CALL FOR PAPERS
37th International Congress
on Medieval Studies, 2-5 May 2002
Western Michigan University
Kalamazoo Michigan
SPECIAL SESSION: Virgins and Dynamos: Medievalizing Modernity in 19th and Early
20th c. U.S. Culture
Henry James had his thoroughly modern heroine Daisy Miller fall in love during a
visit to the Castle of Chillon. Mark Twain sent a Connecticut Yankee to King
Arthur's Court in order to assail recent developments in the technologies of and
attitudes toward warfare. And the historian and presidential scion Henry Adams,
hoping to assess the newly emergent world as he saw it in 1907, hearkened to the
cathedral at Chartres as an exemplar of a time and a worldview now lost: "All the
steam in the world," he laments, "could not, like the Virgin, build Chartres." In
thus drawing a connection between the medieval and the modern, these artists were,
in their day, far from alone. This special session seeks to explore the full range
of Medievalist representations and appropriations in nineteenth- and early
twentieth-century America, from literature to painting to advertising, from
constructions of historical hindsight to the countless gargoyles that embellish
New York City's row houses and office buildings. How and why did Americans choose
to represent and memorialize the medieval past? In what ways are questions of
class, religion, and gender/sexuality pertinent to an understanding of American
medievalism? What about technologies of media distribution and mass-production?
The "chivalric" legacy of the antebellum South? With such questions in mind, this
session will explore how this heyday of medievalism, often referred to as the
"American medieval revivial," intersects with our own historicist and culture
studies attempts to understand the medieval period on its own terms.
Please submit questions or 300-word abstracts to:
Nicolas Witschi
Assistant Professor
Department of English
Western Michigan University
Kalamazoo, MI 49008-5331
616-387-2604
fax: 616-387-2562
Deadline 15 September 2001, earlier submissions strongly encouraged.
Any abstracts not accepted for this session will be forwarded to the Program
Committee at the Medieval Institute for possible inclusion in a General Session.
For general information about the Congress, visit
http://www.wmich.edu/medieval/congress
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