Although this is an off-year for our environmental sessions at Kalamazoo, this year nonetheless features several papers on environmental topics, and the MARS group (Medieval Association for Rural Studies) has organized sessions on “Gardens and Gardening” and the “Archaeology of Landscape.” This year’s Congress is from May 12-15. See http://www.wmich.edu/medieval/congress/sessions.html for more information.

We will be proposing a series of environmental sessions for Kalamazoo 2012. We will be proposing at least one pedagogy session, and people interested in this should share ideas for how that might be shaped. We welcome any scholars researching environmental aspects of the medieval world.  We encourage you to submit your own projects or encourage other colleagues or students to join our group.  Please feel free to pass this information along to others. This is a forum for new directions and new results, and we always welcome new people. Congress authorities rightly expect that papers be essentially original and not repetitions of work already published elsewhere. Experience teaches that the most effective papers are solid expositions of work in progress, where presenters can get useful feedback from an engaged and broadly-informed audience. Contact Ellen Arnold (efarnold@owu.edu) if you would like to participate in one of the environmental sessions.