Red Reading the Premodern

deadline for submissions: 
September 15, 2024
full name / name of organization: 
ICMS 2025
contact email: 

CALL FOR PAPERSPanel: “Red Reading the Premodern” (hybrid)
60th International Congress on Medieval StudiesKalamazoo, MichiganMay 9-10, 2025 This panel takes up Cherokee scholar Scott Andrews’ 2018 challenge to interpret (non-Indigenous) literature from Indigenous perspectives, an approach that he labels a 'Red Reading,’ and extends it to premodern texts. Red Reading allows us to reconsider premodern texts, divorcing them from engrained approaches towards a plurality of perspectives. Our session takes a global approach to Indigeneity, and we welcome approaches and methods that extend from Indigenous communities within and beyond Turtle Island (examples of the latter includes Sami, Asante, Okinawan, or Zapotec to name but a few).The threads of Red Reading are many, and we welcome papers that consider (but are not limited to) the following areas of interrogation:

  • Reading premodern texts through Indigenous literary approaches and methods
  • The representation of Indigenous peoples in premodern texts
  • The early threads of settler-colonial ideologies
  • Indigenous adaptations/retellings of medieval texts
  • Indigenous translations of medieval stories/texts

Abstracts due September 15th, 2024 to the ICMS Confex site: https://icms.confex.com/icms/2025/cfp.cgiOrganized by Brenna Duperron & Sarah LaVoy-BrunetteContact: Brenna.Duperron@dal.ca