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/.