Call for Papers

22nd Annual Conference on Medievalism
International Society for Studies in Medievalism

27-30 September 2007

University of Western Ontario

NEOMEDIEVALISM

Plenary speakers for the conference include Terry Jones (UK), Richard Firth Green (Ohio State University), and Alain Corbellari (Univ. de Lausanne).

Twenty years ago, Umberto Eco described the renewed interest in the Middle Ages, with what he called “a curious oscillation between fantastic neomedievalism and responsible philological examination” as being a modern desire to dream the Middle Ages. On one level a desire to return to our roots, to find our origins, on another it is a desire to make the Middle Ages anew, to make the medieval period happen the way it ought to have according to the individual modern reconception. Neomedievalism has come to be a polysemous term, referring for political scientists to a return to barbaric nation-states or tribalism; for media theorists to video games, graphic novels, and other modern media which reconceptualize the medieval; for traditional medievalists to the historiography of the discipline, the way in which our conception of the medieval depends so profoundly on former scholars and their hopes and desires, their failings and their strengths; and for many others, to an interdisciplinary category which includes all the above and any new approach to the medieval in the past five centuries.

Papers are invited on any aspect of neomedievalism and medievalism, including the following:

•	neomedievalism and neoconservatism
•	the composition, development and presentation of new media with neomedieval elements: manga, graphic texts, film, video, television, video-games
•	neomedievalism in music, visual art, poetry, history
•	theorizing medievalism: new ways of thinking about the turn to the medieval
•	the historiography of medievalism, the construction of the medieval past
•	issues of race, gender, and ethnicity in medievalism
•	the medieval in time and space
•	the neomedieval and the search for the sublime
•	magic, religion and science: the neomedievalist balance
•	neomedievalism and nationhood, policy-making, or the reconfiguring of history
•	the commodification of the medieval

Abstracts of 2-300 words must be submitted by 20 March 2007 to M.J. Toswell or M. Kightley, co-chairs of the Program Committee, at  or  or by mail at: Department of English, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada N6A 3K7 or by fax at: 519-661-3776. If there are problems with submission, please call 519-661-2111 ext. 85776. The conference website will shortly be posted at http://www.uwo.ca/english/neomedievalism.