medieval

CFP: Preach It, Sister! A Roundtable about Women and Homiletics
Sponsored by the Society for the Study of Anglo-Saxon Homiletics at the 53rd International Congress on Medieval Studies
Western Michigan University (Kalamazoo, MI), May 10-13, 2018

PCA/ACA 2018 NATIONAL CONFERENCE

TOLKIEN STUDIES AREA CFP

J.W. MARRIOTT INDIANAPOLIS DOWNTOWN, INDIANAPOLIS, IN

           MARCH 28-31, 2018

http://pcaaca.org/national-conference/

SUBMISSIONS: JULY 1-OCTOBER 1

Presenting at PCA/ACA:  http://pcaaca.org/national-conference/conference-details/ 

For information on the Tolkien Studies area, please contact: 

The medieval manuscript roll was remarkably versatile. Playing host to a variety of genres, the roll format was an omnipresent feature of the textual landscape throughout the Middle Ages. Though its popularity is often attributed to its portability or economical construction, scholars have also noted relationships between its form and the genres it contains. For example, the inverted images of Exultet rolls were visible to onlookers as the texts were read, while the continuous length of a roll could emphasise the continuous history of a chronicle or genealogy. At the same time, however, rolls contain many texts not obviously connected to their format: poetry, recipes, devotional texts, charms, poetry, and even chiromancy.

Twenty-seven years ago, Approaches to Teaching Medieval English Drama, edited by Richard K. Emmerson, presented possibilities for engaging students in the literary, theoretical, historical, and performative explorations of the field. Scholarship in the intervening decades has expanded these approaches and introduced new ones. Manuscript digitization, 3-D modeling of medieval cities, and online databases provide research and instructional opportunities far beyond those available in 1990. Research on Teaching and Learning and rhetorical pedagogies have demonstrated the importance of educational research and strong theoretical approaches. The panel welcomes theoretical and practical discussions of teaching all pre-modern drama.

In a 2013 special issue of the Chaucer Review, Arthur Bahr and Alexandra Gillespie encourage literary scholars to consider the aesthetic qualities of the medieval manuscript, in tandem with the text itself. For Bahr and Gillespie, the “forms of manuscripts can be read alongside, or as an intrinsicaspect of, the forms of literary texts.” These claims are, of course, part of a long-standing tradition in Anglo-American scholarship that considers how the mise-en-page of the medieval manuscript generates different modes of reading, from the lifelong work of Malcolm Parkes to the so-called “New Philology.”