As we near the 15 September deadline for presentation submissions for the 57th International Congress on Medieval Studies (Kalamazoo 2022, held virtually 9-14 May), please consider submitting to the two ISSM sponsored sessions. Presenters will be encouraged to refine their presentations and submit them to the ISSM’s official journal, The Year’s Work in Medievalism (https://ywim.net/). You can present in a roundtable and a paper session without exceeding the conference’s participation limits.
The first, Medievalism and Genre: Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Historical Fiction, is a “regular” paper session.
The second, The Green Knight (2021): Key Critical Perspectives, is a roundtable that asks you to select a key term from the groundbreaking volume Medievalism: Key Critical Terms (2014; eds. Elizabeth Emery and Richard Utz) to shape your discussion of the recent film. If you are based in a region where the film has not yet been released [and haven’t used a VPN to see it anyway!], but sense that you will have things to say on the basis of reviews and conversations you’ve seen elsewhere, we urge you to select a term and submit a proposal that you can refine once you’ve viewed the film.
Here are our calls:
Medievalism and Genre: Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Historical Fiction (Session ID: 2862)
The “flavor” of many creative medievalisms shifts radically from genre to genre, yet these changes have largely been considered within the home genre and mode of the text in question – for example, a historical romance novel might be explored within the contexts of historical fiction or the romance novel genre, but not as a subset of medievalism. This panel seeks to upend those norms by considering medievalism as the broad umbrella category and exploring texts that play with genre, or texts working within a specific genre, for example the forthcoming film The Green Knight (2021).
We invite proposals that explore the influence of the genres of science fiction, fantasy, and historical fiction upon medievalism, whether the field overall or in specific works (of any medium or mode). For example, how might romances like Sir Gawain and the Green Knight change meaning in a new genre, such as science fiction or fantasy? Proposals might consider specific texts, or ask broader questions including: how do speculative genres influence, restrict, or expand the potential of medievalism, or change the types of stories told? Where does genre cross over with medievalism?
Submissions of 250-300 WORDS should be made via the ICMS Confex system https://icms.confex.com/icms/2022am/cfp.cgi no later than Wednesday 15 September 2021. If you have questions, please contact Valerie Johnson ( vjohnso6@montevallo.edu)
The Green Knight (2021): Key Critical Perspectives (A Roundtable) (Session ID: 2859)
The International Society for the Study of Medievalism (ISSM) invites submissions for a sponsored roundtable on David Lowery’s film The Green Knight (2021) for the 57th International Congress on Medieval Studies, which will take place online from Monday 9 May to Saturday 14 May 2022.
This roundtable seeks participants to identify and discuss an element of Lowery’s long-anticipated film, staring Dev Patel. In short presentations (10 minutes), panelists are invited to consider an element of the film in light of a focal keyword inspired by Medievalism: Key Critical Terms (2014), including: archive, authenticity, authority, Christianity, co-disciplinarity, continuity, feast, gender, genealogy, gesture, gothic, heresy, humor, lingua, love, memory, middle, modernity, monument, myth, play, power, presentism, primitive, purity, race, reenactment, resonance, simulacrum, spectacle, transfer, trauma, and troubadour.
Submissions of 250-300 WORDS should be made via the https://icms.confex.com/icms/2022am/cfp.cgi no later than Wednesday 15 September 2021. Queries about the session can be sent to Valerie Johnson (vjohnso6@montevallo.edu) and/or Renée Ward (rward@lincoln.ac.uk).
If you have questions about these sessions, please email Valerie Johnson directly: vjohnso6@montevallo.edu.
