Religion in Premodern Europe and the Mediterranean Unit
We welcome proposals on all topics related to religion in premodern Europe and the Mediterranean, especially Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Our Program Unit facilitates comparative analysis of these traditions and explores the history of their entanglements. We encourage the submission of preformed panel proposals suitable for 90-minute time slots.
We especially welcome proposals that examine manuscript and early print cultures and explore how digital media change possibilities for scholarship today.
For a possible session Co-Sponsored with Jewish Studies, we also seek respondents to two recently published books:
- Marc Herman, After Revelation: The Rabbinic Past in the Medieval Islamic World (Penn, 2025)
- Noam Sienna, Jewish Books in North Africa: Between the Early Modern and Modern Worlds (Indiana, 2025)
Potential respondents can address cultural exchange, book history, or other issues raised by either or both books.
For a possible session Co-Sponsored with the Program Units in Mysticism and Religion in Europe, we seek proposals for "Back to the Future: Mysticism, Apocalypse, and Innovation." This panel invites papers that explore how mystic literature and visual culture approach the theme of apocalypse. Of particular interest are historically grounded approaches to apocalyptic mysticism that consider premodern frameworks. Additional areas of focus include comparisons across traditions and between Eurocentric and non-Eurocentric perspectives, apocalypse and social reform, trans panic and apocalyptic futures, and apocalypse and the colonial imagination. Specific paper topics might include, but are not limited to:
- Repurposing of premodern frameworks in our contemporary moment
- Historical and contemporary theorizations of apocalypse and millenarianism
- Apocalyptic mysticism, neo-fascism, and accelerationism
- Decolonial interventions and apocalyptic narratives
- Imaginative reconfigurations of apocalyptic mysticism
- Technological visions of apocalypse (singularity, AI, and the posthuman)
This Unit aims to bring together scholars working on premodern Judaism, Christianity, and Islam in order to create a venue in which religious phenomena can be considered comparatively. Individual papers may be embedded in a single tradition, but presenters should be interested in engaging this material comparatively during the discussion period.
| Chair | Dates | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Claire Fanger | claire@celestiscuria.org | - | View |
| Lora Walsh | ljwalsh@uark.edu | - | View |