Friends,

I've been given the opportunity to organize and moderate a panel on Military History at the July 2007 Medieval Studies Conference in Leeds, England. Thus, it's my pleasure to issue a call for papers relating to historic arms and armor to be delivered as 20-30min. talks with q&a sessions. Ideally I'd like to have two sessions, one dealing with weapons and tactics and the other with military fashions.

I'm inclined to accept a very liberal definition of "Medieval" provided that your paper's conclusions are relevant to the study of Medieval European warfare, military technology/architecture, or fighting arts. Also, topics dealing with contemporaneous war-related issues in non-European societies are welcome, again provided that they can be made relevant to the Medieval world more traditionally understood.

With high quality submissions, our plan is to approach the Royal Armouries (also in Leeds), arguably the world's premiere arms museum, as partners in this session in order to establish an ongoing cooperative relationship between historians and curators of weapons. My hope is that this will foster a critical dialogue between those who deal in theory (interpretive historical analyses), and those who deal in data (actual physical specimens).

If you're interested, please submit to me via email or PM a 200-500 word abstract for consideration by August 15. Please be sure to define the topic of discussion, identify sources of data and methods of analysis, and emphasize the wider relevance of your study for historians in general. If you need guidelines about these, contact me and I'll send you some sample abstracts.

I'll bump this thread periodically to keep it fresh. If you have questions that would be better answered publicly, please feel free to respond here.

Thanks! Hope to see you in Leeds.
ruel