46th Annual Medieval and Renaissance Forum:
The Body in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance
Keene State College
Keene, NH, USA
Friday and Saturday April 10-11, 2026
Call for Papers and Sessions
We are delighted to announce that the 46th Medieval and Renaissance Forum will take place in person on Friday, April 10 and Saturday April 11, 2026 at Keene State College in Keene, New Hampshire. This year’s conference considers “the body” in the broadest way possible. As always, we also welcome papers on any and every topic related to the Middle Ages or the Renaissance as well as papers on medievalism. We plan to hold the 46th Annual Medieval and Renaissance Forum in person with a limited number of virtual presentations. We welcome abstracts (one page or less) from faculty, students, and independent scholars. If you are an undergraduate student, we ask that you obtain a faculty member’s approval and sponsorship.
Graduate students are eligible for consideration for the South Wind Graduate Student Paper Award upon submission of their essays by March 1, 2026. The winner of the South Wind Graduate Student Paper Award will win $100 to be used for registration and/or travel expenses to the 47th Annual Medieval and Renaissance Forum (travel expenses including but not limited to transportation to and from the conference and accommodations while in Keene). The winner of the South Wind Graduate Student Paper Award will be announced at the Medieval Feast on Friday, April 10, 2026.
Please submit abstracts and full contact information on the Google form.
Keynote
This year’s keynote speaker is Colby Gordon, Associate Professor in the Department of Literatures in English at Bryn Mawr College who will speak on “Margaret Cavendish’s Trans Kabbalah”:
Is gender identity a secularized version of the Christian soul? And if so, where does that leave the body? This talk considers the religious prehistories of the apparently secular clinical apparatus that, today, manages trans life, linking Margaret Cavendish’s 1666 utopian fiction The Blazing World with the later sexological fascination with the transmigration of souls as an explanation for sexual inversion.
Colby Gordon is an Associate Professor in the Department of Literatures in English at Bryn Mawr College. With Simone Chess and Will Fisher, he edited a special issue of The Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies on early modern trans studies, the first published collection to bring the conceptual vocabulary of trans studies into the analysis of gender in early modern literature and culture. In 2022, the Shakespeare Association of America named his essay “A Woman’s Prick” the winner of its Innovative Article Award. His first book, Glorious Bodies: Trans Theology and Renaissance Literature, is forthcoming from the University of Chicago Press (2024). He is currently at work on a second monograph entitled The Trans Debate and the Jewish Question.
Abstract deadline: January 15, 2026
Presenters and early registration: March 15, 2026
As always, we look forward to greeting returning and first-time participants to Keene!