INTERNATIONAL MEDIEVAL CONFERENCE

The voyages undertaken in the name of Henry of Portugal exemplify many of the motives that had long driven people to travel and explore: the prospect of wealth, trade, and territory, knowledge and curiosity, piety and religious zeal, legends and external salvation. The Congress seeks to provide a forum for debates on the motives, processes, and effects of travel and exploration, not only by Latin Christians in the so-called 'Age of Discovery', but across cultures, and throughout the medieval period.  What motives prompted travel and exploration in the Middle Ages? Were the factors that drove exploration and travel in and from Europe the same as in other cultures? How do travel and exploration and their effects resonate through written, material, and visual culture? We welcome papers and sessions on all aspects of travel and exploration, broadly understood, including travel as a means of cultural, political, and commercial interaction, ethnography, mental travel, spiritual journeys, the literature of utopia, travel to any place in our world and beyond, journeys 'real' and 'fictitious'. We would particularly encourage submissions with cross-cultural and comparative approaches, and in this context welcome sessions that reach beyond the conventional chronological and geographical borders of the European Middle Ages.