We'll be wrapping up our participation at the International Congress on Medieval Studies this weekend with a roundtable session (below) and two panels on comics.
See the Medieval Comics Project (https://medieval-comics-project.blogspot.com/) for full details on the comics sessions.
Remembering the Middle Ages: Memories of the Medieval across Time and Space (A Roundtable) (Hybrid)
61st International Congress on Medieval Studies
Western Michigan University (Kalamazoo, Michigan)/Online through Confex
Session 302: Saturday, 16 May 2026, 8:30 AM - 10:00 AM
Sangren Hall 3130 (hybrid)
Organized by Michael A. Torregrossa, Bristol Community College; Siân Echard, University of British Columbia; Alexander L. Kaufman, Ball State University
Cosponsored by Association for the Advancement of Scholarship and Teaching of the Medieval in Popular Culture; International Arthurian Society, North American Branch (IAS/NAB); International Association for Robin Hood Studies (IARHS)
Presider: Kristin Noone, Irvine Valley College
1 - Malory, Caxton, and Chaucer, social critics in the greenwood (In-Person)
Jennifer Goodman Wollock, Independent Scholar
“The Gest of Robyn Hode” (c. 1450) and Sir Thomas Malory’s Morte Darthur (Westminster: William Caxton, 1485), both possibly Malory's work (cf https://printinghistory.org/robin-hood-and-the-printers/), stand at the foundation of much of today’s popular culture. They attack evil customs of Malory's day, and ours, while also prizing restraint against violence,
Jennifer Goodman Wollock is delighted to be able to merge Robin Hood and King Arthur in a new research project, of which this paper is a part.
2 - Adaptations of the ‘Sir Lancelot Fights Tarquin’ Arthurian Episode Through Time, Space, Genres, and Media (In-Person)
Lorraine Kochanske Stock, Univ. of Houston
This presentation traces the development of an Arthurian episode, the combat between Lancelot and Sir Tericam/Tarquyne/Tarquin from its inception in the Vulgate Lancelot, to Thomas Malory's Morte, to Thomas Deloney's broadside and its reprintings, to Richard Thorpe's 1953 film Knights of the Round Table, to Daniel Kelley's folk song.
Lorraine Kochanske Stock is taking a temporary vacation from the greenwood of Robin Hood to explore an Arthurian episode, featuring the mortal combat between Sir Lancelot and Tarquin, that traveled widely over both time and space, from the Vulgate Cycle of 13th-century France to the 21st-century game Assassin’s Creed Valhalla.
3 - Charles William Purnell’s The Modern Arthur, or “Liking” Arthurianism in the 1912 New Zealand (Remote)
Anna Czarnowus, Uniw. Śląski w Katowicach
This paper presents Arthurianism beyond the nineteenth century and ultimately beyond England, even though the volume of poetry "The Modern Arthur" by Charles William Purnell was published in London. The poem "The Modern Arthur" centers on the idea of liking and disliking (or ignoring) the medieval in colonial New Zealand.
Anna Czarnowus is Associate Professor at the University of Silesia, Katowice (Poland). She specializes in Middle English literature and medievalisms. She recently co-edited (with Laurel Ryan) Medievalism in Slavic Popular Culture (2025, Arc Humanities Press).
4- “Long Live King Richard!”: Problems with Robin Hood’s Idolization of a Crusader King (Remote)
Averie Mercedes Basch, Univ. of New Mexico
This project traces how a romanticization of Robin Hood and of the Crusades can be problematic for a modern society, especially one that cannot ignore the use of medieval imagery for radical movements.
Averie Basch is a third-year doctoral student at the University of New Mexico, pursuing a degree in Medieval Studies within the Department of English. Averie focuses on the exchange of ideas between medieval Irish and Arthurian storytellers through their depictions of otherworlds. She assesses how portrayals of liminal spaces represent borderlands in geographic and cultural contexts and can point to contemporary religious and/or social anxieties regarding colonization. She takes great interest in how Arthurian literature reveals interactions between the Christianized North Atlantic and the Celtic fringe, and how the Pre-Christian traditions survived in converted communities through narrative practices.
5- A Band of Not So Merry Men: Grimdark Echoes of Robin Hood in Mark Lawrence’s Broken Empire Trilogy (Remote)
Carl B. Sell, Univ. of Pittsburgh
Post-apocalyptic settings are rife with recreations of the Middle Ages, often creating a world with traces of the past—physically through buildings, roads, and historical memory—in addition to a reimagining of what the medieval world was like. Often, there is a sense of the feudal realms of history and imagination, and the work of Mark Lawrence is no exception to this tradition. Where Lawrence diverges, however, is his use of what is known as “grimdark” elements of fantasy: irredeemable characters, brutal combat, oppressive law systems, and nobles willing to sacrifice anyone to gain a throne. This fits right at home in a post-apocalyptic world, but Lawrence does not reveal that his fantasy world is, really, the far future of our own earth. Remnants of asphalt roadways, skyscrapers-turned-castles, nuclear fallout, science disguised as magic, and works of literature like those of Plato and Shakespeare oft-quoted by learned characters are slowly uncovered in the middle hundred pages or so of the first novel, Prince of Thorns. Prince of Thorns introduces both the setting and the character of Prince Honorious Jorg Ancrath, “Jorg” to friend and foe, a noble in disguise who becomes a cross between the leader of a band equal parts outlaw and mercenary. These “Brothers,” the name by which each member calls another, are composed of characters that at first seem to have no relationship to the merry men of Robin Hood, at least until “Little Rikey” is introduced: he is called “little” because he is anything but, a huge man with a small name reminiscent of Little John. I seek to explore the relationship between our own memories of the medieval and the grimdark fantasy subversions to the Robin Hood legend in these novels, but particularly Prince of Thorns.
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.
6 - The Other King in the North: Recreating the Medieval in Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell Corpus (In-Person)
Amanda Bohne, Univ. of Illinois–Chicago
Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell hints at a magical English past, when a mysterious magician ruled from Newcastle for 300 years before departing for Faerie in 1434. Clarke’s recent work has added to the fictional medieval sources alluded to in the novel.
[no biography provided]
