(Re)Visiting the Reel/Un-Reel Middle Ages: Pathways to Furthering Research on Medievalisms on Screen (Roundtable) (Virtual)
Co-sponsored by Association for the Advancement of Scholarship and Teaching of the Medieval in Popular Culture, International Arthurian Society-North American Branch, International Society for the Study of Medievalism
Co-organized by Michael A. Torregrossa, Bristol Community College; Scott Manning, Independent Scholar; and Siân Echard, University of British Columbia
Background
For nearly forty years, through his scholarship and especially through the seven collections of essays on film he has edited, Kevin J. Harty has enriched our knowledge of medievalisms on screen. In particular, Harty has been at the forefront of bibliographic and filmographic research in the field through his pioneering approach to representations of the Arthurian legends on film and television, which led to the now seminal study, The Reel Middle Ages: American, Western and Eastern European, Middle Eastern and Asian Films About Medieval Europe.
For this session, we’d like to (re)visit the material Harty covers in Reel Middle Ages. As examples of the “reel” Middle Ages, Harty surveys theatrical films and movies made for television that are set in the medieval past or that bring medieval figures forward to post-medieval eras. International in scope, his coverage is vast, and the details for each text are highly informative. For this work, scholars and enthusiasts of medievalisms on screen owe Harty a great debt. However, it’s not likely that any single scholar can match Harty’s endeavors. To further the field, we must combine efforts to continue and enlarge his work.
To expand the concept of the “reel” Middle Ages and to provide a comparable update on recent films, we can add considerations of recent films, as well as material original to home video and streaming media. Building on the foundation that Harty provided also allows us to embrace a wider range of medievalist texts to explore television programming in general (such as series and one-offs), electronic games, and online media (such as motion comics, Internet videos, and memes). Additional examinations of the global Middle Ages on screen are welcome as well.
As a further augmentation of Harty’s treatment of authentic medieval elements in Reel Middle Ages, we might focus more attention on the equally diverse corpus of films inspired by the medieval past. Highlighting these examples of the “un-reel” Middle Ages allows us to enrich our understanding of the reception of the medieval on film through analyses of works that include medieval stories or themes reset into post-medieval times as well as fantasies set in medieval-like realms, whether parallel to our own or existing as distinct secondary worlds (to borrow from Tolkien). This work can also be enlarged to include the fuller range of screenic media, such as television programming, games, native online works, and streaming texts. Once again, examinations of international medievalisms on screen are welcome.
Submissions
For this roundtable session, we are seeking presentations that attempt to deepen and expand the range of Harty’s important work. We hope you can join this conversation related to the “reel” and “un-reel” Middle Ages.
Our intent for this co-sponsored session is to enrich the field of study on medievalisms on screen and to produce some contributions that can live on past this session (such as a special issue of a journal, a collection, a digital resource, or your own project you plan to share out).
Proposals might offer an overview of a specific work of medievalism on screen or a series of related works, the sharing of a new bibliographic and/or filmographic resource devoted to some aspect of medievalism on screen, an update to previous bibliographic and/or filmographic resources devoted to some aspect of medievalism on screen, or other approaches to supporting the field through innovative technologies and/or tools.
For some earlier and ongoing efforts to update Harty’s bibliographic and filmographic work, please see the following resource guide: https://tinyurl.com/MedievalismsOnScreenKzoo26.
Please post paper submissions into the Confex site using the direct link https://icms.confex.com/icms/2026/prelim.cgi/Session/7401.
Do send any questions to the organizers at medievalinpopularculture@gmail.com. Submissions are due no later than 15 September 2025.
Please be aware that those accepted to the panel must register for the conference in order to present. Past registration costs can be viewed at https://wmich.edu/medievalcongress/registration. The International Congress on Medieval Studies does offer limited funding as travel awards and subsidized registration costs; details are available at https://wmich.edu/medievalcongress/awards.
For more information about the Association for the Advancement of Scholarship and Teaching of the Medieval in Popular Culture, do check out our websites Mass Mediævalisms: The Middle Ages of Popular Culture (https://medievalinpopularculture.blogspot.com/) and Medieval Studies on Screen (https://medievalstudiesonscreen.blogspot.com/) and consider signing up for our listserv, The Medieval Studies on Screen Discussion List, at https://groups.io/g/msam-dl.
For more information about the International Arthurian Society/North American Branch, do check out our website at https://www.international-arthurian-society-nab.org/ and consider becoming a member of our organization.
For more information about the International Society for the Study of Medievalism, do check out our website at https://medievalisms.org/ and consider signing up for our listserv (details at https://medievalisms.org/issm-listserv/).
