CFP Off of the Printed Prose Page: Multimodal Medievalisms (9/15/2025; ICMS Kalamazoo)

Off of the Printed Prose Page: Multimodal Medievalisms (A Paper Session)

deadline for submissions:
September 15, 2025

full name / name of organization:
Tales after Tolkien Society

contact email:
talesaftertolkien@gmail.com

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2025/07/09/off-of-the-printed-prose-page-multimodal-medievalisms-a-paper-session

ICMS 2026, Session 7569

While the pop culture landscape of books and films often borrow from and are inspired by "the medieval period"–as well as frequently disseminated, propagated, and influenced by neo-medievalist works such as those by Martin, Jordan, Sanderson, and Hobb–relatively little discourse focuses on how other types of contemporary works pull from the same and/or similar influences. With the increasing popularity of medievalism in games, music, etc., this paper panel seeks to prompt, deepen, and explore the study and discussion of the less commonly talked about–yet no less consumed–works and how they look to and use popular mis/understandings of the medieval.

Abstracts are due 15 September 2025 via Confex, https://icms.confex.com/icms/2026/prelim.cgi/Home/0


Last updated July 17, 2025

CFP Legacies of Tolkien's Whiteness in Contemporary Medievalisms (9/15/19; Kalamazoo 2020)

Legacies of Tolkien's Whiteness in Contemporary Medievalisms
https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2019/07/29/legacies-of-tolkiens-whiteness-in-contemporary-medievalisms

deadline for submissions:
September 15, 2019
full name / name of organization:
Tales after Tolkien Society
contact email:
talesaftertolkien@gmail.com


A roundtable session at the International Congress on Medieval Studies at Western Michigan University (www.wmich.edu/medievalcongress) examining the continuing effects of Tolkien's depictions of race in medievalist works; Rachel Cooper will preside.

Much criticism directs itself towards racial studies and postcolonial readings of the works of JRR Tolkien, arguing whether his works should be regarded as racist and what attitudes contemporary readers would be well served to adopt in response to them. Much attention in popular media has directed itself towards the use of medieval and medievalist works such as Tolkien's by white supremacist groups to offer themselves pseudo-intellectual and pseudo-historical support for their execrable agendas. The session looks for ways in which contemporary medievalist work (hopefully) unintentionally supports such efforts and what can be done to oppose them as things deserving all opposition.

Short proposals are welcome; please send to talesaftertolkien@gmail.com on or before 15 September 2019. Proposals from graduate students, those outside traditional academe, and traditionally underrepresented groups are especially welcome.

Last updated July 29, 2019

CFP Tales Afer Tolkien Society for Kalamazoo 2018

The Tales After Tolkien Society have announced their sessions for next year's International Congress on Medieval Studies. Sessions are as follows:

I. Reclaiming the Dead and the Undead
A paper session, the panel seeks to interrogate appropriations of medieval concepts of un/death in contemporary media, attending to how the medieval corporeal/spiritual divide is reinscribed and transgressed by the appropriations. In brief, it means to look at how recent ideas of un/death correspond with medieval antecedents and what that correspondence suggests.

II. Medievalism in Metal
A roundtable, the panel seeks to investigate medieval referentiality--acoustic, iconographic, thematic, and otherwise--in metal music and among metal bands. (The session will likely need to make use of a/v equipment.)

Send submissions to geoffrey.b.elliott@gmail.com.

Further information is on their website at http://talesaftertolkien.blogspot.com/2017/06/kalamazoo-2018.html.