Mediocrity in the Middle Ages: Finding the Middle Ground11th Annual Medievalists @ Penn (M@P) Graduate ConferenceUniversity of Pennsylvania, February 22nd, 2019Confirmed Keynote Speaker: Sonja Drimmer (UMass Amherst, Art History) What makes something “mediocre” in the Middle Ages? We often assume that if a manuscript, literary text, or work of visual or performance art has survived from the medieval period, it is exceptional in some way. Modern scholarship tends to enforce this assumption by either praising a work for its beauty and importance, or arguing for the centrality and exceptionality of something that past scholarship has ignored. But what of things that have survived that are just OK?

This panel consists of conversations relating to Edward Said's critical treatise Orientalism (1978). We will embark on dialogic evaluations of Said's work through a discussion of the representation of the so-called "Orient" in contemporary literature, social media, and pop culture. There are several examples of texts or narratives exploiting individuals because of their ethnicity, and we have discovered several texts by immigrants or the children of immigrants who have succumb to utilizing stereotypes of their own culture for commercial purposes and appropriating their own culture for the sake of attention and wealth.

This volume will explore ‘ordinary writing’ – that is, ‘writing that is typically unseen or ignored and is primarily defined by its status as discardable’[1] – as an important new way in which to approach the power and identity of marginalised groups in Edwardian Britain (1901-1914). The Edwardian era is often described as a period of intense social conflict and upheaval marked by a heightened awareness of class consciousness, inequality and poverty. Vast social, political and economic changes led to an increasing mobilisation of the lower classes and women, while also bringing about a rise in the number of anarchists and revolutionaries.

Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Intersex

17-19 July 2019

University of Lincoln, UK

Confirmed Keynote Speakers: 

Spaces and Places
An Inclusive Interdisciplinary Conference

Saturday 13th April - Sunday 14th April 2019
Bruges, Belgium

Every day we live and we move through spaces that have been created to be significant. We recognize, resonate and—consciously or unconsciously—react to this significance in a variety of different ways and on a number of differing levels.

I am seeking proposals for chapters to complete an edited collection on literary, cinematic, and televisual treatments of Donald Trump, tentatively titled Trump Fiction:  Essays on Donald Trump in Literature, Film, and Television.

Contributors must have a PhD.