Sewanee Medieval Colloquium Turns 50
February 27, 2025
From Feb. 28 to March 1, Sewanee will welcome 145 scholars from across the country for the 50th Sewanee Medieval Colloquium. In recognition of its milestone anniversary, the conference has selected “Jubilee" for its theme, with programming and discussion to focus on celebration, exaltation, feasting, and festivals.
This year’s conference will feature a plenary talk by Amy Remensnyder, professor of history at Brown University. Titled “Jubilee: Freedoms Past and Present,” Remensnyder’s lecture will address how the field of history can and should reclaim stories from the intersections and borders of the medieval world.
The colloquium will also feature its biennial Colloquium Seminar, led this year by Jesse Rodin, Osgood Hooker Professor of Fine arts in the Stanford University Department of Music. Seminar participants participated in a series of virtual sessions with Rodin before the conference to experiment with connections between their own research interests and the seminar topic. The seminar culminates in an in-person roundtable discussion at the colloquium. Titled “Temporality, Varietas, and Performance in the Late Middle Ages,” the seminar invites participants to explore late-medieval events, texts, objects, and music that set up dynamic temporal trajectories by controlling how various energies—historical, poetic, visual, musical, and more—unfold.
Recognizing the importance of music to the celebratory theme of the colloquium, the weekend will kick off with a performance of the musical works of the late Renaissance composer Josquin de Prez on Thursday, Feb. 27. Selected compositions from de Prez’s time spent in Milan will be performed by the internationally renowned vocal ensemble Cut Circle.
One of the longest-running conferences in medieval studies, the Sewanee Medieval Colloquium is a valued annual tradition for medieval scholars. Sewanee Teaching Professor of English and Director of the Medieval Colloquium Stephanie Batkie was recently honored by the Medieval Academy of America for her contributions to medieval studies and in recognition of the colloquium’s primacy within the field of study.
“Over the course of the last decade, Professor Batkie has profoundly shaped the intellectual culture of medieval studies through the Sewanee Medieval Colloquium,” wrote the award nominators. “Through this work, Professor Batkie has cultivated a space of remarkable generosity, conviviality, and intellectual rigor.”
