IARHS Sponsored Sessions for the 59th ICMS, Kalamazoo, MI, May 9-11. 2024

The International Association for Robin Hood Studies is sponsoring the following two sessions at the 59th International Congress on Medieval Studies, at Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, MI, USA, from May 9-11, 2024.

Session 45 (Virtual), Thursday, May 10, 10:00 AM CST
"Ecomedieval Robin Hood"
Sponsor: International Association for Robin Hood Studies (IARHS)
Presider: Anna Czarnowus, Uniw. Śląski w Katowicach
Organizer: Anna Czarnowus

“Under the grene wode tree”: Eco-Anxiety, Outlaws, and Ecotonal Landscapes in the Lytell Gest of Robyn Hode
Catherine Brassell, Univ. of Illinois–Urbana-Champaign

“An imperishable masterpiece”: Outlawry, Self-Reliance, Scientific Knowledge, and Reverential Awe in B. B.’s (Denys Watkins-Pitchford’s) Brendon Chase (1944)
Alexander L. Kaufman, Ball State Univ.

Paradise Gained: Nature and Religious Affirmation in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves
Julie Loveland Swanstrom, Augustana Univ.

“The outlaw’s friend”: Domesticating the Greenwood in Ridley Scott’s Robin Hood
Christian Sheridan, Bridgewater College

Session 379 (Virtual), Saturday, May 11, 10:00 AM CST
"Outlaw Environments"
Sponsor: International Association for Robin Hood Studies (IARHS)
Presider: Alexander L. Kaufman, Ball State Univ.
Organizer: Anna Czarnowus, Uniw. Śląski w Katowicach
 

Constructing Outlaw Environments: Space, Time, and Belonging in the Outlaw Imaginary
William J. F. Hoff, Univ. of Melbourne 

The Natural and the Courtly in A Lytell Geste of Robyn Hode
Anna Czarnowus 

Robin Hood in Greenwood... Camped
Sherron Lux, International Association for Robin Hood Studies

Resistance Narratives: Comparative Study on Social Banditry, Robin Hood, and Brazilian Literature
Vitor Nunes da Silva, Univ. Federal de Sergipe

IARHS at Kalamazoo 2019 (9-12 May 2019)

The International Association for Robin Hood Studies is sponsoring three sessions at the 2019 International Congress on Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo (ICMS 2019), 9-12 May 2019. The session themes are: "Rhetoric of Resistance," "Social Bandits," and "Animal Crime." See below for details about each session.

CFP: ICMS 2019 "Rhetoric of Resistance"

Though banished from society for real or alleged crimes, the deeds of outlaws are celebrated in popular narratives and ballads. Marginalized figures, they exist on the fringes of civilization in an adversarial relationship with the representatives of the law. In this session, we will address the political status of the Green Wood as a rhetorical concept of "safe harbor," a refuge for the displaced, the ostracized, and the dispossessed. We welcome papers on medieval narratives and ballads of such celebrated outlaws as Robin Hood, Hereward, Eustace the Monk, and Fouke Fitz Waryn, among others, and aim to address the ethical, political, and ecological issues raised by the rhetoric of this body of medieval literature. Collectively, the session and its participants will consider how outlaw rhetoric comments upon the justice system and its representatives, thereby formulating a medieval rhetoric of resistance.

This is a paper session (15-20 minute papers) for the 2019 International Congress on Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo. Please send abstracts (150-250 words) and a completed PIF form (see links below) to Lydia Kertz at lydia[dot]kertz@gmail.com with a subject line "Rhetoric of Resistance" by September 15th, 2018.

CFP: ICMS 2019 “Social Bandits”

The idea of the social bandit, aka the good thief or the noble robber, reaches back millennia and is found around the globe.  The social bandit, whether an individual or a group, historical or fictional, is seen by a segment of a society as protecting and assisting them.  Even an historical social bandit may develop into myth or legend, and the legend lives and changes long after the originator is dead.  The legend of a fictional social bandit likewise shifts over time; as Brian Alderson states that while many years ago he wrote that “’Every generation gets the Robin Hood that it deserves,’” he now believes that, “Every generation surely creates for itself the Robin Hood that it needs” (Forward to Kevin Carpenter’s 1995 Robin Hood: The Many Faces of that Celebrated English Outlaw, p. 9).  This could be said not only of Robin Hood but of all fictional and even historical social bandits who are perceived as robbing the rich to help the poor in some way or other. 

This session seeks 15- to 20-minute papers on any aspect of the social bandit, with special consideration given to papers focusing on the medieval and early modern periods.  It is also worth remembering that one person’s social bandit is another’s common criminal; consider the viewpoint of the Sheriff of Nottingham, for example, or other antagonists, as well as that of people kindly disposed towards the outlaw.  

Please send a short proposal and completed PIF form (see links below) to Sherron Lux at sherron_lux@yahoo.com BY noon (Central Time) on Wednesday 12 September 2018.

CFP: ICMS 2019 “Animal Crime”

Outlaws and outlawry are commonly associated with the human; yet, throughout the medieval period, animals were both the subject of crime, as when they were stolen, maimed, or killed, and its perpetrator; for example, the sow and piglets put on trial for murder for killing a 5-year old boy in Savigny, France in 1457. Documented legal trials from a variety of cultures featuring pigs, goats, horses, dogs and cows suggest that medieval understandings of the moral agency, ethics, and politics of outlaws and outlawry was decidedly not simply a human affair, but extended to our animal counterparts. Papers might consider the historically-documented or literary or textual (re)imagining of a trial or set of trials featuring an animal or animals; how animals interact with outlaw humans; the moral agency of animals on trial; the ethics of putting animals on trial; the ethics of outlawing animals; how animals can be constructed as outlaws philosophically, legally, or by other means, how and where animals appear in laws, the treatment of animal outlaws, animal exiles, and similar.

Send abstracts and a completed PIF form (see links below) to Dr. Melissa Ridley Elmes at MElmes@lindenwood.edu by 15 September, 2018.

2019 Medieval Congress Participant Information Form (PIF):

https://www.wmich.edu/sites/default/files/attachments/u434/2018/medieval-2019-pif.pdf

or see https://www.wmich.edu/medievalcongress/submissions for a form in Microsoft Word

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IARHS CFP: ICMS, Kalamazoo, Michigan, May 10-13, 2018

The International Association for Robin Hood Studies (IARHS) is sponsoring two sessions at the 53^rd International Congress on Medieval Studies. Please see below for session details and submission information.

  1. Multicultural, Multimedia Outlaws (Session of Papers)

The outlaw figure is a universal cross-cultural phenomenon. This session solicits papers that analyze adaptations of narratives about outlaws, whether literary or historical, male or female, from any period (medieval through contemporary), in any medium (ballad, saga, drama, novel, young adult fiction, films, television, comic books, opera, music, to name a few) from any location (Britain, Europe, America(s), Australia, Asia, ranging from the Merry Men to Icelandic outlaws, Ned Kelly, Pancho Villa, and Moll Flanders.

Please send 300-word abstracts, a brief bios, and completed Participant Information Forms to Lorraine Kochanske Stock (lstock@uh.edu) by September 1, 2017.

  2. Oral Tactics of Medieval Outlaw Literature (Session of Papers)

This formal session of papers explores the modes of writing and of performance (and their interconnectedness) that exist within medieval outlaw tales. From the The Outlaw’s Song of Trailbaston to the late-medieval rhymes, plays, games, and “talkings” of Robin Hood, medieval outlaw tales are, like the medieval lyric, ad hoc, improvisatory, and situational works or literature. This session, inspired by Ingrid Nelson’s recent study Lyric Tactics, explores the ways in which the religious, societal, political, and manuscript contexts inform the genre, form, vernacular language, semantics, and voice of a medieval outlaw tale. 
 

Please send 300-word abstracts, a brief bios, and completed Participant Information Forms to Lesley Coote (L.A.Coote@hull.ac.uk) and Alexander L. Kaufman (akaufman@aum.edu) by September 1, 2017.

Here is a link to the ICMS’s Participant Information Form:

http://www.wmich.edu/medievalcongress/submissions

CFP: 51st International Congress on Medieval Studies

Call for Papers: 51 International Congress on Medieval Studies, May 12-15, 2016

Sponsored Session: International Association for Robin Hood Studies

Session Title: “Ecocritical Outlaws”
 

At an ICMS session in 2015, a panel posed the question "What Can Medieval Studies Bring to Ecocriticism?" Although the responses were diverse, none touched on the specific subgenre of outlaw literature, and this absence is reflected in much of the published ecocriticism scholarship. This panel seeks to initiate conversations about ecocritical issues in various outlaw tales, including but not limited to Robin Hood, Gamelyn, Fouke Fitz Waryn, and Án Bow-Bender. Given the liminal spaces which these tales occupy, as well as their frequent movements from greenwood into urban spaces, these tales are rich for ecological study. What do these stories reveal about medieval forest practices or perspectives towards animals (and their relationships and/or kinships to humans)? To what extent do these tales critique medieval ecological beliefs or offer alternative perspectives (that is, do they reveal a plurality of attitudes towards nature co-existing during the medieval period)? Given that Rebecca Douglass, in “Ecocriticism and Middle English Literature,” argues that “[E]cocriticism is . . . informed by a desire to understand past and present connections between literature and human attitudes regarding the earth,” what does the study of medieval outlaw tales offer to ecocritical studies? This panel welcomes a variety of approaches, including ecofeminist perspectives, cultural ecology, deep ecology, animal studies, ecolinguistics, and other innovative approaches.

Please send 250-word abstracts and CVs by September 15, 2015 to Kristin Bovaird-Abbo (kristin.bovairdabbo@unco.edu), Valerie B. Johnson (valerie.johnson@lmc.gatech.edu) and Alexander L. Kaufman (akaufman@aum.edu).
Please also submit a PIF, found here: http://www.wmich.edu/medieval/congress/submissions/index.html#PIF

For further information about the International Association for Robin Hood Studies, please visit http://robinhoodscholars.blogspot.com/