- Introduction
Loyola University Chicago hosted the 35th annual meeting of the Illinois Medieval Association on February 16 and 17, 2018, at the university's Water Tower campus in the River North neighborhood of the city.
The theme of the conference was "Reframing Medieval Bodies." The conference organizers felt that because medievalists have long engaged in the study of the body, producing some of the most influential contributions to the "bodily turn" of the 1980s and 1990s, the time had come for a reappraisal of the multidimensional topic. Speakers were invited to reflect on past scholarship in this area and to use new approaches and methods. Papers covered the full range of disciplines in medieval studies, exploring bodies in their physiological, symbolic, political, economic, and performative capacities.
The conference had forty-nine paper presentations and eighty registered participants. Dr. Peggy McCracken from the University of Michigan delivered the keynote lecture. Her presentation appears here, as do papers on a variety of issues relating to medieval bodies. We have also included a descriptive essay on the numerous programs and services for medievalists that are provided by the Newberry Library in Chicago; the essay is drawn from a special panel at the conference given by librarians and administrators from the Newberry. [End Page v]