Uncharted Medievalisms at NeMLA

Here's the information on our other sponsored session at NeMLA this weekend. My thanks to my co-organizer, Carl Sell, for the idea.



Northeast Modern Language Association 57th Annual Convention

Wyndham Grand Pittsburgh Downtown (Pittsburgh, PA)/Zoom
3.7 Uncharted Medievalisms: Medieval Borrowings in Games

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

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




Thursday, Mar 5: Track 3 (01:15-02:30 EST)


Chair: Carl Sell, University of Pittsburgh

Chair: Michael Torregrossa, Bristol Community College

Location: Birmingham (Media Equipped)

Comparative Literature & Cultural Studies and Media Studies




"Losing to Win: Failure, Loss, and Legacy in Middle-Earth: Shadow of War"

Seth Lee, Slippery Rock University



Dr. J. Seth Lee earned his PhD in English literature from the University of Kentucky. He is a scholar of the literature of exiles and a digital humanist. He has published on Early Modern exile in SEL: Studies in English Literature 1500-1900 and Reformation. Lee’s monograph, The Discourse of Exile in Early Modern English Literature, is available as part of the Routledge Research in Early Modern History Series. It examines questions about the formation of subjectivity and nationalism in the minds of exiles and the development of exile from a “nation” in its modern sense. Additionally, he researches and writes on interdisciplinary approaches to literary studies informed by digital technology. He published most recently in Medieval Perspectives on how eye-tracking cameras revealed insights into student engagement with medieval illuminated manuscripts. He teaches literature and writing at Slippery Rock University in Pennsylvania.




"The Evolution of Medieval Virtue in the Ultima Series"

Amir Saffar, Kent State University



Amir Saffar is currently doing his PhD in English Literature with his dissertation being based on pulp literature. Amir also enjoys bridging the gap between different disciplines, in order to create more dynamic discussions. This is born from his prior work in Environmental Engineering, Civil Engineering and Biology.




"Immersive Simulation of Medieval Play Spaces: Modeling the York Cycle in Unity3D"

Dennis Jerz, Seton Hill University



Dennis G. Jerz, Associate Professor of English at Seton Hill University, has scholarly interests that include critical code studies, digital archeology and ecocritical game studies (all connected to the study of the foundational text adventure game "Colossal Cave Adventure." He posts about his Unity3D projects at jerz.setonhill.edu/blog/tag/unity3d/ (on what has been described as the first blog devoted to English studies, established in 1999).

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.

CFC/ To Play the Queen: Historical Royal Women on Stage and Screen (6/5/2023)

CFC/ To Play the Queen: Historical Royal Women on Stage and Screen

deadline for submissions:
June 5, 2023

full name / name of organization:
N/A

contact email:
toplaythequeen@gmail.com

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2023/03/08/cfc-to-play-the-queen-historical-royal-women-on-stage-and-screen

I am seeking proposals for essays to be included in a proposed volume exploring conceptualizations and representations of Queenship as a dramatic role or performance. In bringing together essays from different disciplinary perspectives, that focus on particular Queen or a group of them, on particular actors or other aspects of performance the volume aims to create a clearer picture of what it has meant to ‘play the part’ of Queen at different times, in different places, and across different media and contexts to shed light on the ways in which the office of Queenship in practice in real historical situations has been culturally understood, interpreted and re-interpreted. Please note that the definition of ‘Stage’ and ‘Screen’ can be broad encompassing amateur and professional performances, formal and informal spaces of performance including but also beyond theatre, film and tv. Although the interpretation of ‘Queen’ could include broader definitions such as princesses, duchesses, or other female political leaders, the ‘Queen’ portrayed must be an historical rather than purely fantastical figure. Topics might include, but are not necessarily limited to,

• Portrayal of a particular Queen/pair/group of Queens in drama from the point of view of the written part or of particular performances
• Censorship and portrayal of a Queen
• Different portrayals of the same Queen
• Comparison of a single actor’s performances as multiple different Queens
• A Queen as a ‘signature’ part
• A Queen as a rite-of-passage role/career-defining/award-winning part
• The use of ‘star-power’ in portraying Queens
• Queens who are missing from significant portrayals of historical events
• Why some Queens are very popular whilst others are underrepresented
• Particular characteristics portrayed in performances of Queens
• Popular creation of Queens – Queens in civic or community pageantry/ as role-play part in Reenactment or LARP or historically set computer games/ as characters of fanfictions
• Casting decisions and controversies
• Dimensions of age/race/gender etc in casting and portrayals
• Dressing up as historical queens, amateur/professional, modelling for still portrayals on canvas or film, advertising, fashion displays or tableaux vivantes etc.
• The use of costume to further or enhance a representation
• International performances and audiences of particular nations histories
• Streaming services such as Netflix’s introducing ‘new’ historical Queens to new audiences
• Adaptations of literary portrayals of Queens
• Different Queens written by the same author/dramatist
• Queens as parts in amateur performance
• Costumed interpretation of Queens at historical or educational sites

Proposals of c350-500 words should be sent to Sarah Betts at toplaythequeen@gmail.com by 5th June 2023. I am also happy to answer any enquiries or discuss ideas about the project in advance of this date.


Last updated March 8, 2023

New Book: The Wife of Bath: A Biography

 

An imminent release:

The Wife of Bath: A Biography

Marion Turner

Ordering information and further details from the publisher's website at https://press.princeton.edu/books/ebook/9780691206028/the-wife-of-bath. Extras include a video trailer and preview (click the text marked "Look Inside") with the contents list, introduction, and index. 

Princeton University Press.

Hardcover Price: $29.95/£20.00. ISBN: 9780691206011. Pages: 336. Size: 5.5 x 8.5 in. 

Ebook Price: 30% off with code PUP30 - Sale Price: $20.97/£17.50; Price: $29.95/£25.00. ISBN:

9780691206028. 

Published: Jan 17, 2023

Illus: 14 color illus.

From the award-winning biographer of Chaucer, the story of his most popular and scandalous character, from the Middle Ages to #MeToo

Ever since her triumphant debut in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, the Wife of Bath, arguably the first ordinary and recognisably real woman in English literature, has obsessed readers—from Shakespeare to James Joyce, Voltaire to Pasolini, Dryden to Zadie Smith. Few literary characters have led such colourful lives or matched her influence or capacity for reinvention in poetry, drama, fiction, and film. In The Wife of Bath, Marion Turner tells the fascinating story of where Chaucer’s favourite character came from, how she related to real medieval women, and where her many travels have taken her since the fourteenth century, from Falstaff and Molly Bloom to #MeToo and Black Lives Matter.

A sexually active and funny working woman, the Wife of Bath, also known as Alison, talks explicitly about sexual pleasure. She is also a victim of domestic abuse who tells a story of rape and redemption. Formed from misogynist sources, she plays with stereotypes. Turner sets Alison’s fictional story alongside the lives of real medieval women—from a maid who travelled around Europe, abandoned her employer, and forged a new career in Rome to a duchess who married her fourth husband, a teenager, when she was sixty-five. Turner also tells the incredible story of Alison’s post-medieval life, from seventeenth-century ballads and Polish communist pop art to her reclamation by postcolonial Black British women writers.

Entertaining and enlightening, funny and provocative, The Wife of Bath is a one-of-a-kind history of a literary and feminist icon who continues to capture the imagination of readers.

Author:

Marion Turner is the J.R.R. Tolkien Professor of English Literature and Language at the University of Oxford, where she is a Professorial Fellow of Lady Margaret Hall. Her books include the prize-winning biography Chaucer: A European Life.

CFP 2023 Wooden O Symposium (proposals by 5/5/2023)

2023 CALL FOR PAPERS

The Wooden O Symposium invites panel and paper proposals on any topic related to the text and performance of Shakespeare’s plays. Next year’s symposium encourages papers and panels that speak to the Utah Shakespeare Festival’s 2023 season: A Midsummer’s Night Dream, West Side Story, Jane Austen’s Emma, A Raisin in the Sun, The Play that Goes Wrong, Coriolanus, and Timon of Athens.

Abstracts for consideration for the Wooden O sessions and individual presentations should be sent to usfeducation@bard.org.

The deadline for proposals is May 5, 2023. Session chairs and individual presenters will be informed of acceptance no later than June 2. Please include 250-word abstracts or session proposals (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

CFP Performing Medievalism (3/31/2022)

CFP Performing Medievalism

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2022/03/08/cfp-performing-medievalism

deadline for submissions: March 31, 2022

full name / name of organization: Ellie Chadwick & Ollie Jones, University of Bristol and University of York, UK

contact email: oliver.jones@york.ac.uk

DEADLINE EXTENDED -- CFP: Performing Medievalism: Tricks, Tips and Tropes from Early Artistic Practice for the Modern-Day Performer

The residual influence of the medieval is visible in today’s performance practice in various ways, yet this inheritance is perhaps not valued as highly as it might be, and oftentimes goes entirely unnoticed. Although there has been a soaring in popularity of medievalesque fantasy films and television shows such as The Witcher or Game of Thrones in recent years, as well as a renewal of interest in historical fiction based in the medieval period with television shows such as The Vikings and The White Queen, there are still significant gaps in the understanding and appreciation of the multiple ways in which the medieval has residual impact on creative performance practices today. What associations do the words ‘medieval’ and ‘Middle Ages’ trigger for those working within a performance context? How are performers currently engaging with the medieval, whether purposefully or subconsciously? What might enhanced knowledge of medieval influences offer performers today in practical terms?



This volume seeks to illuminate the extensive and diverse ways in which the medieval interweaves with, and provides inspiration to, the modern in a wide variety of performance practice, by providing both critical and artistic analysis of the varying forms of medievalism in today’s theatre, dance, music, or television/film performances, as well as practical direction for modern-day performers looking to actively engage with early performance materials (in music, theatre, dance, etc) or to incorporate early tropes and structures into the creation of new medievally-inspired work. This is not limited to working with medieval themes or historical stories but also includes styles of storytelling which hearken back to early forms; many theatre techniques that are becoming popular again today have their roots in the early theatre of the medieval period, from audience participation and immersion to non-linear theatre experiences, as well as genre-busting combinations of theatre with installation, experimental technologies, and performance art.



The volume invites contributors to actively engage with current creative ideas and artistic practices that relate to or are inspired by the medieval, whether through detailing specific projects, offering tips for modern performers and practitioners when engaging with medieval texts, or commenting on recent performances that draw on medieval tropes or utilise medieval materials. It interrogates the ways in which performers and performance practices variously approach the medieval today: as obscure or primitive, as interesting but distant oddity, or as a worthy and relevant source of inspiration and creative material. It offers a critical appraisal that challenges, provokes, and disrupts ideas around the medieval-as-primitive and the modern-as-innovative, offering both scholarly and practitioner perspectives to provide a useful and in-depth look at the way in which the medieval resurfaces in performance practices of all kinds today.



Offerings on music, theatre, storytelling, dance or any artistic performance practice are welcome, for critical and scholarly articles of 8,000-10,000 words in length, documentations of performer training/approaches of 4,000-8,000 words (e.g., interviews, performance reviews, documentation of artistic processes), and shorter pieces of 1,500-3,000 words (e.g., artist’s notes). (These word count ranges are inclusive of notes and references.)



Contributions may address, but are not limited to:

• The medieval in modern storytelling e.g. medieval tropes and how they’re utilised;
• “Artist’s notes” style essays on own medievally-rooted artistic projects;
• Skill and training of medieval performers;
• Approaching medieval materials: tips for actors/musicians/dancers;
• Approaching contemporary artistic performance practices (acting, storytelling, dancing, performing music etc) via a medieval lens;
• Analysis of acting/performances of medieval historical fiction in television, theatre, film;
• Tracing medievalisms in the performance of modern fantasy characters;
• Intersectional feminist perspectives on medieval performance practice;
• Critical appraisement of modern performances of medieval plays/music/stories/other material (e.g. Chester Mystery Plays, Sheffield Mysteries, Everyman (NT), Lincoln Mystery Plays);
• Material culture and medieval performance practice;
• Medieval performance and the archive (e.g. analysis of the University of Bristol Theatre Collection’s Medieval Players archive; York Mystery Plays archive; Poculi Ludique Societas (https://pls.artsci.utoronto.ca/); performances associated with REED-NE (Durham); analysis of personal archives relating to own artistic practice; etc).

Please send abstracts of up to 400 words along with a short (c. 100 word) biography to Ellie Chadwick and Ollie Jones at e.chadwick@bristol.ac.uk and oliver.jones@york.ac.uk. Deadline: 31st March 2022.




Last updated March 8, 2022

CFP New Visions of Julian of Norwich Conference (1/2/2022; Oxford, Eng. 7/15-16/2022)

New Visions of Julian of Norwich

deadline for submissions: January 2, 2022

full name / name of organization: Alicia Smith

contact email: julianofnorwichconference@gmail.com

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2021/11/10/new-visions-of-julian-of-norwich

NEW VISIONS OF JULIAN OF NORWICH

Somerville College, Oxford, 15th-16th July 2022

Organisers: Antje E. Chan (Lincoln College, Oxford), Godelinde Gertrude Perk (Somerville, Oxford), Raphaela Rohrhofer (Somerville, Oxford), Alicia Smith (English Faculty, Oxford)

In May 1373, Julian of Norwich (c. 1343–c.1416) received a series of visions that engage with the mysteries of the divine-human relationship, inspiring the composition of A Vision Showed to a Devout Woman and, decades later, its revision, A Revelation of Love, now recognised as one of the most important texts in the medieval contemplative tradition and Middle English literature. Both have attracted numerous interpretations as visionary as Julian’s work itself, focusing on the significance of anchoritic enclosure, the radical originality of her vernacular theology, the historical and codicological context, as well as potential textual influences. Recent scholarship has explored Julian’s role in the global Middle Ages, her treatment of health, and her ecological poetics. Her texts have also sparked investigations of the role of materiality and provocative encounters between Julian and queer and trans theory.

This international hybrid conference will be the first academic event to focus solely on Julian’s writing, life, contexts, and influence long after her death. It seeks to consider the plurality of approaches towards her work’s interpretation and forge novel pathways of discussing the anchorite both in her own context and in the many scholarly and popular guises of her cultural afterlife. Aimed at established and early-career researchers alike, this interdisciplinary conference will bring together scholars from various fields to map out new and emerging dimensions in Julian scholarship. It will interrogate received assumptions and re-evaluate traditional disciplinary methodologies.

In addition to presenting academic work on Julian’s writing, this conference also seeks to reach out of academe in responding to pastoral and contemplative engagement with her texts, particularly in the light of the pandemic. Two roundtables will bring lived religious practices and critical responses into dialogue. Creative explorations will also help invigorate Julian studies. We look forward to hosting Cindy Oswin’s one-woman play “Cell” about the anchorite as an older woman, and to showing a recording of the 2021 Oxford reconstruction of the medieval rite of enclosure held at St. Mary the Virgin, Iffley.

The opening lecture will be given by Professor Nicholas Watson (Harvard) with responses from Professor Laura Saetveit Miles (Bergen) and Professor Barry Windeatt (Cambridge). Professor Liz Herbert McAvoy (Swansea) will close the conference.

We invite papers from any or multiple disciplines and deploying a wide range of methodologies, focusing on all aspects of Julian’s writing, life, contexts, or afterlife. We especially encourage proposals from graduate students and early-career researchers.

Possible themes include but are not limited to:

• Emerging approaches to Julian’s texts
• Illness, health, and disability
• Visual and material culture
• Queer, genderqueer, and trans theory approaches
• Julian’s wider intellectual and cultural contexts, e.g., Revelation and Vision in the movements of church reform across Europe, or against the backdrop of continental vernacular literature
• Interdisiplinary approaches to Julian
• Julian and apocalypse
• Vision and Revelation as literary landmarks in medieval and post-medieval literature
• Conversations with well- and lesser-known vernacular visionaries and theologians in the British Isles, on the Continent, and beyond
• The history of emotions
• Life-writing

We also welcome proposals for contributions to the two roundtables. Potential topics include:

• Retrieving Julian’s writings to renew contemplative and spiritual practices
• Vision and Revelation and the pandemic moment
• Creative engagement with Vision and Revelation: poetic, dramatic, visual arts
• Julian as a voice for the voiceless
• Julian beyond the academy: contemplative practices, popular imagery, political uses

Please submit abstracts (up to 300 words) for a 15-minute paper or 10-minute roundtable contribution accompanied by a short biography to julianofnorwichconference@gmail.com by 1 February 2022.

In light of the pandemic, this conference will be a hybrid event combining in-person and online papers, while the conference will be streamed for online attendees. Reduced registration will be offered for postgraduate students and unwaged delegates, while a few bursaries may also be available. 

This conference is part of  “Women Making Memories: Liturgy and the Remembering Female Body in Medieval Holy Women’s Texts”, Dr Perk’s MSCA-IF project at the Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages at the University of Oxford. This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 842443.

Follow us on Twitter: @visionsofJulian

Last updated November 10, 2021

CFP The Ludic Outlaw: Medievalism, Games, Sport, and Play (Spec Issue Bulletin of the International Association for Robin Hood Studies 7/31/20)

“The Ludic Outlaw: Medievalism, Games, Sport, and Play,” a special issue
https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2020/04/14/%E2%80%9Cthe-ludic-outlaw-medievalism-games-sport-and-play%E2%80%9D-a-special-issue

deadline for submissions:
July 31, 2020


full name / name of organization:
The Bulletin of the International Association for Robin Hood Studies


contact email:
lfallo1@lsu.edu




From the early Atari single-player arcade game Outlaw to more recent videogames such as Activision Blizzard’s multiplayer Overwatch, modern digital outlaws have long been popular characters in gaming culture. These characters often work to resist authoritarianism within their respective gaming worlds, and they frequently evoke much older outlaw representations, such as the Robin Hood of medieval ballads, by embodying popular definitions of justice and communal welfare.



This special issue of The Bulletin of the International Association for Robin Hood Studies

welcomes papers that examine the specific ways in which enduring medieval outlaw tropes in modern games function as model responses to oppression. Particular attention will be given to submissions that focus on broadly defined digital ludic outlaws, though papers concerned with modern tabletop games, live action role-playing games, and immersive theater are welcome. Papers on early modern May games and festivals will also be considered. Possible themes may include (but are not limited to) the following:

• Parallels between outlaw literary traditions and modern games
• Social positioning, otherness, and outlawry in games featuring playful medievalism(s)
• Gender (re)definition and performance in outlaw games
• Subversive materialities in ludic outlaw toolkits and inventories
• Medieval architecture and its uses in digital outlaw spaces
• Ergodic textuality and interactive outlaw narratives

Manuscripts of 2000-3000 words should be submitted to guest editor Gayle Fallon at lfallo1@lsu.edu by July 31, 2020. Submissions should be saved in Microsoft Word (.doc, .docx) and formatted according to the guidelines in the current Chicago Manual of Style. All work considered for this publication must not be previously published or under consideration elsewhere. Since manuscripts will go through a double-blind peer review, author names should not appear in documents or in file properties. More information about author guidelines can be found here.



Last updated April 16, 2020
This CFP has been viewed 647 times.

CFP Performing Medieval Drama in the 21st Century (A Panel Discussion) (9/6/19; Kalamazoo 2020)

Performing Medieval Drama in the 21st Century (A Panel Discussion)
https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2019/07/19/performing-medieval-drama-in-the-21st-century-a-panel-discussion

deadline for submissions:
September 6, 2019
full name / name of organization:
Kyle A. Thomas, Missouri State University
contact email:
kyleathomas17@gmail.com


Session Title: Performing Medieval Drama in the 21st Century (A Panel Discussion) at the International Congress on Medieval Studies, Western Michigan University (2020)

Organizer: Kyle A. Thomas (Missouri State University)

Sponsered by the Medieval and Renaissance Drama Society (MRDS)

In her seminal book, Ritual Imports: Performing Medieval Drama in America, Claire Sponslor examined the role of European medieval drama in history of North America, making the case that drama was more than the importation of plays. Rather, Sponsler examined the practices and traditions of performance that carved out a space in which the practices of the Old World came into contact and communication with those of the New. Following Sponslor’s lead and her broad definition of drama—which includes plays, religious practices and ceremonies, fairs, pageantry, rites and rituals—this panel discussion seeks out papers and presentations that explore performance(s) of medieval drama in the 21st century. In particular, this panel will aim to facilitate conversation around performances that take from medieval source material but invite performers and audiences into a point or space of contact with the medieval world through effective and affective twenty-first-century practices. The organizers are especially interested in the papers/presentations that might include photos or videos of performance.

Possible approaches/questions might include, but are not limited to:

• current and affective methodologies for performing medieval drama that explore dramaturgy, acting/casting, design/tech, textual analysis, etc.;
• utilization and navigation of twenty-first-century spaces;
• the incorporation of technology, including social media mobile platforms and apps, etc.;
• ways in which potentially problematic characters, themes, ideas (e.g. anti-Semitism, gender roles) are handled in performance;
• how performance facilitates manifests the role of the medieval document/text and/or the work of research and the researcher for current audiences.

Please send abstracts and PIF forms to kathomas@missouristate.edu (if sent before August 10th, please also cc: kyleathomas17@gmail.com) by September 6th, 2019. Also, please mention in your abstract if you intend to include pictures or video of performance in your presentation. Depending on the number or submissions and the content of the proposals, the organizers will make and decision regarding the specific format of the discussion (i.e. length of papers/presentations and the possibility of a panel Q&A or respondant).


Last updated July 19, 2019

CFP Performing Joan: Interpreting the Maid on Screen, on Stage, and in the Streets (9/10/19; Kalamazoo 2020)

Performing Joan: Interpreting the Maid on Screen, on Stage, and in the Streets
https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2019/07/11/performing-joan-interpreting-the-maid-on-screen-on-stage-and-in-the-streets

deadline for submissions: September 10, 2019
full name / name of organization: Scott Manning / The International Joan of Arc Society
contact email: scottmanning13@gmail.com

Call for Papers sponsored by The International Joan of Arc Society/Société Internationale de l’étude de Jeanne d’Arc


International Congress on Medieval Studies (ICMS 2020)
May 7 to 10, 2020
Western Michigan University

Joan of Arc continues to captivate filmmakers, most recently Bruno Dumont, whose headbanging heroine mixes medieval and metal in Jeannette: The Childhood of Joan of Arc (2017) and Joan of Arc (2019). Joan has also made a Broadway comeback via three recent productions: David Byrne’s rock musical Joan of Arc: Into the Fire (2017) the 2018 revival of Shaw’s Saint Joan, and Jane Anderson’s Mother of the Maid(2018). Participatory street theater such as Orléans’ yearly Fêtes de Jeanne d’Arc or the procession’s campier New World cousin, a Joan-themed carnival parade in New Orleans, also shape the Maid’s evolving legacy.

This panel seeks papers that explore the origins, processes, and reception of Joan in performance. What performative aspects characterize the primary documents that inspired subsequent retellings of Joan’s story? Why do certain patterns emerge in Joan’s onstage and onscreen afterlives? And how do different authors and actors approach the creative task of communicating Joan’s relevance to new audiences? What purposes do these performances serve for those who conceive of or take part in them? Finally, how are the productions that Joan inspires received?

Please submit a 250-word proposal for a 15-minute presentation. Proposals should have an abstract format written in Word doc and be accompanied by a brief academic bio (or a CV), including email address, current affiliation, and title/name. Please submit all relevant documents by September 10, 2019 to Scott Manning (scottmanning13@gmail.com) and Tara Beth Smithson (tbsmithson@manchester.edu).

Preliminary inquiries and expressions of interest are more than welcome.


Last updated July 12, 2019
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CFP Beowulf to Shakespeare Area 2018 (6/30/18; Baltimore)

Forwarded on behalf of the area chairs; we are sponsoring two sessions for this upcoming conference.


MAPACA 2018

Baltimore, MD

November 8-10, 2018


Beowulf to Shakespeare

The wealth of material found in the Middle Ages and Renaissance continues to attract modern audiences with new creative works in areas such as fiction, film, and computer games, which make use of medieval and/or early modern themes, characters, or plots. This is a call for papers or panels dealing with any aspect of medieval or Renaissance representation in popular culture. Topics for this area include, but are not limited to the following:

-Modern portrayals of any aspect of Arthurian legends or Shakespeare

-Modern versions or adaptations of any other Medieval or Renaissance writer

-Modern investigations of historical figures such as Eleanor of Aquitaine, The Richards, Henry VIII, Elizabeth I, Mary Queen of Scots

-Teaching medieval and Renaissance texts to modern students

-Medieval or Renaissance links to fantasy fiction, gaming, comics, video games, etc.

- Medieval or Renaissance Dramas

-The Middle Ages or Renaissance on the Internet

-Renaissance fairs


Panel and Workshop proposals are also welcome.


In Addition, this year we are seeking proposals on Charms and Charming in recognition of Baltimore being considered “Charm City”


Submit a 250 word proposal including A/V requests and a brief biography by June 30, 2018 to our online submission form at mapaca.net


If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us directly

Diana Vecchio dmvecchio@mail.widener.edu

Mary Behrman behrm5@aol.com

Co-Chairs Medieval and Renaissance

CFP The First Hamlet, Special Issue of Critical Survey (3/15/2017)

The First Hamlet: A Special Issue of Critical Survey
https://www.cfplist.com/CFP.aspx?CID=7225

Event: 09/01/2017
Abstract: 03/15/2017

Location: Hatfield, Hertfordshire, United Kingdom
Organization: Critical Survey


Call for Papers:
The First Hamlet
A Special Issue of Critical Survey
Guest Editor: Terri Bourus, Indiana University Indianapolis(IUPUI)
tbourus@iupui.edu

The 1603 edition of Hamlet, the first surviving text of Shakespeare’s most famous play, was, for most of the twentieth century, dismissed as a ‘bad quarto’, the most conspicuous inhabitant of the ghetto of ‘memorial reconstruction’. This theory was widely proclaimed as a ‘fact’, which had been proven by the scientific methods of the New Bibliography. It was also widely accepted as a ‘fact’ that references to a play called ‘Hamlet’ in 1589, 1594, and 1596 referred to an earlier, lost tragedy, probably written by Thomas Kyd.

These ‘facts’ began to unravel in the 1990s when the whole theory of memorial reconstruction was challenged by Laurie Maguire, Paul Werstine, and others. In 2014, two monographs on the 1603 edition (the ‘first quarto’, or ‘Q1’) were published, almost simultaneously: Young Shakespeare’s Young Hamlet: Print, Piracy, and Performance (by Terri Bourus) and Hamlet After Q1: An Uncanny History of the Shakespeare Text (by Zachary Lesser). In different ways, both books challenged the orthodox editorial and critical dismissal of Q1. In 2015, the third edition of the Norton Shakespeare included, in addition to the canonical Hamlet (based on the Second Quarto, conflated with additions from the Folio), an edited text of the 1603 edition. In February 2016, The Chronicle of Higher Education published a 5200-word article by Ron Rosenbaum on the controversy surrounding Shakespeare's 'Badass Quarto' (the title of a production of Q1 in Washington D.C.).

In 2017 Critical Survey will publish a special issue on ‘The First Hamlet’, guest-edited by Terri Bourus. We invite papers of 4000-7000 words, addressing issues surrounding the first quarto, or the ‘lost Hamlet’, or both, from a variety of perspectives: critical, theatrical, historical, pedagogical, and bibliographical. We are interested in the history of criticism, the history of the book, and the history of performance, in data-mining and statistical analysis, in the experiments of directors and actors, the experience of teachers, the analysis of verse and prose. Whatever the subject, essays should be clear, concise, and accessible.

Informal inquiries about possibilities for essays, as well as proposals for book reviews, performance reviews, and review essays, are welcome and encouraged. Please direct all correspondence to the guest editor, Terri Bourus at tbourus@iupui.edu

Submissions should be sent to the above email address by 15 March 2017 as Microsoft Word documents. Two (anonymous) hard copies for peer review, should also be sent, along with a separate cover letter, to the mailing address for Critical Survey:

Critical Survey
English Literature Group
School of Humanities
University of Hertfordwhite
De Havilland Campus
Hatfield, Hertfordshire, AL10 9AB
United Kingdom

A style guide and additional submission information is available online:
http://journals.berghahnbooks.com/cs/



Contact Email: tbourus@iupui.edu

CFP Azincourt or Agincourt : Remembering and Representing the Hundred Years War Conference (8/28/15; France 11/6/15)

CFP « Azincourt or Agincourt : Remembering and Representing the Hundred Years War » (deadline 28 August 2015) 6 November 2015, University of Toulouse, France.
https://networks.h-net.org/node/73374/announcements/74435/cfp-%C2%AB-azincourt-or-agincourt-remembering-and-representing-hundred
Announcement published by Nathalie Rivere de Carles on Tuesday, July 7, 2015

Type:
Call for Papers
Date:
August 28, 2015
Location:
France
Subject Fields:
Military History, Diplomacy and International Relations, Visual Studies, Theatre and History of Theatre

CFP « Azincourt or Agincourt : Remembering and Representing the Hundred Years War », 6 November 2015, University of Toulouse, France.

600 years ago, Henry V and his army slaughtered the ‘fine fleur de la chevalerie française’ during one of the most recounted battle in English history. Mythologised by William Shakespeare’s Henry V, the play has become a sounding board for subsequent military conflicts and operations. The young heroic king’s brotherly pledge, ‘We few, we happy few, we band of brothers’, resounded throughout the centuries and inspired authors, directors and politicians. However, what do we really know about the battle of Agincourt? Why is the memory of this battle particularly vivid? How is it perceived whether you call that field Azincourt or Agincourt, whether you are on the French or the English side of the Channel?

This conference wishes to explore historical and literary accounts and narratives of the battle of Agincourt and of the Hundred Years War. These accounts (from the Middle Ages until now) are often contradictory and offer an interesting insight in the process of memorialisation and the instruments it the memory of this conflict was and has become in both domestic and international politics. We wish to investigate the paradigms of fictional transfers of History a,nd the way the historical and fictional accounts have influenced and fashioned national and political prejudices and clichés and participated in the political, social and religious evolution of the belligerents.

This conference will thus favour a dialogue between different research fields (history, literature, military history, diplomatic history, visual arts, theatre and cinema) in order to study the means of creation and transmission of memory, of the formation of war memory and its deformations, and of the part it plays in the construction of states.

The conference also welcomes proposals on the topic of expected or unexpected accounts in French and English chronicles ((Froissard, Hall’s Chronicles, Holinshed, Grandes Chroniques de France, L’Arbre des batailles by Honoré Bouvet, Le Livre des faits de Bertrand Du Guesclin). We welcome proposals regarding Franco-English cultural and political relationships at the beginning of the 15th century and also studies in diplomatic and military history. In the latter field we will question the accuracy of the accounts of the battle, of its location, and its role as landmark in military strategic and tactical methods.

We also wish to examine the way the Hundred Years War and more particularly the Battle of Agincourt were perceived and used in the centuries that followed. The literary and iconographic creations related to this military event need to be studied and we invite proposals on fictional and political writings on the Hundred Years War and its stakeholders such as Christine de Pisan’s Livre des faits et bonnes mœurs du sage roy Charles V ou le Ditié de Jeanne d’Arc, William Shakespeare’s Henry V, Henry VI, Edward III. We also welcome papers on the surge of interest in the 18th and 19th centuries for the conflict in texts such as Décius français ou le Siège de Calais sous Philippe VI de Durosoy (1764), Le Siège de Calais, a tragedy by Dormont de Belloy (1765), or  in the opera, L'assedio di Calais (1836), by Gaetano Donizetti et Salvatore Cammarano.

The conference also wishes to examine the representation of soldiers and the evolution of the representation and the perception of chivalry, masculinity in the context of a reappraisal of heroism. Thus we will also consider contemporary dramatic and cinematographic versions of the Hundred Years Wars and the Battle of Agincourt and its sung or unsung heroes (The BBC’s The Hollow Crown, Laurence Olivier’s and Kenneth Branagh’s Henry V, the recent stage adaptations of Shakespeare’s Histories and other historical plays).

List of topics (non-exhaustive):

• Literary, iconographic and musical accounts of the Hundred Years War since the Renaissance
• The genres of the historical chronicle and of the historical tragedy and their relationship with memory
• Chivalry and the revision of heroism
• The political and structural consequences of the Hundred Years War: the influence on the vision of government…
• Territory and linguistic hybridism in Henry V and historical tragedies
• Military history: perception of war and of soldiers, evolution of chivalry, myths and strategic realities of sieges and warfare (Agincourt, Harfleur, Calais…)
• Diplomatic relationships: the role of the Duke of Burgundy, the art and the failure of negotiation
• The representation of the emissary during and after the Hundred Years War…

Proposals (300 to 500 words) should be sent by August 28th to Dr Nathalie Rivère de Carles (nrivere@univ-tlse2.fr) and Dr John C. Ford (ford.john@hotmail.com). Confirmation of acceptance will be sent to participants by September 3rd.

Contact Info:
Dr Nathalie Rivère de Carles (nrivere@univ-tlse2.fr)

Dr John C. Ford (ford.john@hotmail.com).

Contact Email:
nrivere@univ-tlse2.fr

SMART Fall 2014 News

The latest number (21.2 for Fall 2014) of Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Teaching is now available. It is a special issue on "Teaching Medieval Drama" guest edited by Sheila Christie. Full contents will be posted as soon as they are made available on the SMART web site (http://webs.wichita.edu/?u=smart).

Medieval and Renaissance Drama on Film NeMLA CFP

Filming this Insubstantial Pageant: Medieval and Renaissance Drama on Film (Abstracts due Sept. 30)
full name / name of organization:
Northeast Modern Language Association (conference Mar. 2013)
contact email:
jackiec159@hotmail.com

This panel seeks papers about film adaptations of medieval and Renaissance English drama, both in English-speaking countries and around the world. The NeMLA conference will be held in Boston in March, 2013. Papers might compare different adaptations of the same play, discuss problems associated with the notion of fidelity to text or of relocating a play in a different historical or cultural milieu, or consider the effectiveness for use in scholarly work or in the classroom. We seek investigation of continuities across disciplines: medieval/Renaissance, cinema studies/literature. What is at stake in these adaptations? What do these directors, writers, performers, and audiences bring to the table? This panel should appeal to those interested in film and literary adaptation, world cinema and transnational influences, issues of cultural hegemony and exchange, and Shakespeare on film. Abstracts (250 words) should be emailed in MS format to jackiec159@hotmail.comandmorsed@newschool.edu by Sept. 30.