Medieval Academy of America's 2021 End-of-Year Fundraiser

 One last post. Please consider supporting the MAA. They're doing good work in the field.

MAA News – End-of-Year Fundraiser

Source: http://www.themedievalacademyblog.org/maa-news-end-of-year-fundraiser/

As the holiday season approaches, we hope you will reflect on how the Medieval Academy of America (MAA) has responded to the challenges so many of our community members have faced this past year. We’ve increased our scholarship support and public advocacy, while advancing our mission of publishing the most thoughtful and innovative scholarship in medieval studies. This critical work is made possible only when our community comes together to drive these efforts forward through philanthropy.

We hope we can count on your year-end donation so we can provide even greater support next year for more students and early- and mid-career scholars. Programs that fund travel, research and publication are just a few of the ways we help advance the careers of our members. It goes without saying that this support is even more important now, when so many are balancing competing financial needs.

Your donation supports three key priorities, and you can choose where you’d like to see your donation put to work:

1. Building Endowment to sustain our core mission: Unrestricted donations to our Endowment support research and the publication of the highest-quality scholarship in all disciplines of Medieval Studies, and the wide diffusion of knowledge about the Middle Ages through topical public programing, K-12 webinars, and digital resources.

2. Funds that support Graduate Students, Early Career, Contingent and Unaffiliated scholars: Donations to named Funds support medievalists in greatest need with travel funds for research and participation in conferences, dissertation fellowships, and special publication prizes.

3. MAA Critical Priorities: Donations to our Operating Fund allow us to innovate quickly and respond to new needs and changing circumstances. This year, we are seeking seed funding for an innovative Mentoring Program. Aimed particularly at traditionally underrepresented constituencies, the mentoring program is designed to provide sustained mentorship to help graduate students succeed in their doctoral programs and establish promising careers.

Please help by making a donation so we can continue to strengthen medieval studies and support its scholars in North America and around the world.

Thomas E. A. Dale, President

Lisa Fagin Davis, Executive Director

CFP Beyond Exceptionalism II, c. 500-c. 1500 (2/1/2022; Manchester, UK/Hybrid 7/12-14/2022)

Call for Papers – Beyond Exceptionalism II, c. 500-c. 1500

Beyond Exceptionalism II, c. 500-c. 1500

12-14 July 2022

Source: http://www.themedievalacademyblog.org/call-for-papers-beyond-exceptionalism-ii-c-500-c-1500/

Call for Papers and Sessions

Abstract deadline: 1 February 2022

contact email:  tanner.87@osu.edu & huneycuttl@missouri.edu

We are delighted to announce the Beyond Exceptionalism II conference which will take place on 12-14 July 2022 at John Rylands Library in Manchester, UK. The conference will adopt a hybrid format that simultaneously offers sessions both in-person and via Zoom.

In 2015, Beyond Exceptionalism I addressed the troubling situation that after over fifty years of intense research and publication, the study of medieval European women had not reversed the entrenched notion that elite woman with the authority and ability to influence their families, communities, and realms were somehow all exceptions to the normal situation of female powerlessness and passivity. The conference centered on a rhetorical question: how many ‘exceptional’ women in positions of authority does it take before active females become the rule? Hosted by Heather Tanner at the Ohio State University, the ‘Beyond Exceptionalism’ conference resulted in new avenues of research, fresh approaches to medieval women’s experiences and an edited volume: Medieval Elite Women and the Exercise of Power, 1100–1400: Moving beyond the Exceptionalist Debate (Palgrave 2018).

Six years and one global pandemic later, the question still resonates. The assumption that medieval women were marginalized remains at the center of medieval studies. Beyond Exceptionalism II will be an interdisciplinary conference that continues to address this misapprehension by fostering new avenues and interpretations of medieval women– elite and non-elite, secular and religious – and exploring new methodologies. We encourage papers that draw upon material culture, network analysis, gender, and space. Presentations that address a non-European perspective are most welcome. Papers that utilize items in the JRL collection are especially welcome.  We also welcome submissions from scholars at all levels, from doctoral students to senior scholars.

Keynote Speakers:

• Valerie Garver, History Department Chair, Northern Illinois University
• Amy Livingstone, Head of School of History and Heritage, University of Lincoln
• Talia Zajac, Mellon Post-Doctoral Fellow at Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies

Abstracts & Panels:

Possible topics include but are not limited to: lordship, manorialism, monasticism, crusades, literacy, monarchy, guilds, pilgrimage, warfare, towns, castles & manors, networks and alliances, medicine, patronage, lay religious life, law and custom

Those wishing to participate should please submit an abstract of approximately 250 words to tanner.87@osu.edu and huneycuttl@missouri.edu.

Types of sessions: traditional (3 speakers & chair), roundtable, “flash” presentations by graduate students (5-10 minute presentation & informal discussion after)

Please attach your abstract to your email as a Microsoft Word or PDF file. Included with 250‑word abstracts or session proposals (including individual abstracts) should be the following information:

• name of presenter(s)
• participant category (faculty, graduate student, or independent scholar)
• college/university affiliation
• mailing address
• email address
• audio/visual requirements and any other special requests

Abstract deadline: 1 February 2022. Session chairs and individual presenters will be informed of acceptance no later than 1 March 2022.

Notice of GSC Community Building Award (1/17/2022)

 An exciting opportunity from the Medieval Academy of America:

The GSC Community Building Award

The GSC Community Building Award

The Medieval Academy of America Graduate Student Committee

Source: http://www.themedievalacademyblog.org/the-gsc-community-building-award/

Dear Graduate Student Colleagues,

We wanted to bring to your attention a Special Award being offered this year by the Graduate Student Committee of the Medieval Academy of America. During the 2021-2022 term, the GSC has been committed to thinking creatively about increasing accessibility of the wider public to the knowledge that we, as scholars of the Middle Ages, are producing. We would also like to recognize initiatives of other graduate students that aim to do the same. Thus, the GSC is offering a special award: The GSC Community Building Award. Three graduate students will be awarded $400 to begin or support ongoing projects that creatively seek to close the gap between the academy and the community. Projects may include (but are not limited to): creation or compilation of OER resources, podcasting initiatives, community workshops, performances, free access video lectures, maps (such as StoryMaps), databases, blogs/newsletters, and digital exhibitions. Both individuals and groups are encouraged to apply.

For the application instructions and to submit your application, please go to:

https://www.medievalacademy.org/page/GSCCommunityBuildingAward

Deadline: January 17, 2022.

Feel free to direct any questions you might have to Jonathan Correa (jfc30@psu.edu) and Lauren Van Nest (lv3ye@virginia.edu).

Kind regards,

Jonathan Correa

Lauren Van Nest

CFP Consuming the Middle Ages: 2022 Medieval Studies Student Colloquium (1/30/2022; Zoom event 4/23/2022)

 Call for Papers – Consuming the Middle Ages: 2022 Medieval Studies Student Colloquium

Consuming the Middle Ages: 2022 Medieval Studies Student Colloquium

Source: http://www.themedievalacademyblog.org/call-for-papers-consuming-the-middle-ages-2022-medieval-studies-student-colloquium/

The Medieval Studies Program at Cornell University is pleased to announce its thirty-second annual graduate student colloquium (MSSC), which will focus on the theme of ‘Consuming the Middle Ages’. The conference will take place on the 23rd of April, to be held virtually over Zoom. The colloquium will be preceded by a small lecture series.

We invite 20-minute papers that investigate consuming the Middle Ages as defined within a range of different disciplines and perspectives. Consuming can denote both a physical consumption as well as the act of consuming and making sense of the medieval past through scholarly productions, creative media, and cultural phenomena and practices. How were medieval feasts organized and what socio-cultural function did food and the act of consuming it serve? What are possible connections between the life cycle stages of consumed goods (e.g., from cultivation, to processing, to consuming, to disposal, etc.) and climate, migration, economics, etc.? What material and immaterial substances were subject to consumption and what religious or cultural roles did they play? How do postmedieval writers and thinkers configure the medieval? What are the ramifications of consuming the past and is this the nature of periodization? How are the traces, artifacts, or influences from the medieval past consumed by later or contemporary individuals, communities, and cultures? Papers may respond to (but are not limited to) one of these questions.

Preference will be given to papers from underrepresented backgrounds and disciplines. We strongly encourage submissions that expand these themes and categories of inquiry beyond Christian, Western European contexts. We invite submissions in all disciplines allied to Medieval Studies, including Asian Studies, Africana Studies, Critical Race Studies, Indigenous Studies, Near Eastern Studies, literature, history, the history of art, archaeology, philosophy, classics, theology, and others. Abstracts on all topics will be considered, though priority will be given to those which address our thematic strand.

Please send abstracts by January 30, 2021, to Sarah LaVoy at sfl39@cornell.edu.

CFP 28th Biennial Conference of the Middle Ages and Renaissance Studies Program at Barnard College (proposals by 3/30/2022)

Call for Papers – Enemies Within: The struggle against internal division in the Middle Ages and Renaissance

The 28th Biennial Conference of the Middle Ages and Renaissance Studies Program at Barnard College

Source: http://www.themedievalacademyblog.org/call-for-papers-enemies-within-the-struggle-against-internal-division-in-the-middle-ages-and-renaissance/

PLENARY SPEAKERS:

Kristina Richardson (CUNY)

Mitchell B. Merback (Johns Hopkins)

2022 marks a dubious anniversary: exactly one thousand years ago, in 1022, 13 Cathars were burned at Orléans—the first recorded instance of such punishment of Christian heretics. Exactly five hundred years later, a new sign of internal dissension erupted: In 1522, Martin Luther published his German translation of the New Testament, and in the same year, the Diet of Nuremberg staged an ultimately unsuccessful papal effort to suppress Luther, who had been declared a heretic in the 1521 Edict of Worms. Europe was far from unique in such efforts to suppress internal divisions, which also had a long history in the Middle East, where, for example, during the Mihna in the ninth century CE, the Abbasid caliph had similarly attempted to enforce a theological orthodoxy through centralized or systematized forms of persecuting heresy—attempts that, as in Europe, ultimately failed.

In the Middle Ages and Renaissance, as now, cultures often negotiated their identities by protecting their boundaries against external threats, but equally by marking, and often trying to suppress, enemies within. This conference will focus on cultural anxieties generated by internal challenges, both within the boundaries of a polis and within the boundaries of an individual, exploring how binaries like internal/external, enemy/ally, and related terms, become unstable or unpredictable vectors across periods of time. We invite paper proposals that speak to this issue in its most capacious sense, not only in the religious sphere but equally in the arts, literature, history, and history of science.

Please submit an abstract of 250-300 words and a 2-page CV by March 30, 2022 to Rachel Eisendrath, reisendr@barnard.edu.

PLEASE NOTE THAT, IF THE PANDEMIC ALLOWS, THIS CONFERENCE WILL BE HELD IN PERSON AT BARNARD COLLEGE in NYC. We will announce by the end of summer 2022 if instead we have to hold the conference on Zoom.

CFP New Visions of Julian of Norwich Conference (1/2/2022; Oxford, Eng. 7/15-16/2022)

New Visions of Julian of Norwich

deadline for submissions: January 2, 2022

full name / name of organization: Alicia Smith

contact email: julianofnorwichconference@gmail.com

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2021/11/10/new-visions-of-julian-of-norwich

NEW VISIONS OF JULIAN OF NORWICH

Somerville College, Oxford, 15th-16th July 2022

Organisers: Antje E. Chan (Lincoln College, Oxford), Godelinde Gertrude Perk (Somerville, Oxford), Raphaela Rohrhofer (Somerville, Oxford), Alicia Smith (English Faculty, Oxford)

In May 1373, Julian of Norwich (c. 1343–c.1416) received a series of visions that engage with the mysteries of the divine-human relationship, inspiring the composition of A Vision Showed to a Devout Woman and, decades later, its revision, A Revelation of Love, now recognised as one of the most important texts in the medieval contemplative tradition and Middle English literature. Both have attracted numerous interpretations as visionary as Julian’s work itself, focusing on the significance of anchoritic enclosure, the radical originality of her vernacular theology, the historical and codicological context, as well as potential textual influences. Recent scholarship has explored Julian’s role in the global Middle Ages, her treatment of health, and her ecological poetics. Her texts have also sparked investigations of the role of materiality and provocative encounters between Julian and queer and trans theory.

This international hybrid conference will be the first academic event to focus solely on Julian’s writing, life, contexts, and influence long after her death. It seeks to consider the plurality of approaches towards her work’s interpretation and forge novel pathways of discussing the anchorite both in her own context and in the many scholarly and popular guises of her cultural afterlife. Aimed at established and early-career researchers alike, this interdisciplinary conference will bring together scholars from various fields to map out new and emerging dimensions in Julian scholarship. It will interrogate received assumptions and re-evaluate traditional disciplinary methodologies.

In addition to presenting academic work on Julian’s writing, this conference also seeks to reach out of academe in responding to pastoral and contemplative engagement with her texts, particularly in the light of the pandemic. Two roundtables will bring lived religious practices and critical responses into dialogue. Creative explorations will also help invigorate Julian studies. We look forward to hosting Cindy Oswin’s one-woman play “Cell” about the anchorite as an older woman, and to showing a recording of the 2021 Oxford reconstruction of the medieval rite of enclosure held at St. Mary the Virgin, Iffley.

The opening lecture will be given by Professor Nicholas Watson (Harvard) with responses from Professor Laura Saetveit Miles (Bergen) and Professor Barry Windeatt (Cambridge). Professor Liz Herbert McAvoy (Swansea) will close the conference.

We invite papers from any or multiple disciplines and deploying a wide range of methodologies, focusing on all aspects of Julian’s writing, life, contexts, or afterlife. We especially encourage proposals from graduate students and early-career researchers.

Possible themes include but are not limited to:

• Emerging approaches to Julian’s texts
• Illness, health, and disability
• Visual and material culture
• Queer, genderqueer, and trans theory approaches
• Julian’s wider intellectual and cultural contexts, e.g., Revelation and Vision in the movements of church reform across Europe, or against the backdrop of continental vernacular literature
• Interdisiplinary approaches to Julian
• Julian and apocalypse
• Vision and Revelation as literary landmarks in medieval and post-medieval literature
• Conversations with well- and lesser-known vernacular visionaries and theologians in the British Isles, on the Continent, and beyond
• The history of emotions
• Life-writing

We also welcome proposals for contributions to the two roundtables. Potential topics include:

• Retrieving Julian’s writings to renew contemplative and spiritual practices
• Vision and Revelation and the pandemic moment
• Creative engagement with Vision and Revelation: poetic, dramatic, visual arts
• Julian as a voice for the voiceless
• Julian beyond the academy: contemplative practices, popular imagery, political uses

Please submit abstracts (up to 300 words) for a 15-minute paper or 10-minute roundtable contribution accompanied by a short biography to julianofnorwichconference@gmail.com by 1 February 2022.

In light of the pandemic, this conference will be a hybrid event combining in-person and online papers, while the conference will be streamed for online attendees. Reduced registration will be offered for postgraduate students and unwaged delegates, while a few bursaries may also be available. 

This conference is part of  “Women Making Memories: Liturgy and the Remembering Female Body in Medieval Holy Women’s Texts”, Dr Perk’s MSCA-IF project at the Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages at the University of Oxford. This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 842443.

Follow us on Twitter: @visionsofJulian

Last updated November 10, 2021

CFP Northern Plains Conference on Early British Literature (1/3/2022; South Dakota 4/22-23/2022)

Early British Literature Conference CFP

deadline for submissions: January 3, 2022

full name / name of organization: 

Northern Plains Conference on Early British Literature

contact email: NorthernPlains2022@gmail.com

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2021/11/15/early-british-literature-conference-cfp

The 29th Annual Northern Plains Conference on Early British Literature will take place at the University of South Dakota, Vermillion, South Dakota, 22-23 April 2022. 

A conference known for its supportive and collegial atmosphere for teachers and scholars of Early British Literature, the organizers invite abstracts and panel or roundtable proposals on any of British literature before 1800. 

The conference theme this year is Kindred Communities. However, the conference encourages engagement with all aspects of Early British Literature from its beginnings through the 18th century, including teaching, interpretation, and scholarship.

We are pleased to announce that we will be joined by keynote speakers Tara Lyons (Illinois State University) and Jared Richman (Colorado College). Tara Lyons is a scholar of early modern drama, book history, bibliography, and gender studies. Jared Richman researches satire, radicalism, and disability in the long eighteenth century and Romanticism. 

The organizers of the conference welcome two different types of proposals: 1) descriptions of roundtable discussions with all participants named, or 2) abstracts of brief individual papers. Roundtable discussion groups will be limited to hour-long sessions including discussion and Q&A. Individual papers should be no more than 10-12 minutes in length. The organizers hope these shorter sessions will maintain a larger proportion of the conference in plenary (non-concurrent) format.

Please submit abstracts to NorthernPlains2022@gmail.com no later than January 3, 2022. Questions may also be directed to this email address. 

As it becomes available, detailed information may be found at http://www.npcebl.org/.

Last updated November 15, 2021

CFP Race, Race-Thinking, and Identity in the Global Middle Ages (Spec. Issue of Speculum) (1/31/2022)

 Race, Race-Thinking, and Identity in the Global Middle Ages

deadline for submissions: January 31, 2022

full name / name of organization: Speculum: A Journal of Medieval Studies

contact email: cord.whitaker@wellesley.edu

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2021/11/16/race-race-thinking-and-identity-in-the-global-middle-ages

Speculum Themed Issue: "Race, Race-Thinking, and Identity in the Global Middle Ages" Call for Papers

Editors:

François-Xavier Fauvelle, Collège de France

Nahir Otaño Gracia, University of New Mexico

Cord J. Whitaker, Wellesley College

 

For far too long, scholarly consensus held that race and racism were mainly Enlightenment innovations, datable to no earlier than the seventeenth century. As long ago as the early twentieth century, some scholars pushed race's origins to the sixteenth or even fifteenth centuries, but these scholars were few and far between. The Middle Ages and, with them, medieval studies were set off as a time and discipline innocent of race and racism. This remained generally true until the advent of critical medieval race studies in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Now, in 2021, special issues in major journals and no less than six full-length scholarly monographs have treated imbrications of race with medieval art, literature, religion, and even the periodizing concept of the Middle Ages itself. Many more studies in medieval literature, history, art, religion, and culture have been conceptually informed by race, as have many studies in the modern preceptions and deployments of the Middle Ages. Speculum: A Journal of Medieval Studies calls for proposals for a themed issue, to be published as one of Speculum's four quarterly issues, to recognize the intellectual value of the study of race to a comprehensive understanding of the Middle Ages.

We invite proposals for full-length essays (8,000-11,000 words) that interrogate race, race-thinking, and identity in the Middle Ages. For example, essays might consider the roles of race-making and racialization in the Islamic world; how race and identity, together with religion, was negotiated and navigated in border regions such as al-Andalus, Sicily or the Levant (between Latin Christendom and Islam), the Sahara and the Sahel region (between the Islamic world and Subsaharan Africa); how the dynamics of race-thinking informed relations between Latin and Greek Christendom and Islam or the Mongol Empire, or between the Muslim/Islamicate world and the Christian, Jewish, Hinduist, and traditional religious societies within it or beyond its reaches; how race intersected with the dynamics of trade and connectivity, religious affiliation and conversion, slavery and emancipation, peace and war. Essays may also take on the roles of race, race-thinking and identity in the geography and periodization of the Middle Ages: Are historical moments that are quintessential to the history of race also relevant to medieval-and-modern periodizations? Essays may also consider how and why race, race-thinking, and identity have shaped modern concepts, uses, and scholarship of the Middle Ages.

The editors are open to essays that interrogate race, race-thinking, and identity in the Middle Ages by asking these and other deeply probing questions. Additionally, we are especially interested in essays that consider the globality of the medieval world: those that examine the networked interrelations and interdependences of Africa, Asia, the Americas, and Europe. In addition to the scholarship in history and literature, we invite proposals using the tools and methods of anthropology, archaeology, art history, book history, historical linguistics, religious studies, sociology, and other fields germane to the studies of race, identity, and the Middle Ages.

The themed issue on race, race-thinking, and identity and the articles selected for it will be in keeping with Speculum's purview as stated in the Guidelines for Submission: "preference is ordinarily given to articles of interest to readers in more than one discipline and beyond the specialty in question. Articles taking a more global approach to medieval studies are also welcomed, particularly when the topic engages with one or more core areas of study outlined above. Submissions with appeal to a broad cross-section of medievalists are highly encouraged."

Proposals should be no more than 500 words in length and should be submitted by email to cord.whitaker@wellesley.edu with SPECULUM PROPOSALin the subject line by 31 January 2022. The authors of selected proposals will be notified by 28 February 2022. Completed essays will be expected by 1 December 2022. 

Last updated November 17, 2021

CFP Race and American Medievalism in the U.S. South and Beyond Conference (1/31/2022; Alabama 9/8-10/2022)

Race and American Medievalism in the U.S. South and Beyond

deadline for submissions: January 31, 2022

full name / name of organization: Alex Cook / University of Alabama

contact email: acook@ua.edu

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2021/11/19/race-and-american-medievalism-in-the-us-south-and-beyond

Call for Papers: English Department Symposium, University of Alabama (September 8-10, 2022)

 Cultural appropriations of the European middle ages abound in American popular culture, particularly in the South. Southern investments in the middle ages and in medievalism are rooted to race, and while they begin during the antebellum period, relationships between the South, race, and the middle ages / medievalism extend well past the post-Reconstruction era, into the contemporary moment, and across America. We can see medieval iconography, for example, in the popular HBO television series Game of Thrones, in the backdrop of Spike Lee’s Oscar-winning film BlackKklansman, and in the portrait paintings of artist Kehinde Wiley. 

 Similar connections between the middle ages and medievalism, race and racism, are likewise built into the architecture, topography, and decoration of American college campuses--especially in the South. Architectural features of the University of Alabama, the site for this symposium, position antebellum and gothic styles in proximity to one another; and among the many Confederate memorials on campus is a Tiffany glass window of a golden knight, with a dedicatory epigraph that likens the university cadets to “crusaders of old” and honors those who “fought their heritage to save.”  

 This three-day symposium asks participants to explore the ways in which the South’s relationship to the middle ages and to medievalism has shaped the history of American race relations. Furthermore, this symposium asks participants to consider how the architecture, site plans, and decorative arts at American universities--especially Southern ones--not only contribute to this history but also play a role in shaping the often racially-charged perception of the middle ages in American universities and in popular culture. 

 We invite the submission of 250-word abstracts for papers that explore any aspect of 19th, 20th, or 21st-century American medievalism and welcome papers that explore a wide range of approaches to the topic, from the methodological to the pedagogical. We are especially interested in papers that are attuned to the role of medievalism in the U.S. South, Southern universities, and Southern arts, architecture, and museum studies.

 

Potential topics include but are not limited to:

• The South and medievalism
• Old English, the medieval, and Hip Hop as portrayed, for example, in the work of Atlanta rapper Young Thug and Houston rapper Travis Scott
• Medieval literature and its American afterlives
• Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe and Charles Chesnutt’s The House Behind the Cedars
• Medievalism in the New Negro Movement, WEB Dubois, Nella Larson, and Jessie Fauset 
• The Lost Cause and the middle ages
• Monuments and Southern Chivalry
• Gothic revivalism
• Toni Morrison and Beowulf
• Saxon College in Alice's Walker's Meridian as a site of medieval myth-making
• Memorials and medieval archives
• Architectural aesthetics, museum studies, and the politics of conservation
• Anglo-Saxonism and the myth of racial purity
• Medievalism in the work of Black visual artists such as Kehinde Wiley, Wilmer Wilson IV, and Spike Lee

 The deadline to submit your 250-word abstract is January 31, 2022. 

 Please send abstracts and/or inquiries to symposium organizers with the subject line: Middle Ages and Afterlives

Last updated November 22, 2021

CFP Fakes, Fabrications and Facsimilies in Cultural and Literary History Conference (11/29/2021; Los Angeles 5/5-6/2022)

“FORGING AHEAD: FAKES, FABRICATIONS, AND FACSIMILES IN CULTURAL AND LITERARY HISTORY—MEDIEVAL TO MODERN”

deadline for submissions: November 29, 2021

full name / name of organization: Center for 17th- and 18th-Century Studies, UCLA

contact email: forgingahead2022@gmail.com

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2021/09/14/%E2%80%9Cforging-ahead-fakes-fabrications-and-facsimiles-in-cultural-and-literary-history

A two-day conference: Thursday, May 5-Friday, May 6, 2022

William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, University of California, Los Angeles: https://clarklibrary.ucla.edu/

Plenary speakers: Siân Echard (Professor of English, University of British Columbia); Aaron T. Pratt (Carl & Lily Pforzheimer Curator of Early Modern Books and Manuscripts, Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas, Austin); and Robert Spoo (Chapman Distinguished Professor of Law, University of Tulsa).

Every period of cultural history features a gallery of remarkable forgers and fabricators who have frequently violated customary ideas about the authenticity and sanctity of the artwork. This conference—which features keynote presentations by distinguished scholars based in medieval, early modern, and modernist studies—invites proposals for papers and panels that reveal new research initiatives in our understanding of fakery and fraud across the Middle Ages to our current moment. “Forging Ahead” aims to bring together researchers from different periods and disciplines to discuss some of the conceptual and practical issues raised by the presence of forgeries and other imitative forms in institutional settings, particularly in rare books libraries. We are especially interested in new inquiries into the techniques that forgers have used over time to insert their counterfeit works into the archive as well as the marketplace.

The William Andrews Clark Library is known for several major collections: books and manuscripts produced in England and France from 1650 to 1830; Tudor and Early Stuart printed books; Oscar Wilde and his circle; book arts, with an emphasis on American fine presses; and Montana and the American West. The collections contain many works relating to “Forging Ahead,” including volumes by Thomas Chatterton and William-Henry Ireland, as well as the largest archive of Wilde forgeries in the world. A pop-up exhibition will display examples of some of the Clark’s finest items connected with literary forgery.

At present, the conference is planned as an in-person event on the Clark Library campus, which is based in the historic West Adams District of Los Angeles. The changing nature of the pandemic may dictate that the conference pivots to an online platform.

We invite proposals of 250-400 words for twenty-minute papers. Moreover, we encourage proposals of 750-1,200 words for three-person panels. The conference aims to accommodate ten panels (in two concurrent streams) in addition to the three plenary presentations.

 

Registration for participants will be $175, which includes breakfast, coffee and tea service, lunch, and a closing reception across the two days.

Conference organizers: Joseph Bristow is Distinguished Professor of English at the University of California, Los Angeles. His most recent books are (with Rebecca N. Mitchell) Oscar Wilde’s Chatterton: Literary History, Romanticism, and the Art of Forgery (Yale University Press, 2015) and Oscar Wilde on Trial: The Criminal Proceedings, from Arrest to Imprisonment (Yale University Press, 2022). Gregory Mackie is Associate Professor of English at the University of British Columbia, where he is Norman Colbeck Curator, UBC Library Rare Books and Special Collections. In 2019, he published Beautiful Untrue Things: Forging Oscar Wilde’s Extraordinary Afterlife with University of Toronto Press.

Inquiries about the conference can be sent to jbristow@humnet.ucla.edu and mackieg@mail.ubc.edu.

 Proposals need to be submitted to forgingahead2022@gmail.com by 5.00pm PDT on Monday, 29 November, 2021. Decisions will made in early January 2022.

 “Forging Ahead” is generously supported by a UBC-UCLA Collaborative Research Mobility Award administered by the UCLA Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research and Creative Activities.

Last updated September 16, 2021

CFP 18th Tolkien at University of Vermont Conference (1/15/2022; Vermont 4/2/2022)

18th Tolkien at University of Vermont Conference

deadline for submissions: January 15, 2022

full name / name of organization: 

Tolkien at University of Vermont Conference/ University of Vermont

contact email: cvaccaro@uvm.edu

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2021/09/19/18th-tolkien-at-university-of-vermont-conference

This is our 18th  annual conference held on Saturday, April 2nd at the UVM campus. 

The theme is Tolkien’s Histories and the Idea of History in Middle-earth.  Possibilities include theories of history, the placement of Tolkien himself within historical discourse, the impact of European historical events, the influence of ancient and medieval histories, the play of genre, the history of sexuality, of race, of gender, of science, of religion, the histories within Tolkien's legendarium and in cinematic adaptations, and much more. 

Submitted abstracts need not be on the theme; all will be considered. 

Our keynote will be delivered by Dr. Gergely Nagy. 

There will be a virtual component to this conference, and we will accept virtual delivery. 

Please 200 word abstracts to Christopher Vaccaro at cvaccaro@uvm.edu by January 15th 2022.

 

Last updated September 23, 2021

CFP Crashing the Canon: A Spotlight for the Underrepresented in Higher Education (Spec Issue of The Humanities Review; 12/22/2021)

This seems amenable to our work:

Crashing the Canon: A Spotlight for the Underrepresented in Higher Education

deadline for submissions: December 22, 2021

full name / name of organization: The Humanities Review / St. John's University

contact email: Alexander.radison21@my.stjohns.edu

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2021/11/21/crashing-the-canon-a-spotlight-for-the-underrepresented-in-higher-education

When we think of the western literary canon, we tend to think of the famous authors and works that have shaped our literary and scholarly culture into what it is today: Dante, Shakespeare, Milton, Dickens, Twain, Whitman, and the list goes on and on. But In our age of cultural and technological advancement, we believe that the bodies of works we consider worthy of study should also reflect the current world around us. Thus, the goal of this issue of The Humanities Review is to shine a spotlight on those authors, works, and platforms which have not yet found a home in the literary/academic canon, but still merit the kind of close literary analysis afforded to the canon. Though there have been recent movements to include more BIPOC, women, and LGBTQIA+ writers on that list, more can be done to highlight the immense and important body of work by these underrepresented writers. The same can be said for modern genre fiction as well, particularly those genres which operate in the realm of wonder--science fiction, fantasy, magical realism, supernatural horror, etc. Likewise, traditional novels and collections of poetry currently dominate the list, but what about newer platforms that employ writing such as comics, graphic novels, film and TV, and video games? Should they be considered in the canon conversation as well?

Included in this historical literary tradition is the hierarchy of language. So, in crashing the canon, we also ask one to consider how standard English has been used to reinforce class, racial, and ethnic segregation in academia and through literature. Should the academy, thus, include into its canon multilingual, multidialectal, AAVE and other vernacular voices/writings?

We are open to any and all works that discuss the aforementioned underrepresented writers and genres, as well as creative works of poetry, fiction, drama, and translation, from/about the same. We are also open to relevant book reviews, as well as art/photography for both inside the journal, and the cover.

 

Just a few examples of topics that may fit in this issue:

• Lesser known/under-studied works from any author/time period
• Underrepresented/under-studied works and authors specifically from the BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ communities
• Analysis of works of genre fiction including, but not limited to: Science fiction and its sub-genres (cyberpunk, dystopian, posthumanism, etc) - Fantasy and its subgenres (high, low, magical realism, etc) - Noir/detective - Horror/supernatural - Comics and graphic novels on any subject - Modern and/or under-studied works from film and television - Video games and/or video games as a genre
• Critical analyses of non-standard English in scholarship/academia
• Works of creative writing (open to all, but underrepresented genres and writers especially encouraged)

Editors are currently seeking abstracts of 250 words with a working title along with a CV by December 22, 2021. If your abstract is accepted, the final deadline for full submissions is February 22, 2022.

Submissions must be sent as Microsoft Word documents (.doc or .docx only) attached via email (i.e. not in the body text of the email) to both editors: alexander.radison21@my.stjohns.edu & kainat.cheema21@my.stjohns.edu Submissions must be double-spaced, adhering to MLA format (in-text citations, works cited page, etc.).

Book reviews and interviews should be no more than 1,000 words; essays and all other submissions no more than 5,000 words.

For creative works, send no more than 3-5 poems or 1 short story/dramatic work. You may submit both academic works and creative works for the same issue.

The St. John’s University Humanities Review is a peer-reviewed publication. You will be notified promptly after the deadline if your submission is accepted.

Last updated November 22, 2021

CFP 42nd Annual Medieval and Renaissance Forum (1/15/2022; Keene, NH 4/29-30/2022)

The Sense of Taste in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance

deadline for submissions: January 15, 2022

full name / name of organization: Medieval and Renaissance Forum

contact email: mpages@keene.edu

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2021/10/02/the-sense-of-taste-in-the-middle-ages-and-the-renaissance

42nd Annual Medieval and Renaissance Forum:
The Sense of Taste in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance

Keene State College

Keene, NH, USA

Friday and Saturday April 29-30, 2022

 

Call for Papers and Sessions

We are delighted to announce that the 42nd Medieval and Renaissance Forum: The Sense of Taste in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance will take place on Friday, April 29 and Saturday April 30, 2022 at Keene State College in Keene, New Hampshire. The fourth in a series of five annual conferences dedicated to the five senses, the 42nd Medieval and Renaissance Forum will focus on all culinary and savory experiences in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.

We welcome abstracts (one page or less) or panel proposals that discuss taste in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.

Papers and sessions, however, need not be confined to this theme but may cover other aspects of medieval and Renaissance life, literature, languages, art, philosophy, theology, history, and music.

This year’s keynote speaker is Martha Carlin, Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee.

Professor’s Carlin research focuses on medieval London and Southwark and on everyday life in medieval England, including food, work, shopping, letters, household technologies, and inns. In recent years, Professor Carlin has turned up new evidence concerning the lives of John Gower, Geoffrey Chaucer, and William Shakespeare. Currently, she is working on a book on the rise of inns in medieval England, and a sourcebook of translations from the Manières de langage (French language manuals written in England). She is the author of Food and Eating in Medieval Europe, Lost Letters of Medieval Life: English Society, 1200-1250, London and Southwark Inventories, 1316-1650: A Handlist of Extents for Debts, and, amongst many other articles and essays,“Why Stay at the Tabard? Public Inns and Their Amenities, c. 1400,”“The Bard at the Tabard,” and “The Senses in the Marketplace: Markets, Shops, and Shopping in Medieval Towns.”

Students, faculty, and independent scholars are welcome. Please indicate your status (undergraduate, graduate, or faculty), affiliation (if relevant), and full contact information, including email address on your proposal.

We welcome undergraduate sessions, but ask that students obtain a faculty member's approval and sponsorship.  

Graduate students are eligible for consideration for the South Wind Graduate Student Paper Award upon submission of their essays by April 1, 2022. The winner of the South Wind Graduate Student Paper Award will win $100 to be used for registration and/or travel expenses to the 43rd Annual Medieval and Renaissance Forum (travel expenses including but not limited to transportation to and from the conference and accommodations while in Keene). The winner of the South Wind Graduate Student Paper Award will be announced at lunch on Friday, April 22, 2022.

 

Please submit abstracts and full contact information on the google form available at https://forms.gle/jz1pspi1RRjVVHBA9.

Abstract deadline: January 15, 2022

Presenters and early registration: March 15, 2022

As always, we look forward to greeting returning and first-time participants to Keene in April!

Last updated October 5, 2021

Sponsored Sesssions for MAPACA This Week

Mid-Atlantic Popular Culture Association 2021 Annual Conference
Virtual Event. Wednesday, 11/10, through Saturday, 11/13.

Create an account with MAPACA to register and access the full schedule. 

Recalling the Middle Ages: Nostalgia, Relics, Ruins in Medievalisms

MEDIEVAL & RENAISSANCE / PANEL

Thursday, November 11, 9:30 am to 10:45 am EST (Camelot)

Sponsored by The Association for the Advancement of Scholarship and Teaching of the Medieval in Popular Culture

Session chair: Nick Katsiadas (Slippery Rock University)

Tolkien’s Medievalism as Romantic Nostalgia: The Longing for Aman, Gondolin, and Númenor

Nick Katsiadas (Slippery Rock University)

Nick Katsiadas is a lecturer in the English Department at Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania. His research focuses on graphic narratives, European Romanticism and its echoes in later experimental narratology. He is the author of "Mytho-Auto-Bio: Neil Gaiman's Sandman, the Romantics, and Shakespeare's The Tempest," "The Unwritten: Romanticism in Comics?" and a forthcoming book that is being published by the Rochester Institute of Technology Press, titled Romanticism in Comics: Faith, Myth, and Mood.

Blade and King, Lord and Ring: The Link Between Object and Identity and Story and (Arthurian) Source in Tolkien’s Aragorn son of Arathorn

Carl Sell (Lock Haven University)

Dr. Carl B. Sell is the TRIO SSS Writing Specialist at Lock Haven University. Carl’s research explores appropriations of Arthurian legend narratives, characters, and themes in popular culture as an extension of the medieval adaptive tradition. He serves as a member of the advisory boards for The Association for the Advancement of Scholarship and Teaching of the Medieval in Popular Culture and the Alliance for the Promotion of Research on the Matter of Britain, and he is the author of various film and literature reviews on medievalist and scholarly blogs, as well as articles on Arthurian topics and DC’s Aquaman.

Choose Wisely: The Grail in the Monstrous Matter of Britain

Michael A Torregrossa (Independent scholar)

Michael A. Torregrossa is a medievalist who researches adaptations of the medieval in popular culture. He is founder of The Alliance for the Promotion of Research on the Matter of Britain and The Association for the Advancement of Scholarship and Teaching of the Medieval in Popular Culture, and The Northeast Alliance for Scholarship on the Fantastic; he also serves as the Monsters and the Monstrous Area Chair for the Northeast Popular Culture/American Culture Association.

Medievalisms on Screen

MEDIEVAL & RENAISSANCE / PANEL

Thursday, November 11, 3:15 pm to 4:30 pm EST (Camelot)

Sponsored by The Association for the Advancement of Scholarship and Teaching of the Medieval in Popular Culture.

Session chair: Michael A Torregrossa (Independent scholar)

Knights, Swords, Roundtables and Quests: Contemporary Adaptations and Appropriations of Arthurian Legend

Rachael Kathleen Warmington (Seton Hall University)

Rachael Warmington is an instructor at Seton Hall University. She earned her English M.A. from Seton Hall University, her MFA at CUNY City College and is ABD at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Her current research focuses on themes of Arthurian Legend in medieval texts and in contemporary literature, film and television adaptations and appropriations and how these themes create the space that challenges oppression in its various forms, but have also been used to perpetuate racism, sexism and religious intolerance. Rachael is the editor-in-chief of the academic journal, Watchung Review and a New Jersey College English Association Board Member. She has been published in Journal of Pedagogic Development, The Tower Journal, Poetry in Performance and BigCityLit. 

Victory Over Valhalla: Violence via Vikings Sampling in Acylum’s Kampf Dem Verderb

Nicholas Diak (Independent scholar)

Nicholas Diak is a pop culture scholar of sword and sandal films, Italian exploitation cinema, industrial and synthwave music, and horror studies. He is the editor of The New Peplum: Essays on Sword and Sandal Films and Television Programs since the 1990s, the co-creator and co-chair of the annual Ann Radcliffe Academic Conference, co-host of the H. P. Lovecast Podcast, and contributor to the Exotica Moderne magazine.

Heresy for Fun and Profit: Crusader Kings III, Systematized Religion, and Medieval Heresies

Jason Paelian Pitruzzello

Jason Pitruzzello is a professor of English at Victoria College. He specializes in medievalisms, the literature of Robin Hood, and film/video game adaptations of literary works.

Magic in Medievalism: White Wizards, Wicked Witches & Racialized Sorcerers

MEDIEVAL & RENAISSANCE / PANEL

Friday, November 12, 9:30 am to 10:45 am EST (Camelot)

Sponsored by The Association for the Advancement of Scholarship and Teaching of the Medieval in Popular Culture.

Session chair: Carl Sell (Lock Haven University)

Mages on Stages: White Wizard Male Privilege in Shakespeare’s Tempest and Macbeth

Richard Fahey

Richard Fahey recently graduated from University of Notre Dame with a PhD in English (2020) and currently works as Blog Manager & Contributor at the Medieval Institute’s "Medieval Studies Research Blog," and Managing Book Review Editor for "Religion & Literature" at Notre Dame. Richard specializes in Old English, Middle English, Latin, Old Norse-Icelandic, and Old Saxon literature, and his research interests include medieval wonders, monsters, magic, riddles, heroism, syncretism, allegory, intellectual history, medievalism and public humanities. Richard is currently transforming his recent dissertation into a monograph, titled "Psychomachic Monstrosity in Beowulf,” and editing a collection of essays on the subject of “White Wizard Male Privilege.”

Bewitching Desire: Women’s Secrets, Seduction Magic, and Sexual Medievalism

Emily McLemore

Emily McLemore is a Ph.D. Candidate in English at the University of Notre Dame, where she specializes in Medieval Literature and Gender Studies. Her research focuses on representations of women and the intersections of gender, sex, and violence in medieval texts. Her dissertation, titled “Desiring Women: Pleasure and Power in Late Medieval English Literature,” foregrounds desiring as a transgressive act, which she characterizes as an expression of agency always underpinned by gendered power dynamics. The project examines how women, as desiring subjects, seek pleasure, experience and engender eroticism, and exercise power in sexual contexts. Her paper today, "Bewitching Desire: Women's Secrets, Seduction Magic, and Sexual Medievalism," draws from the introductory chapter of her dissertation where she discusses the evolution of medicalized misogyny in Medieval Europe.

Veiling the Wizard: Orientalizing the Whiteness of Xaltotun in Robert E. Howard’s Hour of the Dragon

Tirumular (Drew) Narayanan

Drew Narayanan is a third-year Art History Ph.D. student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His current projects focus on French and Italian depictions of Islamic Princes (both historical and imagined) in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century manuscripts. To this extent, he is interested in the nuances of “Race in the Middle Ages” as well as the memory of crusade. As a voracious consumer of early 20th century American pulp fiction, he also works on medievalisms and Americana. He has a publication in the magazine Current Affairs co-authored with Benjamin Bertrand titled “Medieval Dreams and Far-Right Nightmares.” 

Race-Swapping Sorcerers on The Continent: The Multicolor Medievalism of Netflix’s "The Witcher"

Kristine Larsen (Central Connecticut State University)

Dr. Kristine Larsen has been an astronomy professor at Central Connecticut State University since 1989. Her teaching and research focus on the intersections between science and society, including Gender and Science; science and popular culture (especially science in the works of J.R.R. Tolkien); and the history of science. She is the author of the books Stephen Hawking: A Biography, Cosmology 101, The Women Who Popularized Geology in the 19th Century, and Particle Panic! Her latest project is a book on Science and Magic in the world of Andrzej Sapkowski’s Witcher series.

CFP Studies in Medievalism 32 (6/1/2022)

 CALL FOR PAPERS: STUDIES IN MEDIEVALISM XXXII: MEDIEVALISM IN PLAY

Posted on September 22, 2021 

Source: https://medievalisms.org/call-for-papers-studies-in-medievalism-xxxii-medievalism-in-play/

From Renaissance satires of courtly love, through Victorian jousts, to Arthurian video games, medievalism has often been central to play, and play has often been central to medievalism. Sometimes the Middle Ages serve as mere background or framework for play that would not change in other contexts. But frequently play is refracted through medievalism (and/or vice-versa) in such a way as to comment specifically on the Middle Ages, the interpreter’s circumstances, the purpose of play, and/or on medievalism. Studies in Medievalism, a peer-reviewed print and on-line publication, is therefore seeking not only feature articles of 6,000-12,000 words (including notes) on any postmedieval responses to the Middle Ages, but also essays of approximately 3,000 words (including notes) on the intersection of medievalism and play. How have the Middle Ages been adapted to one or more particular instances of postmedieval play? Why was that context selected above all other possibilities? What does that choice say about the Middle Ages, the interpreter, the interpreter’s circumstances, about play, and/or about medievalism? Where does play fit with the study of medievalism? In responding to these and related questions, contributors are invited to give particular examples, but their submissions, which should be sent to Karl Fugelso at kfugelso@towson.edu in English and Word by 1 June 2022, should also address the implications of those examples for the discipline as a whole. (Note that priority will be given to papers in the order they are received and submissions that have not been translated into fluent English will not be considered.)

Sponsored Sessions at International Conference on Medievalism This Week

36th Annual Conference on Medievalism Schedule

4-6 November 2021

Virtual Event hosted by Delta College

Full conference schedule available at https://medievalism.net/conference/.


Reshaping the Middle Ages in and through Asian Popular Culture Sessions



Sponsored by the Association for the Advancement of Scholarship and Teaching of the Medieval in Popular Culture and the Mutual Images Research Association.




FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 5
Session 5b (9-10:30 AM EDT)



Reshaping the Middle Ages in and through Asian Popular Culture, 1

Sponsored by the Association for the Advancement of Scholarship and Teaching of the Medieval in Popular Culture and the Mutual Images Research Association



Organizer and moderator: Michael Torregrossa



Snakes and Ladders: The Serpent Allegory in Medieval Religious Art - Priyanka Das, Presidency University Kolkata (student)


Priyanka Das is an undergraduate student of English Literature at Presidency University Kolkata. She was selected at the Virtual Global Leaders Programme 2020 and Global Leaders Virtual Cultural Hackathon 2021 organized by the University of Exeter and Immersive Trails, erstwhile known as Heritage Walks Calcutta. Her research interests broadly encompass Medievalism, Colonialism, and Art. She has presented papers pertaining to these interests at several conferences including– the International Conference on Global Medievalism in Brazil and asynchronous Twitter Conference on Medieval Ages and Modern Games in the UK.




The Female King Arthur; The Moefication of Historical Characters in the Media Mix Called Fate - William Schrage, the University of Groningen


William Schrage recently graduated in his MA International Relations & International Organizations, East Asia track at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands. Before, he did a BA in History. His focus is on East Asian popular culture, heritage preservation and international relations. His forthcoming publication about the representation of otaku in Ore no imōto ga konnani kawaii wake ga nai will be published by the University of Minnesota Press in spring 2022.



SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 6

Session 10b (9-10:30 AM EDT)

Taiwanese roundtable - Borderlands and Berserkers: Understanding Western Culture in Taiwan

Sponsored by the Association for the Advancement of Scholarship and Teaching of the Medieval in Popular Culture


Organizer and moderator: Carolyn F. Scott, National Cheng Kung University


Lo-Yi Zoe Wu; Wen-Chi Stella Chang; Wen-Tien Luthien Chuang; Shan-Yo Jo-Ann Fang, Students at National Cheng Kung University



Session 13b (1:45-3 PM EDT)

Reshaping the Middle Ages in and through Asian Popular Culture, 2

Sponsored by the Association for the Advancement of Scholarship and Teaching of the Medieval in Popular Culture and the Mutual Images Research Association


Organizer and moderator: Michael Torregrossa


Reading Malory by Moonlight: The Arthurian Theme in Sailor Moon - Matthew S. Dentice, University of Nevada


Matthew S. Dentice is an author and academic currently pursuing a Ph.D. in literature with medieval focus at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He is the recipient of the Medieval Association of the Pacific’s Founders’ Prize for 2019 and of the Brooks-Hudgins Essay Award for 2020. His fictional work has been published by The Write Launch and The Closed Eye Open and is scheduled to appear in two upcoming print anthologies from Alternating Current Press and Something or Other Publishing. As an essayist, his work has been published by Bad Bride and in ABC News’ Religion and Ethics section.



“There are no innocents, not anymore”: Holocaust and Medievalism in the Japanese Anime Castlevania - Priyanka Das, Presidency University (Kolkata, India)


Priyanka Das is Assistant Professor of English at Presidency University, Kolkata, India. Her MA, MPhil and PhD is from Center for English Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University. She specializes in Holocaust and Genocide Studies, and Popular Culture, especially television series, memes and video games. Her PhD is on Game of Thrones, and she has extensively published on American, Indian and Korean media in international peer-reviewed journals. She is currently working on the gaming boom in Asian dramas and her forthcoming publication from Routledge is a co-edited volume on Holocaust and Popular Culture.


Monster Girls in the Neomedieval Mangaesque Imagination: Between Melusinian Tales and Interspecies Eroticism - Maxime Danesin, Independent Scholar


Maxime DANESIN obtained his PhD in Modern Literature at Tours University (France), and is now an independent researcher based in France. His primary field of research is European literary and cultural transfers in Japan, with a focus on neomedievalism in Mangaesque literature. He is also the co-founder and vice-president of Mutual Images Research Association (MIRA), an organisation dedicated to develop the research on the cultural relations between Japan and other countries.

A Review of Scholarship on Asian Medievalisms - Michael A. Torregrossa, Independent Scholar


Michael A. Torregrossa is a graduate of the Medieval Studies program at the University of Connecticut (Storrs) and works as an adjunct instructor in English in both Rhode Island and Massachusetts. He is also the founder of The Association for the Advancement of Scholarship and Teaching of the Medieval in Popular Culture and serves as editor for the organization's various blogs and moderator of its discussion lists. Michael’s research interests include the adaptation of the medieval into modern media, and, while he does not profess to be an expert on Asian popular culture, he gave one of the first presentations on medieval themes in the Fate series at a meeting of the Medieval Academy of America in 2010. His presentation today continues his exploration into the field of medievalist anime and manga studies.

Out Now: The United States of Medievalism

The United States of Medievalism

https://utorontopress.com/9781487525088/the-united-states-of-medievalism/

Edited by Tison Pugh and Susan Aronstein



Paperback: $44.95

ISBN: 9781487525088

(eBook also available)



Published: August 2021 © 2021


Product Details

Imprint: University of Toronto Press

Page Count: 336 Pages

Illustrations: 44 colour illustrations, 6 b&w illustrations

Dimensions: 6.00 x 9.00

World Rights




DESCRIPTION


The United States of Medievalism contemplates the desires, dreams, and contradictions inherent in experiencing the Middle Ages in a nation that is so temporally, spatially, and at times politically removed from them. The European Middle Ages have long influenced the national landscape of the United States through the medieval sites that permeate its self-announced republican landscapes and cities. Today, American-built medievalisms continue to shape the nation’s communities, collapsing the binaries between past and present, medieval and modern, European and American.

The volume’s chapters visit the nation’s many medieval-inspired spaces, from Sherwood Forest in Texas to California’s San Andreas Fault. Stops are made in New York City’s churches, Boston’s gardens, Philadelphia’s Bryn Athyn Cathedral, Orlando’s Magic Kingdom, Appalachian highways, Minnesota’s Viking Villages, New Orleans’s Mardi Gras, and the Las Vegas Strip. As the editors and their fellow essayists take the reader on this cross-country trip across the United States, they ponder the cultural work done by the nation’s medievalized spaces.

In its exploration of a seemingly distant period, this collection challenges the underexamined legacy of medievalism on the western side of the Atlantic. Full of intriguing case studies and reflections, this book is informative reading for anyone interested in the contemporary vestiges of the Middle Ages. 

CONTENTS

Introduction: Built in the United States of America: Constructing a Medieval Past
Tison Pugh and Susan Aronstein

Part I: Building the American Middle Ages

1. Translatio Horti: Medievalized Gardens in Boston and Cambridge
Kathleen Coyne Kelly

2. Bryn Athyn Cathedral and Glencairn – and Philadelphia’s Other Medieval(ist) Jewels
Kevin J. Harty

3. The Masonic Medievalism of Washington, D.C.
Laurie Finke

4. Medieval Chicago: Architecture, Patronage, and Capital at the Fin de Siècle
Alfred Thomas

Part II: Living in the American Middle Ages

5. Three Vignettes and a White Castle: Knighthood and Race in Modern Atlanta
Richard Utz

6. Medieval New York City: A Walk through The Stations of the Cross
Candace Barrington

7. Minnesota Medieval: Dragons, Knights, and Runestones
Jana K. Schulman

8. “I yearned for a strange land and a people that had the charm of originality”: Searching for Salvation in Medieval Appalachia
Alison Gulley

9. Wounded Landscapes: Topographies of Franciscan Spirituality and Deep Ecology in California Medievalism
Lowell Gallagher

Part III: Playing in the American Middle Ages

10. Orlando’s Medieval Heritage Project
Tison Pugh and Susan Aronstein

11. Saints and Sinners: New Orleans’s Medievalisms
Usha Vishnuvajjala and Candace Barrington

12. Sherwood Forest Faire: Evoking Medieval May-Games, Robin Hood Revels, and Twentieth-Century “Pleasure Faires” in Contemporary Texas
Lorraine Kochanske Stock

13. Las Vegas: Getting Medieval in Sin City
Laurie Finke and Martin Shichtman

Notes on Contributors



ABOUT THE EDITORS

Tison Pugh is Pegasus Professor in the Department of English at the University of Central Florida.

Susan Aronstein is a professor of English and Honors at the University of Wyoming.

CFP Medievalism in Popular Culture (11/15/21; PCA/ACA Seattle 4/13-16/2022)

Posted on behalf of the organizer:

CFP: Medievalism in Popular Culture

PCA/ACA 2022 National Conference

April 13-16, 2022, Seattle, WA

The Medievalism in Popular Culture Area (including Early to Later Middle Ages, Robin Hood, Arthurian, Chaucer, Norse, and other materials connected to medieval studies) accepts papers on all topics that explore either popular culture during the Middle Ages or transcribe some aspect of the Middle Ages into the popular culture of later periods. These representations can occur in any genre, including film, television, novels, graphic novels, gaming, advertising, art, etc. For this year’s conference, I would like to encourage submissions on some of the following topics:

• Medievalism and Intersectionality
• The Arthurian World
• “Medieval” as a social and political signifier
• Medievalism in Television (e.g., Cursed, Miracle Workers Season Two, etc.)
• Medievalism in Film (The Green Knight, Outlaw King, The Last Duel, etc.)
• Robin Hood
• Medievalism and Teaching (especially remote/distance education strategies)
• Board Games (e.g., Coup, Carcassone, etc.)/Online Gaming and/or Cosplay
• Anglo-Saxon or Viking Representations in Popular Culture
• Medievalism in Novels/Short Stories/Poems/Graphic Novels

If your topic idea does not fit into any of these categories, please feel free to submit your proposal as well. I would like to encourage as much participation as possible, and depending on submissions, I may rearrange the topic groupings.

All papers will be included in sessions with four presenters each, so plan to present on your topic for no more than 15 minutes, inclusive of any audio or visual materials.

Panel submissions are also welcome on any topic of medievalism. If you would like to propose a panel, please submit your complete panel to me directly at cfrancis@bloomu.edu. Individual papers will then have to be submitted to the PCA online system (see below).

Submission requirements:

Please submit a title and a 250 word abstract to http://conference.pcaaca.org. All submissions must be directed to the online database.

Deadline for submission: November 15, 2021.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact Christina Francis, Professor of English, Bloomsburg University, at cfrancis@bloomu.edu. 

Christina Francis, Ph.D. [pronouns: she/her]

Stephen J. Jones Professional U Fellow – College of Liberal Arts

Professor, Department of English

Director, Gender Studies Minor

Advisor, Sigma Tau Delta, English Honor Society 

Bloomsburg University

400 E. Second Street

Bloomsburg, PA 17815

 

CFP Medievalism and Genre: Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Historical Fiction (9/15/21; Kalamazoo 2022)

Posted on behalf of the organizers (from the ISSM list):

Session Title: Medievalism and Genre: Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Historical Fiction (Session ID: 2862)

ISSM-sponsored session at ICMS 2022

The “flavor” of many creative medievalisms shifts radically from genre to genre, yet these changes have largely been considered within the home genre and mode of the text in question – for example, a historical romance novel might be explored within the contexts of historical fiction or the romance novel genre, but not as a subset of medievalism. This panel seeks to upend those norms by considering medievalism as the broad umbrella category and exploring texts that play with genre, or texts working within a specific genre, for example the forthcoming film Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (2021). 

We invite proposals that explore the influence of the genres of science fiction, fantasy, and historical fiction upon medievalism, whether the field overall or in specific works (of any medium or mode). For example, how might romances like Sir Gawain and the Green Knight change meaning in a new genre, such as science fiction or fantasy? Proposals might consider specific texts, or ask broader questions including: how do speculative genres influence, restrict, or expand the potential of medievalism, or change the types of stories told? Where does genre cross over with medievalism?

Submissions of 250-300 WORDS should be made via the ICMS Confex system https://icms.confex.com/icms/2022am/cfp.cgi no later than Wednesday 15 September 2021.  If you have questions, please contact vjohnso6@montevallo.edu.

CFP Balancing Acts: Finding Time for Work and Scholarship (Roundtable) (9/30/21; NeMLA 3/10-13/2022)

CFP Balancing Acts: Finding Time for Work and Scholarship (Roundtable)

Sponsored by the Association for the Advancement of Scholarship and Teaching of the Medieval in Popular Culture

For the 53rd Annual Convention of the Northeast Modern Language Association

To convene at the Baltimore Marriott Waterfront, Baltimore, Maryland, from 10-13 March 2022

Proposals due by 30 September 2021

In connection with the conference theme of “Care”, this roundtable seeks to create a conversation about how we specialists of literature and languages might find a balance between our careers as teachers/workers with our lives as scholars/researchers. We face similar obstacles to achieving success. Can we work together to create a solution? 

Call for Papers

Like many, we specialists of literature and languages often stretch ourselves incredibly thin: as teachers/workers and as scholars/researchers. Many of us work multiple jobs as adjuncts, have temporary or precarious contracts, or teach overloaded schedules; others labor outside the academy. When, then, is there time for our own research, for conferencing, for writing, for publishing? 

This roundtable seeks to present a real-time discussion of these problems within English and language studies and hopes to try and find active answers to these questions. Rather than a presentation of papers, this is conceived as a traditional speaking roundtable: the presenters will have a few remarks prepared, but, ideally, this will serve as an academic conversation to jumpstart a larger, more necessary discussion amongst professionals about how and why finding a balance between working and scholarship is necessary, particularly in our fields. 

While this roundtable may appeal more to early-career academics, we encourage tenured and tenure-track faculty to participate in the conversation: Their contributions will only add to the greater picture of the emerging viewpoints of the field and can lead to some concrete solutions and suggestions for scholars to help find the balance that is necessary to be successful, both in one’s work and in one’s own research goals and agenda.

Guiding Questions:

• How can you balance an overloaded course schedule with a research requirement?
• How can you remain active in research and teach full-time/overtime?
• How can adjuncts/temporary faculty find time to do anything other than find a job?
• What do you do when your job isn’t in your field, and you can’t find time to do research or write?
• Are there organizations that can help with these issues?
• What do you do if you don’t have departmental support?
• How do you find the time to write and do research?
• How do you balance being a professional with your personal life? 
• How do you balance teaching, research, and service with personal health?

Submissions should be made directly into NeMLA’s conference management program at https://www.cfplist.com/nemla/Home/S/19225. Potential presenters will need to create an account with NeMLA to submit a proposal (including a presentation title, brief abstract--not more than 250 words--of some talking points addressing our major questions, academic bio, and AV needs)and to become members of NeMLA should their proposal be accepted for the session. Notice of acceptance will be made after 1 October 2021. Please go to the website nemla.org for details about session types and presenter guidelines.

Please address any other questions to the session organizers at medievalinpopularculture@gmail.com. We also welcome suggestions for resources (in print or online) that might be of value to the panel and its audience. 

CFP Saving the Day: Advice on Publishing in Popular Culture Research (Roundtable) (9/30/21; NeMLA 3/10-13/2022)

 CFP Saving the Day: Advice on Publishing in Popular Culture Research (Roundtable)

Sponsored by the Association for the Advancement of Scholarship and Teaching of the Medieval in Popular Culture

For the 53rd Annual Convention of the Northeast Modern Language Association

To convene at the Baltimore Marriott Waterfront, Baltimore, Maryland, from 10-13 March 2022

Proposals due by 30 September 2021

Finding where to submit our research is an issue for many, especially for those working on popular texts, like anime, comics, games, and genre fiction. Too often, the scholarship “dies”. It remains part of our CV or lesson plan but fails to reach the wider audience it deserves. This roundtable seeks published scholars to present on approaches to finding the right “fit” for work in popular culture and to relate their experiences with the processes of publication all in the hopes of encouraging others to get their work out into the world. 

Call for Papers

Many scholars working with popular culture have had their work feel largely out of place when looking at calls for papers or submitting to journals and edited collections. For example, papers on medievalist games tend to get rejected from strict medieval journals, and staunch comics studies collections focus on the medium and presentation of image rather than the adapted narrative of Frankenstein. Where, then, do we turn to publish our research? And, can anyone help us to do so?

This roundtable seeks published scholars to share their experiences within Popular Culture Studies. How have you achieved success in finding the right “fit” for your work in publications? Can you relate your experiences with the process of acceptance, peer review, revision, and final publication? Our goal is to help new and emerging scholars working with popular culture texts to more easily navigate the various CFPs and submission processes and to learn how and why their work may or may not fit for certain publications or publishers.

We welcome and, indeed, encourage submissions that span the genres of popular culture studies (including anime/manga, fantasy, games, horror, Internet video and memes, medievalisms, and science fiction) and that might highlight perspectives from various specialties (including classics, ecocriticism, feminism, LGBTQ+, romanticism, etc.). The more widespread the discussion, the more we can begin to expand the conversation about approaches to finding publication opportunities and the processes therein, both for new scholars and for those shifting into popular culture from another field. We also hope to begin to create a larger understanding of how and why many popular culturalists remain unpublished or remain relatively unknown outside of a few groups. 

Submissions should be made directly into NeMLA’s conference management program at https://www.cfplist.com/nemla/Home/S/19224. Potential presenters will need to create an account with NeMLA to submit a proposal (including a presentation title, brief abstract of 250 words detailing your experiences with and approaches to publication in popular culture, academic bio, and media needs) and to become members of NeMLA should their proposal be accepted for the session. Notice of acceptance will be made after 1 October 2021. Please go to the website nemla.org for details about session types and presenter guidelines.

Please address any other questions to the session organizers at medievalinpopularculture@gmail.com. We also welcome suggestions for resources (in print or online) that might be of value to the panel and its audience. 

MAPACA 2021 Medieval & Renaissance Area Sessions

The Mid-Atlantic Popular & American Culture Association has released the schedule for its 2021 virtual conference. Create an account to view the full program and register to attend.

Here are the session details for the Medieval & Renaissance Area. We have organized three of the five panels.

Schedule by area: Medieval & Renaissance

• Medievalisms on Screen (Wednesday, November 10, 9:30 am to 10:45 am (Camelot))
• Co-Sponsored Panel: Discourse of Medievalism and Representation on Screen (Wednesday, November 10, 3:15 pm to 4:30 pm (Camelot))
• Recalling the Middle Ages: Nostalgia, Relics, Ruins in Medievalisms (Thursday, November 11, 9:30 am to 10:45 am (Camelot))
• Magic in Medievalism: White Wizards, Wicked Witches & Racialized Sorcerers (Friday, November 12, 9:30 am to 10:45 am (Camelot))
• Medeievalisms in Neomedievalisms in Shakespeare, Video Games, the Classroom, and Culture (Friday, November 12, 1:45 pm to 3:00 pm (Camelot))

Hope you can attend.

CFP "Can These Bones Come to Life?" II: The Afterlife of the Knights Templar (A Panel Discussion) (9/1/21; Kalamazoo 5/9-14/2022)

 Posted from the ISSM listerv:

"Can These Bones Come to Life?" II: The Afterlife of the Knights Templar
(A Panel Discussion)

@ Western Michigan University’s International Medieval Congress (The Conference Formerly Known as “Kalamazoo”)

In keeping with our theme of “reenactment and recreations,” we are seeking a panel of four to six scholars on the afterlife, signification, and uses of the Knights Templar and Templar imagery. Medievalisms modern, premodern, and postmodern—sixteenth-century Portuguese court propaganda to Freemasons to Charlottesville to mosque graffiti to reenactors and the SCA—are welcome, as are depictions and representations both positive and negative. Participants are further invited to submit papers to our ongoing volume of proceedings.

Please contact Ken Mondschein at ken -at- kenmondschein dot com

Update (Un)Fair(ly) Unknown: New and Neglected Arthurian Television Programming (Mythcon 51)

My thanks to everyone at Mythcon 51 for attending our sponsored session this weekend. Here again are the details of the panel.

(Un)Fair(ly) Unknown: New and Neglected Arthurian Television Programming 

Sponsored by the Association for the Advancement of Scholarship and Teaching of the Medieval in Popular Culture

The Arthurian tradition abounds with Fair Unknowns, characters whose identity and true worth are revealed only slowly over the course of an adventure. In this session, we’d like to adopt the motif to look at new and neglected television series that make interesting use of the legend and deserve more recognition by scholars.

Panel Chair: Carl B. Sell, Lock Haven University

Paper 1: “Generation X in King Arthur’s Court: Arthurian Television of the 1970s and 1980s”

Michael A. Torregrossa, Independent Scholar

Michael A. Torregrossa is a graduate of the Medieval Studies program at the University of Connecticut (Storrs) and works as an adjunct instructor in English in both Rhode Island and Massachusetts. His research focuses on popular culture’s adaptation and appropriation of literary classics, including the Arthurian legend, Beowulf, Dracula, and Frankenstein.  In addition, Michael is the founder of The Alliance for the Promotion of Research on the Matter of Britain and The Association for the Advancement of Scholarship and Teaching of the Medieval in Popular Culture; he also serves as editor for these organizations' various blogs and moderator of their discussion lists. Besides these activities, Michael is also active in the Northeast Popular Culture/American Culture Association and organizes sessions for their annual conference in the fall. Michael is currently Monsters and the Monstrous Area Chair for NEPCA, but he previously served as its Fantastic (Fantasy, Science Fiction, and Horror) Area Chair, a position he held from 2009-2018.

Paper 2: “Knights, Swords, Roundtables, and Quests:  Contemporary Adaptations and Appropriations of Arthurian Legend”

Rachael Warmington, Seton Hall University

Rachael Warmington is an instructor at Seton Hall University. She earned her B.A. in English from Montclair State University, M.A. in English from Seton Hall University, her MFA at CUNY City College and is a doctoral candidate at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Rachael is also the editor-in-chief of the academic journal, Watchung Review.  Her research focuses on themes of Arthurian Legend in medieval texts and in contemporary literature, film and television adaptations, and appropriations and how these themes create the space that challenges oppression in its various forms but have also been used to perpetuate racism, sexism, and religious intolerance.

Paper 3: ""Medievalism in the Kingdom: Chivalry and Arthurian Kingship in The Walking Dead"

Richard Fahey, University of Notre Dame 

Richard Fahey recently graduated from University of Notre Dame with a PhD in English (2020) and currently works as Blog Manager & Contributor at the Medieval Institute’s "Medieval Studies Research Blog," and Managing Book Review Editor for "Religion & Literature" at Notre Dame. Richard specializes in Old English, Middle English, Latin, Old Norse-Icelandic, and Old Saxon literature, and his research interests include medieval wonders, monsters, magic, riddles, heroism, syncretism, allegory, intellectual history, medievalism, and public humanities. Richard is currently transforming his recent dissertation into a monograph, titled "Psychomachic Monstrosity in Beowulf,” and editing a collection of essays on the subject of “White Wizard Male Privilege.”

CFP Disney and the Middle Ages (9/15/21; Kalmazoo 5/9-14/2022)

Posted on behalf of the organizer:

Call for Papers 

57th International Congress on Medieval Studies 

May 9–14, 2022, online 

Disney and the Middle Ages

(Link to PDF of cfp)

Description 

The Walt Disney Company's films, theme parks, and other media are full of people and places coded as medieval, from the Magic Kingdom's castles and fairies to the kingdom of  Arendelle in the Frozen films. This session invites papers that examine medievalism in Disney entertainment from a variety of disciplinary and critical perspectives. Papers about Disney’s recently acquired franchises (such as Star Wars, Pixar, and the Marvel Cinematic Universe)  are also encouraged. 

Organizer 

Joshua T. Parks, Princeton Theological Seminary (joshua.t.parks@gmail.com) 

Please submit a 250–word abstract at the ICMS website (https://wmich.edu/medievalcongress/call/) by September 15, 2021. 

CFP Public Medievalism and Academic Activism in the Face of White Nationalist (Mis)appropriations (9/15/21; Kalamazoo 5/9-14/2022)

 CFP: Public Medievalism and Academic Activism in the Face of White Nationalist (Mis)appropriations

Sponsored by the Association for the Advancement of Scholarship and Teaching of the Medieval in Popular Culture.

Chair: Richard Fahey

For the 57th International Congress on Medieval Studies hosted by Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

Online Conference: 9-14 May 2022.

Proposals:

The process for proposing papers for the 57th Congress (live on the internet May 9-14, 2022) uses an online submission system powered by Confex. The deadline for proposals is Wednesday, Sept. 15.

Paper proposals comprise the proposed paper's title; the answers to questions about social media and live recording; name, affiliation, and contact information for the author(s); an abstract (300 words) for consideration by session organizer(s); and a short abstract (50 words) for public view on the meeting site, should the proposal be accepted.

Session Description:

As medievalists in an era of rising white nationalism in both the United States and Europe, we have become increasingly aware of the many ways medieval studies and medievalism has been and is actively being appropriated by organizations who espouse and uphold fallacious and ahistorical white supremacist narratives. It is our job as specialists in the field to act swiftly and decisively in our roles as public medievalists and educators to help combat the nefarious spread of misinformation about the medieval period especially online and via social media. Medieval symbolism and subject matter, especially relating to “Anglo-Saxon” England, the Viking Age, and the Crusades, have been recast as symbols of whiteness and mobilized for their erroneous presentations of medieval Europe as fiercely and intentionally homogenous. Some of the most horrific and egregious examples of misappropriating medieval studies were displayed at the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, VA (8/12/2016) and during the insurrection at the Capitol Building in Washington, DC (1/6/2021).

This raises a related but similarly important question: how have medievalism (whether in fantasy or historical fiction) and modern adaptations of medieval literature and history contributed to these problematic narratives? Helen Young has observed “habits of whiteness” within fantasy literature and modern medievalism, which correspond to current trends in white nationalist rhetoric. This session intends to call attention to the ways in which medievalism reproduces and reinforces, often unwittingly, noxious white supremacist rhetoric in these fictive representations of an imaginary “pure white” medieval period that never existed.

We invite papers that either call attention and critique medievalism and fantasy literature which fall into this category or papers which highlight (often lesser-known works of) medievalism and fantasy literature which problematize these narratives by including, incorporating, or otherwise depicting more historically attuned representations of what scholars rightly describe as the global Middle Ages. We also hope that a collection of essays will result from this session.

Please submit proposals for this session through the Confex system for approval, and send any questions related to the session to the organizer, Richard Fahey, at rfahey@nd.edu. 

More information about the conference can be found at https://wmich.edu/medievalcongress.

Further information about the session sponsors may be found at https://medievalinpopularculture.blogspot.com/.