Help Lorraine Stock

Perry Neil Harrison of Baylor University has started a Go Fund Me campaign to help out Lorraine Stock of the University of Houston. According to the site, Lorraine lost her house during the recent hurricane Harvey.

Lorraine is an invaluable member of our community of medievalismists, and I wish her and her family well.

If you can offer her any support, the campaign can be accessed at https://www.gofundme.com/lorraine-stocks-hurricane-recovery or from the widget below.

Michael Torregrossa
Founder/Blog Editor, The Association for the Advancement of Scholarship and Teaching of the Medieval in Popular Culture

CFP The Medium Aevum is the Message: Appropriation, Reinvention, and Reception of the Middle Ages in Popular Culture (9/21/2017; ACLA 2018 at UCLA)

Great title; do note the impending deadline:

ACLA: The Medium Aevum is the Message: Appropriation, Reinvention, and Reception of the Middle Ages in Popular Culture
https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2017/09/04/acla-the-medium-aevum-is-the-message-appropriation-reinvention-and-reception-of-the

deadline for submissions: September 21, 2017

full name / name of organization: ACLA Annual Conference

contact email: katherine.mcloone@csulb.edu



Organizers: Ilan Mitchell-Smith and Katherine McLoone.

A panel at the annual ACLA (American Comparative Literature Association) Conference at UCLA: March 29 - April 1, 2018.
Sponsored by the Cal State University Long Beach Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies.

From the Renaissance invention of the term medium aevum to modern colloquial usage of “medieval” as a pejorative, the era between the fourth and the fifteenth centuries has been a site of contention through which western culture defines both its fears and its ideals.

Contemporary popular culture is no exception. Some works—such as Game of Thrones or the latest King Arthur movie—explicitly engage medieval tropes. Others, including fantasy novels and superhero comic books, allude more obliquely to the long tradition of medievalism, or the representation of the Middle Ages, often while drawing on stereotypical medieval tropes of the knight, the damsel, and the monster. As we have recently seen with news coverage of various white nationalist and neo-Nazi groups, these allusions and “medieval” references, tropes, and images are also often used to further extremist social and political agendas.

This panel will explore representations of, and engagements with, the Middle Ages in popular culture. Although papers on works such as Game of Thrones or Lord of the Rings are welcome, we hope to expand the discussion of popular medievalism to include political and social reappropriations, the use of medieval tropes in works that are not ostensibly medieval, and even the challenges of overcoming medievalist confirmation bias in the classroom.



We invite you to submit a 250-300 word proposal to our panel through the ACLA portal by 9 AM EST on Sept 21, 2017 (portal open 12 PM EST Aug 31, 2017). Feel free to be in touch with us at any time: Ilan Mitchell-Smith (ilan.mitchellsmith@csulb.edu) and Katherine McLoone (katherine.mcloone@csulb.edu)

Last updated September 6, 2017

CFP Innovative Technologies: Modern Responses to the Medieval (A Roundtable) (9/10/17; Kalamazoo 2018)

Do note impending deadline:


Kzoo 2018: Innovative Technologies: Modern Responses to the Medieval (A Roundtable)
https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2017/09/05/kzoo-2018-innovative-technologies-modern-responses-to-the-medieval-a-roundtable

deadline for submissions: September 10, 2017

full name / name of organization: Hortulus: The Online Graduate Journal of Medieval Studies

contact email: hortulus@hortulus-journal.com



Hortulus: The Online Graduate Journal of Medieval Studies is sponsoring a roundtable at the Kalamazoo International Congress on Medieval Studies in 2018. Innovative Technologies: Modern Responses to the Medieval (A Roundtable) Please send abstracts of no more than a page, along with a current CV and the Participation Information Form (available on the Medieval Congress Submissions page:http://wmich.edu/medievalcongress/submissions) to Gwendolyne Knight and Ryan Lawrence at hortulus@hortulus-journal.com by September 10. This session is open to all.

CFP: As a born-digital journal created and run entirely by a rotating staff of graduate students, Hortulus concerns itself deeply and directly with innovative technologies used within Medieval Studies. The roundtable for the ICMS 2018, Modern Responses to the Medieval, will interrogate this topic from two points. Firstly, what can we learn today from medieval attitudes towards novelty and innovative technologies? And, secondly, in what ways can we innovate by drawing on medieval sources? Recent studies, for example, have attested the usefulness of drawing upon medieval medical recipes in modern medicine, as in the case of a recipe from Bald’s Leechbook which led to the creation of a new antibiotic. In addition, relationships between medieval (celestial/geographic) cartography and digital cartography might prove useful, as do new examinations of medieval science, such as the Ordered Universe project, which analyses the writings of the medieval scholar Robert Grosseteste and its relevance to quantum theory. Panellists are also encouraged to engage with the introduction of postmodern ideas into medieval studies; especially those that are innovative at the moment (e.g. robotics, cyborgs, AI, technoculture).


The session organizers wish to bring people together to share experiences, compare approaches, as well as discuss potentials and potential problems. We invite papers that explore efforts to apply innovative technologies to the field of Medieval Studies, but also those which both explore and challenge innovations which apply medieval strategies to modern problems. The session will be structured as a roundtable with a series of short ten- and fifteen-minute papers (the number and duration to be determined depending on response), with ample time for discussion.


Last updated September 7, 2017

CFP Annual Symposium on Medieval and Renaissance Studies (proposals by 12/31/2017)

Of interest to all:

Call for Sessions and Papers

The Annual Symposium on Medieval and Renaissance Studies provides a convenient summer venue in North America for scholars in all disciplines to present papers, organize sessions, participate in roundtables, and engage in interdisciplinary discussion. The goal of the symposium is to promote serious scholarly investigation of the medieval and early modern worlds.

We invite proposals for papers, sessions, and roundtables on all topics and in all disciplines of medieval and early modern studies. Proposals from learned societies and scholarly associations are particularly welcome. The deadline for proposals submissions is December 31.

Details at http://smrs.slu.edu/cfp.html.

CFP Robin Hood at Kalamazoo (updated deadline 9/10/17)

Forwarded on behalf of the International Association for Robin Hood Studies:

We are extending the deadline to September 10 for IARHS abstracts for the 2018 ICMS in Kalamazoo, May 10-13.

We have two sessions that have been approved by the Congress. Both could use at least one more abstract. Please see below for descriptions of the two sessions and who to contact with abstracts and queries.

Best wishes,
Alex Kaufman

The International Association for Robin Hood Studies (IARHS) is sponsoring two sessions at the 53^rd International Congress on Medieval Studies. Please see below for session details and submission information.

  1. Multicultural, Multimedia Outlaws (Session of Papers)

The outlaw figure is a universal cross-cultural phenomenon. This session solicits papers that analyze adaptations of narratives about outlaws, whether literary or historical, male or female, from any period (medieval through contemporary), in any medium (ballad, saga, drama, novel, young adult fiction, films, television, comic books, opera, music, to name a few) from any location (Britain, Europe, America(s), Australia, Asia, ranging from the Merry Men to Icelandic outlaws, Ned Kelly, Pancho Villa, and Moll Flanders.

Please send 300-word abstracts, a brief bios, and completed Participant Information Forms to Lorraine Kochanske Stock (lstock@uh.edu) by September 1, 2017.

  2. Oral Tactics of Medieval Outlaw Literature (Session of Papers)

This formal session of papers explores the modes of writing and of performance (and their interconnectedness) that exist within medieval outlaw tales. From the The Outlaw’s Song of Trailbaston to the late-medieval rhymes, plays, games, and “talkings” of Robin Hood, medieval outlaw tales are, like the medieval lyric, ad hoc, improvisatory, and situational works or literature. This session, inspired by Ingrid Nelson’s recent study Lyric Tactics, explores the ways in which the religious, societal, political, and manuscript contexts inform the genre, form, vernacular language, semantics, and voice of a medieval outlaw tale. 
 

Please send 300-word abstracts, a brief bios, and completed Participant Information Forms to Lesley Coote (L.A.Coote@hull.ac.uk) and Alexander L. Kaufman (akaufman@aum.edu) by September 1, 2017.

Here is a link to the ICMS’s Participant Information Form:

http://www.wmich.edu/medievalcongress/submissions

 

 

Medievalists Respond to Charlottesville

Medieval Studies organizations across the United States have posted a response to recent activities in Charlottesville (details at http://www.themedievalacademyblog.org/medievalists-respond-to-charlottesville/).

The Association for the Advancement of Scholarship and Teaching of the Medieval in Popular Culture endorses their position especially the following statements:

As scholars of the medieval world we are disturbed by the use of a nostalgic but inaccurate myth of the Middle Ages by racist movements in the United States. By using imagined medieval symbols, or names drawn from medieval terminology, they create a fantasy of a pure, white Europe that bears no relationship to reality. This fantasy not only hurts people in the present, it also distorts the past. Medieval Europe was diverse religiously, culturally, and ethnically, and medieval Europe was not the entire medieval world. Scholars disagree about the motivations of the Crusades—or, indeed, whether the idea of “crusade” is a medieval one or came later—but it is clear that racial purity was not primary among them.

and

Every generation of scholars creates its own interpretations of the past. Such interpretations must be judged by how well they explain the writings, art, and artifacts that have come down to us. As a field we are dedicated to scholarly inquiry. As the new semester approaches at many institutions, we invite those of you who have the opportunity to join us. Take a class or attend a public lecture on medieval history, literature, art, music. Learn about this vibrant and varied world, instead of simply being appalled by some racist caricature of it. See for yourself what lessons it holds for the modern world.

Michael A Torregrossa,
Founder, The Association for the Advancement of Scholarship and Teaching of the Medieval in Popular Culture

CFP Medievalism in Popular Culture Area (10/1/2017; PCAACA 2018)

CFP: Medievalism in Popular Culture
http://pcaaca.org/medieval-popular-culture-arthurian-legends/


PCA/ACA 2018 National Conference
March 28th – 31st, 2018 – Indianapolis, Indiana

The Medievalism in Popular Culture Area (including Anglo-Saxon, Robin Hood, Arthurian, Norse, and other materials connected to medieval studies) accepts papers on all topics that explore either popular culture during the Middle Ages or transcribe some aspect of the Middle Ages into the popular culture of later periods. These representations can occur in any genre, including film, television, novels, graphic novels, gaming, advertising, art, etc. For this year’s conference, I would like to encourage submissions on some of the following topics:

• The Arthurian World
• Papers on King Arthur: Legend of the Sword may generate a dedicated panel to this film
• Children’s Books/Shows/Games (e.g. Coup, Carcassone, etc.)
• Medievalism in Advertising
• “Medieval” as a social and political signifier
• Medievalism in Game of Thrones
• Representations of medieval/Renaissance nobility and royalty in television (Reign, The White Princess, Wolf Hall, etc.)
• Robin Hood
• Medievalism and Teaching
• Board Games/Online Gaming and/or Cosplay
• Medievalism in Novels/Short Stories/Poems
• Potential panel on the novel Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke

If your topic idea does not fit into any of these categories, please feel free to submit your proposal as well. I would like to encourage as much participation as possible, and depending on submissions, I may rearrange the topic groupings.

All papers will be included in sessions with four presenters each, so plan to present on your topic for no more than 15 minutes, inclusive of any audio or visual materials.

Panel submissions are also welcome on any topic of medievalism. If you would like to propose a panel, please submit your complete panel to me directly at cfrancis@bloomu.edu. Individual papers will then have to be submitted to the PCA online system (see below).

Submission requirements:

Please submit a title and a 250 word abstract to http://conference.pcaaca.org. All submissions must be directed to the online database. Be sure to indicate whatever audio/visual needs you may have. Traditionally, all rooms at the PCA/ACA conference provide a projection screen with sound capability. Presenters are required to bring their own laptops and any special connectors.

Deadline for submission: October 1st, 2017

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact Christina Francis, Associate Professor of English, Bloomsburg University, at cfrancis@bloomu.edu.

CFP ISSM at Kalamazoo (9/1/2017; Kalamazoo 2018)

The International Society for the Study of Medievalism (ISSM) has recently announced its sessions for next year's International Congress on Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo. Please support their endeavors.

Here are the details:

ISSM is now seeking papers for three sessions at the International Congress on Medieval Studies, May 10-13, 2018. Please see our calls for papers below for details. For more information about the conference itself, please visit the Congress website.

http://medievalism.net/conference/issm-at-kalamazoo
 

Medievalism, Racism, and the Academy: A joint round table with Medievalists of Color (MOC)

Students often come to Medieval Studies through video games, fantasy novels, tabletop D&D, movies, and other popular medievalisms. But this can present a skewed picture of the Middle Ages as racially homogenous. Unfortunately, some traditional approaches to teaching Medieval Studies can perpetuate this problem. Following recent ISSM sessions on race, anti-Semitism, and xenophobia, and building on professional conversations launched at this year’s MOC workshop on Whiteness in Medieval Studies, our round table will consider how medievalism encountered both within and outside the classroom or embedded in academic structures might propagate racial bias. Participants might critique existing structures and/or offer suggestions for how research, teaching, administration, and academic social structures in both Medieval Studies and Medievalism Studies can be transformed to address these issues. Possible topics could include: diversity and the medieval curriculum, racial discourses in contemporary geopolitics or popular media, ethnonationalism and alt-right discourses on college campuses, medievalism and Islamophobia, the shifting demographics of medievalist scholars or enthusiasts, etc. Please send abstracts for papers of no more than ten minutes to Amy S. Kaufman (skaufmana at gmail) by September 1, 2017.




The New “Dark Ages”

The “Dark Ages” are back in the news, or at least the term is: the label has been applied to everything from the increasing erosion of women’s rights across the globe to the dystopian television worlds of The Handmaid’s Tale and Into the Badlands. Many people seem afraid that the world is inevitably returning to a “medieval” past of patriarchy, superstition, religious homogeny, censorship, and even monarchy. Medievalists, meanwhile, leap at these dim portraits of the Middle Ages to defend it from oversimplification. But sometimes, we dispel popular misconceptions without addressing continuities between the present and the past. For this panel, we’re seeking both papers that trace strong connections between the worst aspects of the Middle Ages and our possible futures and papers that interrogate contemporary anxieties and illusions about the past in light of real medieval history, literature, science, and art. Please send abstracts to Amy S. Kaufman (skaufmana at gmail) by September 1, 2017.


King Arthur 2017: A Round Table

Reviews have poured in for Guy Ritchie’s 2017 King Arthur, and some of them are pretty scathing. Chief among audience complaints is the film’s lack of authenticity: the story deviates so radically from medieval literature that Arthurian legend is barely recognizable. However, authenticity has always been a problematic way to evaluate Arthurian retellings. Sometimes called the “original fan-fiction,” medieval Arthurian legend is always revised and recreated to fit the political or cultural needs of a given period. And in fact, Ritchie’s film has been much better received among scholars of the Middle Ages. Participants in this round table will discuss the 2017 cinematic King Arthur and might answer some of the following questions: How do Ritchie’s changes fit into the canon of Arthurian revisions? How does the 2017 film inform meta-theoretical questions of authenticity surrounding Arthur himself? What do Ritchie’s changes tell us about our own cultural moment? Please send abstracts for papers of no more than ten minutes to Amy S. Kaufman (skaufmana at gmail) by September 1, 2017.

Race and Medieval Studies

According to recent reports there were some racially insensitive comments made at last month's International Medieval Congress at Leeds (and the perception of a lack of real engagement with and exploration of the conference theme of "Otherness"). A full report of the controversy can be accessed at http://www.chronicle.com/article/Medievalists-Recoiling-From/240666. The group Medievalists of Color has posted its response at http://medievalistsofcolor.com/medievalists-of-color-/on-race-and-medieval-studies.

Hopefully, we can all learn to be more aware of others and avoid such occurrences in the future.

Michael Torregrossa
Founder/Blog Editor

PS. If I am misrepresenting this, do let me know in the comments section. My information is all third hand.

Call for Papers for Kalamazoo 2018 (and Some Thoughts)

The call for papers for next May's 53rd International Congress on Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo has been posted online only this year. The link is as follows: https://wmich.edu/medievalcongress/events.

The organizer, the Medieval Institute, has also posted some details on the selection of session proposals at https://wmich.edu/sites/default/files/attachments/u434/2017/medieval-academic-program-2018.pdf. It is a (vague) window into an apparently arcane process, but does not go into enough detail to explain why what one thinks is an otherwise good session is rejected and another group gets multiple sessions accepted each and every year. (We wonder especially how does one superbly justify multiple sessions in a one-page document and how is a very generalized topic [and especially two or more sessions of them] considered to be superbly justified? Also, is it fair to all for some groups to have four or more sessions, when those of smaller groups are rejected?) Hopefully, a more transparent document will be forthcoming.

Michael Torregrossa,
Founder and Blog Editor

PS. We welcome your feedback on this issue. Do post to the comments below or send a message to medievalinpopularculture@gmail.com. 

CFP Monstrous Medievalism (8/31/17; Leeds 2018)

A worthy endeavor (with more to follow):

Monstrous Medievalism: Toxic Appropriations of the Middle Ages in Modern Popular Culture and Thought (Leeds 2018)
https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2017/06/24/monstrous-medievalism-toxic-appropriations-of-the-middle-ages-in-modern-popular

deadline for submissions:
August 31, 2017


full name / name of organization:
MEARCSTAPA (monsters: the experimental association for the research of cryptozoology through scholarly theory and practical application)


contact email:
rward@lincoln.ac.uk


Monstrous Medievalism: Toxic Appropriations of the Middle Ages in Modern Popular Culture and Thought (Leeds 2018)

MEARCSTAPA plans to submit a session of 3 or 4 papers to the 2018 International Medieval Congress at Leeds. The Congress theme is “Memory.” Our hope is that this session will run as a twin-session to our proposed panel for Kalamazoo 2018 on Monstrous Medievalisms. 
The medieval period continues to be misidentified both as a primitive and savage ‘dark ages’ and as an idealized utopian golden age of racial and religious homogeny. In both cases, aspects of medieval culture—stories, motifs, and themes—are appropriated and reimagined (that is, remembered and reconstructed) in ways that celebrate and promote the othering of certain racial and ethnic groups or cultures. Medievalists should be made uncomfortable by the realization that we share some interests with white supremacists, neo-Nazis, and other groups dedicated to the oppression, segregation, and even elimination of racial and ethnic groups or cultures. Medievalists should feel even more uncomfortable when this othering—intentional or otherwise—becomes common in the presentation of the Middle Ages in various popular cultural media.



These medievalisms use the Middle Ages—our Middle Ages—to advance their racist agendas, which have frequently resulted in malicious acts against individuals and groups. In short, the Middle Ages are often put to monstrous work in modern popular thought and culture, frequently used by one community to attack another. The Middle Ages thus become othered and estranged from the scholars who study and teach from positions of acceptance and inclusion. These monstrous medievalisms use the period to foster some of the most pernicious ideologies of the present day and distort our understanding of the past. We ask, whose Middle Ages are they? And in so doing, we seek to confront these monstrous medievalisms, to unravel and make sense of them in order to dismantle the negative work they do.


Papers for this panel might address topics such as:

• Appropriations of the medieval image and narrative in Nazi propaganda
• Contemporary White Pride/White Nationalist appropriations of the medieval symbols and signs (tattoos, banners, album covers, banners)
• Racist responses to inclusion in “Medieval” film
• The medieval fantasies of white identity in the Anglo-Saxon enthusiasm of the founding fathers
• Racialized Monsters in the contemporary medieval fantasy
• Race War as trope in Ancient and Medieval period films, video games, and/or books
• "Unintentional" rehearsals of racist ideologies in popular media

We invite papers from all disciplines and national traditions. Additionally, MEARCSTAPA will provide an award of $500 to the best graduate student submission to this or any of its sessions to help offset the costs of travel and lodging for the IMC.



Please send abstracts of no more than 250 words together with a brief bio to session organizer Renée Ward (rward@lincoln.ac.uk) by 31 August 2017. Please include your name, title, and affiliation on the abstract itself. All abstracts will be vetted by the MEARCSTAPA board and the full session will be submitted to the Congress mid-September 2017.

Last updated June 26, 2017

CFP Authenticity and Authority in Medievalism (9/10/2017; Kalamazoo 2018)

A couple of calls for papers for Kalamazoo. (We wish them luck, but we remain puzzled how some groups were allowed two or more sessions while many others were rejected).

Authenticity and Authority in Medievalism: Kalamazoo Medieval Congress 2018 Call for Papers Announcement published by Ken Mondschein on Friday, July 21, 2017
https://networks.h-net.org/node/73374/announcements/187720/authenticity-and-authority-medievalism-kalamazoo-medieval

Type: Call for Papers
Date: September 10, 2017
Location: Michigan, United States
Subject Fields: Art, Art History & Visual Studies, Early Modern History and Period Studies, Medieval and Byzantine History / Studies, Theatre & Performance History / Studies, Music and Music History


We would like to present a call for papers for the following two sessions on medievalism and the modern Middle Ages for the 2018 Medieval Congress at Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, MI:

1. “Can These Bones Come To Life?” 1: Authenticity in Re-construction, Re-enactment, and Re-creation

We invite historians, scholars of literature, archaeologists, musicologists, theater historians and performers, as well as recreationist-performers such as dancers, musicians, historical fencers, brewers, and textile researchers to submit papers for a unique interdisciplinary session on the insights into history that can be gained from attempts to reconstruct medieval arts, as well as the historiographical issues involved in such work. For this year’s first session, we would like to examine the fraught idea of “authenticity” in all its meanings, from the sense of “verisimilitude to a historical artifact” usually used in reenactment circles; to whether a performance of a piece of music, dance, or fencing match can ever be “authentic”; to the philosophical sense of “authenticity” in the sense of “being true to one’s (socially constructed) self” and its implications for the place of medievalist hobbies in the modern habitus (including ideas of race, class, and gender); to the ways in which an idea of “authentic” national culture can be used to turn such activities to troublesome ends.



2 “Can These Bones Come To Life?” 2: Authority in Re-construction, Re-enactment, and Re-creation

For our second session, we would like to interrogate the idea of “authority.” Who is an authority in recreation/reenactment? What is an “authoritative” recreation? How can authority be gained or lost? How does this either correspond to, or challenge, academic notions of authority? When should academics step in to challenge incorrect or troublesome ideas? Possible subjects for papers include sociological examinations of the peerage system or idea of “renown” in the Society for Creative Anachronism, the dismissal of scholarly authority the historical martial arts movement in favor of a “do it yourself” model, and the permeable boundaries between scholars and performers in early music, dance, and theater. Is authority of academic medievalists on the wane, in favor of a vision of a Middle Ages ruled by self- (or crowd-) appointed authorities and the entertainment industry? Finally, how do scholarly claims to “expertise” match with our living in a post-factual world?

Note that all papers will have the opportunity to be published in our ongoing series of proceedings.

Please send abstracts of up to 300 words, current CV, and the Participant Information Form (available on the Congress’ Submissions page, http://wmich.edu/medievalcongress/submissions) to ken -at- kenmondschein dot com by September 10, or sooner if possible.
Contact Info:


Ken Mondschein
Contact Email:
ken@kenmondschein.com
URL:
http://kenmondschein.com

Coming Soon: Paperback Edition of Medieval Afterlives in Contemporary Culture

Been meaning to post on this for a while: 

Medieval Afterlives in Contemporary Culture

Medieval Afterlives in Contemporary Culture

Paperback edition: http://www.bloomsbury.com/us/medieval-afterlives-in-contemporary-culture-9781350021617/

Published: 08-24-2017 Format: Paperback Edition: 1st Extent: 368 ISBN: 9781350021617 Imprint: Bloomsbury Academic Illustrations: 5 b/w illustrations Dimensions: 7 1/2" x 9 3/4" List price: $44.95

(Also available in hardcover [published in 2015]: http://www.bloomsbury.com/us/medieval-afterlives-in-contemporary-culture-9781441129604/)

(Also available as an e-book)


About Medieval Afterlives in Contemporary Culture

With contributions from 29 leading international scholars, this is the first single-volume guide to the appropriation of medieval texts in contemporary culture.

Medieval Afterlives in Contemporary Culture covers a comprehensive range of media, including literature, film, TV, comic book adaptations, electronic media, performances, and commercial merchandise and tourism. Its lively chapters range from Spamalot to the RSC, Beowulf to Merlin, computer games to internet memes, opera to Young Adult fiction and contemporary poetry, and much more.

Also included is a companion website at https://medievalafterlives.wordpress.com/ aimed at general readers, academics, and students interested in the burgeoning field of medieval afterlives, complete with:

- Further reading/weblinks
- 'My favourite' guides to contemporary medieval appropriations
- Images and interviews
- Guide to library archives and manuscript collections
- Guide to heritage collection



Table of contents

Acknowledgements
Introduction: Living Medieval
Gail Ashton

I: True to Life: in the performance

1.Spamalot: Lovingly Ripping Off / Ripping On the Establishment
Jeff Massey and Brian Cogan

2. Medievalisms in Contemporary Opera
Robert Sturges

3. Medieval religious plays in England: afterlives and new lives through performance
Margaret Rogerson

4. Staging Chaucer: Mike Poulton and the Royal Shakespeare Company's Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales
Sarah Peverley

5. You Can't Do This to Disney! Popular Medievalisms in the Classroom
Meriem Pagès

6. Medieval Times: Tournaments and Jousting in Twenty-first Century North America
Elizabeth Emery

II: To Turn You On: the pleasures of texts- film, TV, gaming

7. From Anglo-Saxon to Angelina: Adapting Beowulf for Film
Stewart Brookes

8. Contemporary Neomedieval Digital Gaming: An Overview of Genres
Daniel T. Kline

9. Survey of 21st 'Medieval' Film
Lesley Coote

10. 'Camelot must come before all else': Fantasy and family in the BBC Merlin
Philippa Semper

11. Electronic Tolkien: Characterization in Film and Video Games
Carol L. Robinson

12. Chaucer in a (Television) Box: The BBC Canterbury Tales (2003)
Kathleen Coyne Kelly

III: More Than This: reimagings and reappropriations

13. Global Chaucers
Candace Barrington and Jonathan Hsy

14. Silence in the Library?-Medievalist Poetry Shout-Out
Gail Ashton

15. Coming of Age in the Middle Ages: The Quest for Identity in Medieval Novels for Young Adults
Angela Jane Weisl

16. Australian Medievalism: Time and Paradox
Louise D'Arcens

17. Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe as Contemporary Cult Figures
Fiona Tolhurst

18. Conjuring the Ghosts of Camelot: Tintagel and the Medievalism of Heritage Tourism
Laurie A. Finke and Susan Aronstein

IV: Avalon: icons and artefacts

19. Medievalism and Heroism in Arthurian Literature for Young People
Ann F. Howey

20. New Age and Neopagan Medievalisms
Karolyn Kinane

21. 21st-Century Templar
Cory James Rushton

22. Malory's Afterlives in Contemporary Culture
Raluca L. Radulescu

23. 'We Are Robin Hood': The Outlaw Tradition in Contemporary Popular Culture
Rob Gossedge

24. Harry Potter and Medievalism
Renée Ward

V: The Space Between: new media and fandom

25. Social Networking, Participatory Culture, and the Fandom World of Harry Potter
Amanda K. Allen

26. 'Nightcrawler's Inferno' and other Hellish Tales: Comics Adaptations of Dante
Jason Tondro

27. From Camelot to Kaamelott: The Arthurian Legend in British, American and French Comics
Daniel Nastali

28. Afterlives of Medieval Manuscripts
Wendy Scase

29. Medieval Memes
Maggie M. Williams and Lauren C. Razzore

Notes on Contributors

Select Bibliography

Index

Medieval Afterlives in Contemporary Culture

Link to CFP on Medieval Monsters and Their Afterlives (9/15/17; Kalamazoo 2018)

The Association for the Advancement of Scholarship and Teaching of the Medieval in Popular Culture is sponsoring a session for next year's International Congress on Medieval Studies on the topic of "Medieval Monsters and Their Afterlives", Please submit proposals and required information by 15 September 2017. Complete details can be accessed at http://medievalstudiesonscreen.blogspot.com/2017/06/cfp-medieval-monsters-and-their.html.

Michael Torregrossa
Founder

CFP International Association for Robin Hood Studies for Kalamazoo 2018 (9/1/17)

The International Association for Robin Hood Studies has also posted their calls for papers for the 2018 Medieval Congress. Session details are as follows:

 1. Multicultural, Multimedia Outlaws (Session of Papers)

The outlaw figure is a universal cross-cultural phenomenon. This session solicits papers that analyze adaptations of narratives about outlaws, whether literary or historical, male or female, from any period (medieval through contemporary), in any medium (ballad, saga, drama, novel, young adult fiction, films, television, comic books, opera, music, to name a few) from any location (Britain, Europe, America(s), Australia, Asia, ranging from the Merry Men to Icelandic outlaws, Ned Kelly, Pancho Villa, and Moll Flanders.

Please send 300-word abstracts, a brief bios, and completed Participant Information Forms to Lorraine Kochanske Stock (lstock@uh.edu) by September 1, 2017.






  2. Oral Tactics of Medieval Outlaw Literature (Session of Papers)

This formal session of papers explores the modes of writing and of performance (and their interconnectedness) that exist within medieval outlaw tales. From the The Outlaw’s Song of Trailbaston to the late-medieval rhymes, plays, games, and “talkings” of Robin Hood, medieval outlaw tales are, like the medieval lyric, ad hoc, improvisatory, and situational works or literature. This session, inspired by Ingrid Nelson’s recent study Lyric Tactics, explores the ways in which the religious, societal, political, and manuscript contexts inform the genre, form, vernacular language, semantics, and voice of a medieval outlaw tale.

Please send 300-word abstracts, a brief bios, and completed Participant Information Forms to Lesley Coote (L.A.Coote@hull.ac.uk) and Alexander L. Kaufman (akaufman@aum.edu) by September 1, 2017.


Here is a link to the ICMS’s Participant Information Form:
http://www.wmich.edu/medievalcongress/submissions

CFP Tales Afer Tolkien Society for Kalamazoo 2018

The Tales After Tolkien Society have announced their sessions for next year's International Congress on Medieval Studies. Sessions are as follows:

I. Reclaiming the Dead and the Undead
A paper session, the panel seeks to interrogate appropriations of medieval concepts of un/death in contemporary media, attending to how the medieval corporeal/spiritual divide is reinscribed and transgressed by the appropriations. In brief, it means to look at how recent ideas of un/death correspond with medieval antecedents and what that correspondence suggests.

II. Medievalism in Metal
A roundtable, the panel seeks to investigate medieval referentiality--acoustic, iconographic, thematic, and otherwise--in metal music and among metal bands. (The session will likely need to make use of a/v equipment.)

Send submissions to geoffrey.b.elliott@gmail.com.

Further information is on their website at http://talesaftertolkien.blogspot.com/2017/06/kalamazoo-2018.html.

ALA 2017 Update 2/25

It is with sadness that I report that the organizers have rejected our panel proposal on "The Medieval in American Popular Culture at Home and Abroad: Reflections in Commemoration of the 80th Anniversary of Prince Valiant" (details at https://medievalinpopularculture.blogspot.com/2017/01/ala-session-proposal.html) for the upcoming meeting of the American Literature Association.

Hopefully, we can celebrate this milestone of medievalism at some other venue this year.

Michael Torregrossa
Founder

CFP 500-Year Commemoration of Martin Luther's 95 Theses Conference (3/1/2017)

500-Year Commemoration of Martin Luther's 95 Theses
https://www.cfplist.com/CFP.aspx?CID=6965

Event: 10/31/2017 - 11/03/2017
Abstract: 03/01/2017

Location: Berrien Springs, Michigan
Organization: Andrews University


The Andrews University Departments of History & Political Science and Religion & Biblical Languages in collaboration with the Office of Research and Creative Scholarship and the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists’ Office of Archives, Statistics, and Research proudly announces its upcoming conference to commemorate the 500-year anniversary of Martin Luther’s Ninety-Five Theses. We welcome all scholarly paper or session proposals for the conference to be held at Andrews University in Berrien Springs, Michigan, from October 31 to November 3, 2017.

The program committee welcomes scholarly proposals from all disciplines, time periods, and locales—with the common thread relating to Martin Luther, Protestantism, and/or the Reformation. Roundtable discussions that foster audience involvement are welcome as well. Please provide a 250-word abstract and cv by March 1, 2017 to:

Dr. Stephanie Carpenter
Department of History & Political Science
Buller Hall 126
8488 E Campus Circle Drive
Berrien Springs, MI 49104-0010
email: lutherconference@andrews.edu
website: https://www.andrews.edu/cas/history/lutherconference/


Contact Email: carpenter@andrews.edu
Website: https://www.andrews.edu/cas/history/lutherconference/

CFP The First Hamlet, Special Issue of Critical Survey (3/15/2017)

The First Hamlet: A Special Issue of Critical Survey
https://www.cfplist.com/CFP.aspx?CID=7225

Event: 09/01/2017
Abstract: 03/15/2017

Location: Hatfield, Hertfordshire, United Kingdom
Organization: Critical Survey


Call for Papers:
The First Hamlet
A Special Issue of Critical Survey
Guest Editor: Terri Bourus, Indiana University Indianapolis(IUPUI)
tbourus@iupui.edu

The 1603 edition of Hamlet, the first surviving text of Shakespeare’s most famous play, was, for most of the twentieth century, dismissed as a ‘bad quarto’, the most conspicuous inhabitant of the ghetto of ‘memorial reconstruction’. This theory was widely proclaimed as a ‘fact’, which had been proven by the scientific methods of the New Bibliography. It was also widely accepted as a ‘fact’ that references to a play called ‘Hamlet’ in 1589, 1594, and 1596 referred to an earlier, lost tragedy, probably written by Thomas Kyd.

These ‘facts’ began to unravel in the 1990s when the whole theory of memorial reconstruction was challenged by Laurie Maguire, Paul Werstine, and others. In 2014, two monographs on the 1603 edition (the ‘first quarto’, or ‘Q1’) were published, almost simultaneously: Young Shakespeare’s Young Hamlet: Print, Piracy, and Performance (by Terri Bourus) and Hamlet After Q1: An Uncanny History of the Shakespeare Text (by Zachary Lesser). In different ways, both books challenged the orthodox editorial and critical dismissal of Q1. In 2015, the third edition of the Norton Shakespeare included, in addition to the canonical Hamlet (based on the Second Quarto, conflated with additions from the Folio), an edited text of the 1603 edition. In February 2016, The Chronicle of Higher Education published a 5200-word article by Ron Rosenbaum on the controversy surrounding Shakespeare's 'Badass Quarto' (the title of a production of Q1 in Washington D.C.).

In 2017 Critical Survey will publish a special issue on ‘The First Hamlet’, guest-edited by Terri Bourus. We invite papers of 4000-7000 words, addressing issues surrounding the first quarto, or the ‘lost Hamlet’, or both, from a variety of perspectives: critical, theatrical, historical, pedagogical, and bibliographical. We are interested in the history of criticism, the history of the book, and the history of performance, in data-mining and statistical analysis, in the experiments of directors and actors, the experience of teachers, the analysis of verse and prose. Whatever the subject, essays should be clear, concise, and accessible.

Informal inquiries about possibilities for essays, as well as proposals for book reviews, performance reviews, and review essays, are welcome and encouraged. Please direct all correspondence to the guest editor, Terri Bourus at tbourus@iupui.edu

Submissions should be sent to the above email address by 15 March 2017 as Microsoft Word documents. Two (anonymous) hard copies for peer review, should also be sent, along with a separate cover letter, to the mailing address for Critical Survey:

Critical Survey
English Literature Group
School of Humanities
University of Hertfordwhite
De Havilland Campus
Hatfield, Hertfordshire, AL10 9AB
United Kingdom

A style guide and additional submission information is available online:
http://journals.berghahnbooks.com/cs/



Contact Email: tbourus@iupui.edu

Blog Updates 2/10/17

I've been catching up on posting some calls for papers this week.

Please send any notices of interest to the Association to medievalinpopularculture@gmail.com.

Michael Torregrossa,
Founder

Kalamazoo 2017 Program Update 2/2

Sorry for the typo:

The program for this year's International Congress on Medieval Studies is now live at https://wmich.edu/medievalcongress/events.

The Association stands by the congress and, especially, the Medieval Academy of America in its encouragement (at http://www.themedievalacademyblog.org/medieval-academy-of-america-response-to-immigration-executive-order/) that we must "learn from – rather than ignore – the past we work to illuminate".

ALA Session Proposal

I am pleased to announce that the association was able to assemble a complete panel for the upcoming meeting of the American Literature Association. The details of our session follow. I will update further once I receive news of its ultimate fate.

Michael Torregrossa
Founder, The Association for the Advancement of Scholarship and Teaching of the Medieval in Popular Culture

The Medieval in American Popular Culture at Home and Abroad: Reflections in Commemoration of the 80th Anniversary of Prince Valiant

Sponsored by the Association for the Advancement of Scholarship and Teaching of the Medieval in Popular Culture

Organizer and Chair: Michael A. Torregrossa, Independent Scholar

1.     “ ‘My White Knight’: American Medievalism 1890-1920 and the Power of Whiteness,” Faye Ringel, U.S. Coast Guard Academy

2.      “Tilting Down the List, Tilting Down the Ages: The Revival of Jousting at the Turn of the 21st Century,” Karli Grazman, University of Connecticut

3.     “Medieval Marvels and Marvel Superheroes,” Rex Barnes, Columbia University

4.    “American Medievalism in Post-Soviet Fairy-Tale Films,” Kate Koppy, Marymount University

Audio-visual equipment required: projector and screen

The Association for the Advancement of Scholarship and Teaching of the Medieval in Popular Culture seeks to facilitate the spread of information about the representations of the medieval in contemporary popular culture. In commemoration of the eightieth anniversary of the Prince Valiant comic strip, this session explores both how Americans have received the medieval and how American-made medievalisms have influenced new works across the globe. First, Faye Ringel explores some uses that Americans made of the medieval at the turn of the twentieth century, works that might have influenced the creation of the comic. Then, Karli Grazman directs our attention to Americans’ continued interest in the medieval through our recreation of the jousting tournament, a prominent event featured in the strip. Next, Rex Barnes turns our attention towards a different group of comic book heroes and suggests a medieval background for the superheroes of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Finally, Kate Koppy highlights how the medievalisms of the Walt Disney Studio, perhaps one of the country’s foremost producers of medievalesque texts, have (like Prince Valiant) in turn inspired new works of medievalism in Russia. 

SMART Fall 2016

Another recent issue of this exemplary journal. Back issues can be purchased at http://webs.wichita.edu/?u=smart.


STUDIES IN MEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE TEACHING

Fall 2016 (Volume 23, Issue 2)

QUEER PEDAGOGY (feature collection guest edited by Graham N. Drake)

• GRAHAM N. DRAKE Introduction to Queer Pedagogy (A Roundtable)
• MICHELLE M. SAUER Queer Pedagogy, Medieval Literature, and Chaucer
• SUSANNAH MARY CHEWNING Queer Pedagogy in the Two-Year College
• LISA WESTON Queer Pedagogy, Medieval Literature, and the Writing of Difference

ELIZABETH WILLIAMSEN Foreign Territory: Teaching the Middle Ages through Travel Writing

JANE BEAL Reading in a Roundtable, Socratic Dialogue, and Other Strategies for Teaching Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

HILLARY M. NUNN and LAUREN A. SCARPA Student Encounters with Suicide in Julius Caesar

GAEL GROSSMAN Student Food Schema of the Medieval Diet Based on Self-Selected Middle Grade and Young Adult Fiction

CHRISTINA FRANCIS The Usefulness of Eli Stone to Teaching Medieval Narrative





HELEN DAMICO Book Review: Old English Liturgical Verse: A Student Edition, edited by Sarah Larratt Keefer

BRIGITTE ROUSSEL Book Review: Women and Writing c. 1340–c. 1650: The Domestication of Print Culture, edited by Anne Lawrence-Mathers and Phillipa Hardman

JENNY REBECCA RYTTING Book Review: Women in Late Medieval and Reformation Europe 1200–1550, by Helen M. Jewell

SUSAN KENDRICK Book Review: Weyward Macbeth: Intersections of Race and Performance, edited by Scott L. Newstock and Ayanna Thompson

RICHARD KAY Book Review: Bede and the End of Time, by Peter Darby

AILEEN A. FENG Book Review: Short History of the Renaissance, by Lisa Kaborycha

GLENN DAVIS Book Review: Old English Reader, edited by Murray McGillivray

STEPHEN F. EVANS Book Review: Sex Acts in Early Modern Italy: Practice, Performance, Perversion, Punishment, edited by Allison Levy

SMART Spring 2016

Sorry to have not posted this sooner. Back issues of the journal can be purchased at http://webs.wichita.edu/?u=smart.

STUDIES IN MEDIEVAL AND RENAISSANCE TEACHING

Spring 2016 (Volume 23, Issue 1)

BETSY CHUNKO-DOMINGUEZ and EDWARD TRIPLETT Digital Humanities and Medieval Studies: The Plan of St. Gall as a Case Study on Shifting Pedagogical Concerns

ALAN S. AMBRISCO Battling Monstrosity in Beowulf and Grendel (2005): Using a Film Adaptation to Teach Beowulf

KATHERINE GUBBELS Queer Approaches to Teaching Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

CAROL JAMISON J. K. Rowling’s Own Book of Chivalry: Incorporating the Harry Potter Series in an Arthurian Literature Course

JULIA FINCH Medieval Manuscripts, Digital Users, and the University Classroom

YVONNE SEALE Imagining Medieval Europe in the College Classroom

KATHLEEN FORNI Ackroyd’s Deviant Chaucer: Translation and Target Cultures

ALISON A. BAKER Opposing Forces: Understanding Classical Gods in Medieval and Early Modern Literature

JOEL ROSENTHAL Teaching The Medieval History Survey: All of Europe!!


NANCY VAN DEUSEN Book Review: The Renaissance Reform of Medieval Music Theory: Guido of Arezzo between Myth and History, by Stefano Mengozzi

MARTHA W. DRIVER Book Review: Women in England in the Middle Ages, by Jennifer Ward

ANNETTE LEZOTTE Book Review: Renaissance Art Reconsidered: An Anthology of Primary Sources, edited by Carol M. Richardson, Kim W. Woods, and Michael W. Franklin

BRIGITTE ROUSSEL Book Review: The Medieval Sea, by Susan Rose

NANCY VAN DEUSEN Book Review: Gregorian Chant, by David Hiley

ANNETTE LEZOTTE Book Review: Merchants, Princes and Painters: Silk Fabrics in Italian and Northern Paintings 1300–1550, by Lisa Monnas

MARY OLSON Book Review: A Gentle Introduction to Old English, by Murray McGillivray

LESLEY A. COOTE Book Review: British Outlaws of Literature and History: Essays on Medieval and Early Modern Figures from Robin Hood to Twm Shon Catty, edited by Alexander L. Kaufman

CFP Studies in Medievalim 2017

Came across the following today:

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS FOR STUDIES IN MEDIEVALISM:

By blatantly concentrating on constructs, medievalism studies may seem to avoid the problems of defining an authentic Middle Ages. But what do such studies presume about that middle ages or any other? About the studies’ medievalist subjects? About the medievalist subjects’ constructs of the Middle Ages? When it comes to authenticity, how do medievalism studies relate to the Middle Ages? To medievalism? To (other) postmedievalism? To neomedievalism? Studies in Medievalism, a peer-reviewed print and on-line publication, is seeking 3,000-word (including notes) essays on these questions, as well as 6,000 to 12,000-word (including notes) articles on any postmedieval responses to the Middle Ages. Please send all submissions in English and Word to Karl Fugelso (kfugelso@towson.edu) by August 1, 2017. For a style sheet, please download the STYLE SHEET here.

Further details at http://www.medievalism.net/sim.html.

Call for Papers: Medieval in American Popular Culture: Reflections in Commemoration of the 80th Anniversary of Prince Valiant

CALL FOR PAPERS: THE MEDIEVAL IN AMERICAN POPULAR CULTURE

SESSION PROPOSED FOR 2017 ANNUAL CONFERENCE OF THE AMERICAN LITERATURE ASSOCIATION

TO BE HELD AT THE WESTIN COPLEY PLACE, BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS FROM 25 TO 28 MAY 2017

PAPER PROPOSALS DUE BY 28 JANUARY 2017

The Medieval in American Popular Culture:

Reflections in Commemoration of the 80th Anniversary of Prince Valiant

             The comic strip Prince Valiant in the Days of King Arthur was launched in 1937 and continues to be produced to this day. Begun by illustrator Hal Foster and now under the direction of writer Mark Schultz and artist Thomas Yeates, Prince Valiant celebrates its eightieth anniversary in 2017. This is a significant achievement for a work of popular medievalism. In recognition of this milestone, the Association for the Advancement of Scholarship and Teaching of the Medieval in Popular Culture seeks papers that explore the appeal (either in the United States or abroad) of the strip and its characters and/or the significance of other works of American medievalism both in the past and in the world today. The session is being submitted for consideration at the 2017 meeting of the American Literature Association to be held in Boston, Massachusetts, from 25-28 May 2017.

            We are especially interested in proposals that respond to one of more of the following questions:

·         Why is the medieval popular in the United States, a nation with no physical connections to the medieval past?

·         What is the continued appeal of the medieval to Americans?

·         Do Americans do different things with medieval material compared to their contemporaries around the globe?

·         How have Americans’ view of the medieval changed over time?

·         Why do some forms of American-made medievalism endure while others are forgotten?

·         How well do American-made medievalisms translate into other media and/or cultural settings?

Please submit proposals to the organizers at medievalinpopularculture@gmail.com no later than 28 January 2017. Please use “Medieval in American Popular Culture” as your subject line. A complete proposal should include the following: your complete contact information, a clear and useful title of your paper, an abstract of your paper (approximately 250 to 600 words), a brief biographical statement explaining your academic status and authority to speak about your proposed topic, and a note on any audio/visual requirements.

Final papers should be delivered between 15 and 20 minutes, depending on the number of presenters. Potential presenters are reminded that the rules of the conference allow individuals to present only one paper at the annual meeting.

Further details on the Association for the Advancement of Scholarship and Teaching of the Medieval in Popular Culture can found at http://medievalinpopularculture.blogspot.com.

Additional information about the conference and the American Literature Association can be found at http://americanliteratureassociation.org/.