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.