Tuesday, July 30, 2019

CFP Ludic Outlaw: Medievalism, Games, Sport, and Play (9/15/19; Kalamazoo 2020)

CFP: “The Ludic Outlaw: Medievalism, Games, Sport, and Play”

Roundtable sponsored by the International Association for Robin Hood Studies

International Congress on Medieval Studies (ICMS), Kalamazoo 2020
   

Cross-platform video games are now so popular as to constitute a financial threat to Netflix and other digital content services. One feature of many of these games is the ludic outlaw figure—found, for example, in the 2016 multiplayer Overwatch—that works to resist oppression within the game world. Because they signify popular definitions of justice and communal welfare, modern digital outlaws frequently evoke medieval outlaw representations, such as Robin Hood. In what specific ways do enduring medieval outlaw tropes function as model responses to oppression in modern games?


This roundtable session seeks 10- to 15-minute papers that interrogate the role(s) of any outlaw figure that fights for popular interests in games. Though particular attention will be given to papers that include an examination of a digital ludic outlaw, submissions concerned with tabletop games, live action role-playing games, and others will be considered. Analyses of the ways in which ludic outlaw figures are poised as responses to the dominant narrative within gaming culture are especially welcome.



Please send your 250-word abstract, Participant Information Form (https://wmich.edu/sites/default/files/attachments/u434/2019/medieval-pif-2020.pdf), and brief bio to Gayle Fallon at lfallo1@lsu.edu by September 15, 2019.


CFP Reassessing the Matter of the Greenwood (9/15/19; Kalamazoo 2020)

CALL FOR PAPERS

“Reassessing the Matter of the Greenwood”

Sponsored Session of the International Association for Robin Hood Studies (IARHS)

International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, MI, May 7-10, 2020


Historian Maurice Keen’s study The Outlaws of Medieval Legend, first published in 1961, remains a significant contribution to outlaw studies. After noticing a number of shared themes, motifs, and styles in medieval outlaw narratives, Keen argued for a new fourth “matter” to join those of Britain, France, and Troy: the greenwood. It is time for a reassessment of his contribution. What are the significant characteristics of a text needed to classify it as a greenwood matter? Can medieval outlaw works exist as hybrid matters? How can we account for matters of the greenwood outside of medieval Western Europe? The papers in this session will examine verse and prose literary texts from the Middle Ages, and scholars are encouraged to think critically about genre and generic markers, the transmission of texts into various literary, cultural, and historical environments, and how shared textual characteristics formulate traditions.



Please send 250-word abstracts and a completed Participant Information Form (PIF) by September 15, 2019, to Alex Kaufman: alkaufman@bsu.edu.



PIF form can be found here: https://wmich.edu/sites/default/files/attachments/u434/2019/medieval-pif-2020.docx

Friday, July 12, 2019

CFP Globalizing Joan of Arc: Positioning the Maid in a Transnational Landscape (9/10/19; Kalamazoo 2020)

Globalizing Joan of Arc: Positioning the Maid in a Transnational Landscape
https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2019/07/11/globalizing-joan-of-arc-positioning-the-maid-in-a-transnational-landscape

deadline for submissions:
September 10, 2019
full name / name of organization:
Scott Manning / International Joan of Arc Society
contact email:
scottmanning13@gmail.com

Call for Papers sponsored by The International Joan of Arc Society/Société Internationale de l’étude de Jeanne d’Arc

International Congress on Medieval Studies (ICMS 2020)
May 7 to 10, 2020
Western Michigan University

If Joan of Arc’s story has circulated well beyond its hexagonal borders of origin, it remains strangely entangled with euro-nationalism and white supremacy as indicated by the backlash over the 2018 choice of Mathilde Edey Gamassou, a biracial teenager of Polish and Beninois parentage to play the Maid in Orléans’ Fêtes de Jeanne d’Arc. This panel seeks presentations that consider Joan of Arc as multicultural or transnational perspective, with particular interest in non-Western interpretations of Joan.

To what effect has Joan of Arc been transplanted to other (especially non-Western) cultural contexts? Why is Joan often the lens for understanding women leaders, such as Lalla Fatma N'Soumer dubbed an “Algerian Joan of Arc” by media outlets. Under what circumstances is Joan evoked to comment on transnational politics? Given that Joan of Arc’s story circulates through the world in “haphazard, unpredictable trajectories,” to what extent can we understand it as “global” as McDonald and Suleiman define it? When does Joan act as a “positioning system” via which interconnected users “situate and navigate themselves” in an ever-shifting transnational landscape?

Please submit a 250-word proposal for a 15-minute presentation. Proposals should have an abstract format written in Word doc and be accompanied by a brief academic bio (or a CV), including email address, current affiliation, and title/name. Please submit all relevant documents by September 10, 2019 to Scott Manning (scottmanning13@gmail.com) and Tara Beth Smithson (tbsmithson@manchester.edu).

Preliminary inquiries and expressions of interest are welcome.


Last updated July 12, 2019

CFP Performing Joan: Interpreting the Maid on Screen, on Stage, and in the Streets (9/10/19; Kalamazoo 2020)

Performing Joan: Interpreting the Maid on Screen, on Stage, and in the Streets
https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2019/07/11/performing-joan-interpreting-the-maid-on-screen-on-stage-and-in-the-streets

deadline for submissions: September 10, 2019
full name / name of organization: Scott Manning / The International Joan of Arc Society
contact email: scottmanning13@gmail.com

Call for Papers sponsored by The International Joan of Arc Society/Société Internationale de l’étude de Jeanne d’Arc


International Congress on Medieval Studies (ICMS 2020)
May 7 to 10, 2020
Western Michigan University

Joan of Arc continues to captivate filmmakers, most recently Bruno Dumont, whose headbanging heroine mixes medieval and metal in Jeannette: The Childhood of Joan of Arc (2017) and Joan of Arc (2019). Joan has also made a Broadway comeback via three recent productions: David Byrne’s rock musical Joan of Arc: Into the Fire (2017) the 2018 revival of Shaw’s Saint Joan, and Jane Anderson’s Mother of the Maid(2018). Participatory street theater such as Orléans’ yearly Fêtes de Jeanne d’Arc or the procession’s campier New World cousin, a Joan-themed carnival parade in New Orleans, also shape the Maid’s evolving legacy.

This panel seeks papers that explore the origins, processes, and reception of Joan in performance. What performative aspects characterize the primary documents that inspired subsequent retellings of Joan’s story? Why do certain patterns emerge in Joan’s onstage and onscreen afterlives? And how do different authors and actors approach the creative task of communicating Joan’s relevance to new audiences? What purposes do these performances serve for those who conceive of or take part in them? Finally, how are the productions that Joan inspires received?

Please submit a 250-word proposal for a 15-minute presentation. Proposals should have an abstract format written in Word doc and be accompanied by a brief academic bio (or a CV), including email address, current affiliation, and title/name. Please submit all relevant documents by September 10, 2019 to Scott Manning (scottmanning13@gmail.com) and Tara Beth Smithson (tbsmithson@manchester.edu).

Preliminary inquiries and expressions of interest are more than welcome.


Last updated July 12, 2019
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Kalamazoo 2020 Call for Papers

The official call for papers for the 55th International Congress on Medieval Studies (to convene at Western Michigan University from 7-10 May 2020) has been released.

It can be accessed at https://wmich.edu/medievalcongress/call.

Saturday, July 6, 2019

CFP Afterlives: Reinvention, Reception, and Reproduction Conference (7/15/19; Glendale, CA 11/9/2019)

My apologies for having missed this before. Do note the impending due date for proposals.


Afterlives: Reinvention, Reception, and Reproduction
https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2019/06/18/afterlives-reinvention-reception-and-reproduction

deadline for submissions:
July 15, 2019
full name / name of organization:
Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies at CSU Long Beach and Forest Lawn Museum
contact email:
heather.graham@csulb.edu

REMINDER: Deadline Approaching July 15, 2019

Afterlives: Reinvention, Reception, and Reproduction

November 9, 2019

Forest Lawn Museum, 1712 S. Glendale Ave, Glendale, CA 91205

Call for Papers

The Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies at California State University, Long Beach, in collaboration with Forest Lawn Museum, invite submissions for the biennial conference, Afterlives: Reinvention, Reproduction, and Reception. We invite scholars from any discipline to approach the ways in which texts, objects, and images of the ancient, medieval, and Renaissance past have been reimagined, repurposed, reconstructed, and reproduced in later periods.

Much recent scholarship, particularly studies exploring medievalisms, has fruitfully traced the ways in which we construct narratives of the past according to contemporary desires. There remains, however, ample room for further investigation. Forest Lawn Museum makes an ideal site for exploring the afterlives of the past as constructed in the present. Founded in 1906, Forest Lawn is home to dozens of reproductions of ancient, medieval, and Renaissance works of art and architecture. It was created with the goal of bringing the Grand Tour to Southern California when travel to Europe was not accessible to the vast majority of American society. From full-scale marble replicas of Michelangelo’s sculpture to buildings that freely combine classical, Romanesque, and Gothic elements in completely novel and imaginative ways, this version of the Grand Tour was both influenced by and influential upon the culture of twentieth-century California. Rather than simply replicating existing works of art and architecture, entirely new monuments were created, which simultaneously call upon the past while proliferating new experiences, meanings, and identities.

This conference invites investigation of such uses of the past with the broadest possible scope. We ask scholars to consider engagements with the past in terms of ongoing processes of reinvention, reproduction, and reception. Papers that address popular culture, such as contemporary fantasy literature and television, twentieth-century Hollywood epics, gaming, popular and folk music, theme parks and other immersive amusement sites, historical reenactments, costume design, and cultural or folkloric festivals, are welcome. Studies on medievalism and more traditional scholarship on reproductions of Antiquity, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance are also encouraged, including investigations of architectural reconstructions, the role of medievalism in museums, and non-Western perspectives on reinventions of the past. We welcome proposals for twenty-minute papers as well as planned panels of three papers pertinent to these themes and their manifestations anywhere in the world.

Individual paper submissions should include:

abstract of approximately 150 words
contact information and one-page CV
Panel Submissions are welcome and should include:

contact information and one-page CV for organizer / chair
names and abstracts (c. 150 words) for all presenters
one-page CVs of all presenters
short (c. 150 word) description of the panel itself
Please send all application materials to: heather.graham@csulb.edu, Ilan.MitchellSmith@csulb.edu, and jfishburne@forestlawn.com. The deadline for all abstracts and panel submissions is July 15, 2019.

Topics of exploration for individual papers or panels may include, but are not limited to:


  • Hybrid Reconstructions of the Past (Hearst Castle, Forest Lawn, Disneyland, The Getty Villa, and The Citadel Shopping Center)
  • Medievalism and Nationalism
  • Posthumous Cults of the Artist
  • American Chivalries
  • Medievalism and Martial Arts
  • Non-Western Reconstructions of the Past
  • Time Travel and Anachronism
  • The Detritus of Hollywood’s Constructions of the Past
  • Medievalism and the West: the American Frontier and the Distant Past
  • Politics of Historical Accuracy
  • Medieval/Renaissance Fantasy in Online Gaming
  • The Renaissance Pleasure Faire and Medievalist Counter-Culture in America
  • Industrialism and Desires for the Past
  • Dungeons & Dragons and Participatory Constructions of the Past
  • Racialized Imagery from the Medieval to the Modern
  • Post-Modernity and the Past


Last updated June 19, 2019

Saving the Day at NeMLA 2020

Amidst all the bad news about Kalamazoo 2020, I'm pleased to announce the call for papers for our associated session "Saving the Day: Accessing Comics in the Twentieth-First Century (A Roundtable)" to assemble next March at the 2020 meeting of the Northeast Modern Language Association.

Full details can be accessed at: https://accessing-comics-in-the-21st-century.blogspot.com/2019/07/cfp-saving-day-accessing-comics-in.html.

(Our affiliate, the Alliance for the Promotion of Research on the Matter of Britain, has also had a set of sessions accepted for NeMLA. They can be viewed at https://kingarthurforever.blogspot.com/.)

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

Monday, July 1, 2019

Global Middle Ages in Popular Culture Session Update

I regret to inform our readers that our sponsored session on "Global Middle Ages in Popular Culture," organized by board member Anna Czarnowus, has been rejected by the organizing committee for the 55th International Congress on Medieval Studies set to convene in May 2020.

Michael Torregrossa
Founder


MAPACA Sessions Update

I am saddened to report that only one of our proposed sessions for MAPACA's 2019 conference received enough submissions to make a viable panel.

Here are the details. I'll update the blog further once the session has been placed on the schedule.

Michael Torregrossa


2019 Annual Conference of the Mid-Atlantic Popular & American Culture Association
Pittsburgh Marriott City Center Hotel, Pittsburgh, PA
7-9 November 2019
https://mapaca.net/conference

Medieval Undead/Undead Medievalisms (A Roundtable)

Sponsored by the Association for the Advancement of Scholarship and Teaching of the Medieval in Popular Culture for the Medieval & Renaissance Area of the Mid-Atlantic Popular & American Culture Association

Organizer: Michael A. Torregrossa, Independent Scholar

Presider: Scott Manning, Independent Scholar

Undoubtedly, the modern concept of the zombie is a recent phenomenon, with origins in Haitian folklore and American film and fiction (notably George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead and Richard Matheson’s “I am Legend”). Nevertheless, the zombie is also indebted to horrors of earlier ages, including the revenants of medieval folklore and literature; although, enthusiasts of present-day zombies often overlook this heritage. Meanwhile, some modern creators of representations of zombie menaces seem to tap into to this tradition in bringing to life new undead creatures that mash the medieval with the modern by allowing more familiar zombies and zombie-like entities to shamble across medieval landscapes. Despite the variety and vitality of these traditions, both the medieval undead and undead medievalisms remain largely neglected by scholarship.

Through this roundtable session, the Association for the Advancement of Scholarship and Teaching of the Medieval in Popular Culture seeks to bridge the apparent divides between modern and medieval and medieval and modern. We endeavor to foster discussion that allows the undead of the medieval past and the zombies found in medieval-inspired narratives of today to come into contact through our teaching and research. The topic is especially relevant to this conference, given that its “unofficial” theme of is “Pittsburgh: Zombie Capital of the World” in honor of Romero and his work.


Embodying Absence: The Medieval and Modern Undead
Peter Dendle, Pennsylvania State


The Divine Undead/The Undead Divine
Elliott Mason, Concordia University


Draugar and White Walkers: Winter Zombies of the Old North
Richard Fahey, University of Notre Dame


Tomes of the Dead: Medievalism, Zombies, and Historical Fantasy-Horror in Viking Dead and Stronghold
Carl Sell, Indiana University of Pennsylvania