CFP Saving the Day for Medievalists: Accessing Medieval-Themed Comics in the Twenty-first Century (Roundtable) (9/15/19; Kalamazoo 5/7-10/2020)

Saving the Day for Medievalists: Accessing Medieval-Themed Comics in the Twenty-first Century (Roundtable)
Sponsored by the Medieval Comics Project, an outreach effort of the Association for the Advancement of Scholarship and Teaching of the Medieval in Popular Culture
55th International Congress on Medieval Studies
Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, Michigan
7-10 May 2020

Proposals due by 15 September 2019

Most medievalists have come to accept popular manifestations of the Middle Ages and are willing to talk about fiction, film, and television programs in their classrooms, and some are even writing about these items in their scholarship; however, few have as readily embraced the material produced in the comics medium. This fault is not due to a lack of interest. As our sessions over the past two decades attest, many medievalists are curious about how the comics have adapted medieval figures, events, and stories, but a much smaller group knows how to access this corpus and use it profitably for research and teaching.

Thus, the goal of this session, sponsored by The Medieval Comics Project, is to attempt to rectify this neglect by to presenting some overviews, by an assortment of medieval-comics scholars, of how the comics have appropriated some of the most well-known material from the Middle Ages (such as Beowulf, the Crusades, Dante’s Commedia, the Matter of Britain, Norse mythology, and the Robin Hood legend) to provide insight into what has been done so far in terms of comics and comics scholarship with regards to these topics and what kind of work might be done in the future.
Suggestions for topics and resources can be accessed at both The Medieval Comics Project site (https://medieval-comics-project.blogspot.com/) and its sibling The Arthur of the Comics Project site (https://arthur-of-the-comics-project.blogspot.com/). Additional material on the comics medium appears at our Saving the Day: Accessing Comics in the Twentieth-first Century site (https://accessing-comics-in-the-21st-century.blogspot.com/).

Presentations will be limited to 10 or 15 minutes depending on final panel size.

Interested individuals should submit, no later than 15 September 2019, (1) paper proposal or abstract of approximately 500 words, (2) a 250 to 500-word academic biographical narrative, and (3) a completed Participant Information Form (accessible at https://wmich.edu/medievalcongress/submissions) to the organizers at Comics.Get.Medieval@gmail.com using “Saving the Day for Medievalists” as their subject heading.

In planning your proposal, please be aware of the policies of the Congress (available at https://wmich.edu/medievalcongress/policies-guidelines/policies), which limits each participant to one formal paper but allows for one to serve “as an active participant (paper presenter, panelist, discussant, workshop leader, demonstration participant, poster presenter, presider or respondent) in a maximum of three sessions”.

Further information about the Association for the Advancement of Scholarship and Teaching of the Medieval in Popular Culture and its outreach efforts can be accessed at our Making Medievalisms Matter site (https://medievalinpopularculture.blogspot.com/).