A Plea for a Public Medievalism

Richard Utz recently published a short section of his May, 2015, Kalamazoo plenary in the Chronicle of Higher Education:

Medievalists, Don't be Snobs

We medievalists have had a pretty good run in academe. We were admitted in the final third of the 19th century after we proved that our subject was complex (read: science-like) enough to warrant professionalized study. European nations’ desire for origins, to use the title phrase in Allen J. Frantzen’s influential book, helped expand the field into the second half of the 20th century. Even in America, although her very existence was predicated on leaving "old" Europe behind, academic work on various medieval heritages thrived to the point where every humanities department boasted at least one medieval specialist.

However, there is now a manifest discrepancy between the large number of students who request that we address their love of Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, and medieval-themed video and computer games on the one hand, and the decreasing number of medievalists hired to replace retiring colleagues on the other. READ THE FULL TEXT HERE

Utz reviews Oexle, Die Gegenwart des Mittelalters

Otto Gerhard Oexle, Die Gegenwart des Mittelalters, Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2015, at Medievally Speaking, reviewed by yours truly:

This delightful cahier of 45 pages, published under the auspices of the Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften, offers a revised version of a paper Otto Gerhard Oexle originally presented at the Academy's Mittelalterzentrum in 2012. To speak about the "Presence" or "Contemporaneity" of the Middle Ages, Oexle addresses three general areas:


1) An immediate presence visible in remains and monuments: Oexle quickly summarizes what we know about the fascination we moderns have with historical objects and buildings, and he likens the immediacy ("Unmittelbarkeit") of the pleasure experienced by lay visitors with that experienced by professional historians…. READ FULL REVIEW HERE

Call for Essays: Volume 30 (2015) of The Year's Work in Medievalism

Dear colleagues,

The editors of The Year's Work in Medievalism, a refereed journal published under the auspices of the International Society for the Study of Medievalism, invites essays to be submitted for consideration for publication in its volume 30 (2015). We especially encourage participants at the 29th International Conference (Georgia Tech) and SiM sections at Kalamazoo 2015 to consider sending us revised versions of their conference presentations. However, we will give equal considerations to all other (independent) papers. Please send inquiries and finished papers to E. L. Risden (edward.risden@snc.edu), and see our website for additional information about the journal and its focus and requirements. Please distribute this invitation widely among your colleagues worldwide. For full consideration, please submit your essay by August 10, 2015.

YWiM provides a codisciplinary medium of exchange for scholars  investigating in the postmedieval reception of medieval culture, scholarly and popular. YWiM invites contributions in the field of medievalism studies, not medieval studies. Thus, while an essay on the medieval Joan of Arc would not be appropriate, we welcome contributions investigating Joan's reputation in early modern Italy, the contexts of her canonization in 1920, or her depiction in a motion picture or as a sculpture in contemporary France.

YWiM is a peer reviewed annual academic journal. Contributions, usually between 3,000 and 4,000 words in length, will be accepted on a year-round basis. Articles should be submitted in electronic form as a Microsoft Word file, typed double spaced (including notes and citations), in Garamond font (12 point), and documented in accordance with theChicago Manual of Style. All submissions are subject to double-blind review, and therefore no identifying information should appear anywhere in the article. Contributors may submit illustrations as part of their texts, but are responsible for ensuring copyright for such materials.

Essays submitted for consideration for publication should be sent to E.L. Risden at edward.risden@snc.edu.

To ensure discovery, public enrichment, and education through original scholarship and research, YWiM makes all publications available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United States. This means readers/users may use and cite the essays freely as long as they provide appropriate credit, do not use the essays for commercial purposes, and do not alter, transform, or build upon the essays. Authors retain copyright over the work they publish in YWiM.

With collegial regards,

E. L. Risden and Richard Utz, editors

Shiloh Caroll and Renée Ward, associate editors

Richard Utz co-edits The Year's Work in Medievalism 29 (2014)

Volume 29 (2014) of The Year's Work in Medievalism, edited by E. L. Risden, Gale Sigal, and Richard Utz, with the assistance of our associate editors, Shiloh Carroll and Renée Ward, has just been published. Here is the Table of Contents:

• E. L. Risden: Introduction
• Glenn Steinberg: Teaching Shakespeare’s Sources and Contexts 
• William Hodapp: Shakespearean Medievalism in Performance: The Second Tetralogy 
• Bonnie J. Erwin: “Is This Winning?”: Reflections on Teaching The Two Noble Kinsmen 
• Leigh Smith: “The matter that you read”: Saxo Grammaticus as a Source for Shakespeare and a Resource for Teachers of Hamlet 
• Brandon Alakas: Shakespeare’s Medievalism and the Life Removed: Depictions of Religious in Measure for Measure
• Karl Fugelso: Cecco Bonanotte’s Moving Illustrations of the Divine Comedy
• Heta Aali: Early Nineteenth-Century French Historiography and the Case of the Merovingian Queens 
• Sandra Gorgievski: Secret Gestures and Silent Revelations: The Disclosure of Secrets in Selected Arthurian Illuminated Manuscripts and Arthurian Films 

Happy Reading @ https://sites.google.com/site/theyearsworkinmedievalism/all-issues/29-2014

Richard Utz Delivers Plenary at 50th International Congress on Medieval Studies

Richard Utz recently delivered the plenary, "The Notion of the Middle Ages: Our Middle Ages, Ourselves," at the 50th (anniversary) iteration of this largest annual international meeting of medievalists. 

Here is what Jennifer Borland of the Material Collective had to say about the event as part of her overview of the sections her group organized at the 2015 Congress:

All three of these sessions contributed to the broader tone of this year’s Congress, which seemed to be especially energized and optimistic about the changes in our disciplines and the future of Medieval Studies. This optimism was also expressed by the excellent plenary by Richard Utz, “The Notion of the Middle Ages: Our Middle Ages, Ourselves,” which highlighted the affective turn in historical studies, the value of medievalisms including recent popular culture, and included a call to embrace and further promote alternative forms of scholarship, publishing, and thinking about the Middle Ages.

Medievalism Scholarship Featured on Georgia Tech Cable Network

Katherine Marchand, a show producer, writer, and anchor for the Georgia Tech Cable Network, approached LMC's Richard Utz some months ago about featuring his work on Medievalism for a show called "Ramblin' Research," a source for students to learn more about professors with "interesting research" on our campus: HERE YOU GO

ISSM Conference 2015 in Pittsburgh

SAVE THE DATE! 2015 ISSM CONFERENCE
When: October 2-4
Where: Pittsburgh, PA, (where you can play with clouds at the Warhol Museum, nibble your way through the Strip District Markets, take a break at the National Aviary or the Carnegie Museum of Art, or catch a performance by some of the country's most innovative musicians)

Theme: Mapping Medievalisms
Over the last few years, the conference has given increased attention to forgotten and marginalized medievalisms, the darker aspects of medievalism that haunt our headlines, and our own self-imposed limits on exploration. We invite you to submit proposals on any aspect of "mapping" medievalism; there is a great deal of, er, latitude for submission. A formal call for proposals will be posted shortly, but feel free to send early ideas, questions, and comments to either Lauryn Mayer (lmayer@washjeff.edu) or Amy Kaufman (Amy.Kaufman@mtsu.edu).

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.

SELIM Conference Invites Papers on Medieval Studies and Medievalism

SELIM, Spanish Society for Medieval English Language and Literature, invites all scholars interested in the field to participate in its 27th International Conference, which will be hosted by the Department of English and Germanic Philology of the University of Granada from September 17th to 19th, 2015. Papers dealing with any aspect of Medieval English (including, of course, Medievalism) are welcome, especially those concerning literary or linguistic history.Abstracts should be sent to Dr. Rafael J. Pascual (selim27@ugr.es). The deadline for abstracts is May 31st, 2015. We will acknowledge receipt and acceptance as soon as the proposal has been peer-reviewed.

The following plenary speakers have confirmed their attendance:
- Leonard Neidorf (Harvard University) – “The Transmission of Beowulf 
and the History of the English Language”
- Rodrigo Pérez Lorido (Universidad de Oviedo) – “Syntax and Language 
Processing in Early English”
- Tom Shippey (Saint Louis University) – “Beowulf Criticism: From 
Tolkien to Fulk”

For further details, please visit our website:
www.ugr.es/~selim27

Position Available: Asst. Editor, The Year's Work in Medievalism

The Year's Work in Medievalism, a refereed journal published under the auspices of the International Society for the Study of Medievalism, is seeking applications for the position of assistant editor. Prior experience in the areas of editing and publishing is definitely an asset. Candidates for this position should have a strong interest, and hopefully some prior experience, in researching the reception of medieval culture in postmedieval times. Please send a concise "letter of interest" and CV as one single PDF to richard.utz@lmc.gatech.edu and edward.risden@snc.edu. We do not expect the average weekly workload for the assistant editor to go beyond 1 hour. The initial appointment will be for a two-year period. The deadline for applications is January 25, 2015.

Valerie Johnson and Richard Utz publish in MEDIEVALISM NOW

The special 28 (2013) issue of The Year's Work in Medievalism, entitled MEDIEVALISM NOW, edited by Ed Risden, Karl Fugelso, Richard Utz, is now available. It includes essays by Valerie Johnson and Richard Utz. 

Here is the Table of Contents:

• E. L. Risden: Introduction 
• Valerie B. Johnson: Ecomedievalism: Medievalism's Potential Futures in Ecocriticism and Ecomaterialism  
• Amy S. Kaufman: Lowering the Drawbridge   
• Elena Levy-Navarro: A Long Parenthesis Begins   
• Nickolas Haydock: Medievalism and Anamorphosis: Curious Perspectives on the Middle Ages  
• Kevin Moberly & Brent Moberly: There is No Word for Work in the Dragon Tongue   
• E. L. Risden: Miyazaki's Medieval World:  Japanese Medievalism and the Rise of Anime  
• Karl Fugelso: Embracing Our Marginalism:  Mitigating the Tyranny of a Central Paradigm   
• Carol L. Robinson: The Quest for a Deaf Lesbian Dwarf (or Anyone Else that Might Have Been Excluded) in Medievalist Video Games: A Response to Karl Fugelso’s ‘Manifesto’   
• Jesse G. Swan: Relaxation and Amateur Medievalism for Early Modernity: Seeing Sir Henry Yelverton as a Woman in Love and a Bureaucrat Threatened in the 1621 Parliament   
• Helen Young: Place and Time: Medievalism and Making Race  
• Richard Utz: Can We Talk About Religion, Please? Medievalism’s Eschewal of Religion, and Why it Matters  

Access to Medievalism Now