Moving Further toward #Kzoo2024

ℑn a bit of an update, the Society has submitted to the 2024 International Congress on Medieval Studies for a business meeting and the four sessions decided upon at the 2023 Annual General Meeting. All events have been requested to be blended online/onsite, with virtual options preferred if hybrid is not available. The texts submitted for consideration are below, so get started planning your papers early!

Alternative Medievalisms against the Tolkienian Tradition–A Paper Session

While it is the case that Tolkien’s works are a primary lens through which contemporary popular culture views the medieval, it is far from the only such lens, and the English and European medieval from which Tolkien’s works borrow so extensively are not the only medievals to be found. This paper session seeks to examine how contemporary works employ medievalisms other than those commonly associated with the Tolkienian tradition, how that employment contrasts with that tradition, and how that contrast can better illuminate how current popular cultures understand, and *can* understand, the medieval in its multitudes.

Off of the Printed Prose Page: Multimodal Medievalisms–A Paper Session

Other media than literature, ranging from the obvious movies to video games and music, among others, make much of the medieval and the kinds of ideas of the medieval that are promulgated and propagated by Tolkienian-tradition works. Rich as other arts are, and borrowing from the medieval as they do, there is relatively little discourse that focuses on how contemporary works in multiple media make use of the medieval, as such. The proposed paper session seeks to open conversations about how non-literary works look to popular mis/understandings of the medieval, making use of and influencing commonplace perceptions of the medieval.

Tolkien and Twenty-First Century Challenges–A Roundtable

That the works of Tolkien continue to be read and adapted decades after their publication bespeaks ongoing interest in those works and the continuing dialogue with the present in which those works engage. The proposed session seeks to examine how Tolkien’s works can be read against the backdrops of late-stage capitalism and hyper-concentration of wealth; resurgent authoritarianism, religious intolerance, and ethnocentrism; increasing precarity in many areas of endeavor, including but not limited to the academic; climate change; building tension between great-powers realignment and regional autonomy and independence; terrorism, state-sponsored and otherwise; and other issues of concern that occupy current attention.

Continued Lessons from the Professor: Borrowings from Tolkien, 2020+–A Roundtable

The Tales after Tolkien Society seeks to foster scholarship on medievalism in popular culture, recognizing the works of Tolkien are a primary lens through which popular culture views the medieval. In acknowledgment of this, the Society proposes a discussion focusing on how primary sources published or otherwise produced in 2020 and after borrow from Tolkien’s works or otherwise make use of them. In doing so, the roundtable will facilitate discussion of the continuing influence of Tolkien on prevailing perceptions of the medieval, helping to situate more formal discussions to come in a more stable sociocultural context.

We hope to have several panels for your papers, and we hope to see you--virtually or otherwise--at the 'zoo!