CFP Robin Hood and Other Social Bandits in Folk and Popular Culture (3/31/2025; IARHS Conference 6/26-27/2025 Hybrid)

Robin Hood and Other Social Bandits in Folk and Popular Culture

HYBRID biannual conference of

the International Association for Robin Hood Studies

26-27 June 2025

The Jagiellonian University, Cracow (Poland)

(and ONLINE)

source: https://robinhoodscholars.blogspot.com/2024/04/biennial-iarhs-conference-cfp.html

The Robin Hood tradition has inalienably been a part of popular culture and some of its elements undoubtedly come from folk culture. Already Robin Hood ballads or rhymes, as they are also called, represented popular culture. The idea of a social bandit or a bandit rebel, understood by Eric Hobsbawm as the one who “challenges the economic, social and political order” (Bandits 7), is related to social justice and injustice, which has always been present in folklore. Not only the medieval and later Robin Hood can be defined as a social bandit, but such outlaws as Janosik and Ondrašek, provincial as they are according to Hobsbawm (Bandits 47), fulfill the criteria for it. The two lived respectively in the Slovakian and Polish mountains in the 18th and 19th centuries and in the legends they opposed both aristocracy and the Hapsburg rule that stood behind this aristocracy. In Australia Ned Kelly has its admirers, who relate him both to the class conflicts of the 19th-century Australia and to the social wrongs that supposedly affect some Australians at present.

Both folk and popular cultures have been open to the concept of social ills that outlaws may oppose, or at least such are the legends about them.



The topics related to this may refer to literary texts, films, graphic novels, and all the other material that represents popular and folk culture. The topics may include, for example:

-outlaws that opposed social injustice: the legend and the historical background

-reworking old myths into those that cater for the current needs

-ideologies behind the idea of social justice in the texts of culture about outlaws

-the concept of the law and justice in outlaw narratives

-popular reworkings of old myths about social bandits

-nationalistic and racist uses of the outlaw myths



All other topics related to this are also welcome.



Please send your 200-word abstract by March 31, 2025 to Dr. Anna Czarnowus at:

annaczarnowus@op.pl.

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

Reposted from the IARHS listserv:

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

1. ECOMEDIEVAL ROBIN HOOD

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

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

2. OUTLAW ENVIRONMENTS

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

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

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

CFP Outlaw Bodies Updated Deadline (6/26/2022; SEMA Birmingham 11/10-12/2022)

Updated deadline:

Dear IARHS Members,


SEMA has extended its deadline for abstracts. Please see below and contact Sherron Lux if you'd like to propose a paper in a session that the IARHS sponsors for the conference.


Best wishes,
Alex Kaufman





International Association for Robin Hood Studies

Call for Papers

2022 Conference of the Southeastern Medieval Association

10-12 November in Birmingham, Alabama

Robin Hood and other medieval outlaws of fact and fiction engage in a variety of physical endeavors: archery, swordsmanship, wrestling, quarterstaff, hunting, even cross-dressing; they also pursue and escape (or seek to escape). When they fail to escape, their bodies may be tortured or killed in some manner. Living or dead, their bodies may also be objects, the subject of the gaze.

In keeping with the 2022 conference theme of the Southeastern Medieval Association (SEMA), “The Body and the Human,” the International Association for Robin Hood Studies invites paper proposals for two sessions titled “Outlaw Bodies.” SEMA 2022 will be in-person in Birmingham, Alabama, 10-12 November. Please send a 150- to 250-word abstract or proposal on any aspect of medieval outlaw bodies – historical, fictional, dramatized, filmed, etc. – to Sherron Lux at sherron_lux@yahoo.com by Sunday, 26 June 2022, with any technology requests.



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CFP Outlaw Bodies (6/1/2022; SEMA, Birmingham, AL, 11/10-12/2022)

CFP: Outlaw Bodies, SEMA, 10-12 Nov. 2022

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2022/04/25/cfp-outlaw-bodies-sema-10-12-nov-2022

deadline for submissions:
June 1, 2022

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

contact email:
sherron_lux@yahoo.com



International Association for Robin Hood Studies

Call for Papers

2022 Conference of the Southeastern Medieval Association

10-12 November in Birmingham, Alabama

Robin Hood and other medieval outlaws of fact and fiction engage in a variety of physical endeavors: archery, swordsmanship, wrestling, quarterstaff, hunting, even cross-dressing; they also pursue and escape (or seek to escape). When they fail to escape, their bodies may be tortured or killed in some manner. Living or dead, their bodies may also be objects, the subject of the gaze.

In keeping with the 2022 conference theme of the Southeastern Medieval Association (SEMA), “The Body and the Human,” the International Association of Robin Hood Studies invites paper proposals for two sessions titled “Outlaw Bodies.” SEMA 2022 will be in-person in Birmingham, Alabama, 10-12 November. Please send a 150- to 250-word abstract or proposal on any aspect of medieval outlaw bodies – historical, fictional, dramatized, filmed, etc. – to Sherron Lux at sherron_lux@yahoo.com by Wednesday, June 1, 2022, with any technology requests.



Last updated April 26, 2022

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 Outlaws, Boundaries and Borders (9/20/19; Leeds 2020)

From the Robin Hood list:

The IARHS are seeking papers for up to two sessions at the Leeds IMC in July next year.  The overall theme for this Congress is ‘Borders’, and our sessions will be entitled ‘Outlaws, Boundaries and Borders’.

Outlaws traverse, transcend and transgress borders of many kinds: geographical, societal, political and ideological.  Their stories have been continually popular since the Middle Ages, crossing boundaries between the literary and the oral (spoken and sung), word and image, verbal and physical performance.  Some, such as the tales of Robin Hood, have had international, multilingual appeal and influence.  Outlaw tales have appeared in a wide variety of media, never more so than in modern times, with the advent of film, gaming and other forms of digital technology. As the general Congress call for papers puts it:

‘Borders are associated with power and the formation of states, definitions of self and other, violence and military engagement, belonging and becoming, material and symbolic construction, relational and perspectival production of space, mapping and discourse, experience and theory, to negotiation and performance. Borders occur in frescoes, textiles, clothing, ceramics or coins, with practical, symbolic or aesthetic functions. Borders are also subject to evolution and significant change over time not just between the medieval and modern, but also within the medieval period.’

Themes given include:

• Political and military borders
• Living in border zones
• Medieval and Modern perceptions, descriptions, and conceptualizations of borders
• Delimiting borders, border markers
• Border maintenance
• Encountering and experiencing borders
• Bordering practices
• Borderscapes in the longue durée
• Symbolic borders
• Belonging and exclusion
• Mapping borders and border zones
• Border institutions
• Materiality of borders
• Border and power
• Migration
• Medieval imagery of borders
• Transnationalism
• Political, social, cultural, religious performance of borders
• Village and parish boundaries
• Boundaries between town and countryside and within towns
• Practices of delimitation
• Blurring boundaries such as human/animal, animate/inanimate, gender, age, status, religion
• Self and other, boundaries of the self
• Fluidity and fixity of borders
• Borders in manuscripts
• Material and visual borders
• Processual and performative turns and medieval borders
• Disciplinary boundaries
• Paratexts as borders
• Borders of the body
• Transcending and reaffirming boundaries between life and death
• Borders, boundaries, frontiers

 

If you would like to offer a paper for a session on ‘Outlaws, Boundaries and Borders’, please send your proposal, including the paper’s title and an abstract of 100-200 words, together with your preferred contact address and email, to Dr Lesley Coote (L.A.Coote@hull.ac.uk) by September 20th 2019 (at the very latest).  Although we especially welcome papers on medieval outlaws, papers may focus on any historical period from the medieval to the modern, and on any national culture.

CFP Ludic Outlaw: Medievalism, Games, Sport, and Play (9/15/19; Kalamazoo 2020)

CFP: “The Ludic Outlaw: Medievalism, Games, Sport, and Play”

Roundtable sponsored by the International Association for Robin Hood Studies

International Congress on Medieval Studies (ICMS), Kalamazoo 2020
   

Cross-platform video games are now so popular as to constitute a financial threat to Netflix and other digital content services. One feature of many of these games is the ludic outlaw figure—found, for example, in the 2016 multiplayer Overwatch—that works to resist oppression within the game world. Because they signify popular definitions of justice and communal welfare, modern digital outlaws frequently evoke medieval outlaw representations, such as Robin Hood. In what specific ways do enduring medieval outlaw tropes function as model responses to oppression in modern games?


This roundtable session seeks 10- to 15-minute papers that interrogate the role(s) of any outlaw figure that fights for popular interests in games. Though particular attention will be given to papers that include an examination of a digital ludic outlaw, submissions concerned with tabletop games, live action role-playing games, and others will be considered. Analyses of the ways in which ludic outlaw figures are poised as responses to the dominant narrative within gaming culture are especially welcome.



Please send your 250-word abstract, Participant Information Form (https://wmich.edu/sites/default/files/attachments/u434/2019/medieval-pif-2020.pdf), and brief bio to Gayle Fallon at lfallo1@lsu.edu by September 15, 2019.

CFP Reassessing the Matter of the Greenwood (9/15/19; Kalamazoo 2020)

CALL FOR PAPERS

“Reassessing the Matter of the Greenwood”

Sponsored Session of the International Association for Robin Hood Studies (IARHS)

International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, MI, May 7-10, 2020


Historian Maurice Keen’s study The Outlaws of Medieval Legend, first published in 1961, remains a significant contribution to outlaw studies. After noticing a number of shared themes, motifs, and styles in medieval outlaw narratives, Keen argued for a new fourth “matter” to join those of Britain, France, and Troy: the greenwood. It is time for a reassessment of his contribution. What are the significant characteristics of a text needed to classify it as a greenwood matter? Can medieval outlaw works exist as hybrid matters? How can we account for matters of the greenwood outside of medieval Western Europe? The papers in this session will examine verse and prose literary texts from the Middle Ages, and scholars are encouraged to think critically about genre and generic markers, the transmission of texts into various literary, cultural, and historical environments, and how shared textual characteristics formulate traditions.



Please send 250-word abstracts and a completed Participant Information Form (PIF) by September 15, 2019, to Alex Kaufman: alkaufman@bsu.edu.



PIF form can be found here: https://wmich.edu/sites/default/files/attachments/u434/2019/medieval-pif-2020.docx

CFP International Association for Robin Hood Studies (9/15/18; Kalamazoo ICMS 2019)

A notice from the Robin Hood Scholars Google Group. Please consider submitting a proposal, if you can:

A reminder that the International Association for Robin Hood Studies is sponsoring three sessions at the 2019 International Congress on Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo (ICMS 2019), 9-12 May 2019. The session themes are: "Rhetoric of Resistance," "Social Bandits," and "Animal Crime."


The organizers of these three sessions are still accepting abstracts and PIFs for consideration.


See below for details and contact information about each session.


CFP: ICMS 2019 "Rhetoric of Resistance"

Though banished from society for real or alleged crimes, the deeds of outlaws are celebrated in popular narratives and ballads. Marginalized figures, they exist on the fringes of civilization in an adversarial relationship with the representatives of the law. In this session, we will address the political status of the Green Wood as a rhetorical concept of "safe harbor," a refuge for the displaced, the ostracized, and the dispossessed. We welcome papers on medieval narratives and ballads of such celebrated outlaws as Robin Hood, Hereward, Eustace the Monk, and Fouke Fitz Waryn, among others, and aim to address the ethical, political, and ecological issues raised by the rhetoric of this body of medieval literature. Collectively, the session and its participants will consider how outlaw rhetoric comments upon the justice system and its representatives, thereby formulating a medieval rhetoric of resistance.


This is a paper session (15-20 minute papers) for the 2019 International Congress on Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo. Please send abstracts (150-250 words) and a completed PIF form (see links below) to Lydia Kertz at lydia[dot]kertz@gmail.com with a subject line "Rhetoric of Resistance" by September 15th, 2018.


CFP: ICMS 2019 “Social Bandits”

The idea of the social bandit, aka the good thief or the noble robber, reaches back millennia and is found around the globe. The social bandit, whether an individual or a group, historical or fictional, is seen by a segment of a society as protecting and assisting them. Even an historical social bandit may develop into myth or legend, and the legend lives and changes long after the originator is dead. The legend of a fictional social bandit likewise shifts over time; as Brian Alderson states that while many years ago he wrote that “’Every generation gets the Robin Hood that it deserves,’” he now believes that, “Every generation surely creates for itself the Robin Hood that it needs” (Forward to Kevin Carpenter’s 1995 Robin Hood: The Many Faces of that Celebrated English Outlaw, p. 9). This could be said not only of Robin Hood but of all fictional and even historical social bandits who are perceived as robbing the rich to help the poor in some way or other.


This session seeks 15- to 20-minute papers on any aspect of the social bandit, with special consideration given to papers focusing on the medieval and early modern periods. It is also worth remembering that one person’s social bandit is another’s common criminal; consider the viewpoint of the Sheriff of Nottingham, for example, or other antagonists, as well as that of people kindly disposed towards the outlaw.


Please send a short proposal and completed PIF form (see links below) to Sherron Lux at sherron_lux@yahoo.com BY noon (Central Time) on Wednesday 12 September 2018.


CFP: ICMS 2019 “Animal Crime”

Outlaws and outlawry are commonly associated with the human; yet, throughout the medieval period, animals were both the subject of crime, as when they were stolen, maimed, or killed, and its perpetrator; for example, the sow and piglets put on trial for murder for killing a 5-year old boy in Savigny, France in 1457. Documented legal trials from a variety of cultures featuring pigs, goats, horses, dogs and cows suggest that medieval understandings of the moral agency, ethics, and politics of outlaws and outlawry was decidedly not simply a human affair, but extended to our animal counterparts. Papers might consider the historically-documented or literary or textual (re)imagining of a trial or set of trials featuring an animal or animals; how animals interact with outlaw humans; the moral agency of animals on trial; the ethics of putting animals on trial; the ethics of outlawing animals; how animals can be constructed as outlaws philosophically, legally, or by other means, how and where animals appear in laws, the treatment of animal outlaws, animal exiles, and similar.


Send abstracts and a completed PIF form (see links below) to Dr. Melissa Ridley Elmes at MElmes@lindenwood.edu by 15 September, 2018.


2019 Medieval Congress Participant Information Form (PIF):
https://www.wmich.edu/sites/default/files/attachments/u434/2018/medieval-2019-pif.pdf
or see https://www.wmich.edu/medievalcongress/submissions for a form in Microsoft Word.