CFP Medievalist Fantasy and Science Fiction (6/13/2026; NEPCA 10/15-17/2026 online)

Northeast Popular Culture Association conference
15-17 October 2026
ONLINE SESSION


Session Proposal:

Medievalist Fantasy and Science Fiction

This session intends to put together discussions about medievalist fantasy and medievalist science fiction. It could be argued that medievalist fantasy is more related to the historical Middle Ages while science fiction medievalism is more generic, hence it includes elements of medieval provenance, yet without resorting to the historical period. Yet medievalist science fiction has been trying to overcome this limitation and increasingly there are analyses of how medieval history and literature reverberates in sci-fi. On the other hand, medievalist elements in fantasy that do not point to specific elements in the history or literature need to be adequately addressed as well.

Please send an abstract of up to 250 words to: annaczarnowus@op.pl
The deadline for the abstracts is 13 June 2026

CFP ISSM Sponsored Sessions List for Kalamazoo 2026 (proposals by 9/15/2025)

ISSM at ICMS 2026

Source: https://medievalisms.org/issm-at-icms-2026/

ISSM will be sponsoring four online sessions during the 61st ICMS (May 14-16, 2026). Submissions for possible inclusion on one of our panels listed below need to be made in ICMS’s Confex System by Friday, September 15. For questions on any of the topics, please email the contact person listed after the session description. And feel free to share widely with anyone who might be interested in these topics!

1: Political Medievalisms 

(Michael Evans: michaelevans@delta.edu )

Medievalism continues to play a significant role in the world of politics. This session seeks to reach beyond the many discussions of the Alt-Right to consider other forms of medievalisms in politics, including modern monarchies, real or imagined; the use of medievalism, new feudalism, and historical claims in labor and worker’s rights movements; the Papal Conclave and election of Pope Leo XIV; medieval imagery, language, or claims in political campaigns; recollections of the medieval past in government’s self-constructions or as justifications for actions, etc.

II: Medievalisms in Space 

(Angela Weisl: angela.weisl@shu.edu for now)

Building on several successful sessions on Science Fiction Medievalisms, this session seeks to consider specifically what happens when the Middle Ages turns up in Outer Space. How is the past created in the future, and to what end? How is the Middle Ages imagined disconnected from the planet on which it took place? How does Medieval space get negotiated in Outer Space?

III: Global Medievalisms 

(Angela Weisl: angela.weisl@shu.edu)

This session seeks to consider medievalisms outside of Europe and North America. We are particularly interested in papers on medievalism in the Global South and how European implanted cultures have left their medieval mark far from home, as well as how these non-European cultures make use of, understand, and imagine their own pasts to contrast, combat, or reject colonial medievalisms. We are also particularly interested in how Catholic medievalisms function and create continuity (or discontinuity) in places where the Church has played an instrumental part of colonial implantation of Western culture, and what about its current function might reflect its medieval past.

IV: Medievalism and Costume 

 (Angela Weisl: angela.weisl@shu.edu )

This session seeks to investigate the medieval in clothing, costume, and ritual. How does the medieval influence fashion? What is the rhetoric of clothing at Renaissance Fairs? In LARPing and Reenactment? In Academic Regalia? Papers might consider popular figures, such as Chappell Roan, who inflect the medieval in their costuming, and what it says about how they understand themselves and their public position.

CFP Bodies and Borders: PKMS 2023 CFP (1/31/2023; online event 5/5/2023)

Bodies and Borders: PKMS 2023 CFP

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2022/09/14/bodies-and-borders-pkms-2023-cfp

deadline for submissions:
January 31, 2023

full name / name of organization:
Pearl Kibre Medieval Study

contact email:
medieval.study@gmail.com



What: Pearl Kibre Medieval Study 17th Annual Conference

Where: Online, hosted through The Graduate Center, CUNY
When: Friday 5 May 2023
Submission Form: https://forms.gle/4cUBLj9oXepsvwsV7

Jeffery Jerome Cohen argues in his introduction to Medieval Identity Machines that these systems of meaning making pull the “human outside of itself, breaking its self-contained organization to disaggregate the body into pieces more intimate with stars and planets than with each other” with a “pancosmic fluidity that mingles the human, animal, vegetal, and inorganic” (xvi). Recognizable medieval images like the zodiac man, the knight riding his horse, and the lovesick lovers are all identity machines, disrupting the stable borders of the body and giving medieval people the language and the models to imagine their bodies as extending beyond their physical form alone. The barber surgeon with his scalpel; the farrier and his horses; the woman in labor wrapped in a prayer scroll to St. Margaret - all of these people learned that their bodies were not limited by the boundary of their skin. What happens to the category of “the human” when these medieval systems of meaning-making decentralize the anthropocene and disrupt definitions of bodily integrity?

This conference is interested in exploring the limits, borders, and boundaries of the medieval body, broadly understood as both the physical body and larger structural understandings of medieval societies as bodies that rely on their component parts to survive. The concept of a “body” itself in a medieval context is a flexible one, encompassing not only an individual’s body but metaphors for social concepts and institutions, in which every member of society is associated with part of a larger whole. Concepts like the social body, the body of the nation, and the king’s two bodies are both comprehensive and limited, encompassing entire societies but also frequently excluding those outside their boundaries. We are interested in projects that explore these wider systems as well as the more granular system of natural bodies, both in their normal operations and in the ways they break down, confuse, and conflict.

Papers might address the following topics:

• Boundaries and limits of the human body
• Symbolic categories of “bodies”, both human and non-human
• Posthumanism, bestiaries, and the borders of the anthropocene
• Speculative fictions, both premodern (history plays, medieval political imaginaries) and modern (cyberpunk, afrofuturism, etc.) that imagine a social body
• Disability and prosthesis
• The body as imagined in medievalism vs. the medieval conception of the body
• Medical humanities and the history of medieval emotions (the borders of the body/mind)

Abstract Deadline: Jan 31 2023
Registration Deadline: April 5 2023


categories
gender studies and sexuality
graduate conferences
interdisciplinary
medieval
theory

Last updated November 7, 2022

CFP Inter/Dis-connections (2/5/22; online/U Mass Amherst 4/30/22)

Inter/Dis-connections

deadline for submissions: February 5, 2022

full name / name of organization: English Graduate Organization at University of Massachusetts Amherst

contact email: englishconference@umass.edu

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2021/12/07/interdis-connections



The UMass Amherst English Graduate Organization is happy to present their 2022 conference, titled Inter/Dis-connections with Keynote Speaker Professor Wai Chee Dimock (English Department, Yale University, and Center for the Environment, Harvard University). The conference will take place on April 30th, 2022.

The 2022 English Graduate Organization Conference interrogates aspects of interconnectivity and disconnection that manifest themselves either implicitly or explicitly throughout the planet. As much as COVID-19 seemed to have created a ‘new normal,’ the pandemic only served to normalize what we already know: we are simultaneously connected to and disconnected from each other in a myriad of ways. The plurality of socio-political, ideological, environmental, and public health conditions that we exist within, and has been accentuated by the Covid-19 pandemic, intersects with disparities in race, gender, and sexual politics. Moreover, the liminal nature of borders, islands, oceans, and maps already contextualizes our existence through considerations of non-human agents. As we are situated by materials that continuously alter and dictate our approaches from the global context, issues such as displacement, migration, nationalism, transnationalism, inter-imperiality, and competing internationalism (s) trigger other versions of how we are simultaneously inter-and dis-connected.

Following these concerns, this conference looks for diverse connections, interpretations, perspectives, and possible solutions regarding the various manifestations of interconnections and dis-connections. Through these perspectives, we raise questions such as: How can we rethink our identities in relation to those whose identities are erased or distorted, or ignored? How can we reimagine the racialized and gendered global infrastructure? How can we visualize the impact of a global pandemic on archives that will be compiled? How do we remap our spatial and conceptual borders? Most importantly, how do we think nationally, internationally, or globally?

In addition to these questions, the scope of this present call is purposely broad so as to welcome a wide range of approaches, particularly those of an interdisciplinary orientation. Possible topics may include (but are not limited to):

• (Re)-imagining locality, globality, and planetarity
• Migration, Dispossession, and Assimilation
• Medieval Worldbuilding
• American (un)exceptionalism
• World Deconstruction and Reconstruction through SF (science fiction, speculative fiction, fantasy, and folklore)
• Ruins and Revolts
• Memory and Archives
• Alternative Narratives and Futurities
• Race, Ethnicity, and Empire
• Rhetoric, Digital Media, and Social Justice
• Pollution, Pandemic, and Politics in a pre-and post-COVID world

We invite contributors to submit their proposals through this google form link by 5th February 2022. Please feel free to direct any questions, suggestions, and concerns to the conference email address: ​​englishconference@umass.edu. We are looking forward to an online event.




Last updated February 3, 2022

CFP Constructing Fantastical Worlds from Antiquity to the Present (3/15/22; Amsterdam 6/30-7/1/22)

Constructing Fantastical Worlds from Antiquity to the Present

deadline for submissions: March 15, 2022

full name / name of organization: University of Amsterdam

contact email: constructingfantasticalworlds@gmail.com

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2022/01/21/constructing-fantastical-worlds-from-antiquity-to-the-present

Constructing Fantastical Worlds: from Antiquity to the Present

University of Amsterdam, Thursday 30th June– Friday 1st July 2022

Keynote Speakers: Dr Benjamin Stevens (Trinity University) and Dr Rutger Allan (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam)

This interdisciplinary two-day workshop is devoted to the construction of fantastical worlds across various narrative media from antiquity to the present.

In recent years, media and literary studies have drawn attention to the process of constructing ‘imaginary’ or ‘secondary’ worlds. We define these fantastical universes as fictional worlds that involve creatures and/or events whose existence and/or occurrence is impossible in our actual world. Being often heterotopic and heterochronic and endowed with their own geographies, populations, histories, governments, etc., fantastical worlds may in complex ways reflect, contrast, and/or transcend ordinary reality.

Yet while this phenomenon is generally considered to originate in Tolkien, fantastical worldbuilding can be recognised in antiquity as well. Recent studies in classical literature and receptions have emphasised the fantasy-like quality of classics like Homer’s Odyssey, Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and Plato’s eschatological myths, while linguists and narratologists have brought to light literary devices that might be used by ancient authors to construct fantastical worlds and mediate the audience’s experience of them. Rarely, however, has the connection been made between the classical and contemporary construction of fantastical worlds, let alone between classics and modern media studies. The overarching aim of the workshop is to launch such an interdisciplinary discussion in search of a comparative, diachronic perspective on fantastical worldbuilding.

Principally, the workshop will focus on the how of fantastical worldbuilding, i.e., on the devices and techniques used in different times and media to create a fantastical world, as well as the ways in which this world is presented as different from yet somehow anchored in reality.

We invite papers that address one (or more) of the following research questions:

• What devices do authors or artists use to construct fantastical worlds? (E.g., common ground management, deixis, the general rendering of time and space)
• How are these fantastical worlds anchored to the audience’s actual world, and what devices are used to express this relationship? (E.g., metalepsis, immersive/enactive devices, shifts in the deictic centre)
• How do fantastical worlds encourage the audience to reflect on the actual world? (E.g., metaphor, metonymy, contrast)
• What differences and similarities exist between the construction of fantastical worlds in different periods and different media?
• How are the devices used by ancient authors to construct fantastical worlds reused (consciously or unconsciously) in later times?

We are interested in contributions from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds that discuss the construction of fantastical worlds in or across different media (e.g., written narratives, drama, film, television, video games). Papers may focus on single narratives, authors, and periods, or discuss fantastical worldbuilding techniques more broadly, e.g., from a theoretical, comparative or reception point of view.

The workshop will take place in Amsterdam on the 30th of June and the 1st of July 2022. Should the state of the pandemic require it, the workshop will be held on the same days as either a hybrid or a virtual event.

We invite submissions for 25-minute presentations. To register your interest, please submit an anonymous abstract of max. 400 words (excluding references and bibliography) to constructingfantasticalworlds@gmail.com by the 15th of March 2022. Your name and affiliation should be included in the body of your email. We aim to respond no later than the 15th of April.

This workshop is generously funded by OIKOS, the National Research School in Classical Studies in the Netherlands, and the gravitation project Anchoring Innovation.

Please do not hesitate to contact us with any questions.

The organizing team: Caterina Fossi (c.fossi@uva.nl), Merlijn Breunesse (m.r.e.breunesse@uva.nl) and Koen Vacano (k.vacano@uva.nl)



Last updated January 21, 2022

CFP Crashing the Canon: A Spotlight for the Underrepresented in Higher Education (Spec Issue of The Humanities Review; 12/22/2021)

This seems amenable to our work:

Crashing the Canon: A Spotlight for the Underrepresented in Higher Education

deadline for submissions: December 22, 2021

full name / name of organization: The Humanities Review / St. John's University

contact email: Alexander.radison21@my.stjohns.edu

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2021/11/21/crashing-the-canon-a-spotlight-for-the-underrepresented-in-higher-education

When we think of the western literary canon, we tend to think of the famous authors and works that have shaped our literary and scholarly culture into what it is today: Dante, Shakespeare, Milton, Dickens, Twain, Whitman, and the list goes on and on. But In our age of cultural and technological advancement, we believe that the bodies of works we consider worthy of study should also reflect the current world around us. Thus, the goal of this issue of The Humanities Review is to shine a spotlight on those authors, works, and platforms which have not yet found a home in the literary/academic canon, but still merit the kind of close literary analysis afforded to the canon. Though there have been recent movements to include more BIPOC, women, and LGBTQIA+ writers on that list, more can be done to highlight the immense and important body of work by these underrepresented writers. The same can be said for modern genre fiction as well, particularly those genres which operate in the realm of wonder--science fiction, fantasy, magical realism, supernatural horror, etc. Likewise, traditional novels and collections of poetry currently dominate the list, but what about newer platforms that employ writing such as comics, graphic novels, film and TV, and video games? Should they be considered in the canon conversation as well?

Included in this historical literary tradition is the hierarchy of language. So, in crashing the canon, we also ask one to consider how standard English has been used to reinforce class, racial, and ethnic segregation in academia and through literature. Should the academy, thus, include into its canon multilingual, multidialectal, AAVE and other vernacular voices/writings?

We are open to any and all works that discuss the aforementioned underrepresented writers and genres, as well as creative works of poetry, fiction, drama, and translation, from/about the same. We are also open to relevant book reviews, as well as art/photography for both inside the journal, and the cover.

 

Just a few examples of topics that may fit in this issue:

• Lesser known/under-studied works from any author/time period
• Underrepresented/under-studied works and authors specifically from the BIPOC and LGBTQIA+ communities
• Analysis of works of genre fiction including, but not limited to: Science fiction and its sub-genres (cyberpunk, dystopian, posthumanism, etc) - Fantasy and its subgenres (high, low, magical realism, etc) - Noir/detective - Horror/supernatural - Comics and graphic novels on any subject - Modern and/or under-studied works from film and television - Video games and/or video games as a genre
• Critical analyses of non-standard English in scholarship/academia
• Works of creative writing (open to all, but underrepresented genres and writers especially encouraged)

Editors are currently seeking abstracts of 250 words with a working title along with a CV by December 22, 2021. If your abstract is accepted, the final deadline for full submissions is February 22, 2022.

Submissions must be sent as Microsoft Word documents (.doc or .docx only) attached via email (i.e. not in the body text of the email) to both editors: alexander.radison21@my.stjohns.edu & kainat.cheema21@my.stjohns.edu Submissions must be double-spaced, adhering to MLA format (in-text citations, works cited page, etc.).

Book reviews and interviews should be no more than 1,000 words; essays and all other submissions no more than 5,000 words.

For creative works, send no more than 3-5 poems or 1 short story/dramatic work. You may submit both academic works and creative works for the same issue.

The St. John’s University Humanities Review is a peer-reviewed publication. You will be notified promptly after the deadline if your submission is accepted.

Last updated November 22, 2021

CFP Medievalism and Genre: Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Historical Fiction (9/15/21; Kalamazoo 2022)

Posted on behalf of the organizers (from the ISSM list):

Session Title: Medievalism and Genre: Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Historical Fiction (Session ID: 2862)

ISSM-sponsored session at ICMS 2022

The “flavor” of many creative medievalisms shifts radically from genre to genre, yet these changes have largely been considered within the home genre and mode of the text in question – for example, a historical romance novel might be explored within the contexts of historical fiction or the romance novel genre, but not as a subset of medievalism. This panel seeks to upend those norms by considering medievalism as the broad umbrella category and exploring texts that play with genre, or texts working within a specific genre, for example the forthcoming film Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (2021). 

We invite proposals that explore the influence of the genres of science fiction, fantasy, and historical fiction upon medievalism, whether the field overall or in specific works (of any medium or mode). For example, how might romances like Sir Gawain and the Green Knight change meaning in a new genre, such as science fiction or fantasy? Proposals might consider specific texts, or ask broader questions including: how do speculative genres influence, restrict, or expand the potential of medievalism, or change the types of stories told? Where does genre cross over with medievalism?

Submissions of 250-300 WORDS should be made via the ICMS Confex system https://icms.confex.com/icms/2022am/cfp.cgi no later than Wednesday 15 September 2021.  If you have questions, please contact vjohnso6@montevallo.edu.

Our NeMLA 2021 Sessions

Details on our sponsored sessions this weekend. Apologies for the delay in posting. 

The 52nd Annual Convention of the Northeast Modern Language Association

Virtual event, 11-14 March 2021

Full details at http://www.buffalo.edu/nemla/convention/VirtualConvention-page.html.

 

Saturday, Mar 13 (Track 22): 09:00-10:15           

22.20 Can We Be More Than the Middle Ages? Medievalism Studies and Medieval Studies (Roundtable)

Chair: Michael Torregrossa, Independent Scholar

Chair: Carl Sell, Lock Haven University

Pedagogy & Professional & Cultural Studies and Media Studies

"The Perverted Anglo-Saxon: White Nationalism in the Medieval Classroom"

Maggie Hawkins, New York University

"Medievalisms in the Medieval Literature Classroom, Or Attempts to Do Everything in One Semester"

Kara McShane, Ursinus College

"The Historical Novel. A Genre, Trespassing a Science-Literature Border?"

Paul Csillag, Universität Innsbruck

 

Saturday, Mar 13 (Track 23): 10:30-12:00           

23.42 Uncharted Medievalisms: Revealing the Medieval in Popular Fiction and Games

Chair: Michael Torregrossa, Independent Scholar

Cultural Studies and Media Studies & Comparative Literature

"Queer Roleplaying Impulses: Building Neomedieval Narratives in Dungeons & Dragons"

Lars Johnson, Cornell University

"Wizard Male Privilege: A Literary History of Misogyny and Gendered Magic"

Richard Fahey, University of Notre Dame

"These Are Fighting Words: Challenging and Perpetuating the Status Quo"

Rachael Warmington, Seton Hall University

"Arthurian Figures in the 41st Millennium: The Emperor and Roboute Guilliman in Warhammer 40,000"

Carl Sell, Lock Haven University

CFP Uncharted Medievalisms: Revealing the Medieval in Popular Fiction and Games (Panel) (9/30/2020; NeMLA Philadelphia 3/11-14/2021)

Uncharted Medievalisms: Revealing the Medieval in Popular Fiction and Games (Panel)

52nd Annual Convention of the Northeast Modern Language Association

Marriott Downtown Philadelphia, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, from 11-14 March 2021

Paper abstracts are due by 30 September 2020

Session organized by Carl B. Sell and Michael A. Torregrossa and sponsored by the Association for the Advancement of Scholarship and Teaching of the Medieval in Popular Culture.


As Umberto Eco once observed, “people like the Middle Ages,” and medievalism flourishes across the globe, with medievalist settings and ideologies used in popular, fictional settings that are widely known in their respective communities. However, critical exploration of these medievalisms has been lacking, save for the most common such settings, like Lewis’s Narnia, Le Guin’s Earthsea, Martin’s Westeros, and Tolkien’s Middle-earth. Consequently, this panel proposes to examine the extent to which medievalism is used by other, perhaps less well-trodden settings, including, but not limited to, the worlds of Dungeons & Dragons, Chaosium’s rereleased Pendragon RPG, and Terry Brooks’s Shannara and Terry Goodkind’s The Sword of Truth series; the Old World and 41st Millennium of Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000; the video game realities of Diablo, Elder Scrolls, Final Fantasy, Fire Emblem, and Warcraft; and similar popular shared worlds of other board games, comics, fiction, RPGs, and video games. Critical explorations of the ways that these settings use and add to medievalism(s), including the more famous worlds, are encouraged.


This session is a paper panel in traditional format, which will include 3-4 participants, reading a formal paper of 15-20 minutes (2500-3000 words) as set by the chair, followed by Q&A.

The direct link for this session is https://www.cfplist.com/nemla/Home/S/18676. Please contact the organizers at MedievalinPopularCulture@gmail.com with any questions or concerns.


Abstract submissions must be made through NeMLA’s official site. Applicants will need to login or create an account at https://www.cfplist.com/nemla/Home/login. Submissions must begin with a paper title of not more than 100 characters (including spaces) and adhering to the following: capitalize titles by MLA formatting rules unless the title is in a language other than English; do not use quotation marks in the session title or abstract title itself but please use only single quotation marks around titles of short stories, poems, and similar short works; italicize the titles of long works mentioned in the paper title; and do not place a period at the end of the title. Submissions should also include an academic biography (usually transferred from your NeMLA profile) and a paper abstract of not more than 300 words; be sure to italicize or use quotation marks around titles according to MLA guidelines.


Please be aware that NeMLA membership is not required to submit abstracts, but it is required to present at the convention. In addition, note that it is permissible to present on (1) a panel (or seminar) and (2) a roundtable or a creative session, but it is not permissible to present on a panel and a seminar (because both are paper-based), on two panels or two roundtables (because both would be the same type). Further information on these and other policies can be accessed at http://www.buffalo.edu/nemla/convention/callforpapers/submit.html.


Chairs will confirm the acceptance of abstracts before 15 October 2020. At that time, applicants must confirm the panel on which they wish to participate. Convention registration/membership for 2020-2021 must be paid by 9 December 2020.

Second Possible Session for Kalamazoo 2019

Here is a second session proposal I have been working on.

Again, please post feedback in the comments and/or attend our buisness meeting next Saturday at Kalamazoo.

Michael Torregrossa
Founder, Association for the Advancement of Scholarship and Teaching of the Medieval in Popular Culture

Quondam et Futurus?

Reflections on Medieval-Themed Science Fiction

For most of us, the Middle Ages exists in the past. We can connect to it through histories, literary texts, and post-medieval re-creations of the medieval, but we cannot envision a future for the Middle Ages. However, the science fiction genre does allow the possibility of imagining new versions of the medieval in futuristic settings. The Star Wars saga, begun in 1977 and having celebrated its fortieth anniversary in 2017, represents one such attempt to create a medieval world of knights and wizards within a science-fictional setting filled—despite its promise that it exists “a long time ago”—with advanced technology, such as robots, spacecraft, world destroyers, and laser swords. Star Wars is not the only work that gives us a glimpse into a future for the Middle Ages; other texts have also offered updated examples of the Middle Ages, and still more of them have brought medieval figures and artifacts forward to engage with the humans and aliens of future ages. Furthermore, science fiction also allows reconsiderations of the origins of familiar medieval figures, beliefs, and practices to offer innovative beginnings to these elements through science-fictional tropes. However, despite the possibility for engaging with the medieval in these ways and the popularity of these works by fans, medievalists, in general, have been slow to catalogue such representations of medievalism, preferring, it seems, more familiar versions of the Middle Ages grounded in either the mundane or the fantastic rather than the speculative. Through this session, we hope to advance the dialogue between Medieval Studies and Science Fiction Studies by looking anew at how the creators of science fiction have engaged with medieval motifs and to begin to explore the value of these works in our classrooms and research.

 

CFP Science Fiction in the Middle Ages and the Middle Ages in Science Fiction (9/30/15; NeMLA 2016)

Science Fiction in the Middle Ages and the Middle Ages in Science Fiction (Panel)
NeMLA's 47th annual convention, March 17 to 20, 2016 in Hartford, CT
Primary Area / Secondary Area: British / Comparative Literature
Chair(s): Timothy Miller (Sarah Lawrence College)
Proposals by September 30, 2015.

Abstract
Medieval European literature played a defining role in the development of modern fantasy fiction, and genre fantasy has already received a great deal of critical attention in the academic study of medievalism. By comparison, the complex relationship of genre science fiction to the Middle Ages has been sorely understudied, and this session will include papers that consider either or both of the topics in its title, that is, on the one hand, the appearance or influence of "the medieval," broadly conceived, in modern science fiction. Such papers might examine how certain works of SF (re)construct the medieval: fruitful examples would include a text like Frank Herbert's Dune, where neo-feudalism prevails; time travel novels in which contemporary characters return to an imagined Middle Ages; SF narratives written by medievalists (such as C. S. Lewis's Space Trilogy); or space operas that follow romance or folkloric formulae. Alternatively, papers in search of "science fiction in the Middle Ages" might apply to medieval texts concepts central to the academic study of science fiction -- Darko Suvin's "cognitive estrangement," Fredric Jameson's theory of utopia, and so on -- or examine any set of medieval discourses, impulses, or individual works that might be productively understood as some kind of equivalent to contemporary SF. Examples here might include dream visions in which the narrator traverses the celestial spheres, tales of impossible gadgets, or narratives of alchemical success or folly. Finally, papers that argue from a perspective denying the compatibility of the medieval worldview and the rationalist-empiricist discourse of science fiction would also be welcome. This session will advance our understanding of the place of (proto-)science in medieval fictions, but also attempt to account for the frequent reappearance of the medieval in the distinctly modern science fiction genre, which often takes pride in its modernity and defines itself against pre-Enlightenment epistemologies.

Description
This session will explore the reception and reconstruction of the Middle Ages in contemporary science fiction narrative, but also invites reconsiderations of the appearance of proto-scientific discourses in medieval literature itself, in search of possible connections between these phenomena. Accordingly, individual papers may address modern and/or medieval texts: neo-medieval science fiction masterworks such as Frank Herbert's Dune, where neo-feudalism prevails; time travel novels in which contemporary characters return to an imagined Middle Ages; SF narratives written by medievalists (such as C. S. Lewis's Space Trilogy); space operas that follow romance or folkloric formulae; or any medieval text with natural-scientific ambitions of its own (dream visions, marvel tales, alchemical ruminations, bestiaries, and more). By bringing SF theory and medievalizing science fiction in dialogue with the science and fiction of the Middle Ages, this session will advance our understanding of the place of (proto-)science in medieval literature, while also perhaps shedding light on the unexpectedly frequent reappearance of the medieval in the distinctively modern genre of science fiction genre, which so often takes pride in its modernity and defines itself against pre-Enlightenment epistemologies.

Submit Abstract at https://www.cfplist.com/nemla/Home/S/15692