medieval

The Early Proverb Society emphasizes the functions of that mobile, morphic form, the proverb.  EPS showcases our readings at a round table (three to four discussants and one respondent) and a panel of papers (three speakers) at the 55th Congress, May 7-10, 2020.  All methodological approaches are welcomed warmly.

Round table:  Medieval Proverbs:  Exchanges, Clashes, and Transactions

The Games Culture Society showcases the importance of games —and their various manifestations — in medieval culture. Importantly, the theoretical implications of games extends beyond the temporal and spatial borders of the game space itself into larger aesthetic, ethical, cultural, and social arenas. The GCS serves to highlight the importance and multivalent purpose of games in medieval culture as a way to understand better their function in society both then and now. We are pleased to announce the following Calls For Papers for the 55th International Congress on Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo, May 7 – 10, 2020:

Roundtable Description: 

“The Middle Ages” are created and maintained by those who imagine them today, lending urgency to the project of narrating a global medieval that resists the field’s racist and nationalist myths. Given a need for new imaginaries:

Medieval refugees’ stories can be difficult to access, but our own encounters with contemporary refugee crises may hint at the disruption that accompanied mass displacement in the Middle Ages. As millions across the globe continue to be uprooted, what can we learn about the experience of displacement in the medieval world? Persecution, war, plague, poverty, and other factors all contributed to forced migration and exile, as seen in the expulsions of Jews from England and France; the expulsion of Andalusi Muslims during Spain’s Reconquista; displacements caused by the Mongol invasions; and in the migration of peoples escaping the Black Death.

Call for Papers: SHARP @ RSA 2020

The Society for the History of Authorship, Reading & Publishing (SHARP) will sponsor up to four panels at the Renaissance Society of America’s annual meeting in Philadelphia, PA on 2-4 April, 2020. SHARP @ RSA brings together scholars working on any aspect of the creation, dissemination, and reception of manuscript and print and their digital remediation. We plan to sponsor at least two panels under the banner “New Voices in Book History,” so we welcome applications from participants new to RSA or SHARP, especially early career researchers.

International Congress of Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo 2020

Kinney Center for Interdisciplinary Renaissance Studies, University of Massachusetts Amherst, February 22, 2020

What are the ecological affordances of thinking with the medieval and early modern past? How can the environmental humanities inspire eco-mimetic modes of thinking and writing? This think-tank conference invites research-in-progress that parses the entanglements of nature and culture, the human and the nonhuman, the material and the metaphysical, to explore how medieval and early modern ecocritical scholarship might speak directly to contemporary political and social concerns.

The conference will include three panels, grouped thematically according to distinct modes of ecological entanglement:

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.

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

Gender in Global Medieval Mysticism

March 20-21, 2020

Ashoka University, Sonipat, Haryana, India

Keynote speakers:

Professor Liz Herbert McAvoy, Swansea University

Professor Sa'diyya Shaikh, University of Cape Town

As medievalism has made its way into mainstream medieval studies, and the teaching of medievalist film alongside medieval texts has become commonplace, what new opportunities and challenges do scholars of medievalist film studies face? These shifts have prompted heated debates in recent years on the values and dangers of teaching Game of Thrones in medieval studies classes, the inadequate framing of medievalist films as adaptations in literature classes and as fiction in history classes, and the formal differences between cinematic and written texts. This roundtable seeks short presentations that address some aspect of this development in scholarship and teaching.

For this session, we seek proposals exploring the factors shaping nineteenth- and twentieth-/twenty-first-century literature (in its broad sense) about the Middle Ages as well as the differences in approaches to the Middle Ages in each century. What historical, social, and intellectual views shaped nineteenth-century approaches to the Middle Ages? In what ways were these views limited or biased based on what the Victorians knew and believed and did not know, particularly when compared to advances in historical, psychological, and political knowledge in the next centuries? Conversely, what shaped twentieth-/twenty-first-century views of the Middle Ages?

CFP: Jerusalem the Holy City

The Stanford University Center for Medieval and Early Modern Studies (CMEMS) is pleased to announce that we will sponsor three sessions at the 55th International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, Michigan (May 7-10, 2020). Among these are two linked panel sessions entitled “Jerusalem: The Holy City.” The first considers medieval imaginings of a distant Jerusalem across textual, visual, and material culture, while the second considers Jerusalem as an interreligious experience among Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.