The 2024 conference will mark the quinquagenary (fiftieth anniversary) of the NEMC’s founding. As the conference returns to Boston College for the first time since 1981, we hope to make it an especially festive occasion.

This year's theme is "Books and Transgressions." Keynote lectures will be delivered by Ariane Bottex-Ferragne (Assistant Professor of French, New York University), “Rules of Transgression in Medieval Poetry: Lessons from a Forgotten Bestseller”; and Ahmed El Shamsy (Professor of Islamic Thought, University of Chicago), “Authors and their Audiences in Medieval Arabic Book Culture."

The local organizing committee is Tina Montenegro (BC), Alice Sullivan (Tufts University), and Eric Weiskott (BC).

This conference will provide an opportunity for medievalists working across a range of disciplines and geographic areas to join in conversation about premodern cultures of the book, boundary-crossing, and the law and other normative cultural expressions. Given this year’s conference location at a Jesuit, Catholic university, and our keynote speakers, we particularly (but not exclusively) invite submissions focused on regions other than England, including the Middle East; language traditions other than English; and religious cultures.

We interpret “transgressions” broadly, including the notions of access, trespass, and desire. Accordingly, we welcome papers from medievalists in any discipline, concerned with any region or polity of Europe, Asia, or Africa.

The conference takes place on Saturday. On the preceding Friday afternoon, there will be an exhibition or workshop hosted by the Tufts University Special Collections.