Conference Update: Plymouth State Medieval and Renaissance Forum

The Society ran a successful session last Saturday afternoon at the 30th Annual Medieval and Renaissance Forum held at Plymouth State University in Plymouth, NH.  We are extremely grateful to our presenters and our audience for their participation, and thank Karolyn Kinane, Forum Director, for allowing us to sponsor a session.  We hope to continue our association with the Forum in the future.  

Session details were posted earlier on the blog and are repeated here with biographical information on our presenters.  

Saturday, 4/25: 3:00-4:30 PM
Papers from the Society for the Study of Popular Culture and the Middle Ages 

Presider: Carl James Grindley, Hostos Community College, CUNY

The Middle Ages in Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Images and Symbols
Tania Ramos, Lehman College, CUNY

Tania Ramos is in her final year of Undergrad work at Lehman College. She is a History major with a minor in English Lit.  Tania will be graduating in the Spring of 2010 and is planning on continuing her grad work at Lehman. 

Intertext Jokes: Humor and Allusion in the Trailer and Opening Credits of Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975)
Kevin Cryderman, Rochester University/Emory University

Kevin Cryderman is a PhD student in English and Film Studies at the University of Rochester, New York who is currently a lecture-track faculty at Emory University in Atlanta.  He is set to defend his dissertation, entitled "Ghostly Spectators of History: Collective Identity, Genre and the Idiosyncratic Subject," this summer.  Along with scholarly enterprises, Kevin writes fiction and writes and records his own music.

Merlin, from Star Trek to Stargate: Investigating the Sci Fi Merlins of the Reel Matter of Britain
Michael Torregrossa, independent scholar

Michael A. Torregrossa is co-founder of The Society for the Study of Popular Culture and the Middle Ages.  His research focuses on the representations of the Arthurian legend in popular culture, and he is editor of the forthcoming collection The Reel Matter of Britain: The Transformation of the Arthurian Tradition on Film and Television due out in 2010.

Dr. Who: A Wizard in Scientific Clothing
Lisa Leblanc, Anna Maria College

Lisa LeBlanc has been attending the Plymouth State Medieval and Renaissance Forum for the past four years. She is an associate professor of English literature at Anna Maria College with a concentration in Medieval Literature.  Her interests beyond Medieval include Gothic, Fantasy and Folk Literatures as well as visual media.