Recent Reviews in Speculum

The medieval journal Speculum has recently begun publishing reviews of scholarship on filmic medievalisms. The latest include the following:


Kelly, Kathleen Coyne. Rev. Filming the Middle Ages. By Bettina Bildhauer. Speculum 87.2 (April 2012): 528-29. (web content)


Aronstein, Susan. Rev. Remaking the Middle Ages: The Methods of Cinema and History in Portraying the Medieval World. By Andrew B. R.  Elliott. Speculum 87.3 (July 2012): 867-68. (web content)

Both reviews offer insight into each study and position the author's work within the ever-growing corpus of scholarship on filmic medievalisms and the various practices they employ to (re-)create the medieval.  

Still Getting Medieval on TV Update (At Last)

I am pleased to (finally) announce the details of our session for the 2013 International Congress on Medieval Studies:


Still Getting Medieval on Television: Medieval-Themed Television of the Twenty-first Century and Its Impact on Medieval Studies (Roundtable)
Organizer: Michael A. Torregrossa, The Virtual Society for the Study of Popular Culture and the Middle Ages

Presider: Suanna Davis, Abilene Christian University

Paper 1: Hybrid Medievalisms in Arthurian Romance and the Historical Evolution of the Genre from Print to Television
Kevin Teo Kia Choong, Nagoya University

Paper 2: When Bows Don't Bow: Sherwood and Camelot in Conflict
Elizabeth Bernhardt, Abilene Christian University

Paper 3: Kaamelott/Camelot on the Small Screen
Tara Foster, Northern Michigan University

Paper 4: Medieval Themes in the Contemporary Newsroom
Charlotte A. T. Wulf, Stevenson University

Paper 5: Medievalism in Television's Popular Series Once Upon a Time
Mikee Delony, Abilene Christian University

Update for Still Getting Medieval on Television

We are still finalizing the details of our roundtable "Still Getting Medieval on Television" for next year's Medieval Congress. Details will be posted in a few days.

Michael Torregrossa

Auger on Lord of the Rings

From a recent issue of Mythlore:

Auger, Emily E. “The Lord of the Rings’ Interlace: The Adaptation to Film.” Mythlore 30.1-2 (Fall/Winter 2011): 143-62.

Recent Reviews from Arthuriana

Still catching up:

Reviews from Arthuriana 22.1 (Spring 2012):


REVIEWS

Bettina Bildhauer, Filming the Middle Ages
Kevin J. Harty 125-27

Andrew B.R. Elliott, Remaking the Middle Ages: The Methods of Cinema and History in Portraying the Medieval World
Kathleen Coyne Kelly 127-28

Kevin J. Harty, ed., The Vikings on Film: Essays on Depictions of the Nordic Middle Ages
Shaun F.D. Hughes 129-35 [an especially insightful review and commentary]

Medieval Papers at Film & History 2012

The 2012 Film and History Conference meets later this month from 26-30 September 2012 at the Hyatt Regency Downtown in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The complete program can be accessed at http://www.filmandhistory.org/conference/conference2012.php.

The following sessions are of interest:

THURS., 27 SEPT

SESSION 1
PANEL 2716 Myths R Us III: The Sun Never Sets: British Identity in Film and Television
PAPER 2 OF 3: Brave Hearts and Minds: Scottish Politics, Nation-Building and the Myth-Making Power of Braveheart
Cody Neidert, University of Northern Colorado
PAPER 3 OF 3: “Decaying Splendours”: Landscapes of Absence, Loss, and Trauma in the Films of Stephen Weeks
Kevin M. Flanagan, University of Pittsburgh


SESSION 2
PANEL 2723 Medieval Myths II: Magic Beyond the Pale
The Dark Ages in the Cinema: A Case Study on Medieval Witchcraft
Tom Vercruysse, Kotholieke Universiteit Leuven
Father of Anarchy: Robin Hood and the Medieval Outlaw in Contemporary Culture
Melissa Sartore, West Virginia University Institute of Technology
Indistinguishable from Magic: Weapons of Mass Destruction in Robin Hood
Leah Larson, Our Lady of the Lake University

PANEL 2726 Mythos II: Goddesses: Armed and Dangerous
PAPER 2 OF 3: Arya, Katniss, and Merida: Three Screen Teen Amazon Archers
Beverly J. Graf, Pepperdine University


SESSION 3
PANEL 2733 Storytelling 101 II: Prominent Historical Figures: Anastasia,
Martin Guerre, Edith Piaf and Cleopatra
PAPER 2 OF 4: The Artful Historian and the Historical Filmmaker: Two Accounts of Martin Guerre
Mike Schraeder, M.F.A


SESSION 4
PANEL 2747 Medieval Myths I: Magical Medieval Realms in High
Definition
Politics, Magic, and Religion in the Middle Ages as Presented in George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones
Thomas McBryde, Our Lady of the Lake University
To Infinity and Beyond: How Film and Television Have Influenced the Evolution of the Arthurian Legend through BBC’s Merlin
Vanessa Schuchardt McBryde. Our Lady of the Lake University
Arthur and Guinevere 2.0: The BBC’s Merlin and the Reimagining of Arthurian Legend for a Twenty-First Century British Audience
Antoinette Winstead, Our Lady of the Lake University



SAT., 29 SEPT.
SESSION 2
PANEL 2924 Myths of Place
PAPER 3 OF 3: Off to the Highlands: Pixar’s Brave and the Allure of Scotland to the American Imagination
Dorene Koehler


SESSION 3
PANEL 2931B | Medieval Myths III: Varied Visions of Medieval Legends
Beowulf and Grendel
Kris Kobold, York University
Artifice and Misrecognition in Zemeckis’ Beowulf
David Watson, Michigan State University

Elizabeth I on Film CFP

[UPDATE]: Elizabeth I on Film: Kalamazoo, May 9-12, 2013
full name / name of organization:
Queen Elizabeth I Society
contact email:
ariehl@auburn.edu

Our panel in 2013 will focus on representations of Elizabeth I in the classic and more recent film narratives. In the last decade alone, the image of Elizabeth I on film has ranged from Dame Judi Dench's aged but energetic queen to Cate Blanchett's preternaturally youthful 55 year old monarch to the adolescent princess played by Laoise Murray on _The Tudors_. This panel will seek to explore the general trajectories of representing Elizabeth I on screen as well as identify and analyze the developments, continuities, and significance of these representations in the 21st century.

This session is sponsored by Queen Elizabeth I Society.

Please email the abstracts (300 words or less) to Anna Riehl Bertolet, ariehl@auburn.edu, no later than September 15, 2011.

Medieval and Renaissance Drama on Film NeMLA CFP

Filming this Insubstantial Pageant: Medieval and Renaissance Drama on Film (Abstracts due Sept. 30)
full name / name of organization:
Northeast Modern Language Association (conference Mar. 2013)
contact email:
jackiec159@hotmail.com

This panel seeks papers about film adaptations of medieval and Renaissance English drama, both in English-speaking countries and around the world. The NeMLA conference will be held in Boston in March, 2013. Papers might compare different adaptations of the same play, discuss problems associated with the notion of fidelity to text or of relocating a play in a different historical or cultural milieu, or consider the effectiveness for use in scholarly work or in the classroom. We seek investigation of continuities across disciplines: medieval/Renaissance, cinema studies/literature. What is at stake in these adaptations? What do these directors, writers, performers, and audiences bring to the table? This panel should appeal to those interested in film and literary adaptation, world cinema and transnational influences, issues of cultural hegemony and exchange, and Shakespeare on film. Abstracts (250 words) should be emailed in MS format to jackiec159@hotmail.comandmorsed@newschool.edu by Sept. 30.

Corporate Medievalism on Screen

Catching up:

The latest number of Studies in Medievalism, entitled Corporate Medievalism, includes a number of essays devoted to medieval subjects on screen. Complete contents at http://popularcultureandthemiddleages.blogspot.com/2012/09/corporate-medievalism-contents-update.html.

Essays of interest to blog readers include:


2 Lives of Total Dedication? Medieval and Modern Corporate Identity (M. J. Toswell)
3 Reincorporating the Medieval: Morality, Chivalry, and Honor in Post-Financial-Meltdown Corporate Revisionism (Kevin Moberly and Brent Moberly)
4 Medievalism and Representations of Corporate Identity (KellyAnn Fitzpatrick and Jil Hanifan)
5 Knights of the Ownership Society: Economic Inequality and Medievalist Film (Harry Brown)
6 A Corporate neo-Beowulf: Ready or Not, Here We Come (E. L. Risden)

11 The Cinematic Sign of the Grail (J. Rubén Valdés Miyares)
12 Destructive Dominae: Women and Vengeance in Medievalist Film (Felice Lifshitz)
13 Neomedievalism Unplugged (Pamela Clements and Carol L. Robinson)

Disney Middle Ages Contents

My thanks to Tison Pugh for the update:

The Disney Middle Ages: A Fairy-Tale and Fantasy Past

Table of Contents

1. Introduction: Disney’s Retroprogressive Medievalisms: Where Yesterday Is Tomorrow Today
Tison Pugh


Part I: Building a Better Middle Ages: Medievalism in the Parks

2. Mapping the Happiest Place on Earth: Disney’s Medieval Cartography
Steve Yandell

3. Disney’s Castles and the Work of the Medieval in the Magic Kingdom
Martha Bayless

4. Pilgrimage and Medieval Narrative Structures in Disney’s Parks
Susan Aronstein


Part II: The Distorical Middle Ages

5. “You don’t learn it deliberately, but you just know it from what you’ve seen”: British Understandings of the Medieval Past Gleaned from Disney’s Fairy Tales
Paul Sturtevant

6. The Sorcerer’s Apprentice: Animation and Alchemy in Disney’s Medievalism
Erin Felicia Labbie

7. The Sword in the Stone: American Translatio and Disney’s Anti-medievalisms
Robert Gossedge

8. Walt in Sherwood, or the Sheriff of Disneyland: Disney and the Film Legend of Robin Hood
Kevin J. Harty

9. Futuristic Medievalisms and the U.S. Space Program in Disney’s Man in Space Trilogy and Unidentified Flying Oddball
Amy Foster


Part III: Disney Princess Fantasy Faire

10. “Where happily ever after happens every day”:The Medievalisms of Disney’s Princesses
Clare Bradford

11. Disney’s Medievalized Ecologies in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Sleeping Beauty
Kathleen Coyne Kelly

12. The United Princesses of America: Ethnic Diversity and Cultural Purity in Disney’s Medieval Past
Ilan Mitchell-Smith

13. Esmerelda of Notre Dame: The Gypsy Girl in Medieval View from Hugo to Disney
Allison Craven

14. Reality Remixed: Neomedieval Princess Culture in Disney’s Enchanted
Maria Sachiko Cecire

Shrek Book

Catching up:

Investigating Shrek: Power, Identity, and Ideology (click for Amazon preview)
Edited by Aurélie Lacassagne, Tim Nieguth, and François Dépelteau

Palgrave Macmillan, August 2011
ISBN: 978-0-230-11415-9, ISBN10: 0-230-11415-6,
5 1/2 x 8 1/4 inches, 202 pages, Includes: 3 pgs figs, 1 pg table,
Hardcover $85.00

An exploration of the social significance of Shrek from a variety of theoretical perspectives, this book pursues two different, yet intertwined objectives. The first is to present Shrek as pedagogical tool that could be usefully employed in a number of different disciplines. Shrek is approached from a political science angle, a sociological perspective, and applied to the tenets of evolutionary psychology. The second objective is concerned with outlining some of the ways in which Shrek is actively bound up with various aspects of social reality--such as capitalism, power relations, inequality, rule and resistance. This book analyzes the green ogre and his companions in a way that is entertaining as well as informative.

About the Editors:

Aurélie Lacassagne is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at Laurentian University. Tim Nieguth is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at Laurentian University. François Dépelteau is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at Laurentian University.

Contents:

Through the looking glass: Shrek in perspective--Aurélie Lacassagne, Tim Nieguth, and François Dépelteau 

* Shrek in the classroom * 

Representing political regimes in the Shrek trilogy-- Aurélie Lacassagne 

Big (and green) is better: Shrek and female body image--Mary Ryan

Green consciousness: Earth-based myth and meaning in Shrek--Jane Caputi

“Happiness is just a teardrop away”: A Neo-Marxist interpretation of Shrek--Alexander Spencer, Judith Renner, and Andreas Kruck

* Shrek in context * 

The mouse is dead, long live the ogre: Shrek and the boundaries of transgression--Daniel Downes and June Madeley

Kantian cosmopolitanism and the DreamWorkification of the next generation--Marianne Vardalos

An evolutionary psychological perspective on Shrek and Fiona--Gayle Brewer 

Shrek as a non-human transactor and social movements--François Dépelteau

Potholes of knowledge: The politics of studying Shrek--Tim Nieguth 

Filmography

Disney Middle Ages Coming Soon

Nothing yet from the publisher but online booksellers now include information for the following new collection:

The Disney Middle Ages: A Fairy-Tale and Fantasy Past (The New Middle Ages)

Edited by Tison Pugh and Susan Aronstein

List Price: $85.00

Expected publication 12/11/12

Hardcover: 304 pages
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan (December 11, 2012)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0230340075
ISBN-13: 978-0230340077


In addition, WorldCat offers the following details:

"The Disney Middle Ages: A Fairy-Tale and Fantasy Past examines the intersection between the products of the Walt Disney Company and popular culture's fascination with the Middle Ages. The Disney Middle Ages have come, for many, to figure as the Middle Ages, forming the earliest visions of the medieval past for much of the contemporary western (and increasingly eastern) imaginary. The Disney Middle Ages explores Disney's accounts of the Middle Ages and their political and cultural ramifications, analyzing how these re-creations of a fairy-tale history function in modern society"

Tudors on Screen Book

Coming soon from McFarland: 

The Tudors on Film and Television
Sue Parrill and William B. Robison

Print ISBN: 978-0-7864-5891-2
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-4766-0031-4
ca. 25 photos, chronology, filmography, bibliography, index
softcover (8.5 x 11) 2012

Price: $75.00

Not Yet Published, Available Fall/Winter 2012

About the Book

With its mix of family drama, sex, and violence, Britain’s Tudor dynasty (1485-1603) has long excited the interest of filmmakers and moviegoers. Since the birth of movie-making technology, the lives and times of Kings Henry VII, Henry VIII, and Edward VI and Queens Mary I and Elizabeth I have remained popular cinematic themes. From 1895’s The Execution of Mary Stuart to 2011’s Anonymous, this comprehensive filmography chronicles every known film about the Tudor era, including feature films; made-for-television films, mini-series, and series; documentaries; animated films; and shorts. From royal biographies to period pieces to modern movies with flashbacks or time travel, this work reveals how these films both convey the attitudes of Tudor times and reflect the era in which they were made.

About the Authors
Sue Parrill is professor emeritus and former head of the department of English at Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond. William B. Robison is a professor of history and heads the Department of History and Political Science at Southeastern Louisiana University. He lives in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

Still Getting Medieval on Television CFP

CALL FOR PAPERS
STILL GETTING MEDIEVAL ON TELEVISION:
MEDIEVAL-THEMED TELEVISION OF THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY AND ITS IMPACT ON MEDIEVAL STUDIES
A ROUNDTABLE FOR THE 48TH INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS ON MEDIEVAL STUDIES (WESTERN MICHIGAN UNIVERSITY, KALAMAZOO, MI) FROM 9-12 MAY 2013
SPONSORED BY THE VIRTUAL SOCIETY FOR THE STUDY OF POPULAR CULTURE AND THE MIDDLE AGES
PROPOSALS BY 1 SEPTEMBER 2012 (EARLY SUBMISSION RECOMMENDED)


In the twentieth-century, film and later television were the primary media for disseminating information about the Middle Ages to mass audiences. However, in the twenty-first century, that paradigm has shifted—a fact we had not yet realized in organizing our 2007 sessions at both the Popular Culture Association Annual Meeting and the International Congress on Medieval Studies—with the “reel Middle Ages” of film giving way almost completely and the “televisual Middle Ages” becoming the dominant texts in our contemporary (re)construction of the medieval. Consequently, thanks to the healthy manufacturing of new works for distribution on television as well as (in defiance of the hithertofore ephemeralness of television programming) the preservation of older ones online and on DVD, we should not discount their impact on us and our students, both now and in the generations to come.

In apparent ignorance or (perhaps) denial of television’s usurpation of film’s role as the major innovator of medieval-themed texts, the study of medieval-themed film continues to expand, while research on televisual medievalisms remains limited despite the growing number of high profile programs both in the United States and abroad. Currently, television produces an overabundance of one-offs, series, telefilms, miniseries, commercials, and documentaries, all created in ever-increasing numbers for an incredibly diverse audience across the globe and provides viewers, starting with simple plots for young children and culminating in an increased sophistication and content for older adults, with vivid, informative and entertaining recreations of the medieval past (either as they truly were or, more usually, as we wish they had been) and/or transformations of that past in a vibrant medieval present. We can no longer ignore television’s Middle Ages as a fertile ground for discussion and debate—a fact addressed in the call for proposals for three recent collections on the topic. In this roundtable session, designed to continue the ongoing work of the Virtual Society for the Study of Popular Culture and the Middle Ages, we hope to further alleviate some of the disparity between filmic and televisual medievalisms and provide both a gateway into accessing this material as well as to evaluate how these programs might be profitably integrated into medievalist research and teaching.

Please note, all submissions will also becinsidered for inclusion in an essay collection on medieval-themed TV.

PLEASE SUBMIT PROPOSALS OF 500 WORDS OR LESS, PARTICIPANT INFORMATION FORM (AVAILABLE AT http://www.wmich.edu/medieval/congress/submissions/index.html), AND A COPY OF YOUR CV TO THE ORGANIZERS AT Popular.Culture.and.the.Middle.Ages@gmail.com PLEASE INCLUDE “KALAMAZOO 2013 PROPOSAL” IN THE SUBJECT LINE

FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THE VIRTUAL SOCIETY FOR THE STUDY OF POPULAR CULTURE AND THE MIDDLE AGES, PLEASE ACCESS OUR BLOG AT http://PopularCultureandtheMiddleAges.blogspot.com/

Syfy April 2012

This past April's listings from Syfy:


MON., 9 APR
1:30 AM
Movie: Wes Craven Preents Dracula III: Legacy


FRI., 13 APR
09:30 AM
Syfy Original Movie: Book Of Beasts, The
11:30 AM
Movie: Merlin - Part One
01:30 PM
Movie: Merlin - Part Two
03:30 PM
Syfy Original Movie: Thor: Hammer Of The Gods


SAT., 14 APR
03:00 AM
Syfy Original Movie: Thor: Hammer Of The Gods
06:00 PM
Movie: Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade


SUN., 15 APR
03:00 PM
Movie: Indiana Jones And The Last Crusade


SAT., 21 APR
Apr 21
06:30 PM
Movie: Outlander


SUN., 22 APR
03:00 AM
Movie: Outlander