Paper proposal for International Medieval Congress...accepted!!

A few months ago, on a lark, I sent in a paper proposal for the 2009 International Medieval Congress at Leeds. For those not in the know, this is one of the two annual huge Medieval Studies conferences held annually, the other held at the American Leeds- Kalamazoo, Michigan. While I was at 'zoo last year, I met the organizers of this year's IMC, and they told me about the leitmotif of this conference, heresy and orthodoxy, and when I told them some of my ideas, they encouraged me to submit a proposal. The paper is a spinoff of ideas I have developed while working on my Master's thesis, and I hope I can do it justice. Here it is, then, the paper that I will present on Bastille Day 2009. All that's left to do is write the damn thing...

Proposal for "Beware Greeks Bearing News: the Influence of Orthodox Monks on the Reporting of Heresy in Western Europe"

"Recent scholarship into 11th-century texts such as the "Letter of Heribert" and the sermons of Ademar of Chabannes have done much to revive the notion that the 'heretics' of 11th-century France were proselytized by Bogomil missionaries from the Byzantine Empire. They have pointed toward superficial similarities between the western 'heretics' described and the Bogomils, and toward the language used in polemics against the new religious movements as evidence of their connection. I intend to propose that these similarities cannot be taken as prima facie evidence of a connection. They may, rather, constitute evidence of a different kind of influence - that of visiting Orthodox monks on the chronicling of reformist movements by their Catholic brethren."