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International Medieval Congress (IMC) provides an interdisciplinary forum for the discussion of all aspects of Medieval Studies. Proposals on any topic related to the Middle Ages are welcome, while every year the IMC also chooses a special thematic focus. In 2019 this is ‘Materialities’.Recent attention to objects, artefacts, matter, and material culture has reshaped scholarship in many fields. This strand seeks to address the impact of this new interest in things, theories, and methods as they relate to an expansive understanding of ‘materiality’. The study of materiality brings together a host of scholarly and theoretical concerns and puts them into dialogue to understand how conceptions of matter, and matter itself, shaped the creation of the material world, regimes of labour and supply, connectivity, entanglements, trade networks, movements of things and people, concepts of agency and network theory, and constructed notions of the sublime, of replication, and of ‘reality’, as an abstract concept and category during the Middle Ages.This strand seeks to bring into conversation recent work on materialities by art historians, archaeologists, paleographers, historians, economists, musicologists, liturgists, philosophers, philologists, and scholars of literature, critical theory, and religious studies, among other fields. Material objects and practices served as markers of cultural difference, but could also – simultaneously – become part of a shared culture of consumption, proximity suggesting gender and class affinities. Material dynamics were embedded in the making of objects, the trade in raw materials, and the roles of men and women in the fabrication of things spanning the luxurious to the mundane. Materialities shaped cultures of consumption, created regimes of circulation, and informed networks that defined both subjects and objects. Materialities encompass interactions between peoples both near and far and offer an analytical framework that suggests the unity of the medieval world across religious, ethnic, and spatial distances and differences.Programme PDF : 2019_07_01-04 -- IMC Leeds 2019 MaterialitiesLiens : https://www.imc.leeds.ac.uk/imc2019/Parmi les sessions sur l'Islam médiéval :Session 134 : "Tranforming identities on the Early Islamic Frontier"Session 234 : "Castile and al-Andalus in the Early Middle Ages : Multidisciplinary perspectives on expansion and conflict"Session 334 : "Seas and Floods in the Islamic West"Session 516 : "Cities and Scholars in the Islamic World"Session 530 : "Rethinking the Medieval Frontier 2018, I : Iberian Spaces"&#160;Themes to be addressed may include, but are not limited to:Material culture and consumptionMateriality and the archaeological recordAgency of people and thingsMedieval ‘thing’ theoryMaterial connections: regimes of circulationMaterialism and the Middle AgesLabour and production of thingsThe social life of thingsFabrication: production of specific objectsReplication and reproductionMateriality of coins, money, and circulationManuscripts: material and makingMaterial textual and writing culturesSoundscape: material and musical cultureLight and formRepresenting the materialBody and spirit: spirituality and the materialSpace and materialitiesMaterials: mundane (e.g. wood, water, dust) and luxurious (e.g. gold, silver, gems)Intimacies of thingsAbundance and/or scarcityImagined materialsMaterial landscapes: urban, suburban, ruralLoans, debts, creditMaterialities of power/empireRace and subjectivityTransformations: recycling, reuse, destructionMaterial religions: beliefs and practicesMaterials and memoryMaterialities and/of conflictGendered materialitiesDigital/virtual/material archivesConservation and preservationText and/as objectThe Special Thematic Strand ‘Materialities‘ will be co-ordinated by Anne E. Lester (Department of History, Johns Hopkins University).&#160;