The Colloquium

Located atop the Cumberland Plateau, on the 13,000-acre campus of the University of the South, the Sewanee Medieval Colloquium is a place for conversation, for colloquy: it allows for the sharing of ideas, the testing of new work, and the forming of new relationships. Surrounded by bluffs and forest coves, Sewanee’s neo-Gothic campus offers a beautiful and intimate setting for academic conversation about the past and the future.

Our small size and careful organization means that the work of everyone who comes to deliver a paper at the Sewanee Medieval Colloquium will find engagement and response. We never have more than three concurrent sessions, so that every paper has an audience, Also, every panel has a respondent, usually a major figure in the field, to offer extended comment on each paper and the session as a whole.

We also know that many doctoral students and adjuncts, and, more and more, professors in general, receive little to no support to attend professional conferences. However, conferences are the places at which scholarship happens for so many in our profession. The Sewanee Medieval Colloquium offers the opportunity for medieval scholars across various disciplines to converse with each other on a theme, to hear lectures, to share papers, and to take part in seminars, to find and to bring challenging new perspectives, to build friendships and encourage collaboration.

A generous gift of $100,000, from an anonymous friend of the Colloquium, makes possible a perpetual endowment to assist doctoral students, adjuncts, and professors who lack institutional support; for them, we can offer low registration fees, low-cost meals, and assistance with travel and housing. Often, institutions can only provide assistance to one conference, and many feel they must choose the large conferences, in order to pursue hiring or speak with a publisher. We hope that this gift will allow for scholars across the country (and the world) to come to Sewanee and share ideas, in panels, in responses, during meals, and perhaps simply while enjoying our beautiful mountain.

The Sewanee Medieval Colloquium is housed at the University of the South, but works in coordination with scholars from a variety of institutions. We hope to maintain relationships with other groups and conferences. If you would like to be more involved with the Colloquium, as an individual or as an institution, please contact Stephanie Batkie, the Colloquium Director.

In addition, we are committed to creating an inclusive and welcoming conference experience from all our participants, and are dedicated to the study of the Middle Ages that works actively to expand the conversation to as many otherwise marginalizes voices as possible. You may read our statement of ethics here.

We also maintain an archive of past conference programs, which you may access here.