MEMO's Blog Has MOVED!

Medieval Electronic Multimedia Organization's blog has moved.  If you posted comments on any blog essays composed during the second half of 2012, those essays have been copied over into the new blog location.  Feel free to copy and post your comments there, too (please)!

Here's the new url: http://www.medievalelectronicmultimedia.org/blog/

Digital Religion: How medieval is that Church, anyway?

My apologies for not posting the December post this weekend. I’ve interviewed and been offered a new job, I’m moving, and I’m wrestling with a publisher.  Good news all around, but it did lead to a slight delay on posting my contribution to the blog.

It’s been another profitable year for multimedia medievalism. The video game industry released a number of titles that sold well in 2012, along with the profitable release of additional content for existing titles. While we could have an interesting discussion about the industry in general, I thought I’d talk about how “the other half” live in neomedieval games. I’m talking about religious institutions, of course. When most people think of medievalism (even without our fancy academic vocabulary), they tend to focus on swords, sorcery, and aristocratic titles. The Church, theology, and monastic life are usually far less prominent, often reduced to window dressing. How many games have religious institutions reduced to “people who heal with supernatural powers” or “institution that calls for clichéd religious conflict while wearing funny clothes”? Yet, for all the clichés and tropes that abound, there are some practical issues that are often overlooked with religious institutions found in medievalism. How does the religious institution fund its activities? How does it recruit members? How does it practice politics? And how does it influence culture?

This is not merely a question of historical accuracy; even a fictional religion with a fictional religious hierarchy needs to be able to meet the basic needs of its members and adherents. After all, even cloistered nuns need to eat, even before we talk about the power plays involved in the election of various Popes or the obligations peasants owed church property in medieval England. Along these lines, I was thinking about how one could rate a religious institution in medievalism and see just how medieval it really is, without discussing the actual theology involved. A kind of structural approach, if you will, rather than comparing the theology of a fictional religion to the real theology of various religious traditions in the Middle Ages. 

Some criteria I was brainstorming that might be applicable to a Western European/Roman Catholic flavored medievalism:

1)      Land or property ownership: Does the institution own property that generates revenue. Lots of religious institutions own land for their places of worship, but the generation of revenue to support the institution seems to me to be a fairly medieval way of operating. How many monks were supported in their prayer by a bequest from an aristocratic lord who donated the revenue from a piece of property?

2)      Legal power: Does the religious institution have the legal authority to judge and punish its own crimes? Does it enjoy any kind of immunity from secular legal authorities? Does it operate with the sanction of secular rulers?

3)      The sale of goods/services: Does the institution, as a matter of policy, sell or rent relics, sacraments, indulgences, prayers, or honorary positions?

4)      Religious Warfare: Does the institution advocate warfare on theological grounds?  Does it couch warfare in terms of one religious tradition versus another?

5)      Heresy: Does the institution use violence or military force against heretics? Does it refuse to tolerate divergent theologies?

6)      Visibility: Is the institution a ubiquitous figure throughout a culture? Even if the common people do not understand the theology or recognize sub sects, do they easily recognize and show respect to members of the institution?

7)      Obligations to the people: Does the institution meet some kind of need of those outside the institution? Does it provide religious services of some sort, including days and places of worship?

8)      Secular interference: Is the religious institution powerful enough/important enough that secular political figures attempt to influence the selection of leadership within the institution?

9)      Training and recruitment: How does the institution perpetuate itself every generation?

Just to try out the criteria, I thought I’d use Star Wars: The Old Republic as a test case. Some of my colleagues have published on medievalism in the Old Republic setting before, but SW:TOR is the latest incarnation of such well received games like Knights of the Old Republic and The Sith Lords. Like it or not, Star Wars and its canon participates in medievalism with eagermess and aplomb. Given the money to be made, we should not be surprised.

A bit of background before I begin. SW:TOR is in a setting that is around 4,000 years before the events depicted in the famous films. It features all the common tropes you would expect from Star Wars, including Jedi Knights, smugglers, evil Sith Lords, glowing swords, and a religious tradition involving The Force. Relevant to our discussion are the two main religious institutions of the game: the Sith Empire and the Jedi Order. The Jedi are the putative “good guys” while the Sith are the putative “bad guys.” Both religious institutions have their respective iconography. Jedi tend to wear softer, earth-toned clothing with swords (called lightsabers) that glow a friendly blue or green, while the Sith tend to wear black or dark purple clothing with lightsabers that glow a bright red. The architecture of Sith buildings tends towards dark, grey cathedrals with the red emblem of the Empire adorning all faces, while Jedi buildings (the few they have) are bright and cheery with round contours. And just in case you weren’t sure if the Sith are supposed to be the “bad guys,” their use of the Dark Side of the Force tends to disfigure their faces, turning their eyes red or yellow, turning their skin gray (regardless of species or ethnicity), and giving their faces what appear to be varicose veins. Jedi tend to have a healthy flesh color (when human), have normal eye colors, and have no varicose veins in their faces (probably all that exercise they get).

We could go into a lengthy discussion of theological differences, but we’re here to talk about institutions and structures. In SW:TOR, how do the Sith and Jedi stack up as medievalisms?

1.      Land/Property ownership: The Jedi Order seems to own some land. They have a large temple on the capital of the Republic (which was destroyed in the last war), along with some facilities on Tython. By and large, though, the Jedi just have a few buildings where they meet and train. As far as I can tell, they do not generate any revenue from their lands, and the individual Jedi tend to live like itinerant friars. The Sith Empire, on the other hand, gives individual Sith Lords substantial property. Whole planets are owned or controlled by Sith Lords. Sith Lords also own slaves. In fact, Sith Lords own so much revenue generating land that they fight one another for scarce resources when the higher members of the institution do not move to prevent such warfare. An individual Sith Lord might be able to command entire economies.

2.      Legal Power: Jedi are an extra-legal institution. They have ties to the military of the Republic, but they have no official power to arrest others or compel them to behave in certain ways. The Jedi Order does have the power to police its own members, however. It may punish or even kill members who are guilty of crimes. But outside the confines of the institution, it only wields a small amount of legal power. The Sith Empire, on the other hand, gives considerable power to Sith Lords. Many civilians live in fear of the Sith; furthermore, the Sith equivalent to canon law disputes between Sith Lords (such as the conflict between Lord Kallig and Darth Thanaton) often spill over into the lives of those outside the Sith hierarchy. Sith Lords are also normally immune to prosecution or legal censure from non-Sith. The Sith police themselves with substantial violence (canon law disputes tend to be resolved with battles to the death, making the Sith a bit more exciting than Occam and Aquinas), but those outside the hierarchy of the Sith have very little ability to legally deal with the Sith.

3.      Sale of goods and services: The Jedi Order seems to have no visible means of support. It sells nothing to anyone. In fact, playing SW:TOR as a Jedi Knight, one can’t help but wonder how the Order is able to finance the construction of lightsabers or even feed its own trainees. The Sith do not sell anything, either. But since the Sith have planets dedicated to their support, they have a visible means of support that the Jedi do not.

4.      Religious Warfare: Both the Jedi and the Sith frame conflict across the galaxy in theological terms.  Each group sees the other as an abomination to be wiped out. While the Jedi normally preach non-violence and forgiveness, they are more than willing to engage in warfare against the hated Sith. For their part, the Sith see the extermination of the Jedi as a right and proper goal of warfare. The wars discussed in SW:TOR all have this religious dimension to them.

5.      Heresy: Both the Sith and Jedi have little tolerance for heresy. While the Jedi Order is more willing to try and bring a heretic back to the light, neither religious organization hesitates to use violence to resolve problems of heresy. Both Jedi and Sith use censorship to suppress heresy as well, as each organization buries the secrets of heretics far away from where its members might find them.

6.      Visibility: Both organizations are highly visible. While no one “worships” The Force in the same way that medieval Christians worship, everyone in both cultures recognize and shows deference to Jedi and Sith. Their iconography makes them easy to spot, and everyone knows the kinds of powers and abilities these people have.

7.      Obligations to the people: Neither the Jedi nor the Sith have obligations to the people. Because people in the fiction of Star Wars do not worship The Force as such, there are few needs for them to meet. The Jedi sometimes practice healing, but their abilities with medicine are no better than doctors using the high-tech gadgets of the galaxy.

8.      Secular interference: There is little secular interference in the affairs of the Jedi Order. Since they wield little power, there is less need for the Republic military or intelligence services to keep tabs on them. The Sith, on the other hand, are so embedded in the affairs of the Empire (it is called the Sith Empire, after all), that secular interference is normal. While the Imperial military and Imperial Intelligence would not dream of actually interfering in the election of Sith Lords to the Dark Council (kind of like the College of Cardinals with saber duels and supernatural powers), they do spend considerable time keeping tabs on influential Sith Lords. And when Sith Lords threaten the interests of the Empire, they are dealt with accordingly. Darth Jadus and Darth Malgus are both the subject of espionage and outright military action when they threaten the stability of the Empire (Jadus through terrorism, Malgus through an attempted coup and treason). Furthermore, the Minister of Intelligence will often complain to the player that Imperial Intelligence can’t do more to check the power of the Sith. These secular institutions see themselves in nationalist and patriotic terms, and they find the Sith Lords to be troublesome meddlers that are tolerated because of how powerful they are.

9.      Recruitment and training: SW:TOR does not really discuss the training or recruitment of either Jedi or Sith in any significant detail. There are vague references to the Jedi Order training too many students too quickly to replace losses from recent conflicts, causing a general decline in the quality of members (not unlike the medieval Church replacing clergy lost in the Black Death). For their part, the Sith seem to train many students, but the process kills most of the apprentices.  However, unlike the Jedi Order, the Sith tend to pass on positions of economic or political influence to their apprentices when they die (a fairly common occurrence given the lethality of political infighting). Maybe one out of a hundred students might survive training and apprenticeship, but that one apprentice could inherit the position of a Sith who has power equivalent to a Cardinal or head of a monastic order.

It seems like both organizations have some similarities to the medieval church, but the Sith are far more medieval than the Jedi. The Sith Empire, with its meshing of the Sith hierarchy to the bureaucratic institutions of the Empire shares far more in common with the medieval church of Western Europe, say 8^th Century or later, than it does with contemporary political institutions. It is structurally medieval, even if the theology is in no way really connected to medieval Christian thought.

What do you, my distinguished colleagues, think about this kind of systematizing approach? I’m sure I’ve left out all kinds of criteria that might be employed, but does an approach like this have any kind of attraction to those who study medievalism in general, or digital medievalisms in particular? And what does it say about medievalism when the “bad guys” are the one with a more medieval religious hierarchy than the “good guys”?

October blog - reproducing medieval artefacts

Greetings, MEMO friends, from Yorkshire.  I haven’t been able to join in much for the last month, as I have spent a month forcefully persuading (!) people at Hull University that I really AM on study leave….but I have done that, and here is my October blog, as promised…..

An interesting ‘neo-medieval event’ this week was the unveiling of a reproduction of the Bayeux Tapestry, engraved in its entirety on the base and sides of a shallow glass bowl.  It took six months to engrave all 58 scenes on the base of the bowl, which is going to star in a ‘Glass’ exhibition at Glastonbury Abbey. 

The final product is interesting in the changes it makes to the original.  It’s a mini-version, much smaller, it has English captions, and it snakes around the inside of the bowl in a sort of ‘wiggly wormy ‘ circle, complete with pointy tail-curl on the outside end.  It looks a bit like a labyrinth, or the Ragnarok serpent. There’s a picture of it on Getty images (News – image 153160878).  What interests me is what it says about reproducing things from the past in different media, or reproducing them at all.  This, although a reproduction, is unlike the original, which you have to follow around the wall, and which (even if it were complete) resists completion.  It’s both exciting and (from an  Anglo-Saxon point of view) threatening, larger than life.  The glass version is complete, contained, and ‘owned’ by English culture – the English lines are on top of each scene, with the Latin text, as in the original, within it.  It has been made into an object, ultimately for use by another culture – the one which lost in 1066.

This got me thinking about what happens when we reproduce things from the medieval (or older) past as ‘things’.  What’s going on there?  Apart from economic gain, why do we want to do it?  And if it IS economic, why does it sell?  One of the features of this year’s Cultural Olympiad (timed to coincide with a certain event in London) was a giant inflatable Stonehenge, used as a bouncy castle.  You can find pics of that at

 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-17777997

I have to admit that I like this better than Norman propaganda on glass bowls, or the Canterbury Pilgrims on a necktie.  It offers a (playful) idea of the far past as an environment, rather than as an object or ‘thing’.  More than that, you can bounce around in it, maybe with time to think about what it might have been like, maybe have some ideas on what the ‘real thing’ is about….???

Another interesting notion is the fact that, being an engraving, the figures on that bowl are negatives of the original – it is transparent, uncolored – in fact, against the background, all the faces are black.  Given the focus of the SIM conference this month, does this have implications for how we see the medieval?  Can we fit our own identities into the transparent frame, or maybe see non-white, or figures devoid of any color?  Does this have interesting implications for neo medieval re-workings, re-presentations, or commentary?  On the subject of Stonehenge, anyone can bounce around in it, regardless of color, age or physical condition. Given that the original was thought to have been a place of healing, doesn’t that have interesting possibilities, too?

This is a big neo-medieval week in Britain – the new series of Merlin begins on the BBC on Saturday.  The queen may be an actress of color, along with her brother (one of the Knights of the Round Table), and ‘magic’ appears to stand in for ‘otherness’ of some unspecific kind…but the big cheese is still a white, blond, sports stud.  The strongest female is still not allowed to grunt, sweat or hack people with swords and sticks (please, the use of bows and arrows, or lightening bolts of varying kinds, is NOT female empowerment) – we still await the demise of the ‘white’- and ‘gender’-wash! 

At the end of all that – what d’you reckon would be good to reproduce in neo-medieval form, and where should it be exhibited? What would you like to make a ‘bouncy’ version of?  Is ‘play’ of this kind important? 

 All best wishes for the US elections...

Lesley

Call for Papers: Medievalism at the PCA/ACA 2013

Medievalism in Popular Culture 
43rd Annual PCA/ACA Conference
Wardman Park Marriott, Washington, D.C. 
March 27-30th, 2013

Call for submissions to the following paper sessions and round table panels:

1) Arthurian Aesthetics - Round Tables:

Inspired by last year’s debate over whether a “good” Arthurian text exists, this series of round table discussions will combine our analysis of Arthurian legends with the recent aesthetic turn in literary studies. Is there an aesthetic case to be made for Arthurian studies, particularly for studying contemporary Arthuriana? How do we justify our scholarship if we are suddenly held accountable for the quality and universality of our texts? Short (10 minute) papers on aesthetics and Arthuriana in any medium and from any historical period are welcome.

2) Medievalism in Politics - Round Tables:

From accusations of corporate feudalism to medieval medical theories alive and well in twenty-first century politics, medievalists have found their time period unexpectedly represented (and misrepresented) in the news these days. This series of round table discussions will explore the way politicians across the globe are ‘getting medieval’ and what it signifies. Short (10 minute) papers on medievalism in contemporary politics are welcome.

3) Popular Culture in the Middle Ages - Paper Session:

Though at the PCA/ACA we typically focus on how the Middle Ages looks through contemporary eyes, this paper panel will focus on cultural studies of the Middle Ages. This panel will explore popular medieval religious practices, legends like Robin Hood or King Arthur, and tales about supernatural beings like fairies, witches, and elves that originated in medieval times but continue to shape popular culture today. Papers that focus on cultural shifts and reception of texts or ideas are especially encouraged, as are papers that draw parallels between medieval culture and medievalism today. 

4) The Medieval Frontier - Paper Session:

Critics have long acknowledged that the medieval knight was the inspiration for Owen Wister’s cowboy figure. Even in the current reinvention and subversion of the cowboy represented by films like Unforgiven and novels like The Sisters Brothers, something of this medieval aesthetic remains. This panel will explore this and other ways in which the idea of the Old West has been shaped by cultural memory of the Middle Ages.

5) Men of the North - Paper Session:

From Ulfric Stormcloak to Thor to Ned Stark, recent medievalism has celebrated a very specific brand of masculinity, one more commonly associated with Vikings and Anglo-Saxons than King Arthur’s knights or a chivalric ‘golden age.’ Is 2012 a Viking moment, and if so, why? How does this Norse revival recall earlier obsessions with the men of the north? This panel will explore the very specific cultural appeal (and cultural baggage) of northern-inspired medievalism.

Instructions:

Please submit abstracts of 250 words or less to the PCA/ACA database at http://ncp.pcaaca.org  Please include the name and number of the session to which you are submitting within the abstract.

Papers in regular sessions should be limited to a reading time of 15 minutes (7-8 double-spaced pages). Round table contributions should be shorter, no more than 10 minutes (5 double-spaced pages) to allow for extended discussion. Be sure to include your full name, affiliation, mailing address, phone number, and email address on your abstract.

Deadline: December 1, 2012

Please note: Membership in the PCA is required for participation. Membership forms and more information about the conference are available online at www.pcaaca.org.

A Spaceship Named Dragon

I have to admit that I've spent a good part of this summer enthralled by the various endeavors of Space Exploration Technologies: the recent mission to the international space station (and back again!); the prehensile "X" (didn't that meme go extinct in the mid '90s?); and the willful, misfit medievalism that attends the entire enterprise.

In medias res, there is a rocket called "Falcon," powered by "Kestral" or "Merlin" engines and topped by a capsule named "Dragon," which, in turn, comes outfitted with 18 "Draco" thrusters, boasts a logo that harkens back to the Lego Castle days of yore, and will eventually be able to ferry crews to and from the international space station or even Mars.  In company media releases and elsewhere, these crews are called "Dragon Riders."  The whole project is called "DragonLab(TM)."

As a graduate student I chose to take Peasant Husbandry instead of Dragon Physiology, so I'm not really the expert that I should be in such matters.  I have, however, conducted an exhaustive internet survey in preparation for this entry, and it turns out that everyone from the 420 crowd to the droll misogynists of urban dictionary.com agrees that with dragons, at least in the western tradition, the fire comes out of the front.  Whereas in rocketry, the fire, generally (and hopefully) comes out the back.

OK, if you really want to nitpick -- in the case of a thruster, the fire does indeed come out of the "mouth" of the thruster, so the "Draco" thrusters in and of themselves get a pass.  But, according to Wikipedia and company literature, there are 18 of these things interspersed in redundant pairs on all axes of the capsule.  Apparently, they allow the spacecraft fine yaw, pitch, and roll control.  Traditional Dragons have wings for that and, possibly, a tail.

As for the "Dragon Rider" business, the crew is not situated on the capsule, but in it.  I don't really want to belabor this point, but, again, there is much agreement in Western sources that if you're in a dragon, you're not crew, you're lunch.

As for "DragonLab(TM)" -- I understand that in geek culture one achieves a certain caché in naming various, daunting engineering projects after malign entities from ancient lore.  I heard on NPR the other day that the various conference rooms at Google Venture's Silicon Valley facility bear names from Middle Earth.  And yes, there is a conference room named Mordor.

(From my day-job adventures as a mild-mannered software engineer and as an aside, we once named one of our software development projects Kali. The name turned out to be quite apropos.)

At any rate, as engineers (software or otherwise), we do things like this to suggest, ever so subtly, our mastery over the task at hand, as a hedge against all of the bad things that are likely happen three days after we release our project to an unsuspecting user-base, and to prove that that at least one of us read a book once, even if it was just something by Anne McCaffrey or the Kama Sutra.

But still, aside from intemperate halitosis, dragons are probably best known in the popular imagination as inveterate hoarders.  They are, in short, wealth-sponges. "DragonLab(TM)," then, is probably not the best name for a capital-intensive, multi-billion-dollar, enterprise endeavor.

Of course, all of this is much more of an exercise in corporate brand synergy than it is an attempt at earnest or even amateur medievalism.  As such, it appropriates elements from popular medievalism with some tenuous connection to the matter at hand (fire and flight) but orders them according to an internal logic that makes sense for the brand and only the brand.  Brand neomedievalism, if you will.

Although it is ostensibly a private company, SpaceX owes much to NASA. A lot of its technology was developed by NASA, which will likely be one of its major customers, with the former assuming much of the latter's mission and resupply burdens now that the shuttles have been retired.  Arguably, SpaceX has also inherited NASA's penchant for creative branding of its ship and programs.  But NASA's shtick was mostly classical mythology -- Saturn Rockets, Apollo missions, etc. -- not fantastic medievalism. Well, there were two Mars probes called "Viking."

All of this has gotten me thinking about fantasy, medievalism, and mythology, both as often-overlapping genres and as compelling, organizing fictions. It seems to me that classical mythology is mostly ambivalent, with the emphasis as much on what one loses as what one gains.  Think Persephone or Oedipus or Aeneus or Jason, etc.  Medievalism, at least as we have it now (that is, fantasy), is much less ambivalent and generally more optimistic.  Adventure in popular culture is a relatively straight-forward endeavor, which is to say not subject to the degree of reflection or general pensiveness that characterizes classical mythology.

What is it, I wonder, that makes the medieval more appealing as a privatized, corporate mythology? Beyond spaceships named "Dragon" and launch-assist planes named "White Knight 2," I'm thinking of bank architecture, which has moved from the neoclassical to the post-medieval. (I think Eco characterizes this one bank skyscraper as a modernist castle where the lords of commerce literally tower over the serfs on the ground.)  But also, of public verses private architecture (on this side of the pond) in general: the Chrysler Building (completed in 1930) vs. the National Gallery of Art (1938) or the Lincoln Memorial (1927).  I guess complicating things is the Hoover Dam (1935), which was originally meant to have Gothic balustrades, but was revised to be the Art Deco masterpiece that it is today.  And so, I will end with this impossible image: gargoyles on the Hoover Dam. Oh, wait....


  

CALL FOR PROPOSALS
Deadline EXTENDED: July 25, 2012
for the MEMO SESSIONS at the
27th International Conference on Medievalism
Hosted by Kent State University Regional Campuses
(October 18-20, 2012)
Conference Theme: Medievalism(s) & Diversity

CLOUD CONFERENCE: SPECIAL ONLINE SESSIONS 

(October 15-November 15, 2012)
(Sponsored by Medieval Electronic Multimedia Organization & Kent State University Trumbull)
Papers and Session Proposals will be considered for the Special Online Sessions. Your presentation can be in any type of media format that can be hosted on the Internet: PDF, PowerPoint, Videos, and other online media. These sessions will be password protected and available only to Conference Registrants (both online and on-campus). Papers in the online sessions may not be presented in the on-campus conference. The online sessions will be available for both perusal and discussion (online) from October 15 to November 15, 2012.
PAPER:
Session proposals must include paper abstract proposals (100-300 words each), as well as an over-all description of the intentions of this session (100-300 words).
WORKSHOP:
Session proposals must be a 100-300 word abstract describing: 1) the purpose and/or goal of the workshop 2) the activity(ies), including a list of those presenting in the workshop.
ROUND TABLE:
Session proposals must a 100-300 word abstract describing: 1) the intentions of the round table and 2) a list of the participants.
SPECIAL UNDERGRADUATE STUDENT SESSIONS:
Students must be college undergraduates currently enrolled for for classes at their academic institution. Sessions must be proposed and moderated by a professor. Professors are responsible for completed papers. Submit: paper abstracts as well as an over-all description of the intentions of this session (100-300 words for each).

VIDEO GAME POSTER SESSION & WORKSHOP
MEMO invites both established scholars and undergraduate students to submit for participation in a medievalist video game poster session workshop (co-sponsored with Medieval Electronic Multimedia Organization). This workshop will be held in two ways. One way will be during an afternoon of the conference (in a room filled with the appropriate technology), where conference participants may wander from station-to-station of presented medievalist games. Each participant will have a station (a table) at which both the poster and the game will be made available to conference participants. The poster may be constructed of either paper poster board or be electronic (such as a PowerPoint presentation on a laptop). NOTE regarding the video game demonstrations at the conference: the game and the necessary equipment might have to be supplied by the presenter, but there will be some pieces available for general use. The other way that one might present would be fully online, in a password protected area, where electronic posters will be accessible to all conference participants for several weeks. Participants may be considered to present in both the physical and virtual environments. There are a limited number of stations available for the at-conference (physical) presentations.
Students should submit the  Video Game Poster Session Student Application & Checklist for consideration by july 25, 2012. 

SUBMIT ALL PROPOSALS TO: 

\via email or fax:
Carol L. Robinson
EMAIL: clrobins@kent.edu
FAX: 330-437-0490

CFP: International Conference on Medievalism

We like to get uniquely MEMO presentations together for this conference. Please send proposals to Carol Robinson (clrobins@kent.edu) by June 1, 2009.
Call for Papers
24th International Conference on Medievalism

October 8-11, 2009

Medievalism and Religion

Studies in Medievalism invites session and paper proposals for its annual interdisciplinary conference, October 8-11, 2009. We welcome papers that explore any topic related to the study and teaching of Medievalism, and especially those that focus on this year's theme of “Medievalism and Religion.”

This interdisciplinary conference seeks to bring together aspects of the Middle Ages with the ways artists and scholars since medieval times have imagined these eras in literature, film, music, painting, sculpture and other media, as well as in other (non-humanities) institutions. One does not have to look far to find connections between medievalism and religion. For example, in her book's Epilogue, Karen Armstrong writes, "Crusading is not a lost medieval tradition: it has survived in different forms in both Europe and the United States and we must accept that our own views are as likely to be blinkered and prejudiced as either the Arabs' or the Jews'. It is probably impossible for us to change these old crusading attitudes overnight." Points of focus might include (but are not limited to):
ÿ Counter cultural medievalists beliefs
ÿ Misrepresentations of medieval religion in contemporary society, including Neopaganism
ÿ Medievalism, religion, war and other contemporary crusades
ÿ Medievalist contemporary religious music
ÿ The “gothic” architecture of American churches
ÿ Re-imaginings of important religious figures (Cuthbert, Saladin, Catherine of Siena, Maimonides, Margery Kempe)
ÿ Travel and/or pilgrimage literature (early or modern)
ÿ Modern historical novels (including mysteries)
ÿ Medievalist religious works on the contemporary stage
ÿ Shakespeare and medievalist beliefs
ÿ Tolkien and Religion
ÿ Religion in contemporary Arthurian works
ÿ Medievalist religion portrayed on film, television and/or the radio
ÿ Medievalist religion and the Internet
ÿ Medievalist religion in electronic and/or non-electronic games
ÿ Gender identity and sexuality, medievalism and religion

Publication Opportunities:
Selected papers related to the conference theme will be published in The Year’s Work in Medievalism.

Siena College is located near Albany in beautiful upstate New York, 2 hours north of New York City, with easy access via Albany International Airport (ALB) and by Amtrak train and auto. October is prime leaf-peeping season with an average temperature of 65 degrees. Siena College, a contemporary institution that is yet also firmly grounded in the traditions of Franciscan Catholicism, is the perfect setting for our exploration of medievalism and religion.

For more information, vist:
http://www.medievalism.net/conferences/conference2009.html