New Society at the International Medieval Congress at Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, MI

The Vernacular Devotional Cultures Group seeks to fill the gap left by the departure of the Mystics Quarterly sessions at Kalamazoo, with a broadened focus to include vernacular spiritual writings of the late Middle Ages–championed by female visionaries, but also written and disseminated by clerics and monks, and read by women religious  as well as by the laity. We  sponsored our first session in Kalamazoo 2016 for scholars and students of late-medieval, vernacular devotional culture. We wish to complement the work being done by such groups as the Syon Abbey Society, the Lollard Society, and the Anchoritic Society.

Our mandate for the Vernacular Devotional Culture includes making up for the loss of the Mystics Quarterly sessions (no longer taking place at Congress) by sponsoring sessions on medieval mystics and mysticism, fostering collaboration among societies devoted to religious cultures, and showcasing recent scholarship on vernacular spiritual traditions in medieval Western Europe.

For further information please contact:

Cathy Grisé, McMaster University (grisec@mcmaster.ca)

Barbara Zimbalist, University of Texas at El Paso (bezimbalist@utep.edu)

Jennifer Brown, Marymount Manhattan College (jbrown1@mmm.edu)

Stephanie Amsel, Southern Methodist University (samsel@mail.smu.edu)