58th International Congress on Medieval Studies. May 11-13, 2023. Kalamazoo, Michigan

Special Session: Nineteenth-Century and Twentieth-Century Medievalisms

Organizers: Robert Sirabian, UW-Stevens Point; Daniel C. Najork, Arizona State University

Presider: Daniel C. Najork

For this session, we seek proposals that focus on nineteenth- and twentieth-century novels and/or poetry that address what Louise D’Arcens notes as a key conceptual idea in Medieval studies:  “One broad distinction that might provisionally be made is between the medievalism of the ‘found’ Middle Ages and the medievalism of the ‘made’ Middle Ages” [The Cambridge Companion to Medievalism (2016) 2]. This session aims to explore this distinction through presentations that examine how writers of novels and poetry in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries both research and uncover the Middle Ages as well as creatively imagine and recreate it. As was pointed out in informative discussions during several sessions on medievalisms in last year’s Congress, the term involves a self-conscious use of the Middle Ages that combines both the historical record and imagination, allowing writers and artists to reflect and critique commercial, social, and political realities as well as create the Middle Ages that we desire and need.

Papers should focus on nineteenth- and twentieth-century novels and/or poetry that address these issues.

Please submit your proposals to the conference website: https://wmich.edu/medievalcongress/call by September 15th, 2022