Still Another Step towards #Kzoo2024

ℌello again, all!

In a bit of an update, the official call for papers for the 2024 International Congress on Medieval Studies is up: https://wmich.edu/medievalcongress/call. The Society has two sessions and a business meeting this coming year. The sessions, per https://talesaftertolkien.blogspot.com/2023/06/another-step-towards-kzoo2024.html, are

• 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.
• 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.

The business meeting will, as has been common practice, serve as the AGM called for in §5.1 of the Society Constitution. The AGM will treat the following items:

• Determination of offerings for the 2025 ICMS
• Determination of the Society President for 2024-2027, following §4.2.2 of the Society Constitution and the 2021 AGM
• Other business brought before the membership, as time permits
  

All submissions are due no later than 15 September 2023 to the Confex portal, https://icms.confex.com/icms/2024/cfp.cgi. Please provide abstracts of no more than 300 words, as well as contact and introductory information (including how to pronounce your name and how you want presiders to refer to you).

The office of Society President may, per §3 of the Society Constitution, be any member of the Society in good standing who does not currently hold two offices on the Committee. Nominations, including self-nominations, may be emailed to talesaftertolkien@gmail.com.

Members, please distribute widely and across channels.

Thank you all, and we'll see you (virtually) at the 'zoo!