CFP Tolkien’s Medievalism in Ruins II: Relics and Ruins in Re/Visions of Tolkien’s Larger Legendarium at NeMLA 2024 (9/30/2023; NeMLA 3/7-10/2024)

Posted on behalf of our advisory board members who have organized this session. Please support their work if you can.

Tolkien’s Medievalism in Ruins II: Relics and Ruins in Re/Visions of Tolkien’s Larger Legendarium at NeMLA 2024

deadline for submissions:
September 30, 2023

full name / name of organization:
Carl Sell and Nick Katsiadas / Slippery Rock University and University of Pittsburgh

contact email:
nicholas.katsiadas@sru.edu

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2023/06/14/tolkien%E2%80%99s-medievalism-in-ruins-ii-relics-and-ruins-in-revisions-of-tolkien%E2%80%99s-larger

With the success of two panel sessions at the 2023 NeMLA Convention, we are happy to propose a “sequel” session on the theme of “Tolkien’s Medievalism in Ruins” in 2024. For all that may be said about the 2023 panels, one thing is certain: The panelists highlighted the important roles of relics and ruins within Tolkien’s essay “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics,” The Hobbit, and The Lord of the Rings. While we certainly covered much ground, there is a great deal left to explore, especially within The History of Middle-earth series, The Silmarillion, and the texts that Christopher Tolkien edited and published after his father’s death (The Children of Húrin, Beren and Lúthien, The Fall of Gondolin, The Fall of Númenor). We are concerned with including presentations about the larger legendarium, and we are equally concerned with opening this sequel session to the surplus of adaptations from Tolkien’s works, including: Peter Jackson’s adaptations, Rankin & Bass adaptations, Ralph Bakshi's adaptation, Amazon's The Rings of Power, video game adaptations, graphic representations, and revisions.

We are pleased once again to welcome proposals from a variety of theoretical approaches for the 2024 NeMLA Convention in Boston. Topics and texts about Tolkien’s legendarium may include, but are certainly not limited to, the following:

• Ruins or relics and trauma
• Ruins or relics and war
• Ruins or relics and nostalgia
• Ruins or relics and melancholy
• Ruins or relics and loss
• Ruins or relics and memory
• Ruins or relics and travel
• Ruins or relics and Medievalism
• Ruins or relics and Arthuriana
• Ruins or relics and Classicism
• Ruins or relics and Romanticism
• Ruins or relics in the First, Second, or Third ages of Middle-earth
• Ruins or relics in The History of Middle-earth series
• Relics and the Silmarils
• Relics and the Arkenstone
• Relics and the Dragon-helm of Dor-lómin
• Relics and Bard’s Black Arrow
• Ruins or relics in adaptations of Tolkien
• Ruins and Tolkien's critical works
• Ruins of Golden Ages
• Ruins or relics in Middle-earth and their Literary History
• Ruins or relics of Abandoned cities, locations, and peoples

We seek 250 – 300 word abstracts for presentations across periods and nations that address topics related to relics or ruins in Tolkien’s Middle-earth. Panelists should use the NeMLA conference website to submit abstracts, and abstracts should clearly delineate the presentation’s argument in relation to this theme. Once abstracts have been collected and accepted, the organizers will then confer and send acceptance letters. We ask that abstract submissions follow MLA format.

Those with inquiries may email Nick Katsiadas at Nicholas.katsiadas@sru.edu and Carl Sell at cscarlsell@gmail.com.



Last updated June 20, 2023

CFP Music Medievalism in Popular Culture (virtual) (9/1/2023; ICMS 5/9-11/2024)

MUSIC MEDIEVALISM IN POPULAR CULTURE at ICMS in Kalamazoo (May 9–11, 2024)

Sponsoring Organization: Association for the Advancement of Scholarship and Teaching of the Medieval in Popular Culture
Organizer: Anna Czarnowus





Jonathan Le Cocq (forthcoming, 2024) defines music medievalism as either the influence of the medieval on later music, or the impact on medieval music (real or imagined) on any later cultural practice. In popular culture, we can find both the music that has been influenced by the actual medieval one and music influenced by some folk music imagined as medieval. Medievalist music such as pagan folk music (Troyer in: Meyer and Yri, 2020) can be used in various media and there are various genres of it. Some music videos can be an example of the cultural practice that is influenced by the imaginary medieval music. Medievalist video games also contain “medievalized” music. Please consider such topics and similar ones:

• medievalist music as background
• medievalist music and similar videos
• medievalist music/folk music as medievalist

Please send your abstract to: annaczarnowus@tlen.pl by September 1, 2023, but an official proposal can only be made and accepted through (https://icms.confex.com/icms/2024/cfp.cgi).

CFP Political Medievalism: A Global View (virtual) (9/15/2023; ICMS 2024)

Cross-posted from the ISSM listserv:



Dear Friends and colleagues,
Please consider submitting an abstract to our virtual session at ICMS 2024. The deadline for abstract submission is September 15. The link for submissions is: https://icms.confex.com/icms/2024/cfp.cgi





POLITICAL MEDIEVALISM: A GLOBAL VIEW (#4923)


In 2017, with white supremacists sporting shields and standards containing medieval-like heraldry, Charlottesville shocked the mainstream world. Not long after, in 2019, Christchurch in New Zealand followed a similar pattern, when Christian terrorist Brenton Tarrant attacked two mosques and murdered 51 people, using (amongst other weapons) an assault rifle riddled with inscriptions alluding to medieval themes, characters, and events. Despite not being a new phenomenon (let us not forget that painting of Adolf Hitler as a medieval knight) twenty-first century political (neo)medievalism seems to be finally showing its more brutal impulses; once confined to the ends of the internet and other restricted underworlds, it is now crawling its way into the public scene and even gaining relevance in places and countries where it was previously unknown. Email Luiz Guerra (anchietaguerra@gmail.com) with questions.


Best,

Luiz Felipe Anchieta Guerra
International Liaison - ISSM

CFP Teaching the Middle Ages and Renaissance to STEM Students: A Digital Symposium (10/1/2023; Zoom 12/4/2023)

An exciting project. Do consider giving it your support.

Call for Papers – Teaching the Middle Ages and Renaissance to STEM Students: A Digital Symposium

Posted on August 22, 2023 by Chris

Source: https://www.themedievalacademyblog.org/call-for-papers-teaching-the-middle-ages-and-renaissance-to-stem-students-a-digital-symposium/

We’re pleased to announce “Teaching the Middle Ages and Renaissance to STEM Students” digital symposium hosted by the Georgia Institute of Technology‘s Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts, together with the Studies in Medieval Renaissance Teaching (SMART) December 4, 2023. The symposium will be held entirely on Zoom and brings together colleagues with professional experience at teaching medieval and Renaissance subject matter to student audiences mostly or entirely consisting of STEM majors.

“Teaching the Middle Ages and Renaissance to STEM Students” invites proposals for 15-minute presentations that explore teaching medieval and Renaissance subject matter to student audiences mostly or entirely consisting of STEM majors. The increasing importance of the sciences and technology at institutions of higher learning suggests that medievalists and Renaissance scholars also have an increased need to understand how we should respond to student audiences whose focus lies outside the humanities and social sciences. Are STEM students’ horizons of expectation and interest substantially different from those in art, history, literary studies, music, religion, philosophy, or sociology? Do these audiences (science, technology, engineering, mathematics, medicine) and their environments (labs, future- and progress-orientedness, linkages to industry, profession-ready education) demand that we adjust our themes, philosophies, and methodological approaches? How is the instruction of medieval and Renaissance subject matter structurally integrated for these audiences and environments?

How to participate

Please send proposals of c. 350 words, in an MS Word file attached to your email, to Lainie Pomerleau (lpomerleau6@gatech.edu) and Richard Utz (richard.utz@lmc.gatech.edu) by October 1, 2023. Please also indicate if you plan on submitting an essay version of your presentation for consideration for publication. Presentations will be delivered via Zoom and should be non longer than 15 minutes (approximately 6 to 8 double-spaced pages).

CFP Medievalisms Today: Aspects of the Medieval Past in the 21st-century World (Panel) (9/30/2023; NeMLA 3/7-10/2024)

Medievalisms Today: Aspects of the Medieval Past in the 21st-century World (Panel)

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

Organized by Michael A. Torregrossa, June-Ann Greeley, and Rachael Warmington


Call for Papers - Please Submit Proposals by 30 September 2023

55th Annual Convention of Northeast Modern Language Association

Sheraton Boston Hotel (Boston, MA)

On-site event: 7-10 March 2024

Session Rationale

Medievalisms Today: Aspects of the Medieval Past in the 21st-century World (Panel)


A frequent conception of the medieval period is that it was a barbaric, fanatical, and unenlightened era, yet, despite these (actual or perceived) faults, there remains an appeal to the era in modern culture. As Umberto Eco wrote a number of decades ago, “it seems people like the Middle Ages,” and this statement continues to ring true today in 2023. Regardless of the centuries (and often geography) that separate them from this time, creators worldwide are still engaged with adapting, adopting, appropriating, and/or transforming elements of the medieval past. The resulting works (referred to as medievalisms) appear in a startling array of media and have been employed (both positively and negatively) for a variety of purposes, including in materials with commercial, educational, entertainment, and propagandist motives.


Recently, medievalists have begun to widen the scope of their analysis of these works, and they have strived to explore the reception of the medieval on a wider scale than the expected sites of medieval re-creation (such as Europe, Canada, and the United States) to highlight the production and dissemination of medievalisms (as recent studies phrase it) as global, international, and/or world phenomena. Medievalists have also looked more deeply at how the creators of these new works impact the local culture around them.


These studies have made a promising start toward widening the scope of medievalism, but much work remains to be done to more fully catalog and assess these materials, especially as their numbers keep increasing.


Our intent in this session is to shine the spotlight onto new and recent works of medievalism from across the planet that haven’t yet received much (if any) attention and explore how and (perhaps) why creators still find the Middle Ages so interesting and (despite their distance from the period) relevant in the twenty-first century to their own experiences, places, and times.


Presentations might highlight and engage with examples of the medieval in comics, drama, fiction, film, games, manga, memes, music, politics, streaming video, television programing, and/or translations.Other approaches are also welcome.


Please see Helen Young and Kavita Mundan Finn’s online bibliography from Global Medievalism: An Introduction (available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/elements/abs/global-medievalism/E555F6DCC12217351536A00E22E862E5) for ideas and support.

Submission Information

All proposals must be submitted into the CFPList system at https://cfplist.com/nemla/Home/S/20591 by 30 September 2023. You will be prompted to create an account with NeMLA (if you do not already have one) and, then, to complete sections on Title, Abstract, and Media Needs.


Notification on the fate of your submission will be made prior to 16 October 2023. If favorable, please confirm your participation with chairs by accepting their invitations and by registering for the event. The deadline for Registration/Membership is 9 December 2023.


Be advised of the following policies of the Convention: All participants must be members of NeMLA for the year of the conference. Participants may present on up to two sessions of different types (panels/seminars are considered of the same type). Submitters to the CFP site cannot upload the same abstract twice.(See the NeMLA Presenter Policies page, at https://www.buffalo.edu/nemla/convention/policies.html, for further details,)



Thank you for your interest in our session. Please address questions and/or concerns to the organizers at MedievalinPopularCulture@gmail.com.


For more information on the Association for the Advancement of Scholarship and Teaching of the Medieval in Popular Culture, please visit our website at https://MedievalinPopularCulture.blogspot.com/.

CFP Vikingism: Viking-Age Scandinavians in Modern British and North American Media (9/15/2023)

Vikingism: Viking-Age Scandinavians in Modern British and North American Media

deadline for submissions:
September 15, 2023

full name / name of organization:
Johanna Hoorenman & Tom Grant, Utrecht University

contact email:
j.e.m.hoorenman@uu.nl



CFP: Edited volume on Vikingism: Viking-Age Scandinavians in Modern British and North American Media

Vikings — their history, traditions, mythology and material culture — have taken contemporary media by storm. Popular culture is awash with Viking tropes and themes which have generated explosive interest in cinema, television, video games, music, literature, genre fiction and comics. This volume aims to provide a ground-breaking and innovative understanding of twentieth- and twenty-first century Vikingism. We are inviting scholars with relevant expertise to contribute essays which address any of the following questions:

• What contemporary culture wars are being fought on Viking battlefields?
• What are the main trends in the recent depictions of Vikings on screen, in video games and in literature, and what do these cultural products communicate to their audiences?
• How have Vikings been used as a trope for British and American narratives of cultural heritage, social values, nationalism and/or Christianity? How have Viking tropes developed across popular and artistic genres and media?
• What socio-cultural developments in Britain and North American are driving the recent surge of interest in the Viking Age?

We are interested in all media genres aimed at the British and American markets, popular and literary, including but not limited to

• British historical fiction, including Bernard Cornwell’s The Saxon Stories and their Netflix adaptation The Last Kingdom
• American historical (pulp) novels including Edison Marshall’s The Viking (1951) and West with the Vikings (1962)
• AS Byatt’s Ragnarök, Joanne M Harris’ Gospel of Loki and Runemarks series
• Children’s / YA literature, including John Flanagan’s Brotherband Chronicles and Cressida Cowell’s How to Train your Dragon series
• Comic books: Marvel’s Thor and their screen adaptations
• Games, including: Skyrim, Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla
• History Channel’s Vikings and Vikings: Valhalla
• Feature films including The Vikings (1958), Erik the Viking (1989), The Northman (2022)
• Fantasy fiction, including Neil Gaiman’s Sandman, American Gods, Norse Mythology
• Popular romance fiction, including queer romance and trans identities
• Music

Please submit an abstract (max. 300 words) and a short biography (max. 150 words)to both of the editors, Johanna Hoorenman (j.e.m.hoorenman@uu.nl) and Tom Grant (t.o.grant@uu.nl) by 15 September 2023.



Last updated July 28, 2023

New Scholarship - The Year’s Work in Medievalism 35-36

Issues 35 and 36 of YWIM are out!

Posted on July 27, 2023 by lhaught

source: https://medievalisms.org/issues-35-and-36-of-ywim-are-out/.

The editors of The Year’s Work in Medievalism are delighted to announce the publication of volume 35.36 (2020-2021), a double issue. YWiM is the ISSM’s own peer-reviewed open access scholarly journal. The new volume represents work completed during the COVID-19 lockdown years, and so YWiM 35.36 contains: a pedagogy cluster; articles that discuss form, media, and medievalism; and a posthumous article by Alicia McKenzie (1976-2022), which we hope serves as a lasting memorial to her life and work. We encourage you to visit https://ywim.net/ to read and enjoy innovative medievalism scholarship.

CFP ISSM Sponsored Kalamazoo 2024 Sessions (9/15/2023; ICMS 5/9-11/2024)

CFP: ISSM Sponsored Kalamazoo 2024 Sessions

The 59th International Congress on Medieval Studies will be held in Hybrid Format on May 9-11, 2024.

All ISSM sponsored sessions will be remote and submissions are due by 9/15/23.

Further details at https://medievalisms.org/cfp-issm-sponsored-kalamazoo-2024-sessions/. 

YOUNG ADULT MEDIEVALISMS (#4924): PAPER PANEL

This virtual/remote session considers the function of the Medieval in Young Adult Literature and Media. Whether retellings of Arthurian or other medieval stories, stories set in the Real or Fantasy Middle Ages, or stories working in Medieval narrative modes, the universe of YA media seems deeply engaged with the past. This is particularly interesting since the idea of “adolescence” certainly post-dates the Middle Ages. Papers will consider any aspect of the Medieval in YA Media focusing on how the medieval is defined or created and used within the narrative. What it the purpose of setting a YA story in the medieval past? What happens when Medieval characters are reconstituted as contemporary (or futuristic) young adults? How do medieval genres work to tell stories that speak to the present moment? And what is the relationship of the past and the present in these stories? Email Angela Weisl (angela.weisl@shu.edu) with questions; abstracts must be submitted through the ICMS website for consideration.

POLITICAL MEDIEVALISM: A GLOBAL VIEW(#4923): PAPER PANEL

In 2017, with white supremacists sporting shields and standards containing medieval-like heraldry, Charlottesville shocked the mainstream world. Not long after, in 2019, Christchurch in New Zealand followed a similar pattern, when Christian terrorist Brenton Tarrant attacked two mosques and murdered 51 people, using (amongst other weapons) an assault rifle riddled with inscriptions alluding to medieval themes, characters, and events. Despite not being a new phenomenon (let us not forget that painting of Adolf Hitler as a medieval knight) twenty-first century political (neo)medievalism seems to be finally showing its more brutal impulses; once confined to the ends of the internet and other restricted underworlds, it is now crawling its way into the public scene and even gaining relevance in places and countries where it was previously unknown. Email Luiz Guerra (anchietaguerra@gmail.com) with questions.

MEDIEVALISM AND CONTEMPORARY ROMANCE (#4925): PAPER PANEL

The romance genre emerges in the Middle Ages but has shown no intention of going anywhere. How do contemporary forms of romance (whether novels, films, television shows, etc.) engage with medieval tropes and narrative elements? While there are certain obvious elements that have changed, what remains the same? And what about the genre allows it to maintain the same status it had in the Middle Ages as the most popular (secular) genre? Papers for this virtual/remote session may look at any contemporary examples from any media. Email Angela Weisl (angela.weisl@shu.edu) with questions; abstracts must be submitted through the ICMS website for consideration.

INCLUSIVE MEDIEVALISMS IN FILM AND TELEVISION (# 4296): ROUNDTABLE

Medievalisms in Film and Television show no sign of slowing down, every season brings new examples. Whether purely fantasy or based in some kind of historical reality, these instantiations suggest an ongoing preoccupation with the medieval past. But to what end? More specifically, how do diverse casting choices (or the lack thereof) impact popular conceptions of the “premodern” past? This virtual roundtable will investigate different visions of medieval society put forth recently on film and tv in an attempt to determine how they might reflect the use and abuse of the Middle Ages in contemporary discourses on diversity and inclusion. Considerations of fan reactions to casting choices are welcome alongside analyses of the impact of these choices on the world building and messaging of the show or film in question. Email Leah Haught (lhaught@westga.edu) with questions; abstracts must be submitted through the ICMS website for consideration.

SCIENCE FICTION MEDIEVALISMS (#4922): PAPER PANEL

After the success of last year’s four sessions on Science Fiction Medievalisms, this virtual/remote session seeks to continue the conversation. How is the Medieval used in a genre that is supposedly about the future? How do medieval elements interact with the technological, scientific, and cyber elements of the genre? Why do “past” stories continue to be told in the imagined future, and what does this suggest about our present? Email Chrissie DeClerck-Szilagyi (christinaszilagyi@delta.edu) or Angela Weisl (angela.weisl@shu.edu) with questions; abstracts must be submitted through the ICMS website for consideration.

If you have friends or colleagues who you think would be interested in these sessions, please encourage them to submit!

CFP MUSIC MEDIEVALISM IN POPULAR CULTURE (9/1/2023; ICMS in Kalamazoo May 9–11, 2024)

MUSIC MEDIEVALISM IN POPULAR CULTURE (virtual) at ICMS in Kalamazoo (May 9–11, 2024)

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

Jonathan Le Cocq (forthcoming, 2024) defines music medievalism as either the influence of the medieval on later music, or the impact on medieval music (real or imagined) on any later cultural practice. In popular culture, we can find both the music that has been influenced by the actual medieval one and music influenced by some folk music imagined as medieval. Medievalist music such as pagan folk music (Troyer in: Meyer and Yri, 2020) can be used in various media and there are various genres of it. Some music videos can be an example of the cultural practice that is influenced by the imaginary medieval music. Medievalist video games also contain “medievalized” music. Please consider such topics and similar ones:

• medievalist music as background
• medievalist music and similar videos
• medievalist music/folk music as medievalist

Please send your abstract to: annaczarnowus@tlen.pl by September 1, 2023, but an official proposal can only be made and accepted through (https://icms.confex.com/icms/2024/cfp.cgi).

CFP Biennial Conference of the International Association for Robin Hood Studies (9/1/2023; Missouri Valley College/Hybrid 10/18-21/2023)

Cross-posted from the ISSM listserv:

On behalf of Thomas Rowland, here is a call for papers that may be of interest to many medievalism-ists!

CFP: Biennial Conference of the International Association for Robin Hood Studies

October 18-21, 2023

Missouri Valley College, Marshall, MO

The 2023 Conference will be hybridized to allow for more participants to join!

Robots, Androids, and Outlaws: How Machines and Bandits Disrupt Social Order

The International Association for Robin Hood Studies Biennial Conference will be held at Missouri Valley College (Marshall, MO) in October 2023. This conference brings together scholars to present current research on the famous outlaw as he appears in both medieval and post-medieval media.



This conference will focus on (but not exclusively) discussions of Robin Hood and machine culture, with special emphasis on AI as a Robin Hood-like disrupter, banditry from robots and machines, and Robin as a subverter of social norms and expectations. We anticipate that this theme will allow us to address both traditional Robin Hood subjects and current changes happening in academic culture. Everyone interested are invited to submit paper proposals on this topic or any other topic related to Robin Hood. Please send a 500-word abstract to Dr. Thomas Rowland at rowlandt@moval.edu. For those who would like to submit a session proposal, please submit an abstract description of the session topic and preferably three to four presenters. Please include with your proposal your name, paper title, and affiliation (if any).



All proposals will be due by September 1, 2023.



Please be welcome to share this CFP with others!

CFP Robin Hood and Other Outlaws for Kalamazoo 2024 (deadline 9/15/2023)

Reposted from the IARHS listserv:

IARHS Sponsored Sessions at the ICMS, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, MI, USA, May 9-11, 2024

1. ECOMEDIEVAL ROBIN HOOD

Even though the Robin Hood tradition is identified as medieval, most of the texts are post-medieval, hence medievalist. These are often situated against the background of natural environment, and thus Valerie Johnson coined the term “ecomedievalism” for “the application of ecocriticism to neomedieval texts.” Therefore, discussion of neomedievalist texts of popular culture, such as films and TV series about Robin Hood that relate more to the times when they were made than to the Middle Ages, is particularly welcome. The Robin Hood tradition contains different interpretations of the environment, such as the myth of unspoiled nature, but also nature as dangerous, with apocalypse as something imminent. This session invites such ecocritical readings of various neomedievalist outlaw texts that represent nature or the relationship of nature to culture. You can focus, for example, on:

• RH and greenwood in various cultural period
• the culture/nature divide
• apocalyptic versions of RH narrative

2. OUTLAW ENVIRONMENTS

A popular saying has it that “Robin Hood in greenwood stood” and a similar phenomenon can be found in other outlaw texts and traditions. Such outlaws as Fouke le Fitz Waryn, Twm Shon Catty, or the Slovak Janosik all functioned in a specific natural environment. It needs to be examined how important this background was for their respective legends. The landscape was presented as a romanticized version of nature or as wilderness that went well with what was believed to be the outlaws’ “natural” brutality and violence. This tradition is important to examine as it is present in various countries, not only English-speaking. We can suggest, among others, the following topics:

• outlaws against romanticized landscape
• violence of outlaws/wildness of nature
• the specificity of the landscape against which an outlaw is presented
• nature (e.g. its beauty) and nationalism in outlaw legends

Please send your abstract to: annaczarnowus@tlen.pl, but an official proposal can only be made and accepted through (https://icms.confex.com/icms/2024/cfp.cgi). The deadline for proposals is Sept. 15, 2023.

Upcoming Conference Deadlines

Please note immanent deadlines for submissions:

The 2023 Annual Conference of the Northeast Popular Culture Association is virtual from October 12-14, if you’re looking for somewhere to present ideas. The deadline is 8/14. Registration fee is $50 + $5.20 Eventbrite fee, but there are waivers available, Submit proposals at https://nepca.blog/2023-annual-conference/. 

If you're in the Northeast, the 2023 America Conference on Irish Studies New England & Mid-Atlantic Regional Conference will take place at Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA on October 13-15. Further details are available at https://events.bc.edu/event/2023_acis_new_england_mid-atlantic_regional_conference. The deadline is 30 August, 

The 2023 International Conference for the Study of Medievalism s also virtual from 26-28 October. The proposal deadline is 8/15. We're trying for another panel on comics; send us your ideas. Anything else goes to the organizers at https://medievalisms.org/conferences/.