About a Recent News Piece on Martin and Coursework

An April 2015 Associated Press piece appearing on HigherEdJobs.com, "Game of Thrones- College Course," notes that Northern Illinois University will be offering a course on the as-yet-ongoing television series. Among the comments made in reference to the course are that its subject offers relatively realistic presentations of the European Middle Ages and that it provides a useful example of the continuing manifestation in the past within the present. Also noted in the article is the popularity of the course, which filled quickly and will be offered in consecutive semesters.

The three points identified deserve some comment, with the first speaking to a topic not seldom treated in this webspace (see the Game of Thrones entries and the comments made on them). How "realistic" the presentations are is hardly a settled matter, as Helen Young and a number of other scholars have argued at great length. While some consideration must be made for the fact of reporting and the constraints of journalistic prose, the article's presentation conduces to the idea of the matter as fixed and established, beyond contestation. In facilitating such a reading, the article does a disservice to the body of scholarship that continues to examine Martin's work and the television series deriving from it--as well as to the work and likely to the activities of the class as a whole.

The exemplification of how the past continues to manifest in the present is also something this webspace treats; it is, indeed, the avowed purpose of the Society. That a major media product does invoke and involve the medieval--and not only the "traditional" medieval patterned after the European High Middle Ages--is a good thing, surely. The problem, though, is that the past Martin refigures is not the past as it has been recorded as being or that the physical evidence increasingly available suggests is true. Again, Young and other scholars detail the problems in Martin's portrayals in great detail, and it is admittedly true that "refiguring" is far from the same thing as "accurate reporting." It is not to be expected that a fictional world, even one based more or less loosely on the "real" world, would adhere completely to the "real" world. When a work is presented as being authentic, however, it is obliged to be authentic, or as authentic as it can be (i.e., reliant on the current best knowledge of the medieval as asserted by scholars of the medieval, since it is not necessarily to be expected that a non-specialist will have the same level of knowledge of a specialty as a specialist); to misidentify authority and authenticity, whether willfully or inadvertently, is not helpful.

The popularity of the course, if perhaps less targeted to the interests of the Society itself, may well be of interest to many of the members of the Society, who are themselves students and teachers. Popular courses would seem to argue well on behalf of those who teach them; a popular instructor ought to be someone to be valued. Some scholarship on popularity among instructors and courses, however, raises concerns; among others, Nate Kordell addresses the matter in a 31 May 2013 Psychology Today piece, "Do the Best Professors Get the Worst Ratings?" Many of those who have spent time in the college environment can offer up anecdotal support for the idea that popularity does not always indicate the relative value of a course; many students openly avow taking courses based on the seeming promise of an "easy A." This is not to say, of course, that the class offered at Northern Illinois University will be the "easy A"; Professors Garver and Chown are without doubt pushing their students to excel. But there is a perception that classes treating popular culture materials are less substantial than those treating more traditional subjects, a perception addressed perhaps most prominently among reactionary media but exerting some influence even so. How many students seek to take the course because of the perceived ease of watching television--and it is only perceived, as watching for scholarly purposes is far more dynamic and demanding than watching for entertainment only--or because they will be able to look at a number of attractive people in various states of undress is unclear, but it does likely vitiate against the use of popularity as a rubric for the course's success--something the article neglects, to its discredit.

That the article reporting the course deserves critique does not mean that the course is not worth offering, of course. Again, the Society does attend to Game of Thrones and to the novels which inform it. It does laud continued engagement with the past, particularly the medieval past, in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. It does work to promote accurate understandings of the medieval past by those who create and consume the products of contemporary popular culture. And so it does stand to reason that the kind of course being offered at Northern Illinois University is the kind of course that the Society could well endorse and support. (I am not in a position to offer such an endorsement on behalf of the Society, although I would encourage such a thing if it became an issue.) But it also stands to reason that, as a group invested in such things, the Society would like to see them accurately reported--particularly when the report appears in a venue so tightly concerned with the scholarly community as is HigherEdJobs.com. The medieval and its refigurations deserve better than a glossed, summary treatment.

About an Anglo-Saxon Eye Salve

A number of news reports have avowed that an Anglo-Saxon topical ointment has substantial antibacterial properties. As pieces from ITV News, Claire Wilson of New Scientist, and Vanessa Heggie of The Guardian all note, the ointment, or rather its recipe, derives from Bald's Leechbook, held in the British Library, a tenth-century collection of medical knowledge and recorded practice. As the ITV and Wilson pieces both note, the ointment is as effective as the best modern medicines against MRSA, and the prospect of finding more such gems in the works of old offers an answer to some of the questions frequently voiced by students--undergraduate and graduate both--who find themselves obliged to take coursework treating the medieval: Why do we need to study this? Why does this still matter? Haven't we moved past this?

We study the medieval because it has more to teach us about the world, as an earlier entry to this webspace notes no less than the study on which the three news releases report. And when we do, we are reminded that the medievals were not less intelligent than we. They were in some ways less informed, certainly, lacking knowledge gained only by way of technology to which they did not have access. And they had bad ideas, to be sure. But the same is true for us; we cannot know what we lack the capacity to perceive, and not all of our ideas are good, as the still-sad state of the world makes clear.

The things for the Society to attend to as bear in on the current revelation, then, are these:

1) How will current science continue to deploy the medieval? Will it look to medievalists for their expertise on it? Will they continue to test out what the medievals did to see how much sense their ideas still make? How will such trials be taken up into the prevailing popular consciousness of the world? In effect, what will science prompt the non-scientist to appreciate about the medieval?

2) How will medievalist popular media begin to integrate the revelations of current science into its refiguration of the medieval? As knowledge of the medieval progresses and develops, treatments of the medieval in mainstream media can easily be enriched, nuanced, complicated, and thereby made more authentic and compelling. Or they may not be. Either has implications for what the continued deployment of the medieval means.

3) While interdisciplinary work is valued, and valorization of the humanities departments in which much medieval work is done is welcome, the Society and its members should be wary of the subordination of the humanities to STEM fields, as the comment with which Heggie concludes threatens to imply. Those who work in humanities fields are already too-much seen as adjunct or servitor to STEM fields, and while they are worthy endeavors, they are not more worthy than the humanities. While an instrumental reason to maintain humanities studies is helpful, it must not become the only reason offered for that maintenance.

The medieval manifests in many ways in the post-medieval. Many of them need celebrating. All of them need examination.

About Richard III

Much was made this week just past about the re-internment of Richard III, following excellent work at the University of Leicester. The BBC, understandably, had somewhat to say about the matter, as have the Richard III Society, NPR's Scott Simon, and many others. Among the many things that the discovery of the old king's remains and their reburial suggests is continued appreciation of the medieval--for the event would not have attracted the media attention it has or the number of attendees at the surrounding ceremonies did the medieval it represents not still command the regard of many in the world.

Or it at least can. As an early post to this blog notes, the end-date of the medieval in England can be argued across several dates. One of them is the ascent of the Tudors after the death in battle of Richard III in 1485, and if that is the date accepted, then Richard III is the last medieval king of England as well as the last (as yet) to die in battle.* If the end of the English medieval is taken as the 1534 Act of Supremacy, then Richard III is still a medieval king, although not epoch-ending as the 1485 date makes him. If the end of the medieval in England is, instead, the 1476 introduction by Caxton or printing to England, though, he is not: Edward IV would be, and Richard III would be the second early modern English king if the usual succession of cultural and historical periods is followed in such a case. But it is more likely that the 1485 date continues to apply (discussion of the issue is still worth having), and it is thus more likely that the death of Richard III marks the end of the medieval in England--at least in an "official" sense. Commemoration of that death, then, would also be a commemoration of the medieval, an acknowledgement of its importance centuries after the fact even if there are potentially problematic metaphors involved in celebrating the internment of the last medieval king of England.**

Another early post to this blog notes that part of why the medieval continues to occupy contemporary thought is its correspondence with current concerns. Divisive power struggles seem to remain concerns, as do the seesawing of power among two groups of dynastic elites effectively indistinguishable from one another by those over whom they rule and concerns over shifts in language. Political corruption does, as well. The life and times of Richard III speak to all such things, and celebrating him (as happens at burials) serves as a reminder of such speaking, arguing again in favor of keeping the medieval in mind.

The ceremony itself can be parsed, of course, with the changes from the rites Richard III would have recognized noted (the shift to Protestantism being among them) no less than the continuities, the unifying formal serving as synecdoche for the broader cultures which enfold it and offering once again a lens through which to understand ourselves the better. And that seems something well worth doing.

*Note that this is not an expression of hope. It is, instead, an acknowledgement that there are likely yet to be kings of England, and one of them might well die in battle.

**Joy at interring the last medieval king can easily be read as joy at interring the medieval, in a sense putting it entirely in the past. Simply enacting the burial cannot effect the change in fact, of course, but it can conduce to a blindness to the continuations of medieval practice that occur, as well as to the many good things that were present among the medieval that would be good to retain or return to in the modern and post-modern.

CFP- South Central Modern Language Association 2015, English I: Old and Middle English

The South Central Modern Language Association is holding its annual conference in Nashville, Tennessee, USA, 31 October through 3 November 2015. Those who want to attend the conference are encouraged to submit abstracts. Those with ideas relating to Old and/or Middle English are asked to send abstracts of 300 words or less, along with contact information, to the chair of the English I: Old and Middle English sessions, Geoffrey B. Elliott (geoffrey.b.elliott@gmail.com), or the secretary of those sessions, Brian Brooks (brian.brooks@okstate.edu). The panel (and possibly more than one!) is wide open at this point, and abstracts are due by 31 March 2015. More information can be found here: http://southcentralmla.org/conference/.

Please pass along to colleagues and independent scholars who may be interested.

CFP: Heaven, Hell, and Little Rock

Jay Ruud sends the CFP linked below:

https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?ui=2&ik=2f95d260c3&view=att&th=14bff2271d0d0677&attid=0.1&disp=inline&realattid=f_i720qkji0&safe=1&zw

For those for whom the URL does not work, the Southeastern Medieval Association is hosting its 41st annual conference in Little Rock, Arkansas, USA, 22-24 October 2015. The text of the CFP is below:

You are cordially invited to participate in the 2015 meeting of the Southeastern Medieval Association. This year’s meeting will take place at the Wyndham Riverfront Hotel in North Little Rock, Arkansas on Thursday, October 22, 2015 through Saturday, October 24, 2015, and is sponsored by the University of Central Arkansas.
The theme of this year’s meeting is “Heaven, Hell, and Little Rock,” in celebration of a host of anniversaries celebrated this year (the Fourth Lateran Council, the 750th anniversary of Dante’s birth, the burning of Jan Hus, the signing of the Magna Carta). We welcome submissions and encourage panels related to these anniversaries or on other medieval topics.

Further, in acknowledgment of the pivotal role that Little Rock, this year’s conference location, played in the American civil rights movement. In the spirit of this significant step in; the civil rights movement, we would like to encourage for this conference an emphasis on the “Other” Middle Ages, and encourage panels on East Asia, South Asia, and Islam at the time of the European Middle Ages, as well as panels on the “Other” within medieval Christendom (e.g., Jews and other non-Christians, Norse encounters with “Skraelingas,” or the treatment of the disabled, diseased, sexually “deviant,” or “mad” in Christian society).

In addition, this year’s meeting will include several sessions devoted to undergraduate research. Please encourage students who have done especially good work to submit abstracts.

Please submit proposals for sessions and individual papers using the link at http://goo.gl/forms/KDyCGVPqoN no later than July 1, 2015.

Plenary Speakers:

Dr. Peter S. Hawkins of the Yale Divinity School (author of Dante’s Testaments: Essays on Scriptural Imagination and Dante: A Brief History among others) will give a plenary address called "Dante's 'Other': Thinking outside the Christian Box."

Dr. Thomas A. Fudge of the University of New England (author of Heresy and Hussites in Late Medieval Europe and The Trial of Jan Hus: Medieval Heresy and Criminal Procedure, among others) will give a plenary address on Hus and his martyrdom.

Dr. Stephen Owen of Harvard University (author of The Late Tang: Chinese Poetry of the Mid-Ninth Century (827-860) and The Making of Early Chinese Classical Poetry, among others) will give a plenary address on Tang poetry and culture.

About Legend of the Five Rings

Not too long ago (although longer than it should have been since the last entry in this webspace), the Society co-sponsored an event at the 2015 Tolkien Days at Ohio State University, acting in concert with the Medieval Electronic Multimedia Organization and the nascent UNICORN Cloud Conference and Virtual Museum of Medieval Studies and Medievalism. The focus of the event was the Lord of the Rings Online MMORPG, and several papers were presented in person and online; they can be found here. My own contribution to the event offered some perspective on the history of the gaming property, tying it back through its direct subject matter and the history of the RPG, generally, to Tolkien and thus to recapitulation of the medieval.

Not too long ago, also, this webspace saw comments on The Year's Work in Medievalism 28, which includes an article by E.L. Risden that treats the Japanese medievalism exhibited in Miyazaki's animated films and calls for more consideration of how the Japanese medieval is deployed. In those comments, I invoked an earlier piece in which I note the deployment in anime of the Western medieval despite the easy access of Japanese artists to a rich history that, because it is caste-based and feudal under the (often nominal) oversight of a centralized religious authority, can easily be considered medieval as Risden asserts (with medieval remaining a fraught term). The reverse also occurs, not seldom in the RPG, with Western audiences recapitulating (romanticized and simplified) figures and tropes from the Japanese medieval--as is the case in the Legend of the Five Rings RPG.*

Legend of the Five Rings, or L5R, is both a CCG (following loosely the model of Magic: The Gathering) and an RPG. In both cases, it is based largely in Japanese culture, taking its name from Musashi's treatise, the Book of Five Rings, and deploying an iteration of Japanese myth, legend, and history that is as true to its sources as Lord of the Rings is to Tolkien's or Foundation is to Asimov's. That is, it makes free use of the "truth" while deploying some obvious fictions and occasionally mixing in things that are not in the originals but still make for interesting storytelling. For even in its CCG iteration, the game makes much of telling a story that is driven by the player base; official events such as card tournaments and sanctioned RPG events are taken up as parts of the ongoing storyline that has been in continuous evolution since 1997. Generations have passed in the game's milieu, and that milieu has changed as the result of player decisions, corporate concerns, and shifts in the prevailing cultural standards of the player bases--but it still retains in large part the trappings of the Japanese medieval in which it was initially grounded.

Several reasons for that grounding suggest themselves. The personal interests of the game's initial designers--most notably John Wick--do much to shape it, of course, and the thought that some desire to not overlap overly closely with other CCG and RPG properties (notably the aforementioned Magic: The Gathering and Dungeons & Dragons) informs the choice is a sensible one. the notion that the Western audience of L5R is less likely to be steeped in Japanese and other Asian medieval cultures than Western, and thus less likely to be attuned to deviations therefrom, an inversion of an idea advanced in "About Student Papers and Anime," may also obtain. And the feudal Japanese system, with easily identifiable social standards (bushido, social stratification, and traditional and contemporary dojo structures), lends itself to the kind of quantification typically seen among RPGs, as well; promotion up the ranks of a martial arts system comes off as more authentic than the level-based advancement in such games as D&D.

Whatever the reasons, though, there are things to consider about the deployment by L5R of its Japanese medieval tropes, particularly in its RPG iteration. The complexity of the in-milieu social structure is welcome. While it is ostensibly strictly ranked and tightly controlled, the practice of the game is such that there are many methods to circumvent the prevailing social controls at almost all levels. Competing chains of command and webs of loyalty pervade the setting, and attempts at negotiating them effectively inform many of the stories the game tells both at the individual game level and in the canonical storyline. Combat and tactics necessarily inform the game, both owing to the historical influences on the RPG and the specific social setting of L5R, which focuses on the deeds and doings of a warrior caste, and such concerns are differentiated from one another substantially among the various martial arts schools present in the game's world. The plethora of religious practices present, although formally united under the aegis of a central authority, also provides an authentic narrative complexity to the world, and it joins the variety of martial and sociocultural practices present in the game to present a recapitulation of feudal Japan that, if far simplified from the "reality," is still far more complex than many depictions of the medieval admit.

This does not mean, of course, that there are not problems in the depiction. The validity of the sources that inform the game can certainly be questioned in terms of their historical authenticity. If Musashi and Sun Tzu inform the game substantially, so does Shogun, and so do the films of Akira Kurosawa. As histories, they are not necessarily the best sources, and the latter's presentations of the samurai are directed towards audiences that follow the feudal period by quite some time. How much of the presentation of figures and tropes in the game have to be considered culturally apporpriative, how much of it serves the colonialist purposes Davis and Altschul's Medievalism in the Postcolonial World identifies as at work in the description of non-Western cultures as "medieval," and how much of it is set up specifically to accord with Western expectations of the medieval all need to be investigated. That is to say, how authentically L5R represents what can be called a medieval Japan bears further study--and where it is inauthentic needs to be critiqued. As Helen Young has noted, how true a presentation of the medieval is to the medieval it claims to represent matters, and those of us who study the medieval, either directly or in re-presentation, have a duty to look at those presentations. What they get right, what they get wrong, and how and why they get it wrong all tell us much of ourselves, and that is surely worth all the attention that it can be paid.

*I have been involved with the L5R RPG for some years now, having participated as a player and a GM in various incarnations of the online Winter Court game and having contributed informally to some of the now-canonical storyline.

About "Three Surveys"

In September 2014, I posted links to three surveys here. The questions on them are still valid; they still need answering. If you are a member of the Tales after Tolkien Society and have not answered them, please do; it will help us to have some understanding of what the membership wants to see us do.

For ease, the surveys are linked below, as well:

Blog Content Survey
Kalamazoo 2015 Survey
Directory Survey

Your information is appreciated.

About News from Texas

Society member Carol Robinson pointed out a New York Daily News article on the Society Facebook page on 2 February 2015, Nicole Hensley's 31 January 2015 "Texas Boy Suspended for Saying He Could Make Classmate 'Disappear' with Lord of the Rings Sorcery." The piece and a 30 January 2015 article from the Odessa American (much closer to the incident in question), "Parent: Fourth-grader Suspended after Using Magic from The Hobbit" both note that the child in question was suspended from school after saying to a classmate something about using a ring to make the classmate disappear. The articles raise several points for discussion, including one that goes very much to the heart of what it is that the Society does.

Given the location of the incident--the oil-driven dry and windswept lands of West Texas, known not only for their oil production but also for football and a peculiarly romanticized and execrated public culture--the reaction is unsurprising. Texas, after all, is roundly accused (and with some justification) of being prevailingly backward and insular, of trumpeting entrenched attitudes that did not serve well even when they were new, and are far less wholesome now. Further, schools in the United States, generally, trend towards absolutist, non-nuanced policies that make reflexive overreactions--and suspending a child for a backhanded and patently fictitious comment is an overreaction--obligatory, the threat of lawsuits for unequal treatment and the paranoid fears of relaxed controls being as they are and all too present.

But that the reaction comes as no surprise should not mean that it is condoned. If nothing else, it smacks of a perilous reactionary impetus that corresponds both with "Christian" fundamentalism--something else unfortunately correctly associated with the Lone Star State--and the fears from the late 1980s of a sprawling spiritual threat contained in fantasy literature and its offshoots--materials to which those involved in medievalist study seemingly must attend, given their pervasive figuration of the medieval. Reading that teachers reacted as they did to comments that surely stopped short of the literary Ash nazg dubatulûk, ash nazg gimbatul called to mind the discussion in Michael A. Stackpole's 1990 "Pulling Report," The paranoid fear that I recall from my own youth, not so many miles from Kermit, centering around those very things seems to have resurfaced, if it ever indeed submerged, unfortunately bubbling up around the child in question. I find that I wonder now whether the child will ever again be inclined to be excited about what he reads or to discuss it. Will he do as many others have done and assign shame to learning, and either rack himself with guilt over the love of reading or turn away from in in hate and anger? Will he become yet one more who is placed and places himself beyond the reach of such mystery and wonder as what the Society studies offers, and will those who have seen him in such straits follow him away?

It is, as Robinson points out, "not a very nice tale after Tolkien." One can hope, though, that the next chapter turns it towards a better story.

About an Article by Paul Strohm

It seems the new year is off to a slow start...

On 24 January 2014, the online version of The Guardian published Paul Strohm's "Who Was Chaucer?" In the article, Strohm offers a brief biography of the Well of English Undefiled, one tailored for public consumption, partly as a way to advertise his more comprehensive treatment of the poet's life and partly as a way to discuss the interaction of life experience and artistic performance. The biography provided in the article is a useful summary of Chaucer's life, and the commentaries embedded alongside it do well to point out not only the context in which the poet worked and in which his work has been studies, but also the enduring relevance of the poet and his work.

Seeing such commentary, and in a major public venue such as The Guardian, is a comfort, particularly when the study of the medieval is under attack. Recently, the Modern Language Association of America proposed to collapse several of the early English units into one, coalescing them into an amorphous mass stretching across at least a millennium and multiple languages in its treatment. While the proposal was rejected (at least in the short term), it bespeaks a prevailing lack either of understanding of or consideration for the complexities of the slippery and difficult thing that is the medieval. (It also touches upon other concerns noted as of particular interest to individual members of the Society, about which more in another post.) If one of the major scholarly bodies seeks to act against detailed and specific study of the medieval, it bodes ill for those of use who make that study our own--as well as for those who are scholars of the medievalist rather than the medieval, proper, since medievalist study relies on accurate understandings of the antecedent medieval.

For Strohm, then, to highlight the multiplicity of voice and genre in Chaucer, as well as the resonance his works still carry for twenty-first century readership, serves as a corrective. It functions to remind the public--from which academia all too often and all too unfortunately seeks to distance itself, as scholars noted earlier suggest--that what has been done is still being done, so that what has been written is still relevant, still applicable. It still offers readers an image of how things might be improved though its distillation of what is less than desirable--and if there are problems in its depictions, there are certainly problems not only in current depictions that seek to coalesce or elide broad swaths of peoples and histories or in the all-too-real interactions of people with people in the world now.

About _The Year's Work in Medievalism_ 28

On 15 December 2014, the International Society for the Study of Medievalism released Volume 28 of its journal The Year's Work in Medievalism online.* The volume is a special issue, Medievalism Now, one that seeks, in the words of editor E.L. Risden as he introduces the volume, to bring "marginalized medievalism into the center of our [scholarly] vision." In doing so, it deploys articles from Valerie B. Johnson, Amy S. Kaufman, Elena Levy-Navarro, Nickolas Haydock, Kevin Moberly and Brent Moberly, E.L. Risden, Karl Fugelso, Carol L. Robinson, Jesse G. Swan, Helen Young, and Richard Utz to argue for an expansion of medievalism's formal concerns and the body of scholars, professional and amateur, who contribute to the still-burgeoning field.

Valerie B. Johnson's "Ecomedievalism: Medievalism's Potential Futures in Ecocriticism and Ecomaterialsim" argues convincingly that medievalist study will benefit from deploying the tools common to ecocritical approaches. The article offers a useful list of readings that engage intersections that can be termed "ecomedieval," helping ease entry into their study and pointing out the contested nature of both ecocritical approaches and medievalism. The reminder that the environment is a long-standing socio-cultural concern is useful.

Amy S. Kaufman's "Lowering the Drawbridge" lays out (again) the tensions between the academic humanities and the "useful" world and between proximal disciplines. The article posits that medievalism itself remains a marginal, liminal space, partaking of multiple disciplines but welcomed by none, and finding itself marginalized in part because it is liminal not only within academic but also between it and the "regular" world. That it is one of the few disciplines in which amateurs are welcomed and even embraced vitiates against it for those who occupy the more traditional ivory tower. Medievalist studies are optimally poised to break down the barriers surrounding that tower, or at least to open additional gates in them through the resurgence of the medieval in entertainment culture and social structures.

Elena Levy-Navarro's "A Long Parenthesis Begins" argues that medievalist study needs to be more open to and accepting of non-professional scholars as a means to keep itself fresh and identify and explicate the connections--sometimes seemingly tenuous--upon which it depends. Opening up medievalist inquiry to more minds also allows for a richer historiography, one that rejects the absolutes of periodic and disciplinary boundaries to create a living understanding of how the world continues to use what it has used before.

Nickolas Haydock's "Medievalism and Anamorphosis: Curious Perspectives on the Middle Ages" points out how recapitulations of medieval figures and tropes in succession serve to highlight the unattainability of medieval ideals and of the ambiguous nature of those ideals themselves. In the article, refigurings serve to obscure, not only among receptions of the medieval but in the medieval itself. It is a useful reminder of the continuity of cultural fixtures, although the fixtures themselves are perhaps not ideal for continuation.

Kevin Moberly and Brent Moberly contribute "There Is No Word for Work in the Dragon Tongue," which explicates the manner in which The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim reinscribes the removal of medievalist treatments from the material conditions of the medieval. It also likens that removal to current first-world concerns of removal from production. Manual labor is distinctly non-privileged in the game as in the cultures of which it ostensibly partakes and among which its intended player-base is. It, along with other medievalist popular works, reflects the tension between nostalgia for "good, honest work" and the non-desire to actually do that work, and it calls for a better reflection of the actuality of that work in future medievalist works. (Notably, the Moberlys' article can be read against Johnson's to good effect.)

E.L. Risden's "Miyazaki's Medieval World: Japanese Medievalism and the Rise of Anime" notes that medievalism in Asia is insufficiently examined by scholars of medievalism. Miyazaki's 1997 film Princess Mononoke is used as a case study for how Japanese medievalism might function and be explicated; other works are suggested for further study. Risden's comments speak to something that this webspace has also addressed, and they could well serve as an impetus for treatments of other works entirely.

Karl Fugelso's "Embracing Our Marginalism: Mitigating the Tyranny of a Central Paradigm" reminds readers that any kind of centering motion necessarily implies a fluidity of categorization that vitiates against the effectiveness of categorization. The article highlights the liminality of medievalist study that derives from its disciplinary heterodoxy, but notes that even within the field, there is a centralizing push that unfortunately excludes too many. Some is structural; Fugelso makes the telling comment that "There is simply not enough time, space, energy, and money to air everyone's work, much less give it equal billing, much less make it easily accessible" to highlight that structural limit. Some, though, is merely the result of habit--and that habit is a dangerous thing to maintain for medievalism as a field.

Carol L. Robinson, a valued Tales after Tolkien Society member, contributes "The Quest for a Deaf Lesbian Dwarf (or Anyone Else that Might Have Been Excluded) in Medievalist Video Games: A Response to Karl Fugelso's Manifesto." In it, she argues that the exclusionary and oppressive practices seen in medievalist video games parallel and reinscribe those in medievalist studies as a whole, and that redress of them needs to be "radical, dramatic, abrupt, and thus acutely innovative." The reinscription derives from earlier receipt of benefits from the inscription, and the duty incumbent on medievalists is to reclaim those benefits in the service of a greater inclusivity and diversity of treatment.

Jesse Swan's "Relazation and Amateur Medievalism for Early Modernity: Seeing Sir Henry Yelverton as a Woman in Love and a Bureaucrat Threatened in the 1621 Parliament" takes the uncommon approach of explicating earlier medievalisms, likening the treatment of Yelverton to the treatment of Spencer and Gaveston in then-popular media. Although an elided preposition distracts, the explication of an earlier medievalism is of interest and serves as a reminder that the Middle Ages have long served as a lens through which to examine current culture. The article's early comments about relaxation enabling inquiry are also helpful, recalling Asimov's "The Eureka Phenomenon."

Tales after Tolkien Society founder Helen Young's "Place and Time: Medievalism and Making Race" continues her project of explicating the multiracial nature of medieval Europe and arguing in favor of reflecting that multiracial nature in medievalist works. The article references the common assertion of the Middle Ages as a generative time for racial and national identities, marking nation-building as an iteration of medievalist practice, and argues that the purported lack of a medieval, or of an interesting medieval, among non-European peoples accounts in part for the drive to subjugate them. The implication is one Young has made explicit before (here and elsewhere): medievalist scholars have a duty to correct the abuses perpetuated by medievalist materials.

The volume concludes with Richard Utz's "Can We Talk about Religion, Please? Medievalism's Eschewal of Religion, and Why It Matters." The article contrasts the notable lack of religious discussion in medievalist scholarship with the wide range of materials it tends to cover. Utz posits that the lack stems in part from uncertainty about how to treat religion, informed by disciplinary and periodic divisions as well as an undercurrent of anti-theistic thought (evoking Michael-John DePalma's December 2011 CCC article "Re-envisioning Religious Discourses as Rhetorical Resources in Composition Teaching: A Pragmatic Response to the Challenge of Belief"). It is, in Utz's view, a lack that needs to be redressed.

The eleven articles combine to present an impressive collective call to expand medievalist studies and will certainly undergird no small number of projects that aim to answer that call. The Year's Work in Medievalism 28 (2013) presents excellent scholarship, well worth deploying in further expansion of human knowledge.

*All comments are taken from the volume as it appears online as of 27 December 2014, at which time I printed out copies of the articles for reading and comment.