CFP Fostering Interpretive Communities in the Classroom and Research through Adaptation Studies (Roundtable) (Virtual) (9/30/2026; NeMLA 3/6-9-2027)

Fostering Interpretive Communities in the Classroom and Research through Adaptation Studies (Roundtable) (Virtual)

Co-organizers Michael A. Torregrossa and Carl B. Sell

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

Call for Papers - Please Submit Proposals by 30 September 2026

58th Annual Convention of Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA)

Salve Regina University (Newport, RI)/Online.

Hybrid event: 6-9 March 2027


This session’s modality is Virtual Only, meaning all presentations will be delivered via Zoom regardless of whether the presenters are in-person.

Rationale

Explorations of adaptations offer many ways to investigate the conference theme of Empowering Communities. Adaptations, especially contemporary ones, create opportunities for inclusion that may not have been present in the source. This forges a new space for receivers of the text to connect to its narrative. Highlighting how and why these new works appeal to and have an effect on us can help our students (and ourselves) relate to older material and see the ways that a story can find new relevance.

Topics might include adaptations that recast, reset, and/or restage a text; adaptations that rewrite and/or reboot a text; adaptations that expand texts (such as prequels, midquels, or sequels); and adaptations that present ways to remedy problematic texts and authors.

We welcome investigations of adaptations across all media, as well as adaptation within transmedia franchises/universes.

Submission Instructions

All proposals must be submitted into the CFPList system at https://cfplist.com/nemla/Home/S/22514 by 30 September 2026. 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, Brief Bio, Media Needs, and Modality. This session’s modality is Virtual Only, meaning all presentations will be delivered via Zoom regardless of whether the presenters are in-person.

Notification on the status of your submission will be made by 16 October 2026. If accepted, NeMLA asks you to confirm your participation with the session chairs by accepting their invitation and by registering for the event. The deadline for Registration/Membership is 9 December 2026. For the 2027 Convention, registration will be the same for in-person and remote attendance. (See NeMLA’s Membership and Registration page, at https://www.nemla.org/about/members.html, for full details.)


Be advised of the following policies for the Convention: All participants must be members of NeMLA for the year of the conference. Participants may present on up to two sessions of any type. Registrants at NeMLA may not present the same abstract/paper on two different sessions. (See NeMLA’s Presenter Policies page, at https://www.nemla.org/convention/policies.html, for further details. Information on Session Types can be found at https://www.nemla.org/convention/sessions.html.)


NeMLA offers limited funding for travel to graduate students and to contingent faculty, adjunct instructors, independent scholars, and two-year college faculty. Details can be found at NeMLA’s Travel Awards page at https://www.nemla.org/awards/travel.html.


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 blog, Mass Mediævalisms: The Middle Ages of Popular Culture, at https://MedievalinPopularCulture.blogspot.com/.

Twainian Regeneration Sessions at NeMLA 2026

 We've got some sessions running this weekend at NeMLA. Here are the details on today's panels.

Northeast Modern Language Association 57th Annual Convention

Wyndham Grand Pittsburgh Downtown (Pittsburgh, PA)/Zoom

15.18 Twainian Regeneration: Adaptations of the Works, Life, and Legacy of Mark Twain (Part 1) - Twain and Time Travel

Organized by Michael A. Torregrossa, Bristol Community College, and Carl B. Sell, University of Pittsburgh

Sponsored by the Mark Twain Circle of America

Saturday, Mar 7: Track 15 (01:00-02:30 EST)

Disney's "Connecticut Yankees" (remote) - WITHDRAWN

Cindy Mediavilla, University of California, Los Angeles

A Michigan Loudmouth in a Primitive Screwhead's Court: Sam Raimi's Army of Darkness and Twain's Connecticut Yankee (in person)

Carl Sell, University of Pittsburgh

Dr. Carl B. Sell (he/him/his) is the Associate Director for McNair and Undergraduate Research Programs and is a Part-Time Instructor of English Literature at the University of Pittsburgh. His 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 journal articles and book chapters on Arthurian topics and DC’s Aquaman.

Resisting Closure: Continuations of Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (remote)

Michael 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, Beowulf, Dracula, Frankenstein, Robin Hood stories, and Winnie-the-Pooh, and the larger corpus of writers H. P. Lovecraft, Edgar Allan Poe, William Shakespeare, and H. G Wells. 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.

Twain Explains Another Century in Kupperman’s Mark Twain’s Autobiography 1910 – 2010 (in person)

Wesley McMasters, Carson-Newman College

Dr. Wesley Scott McMasters is Associate Professor of English and Creative Writing at Carson-Newman University in Jefferson City, Tennessee.

16.18 Twainian Regeneration: Adaptations of the Works, Life, and Legacy of Mark Twain (Part 2) - Tom & Huck

Organized by Michael A. Torregrossa, Bristol Community College, and Carl B. Sell, University of Pittsburgh

Sponsored by the Mark Twain Circle of America

Saturday, Mar 7: Track 16 (02:45-04:15 EST)

Racial Adaptations: The Changing Historical Contexts of the Huckleberry Finn on Film (in-person)

Reynolds Scott-Childress, SUNY New Paltz

Reynolds Scott-Childress teaches cultural history of the United States with a focus on categories and practices of race and culture.

“We can just black them”: Giving Jim a Voice (in-person)

Robert Myers, Lock Haven University

Robert Myers is a Professor of English at Lock Haven  University.  He has published books and articles on late-19th and early 20th-century American literature.  Myers’s most recent book, Reconciling Nature: Literary Negotiations of the Natural, 1876-1945 (SUNY Press, 2019), has a chapter on Huckleberry Finn.

“Tom . . . or wait, Jack Sawyer: Stephen King and Peter Straub Regenerate Mark Twain" (remote)

Abigail Sloan, Blue Ridge Community College

Abby Sloan serves as Associate Professor of English at Blue Ridge Community College, where she has taught since 2007 and advises the college's Phi Theta Kappa chapter.  Her research interests range from Shakespeare to Stephen King.

Big Jim and the White Boy as a Palimpsestic Reimagining of Twain’s Huckleberry Finn (remote)

Seema Sharma, Jai Hind College

Dr Seema Sharma is Professor of English Literature at Jai Hind College, University of Mumbai. She obtained her BA, MA and MPhil degrees from University of Delhi and PhD degree from SNDT University, Mumbai. She was a Fulbright Postdoctoral Scholar at Stanford University (2015-16), where she was engaged in a research project on Mark Twain and India. During her tenure in the U.S., she delivered talks at several universities and public platforms, and published papers in leading scholarly journals.

CFP Reading Chaucer outside the Anglophone World: Receptions, Translations, and Traditions (6/30/2026; Taiwan 3/12-13/2027)

From the Global Chaucers site: https://globalchaucers.com/2026/01/20/reading-chaucer-outside-the-anglophone-world-receptions-translations-and-traditions/. 

In Sondry Ages and Sondry Londes

Reading Chaucer outside the Anglophone World: Receptions, Translations, and Traditions

Date: March 12–13, 2027
Venue: National Taiwan University, Taiwan

**

The recent Mandarin Chinese translation of The Canterbury Tales (Linking Publishing, 2025) by Dr. Francis K. H. So offers a timely opportunity to reflect on the growing presence, vitality, and diversity of Chaucerian studies outside the Anglophone world. This significant contribution not only opens new avenues for engaging with Geoffrey Chaucer’s language and narrative art, but also foregrounds the crucial role of translation, pedagogy, and local scholarly traditions in shaping how Chaucer is read, interpreted, and taught across different linguistic and cultural contexts.

Aligned with the New Chaucer Society’s (NCS) ongoing initiative “In Sondry Ages and Sondry Londes” (curated by Dr. Jonathan Fruoco), this international conference seeks to advance a more globally grounded Chaucerian studies, one that situates the significance of Chaucer beyond the Anglophone world by foregrounding translation, adaptations, multilingual readerships, pedagogical practices, and cross-cultural intellectual exchange. By bringing together scholars working across diverse linguistic regions and by creating a venue for established scholars, early-career researchers, and graduate students, the conference aims to foster sustained conversations about Chaucer’s afterlives and to strengthen transnational scholarly networks shaped by translation, adaptation, and comparative inquiry.

The keynote speakers are Dr. Candace Barrington, Professor of English at Central Connecticut State University and President of the New Chaucer Society, whose work focuses on Chaucer and medieval English literature, especially global reception, translation, and adaptation, and Dr. Francis K. H. So, Professor Emeritus at National Sun Yat-sen University, whose scholarship centers on Chaucer, medieval and Renaissance English literature, East–West comparative studies, and the translation and global circulation of premodern texts.

We invite proposals that explore any aspect of Chaucer’s works, their translations and adaptations, as well as their critical or creative receptions outside the Anglophone world, or in comparative and transregional contexts. Possible topics include (but are not limited to):

• Translation, Adaptation, and Literary Mediation
• New approaches to, or challenges in, translating Chaucer into non-Anglophone languages
• Histories of major translations and translators, and the role of translation in shaping local understandings of Chaucer
• Considerations of the role publishers (both university and commercial presses) supporting and promoting editions of Chaucer outside the Anglophone sphere
• Theoretical reflections on translation, vernacularity, and Middle English in multilingual or cross-cultural contexts
• Chaucer-inspired works in contemporary literature, media, or visual culture
• Reception, Pedagogy, and Intellectual HistoriesHistories of Chaucerian scholarship in non-Anglophone academic traditions
• Pedagogical practices and challenges in teaching Chaucer in multilingual or non-Anglophone classrooms
• Chaucer in textbook cultures, anthologies, curricula, and the formation of literary canons, particularly the “World Literature” category Chaucer in Global and Comparative Perspectives
• Cross-cultural approaches to medieval narrative, performance, humor, or religiosityComparative medievalisms across linguistic, national, or cultural traditions
• Reading Chaucer alongside non-Western or premodern texts (for example, The Tale of Genji, The Cloud Dream of the Nine, and Romance of the Three Kingdoms), with attention to narrative framing, irony, or social satire
• Intersections between Chaucer and local philosophical or aesthetic traditions
• Texts, Traditions, and Critical MethodsCritical innovations on Chaucer’s oeuvre (The Canterbury Tales, Troilus and Criseyde, the dream visions, Chaucer’s translations of Latin and French texts, and shorter poems), through lenses such as gender, race, affect, ecology, embodiment, or disability
• Manuscript studies, material culture, digital humanities, or archival research, particularly Middle English manuscripts housed in Asia and the global South.
• Chaucer, colonialism, and postcolonial reception histories in non-Anglophone contexts

The conference will be held in person on March 12–13, 2027, at National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan. Please submit a proposal (250 words in English) along with a brief bio of 100 words to readingchaucer@gmail.com by June 30, 2026. In addition to individual paper proposals, the conference welcomes panel proposals consisting of three to four papers organized around a shared theme. Panel submissions should include a panel abstract (300 words) outlining the panel’s coherence and relevance to the conference theme, along with individual paper abstracts (250 words each) and a brief 100-word bio for each participant.

We particularly welcome submissions from graduate students and early-career scholars, and we hope this gathering will reinforce and expand long-term networks of Chaucerian research beyond the Anglophone world. There is no registration fee for the conference. For updated information, please visit the conference website: https://readingchaucer.com/.

This event is co-sponsored by the New Chaucer Society (NCS), the Taiwan Association of Classical, Medieval, and Renaissance Studies (TACMRS), University Paris Nanterre (CREA), and the National Science and Technology Council (NSTC), Taiwan.

Conference Organizers:
Sophia Yashih Liu, National Taiwan University
Yu-Ching (Louis) Wu, National Central University
Jonathan Fruoco, University Paris Nanterre (CREA)

CFP Wooden O Symposium 2026 (3/31/2026; Utah 8/3-5/2026)

Wooden O Symposium

deadline for submissions:
March 31, 2026

full name / name of organization:
Southern Utah University-Utah Shakespeare Festival

contact email:
tvordi@suu.edu

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2026/01/09/wooden-o-symposium

August 3-5, 2026

Southern Utah University - Utah Shakespeare Festival



The Wooden O Symposium is a cross-disciplinary conference exploring the impact of Shakespeare's plays on culture and history, from his time to the present. This face-to-face conference aims to foster research in the field of Shakespeare Studies and to provide connections between academia and professional theatre productions through our partnership with the Utah Shakespeare Festival. The Wooden O Symposium limits participation to 25 presenters to ensure robust conversation and feedback as we strive to create a community of scholars engaged with the work of Shakespeare.

Our 2026 keynote speaker is Dr. Daniel Vitkus, Rebeca Hickel Endowed Chair in Elizabethan Literature at the University of California, San Diego

We invite proposals for presentations on any topic relating to Shakespeare and his plays, including:

• Shakespeare and Adaptation
• Shakespeare in Performance
• Shakespeare and History, Culture, and Society
• Shakespeare and Rhetoric
• Shakespeare and the Arts
• Shakespeare and his Global Contemporaries
• Theoretical Approaches

We also encourage papers and presentations speaking to the Utah Shakespeare Festival’s 2026 summer season: Troilus and Cressida, Hamlet, and Twelfth Night. Conference registration includes 1 ticket to Troilus and Cressida and 1 to Hamlet, as well as 50% off any USF ticket from August 3-5 for you and your guests.

The deadline for proposals is March 31, 2026. Please include a 200-250-word abstract and the following information:

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

All abstracts should be submitted through the following link: 2026 Wooden O Symposium Submission Form

For more information, please contact the conference co-organizers, Scott Knowles at scottknowles@suu.edu or Jessica Tvordi at tvordi@suu.edu


Last updated January 9, 2026

CFP Echoes of Shakespeare: Intertextual Dialogues across Centuries (6/1/2026)

Echoes of Shakespeare: Intertextual Dialogues across Centuries

deadline for submissions:
June 1, 2026

full name / name of organization:
Rachel Wifall / Saint Peter's University

contact email:
rwifall@saintpeters.edu

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2026/01/18/echoes-of-shakespeare-intertextual-dialogues-across-centuries

Dear Colleagues,

We are pleased to announce that submissions are open for the upcoming Special Issue, Echoes of Shakespeare: Intertextual Dialogues across Centuries. The Guest Editor, Rachel Wifall (Saint Peter’s University), welcomes articles that consider how the works of William Shakespeare have informed other artists and thinkers over time. Literature (ISSN 2410-9789) provides an advanced forum for studies related to the literature of all times and places. It publishes reviews, regular research papers, and short communications, as well as Special Issues on particular subjects. For this Special Issue, studies in intertextuality, adaptation, and appropriation are encouraged, from diverse fields such as history, philosophy, theater, music, film, and media studies. Since Shakespeare remains the most influential and most adapted English author, this issue aims to update the ongoing conversation between the works of Shakespeare and subsequent generations. While papers considering contemporary literature and other art forms are encouraged, studies are welcome that look back into history, as far as the seventeenth century.

We request that, prior to submitting a manuscript, interested authors initially submit a proposed title and an abstract of 200-300 words summarizing their intended contribution. Please send it to the Guest Editor, Dr. Rachel Wifall (rwifall@saintpeters.edu), and CC the Section Managing Editor of Literature, Ms. Joyce Xi (joyce.xi@mdpi.com). The guest editor will review abstracts for the purpose of ensuring a proper fit within the scope of the Special Issue. Full manuscripts will undergo double-blind peer review.

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

https://www.mdpi.com/journal/literature/special_issues/7099MS9755



Last updated January 20, 2026

CFP Twainian Regeneration: Adaptations of the Works, Life, and Legacy of Mark Twain (NeMLA Session 21918) (Hybrid) (9/30/2025; Pittsburgh 3/5-8/2026)

Twainian Regeneration: Adaptations of the Works, Life, and Legacy of Mark Twain (NeMLA Session 21918)

deadline for submissions:

September 30, 2025


full name / name of organization:

57th Northeast Modern Language Association Conference


contact email:

cscarlsell@gmail.com


source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2025/06/27/twainian-regeneration-adaptations-of-the-works-life-and-legacy-of-mark-twain-nemla

This session is sponsored by the Mark Twain Circle of America.



American author Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1935-1910) achieved lasting fame as Mark Twain, an identity that served as both his pen name and the persona he cultivated for the public. Twain’s writings and his distinctive character have dispersed across time and space, and the resulting Twainian tradition incorporates these elements in many ways.


Importantly, his works and iconography have long been the focus of adaptation. This process begins with the illustrations commissioned for the initial publication of his texts, Twain’s own attempts to rework and expand his stories, and contemporary caricatures of his person, and it continues with retellings of Twain’s stories, linked texts (such as prequels, midquels, and sequels) connected to his work, recastings and restagings of his tales, and new adventures for Twain himself. These adaptations, appropriations, and transformations of Twain appear in diverse forms and formats including anime series, artworks, cartoons, comics, films, games, historical fiction texts, home video releases, graphic novels, illustrations, memorials, musical theater productions, mysteries, performances, plays, radio broadcasts, science fiction works, sculptures, song lyrics, stamps, television programming, theme park attractions, and tourist sites.


Each adaptation regenerates aspects of Twain for new audiences revealing fresh insights into the reception of his works, life, and legacy. They also highlight both the timelessness of Twain as well as his timeliness for the present of each new text that his writings and his person have inspired.


Resource Guide: https://tinyurl.com/TwainianRegenerationRG.


Hybrid Session.


Please use the NeMLA submission portal at https://cfplist.com/nemla/Home/CFP and look for session 21918.


NeMLA's submission deadline is September 30, 2025.

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.

NeMLA Sponsored Sessions March 2025

We are organizing the following sessions for the 56th Annual Convention of the Northeast Modern Language Association to be held in Philadelphia, 6-9 March. The full schedule is available online and registration is required to attend. 

Thursday, Mar 6 - Track 4 (02:15-04:15 PM)

4.12 Saving the Day for Medieval Studies: Using Comics for Teaching the Middle Ages (Roundtable)
Chair: Michael Torregrossa, Bristol Community College
Chair: Karen Casebier, University of Tennessee-Chattanooga
Location: 402 (Media Equipped)
Pedagogy & Professional & Cultural Studies and Media Studies

"The Medieval Comics Project: Ongoing Efforts to Expand the Field of Medieval Comics Scholarship" Michael Torregrossa, Bristol Community College

"From Borders to Panels: Integrating Comic Books into Medieval Studies Pedagogy" Rachael Warmington, Seton Hall University

"Reshaping Literary Canon: Graphic Novels as the Future of Classics" Derek Castle, University of New Hampshire

"Marvel 1602 and its Connection to the Scientific Enlightenment" Madison Cothern, University of Memphis

Sunday, Mar 9 - Track 22 (08:15-10:15 AM)

22.20 (Re)Animating the Middle Ages: Adapting the Medieval in Animated Media (Seminar)
Chair: Michael Torregrossa, Bristol Community College
Chair: Karen Casebier, University of Tennessee-Chattanooga
Location: 410 (Media Equipped)
Cultural Studies and Media Studies & Interdisciplinary Humanities

"Animating Marie de France : Emile Mercier’s Bisclavret (2011)" Karen Casebier, University of Tennessee-Chattanooga

"Possibilities and Pitfalls in Arthurian Animation: An Exploration of the Darkstalkers Series (1995)" Michael Torregrossa, Bristol Community College

"The Black Knight: Women “Passing” as Knights in Children’s Entertainment" Megan Arnott, Lakehead University

"Cartoon Saloon's Wild Women: Monstrous Genders in Irish Animated Medievalism" Colin Wheeler, Kennesaw State University

"A Modern Look at Late Medieval Religion and Literacy in Obsidian Entertainment’s Pentiment" Olivia Mathers, Lehigh University

"Heresy and Crusades: How Modern Fascists Appropriated the Medieval Aesthetics of Warhammer 40k" William Weiss, Independent Scholar

CFP (Re)Animating the Middle Ages: Adapting the Medieval in Animated Media (9/30/2024; NeMLA Philadelphia 3/6-9/2025)

(Re)Animating the Middle Ages: Adapting the Medieval in Animated Media

Co-organizers Michael A. Torregrossa, Karen Casey Casebier, and Carl B. Sell

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

Call for Papers - Please Submit Proposals by 30 September 2024

56th Annual Convention of Northeast Modern Language Association (NeMLA)

Philadelphia Marriott Downtown (Philadelphia, PA)

On-site event: 6-9 March 2025

Rationale

Our conception of the Middle Ages is usually formed by the versions of the medieval past we experienced as children, and, because they are considered suitable for young viewers, animated depictions of this world often represent our earliest exposure to the events, personages, and stories of this era. Consequently, the animated creations of the Walt Disney Company have played a huge part in shaping our collective image of the Middle Ages, but the corpus of medieval-themed animation is truly vast. It has been expanded greatly by the output of many other content producers across the globe through anime, cartoons, films, games, streaming videos, and theatrical shorts. (See our list of representative texts–at https://tinyurl.com/ReAnimatingtheMiddleAgesCFP–for examples.)

Despite animation's important role in shaping how we perceive and receive the medieval past, the field of Medieval Animation Studies remains limited, especially compared to the fluorescence of Medieval Film Studies and Medieval Television Studies over the past four decades. In this panel, we seek in particular to build upon the pioneering work of medieval-animation scholar Michael N. Salda and provide additional insights into the ways medieval-themed animation has impacted our contemporary world. Presenters might explore anime, cartoons, films, games, shorts, and videos produced through traditional ink-and-paint, stop-motion, claymation, or computer-generated imagery. Selections should represent and/or engage with some aspect of the medieval, such as artifacts, characters, settings, themes, etc. These might be central to the narrative, tangential, or appearing solely as cameos. (For ideas and support, we have created a list of representative texts and a resource guide devoted to studies of medieval-themed animation. It can be accessed at https://tinyurl.com/ReAnimatingtheMiddleAgesCFP.) 

Submission Instructions

In this panel, we seek in particular to build upon the pioneering work of medieval-animation scholar Michael N. Salda and provide additional insights into the ways medieval-themed animation has impacted our contemporary world. Presenters might explore anime, cartoons, films, games, shorts, and videos produced through traditional ink-and-paint, stop-motion, claymation, or computer-generated imagery. Selections should represent and/or engage with some aspect of the medieval, such as artifacts, characters, settings, themes, etc., presented as central to the narrative, tangential, or appearing solely as cameos.  

For ideas and support, please see our list of representative texts and resource guide devoted to studies of medieval-themed animation at https://tinyurl.com/ReAnimatingtheMiddleAgesCFP. 

All proposals must be submitted into the CFPList system at https://cfplist.com/nemla/Home/S/21105 by 30 September 2024. 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 status of your submission will be made by 16 October 2024. If accepted, NeMLA asks you to confirm your participation with the session chairs by accepting their invitations and by registering for the event. The deadline for Registration/Membership is 9 December 2024.

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.nemla.org/convention/policies.html, for further details,)

NeMLA offers limited funding for travel to graduate students and to contingent faculty, adjunct instructors, independent scholars, and two-year college faculty. Details can be found at the NeMLA Travel Awards page at https://www.nemla.org/awards/travel.html.  

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/.  

Recent Release - Fantasies of Music in Nostalgic Medievalism

Recently published:

Fantasies of music in nostalgic medievalism

By Helen Dell

Full details and ordering information at https://manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526173959/fantasies-of-music-in-nostalgic-medievalism/.

-

ISBN: 978-1-5261-7395-9

Pages: 264

PRICE: £85.00

ISBN: 9781526173959

PUBLISH DATE: January 2024

PUBLISHER: MANCHESTER UNIVERSITY PRESS

Series: Manchester Medieval Literature and Culture

Also availble as a eBook,

DESCRIPTION

In the period between the Second World War and the present, there has been an extraordinary rise in the production of medievalist fantasy literature and film. This has been accompanied by the revival, performance and invention of medieval music. In this enterprise modern fantasies of the Middle Ages have exercised great influence.

Fantasies of music in nostalgic medievalism shows how music, medievalism and nostalgia have been woven together in the fantasies of writers and readers, musicians, musicologists, directors and listeners, film-makers and film-goers. This book studies the ways in which three fields of creative activity inspired by the medieval - musical performance, literature, cinema and their reception - have worked together to produce and sustain, for some, the fantasy of a long-lost, long-mourned paradisal home.

CONTENTS

Introduction: Music, nostalgia and the medieval

1 More real than reality: nostalgia for the medieval in high fantasy fiction

2 'Yearning for the sweet beckoning sound': Musical longings and the unsayable in medievalist fantasy fiction

3 The lost world inside a song: from the book to the record

4 Exotic sexualities: the countertenor voice in the late twentieth-century medieval music revival

5 The call of the mother: music for myth and fantasy in two Arthurian films

Aftermath

AUTHOR

Helen Dell is a research fellow at the University of Melbourne

CFP Classics x Medieval for NeMLA 2025

Classics x Medieval: Exploring the Past in the Present through Literature, Art, and Popular Culture (Panel)

Submit Abstract

Primary Area / Secondary Area
Comparative Literature / Classics
Chair(s)


Jared Simard (New York University)

Afrodesia McCannon (New York University)
Abstract


Both antiquity and the Middle Ages have been manipulated in the present in creative and destructive ways. The past has been weaponized often with racialization as its barb, but also used to posit alternative, culturally diverse worlds as spaces of creative, generative play. How might the uses of these periods be compared? How can we de-silo the disciplines to enrich the study of their manipulations and expressions in the present? Can we think of “classicism” or “medievalism” as a methodology that can be extended to any period or does each period have its own -ism? The panel hopes to bring classicists and medievalists together (and those who study both) to produce an interdisciplinary discussion about how different pasts intersect with the present.

In our panel, we explore the interplay between the ancient and medieval worlds and their reverberation in contemporary culture. We are especially interested in global and interdisciplinary perspectives on this topic and invite a broad range of topics in literature, art, and popular culture that employ a variety of critical perspectives. We hope to create a space for academics of all levels to enter into conversation with one another and dialogue with scholars from equally interdisciplinary fields. Papers that explore decentering or challenging Eurocentric interpretations of history or that seek to uncover alternative narratives and marginalized voices are especially welcome.

Description
Antiquity and the Middle Ages have been manipulated and at times weaponized in their many reception histories down to the present. This panel invites scholars of all levels, Classicists and Medievalists alike, to explore together how different pasts intersect in the present.

CFP J.R.R. Tolkien & Children’s Literature (9/15/2024; Special Issue of Children’s Literature Association Quarterly)

J.R.R. Tolkien & Children’s Literature

deadline for submissions: September 15, 2024

full name / name of organization: Children's Literature Association Quarterly

contact email: jtthomas@sdsu.edu

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2024/06/20/jrr-tolkien-children%E2%80%99s-literature

CFP: J.R.R. Tolkien & Children’s Lit

A Special Issue of Children’s Literature Association Quarterly

Joseph T. Thomas, Jr., Guest Editor

San Diego State University



The deadline for submissions to this special issue is September 13, 2024.

J.R.R. Tolkien is best known for his seminal fantasy novel The Lord of the Rings. Even his renowned children’s book, The Hobbit, is primarily considered an “Enchanting Prelude to The Lord of the Rings” (a sentiment often rehearsed on the covers of most paperback editions of the work). This special issue of the Children’s Literature Association Quarterly, however, asks us to put aside The Lord of the Rings and focus instead on those works that might be called “minor”—and specifically those works made for minors: Tolkien’s unfortunately neglected children’s books (including The Hobbit, Letters from Father Christmas, Mr. Bliss, and Roverandom) as well as his playful visual art and many children’s poems (a good number of the latter eventually published in The Adventures of Tom Bombadil). Of course, we’re especially interested in scholarship and criticism exploring the first edition of The Hobbit, a novel that, while borrowing some names from Tolkien’s inchoate Silmarillion and Lost Tales, was originally conceived and published as a children’s story set outside of the mythos that he would eventually fold into the revised second edition and its influential sequel. Additionally, we’re hoping for scholarship and criticism treating Tolkien’s folk and fairy tales (such as “Leaf by Niggle” and Smith of Wootton Major, Farmer Giles of Ham and “The Sellic Spell”), those marginal texts resting on the borders between children’s literature and faerie.

Finally, we are curious to see scholarship examining Tolkien’s conception(s) of childhood and the influence children’s literature and “the rhetoric of childhood” have had on Tolkien’s writings (see Lois Kuznets’ “Tolkien and the Rhetoric of Childhood”). What a wonder to receive a piece placing Edward Wyke-Smith’s The Marvellous Land of Snergs in conversation with Roverandom and/or Mr. Bliss. That is, we encourage submissions investigating the question of influence—especially on Tolkien’s conception of children’s literature (including his thoughts on illustration and book design, both practical and theoretical). One can imagine critical reappraisals of the first edition of The Hobbit in relation to the work of Lewis Carroll, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, Andrew Lang, George MacDonald, William Morris, Edith Nesbit, or even Snorri Sturluson (among many others).

Which is to say, we are not looking for work that engages The Lord of the Rings, The Silmarillion (as published), or the wider Legendarium informing both (including, for the most part, Christopher Tolkien’s magisterial twelve-volume The History of Middle-earth).

All theoretical approaches are welcomed, as are works that challenge the conventions of the scholarly essay: collaborative pieces; works that blur the line between the personal essay and academic paper; performance works; interviews; comics; short plays; essays in verse; short papers (notes and queries) or micro essays; really, the sky’s the limit. However, we do suggest that formally innovative and unconventional submissions make clear—perhaps in a short preface—how their form informs or illuminates the arguments being made.

That said, traditional academic articles submitted for publication should shoot for approximately 20-30 pages and conform to MLA style. We follow the bibliographical format specified in the eighth edition of the MLA Handbook, omitting the designations “Print” and “Web,” but including URLs when appropriate. Please send completed essays by e-mail attachment in Microsoft Word or Rich Text Format to chlaquarterly@cmich.edu & jtthomas@sdsu.edu. In your subject line, flag your message with Tolkien Special Issue. Submissions should follow the ChLAQ submission guidelines found at https://www.childlitassn.org/chla-quarterly. (Note: please anonymize the essay itself—that is, remove words and phrases that clearly identify the author[s]—so we can immediately send the work to peer reviewers.)

Last updated June 24, 2024

CFP Robin Hood: The Legend in Social-Cultural and Political Contexts (7/7/2024; SEMA Augusta, GA 10/10-12/2024)

Sharing on behalf of the organizers:

Robin Hood: The Legend in Social-Cultural and Political Contexts

International Association for Robin Hood Studies
Call for Papers
2024 Conference of the Southeastern Medieval Association
10-12 October, Augusta College, Augusta, Georgia

The Robin Hood/Greenwood legend has endured for over 500 years, largely because of its mutability. As social-cultural and political climates change, Robin and Marian and the legend shift accordingly, sometimes in seemingly extreme directions. From the late 15th-early 16th-century Gest of Robyn Hood to the Late Medieval and Early Modern ballads and plays; to the folklore enthusiasts and the plays, poems, and episodic 19th-century novels; to the 20th-century’s plethora of novels, children’s books, movies, television programs, comics, and games; to the 21st-century’s novels, films, and streaming video: Robin and Company have been yeoman outlaws, aristocratic outlaws, outlaws who help the poor and oppressed, outlaws who seek to help restore traditional government, outlaws who seek to help create a more equality-based government, outlaws who protest foreign wars, outlaws who participate in foreign wars. They can be congenial, aloof, intense, detached. Their Greenwood homes range from forest floor to treehouse community. Their numbers include men, women, and even children of an increasingly wide variety of races, ethnicities, and religions. They may appear medieval, somewhat medieval, early modern, modern, or a bewildering mix of times and places. They inhabit not only England, but Scotland, Wales, and the United States, among other places.
What social-cultural or political climate changes might influence one or more of these expressions of the Greenwood legend?

In keeping with the 2024 conference theme of the Southeastern Medieval Association (SEMA), “Climate,” the International Association for Robin Hood Studies invites paper proposals for a session titled “Robin Hood: The Legend in Social-Cultural and Political Contexts.” SEMA 2024 will be in-person in Augusta, Georgia, 10-12 October. 

Please send a 150- to 250-word abstract or proposal on any aspect of social-cultural and/or political climate and the Greenwood legend or various aspects thereof to Sherron Lux at sherron_lux@yahoo.com by Sunday 7 July 2024, with any technology requests.

New Book - Medievalisms in a Global Age

Just released. Looks like a great resource.

Medievalisms in a Global Age

Edited by Angela Jane Weisl and Robert Squillace

Full details, preview, and ordering information at https://boydellandbrewer.com/9781843847038/medievalisms-in-a-global-age/.

TITLE DETAILS

282 Pages

23.4 x 15.6 cm

3 graphs and 3 b/w illus.

Series: Medievalism

Series Vol. Number: 27

Imprint: D.S.Brewer

July 2024

DESCRIPTION

Discusses contemporary medievalism in studies ranging from Brazil to West Africa, from Manila to New York.

Across the world, revivals of medieval practices, images, and tales flourish as never before. The essays collected here, informed by approaches from Global Studies and the critical discourse on the concept of a "Global Middle Ages", explore the many facets of contemporary medievalism: post-colonial responses to the enforced dissemination of Western medievalisms, attempts to retrieve pre-modern cultural traditions that were interrupted by colonialism, the tentative forging of a global "medieval" imaginary from the world's repository of magical tales and figures, and the deployment across borders of medieval imagery for political purposes. The volume is divided into two sections, dealing with "Local Spaces" and "Global Geographies". The contributions in the first consider a variety of medievalisms tied to particular places across a broad geography, but as part of a larger transnational medievalist dynamic. Those in the second focus on explicitly globalist medievalist phenomena whether concerning the projection of a particular medievalist trope across borders or the integration of "medieval" pasts from different parts of the globe in a contemporary incarnation of medievalism. A wide range of topics are addressed, from Japanese manga and Arthurian tales to The O-Trilogy of Maurice Gee, Camus, and Dungeons and Dragons.

CONTENTS

Introduction: Medievalisms: Local Spaces and Global Geographies

Part I: Local Spaces

1. Metamorphosis Metamorphosed: Fox Daemon, (Anti-)Colonialism, and Global Medievalism in Ken Liu's 'Good Hunting' - Minjie Su

2. The Medievalist Simulacra of Kafka's The Castle in Graphic Adaptations - Elizabeth Allyn Woock

3. Mangaesque Knights: Japan's Path to Global Medievalism - Maxime Danesin & Manuel Hernández-Pérez

4. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly in Maurice Gee's The O Trilogy - Anna Czarnowus

5. Trading a Bow for a Machine Gun: Robin Hoods, Nationalism and the Personas of Philippine Politics - Stefanie Matabang

6. Tropical Templars? Medievalism and Pseudohistory in Brazil's Largest City - Luiz Guerra

7. Plague Temporality and Chronicle in Camus's La peste - Sara Torres

8. The Griot in Sunjata: A Paradigmatic Herald of an Afrofuturistic Messianic Age - Joseph Osei-Bonsu

9. Toward a Place-Based, North Pacific Medieval Studies: Medievalism, Pedagogy, Indigeneity - Daniel T. Kline

Part II: Global Geographies

10. Revolt: "Peasants" and Protest in the Twenty-First Century - Matthias D. Berger

11. "Taking a Step Back into the Thirteenth Century": Reading the Globe through a Medieval Lens: In the Footsteps of Marco Polo - Kara L. McShane

12. A Pinch of Flour, a Cup of Tall Tales, and one Khaleesi: Getting Medieval Across Time and Space - Meriem Pagès

13. The Boys Are Back in Town: Capital One's Propagandic Commercials for Alt-Right Nostalgic Imperialism - Carol Robinson

14. Memes, Covid-19, and Global Medievalism - Andrew B.R. Elliott

15. Dichotomies of Arthurian Medievalism: Dismantling and Reinforcing the Status Quo - Rachael Warmington

16. Thor versus Juracán: Premodern Storm Gods and Goddesses in Popular Culture - Marian E. Polhill

17. Geo-mapping the In-Betweens: Medieval Daoist Correlatives in Pokémon Go - Anne Giblin Gedacht

18. Worldbuilding Dungeons and Befriending Dragons: How the Global TTRPG Community Combats Western Hegemony - Miranda Hajduk

19. Marrying Medievalism, Post-Apocalypse, and the Global in Digital Games - Emily Price

List of Contributors

Index

ABOUT THE EDITORS

ANGELA JANE WEISL is Professor of English and Chair of the English Department at Seton Hall University.

ROBERT SQUILLACE is a Clinical Professor in Arts, Text, and Media and Educational Technology Liaison at New York University's School of Liberal Studies.

Studies in Medievalism 33 Out Now

Released earlier this season:

Studies in Medievalism XXXIII: (En)gendering Medievalism

Edited by Karl Fugelso

Full details, preview, and ordering information at https://boydellandbrewer.com/9781843847175/studies-in-medievalism-xxxiii/.

TITLE DETAILS

270 Pages

23.4 x 15.6 cm

6 b/w illus.

Series: Studies in Medievalism

Series Vol. Number: 33

Imprint: D.S.Brewer

April 2024

DESCRIPTION

Essays on the post-modern reception and interpretation of the Middle Ages.

Though Studies in Medievalism has hosted many essays on gender, this is the first volume devoted specifically to that theme.

The first part features four short essays that directly address manifestations of sexism in postmedieval responses to the Middle Ages: gender substitutions in a Grail Quest episode of the 2023 television series Mrs. Davis, repurposed misogyny in the last two episodes of Game of Thrones (2011-19), traditional gender stereotypes in Capital One's credit card commercials from 2000 to 2013, and "shaggy" medievalism in Robert Eggers' 2022 film The Northman.

The second part contains ten longer essays, which collectively continue to demonstrate the ubiquity of gender issues and the extraordinary flexibility of approaches to them. The authors discuss the misogynistic sexualization of Grendel's mother in Parke Godwin's 1995 fantasy novel The Tower of Beowulf, in Graham Baker's 1999 film Beowulf, in three episodes from the television series Xena: Warrior Princess, and in Robert Zemeckis's 2007 film Beowulf; gender substitution in David Lowery's 2021 film The Green Knight and in Kinoku Nasu's and Takashi Takeuchi's anime series Fate (2004-); female authorship of three early-nineteenth-century plays about court ladies' medieval empowerment; extraordinary violence in medievalist video games; nationalism in fake nineteenth-century medievalist documents and in contemporary online fora; racial discrimination in video gaming and in Jim Crow literature; and the condemnation of racism in Maria Dahvana Headley's 2018 novel The Mere Wife.

CONTENTS

Preface - Karl Fugelso

I: (En)gendering Medievalism

The Peacock Television Network's Mrs. Davis, Sister Simone, and Messing Up the Quest for the Holy Grail - Kevin J. Harty

Bitches Be Crazy: Patriarchal Weaponization of Mental Distress in Game of Thrones - Lauryn Mayer

Capital One's Condemnation, Conversion, and Eventual Celebration of Mythical Medieval Northern European Males through Allegorical Commercials - Carol L. Robinson

The Northman and the Link between Past and Present Masculinities - H. Peter Johnsson

II: Other Responses to Medievalism

Maternal Games in The Green Knight: Launching Gawain - Carol Jamison

Seaxy Beast: Grendel's Mother and Responses to Third-Wave Feminism in Beowulf Adaptations - Alison Elizabeth Killilea

Artoria Pendragon: Anachronism, Gender and Self-Acceptance in the Fate Anime Series of Kinoko Nasu and Takashi Takeuchi - Lisa Myers

Exalted by Honour: Women's Medievalist History Plays in the Late-Eighteenth Century - Kirsten Ogilby

A Violent Medium for a Violent Era: Brutal Medievalist Combat in Dragon Age: Origins and Kingdom Come: Deliverance - Robert Houghton

The "Old Frisian" Tescklaow as Invented Tradition: Forging Friesland's Rural Past in the Early Nineteenth Century - Rolf H. Bremmer, Jr. and Philippus Breuker

Neither Brutes, Nor Sissies: Re-imagining the Vikings on a Swedish Online Forum - Christine Ekholst

Avatar Creation and White Masculinity in Wolfram van Eschenbach's Parzival and Ernest Cline's Ready Player One - Chelsea Keane

Intersectionality in Maria Dahvana Headley's The Mere Wife - Mareike Huber

The Smith, the Devil, and Jim Crow: Medieval Hagiography, Victorian Popular Culture, and the Legacy of Slavery in Edward G. Flight's The Horse Shoe: The True Legend of St. Dunstan and the Devil - Christina M. Heckman

CFP Wooden O Symposium 2024 (4/20/2024; Cedar City, Utah 8/5-7/2024)

Wooden O Symposium

deadline for submissions: April 20, 2024

full name / name of organization: Southern Utah University - Utah Shakespeare Festival

contact email: tvordi@suu.edu

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2024/02/23/wooden-o-symposium

The 2024 Wooden O Symposium will be held in conjunction with the Rocky Mountain Medieval and Renaissance Association’s annual conference in Cedar City, UT.

We are also pleased to announce our keynote speaker is Vanessa I. Corredera (Andrews University), author of Reanimating Shakespeare's Othello in Post-Racial America (Edinburgh University Press, 2022).

The Wooden O Symposium invites panel and paper proposals on any topic relating to Shakespeare and his plays:

• Literary Analysis & Theoretical Approaches
• Shakespeare and Adaptation
• Shakespeare on Screen
• Shakespeare in Performance
• Shakespeare and History, Culture, and Society
• Shakespeare and Rhetoric
• Shakespeare and the Arts

We encourage papers and presentations that speak to the Utah Shakespeare Festival’s 2024 summer season: Henry VIII, The Winter’s Tale, The Taming of the Shrew, and Much Ado About Nothing.



The deadline for proposals is April 20, 2024.



Please include a 100-200-word abstract or session proposal (including individual abstracts) and the following information:

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

All abstracts should be submitted through the following link: www.memberplanet.com/s/rmmra/rmmra2024application



For more information, please contact the conference co-organizers, Scott Knowles at scottknowles@suu.edu or Jessica Tvordi at tvordi@suu.edu



Last updated February 26, 2024
This CFP has been viewed 119 times.

CFP Adapting In and Out of the Classroom (12/1/2023; LFA/AAS online 2/22-24/2024)

Call for Papers:

LFA /AAS ONLINE 2024: ADAPTING IN AND OUT OF THE CLASSROOM

Main site: https://litfilm.org/conference/

THIRD ANNUAL JOINT LITERATURE / FILM ASSOCIATION & ASSOCIATION FOR ADAPTATION STUDIES CONFERENCE

ONLINE

FEBRUARY 22-24, 2024



Adaptation scholars constantly swap anecdotes about what it’s like teaching adaptations of Jane Austen or the Marvel Universe, but surprisingly few of their conference presentations focus on the pedagogy of adaptation. So the organizers of this year’s online joint conference of the Literature/Film Association and the Association of Adaptation Studies—Julie Grossman, Peter Kunze, Thomas Leitch, Seda Öz, John Sanders, and Allen Redmon—invite anyone who’s ever taught adaptations, or adaptation, to share their experiences with audiences who may be far distant geographically but are likely to be highly sympathetic professionally. The conference, scheduled for 22–24 February 2024, aims to foster more global conversations among adaptation teachers and scholars, promote closer interaction between the Literature/Film Association and the Association of Adaptation Studies, and invite participation from active members of either organization who would not normally consider traveling far away for an in-person conference. Although all presentations will be in English, we hope the event’s online format will attract colleagues from around the globe, interested peers in related fields, and anyone else who wants to learn more about contemporary adaptation studies.

The success of the first two joint conferences of the LFA and the AAS has made us aware that virtual conferences, though they cannot serve all the same social and networking functions as face-to-faces conferences, are themselves indispensable adaptive mutations that serve certain important tasks—especially bringing people together who would be unable or unwilling to travel to a live conference—better than the conferences they rapidly replaced in the Covid era. We hope that online events assembling an ever more diverse network of adaptation scholars, a supplement rather than a replacement for our in-person conferences, might take their place as part of a new normal that exploits new possibilities for discussions of ideas that could blossom in and out of the classroom.

We invite abstracts for ten-minute presentations that deal with any aspect of adaptation. We are especially interested in the opportunities and problems that arise when participants teach adaptations. But we do not wish to exclude adaptation scholars with other matters on their minds. So presentations for the conference may focus on teaching particular adaptations or adaptation as a more general practice, or they may highlight archives, performances, and networks, borders and contact zones, divisions and bridges, epistemological and phenomenological experiences, new media and transmedia, linearity, spatiality, and seriality, and challenges, defenses, and alternatives to the humanities. We particularly encourage submissions on the following topics:

• introducing students to adaptations
• teaching adaptations in literature courses
• teaching adaptations as supplements or substitutes
• teaching adaptations in different national settings
• teaching adaptations vs. teaching adaptation
• nurturing budding adaptation scholars
• adaptation and the post-human world
• remaking and readapting
• adaptation and seriality
• building and maintaining adaptation networks

Please send all inquiries, abstracts of 250 words, and biographies of 100 words to teachingadaptations2024@gmail.com by 1 December 2023. We plan to notify all participants whose proposals are accepted for presentation by 15 December.

CFP Ecomedieval Robin Hood (virtual) (9/15/2023; ICMS 5/9-11/2024)

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

Ecomedieval Robin Hood (virtual)

Sponsoring Organization: International Association for Robin Hood Studies (IARHS)

Organizer: Anna Czarnowus




ECOMEDIEVAL ROBIN HOOD at ICMS in Kalamazoo (May 9–11, 2024)- AN ONLINE SESSION


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 periods
• the culture/nature divide
• apocalyptic visions of RH narrative

Please send your abstract to: annaczarnowus@tlen.pl by September 15, 2023, but an official proposal can only be made and accepted through the (https://icms.confex.com/icms/2024/cfp.cgi).

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