The full program is available at https://wmich.edu/medievalcongress/events.
SATURDAY, MAY 11
10:00 AM
368 SCHNEIDER 1280
More than Marvel: Representations of Norse Mythology in
Contemporary Popular Culture I: New Perspectives
Sponsor: Association for the Advancement of Scholarship and
Teaching of the Medieval in Popular Culture
Organizer: Michael A. Torregrossa, Independent Scholar
Presider: June-Ann Greeley, Sacred Heart Univ.
Adapting the Norse Myths: Risks, Challenges, and Creative
Choices
Erik A. Evensen, Univ. of Wisconsin–Stout
Erik A. Evensen, MFA, is an associate professor of design in the School of
Art and Design at the University of Wisconsin–Stout. He is a designer,
illustrator, and graphic novelist whose creative work often reinterprets topics
from history, mythology, and folklore. He is the author/illustrator of the graphic
novels Gods of Asgard and The Beast of Wolfe’s Bay, the game
artist for Marrying Mr. Darcy: The Pride
and Prejudice Card Game, and has
illustrated for the Ghostbusters and Back to the Future comic book series
from IDW Publishing. Gods of Asgard
won a Xeric Award in 2007, and has since been featured at the Field Museum of
Natural History, the Vesterheim Norwegian-American Museum, and the Wexner
Center for the Arts, and has been adopted as a textbook at Gustavus Adolphus
College, James Madison University, and Marshall University. It has been cited
in a wide variety of academic writing, including master’s theses, doctoral
dissertations, books, and journal articles. Other mythological works include
the 2013 graphic novel The Beast of
Wolfe’s Bay, a modernized retelling of Beowulf, and Angrvadil, an illustrated novel retelling of the Saga of Fridtjov
the Bold. Erik holds an MFA in Visual Communication Design from Ohio State
University, and studied fine art at the University of New Hampshire and the
School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Asgardians in the East: Norse Gods in Japanese Popular
Culture
Ilse Schweitzer VanDonkelaar, Michigan State Univ.; Sarah
Kelley Brish, Independent Scholar
Ilse Schweitzer VanDonkelaar
received her PhD in English from Western Michigan University and is an
assistant professor in the department of Writing, Rhetoric, and American
Cultures at Michigan State University. Her research focuses on representations
of the natural world and of death in Old English and Old Norse literatures. She
is also an acquisitions editor for Medieval Institute Publications, managing
series in New Queer Medievalisms and Monsters, Prodigies, and Demons.
Sarah Kelley Brish received her MA in Medieval Studies from Western
Michigan University. In 2011, she presented a paper at NTNU in Trondheim,
Norway, on the appropriations of Norse culture in World of Warcraft, so being able to view this particular topic
through the lens of another culture is very intriguing. Sarah currently works
as a freelance editor.
Hidden Bodies, Masculine Minds: Shield-Maidens in Video
Games, Norse Myth, and Legend
Shirley
McPhaul, Univ. de Puerto Rico–Recinto de Río Piedras
Shirley McPhaul holds two Master Degrees, one in Viking and
Medieval Norse Studies from the University of Iceland, and a second one in
Comparative Literature from the University of Puerto Rico. For her thesis in
both degrees, she chose to direct her research towards reception, Popular
Culture and Video Game Design, focusing in Fictional World Building for one project
and gender theory for the second. She is currently teaching Medieval Literature
and Popular Culture at the University of Puerto Rico, and Video Game
Conceptualization at Atlantic University College. Her current research is
geared towards interactive narratives in interactive media, such as Video
Games, Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality.
“I did that once. They made a saga about it”: Metafiction
and Storytelling in Neil Gaiman’s Adaptations and Retellings of Norse Mythology
Fanny Geuzaine, Univ. catholique de Louvain
A graduate in English and French
literatures as well as in mathematics and musicology, Fanny Geuzaine is
currently pursuing her doctoral research as a F.R.S.-FNRS Research Fellow in
the English Literature department of the Université catholique de Louvain
(Belgium). Her research focuses on metafiction, storytelling and transmediality
in the short works of fiction and non-fiction of Neil Gaiman. Her recent
publications tackle the question of transmediality and novelization processes
in Dave Eggers’s rewriting and adaptation for the screen of Maurice Sendak’s Where
the Wild Thing Are (L’Harmattan),
as well as the impact of context and co-text on metafictional issues in
Neil Gaiman’s short stories (Journal of the Short Story in English). Her
first monography, The Tripartite Nature of Speculative Fiction. The Shock of
the Strange through the Figure of the Creature, will be released in Autumn.
She is particularly interested in the way popular culture reinvests tales,
myths and literary traditions, and she simply loves a chilling ending to a good
story – but she won’t tell anyone if you don’t.
12:00 PM
Schneider 1280
Association for the Advancement of Schneider 1280
Scholarship and Teaching of the Medieval in Popular Culture
Business Meeting: All are welcome to attend.
01:30 PM
421 SCHNEIDER 1280
More than Marvel: Representations of Norse Mythology in
Contemporary Popular Culture II: Character Spotlights
Sponsor: Association for the Advancement of Scholarship and
Teaching of the Medieval in Popular Culture
Organizer: Michael A. Torregrossa, Independent Scholar
Presider: Scott Manning, Independent Scholar
Reshaping the Scandinavian Saga through Hybridity: Thorgal, an Anti-Mythological Hero
Maxime Thiry, Univ. catholique de Louvain
A graduate in Roman and French
literatures, Maxime Thiry is currently pursuing his doctoral research as a
Teaching Assistant in the French & Roman Languages &Literatures
department of the Université catholique de Louvain (Belgium). His research
focuses on intermediality in Belgian cotemporary literature and how it offers
an original angle to the mutations of representations following the Iconic
Turn. This question leads him to analyze both similarities and differences in
works (from narrative works to cinematographic and television products) that
grapple with postmodernist and pop paradigms, from their production to their
reception. His recent publications tackle the question of iconicity in novels
from the Belgian writers Jean-Philippe Toussaint and Guy Vaes, and the TV show American Horror Story.
The Misunderstood Wolf: Fenrir as Antihero in Neil Gaiman’s Norse Mythology and Televassi’s Fenrir’s Saga
Travis Kane, Univ. of Houston
Travis Kane is a recent graduate of
the University of Houston. He is the recipient of the Gentile Scholarship in
literary criticism, and the PURS research award. He presented his paper “From
Demon to Disabled: Interpreting Grendel’s Monstrosity in Beowulf, John Gardner’s Grendel,
and Robert Zemeckis’s Beowulf” at the
Southeastern Medieval Association (SEMA) conference on November 2017. His
research interests include Medieval Norse, Anglo Saxon, and Celtic literature,
Germanic and Celtic mythology, Medievalism, Translation, Adaptation, and
Fantasy literature.
Translating Trickster: Reading Loki for the Twenty-First
Century
Megan Fontenot, Michigan State Univ.
Megan N. Fontenot holds a dual BA
in English and Humanities from Milligan College and an MA in English Literature
from Michigan State University. Her work has been published in the journals Mythlore and Fafnir, with an article forthcoming in Tolkien Studies: An Annual Scholarly Review. Megan is also a
regular blogger for Tor.com and is currently working on a series exploring the
textual histories and developments of various Tolkien characters. She will be
pursuing a PhD in English Lit, with a focus in nineteenth century British
literature and Tolkien Studies, at the University of Georgia this fall.
Give Them Hel(a): The Norse Goddess of Death as the Great
Mother in Myth and Film
June-Ann Greeley, Sacred Heart Univ.
[bio not provided]
03:30 PM
473 SCHNEIDER 1280
More than Marvel: Representations of Norse Mythology in
Contemporary Popular Culture III: Channeling the Myths
Sponsor: Association for the Advancement of Scholarship and
Teaching of the Medieval in Popular Culture
Organizer: Michael A. Torregrossa, Independent Scholar
Presider: Jolanta N. Komornicka, St. Jerome’s Univ., Univ.
of Waterloo
Medieval Motifs in DreamWorks
Dragons
Sandra Hartl, Otto-Friedrich-Univ. Bamberg
Sandra Hartl, M.A. studied English
literature and Classics at the universities of Bamberg (Germany) and Galway
(Ireland). She is doing a PhD and has presented several papers on J.R.R.
Tolkien’s classical mythological motifs.
Reinterpretation of Norse mythology in Trollhunters: Tales of Arcadia
Geneviève Pigeon, Univ. du Québec–Montréal
[bio not provided]
“Her temper was still the same”: Women Resisting Colonialism
in Modern Viking Narratives
Margaret Sheble, Purdue Univ.
Winner of the Thomas
Ohlgren Award for Best Graduate Student Essay in Medieval and Renaissance
Studies
Margaret Sheble is a PhD candidate
at Purdue University studying English Literature where she also received her
MA. Additionally, she holds an MA in Arthurian Literature from Bangor
University, Wales and an Honors BA in Art History from Norther Arizona University.
Currently she works as an instructor on record for ENG 106 Introductory
Composition at Purdue University and has generated curriculum for the
equivalent online course. Other courses include ENGL 286 The Movies with
a focus on superhero films and ENGL 238 Intro to Fiction. Margaret is also a
graduate assistant for the Center for Intercultural Learning, Mentorship,
Assessment and Research. Other positions held have included museum development,
archival research assistant, and editorial assistant. In the Fall 2019 she will
be the graduate assistant for the journal Arthuriana and is
currently working on an Arthurian games database for The Camelot
Project. Her dissertation research is on suicide in the Arthurian tradition
and how the suicides that occur or are attempted within the Arthurian
texts reflect the wider concerns of ideal heteronormativity, gender roles, and
one’s faithfulness to the Arthurian community. Her talk “Her temper was the
same: Women Resisting Colonialism in Modern Viking Narratives” will appear
in New Feminist Voices in the Heroic Age this summer.
“I was born a god.
And so were you”: Mythic Norse Superheroes in God of War (2018) and Marvel Comics
Andrew Barton, Texas State Univ.–San Marcos
Andrew Barton is a lecturer at
Texas State University, where he teaches freshman composition courses. Upon
graduating from Texas A&M University with degrees in Psychology and
English, he worked for several years in the nonprofit world, serving as a district
executive for an organization with a youth-serving focus. Eventually, Andrew
desired to return to literature and academia, and enrolled at Texas State
University. During his studies, he became interested in fantasy and children’s
literature. While a graduate student, Andrew worked as a Teaching Assistant,
covering classes in American and British literature, and was awarded multiple
scholarships for his academic achievements. He received a Master’s degree in
Literature in 2018, and wrote his thesis on medievalist literature in popular
culture as it relates to adventure and spatiality. He is especially interested
in medievalist and popular literature such as comics and film, and particularly
how those interact in digital media such as video games. He has presented
multiple papers at conferences, with topics including heterotopia, the Other,
the Harry Potter series, The Lord of the Rings, Beowulf, liminality, and Dr. Strange. He is currently working on
a project involving the medieval influences of Ready Player One, and assisting in a videocast project on
Diversifying the Western Canon for use in sophomore literature classes. He
lives in Austin, Texas, with his wife, their dog, and their hedgehog.
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