medieval

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.

Environmental Violence

IMC Kalamazoo (May 7-10, 2020)

Organizer: Elizabeth S. Leet (eleet@fandm.edu)

Much early ecocriticism focused on natural spaces as complements to human agency. For example, studies of the hortus conclusus in medieval romance emblematize this view of nature as a fecund space mastered by humans. In our time of climate crisis, however, ecocritics seek to complicate anthropocentric views of medieval environments. By studying climates and environments that reject human dominion and endanger human lives, we may examine the violence these environments enact and evaluate the models they offer for human survival and care amidst climate disaster.

Coleridge's famous phrase "the willing suspension of disbelief" implies that disbelief (i.e., secularity) is a pre-condition of fictionality. That argument is made explicitly in Catherine Gallagher's well-known article "The Rise of Fictionality"—but it is also often assumed in medieval studies, as fictionality is localized in secular romance and rarely considered in devotional contexts. Where do fictional writing and sincere belief meet, and how do they interact? This panel welcomes papers that investigate the relationship between fictionality and belief from any angle, but which might respond to one or several of the following questions.

The Yale Department of English Medieval Colloquium & Scriptorium working group are pleased to present two panels and a roundtable that have grown out of our conversations with speakers and faculty over the previous year (please see our other CFPs for the additional panels). For panels, we invite papers of 15 to 20 minutes and for the roundtable we invite 5-7 minute remarks on the topic. If you are uncertain as to your proposed paper’s fit for the panels, please contact us. While our colloquium represents the Department of English at Yale, we are interdisciplinary in outlook and composition and welcome papers from all medieval-interested disciplines and that cover topics beyond texts in Anglo-Saxon and Middle English.

The right-wing medievalisms of Brexit and other Eurosceptic movements have been well-studied in the past few years. But not all separatist/independence/autonomy/statehood movements use medievalism in the same ways. This session seeks papers that examine the medievalisms of other such movements, including those (Scottish independence, Basque nationalism) that identify with more leftist politics, as well as those that engage with a range of political ideologies. How are appeals to the historical or fictional Middle Ages used by such movements or those who oppose them? Preference will be given to papers that address the complexity of the relationship between medievalism and modern or contemporary politics, and to those proposals received by Sept 1.

Session Title: Performing Medieval Drama in the 21st Century (A Panel Discussion) at the International Congress on Medieval Studies, Western Michigan University (2020)

Organizer: Kyle A. Thomas (Missouri State University)

Sponsered by the Medieval and Renaissance Drama Society (MRDS) 

Art Historical Approaches to Medieval Environments

International Congress on Medieval Studies

May 7–10, 2020

Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo Michigan

International Center for Medieval Art, Student Committee

International Pearl-Poet Society

Call for Papers — ICMS 2019

The International Pearl-poet Society is sponsoring five sessions and one co-sponsored session with the Medieval Association of the Midwest (MAM) at the 55th International Congress on Medieval Studies (May 9–12, 2020) at Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, MI. One session is:

The Final Frontier: Embodied Space in the Works of the Pearl-poet