Pre-Modernisms: Friday, October 28^th, The Graduate Center, CUNY

As the famous sayings go, everything old is new again, and history repeats itself. How many times have we heard someone described as a Renaissance man or woman, or something that seems old-fashioned called “medieval?” Scholars of these periods often find, of course, that such evaluations are, at best, inaccurate. However, trans-temporal approaches to study and even historical anachronisms can produce fruitful new inquiries into our fields, from contemporary children’s literature that engages in medievalisms to produce new fantasy worlds to queer and transgender studies that attempt to see the past from non-normative perspectives. This conference aims to bring together a wide variety of scholars of different disciplines and especially different time periods to pair what we know about the classical, medieval, and early modern periods with what later times perceive about these periods and how they manipulate the past for present agendas. As such, this conference is aimed not only at pre-modern scholars, but also at scholars of later and contemporary periods whose work engages in envisioning the past.

Please submit a 300-word abstract no later than September 15 at 5 PM.

E-mail: medieval.study@gmail.com

Topics may include, but are not limited to:

Arthurian Tradition

Early Book Collections

Architectural Styles

Medieval TV and Film

Children’s and Young Adult Literature

Historical Fiction

J.R.R. Tolkien

Historically Based Political Rhetoric

History of Marginal Perspectives

Law and the Legal Tradition

Renaissance Humanism

Philosophical Traditions

Renaissance Faires and Period Dress

Medieval and Early Modern Adaptations of Classical Texts

Premodern Recipes and Remedies

Contemporary Classroom Approaches

Linguistic Developments

Premodern Historiography (including history plays)