CFP IARHS-Sponsored Session (6/25/2025; Southeastern Medieval Association Conference, Cincinnati 11/6-8/2025)

Sharing on behalf of the International Association for Robin Hood Studies:

CFP: IARHS-Sponsored Session, Southeastern Medieval Association Conference, November 6-8, 2025, University of Cincinnati

Proposed Sponsored Session Title: “Confluences in the Robin Hood Tradition”


The theme of SEMA’s 50th annual conference is “Confluences”:
https://southeasternmedieval.wordpress.com/2025/05/07/sema-2025-cfp/


With that theme in mind, the IARHS welcomes abstracts for formal paper sessions to be considered for 1-2 possible sessions at SEMA’s in-person conference.

• How does the Robin Hood tradition explore political, environmental, geographical, natural confluences in its body of literature?
• In what ways does the Robin Hood tradition merge disparate or similar cultures, ideologies, texts to form something new?
• In what ways is the Robin Hood tradition fixated upon or enamored with concepts of hybridity of physical, ideological, or textual bodies/forms? 
• "Confluences" suggests movement, which results in an overlapping, a layering, and/or a merging of objects or forms. As such, in what ways is the Robin Hood tradition (its body of literature, its various media texts) reliant upon existing or nascent textual conjunctions, accretions, convergences, and meetings not only to sustain itself but also to create new works?

Please send to Alex Kaufman (alkaufman@bsu.edu) by June 25, 2025 the following items in a Word Document or a PDF for consideration for an IARHS-sponsored session at the SEMA Conference:


1. Your name
2. Your email
3. Your affiliation
4. A 250-word abstract
5. 3-5 keywords
6. If you will need technology to present at the conference

CFP Fantasy & the Fantastic Area / Robin Hood and Other Outlaw Narratives (5/15/2025; PAMLA San Francisco 11/20-23/2025)

Sharing on behalf of Kristin Noone, Fantasy & the Fantastic Area Chair for the Pacific Ancient & Modern Language Association (PAMLA)

PAMLA Conference: Nov 20-23, 2025; Location: the InterContinental Hotel, San Francisco

Abstract / Proposal Deadline: May 15 (it'll stay open through the 16th for any late ones)

PAMLA general website: https://www.pamla.org/pamla2025/

Full CFP with all areas (my specific areas linked below): https://pamla.ballastacademic.com/Home/CFP

Standing Session: Fantasy and the Fantastic

Area Chair: Kristin Noone, Irvine Valley College (kristinlnoone@gmail.com)

Fantasy and the supernatural, broadly defined, shape many of the most popular contemporary narratives and universes—from Lord of the Rings to Game of Thrones, from World of Warcraft to The Witcher, from classical and medieval tales of monsters and dragons to the worlds of N.K. Jemisin, Terry Pratchett, Tracy Deonn, Nnedi Okorafor, and Ursula K. Le Guin. As a genre, fantasy engages with questions of rhetoric, identity, and power in multiple ways, across multiple media, subgenres, and cultural traditions; the enchantment of fantastic and supernatural narratives has cast a persistent and global spell. We welcome proposals both related to the conference theme, "Palimpsests: Memory and Oblivion," and those not related.

Direct submission portal: https://pamla.ballastacademic.com/Home/S/19602

Special Session: Robin Hood and Other Outlaw Narratives (co-sponsored by the International Association for Robin Hood Studies)

Session Chair: Kristin Noone, Irvine Valley College (kristinlnoone@gmail.com)

Robin Hood and other outlaw figures exist as polymorphous, shifting, persistent presences across space and time, inhabiting storyworlds that respond to and reflect the needs of the society in which the outlaw emerges. The Robin Hood tradition is a rich and varied one, appearing across many forms of media and numerous adaptations; outlaw heroes—or anti-heroes, protagonists, or even antagonists—can be found in cultures from the medieval to the present, spanning the globe.

For this special allied session, the International Association for Robin Hood Studies invites papers and presentations which explore the myriad faces and evolutions and representations of the outlaw, from the medieval to the modern, in various cultural traditions and media. This year’s overall PAMLA conference theme is “Palimpsests: Memory and Oblivion,” and particular attention will be given to proposals which incorporate these concepts, but we are certainly open to all outlaw-related proposals regardless of theme—in keeping with the greenwood community spirit!

Direct submission portal: https://pamla.ballastacademic.com/Home/S/19616

Kalamazoo Report - More than The Green Knight: Exploring the Ongoing Tradition of Adapting and Appropriating Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (Hybrid)

We co-sponsored another great session today at Kalamazoo. My thanks to our chair, my fellow presenters, and our audience (both on-site and in Zoom).

More than The Green Knight: Exploring the Ongoing Tradition of Adapting and Appropriating Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (Hybrid)

60th International Congress on Medieval Studies

Western Michigan University (Kalamazoo, MI)


Session 247 (Sangren Hall 1320): Friday, 9 May, from 3:30-5:00 PM EDT

Principal Sponsoring Organization:

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

Co-Sponsoring Organization(s):

International Arthurian Society, North American Branch (IAS/NAB), International Pearl-Poet Society


Organizers: Michael A. Torregrossa, Bristol Community College; Joseph M. Sullivan, Univ. of Oklahoma; Amber Dunai, Texas A&M Univ.–Central Texas

Presider: Amber Dunai, Texas A&M Univ.–Central Texas

There Are Many Ways to the Green Chapel: Creating a Resource Guide to Adaptations of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (Virtual)

Michael A. Torregrossa, Bristol Community College

Michael A. Torregrossa (he/him/his) is a graduate of the Medieval Studies program at the University of Connecticut (Storrs) and works as an adjunct instructor of writing and literature courses in both Rhode Island and Massachusetts. His research focuses on popular culture’s adaptation, appropriation, and transformation of literary classics, including the Arthurian legends. In addition to these pursuits, Michael is the founder of The Alliance for the Promotion of Research on the Matter of Britain (2000-) and The Association for the Advancement of Scholarship and Teaching of the Medieval in Popular Culture (2004-). He also serves as editor for these organizations' various blogs and as moderator of their discussion lists and leads the development of their conference activities. Besides this work, Michael is active in the Northeast Popular Culture/American Culture Association (a.k.a. NEPCA) and organizes sessions for their annual conference in the fall. Since 2019, Michael has been NEPCA’s Monsters and the Monstrous Area Chair, but he previously served as its Fantastic (Fantasy, Science Fiction, and Horror) Area Chair, a position he held from 2009-2018.

Not a Knight, but a Turtle: Looking at Children’s Media and Medievalism through Franklin and the Green Knight (Virtual)

Sam Lehman, Memorial University of Newfoundland

Sam Lehman is a PhD Candidate who studies Arthurian literature and popular culture on the Avalon Peninsula in Newfoundland, Canada; her thesis project looks at women and trauma in The Mists of Avalon and Le Morte Darthur.

“Finn is totally getting played:” Carnival Games and Imbalanced Knowledge in Adventure Time’s Adaptation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

Prudence J. Ross, Brown Univ

Prudence Ross is a PhD candidate at Brown University in the Department of English. Their work is focused on considering the ways in which poetry, affect, and memory relate to and produce one another in early modern and medieval texts. Prudence’s dissertation project, entitled Poetic Joinery: Remembering the Passion in Early Modern Poetry, examines how the image of the joint in its various contexts – bodily, architectural, and mechanical - are employed in devotional poetry towards establishing a deeply felt readerly memory of the Crucifixion.

In His Own Time, On His Own Terms: Neuroqueer Medievalisms in Jes Battis’s The Winter Knight (Virtual)

Miles Smith, Fordham University

Miles Smith is a PhD candidate in English at Fordham University. Their dissertation project focuses on rhetoric and nonnormative bodyminds in late medieval literature, with a particular emphasis on gender, animality, and disability. They use they/them pronouns.

Funding Request METS

I've been asked to share this by the Middle English Text Series based at the University of Rochester. Do consider helping them out if you can.

On April 3, the Department of Government Efficiency summarily cancelled almost all grant support from the National Endowment for the Humanities.  This cancellation had an immediate and destabilizing effect on the Middle English Text Series (METS), which was nearing the mid-point of a three-year NEH grant that had provided essential funding for the compensation of METS Managing Editor and the remainder of our editorial and research staff.  In the days since, we have been scrambling to assemble new internal sources of funding that will allow METS to bring to completion editions currently under way (online and print) and to support further editions in the series.  While we are hopeful that we will soon have a short-term plan in place to see these editions through to publication, that plan cannot succeed without your support.

METS issued its first volume in 1989, and published its hundredth volume in 2023. In November 2024 METS launched its completely renovated website and digital edition (www.metseditions.org):  this offers a new reader interface, intuitive access to the texts, glosses, notes, and introductions, along with TEI encoding of all new editions, improved metadata, and enhanced transparency and accessibility.  MIP has kept all volumes continuously in print, and the METS website (available through the University of Rochester Libraries) has attracted over a half million hits per year from more than one hundred thirty-five countries and language groups.  The Series currently has some sixteen volumes in progress, and plans to publish two of these in print and online this year. The Series is also working on updating all its backlist editions for the new website, including adding TEI markup to each edition.

The abrupt loss of NEH support threatens all of this.  While we have been working over the last several years to transition METS to a more sustainable funding model, we are not there yet. The emergency measures are just that: temporary.  Without new sources of funding, METS will be unable to sustain its staff or operations beyond the near future., 

We are calling on the medievalist community: editors, scholars, instructors, and everyone who has relied on METS for teaching, research, or simply the joy of engaging with medieval texts to help ensure the survival of this vital resource.  METS has long stood as a shared foundation for the field.  Now, its future depends on those who believe in the value of collaborative, open-access scholarship and of engagement and understanding of history. 

To that end, we have established the Russell Peck Memorial Fund through the University of Rochester.  All contributions to this fund will go directly toward supporting METS’ editorial staff and ensuring the continued production of high-quality, freely available editions.   If you have ever assigned a METS volume in a syllabus, cited one in your research, or found inspiration in a medieval text thanks to METS, we ask you to consider giving back.  Every donation – no matter the size – helps sustain the work that makes our field accessible to the world. These donations are tax deductible for US taxpayers.

Donations can be made via our website: https://metseditions.org/donate. This link will take you to the University of Rochester's giving portal. 

If you prefer to donate via check, please send to: University of Rochester, Office of Gift and Donor Records, 300 East River Road, BOX 270032, Rochester, NY 14627, with a note indicating that you wish the gift to go to the Russell Peck Memorial Fund. You can also support this initiative through gifts of stocks and securities; Qualified Charitable Distributions; or cryptocurrency. If you are interested in any of these options, please contact Pam Jackson at pamela.jackson@rochester.edu or 585.281.9061. 

This is a time of crisis for our field and for the humanities. It is also an opportunity for us to come together as a field to protect what we’ve built together and to ensure that METS will continue to support future generations of students, readers, and scholars. Thank you for joining us in our mission.

If you have any questions, please reach out to Anna Siebach-Larsen (annasiebachlarsen@rochester.edu) and Thomas Hahn (thomas.hahn@rochester.edu).

Thank you for your support,

Thomas Hahn (General Editor) & Anna Siebach-Larsen (Executive Director)

Job Posting: Assistant Editor of Year's Work in Medievalism (apply by 5/16/2025)

Sharing on behalf of the Internation Society for the Study of Medievalism:

The Year’s Work in Medievalism is seeking applications for the position of Assistant Editor. The selected individual will work alongside the current editors on future issues of the journal, undertaking administrative and editing tasks as needed and directed. While this is not a paid position, it is one that offers considerable insight into and experience with the operations of an academic journal. It is also an excellent opportunity for displaying service to the field.

Prior experience in the areas of editing and publishing is an asset, as is familiarity with MS software and the Chicago Manual of Style, though neither is required. Candidates for this position should have a strong interest in, and hopefully some prior experience with, researching the reception of medieval culture in post-medieval times. Experience in asynchronous collaboration, synthesizing reports, and providing constructive feedback on writing would all also be most welcome.

The average weekly workload for the position varies based on the publishing cycle. The appointment will be for a two-year period.

Please send a concise "letter of interest" and CV in PDF to Renée Ward (rward@lincoln.ac.uk) and Valerie Johnson (vjohnso6@montevallo.edu). The deadline for applications is 16 May 2025.