september 20 – 21, 2019
Georgia Institute of technology | Atlanta, Ga
As the global media phenomenon called Game of Thrones ends (or will it?), the foundations and futures of what we refer to as the Middle Ages have come under increased scrutiny. Questions of affect, gender, nationalism, race, and religion, even if starting small and locally, can quickly reach regional, national, and global audiences, just as global, national, and regional matters can quickly impact local discussions. In addition, the roles of those engaged in studying and teaching the reception of medieval culture in postmedievaltimes are changing, perhaps demanding more public outreach. And the boundaries between ‘amateurs’ and ‘specialists’ are increasingly called into question as large scale access to the Digital Plenitude blurs the traditional distinctions between academic and non-academic research and scholarship. Aware of these complex developments, this year’s conference intends to bring together world-wide perspectives and perhaps suggest a toolkit of practices we can employ to bring to bear our experience on the manifold new and old instantiations of medievalism. We will also hold a number of ISSM organizational meetings and workshops.
Please send abstracts of c. 300 words for individual papers or entire sessions of on global and all other kinds of medievalisms by June 15 to Richard Utz (richard.utz@lmc.gatech.edu). For the wide range of topics of interest to the study of medievalism, please visit the table of contents pages of Studies in Medievalism and The Year’s Work in Medievalism, and the reviews published in Medievally Speaking. We will do our best to respond to abstracts as quickly as possible since we know you will need to plan your travel relatively quickly. Please know that we won’t have a dedicated conference hotel. For Atlanta hotels surrounding Georgia Tech, online special offers are usually better priced than the special rates provided to organizers of small conferences like ours. Therefore, simply search online for the 10 hotels within walking distance to the Stephen J. Hall Building on the GT campus, 215 Bobby Dodd Way, NW, Atlanta, Georgia, 30313. For those who joined us in 2014, it’s the same building in which we held the conference then.
Finally: As an organization, the International Society for the Study of Medievalism has a long history of being open to proposals from the widest possible range of participants, including independent scholars and students. Therefore, we are committed to keeping our conference fees reasonable (between $30 and $100, depending on income), to help colleagues in contingent positions, independent scholars, international travelers, and students attend.
Our current regional organizing committee includes:
Andrew Eichel, Center for Academic Success, Georgia Tech
Allen Fromherz, History/Middle East Studies Center, Georgia State University
Jonathan Good, History, Reinhardt University
Leah Haught, English, University of West Georgia
Dina Khapaeva, Modern Languages, Georgia Tech
Nikolay Koposov, Russian and East Asian Languages and Cultures, Emory University
Robert J Meyer-Lee, English, Agnes Scott College
Carol Senf, Literature, Media, and Communication, Georgia Tech