The structure of Joan of Arc's early phase invites comparison to archetypal heroic narrative: reluctant departure, rejected petitioner, gatekeepers to persuade or evade, and the acquisition of skills and resolve before the great undertaking. Whether such comparisons illuminate Joan’s experience, distort it, or reveal more about her interpreters than Joan herself is the question this panel opens. What do we actually know about Joan before she became Joan? How have scholars, hagiographers, filmmakers, and popular adapters handled the silence and ambiguity of her early life? When Joan is made to fit a pattern, which Joan gets left out?

Joan of Arc’s story effectively begins for most audiences at Orléans–and yet the years before her departure from Domremy, the three rejections by Robert de Baudricourt, the leave-taking from her family, and the slow assembly of a public identity constitute one of the most contested and generative spaces in Johannic studies. The documentary record is thin, the mythologizing is thick, and the interpretive stakes are high. This panel invites scholars to examine Joan of Arc’s origins–historical, literary, and cultural–with particular attention to the threshold period between private calling and public action.

This panel seeks 15-minute presentations for an in-person format at the 2027 International Congress on Medieval Studies at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, MI, May 13-15

Papers on other aspects of Joan of Arc studies are also welcome.

Feel free to reach out to organizers with questions and ideas!  Tara Smithson (tsmithson@saintmarys.edu) and Scott Manning (scottmanning13@gmail.com)

Submit proposals on the conference website: https://icms.confex.com/icms/2027/prelim.cgi/Session/8524