From arborescence to the rhizome, plants have long served as models for thinking in philosophy, biology, and the arts. In recent years, scholars including Michael Marder, Catriona Sandilands, and Jeffrey Nealon have brought renewed attention to the agency and dynamism of the vegetal, at the same time that the future of plant life has come to be at risk in the wake of climate change and the impending collapse of ecosystems. This panel invites papers that explore ways of thinking about and with plants in the shadow of the Anthropocene. How do writers and visual artists, past and present, help us renegotiate our relationship to the vegetal today?

Virtualizing Material Games (SCMS Virtual Conference Panel 2021)

Even before worldwide quarantines added impetus, material gaming had already become increasingly enacted in virtual spaces.  Rather than virtual play replacing the material, as some speculated in the early days of videogames, material play has become increasingly entangled with virtuality.  These increasingly complementary modes of play offer a rich space for exploring the multifaceted embodied and conceptual activity of play, the blending of material and virtual that in many ways defines games.   

While it is considered dubious to anthropomorphize animals to learn about them, learning with animals asks scholars to consider both animal and human ways of being and knowing, as well as where those epistemologies might overlap or diverge. Attempting to learn with animals requires consideration of the value of anthropomorphization. Drawing on the burgeoning field of animal studies, we invite literary scholars to consider how literature imagines animals and their ways of being and knowing—whether alternate or familiar.

Whether we consider the high fantasy of Lewis and Tolkien or the contemporary rise in historical fiction set during the Middle Ages, it must be acknowledged that medievalists (and scholars more generally) have long been linked with creative writing. In an era of academia where the traditional university job is far from assured and where representations of the Middle Ages are co-opted by white nationalists, we must acknowledge the wider benefits and contributions of the humanities, while promoting a diverse picture of the Middle Ages. It is more important than ever that the scholastic community embrace its creative side.

Reading into Murder: interpretative essays on select cult texts. 

Call for Papers: 

Jesuits in Science Fiction: The Clash of Reason and Revelation on Other Worlds

Edited by Richard Feist (Saint Paul University, Ottawa, Canada)

To be published by Vernon Press

https://vernonpress.com/proposal/124/c3ae24073138a8424f53d1810cbfeb36