CFP Beowulf at Rocky Mountain MLA (6/30/2024; Las Vegas 10/10-12/2024)

Call for Papers: The Pagan Beowulf: Alternatives to the Usual Beowulf

Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association (RMMLA) 77th Annual Convention

October 10-12 (Thur.-Sat.) at the Westgate Resort, Las Vegas, Nevada



Deadline for Submissions: June 30, 2024



For centuries, the “usual” Beowulf translation has been full of Christian references and very little Pagan references. Yet, Christianity did not arrive in Scandinavia until around 710, well after the time of the events in Beowulf, which is around 550 AD. In contrast, the first Christian missionary to Anglo-Saxon England was with St. Augustine in 597. While there are some definite Christian references in Beowulf, there are actually far fewer than the far greater pagan references in the poem. Your abstract should address this theme specifically.



Send your 350-word abstract, with a short 50-word bio, to Jim Buckingham, Old English Session Chair, at wibuck50@gmail.com by June 30, 2024.

Odin asked, “Can you Read the Runes?”: How to Read the Runic Letters in Part I of Beowulf.

Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association (RMMLA) 77th Annual Convention

October 10-12 (Thur.-Sat.) at the Westgate Resort, Las Vegas, Nevada



Join us in Las Vegas this October, where we will defy the odds and time, and you can learn how to read some of the 419 (and counting) letter runes found in the first third of Beowulf.



This groundbreaking, ninety-minute session is the first of its kind in teaching how one can detect and decipher between two alphabets that use the same letters, with one being just a letter and the other being a letter that represents a word. Unlike Odin, you will not have to give up an eye.




All attendees will receive a letter rune chart.



Contact Jim Buckingham, Old English Session Chair, at wibuck50@gmail.com by June 30, 2024 to express your interest in attending. Limit per Session is 100 attendees.

CFP Beowulfs Beyond Beowulf: Transformations of Beowulf in Popular Culture (Panel) (9/30/2023; NeMLA Boston 3/7-10/2024)

Beowulfs Beyond Beowulf: Transformations of Beowulf in Popular Culture (Panel)


Sponsored by the Association for the Advancement of Scholarship and Teaching of the Medieval in Popular Culture and the Monsters & the Monstrous Area of the Northeast Popular Culture Association

Organized by Michael A. Torregrossa, Richard Fahey, Carl Sell, and Benjamin Hoover


Call for Papers - Please Submit Proposals by 30 September 2023

55th Annual Convention of Northeast Modern Language Association

Sheraton Boston Hotel (Boston, MA)

On-site event: 7-10 March 2024



Beowulfs Beyond Beowulf: Transformations of Beowulf in Popular Culture (Panel)


The Old English epic Beowulf remains an important touchstone for connecting us to the medieval past, yet it also has continued relevance today through its various transformations in cultural texts (especially works of popular culture). Our hope with this session is to expand our knowledge of these works and assess their potential for research and teaching.


Please visit our website Beowulf Transformed: Adaptations and Appropriations of the Beowulf Story (available at https://beowulf-transformed.blogspot.com/) for resources and ideas.


The full call for papers (with complete session and submission information) can be accessed at https://tinyurl.com/Beowulf-Transformed-NeMLA-2024.

Session Information

Over a millennium old, the story of Beowulf is disseminated primarily through its editions and translations and its transformations. These three types of Beowulfiana represent a massive corpus of over 1000 works according to the Beowulf’s Afterlives Bibliographic Database; though, as medievalists, we tend to focus on the first two categories rather than the last concentrating on scholastic pursuits rather than entertainments. Consequently, many are often surprised by the variety and vitality of this corpus and its vast potential for research and teaching.


New versions of the Beowulf story feature in all forms of modern mediævalisms, yet (as is true with most medieval texts) research continues to focus primarily on depictions of Beowulf on screen (about 100 examples according to the Internet Movie Database). We hope in this session to expand our view of Beowulf’s reception by creators and look more deeply at the text’s wider use.


We are particularly interested in explorations of the adaptation and/or appropriation of the text, its characters, and its themes in works of fiction (at least 250 examples according to the Internet Speculative Fiction Database and much more recorded by the Beowulf’s Afterlives Bibliographic Database) and comics (at least 380 examples according to the Grand Comics Database), as well as their representations in new and neglected works on screen (including film, television, entertainment consoles, and the Internet). Additional versions of the Beowulf can be found in works of creative, performative, and visual arts that also need more attention.


We hope to make our conversation productive. Therefore, we request that submissions highlight the ways the new text transforms the old (for example as interpretations or appropriations of the poem or as an intertext for another work) as well as its value in furthering the Beowulf tradition rather than focusing solely on any perceived defects.


Please see our website Beowulf Transformed: Adaptations and Appropriations of the Beowulf Story (at https://beowulf-transformed.blogspot.com/) for a growing list of ideas, resources and support.


All proposals will also be considered for a themed issue of the open-access journal The Heroic Age: A Journal of Early Medieval Northwestern Europe.


Please address questions and/or concerns to the organizers at popular.preternaturaliana@gmail.com. .

Submission Information

All proposals must be submitted into the CFPList system at https://cfplist.com/nemla/Home/S/20596 by 30 September 2023. You will be prompted to create an account with NeMLA (if you do not already have one) and, then, to complete sections on Title, Abstract, and Media Needs.


Notification on the fate of your submission will be made prior to 16 October 2023. If favorable, please confirm your participation with chairs by accepting their invitations and by registering for the event. The deadline for Registration/Membership is 9 December 2023.


Be advised of the following policies of the Convention: All participants must be members of NeMLA for the year of the conference. Participants may present on up to two sessions of different types (panels/seminars are considered of the same type). Submitters to the CFP site cannot upload the same abstract twice.(See the NeMLA Presenter Policies page, at https://www.buffalo.edu/nemla/convention/policies.html, for further details,)



Thank you for your interest in our session.


Again, please address questions and/or concerns to the organizers at popular.preternaturaliana@gmail.com. .


For more information on the Association for the Advancement of Scholarship and Teaching of the Medieval in Popular Culture, please visit our website at https://MedievalinPopularCulture.blogspot.com/.


For more information on the Monsters & the Monstrous Area of the Northeast Popular Culture Association, please visit our website at https://popularpreternaturaliana.blogspot.com/.

CFP What's in a Name? (Ab)Use of Anglo-Saxon in English-speaking cultures and elsewhere (12/20/2021; conference in Padua 6/6-7/2022)

What's in a Name? (Ab)Use of Anglo-Saxon in English-speaking cultures and elsewhere

deadline for submissions: December 20, 2021

full name / name of organization: Alessandra Petrina / University of Padua, Italy

contact email: alessandra.petrina@unipd.it

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2021/11/10/whats-in-a-name-abuse-of-anglo-saxon-in-english-speaking-cultures-and-elsewhere

What’s in a Name?

(Ab)Use of Anglo-Saxon in English-speaking cultures and elsewhere

Padova 6-7 June 2022

Since the seventeenth century, the use of the term Anglo-Saxon has been characterised by a strong identity and ideological acceptation. The nationalistic sentiment grown after British imperialism obtained legitimation in the appropriation and remodelling of Britain’s own past, conferring on Anglo-Saxon meanings that were increasingly connected with national and racial identity (Horsman 1976, 1981; Greenberg 1982).

This fictitious idea of ancestry has exerted a special fascination on collective imagery also thanks to the cultural movement known as ‘medievalism’, a recurrent theme in British and American art which also characterises the contemporary political debate in those countries. In America, far-right (pseudo-)political groups make large use of medievalism, and, in particular, of their alleged ‘Anglo-Saxon’ origins in the attempt to back their xenophobic and racist claims, based on white supremacy.

A connection between Anglo-Saxon and whiteness has also emerged within Medieval Studies and this gave birth to firm and, sometimes, drastic reactions. In recent years, a movement formed of women researchers of non-Western origins voiced vibrant protests against the treatment they have been suffering in this academic field, which they consider racist, sexist and xenophobic.

In this regard, they have identified the terms Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Saxonist as the most obvious expressions of this attitude.

This debate concerns the specifically ideological and extremist uses of Anglo-Saxon, but little attention has been devoted to the use of this term in all forms of communication and the semantic values it has received in history, not only in English, but also in other languages and cultures. Beyond the ideological dimension that seems to prevail in some contexts, how and to what purposes has Anglo-Saxon been employed? And to what extent does this term eventually designate an exclusive and superior racial or cultural origin?

The purpose of this conference is to investigate this phenomenon across time, languages, and media. The topics include (but are not limited to) the use of Anglo-Saxon (and its corresponding forms in other languages) in:

• Literature
• Journalism
• Political discourse
• Performative arts (theatre, cinema, TV and web series, etc.)
• Gaming

Please send an abstract (roughly 500 words) and a short curriculum by 20 December to Omar Khalaf omar.khalaf@unipd.it

Last updated November 10, 2021

CFP Decentering the White Male Gaze: Inclusivity and Diverse Voices in Beowulf Studies (9/25/21; NeMLA 2022)

Decentering the White Male Gaze: Inclusivity and Diverse Voices in Beowulf Studies (NeMLA 2022)

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2021/06/16/decentering-the-white-male-gaze-inclusivity-and-diverse-voices-in-beowulf-studies

deadline for submissions: September 25, 2021

full name / name of organization: Richard Fahey - NeMLA 2022

contact email: rfahey@nd.edu

Beowulf studies has traditionally been the domain of white male scholars who have historically dominated both the scholarship and translations of the poem. This session seeks to decenter the white male gaze and invites novel perspectives from often marginalized voices in the field to contribute to the many ongoing academic conversations focused on Beowulf.

Although in the field of Beowulf studies, Beowulf has long been regarded as a poem about men and for men, this session rejects such notions and seeks to highlight the formative role women play both in the poem and in the scholarship. Moreover, this session intends to explore the role of race in both the poem and the scholarship, and scholars of color, who have even more underrepresented that women in the field, are especially encouraged to submit proposals. Some recommended topics might include discussion of the role of women in the poem or women’s contributions to scholarship and translations of Beowulf. Other recommended topics might include exploring the role of race and tribalism in the poem, examining the effects of ethno-nationalism and toxic masculinity on interpretations of Beowulf and its literary afterlives, highlighting scholars of color’s contributions to Beowulf studies or centering the perspectives of the monsters.

Please send paper proposals (along with your contact information and a brief academic biography) and/or questions directly to session organizer, Richard Fahey at rfahey@nd.edu. Unless otherwise directed, he will submit the panel details to the conference.

Last updated June 23, 2021

CFP Monsters of Beowulf (8/1/2021; NEPCA virtual 10/21-23/21)

 Our kick-off event:

Monsters of Beowulf: Past, Present, Future

Session Proposed for the 2021 Conference of the Northeast Popular Culture/American Culture Association

Sponsored by the Monsters & the Monstrous Area

Virtual event, Thursday, 21 October, through Saturday, 23 October 2021.

Proposals due by 1 August 2021.

 

The Northeast Popular Culture/American Culture Association (a.k.a. NEPCA) prides itself on holding conferences that emphasize sharing ideas in a non-competitive and supportive environment. We welcome proposals for presentations of 15-20 minutes in length, from researchers at all levels, including undergraduate and graduate students, junior faculty, and senior scholars, as well as independent scholars. NEPCA conferences offer intimate and nurturing sessions in which new ideas and works-in-progress can be aired, as well as completed projects.

For this session, we’re looking for papers that explore and highlight the reception and representation of the monsters of Beowulf in popular culture.

 

If you are interested in joining this session, please submit the following information into NEPCA’s online form at http://bit.ly/PopCFP2021.

·         Proposal Type (Single Presentation or Panel)

·         Subject Area (select the “Monsters and the Monstrous” from the list)

·         Working Title

·         Abstract (250 words)

·         Short bio (50-200 words)

Address any inquiries to the area chairs: Michael A. Torregrossa at popular.preternaturaliana@gmail.com.

Presenters are also required to become members of NEPCA for the year.