Francis on Eli Stone!

I was excited to see this piece in the latest issue of SMART. Francis always has interesting things to say about how modern texts use the medieval. Copies of the journal can be purchased from the publisher at http://webs.wichita.edu/?u=smart&p=.

Francis, Christina. “The Usefulness of Eli Stone to Teaching Medieval Narrative.” Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Teaching, vol. 26, no. 2, Fall 2016, pp. 133-43. 

Details on the Eli Stone series can be found on Wikipedia at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eli_Stone.

Ambrisco on Beowulf and Grendel

A recent issue of Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Teaching featured the following essay on the film Beowulf and Grendel. Back issues of the journal can be ordered from the publisher at http://webs.wichita.edu/?u=smart&p=.

Ambrisco, Alan S. “Battling Monstrosity in Beowulf and Grendel (2005): Using a Film Adaptation to Teach Beowulf.” Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Teaching, vol. 23, no. 1, Spring 2016, pp. 29-40.

Chaucer on Screen Contents

The following contents list for Kathleen Coyne Kelly and Tison Pugh's new book Chaucer on Screen: Absence, Presence, and Adapting the Canterbury Tales is based on that in WorldCat (http://www.worldcat.org/title/chaucer-on-screen-absence-presence-and-adapting-the-canterbury-tales/oclc/945948419). A PDF of the complete contents pages can be accessed from the publisher at https://ohiostatepress.org/books/BookPages/kelly_pugh_chaucer.html.

It looks to be a fairly complete volume. Too bad its priced at $94.95(though a PDF version is offered for $19.95, if you can live without a physical book). 

Foreword / Terry Jones

Introduction / Kathleen Coyne Kelly and Tison Pugh

PART 1: THEORIZING ABSENCE
Naked yet invisible: filming Chaucer's narrator / Elizabeth Scala --
"The play's the thing": the cinematic fortunes of Chaucer and Shakespeare / Susan Aronstein and Peter Parolin --
Chaucer, film, and the desert of the real; or, why Geoffrey Chaucer will never be Jane Austen / Larry Scanlon --
Profit, politics, and prurience; or, why Chaucer is bad box office / Kathleen Forni --






PART  2: LOST AND FOUND
Chaucer and the moving image in pre-World War II America / Lynn Arner --
Lost Chaucer: Natalie Wood's "The deadly riddle" and the golden age of American television / Candace Barrington --



PART 3: PRESENCE
Chaucerian history and cinematic perversions in Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's A Canterbury tale / Tison Pugh --
Idols of the marketplace: Chaucer/Pasolini / Kathryn L. Lynch --
"Sorry, Chaucer": mixed feelings and Hyapatia Lee's Ribald tales of Canterbury / George Shuffelton --
The naked truth: Chaucerian spectacle in Brian Helgeland's A knight's tale / Sian Echard --



PART 4: THE BBC CANTERBURY TALES (2003)
Putting the second first: the BBC "Miller's tale" / Steve Ellis --
Midlife sex and the BBC "Wife of Bath" / Sarah Stanbury --
Serving time: the BBC "Knight's tale" in the prison-house of free adaptation / Louise D'Arcens --
The color of money: the BBC "Sea captain's tale" / Kathleen Coyne Kelly --
Sex, plague, and resonance: reflections on the BBC "Pardoner's tale" / Arthur Bahr --
Time, memory, and desire in the BBC "Man of law's tale" / Kathleen Davis --



PART 5: ABSENT PRESENCE
Marketing Chaucer: Mad men and the Wife of Bath / Laurie Finke and Martin B. Shichtman.

Medieval Studies on TV Update

I was remiss in posting notice of the following session in a timely manner. My apologies to the presenters and area chairs.

27th Annual Conference of the Mid-Atlantic Popular & American Culture Association

Tropicana Hotel in Atlantic City, New Jersey

3-5 November 2016

Friday, 4 November 2016

Session II (11:00 AM – 12:15 PM)

Medieval Studies on TV (Beowulf to Shakespeare: Popular Culture in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance I) (Bongo 1)

Sponsored by the Association for the Advancement of Scholarship and Teaching of the Medieval in Popular Culture

Organized by Michael A. Torregrossa

Presider: Diana Vecchio (Widener University)

Paper 1: Game On: The Medievalism of Television Golf Tournaments

Martha Oberle (Independent Scholar)

Paper 2: No Such Thing as Bad Press: Christian Conversion Narrative in the Popular Culture Series Vikings

Jennifer Veronica Agnes MacLellan (Háskóli Íslands)

Paper 3: The Evolving Realism of the Trebuchet from Excalibur to Game of Thrones

Scott Manning (American Military University)

Animating the Medieval Update (September 2016)

I am pleased to announce the slate for our upcoming session at next year's International Congress on Medieval Studies:

Animating the Medieval: Research on Animated Representations of the Middle Ages in Memory of Michael N. Salda

Sponsored by The Association for the Advancement of Scholarship and Teaching of the Medieval in Popular Culture

Organizer: Michael A. Torregrossa (Independent Scholar)

Presider: Jennie Friedrich (University of California, Riverside)

Paper #1: Reading, Writing, and Sorcery: Education in the Animated Middle Ages

Valentina S. Grub (University of St Andrews)

Valentina S. Grub is in the final year of her PhD at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. She graduated with a degree in Medieval & Renaissance Literature and Classical Civilization from Wellesley College, and earned her master's degree in Medieval Studies from St. Andrews. Her dissertation looks at the ritualization of medieval English embroidery between 1250-1350. Her research has been published in Allegorica, The Manuscript Hub, and Sequitur.

Paper #2: History and Stories: The Middle Ages in European Animated Cartoons

Marie-Anne Smith (Independent Scholar)

Marie-Anne Smith is now an independent scholar but worked for more than ten years as assistant curator in French and British museums and as lecturer at the Ecole du Louvre. She obtained a BA in History from the Sorbonne, Paris, an MA in History of Design from the Royal College of Art, London and a PhD in Art History from the Ecole du Louvre, Paris in 2004. Although her first works focused on the development of armament in the 15th and 16th century with the publication of Glossaire des termes militaires français du XVIème siècle and Swords and Saucepans: Arms and Armor in Parisian domestic interiors she also reached a wider audience by collaborating on productions such as Les Mots-Clés de la Renaissance and the children book Au Temps des Chevaliers. Convinced that entertainment media such as comic-books or video games can be an ideal link between scholars and the general public, she will show in her paper how animated cartoons, often dismissed as “childish,” have been regularly used in the transmission of historic knowledge.

Paper #3: Teaching the History of the English Language with Comics

Patrick J. Murphy (Miami University)

Patrick J. Murphy is an Associate Professor of English at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, where he has taught medieval literature and the history of the English language since receiving his PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2007. His research has appeared in the journals English Studies, Philological Quarterly, Modern Philology, English Literature in Transition, Review of English Studies, and Studies in Medievalism. His book Unriddling the Exeter Riddles was published in 2011 by Penn State University Press and a new monograph, Medieval Studies and the Ghost Stories of M.R. James, is forthcoming from the same press in May 2017. He has long had an interest in teaching with comics, and his latest project (just now underway) is to develop the "ink talks" he has been illustrating for a course on historical linguistics into a full-length work of graphic nonfiction: A Comics History of the English Language. The current proposed paper is a first attempt to share these materials with, and gain feedback from, an audience outside the classroom.

CFP Animating the Medieval (proposals by 9/15/16)

Animating the Medieval: Research on Animated Representations of the Middle Ages in Memory of Michael N. Salda
Sponsored by The Association for the Advancement of Scholarship and Teaching of the Medieval in Popular Culture
52nd International Congress on Medieval Studies
Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, Michigan
11-14 May 2017
Proposals due by 15 September 2016

Medievalist Michael N. Salda passed away in October 2015. He was, perhaps, best known for his work on Chaucer and Malory, but scholars of the medieval on screen owe him a greater debt for his pioneering work on animated films, television programming, and theatrical shorts based on medieval subjects. Much of his activities in this field focused on the Matter of Britain. He began these efforts in the mid-1990s, and they culminated in his monograph Arthurian Animation: A Study of Cartoon Camelots on Film and Television published in 2013. In addition, Salda’s interests in animated representations of the medieval extended beyond Arthurian subjects; he also contributed an essay on the Vikings in animation for Vikings on Film: Essays on Depictions of the Nordic Middle Ages (2011) and was working on a venture devoted to cataloging the more general use of the medieval in animation, a project that now seems unlikely to appear given his untimely death. However, as advocates of the Once and Future King have sustained the ideals of their fallen Arthur, we, too, are able to follow Salda’s model and honor his memory in continuing his work by building upon his scholarship in our own contributions to studies of the medieval on screen and by tracking down and discussing additional representations of the medieval in animation. We believe these efforts both further the mission of The Association for the Advancement of Scholarship and Teaching of the Medieval in Popular Culture (successor to the Virtual Society for the Study of Popular Culture and the Middle Ages) in promoting original research on the medieval in popular culture and acknowledge the lasting impact of a colleague that changed the field of Medievalism Studies for the better.

Presentations will be limited to 10-15 minutes depending on panel size, and The Association for the Advancement of Scholarship and Teaching of the Medieval in Popular Culture asks that accepted presenters submit their completed papers for publication on the Medieval Studies on Screen site (https://medievalstudiesonscreen.blogspot.com/) prior to the conference to allow maximum dissemination of their ideas.

Interested individuals should submit, no later than 15 September 2015, (1) an abstract of approximately 500 words, (2) a 500-word biography, and (3) a completed Participant Information Form (accessible at https://wmich.edu/medievalcongress/submissions) to the organizers at MedievalStudiesonScreen@gmail.com using “Animating the Medieval” as their subject heading.

In planning your proposal, please be aware of the policies of the Congress (available at https://wmich.edu/medievalcongress/policies).

Game of Thrones Psychology

Game of Thrones Psychology is a new book from Sterling Publishing. The publisher's website is still under construction and there are no previews available online or contents list posted anywhere yet, so do see the scans below for details.

Kalamazoo Update June 2016

I am pleased to report that our session on medievalism and animation has been accepted for next year's International Congress on Medieval Studies. The officifal call for papers will be posted in July, but do contact me as soon as possible if you might be interested in presenting.

The session proposal follows.

Michael Torregrossa
Founder, The Association for the Advancement of Scholarship and Teaching of the Medieval in Popular Culture


Animating the Medieval: Research on Animated Representations of the Middle Ages in Memory of Michael N. Salda
Sponsored by The Association for the Advancement of Scholarship and Teaching of the Medieval in Popular Culture

Medievalist Michael N. Salda passed away in October 2015. He was, perhaps, best known for his work on Chaucer and Malory, but scholars of the medieval on screen owe him a greater debt for his pioneering work on animated films, television programming, and theatrical shorts based on medieval subjects. Much of his activities in this field focused on the Matter of Britain. He began these efforts in the mid-1990s, and they culminated in his monograph Arthurian Animation: A Study of Cartoon Camelots on Film and Television published in 2013. In addition, Salda’s interests in animated representations of the medieval extended beyond Arthurian subjects; he also contributed an essay on the Vikings in animation for Vikings on Film: Essays on Depictions of the Nordic Middle Ages (2011) and was working on a venture devoted to cataloging the more general use of the medieval in animation, a project that now seems unlikely to appear given his untimely death. However, as advocates of the Once and Future King have sustained the ideals of their fallen Arthur, we, too, are able to follow Salda’s model and honor his memory in continuing his work by building upon his scholarship in our own contributions to studies of the medieval on screen and by tracking down and discussing additional representations of the medieval in animation. We believe these efforts both further the mission of the Association for the Advancement of Scholarship and Teaching of the Medieval in Popular Culture (successor to the Virtual Society for the Study of Popular Culture and the Middle Ages) in promoting original research on the medieval in popular culture and acknowledge the lasting impact of a colleague that changed the field of Medievalism Studies for the better.

The Disney Middle Ages Now in Paperback

Palgrave has recently released Pugh and Aronstein's The Disney Middle Ages collection in paperback; it was originally released in hardcover in 2012. Full details on the new edition can be found at their UK (http://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9780230340077) and US (http://www.palgrave.com/us/book/9780230340077) websites.

Reactions: Medieval/Modern: 9th Annual Lawrence J. Schoenberg Symposium on Manuscript Studies in the Digital Age

Came across this on the Medieval Academy news page:

9th Annual Lawrence J. Schoenberg Symposium on Manuscript Studies in the Digital Age

Posted on June 3, 2016 by Chris
http://www.themedievalacademyblog.org/9th-annual-lawrence-j-schoenberg-symposium-on-manuscript-studies-in-the-digital-age/

November 17-19, 2016

Save the Date! Registration opens at the end of the summer.

Reactions: Medieval/Modern

In partnership with the Rare Book Department of the Free Library of Philadelphia, the Schoenberg Institute of Manuscript Studies (SIMS) at the University of Pennsylvania Libraries is pleased to announce the 9th Annual Lawrence J. Schoenberg Symposium on Manuscript Studies in the Digital Age. This year’s theme, “Reactions: Medieval/Modern,” gives us space to explore the many and varied ways that people have reacted to, and acted upon, manuscripts from the Middle Ages up to today. Reactions take many forms. They include the manipulation of physical objects through, for example, the marking up of texts, addition of illustrations, the disbinding of books or rebinding of fragments, as well as the manipulation of digital objects, thanks to new technologies involved in digitization, ink and parchment analysis, virtual reconstruction, among many other processes. This symposium will also tackle how popular culture has reacted to manuscripts over time as witnessed by their use and appearance in books, games, and films. Our keynote speaker will be Michelle P. Brown, Professor emerita of Medieval Manuscript Studies at the School of Advanced Study, University of London, and former Curator of Manuscripts at the British Library.

For more information and a list of speakers, visit the website: http://www.library.upenn.edu/exhibits/lectures/ljs_symposium9.html.

New Book Chaucer on Screen

Came across this last month. No details yet on exact contents.

Chaucer on Screen: Absence, Presence, and Adapting the Canterbury Tales
https://ohiostatepress.org/index.htm?books/book%20pages/kelly_pugh_chaucer.html
Edited by Kathleen Coyne Kelly and Tison Pugh
Foreword by Terry Jones

Ohio State University Press
Series: Interventions: New Studies in Medieval Culture

Books are expected to be available December 2016
$94.95 cloth
296 pp. 6x9
978-0-8142-1317-9

“This is a ground-breaking volume. It reflects a continued interest in the intersection of the medieval as a theme, subject matter, and source with more recent technologies and ways of (re)telling narratives.”—Kevin J. Harty, La Salle University

“This volume will be highly significant for scholars interested in adaptations of canonical texts, including but not limited to the medieval and Chaucer.” —Helen Young, La Trobe University

Unlike William Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, and other great authors who have enjoyed continued success in Hollywood, Geoffrey Chaucer has largely been shunted to the margins of the cinematic world. Chaucer on Screen: Absence, Presence, and Adapting the Canterbury Tales, edited by Kathleen Coyne Kelly and Tison Pugh, investigates the various translations of Chaucer and the Canterbury Tales to film and television, tracing out how the legacies of the great fourteenth-century English poet have been revisited and reinterpreted through visual media. Contributors to this volume address the question of why Chaucer is so rarely adapted to the screen, and then turn to the occasional, often awkward, attempts to adapt his narratives, including such works as Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s lyrical A Canterbury Tale (1944), Pier Paolo Pasolini’s still-controversial I racconti di Canterbury (1972), Bud Lee’s soft-core The Ribald Tales of Canterbury (1985), Brian Helgeland’s A Knight’s Tale (2001), and BBC television productions, among others. Chaucer on Screen aims to rethink some of the premises of adaptation studies and to erase the ideological lines between textual sources and visual reimaginings in the certainty that many pleasures, scholarly and otherwise, can be found in multiple media across disparate eras.

Kathleen Coyne Kelly is Professor of English at Northeastern University. Tison Pugh is Professor of English at the University of Central Florida.

Medieval Studies on Television Screens (MAPACA Atlantic City 11/3-5/16)

Sorry to have forgotten to post this to the blog:

Call for Papers
Medieval Studies on Television Screens
Proposals by 30 June 2016

Session sponsored by the Association for the Advancement of Scholarship and Teaching of the Medieval in Popular Culture
For the 27th Annual Conference of the Mid-Atlantic Popular & American Culture Association, Atlantic City, New Jersey, 3-5 November 2016

Following the success of previous sessions at both the International Congress on Medieval Studies and meetings of the Popular Culture Association, the Association for the Advancement of Scholarship and Teaching of the Medieval in Popular Culture seeks proposals for a sponsored session on the topic of Medieval Studies on Television Screens for inclusion under the Beowulf to Shakespeare: Popular Culture in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance Area at the 27th Annual Conference of the Mid-Atlantic Popular & American Culture Association to be held at the Tropicana Casino & Resort in Atlantic City, New Jersey, from 3-5 November 2016.

The medieval is represented on television, as in other forms of medievalism, through four basic types of stories distinguished by their settings. Narratives might be set fully in medieval past, or the medieval may be reimagined in anachronistic settings, such as the pre-medieval past (a site of origins), post medieval eras (including science fictional futures) or secondary worlds.

In this session, we hope to continue the work begun in the recent studies like Arthurian Animation: A Study of Cartoon Camelots on Film and Television (2013) by the late Michael N. Salda, Arthurian Legends on Film and Television (2000) by Bert Olton, Cinematic Re-Imaginings of Arthurian Literature (2015) edited by Tara Foster and Jon Sherman, Mastering the Game of Thrones: Essays on George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire (2015) edited by Jes Battis and Susan Johnston, The Middle Ages on Television: Critical Essays (2015) edited by Meriem Pagès and Karolyn Kinane, Winter is Coming: The Medieval World of Game of Thrones (2016) by Carolyne Larrington, and Women in Game of Thrones: Power, Conformity and Resistance (2014) by Valerie Estelle Frankel and in the ongoing efforts of numerous bloggers, essayists, and thesis and dissertation writers working independent of dedicated publications on the medieval on screen.

Papers might address any of the following aspects of medievalism on television:

Animated or live-action series with medieval themes
Films made for television or television miniseries with medieval themes
Fantasy series or telefilms inspired by the medieval
Allusions to the medieval in otherwise non-medieval television productions
One-off episodes featuring appearances of the medieval
Commercials with medieval themes
Television documentaries and other educational television about the medieval past
Television adaptations into other media depicting the medieval

An ever-expanding list of potential works can be found at our website: https://medievalstudiesonscreen.blogspot.com/.

Please send abstracts of approximately 300 words and a brief biography to the organizer, Michael A. Torregrossa, at MedievalStudiesonScreen@gmail.com.

Kalamazoo 2017 Advance Notice

The Association for the Advancement of Scholarship and Teaching of the Medieval in Popular Culture has proposed the following sponsored session for the 52nd International Congress on Medieval Studies. The session is pending acceptance by the organizing committee, and an official call for papers will be announced should it act favorably on our behalf. Please contact us at MedievalStudiesonScreen@gmail.com if you might be interested in participating.

Animating the Medieval: Research on Animated Representations of the Middle Ages in Memory of Michael N. Salda
Sponsored by The Association for the Advancement of Scholarship and Teaching of the Medieval in Popular Culture

Medievalist Michael N. Salda passed away in October 2015. He was, perhaps, best known for his work on Chaucer and Malory, but scholars of the medieval on screen owe him a greater debt for his pioneering work on animated films, television programming, and theatrical shorts based on medieval subjects. Much of his activities in this field focused on the Matter of Britain. He began these efforts in the mid-1990s, and they culminated in his monograph Arthurian Animation: A Study of Cartoon Camelots on Film and Television published in 2013. In addition, Salda’s interests in animated representations of the medieval extended beyond Arthurian subjects; he also contributed an essay on the Vikings in animation for Vikings on Film: Essays on Depictions of the Nordic Middle Ages (2011) and was working on a venture devoted to cataloging the more general use of the medieval in animation, a project that now seems unlikely to appear given his untimely death. However, as advocates of the Once and Future King have sustained the ideals of their fallen Arthur, we, too, are able to follow Salda’s model and honor his memory in continuing his work by building upon his scholarship in our own contributions to studies of the medieval on screen and by tracking down and discussing additional representations of the medieval in animation. We believe these efforts both further the mission of the Association for the Advancement of Scholarship and Teaching of the Medieval in Popular Culture (successor to the Virtual Society for the Study of Popular Culture and the Middle Ages) in promoting original research on the medieval in popular culture and acknowledge the lasting impact of a colleague that changed the field of Medievalism Studies for the better.