Mass Mediævalisms: The Middle Ages of Popular Culture

Welcome to home page of the Association for the Advancement of Scholarship and Teaching of the Medieval in Popular Culture, a community of scholars and enthusiasts organized to promote and foster research and discussion of representations of the medieval in post-medieval popular culture and mass media. Encompassing material produced from the close of the Middle Ages to today, these medievalisms can be categorized as survivals, revivals, or re-creations of the medieval in post-medieval eras.

Thursday, September 1, 2022

CFPs Tolkien at Kalamazoo (proposals by 9/15/2022)

From the Mythopoeic Society Listserv:

Proposals of papers and contributions to roundtables are due Sept. 15, 2022.

Tolkien at Kalamazoo is sponsoring three sessions:

Medieval Elements in Amazon’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (Roundtable): In-Person Session

The upcoming Amazon Prime series The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, due to premiere in September 2022, explores the Second Age of Middle-earth. The announcement of the series, followed by the release of images and a trailer, has suggested that the world constructed by the show contains a number of elements that appear to draw on the Middle Ages. This roundtable invites contributions that consider the medieval elements in the series, both elements of design and narrative, and including structures of society, government, and relations among societies.

Christopher Tolkien: Medievalist Editor of J. R. R. Tolkien’s Legendarium (Paper Session): In-Person Session

The publication of The Great Tales Never End: Essays in Memory of Christopher Tolkien in September 2022 affords us an opportunity to investigate the work of Christopher Tolkien as editor. Edited by the Bodleian’s librarian Richard Ovenden and Tolkien Archivist Catherine McIlwaine and published by the Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford, this volume is well concerned with the work of reading and editing manuscripts. A medievalist by training, working in Old Norse texts, Christopher is best known as the editor of his father’s legendarium. This paper session invites contributions that consider the role of his background in medieval texts as editor of J. R. R. Tolkien’s manuscripts and that engage with the memorial volume The Great Tales Never End.

“Climate Change” II: Social, Ecological, Political, and Spiritual Shifts in J.R.R. Tolkien and Medieval Poets: Blended Session (co-sponsored with the Pearl-Poet Society; organized by Jane Beal)

J. R. R. Tolkien was a reader, translator, and teacher of medieval poetry in Old and Middle English as well as Old Norse, showing particular devotion to Beowulf and the works of the Pearl-Poet. Tolkien’s interpretations of medieval poetry deserve further investigation in terms of the theme of “climate change,” which can be explored in social, ecological, political, and spiritual terms by interested scholars submitting papers for our session. This session is the second in a two-part series, “Climate Change” I sponsored exclusively by the Pearl-Poet Society and this session sponsored jointly by the PPS and Tolkien at Kalamazoo.

Additional Tolkien Sessions:

Tolkien and Medieval Constructions of Race (A Roundtable): Virtual Session (sponsored by the Centre for Fantasy and the Fantastic, Univ. of Glasgow; Contact: Mariana Rios Maldonado)

Tolkien and the Middle Ages: Tolkien and the Scholastics: In Person Session (sponsored by the D. B. Reinhart Institute for Ethics in Leadership, Viterbo Univ.; Contact: Michael A. Wodzak)

All proposals must be made through the Congress’s Confex system. Please follow the instructions on the Congress’s Call for Papers carefully (https://wmich.edu/medievalcongress/call).