Call for Proposals! Medieval Art History Tomorrow: A Whiteboard Session

It worked so well in 2024 and 2025, we’re doing it again in 2026!

Please join us to brainstorm about the future of Medieval Art History IN PERSON at the 61st International Congress on Medieval Studies at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, MI, May 14-16, 2026. Organized by Ben Tilghman, Eliza Garrison, and Nina Rowe and Sponsored by Different Visions.

The field of medieval art history is in a moment of expansion and self-evaluation. In this Workshop, we will draw inspiration from anti-racist, anti-colonial, and environmental studies discourses. We see these discourses as ever more urgent in light of the fact that the development of AI technologies is rapidly changing the intellectual and pedagogical landscape; these directly affect our research and teaching. This Workshop provides a space to ignite conversations on current opportunities and challenges, centering the discussion on readings that might guide paths to the future. These readings could be theoretical texts, literary works, technical studies, or pieces of journalism, and we hope that they draw on the best of existing methods and spark creative new approaches.

We organized similar Whiteboard workshops at ICMS 2024 and 2025, and we look forward to a final redux in 2026. Our goal is to foster dynamic exchanges between emerging and established scholars, steering our field toward ethically informed and socially engaged scholarship envisioning a future of the humanities broadly conceived.

What we Have in Mind:

• Our guiding questions are: “What should we be reading?” and “What should we be looking at?”
• In the coming months: We will select three Workshop Leaders to guide discussion, working collaboratively with the three session organizers (Ben, Eliza, and Nina).
• In early spring 2026: via public postings and email to registered attendees, we will pre-circulate reading materials from each Workshop Leader.
• At the ICMS: Each Workshop Leader will provide brief summaries of their texts and explain how they might inspire analysis of a chosen object or site, and/or the field of medieval art history in general.

CFP: If you want to be a Workshop Leader:

In this brainstorming session, three Workshop Leaders each will give a short (4-5 minute) presentation on a critical text from outside the field of art history and an object or site, making the case for how these materials can steer and energize the field of medieval art history going forward. Following the presentations, Workshop Leaders will orchestrate break-out small group discussions on themes of their presentations.

Because our session is designated as a Workshop, we will constitute our panel outside the Confex submission system used by the ICMS. So here are particulars if you wish to submit a proposal to be a Workshop Leader:

• Proposal should include:
  • PDF of the critical text that will be presented and discussed (no more than 10 published pages).
  • An abstract that explains how you think the text you selected has the potential to steer the field of medieval art history in productive ways and focuses on a particular object or site as a case study.
  • A current CV.
• Deadline: Monday, September 15, 2025, 11:59pm ET
• Send materials to: medievalarthistorytomorrow@gmail.com

In the interest of formulating a coherent and dynamic panel, those who submit proposals should expect discussion with the workshop organizers and refinement of plans for the presentations.

If you have questions, please contact us at: medievalarthistorytomorrow@gmail.com or our personal email addresses.