Old English Forum CFP for MLA 2022
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The Old English Forum announces these calls for papers for MLA 2022, 6–9 January in Washington, DC.
Session (1) Broken but Wondrous: Finding Hope in Old English Literature
Old English literature is rarely associated with hope – indeed, much of its poetry is littered with the ruins of lost peoples, frozen and desolate landscapes, meditations on the death of warriors, and ponderous reminders that everything in life is merely lent. But Old English is also replete with insouciant riddles, memories of cities in their prime, and even the promise of consolation, through philosophy, Christianity, or even fame. For this session, we invite papers that consider the place of hope in Old English: how it manifests in language and literature, and how we might escape the elegiac traps of our own nostalgia in studying it. Please send a 300-word abstract and a short bio to Mary Kate Hurley (hurleym1@ohio.edu). The deadline has been extended to 25 March.Session (2) The Politics of Old English: A Round Table
It will have escaped no one’s attention that the field of Old English studies has received a great deal of political scrutiny in recent years. This Round Table seeks to focus attention on the pedagogical dimension and/or consequences of that scrutiny. We invite speakers to give brief presentations on any number of topics relevant to the political aspects of teaching of Old English in the 21st century. These might include such things the “politically retrograde” ways in which Old English is often taught; proposals on how to teach Old English in a way that does not avoid the history of colonization and suppression with which it is intertwined; ways to teach Old English that are better connected to contemporary students and responsive to the political moment; and teaching Global Old English/reframing Old Englishes. Please send a 300-word abstract and a short bio to Heide Estes (hestes@monmouth.edu). The deadline has been extended to 25 March.Session (3) ‘Passing from Winter into Winter Again’: Ecocritical Approaches and Old English Poetry and Prose
Bede’s famous sparrow in the hall moves from winter to winter, with only a brief period of safety and warmth indoors: climate is represented as a winter briefly and unsuccessfully defended against by the architecture of human civilization. As recent work in ecocriticism has emphasized, early Medieval England represented understanding of the environment well beyond such a paradigm, as is evident in texts ranging from the heroic poetry and elegies to the Wonders of the East to the medicinal recipes, the riddles, and the lives of the saints. This session seeks engagement with ecocriticism and with representation of weather, climate, and the environment in Old English literature. Please send a 300-word abstract and a short bio to Susan Kim (smkim2@ilstu.edu) or Heide Estes (hestes@monmouth.edu). The deadline has been extended to 25 March.Session (4) Collaborative session with allied organization Society for Medieval Feminist Studies
Gendered Violence in Old English Literature
The Old English MLA forum and the Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship are proposing a jointly-sponsored session on gendered violence in Old English literature. The last decades have witnessed an increased interest in research on the relationship between gender and violence in the Middle Ages, with new studies exploring the construction of gender through violence and women as its victims. Gender theory and feminist studies have done much to refine methodologies used in this research, especially in the late Middle Ages. Still, there is a great deal of work to be done in the area of gendered violence, in particular in the literature of the early English era. Some of the questions that panelists in this jointly sponsored session might wish to address include: How/is violence gendered in early medieval English literature? Is there an expressly gendered aspect to violence, or should we be looking at other factors in these investigations? What role does violence play in constructions of gender in these texts? What are the intersections of power and gender in terms of depictions of violence in early English texts? How/is gender featured, understood, interpreted and applied in legal contexts featuring violence? Are there indications of gender as a significant factor in the violence of these texts from an expressly linguistic standpoint? With what other categories of individual, socio-cultural, and political classification does gender intersect in depictions of violence in early medieval English texts? Please send a 300-word abstract and a short bio to Melissa Ridley-Elmes (MElmes@lindenwood.edu) or David F. Johnson (djohnson@fsu.edu). The deadline has been extended to 25 March.Panel co-sponsored by the Old English Forum and the Society for Medieval Feminist Studies. This panel is not guaranteed.Please reshare and consider submitting to one of these panels!
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