53rd International Congress on Medieval Studies
Western Michigan University
10- 13 May 2018
Saturday, 5/12, at 1:30 PM
417 SCHNEIDER 1160
Past, Present, Future: Medieval Monsters and Their
Afterlives I
Sponsor: Association for the Advancement of Scholarship and
Teaching of the Medieval in Popular Culture
Organizer: Michael A. Torregrossa, Independent Scholar
Presider: Anna Czarnowus, Univ. of Silesia
Anna Czarnowus is Adjunct Professor
at the Faculty of Philology at the University of Silesia, Katowice (Poland).
She specializes in Middle English literature and published her doctorate as Inscription
on the Body: Monstrous Children in Middle English Literature (Wydawnictwo
Uniwersytetu Śląskiego, 2009). Her Habilitatzionsschrift was published as the
monograph Fantasies of the Other’s Body: Monstrous Children in Middle
English Literature (Peter Lang, 2013). She has written on Chaucer and the
Chaucerians, Middle English romance, medieval literature from the perspective
of postcolonial and gender studies, medievalisms, and litanic poetry. Her
recent interests include ecocriticism and the history of emotions.
Giants in the History of England: The Final Frontier and
Steven Spielberg’s The BFG
Geneviève Pigeon, Univ. du Québec–Montréal
Geneviève Pigeon studies Medieval
Literature and England’s Arthurian founding myth. She currently teaches at
Université du Québec's Religous Studies Department and is a member of both the
Centre de recherche bretonne et celtique (Université de Bretagne occidentale,
France) and the Centre de recherche internationale sur l'imaginaire. Most
recently, Geneviève was a guest editor for the newly released number 35 issue
of Religiologiques, in which she co-authored
an article about the celebration of Halloween in Québec. The journal is free
and can be accessed at http://www.religiologiques.uqam.ca/. Her work often focuses
on the written representation of landscapes as reservoirs of memory, and she is
especially intrigued (as today’s paper illustrates) by their unusual
inhabitants. Geneviève believes that these figures—fairies, giants, hermits,
magicians, animals and other fascinating creatures—are the most interesting aspects
of any story.
The Monstrous Host: Hospitality and Hostility in Kazuo
Ishiguro’s The Buried Giant
Matthew Vernon, Univ. of California–Davis
Matthew Vernon is an assistant
professor of English Literature at the University of California, Davis. His
current research project studies African-American mobilizations of medieval
texts and iconography. He has published on Gerald of Wales and the problems of
defining ethnicity as well as on race and nostalgia in the Marvel film Captain
America: The First Avenger.
Merlin the White(washed): The Entertainment Industry’s
Evasion of Merlin’s Demonic Heritage
Michael A. Torregrossa
Michael A. Torregrossa is a
graduate of the Medieval Studies program at the University of Connecticut
(Storrs) and a devoted follower of Merlin’s career on screen. His published
work on the subject includes “Merlin Goes to the Movies: The Changing Role of Merlin
in Cinema Arthuriana” in Film &
History: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Film and Television Studies,
“Merlin at the Multiplex: A Filmography of Merlin in Arthurian Film, Television
and Videocassette 1920-1998” in the 1999
Film & History CD-ROM Annual, “The Way of the Wizard: Reflections of
Merlin on Film” in The Medieval Hero on
Screen: Representations from Beowulf to Buffy, and entries on “Television”
in the 2001 and 2005 supplements to The
Arthurian Encyclopedia. In addition, Michael is founder of The
Alliance for the Promotion of Research on the Matter of Britain, The
Association for the Advancement of Scholarship and Teaching of the Medieval in
Popular Culture, and The Northeast Alliance for Scholarship on the Fantastic,
as well as the outgoing Fantastic (Fantasy, Science Fiction, and Horror) Area
Chair for the Northeast Popular Culture/American Culture Association, a
position he has held since 2009. He welcomes your help in furthering the
missions of these various groups.
A Rapacious Daemon in King Arthur’s Court: Re-designating Merlin
as a Demonic Rapist in Arthuriana [note
corrected title]
Tirumular Narayanan, California State Univ.–Chico
Tirumular (Drew) Narayanan is a
second-year art history graduate student at California State University, Chico.
After finishing his B.A. in Medieval Studies at UC Davis, Drew became an
adjutant to Dr. Susan Landauer, who was writing Of Dogs and Other People: The Art of Roy De Forest., and he would
later become the author of the illustrated chronology in Landauer’s book.
Drew’s interest in scholarship heavily revolves around “othered” characters,
whether they be demons, impaired persons, or double-chinned Roman emperors, and
he is also a promising scholar of medieval-themed comics and, last year,
presented at a Kalamazoo session where he discussed Ableism in Hal Foster’s Prince Valiant. In addition, he hopes to
be announcing the publication of his paper, Kull:
To Be King, within the coming year. In his free time, Drew is a voracious
consumer of Arthuriana and enjoys watching re-runs of Scooby Doo with his fiancé Kelsey.
Saturday, 5/12, at 3:30 PM
469 SCHNEIDER 1160
Past, Present, Future: Medieval Monsters and Their
Afterlives II
Sponsor: Association for the Advancement of Scholarship and
Teaching of the Medieval in Popular Culture
Organizer: Michael A. Torregrossa, Independent Scholar
Presider: Whitney Dirks-Schuster, Grand Valley State Univ.
Whitney Dirks-Schuster is a
Visiting Assistant Professor at Grand Valley State University (MI). She
received her PhD in History at The Ohio State University in 2013. Whitney
specializes in early modern British social and medical history with an emphasis
on bodies and unusual anatomies, and she is under contract with Amsterdam
University Press for her first book, Monstrous Bodies and Knowledge Transfer
in Early Modern England. The book revolves around an unique
legal case, involving the alleged kidnapping of a pair of neonatal conjoined
twins born in 1680, which is contextualized in terms of broader cultural
beliefs about monstrosity between 1450 and 1800. She most recently
published “ ‘Weighty Celebrity’: Corpulency, Monstrosity, and Freakery in
Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century England” in Monstrosity, Disability, and
the Posthuman in the Medieval and Early Modern World (forthcoming).
Future projects will examine the centuries-long urban legend of a pig-faced
woman residing in London and the popular versus medical understandings of
intersexuality in early modern England.
Haunting Poltergeists: Historical and Cinematic Representations
of Ghosts as Demonic Monsters
Rex Barnes, Columbia Univ.
Rex Barnes is a doctoral candidate
in the Department of Religion at Columbia University, where he has taught
classes in early and medieval Christian history, as well as premodern magic and
witchcraft. He holds a master’s degree in the history and philosophy of
religion from Concordia University in Montreal, QC, and a bachelor’s degree in
political theory from the same institution. Currently he is working to finish
his dissertation, “Haunting Matters: Demonic Infestation in Northern Europe,
1400-1600,” under the direction of Euan Cameron. This interdisciplinary study
investigates the twin discourses of social and religious reform in the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries from the perspective of demonological
literature.
The Queer and the Dead: Medieval Revenants and Their
Afterlives in In the Flesh [via
Skype]
Elliot Mason, Concordia Univ. Montréal
Elliot Mason is a second-year PhD
student in Concordia University's Department of Religions and Cultures, working
under the supervision of Dr. Lorenzo DiTommaso. He has completed Master’s
degrees in Russian language and literature at the University of Waterloo,
Medieval Studies at the University of Toronto, and Religious Studies at the
Memorial University of Newfoundland. Elliot’s previous research has focused on both
the biblical sea monster Leviathan and the fallen angel Azazel. As a queer,
trans person, he is particularly interested in the ways in which the history of
monstrosity intersects with queer marginalities and, especially, the
re-purposing of historical monsters as queer icons.
The Witcher’s Anal Eye: Monstrous Technologies of the
Medievalized Other in Witcher 3: Wild
Hunt
Kevin Moberly , Old Dominion Univ.; Brent Addison Moberly,
Indiana Univ.–Bloomington
Kevin Moberly is an Associate
Professor of Rhetoric, Digital Media, and Game Studies in the English
department at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia. His research
focuses on understanding how digital manifestations of popular culture reflect,
contribute to, and transform contemporary cultural, political, and historical
discourses. In particular, Kevin is interested in the ways that contemporary
computer games encode labor, often blurring already uneasy distinctions between
work and play. His work has appeared in a number of peer-reviewed journals and
scholarly collections, including Computers and Composition, Eludimos, Kairos,
and Works and Days. Kevin has received a number of awards while at ODU,
including a Hixon Fellowship from the ODU English department, a university
Teaching with Technology Award, and an Entsminger Entrepreneurial Fellowship.
Brent Moberly is a software
developer at Indiana University, Bloomington. He holds a Ph.D. in medieval
literature from the same institution. His dissertation focused on changing
representations of labor in late-medieval England, and his current research
interests include Victorian and Edwardian medievalism, contemporary popular
medievalism (neo- or otherwise), and labor history and studies.
Kevin and Brent have collaborated
on a number of articles on medievalism in contemporary computer games and
popular culture, most recently: “Gay Habits Set Straight: Fan Culture and
Authoritative Praxis in Ready Player One,”
in The Year's Work In Medievalism 31 (2016); “Swords, Sorcery, and
Steam: The Industrial Dark Ages in Contemporary Medievalism,” in Studies In
Medievalism XXIV: Medievalism on the Margins (2015); “Play,” in Medievalism:
Key Critical Terms, ed. Richard Usk and Elizabeth Emery (2014); and
“There Is No Word For Work In the Dragon Tongue,” in The Year’s Work in
Medievalism 28 (2013). They are currently working to finish a
book-length study examining how contemporary medieval-themed computer games
function within and against the larger material context of late capitalism.
The Monstrous Mongols in Medieval Eurasia and Modern Day
Film
Colleen C. Ho, Univ. of Maryland
Colleen C. Ho is a Lecturer in the History Department at the University
of Maryland, College Park. Recipient of national awards like NEH fellowships
and a Fulbright, her current research projects include the portrayal of the
Mongols in film and female piety in medieval Europe. Colleen’s teaching
interests include world history from Jesus to the plague, race and religion in
the Middle Ages, and the Mongol Empire. She confesses that she doesn’t watch Game
of Thrones.
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