Medieval studies is in a moment in which it is re-examining the long-held categories that have traditionally defined its boundaries. As this reconceptualization of the field progresses, Trans Studies offers a number of scholarly methodologies and insights that are changing the way medievalists consider their field and, more specifically, Trans…[Read more]

This session seeks to build upon the growing appreciation for the complex and multifarious discursive engagements between late medieval English literary texts and Islamicate or Persianate culture, society, language, or literature. Recognizing that such engagements include much more than direct literary representations of the individual Islamicate…[Read more]

The Chaucer Forum warmly invites submissions for our MLA 2023 (San Francisco, January 5-8) sessions:

Chaucer’s Ornamentalism and Gimmickry

This roundtable session brings Anne Anlin Cheng’s concept of ornamentalism and Sianne Ngai’s work on the gimmick into conversation with Chaucer’s work. For instance, in The Squire’s Tale, Canacee’s…[Read more]

New Directions in Feminist and Queer Readings of Medieval French Literature: a Session in Honor of Simon Gaunt

Simon Gaunt’s research interests were remarkably varied: from Romance philology to psychoanalysis, postcolonial studies, and beyond. This panel honors one important part of his legacy: his groundbreaking feminist and queer readings of m…[Read more]

The omnipresence of religious rhetoric in medieval French culture is among the most salient and often among the most alienating cultural juggernauts faced by students and scholars alike. Yet, sacred biography–hagiographical, Marian, and Christological–has not fully found its place in the discipline of medieval French studies. As a corpus at onc…[Read more]

The executive committee of the Arthurian Forum would like to solicit nominations (including self-nominations) for a new member of the executive committee who will serve from Feb. 1, 2022-Jan. 31, 2027. The new member must be an MLA member (if they aren’t currently, the appointee can join or renew and then be eligible); they cannot already be s…[Read more]

As you may have heard, the Program Committee has implemented a change to the process of assembling Forum Executive Committees. We will use an appointment model as a trial run for the next three years, meaning the existing committee will select new members. The rationale for this change is that the MLA has heard from many executive committees that…[Read more]

In collaboration with the Bodleian Libraries, Oxford, the New Chaucer Society will support one or two one month (30 day) research visits by an early career scholar who is a member of the New Chaucer Society to the Special Collections of the Bodleian Library in the University of Oxford. Details here:…[Read more]

MLA staff member and University of Scranton instructor Dan Connor shares his recent experience teaching with the MLA International Bibliography in this recorded presentation from the November 2020 Charleston Library Conference.

View the recording on Vimeo here: Searching to Engage: Teaching with the MLA International Bibliography

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…[Read more]

Care in the Age of Chaucer

Premodern care across political, ethical, religious, medical, environmental discourses. Gender, conduct, and responsibility. Consolation and therapy. Justice and reparation. (Un)caring acts and affects. Pastoral, non-Foucauldian, Lordean paradigms. Self and community. Please submit 250-word abstracts to Wan-Chuan Kao…[Read more]

What kinds of atmospheres does Chaucer’s work engage with or create? How can we understand the social, political, ecological, juridical, poetic, sensory, or media atmospheres within which his poetry circulates? To what extent is Chaucerian poetry part of our contemporary atmosphere? How can we engage with premodern and/or modern theories of a…[Read more]

Sequestered away from our institutions, colleagues, and students, and yet continuing to seek connections with them, many medievalists have no doubt registered the uncanny resemblance between the newly remote experiences of our work and the already pervasive perceptions of that work as remote, both within and without academe. On the one hand, we…[Read more]