Pre-Modernisms: Friday, October 28th, 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)
