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.
