Richard Utz to deliver Keynote at U of Bamberg

Andrea Schindler (Bamberg), Axel Müller (Leeds), and Siegrid Schmidt (Salzburg) are hosting Heroes of the Past in the Present. Formations of European Identities through Literature in the Post-Medieval World (Alte Helden – Neue Zeiten. Die Formierung europäischer Identitäten im Spiegel der Rezeption des Mittelalters) at the U of Bamberg, Germany, 9-12 April 2015, and Georgia Tech's Richard Utz will deliver a keynote, "Beyond Sherwood Forest: Robin Hood Goes Global." 

Valerie Johnson and Richard Utz publish in Medievalism on the Margin

Valerie B. Johnson, a Brittain Postdoctoral Fellow, and Richard Utz, LMC Chair, both contributed essays ("Ecomedievalism: Applying Ecotheory to Medievalism and Neomedievalism"; "Medievalism Studies and the Subject of Religion") in volume 24 (2015) of Studies in Medievalism, entitled Medievalism on the Margin: Some Perspective(s).

The volume, edited by Karl Fugelso, Vincent Ferré, and Alicia C. Montoya, not only defines medievalism's margins, as well as its role in marginalizing other fields, ideas, people, places, and events, but also provides tools and models for exploring those issues and indicates new subjects to which they might apply. The eight opening essays address the physical marginalizing of medievalism in annotated texts on medieval studies; the marginalism of oneself via medievalism; medievalism's dearth of ecotheory and religious studies; academia's paucity of pop medievalism; and the marginalization of races, ethnicities, genders, sexual orientations, and literary characters in contemporary medievalism. 

Seven subsequent articles build on this foundation while discussing: the distancing of oneself (and others) during imaginary visits to the Middle Ages; lessons from the margins of Brazilian medievalism; mutual marginalization among factions of Spanish medieval studies; and medievalism in the marginalization of lower socio-economic classes in late-eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Spain, of modern gamers, of contemporary laborers, and of Alfred Austin, a late-nineteenth- and early twentieth-century poet also known as Alfred the Little. In thus investigating the margins of and marginalization via medievalism, the volume affirms their centrality to the field.

Contributors: Nadia R. Altschul, Megan Arnott, Jaume Aurell, Juan Gomis Coloma, Elizabeth Emery, Vincent Ferré, Valerie B. Johnson, Alexander L. Kaufman, Erin Felicia Labbie, Vickie Larsen, Kevin Moberly, Brent Moberly, Alicia C. Montoya, Serina Patterson, Jeff Rider, Lindsey Simon-Jones, Richard Utz, Helen Young.