CFP: IARHS Biennial Conference, Irvine Valley College, June 4-5, 2027 (In-person and Virtual)

 

Call for Proposals

Spaces and Stories of Resistance: The 2027 International Association for Robin Hood Studies Conference

June 4-5, 2027

Irvine Valley College (Irvine, Southern California, United States)

In-person and virtual

The stories of Robin Hood and other outlaw figures offer complex, shifting, persistent narratives of resistance and power, inhabiting diverse storyworlds that respond to and reflect the needs of the society in which the outlaw emerges. The Robin Hood tradition is a rich and varied one; tales of outlaw heroes, resistance fighters, tricksters, and merry bands can be found across time and space, spanning the globe. 

At present, spaces and stories of resistance and power are particularly timely and vital concepts, and the International Association for Robin Hood Studies invites proposals for conference presentations which examine the complexity of these themes. What might it mean to create a community or space of resistance? (For that matter, what is being resisted, and by whom?) How can tales of these outlaw heroes impact the present and invite the construction of the future, and equally, how might these stories shape our understanding of the past and ourselves? How are these spaces of resistance imagined, and re-imagined, in response to and in tension with structures of power? How do these stories contribute to narratives of cultural and/or national identity? 

Particular attention will be given to proposals which incorporate these concepts, though - in keeping with the greenwood community spirit - all Robin Hood and similar outlaw-related proposals are invited for consideration! The IARHS welcomes international scholars working in diverse fields, such as literature and drama, history, folklore and mythology, film and television studies (including Disney), music and performing arts, fashion and costume design, comics and graphic arts, adaptation studies, and fan studies.

The IARHS understands that travel may be complicated for any number of reasons, and while we encourage in-person attendance and community, a virtual presentation and attendance option will be available via Zoom. 

Please submit proposals, consisting of a 200-500 word abstract and a short bio, to iarhsconference2027@gmail.com by February 1, 2027. 

Please also indicate whether you will have any A/V needs, and whether you are considering in-person or virtual attendance, if accepted. 

Undergraduate scholars are welcome to submit proposals for consideration for undergraduate sessions; please include the name of a supervising faculty member or scholar, and your institutional affiliation, in your proposal.

IARHS Sponsored Sessions for 61st International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, May 14-16, 2026

The International Association for Robin Hood Studies is sponsoring the following sessions at the 61st International Congress on Medieval Studies, at Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, MI, USA, May 14-16, 2026.

Session 168 Virtual
"Affect and Feeling in the Robin Hood and Outlaw Tradition"
Sponsor: International Association for Robin Hood Studies (IARHS)
Presider: Lorraine Kochanske Stock, Univ. of Houston
Organizer: Anna Czarnowus, Uniw. Śląski w Katowicach

• Merey Ynow: The Role of Affect in Robin Hood and the Potter; Jason C. Hogue, Texas A&M Univ.–Kingsville
• Strong Feelings in the Gest of Robyn Hode and Malory’s Morte Darthur; Jennifer Goodman Wollock, Independent Scholar
• Religious Feeling in A Lyttel Geste of Robyn Hode; Anna Czarnowus, Uniw. Śląski w Katowicach
• Revelatory Laughter in Medieval Outlaw Tales; Laura Gayle Fallon, Rocky Mountain College
• Bummer Robin Hood; Emily Youree, Univ. of Louisiana–Lafayette 

Session 174 Hybrid
"Political Outlaws and Politics of Outlawry"
Sponsor: International Association for Robin Hood Studies (IARHS)
Presider: Valerie B. Johnson, Univ. of Montevallo
Organizer: Valerie B. Johnson, Univ. of Montevallo

• Rival Kings, Rival Laws: Reading A Gest of Robyn Hode; Yi Yu, Cornell Univ.
• Blood and Thunder? Reframing Medieval Social Politics in the Robin Hood Tradition; William J. F. Hoff, Univ. of Melbourne
• What Wouldn’t Robin Do? The Outlaw as Intellectual Property in Conquests of The Longbow: The Legend of Robin Hood; Kevin Moberly, Old Dominion Univ.; Brent Moberly, Indiana Univ.–Bloomington 

Session 302 Hybrid
"Remembering the Middle Ages: Memories of the Medieval Across Time and Space (A Roundtable)"
Sponsors: Association for the Advancement of Scholarship and Teaching of the Medieval in Popular Culture; International Arthurian Society, North American Branch (IAS/NAB); International Association for Robin Hood Studies (IARHS)
Presider: Kristin Noone, Irvine Valley College
Organizer: Alexander L. Kaufman, Ball State Univ.
Siân Echard, Univ. of British Columbia
Michael A. Torregrossa, Bristol Community College

• A roundtable discussion with Jennifer Goodman Wollock, Independent Scholar; Lorraine Kochanske Stock, Univ. of Houston; Anna Czarnowus, Uniw. Śląski w Katowicach; Averie Mercedes Basch, Univ. of New Mexico; Carl B. Sell, Univ. of Pittsburgh; Amanda Bohne, Univ. of Illinois–Chicago 

The Bulletin of the International Association for Robin Hood Studies, Vol. 7, Published

 

Volume 7 of The Bulletin for the International Association for Robin Hood Studies! 

The volume features a special topics concentration, Explorations in Realism and Verisimilitude in Post-Medieval Robin Hood Texts:

• Introduction by Alexander Kaufman
• Getting (and Staying) Medieval: Historical Setting in Robin Hood Adaptations by Emily Youree
• Fantasy Feminism: Joseph Campbell's Heroic Model as a Framework for Marginalization in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves by Johanna Black
• The Hooded Man Reborn: The Post-Apocalyptic Robin Hood of Paul Kane's Hooded Man Novels by Carl Sell

We conclude the volume with a "regular" article, as well: 

• Fishermen, Seafaring, and English Identity in the Seventeenth-Century Robin Hood's Fishing by Perry Neil Harrison

CFP: IARHS Sponsorded Session, "Time and the Outlaw," Leeds IMC 2026

 

IARHS Sponsored-Session Proposal: 'Time and the Outlaw'

Leeds International Medieval Congress 2026

6^th-9^th July 2026, University of Leeds, UK

Call for Papers

 

The theme of Leeds International Medieval Congress will be ‘Temporalities’

On the official ‘Call for Papers’ webpage, this is described as follows:

‘Diverse notions of the passage of time affected medieval people’s political decisions, economic exchanges, and production of objects and artefacts. Medieval people manipulated time to reflect their gender roles, narrative strategies, views on human ageing, shifts in ethnic or social groups, or changes in public and private spaces.

Modern concepts of medieval time are bound up with our own understanding and (ab)use of medieval temporalities. Whether we construct images of a ‘Dark Age’, or imagine a romantic time of chivalry and knighthood, these projections into the past reflect our own temporal outlooks and how today we organise ‘medieval time’ in a variety of ways that address modern diverse political or cultural agendas, which lie at the heart of our debate on medievalism.’

 

IARHS session proposal is ‘Time and the Outlaw’

 

Outlaw stories are like time travelers: they exist in their own time and seemingly outside time.    Some of their elements remain fixed and unchanging whilst others are a product of negotiation between the tellers and their audiences, according to the needs of their present situations and ideological perspectives.  They exist in a variety of media and in many different genres.

This session, therefore, examines outlaws and their stories through time: what they have been, what they are now, and what they may become.   How have they been presented and how has that presentation changed, how might they be presented in the future – and why?  Are outlaw stories simply ephemeral wish fulfillment, or do they really matter?  What was their function in the past, what is it now, and what might it be in the future? 

Outlaw heroes are not necessarily ‘different’ from other people – they frequently begin their stories living unremarkable lives in an everyday world – but their qualities are super-charged by their natural empathy and ability reacting to adverse circumstances created by (‘evil’) others.  Their subsequent actions become the subject of myth, legend and popular culture.  They speak truth to and about power in every age. 

Medieval commentators regarded stories (such as those of Robin Hood) as either mindless diversions that did neither harm nor good, or as carriers of important socio-cultural messages that could be either supportive or subversive of hegemonic practices and beliefs.  The outlaw’s relevance in and through time, to whom and why, is still a major subject of academic study and of interest to wider audiences.

We invite proposals for 20-minute papers on this topic.  Some suitable Congress suggestions are: Medieval perceptions of time, temporality, and their modern interpretations; People in time; Time as an agent of change; Temporality in political, economic, and socio-cultural relations; Time, memory, and commemoration; Time, nature, and the environment; Medieval temporalities in film, media, digital technology, and Artificial Intelligence; Artistic representations of time and temporality; Medieval temporalities in literature, music, performing arts, and folklore; Medievalism and medieval temporalities; The future of the Middle Ages. 

This is a limited list, but proposals on any aspect of time and outlaws/outlaw stories, in any or many media, medieval, post-medieval, modern or future are welcomed.

The session/s will be hybrid, so distance need not be a limitation.

To submit before the Congress deadline, proposals need to be made by midnight on Friday 26^th September.  There will be a waiting list in operation after that weekend. 

Please send your proposal to the session organiser, Dr Lesley Coote, at coote081@gmail.com

Proposals need to be accompanied by a working title, speaker name and designation, and a contact address. 

CFP: IARHS Sponsored Sessions, ICMS 2026 (Kalamazoo)

 The IARHS will be sponsoring one virtual and two hybrid sessions at the 61th International Congress on Medieval Studies at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, MI (USA). Submissions to these sessions are due by Friday Sept. 15, 2025, via the ICMS's Confex system. Please share this post widely!

Session organizers are listed after each session title; if you have questions about a specific session, please directly email the session's organizer.

Modality note: In virtual sessions, participants are all live via the digital Confex Zoom system. In hybrid sessions, participants are all live, with a mix of in person on Western Michigan University's campus and virtually via the Confex Zoom system; virtual speakers will be projected onto a large screen at the front of the room in Kalamazoo. The IARHS is an international organization and recognizes that travel to the conference site is not possible nor safe for many: when conference organizers permit, we are committed to offering hybrid and virtual sessions. 

Session 1 (Virtual): Affect and Feeling in the Robin Hood and Outlaw Traditions (Anna Czarnowus;  annaczarnowus@op.pl)

We can discuss affect, feeling, and emotions in the Robin Hood and outlaw tradition, since affect studies, the discussion of feeling (including religious feeling), and the history of emotions allow us to see the plots and the characters in the narratives in question in a new light. This session will explore which affective strategies are adopted in specific texts, films, graphic novels, and games, and how emotional communities are constructed in them. Engaging with these emotional communities, presenters might consider which types of affect, feelings, and emotions should be propagated and which should be suppressed. 

Session 2 (Hybrid): Political Outlaws and the Politics of Outlawry (Valerie Johnson; valerie.johnson@montevallo.edu)

This panel invites presentations on Robin Hood texts, performances, artifacts, references and evocations that participate in the ongoing lively public discourse connecting medieval outlaws to politics, political figures or political moments. For centuries the Robin Hood tradition has been evoked as modern political capital, and in the past decade alone has appeared in French tax protests, British and Spanish supermarket thefts, and American healthcare claim adjustments. Outlawry has likewise been politicized, paradoxically lauded as integral to functional governments and societies. We encourage presenters to consider a range of potentially intersecting and comparative perspectives, whether period, discipline, genre, modality, etc.

Session 3 (Hybrid): Remembering the Middle Ages: Memories of the Medieval across Time and Space (A Roundtable), co-sponsored by the IARHS with the Association for the Advancement of Scholarship and Teaching of the Medieval in Popular Culture and the International Arthurian Society, North American Branch (IAS/NAB)  (Michael A. Torregrossa; Siân Echard, sian.echard@ubc.ca; Alexander L. Kaufman, alkaufman@bsu.edu)

Heather Arden claims that medievalisms manifest as the “survival, revival, or re-creation” of aspects of the Middle Ages. These works display the continued importance in how the era is viewed and shape a unique relationship with those who restore and/or participate in them. In this co-sponsored session, we seek to ally scholars of popular culture and medievalisms along with those who study the legendary traditions of the Matter of Britain and the Matter of the Greenwood to share new and neglected works that highlight the many ways we remember the Middle Ages and have restored it to life. 

CFP: IARHS-Sponsored Session, Southeastern Medieval Association Conference, November 6-8, 2025, University of Cincinnati

 

CFP: IARHS-Sponsored Session, Southeastern Medieval Association Conference, November 6-8, 2025, University of Cincinnati

Proposed Sponsored Session Title: “Confluences in the Robin Hood Tradition”

The theme of SEMA’s 50th annual conference is “Confluences”:

https://southeasternmedieval.wordpress.com/2025/05/07/sema-2025-cfp/

With that theme in mind, the IARHS welcomes abstracts for formal paper sessions to be considered for 1-2 possible sessions at SEMA’s in-person conference. 

• How does the Robin Hood tradition explore political, environmental, geographical, natural confluences in its body of literature?
•  In what ways does the Robin Hood tradition merge disparate or similar cultures, ideologies, texts to form something new?  
• In what ways is the Robin Hood tradition fixated upon or enamored with concepts of hybridity of physical, ideological, or textual bodies/forms?  
• "Confluences" suggests movement, which results in an overlapping, a layering, and/or a merging of objects or forms. As such, in what ways is the Robin Hood tradition (its body of literature, its various media texts) reliant upon existing or nascent textual conjunctions, accretions, convergences, and meetings not only to sustain itself but also to create new works?  

Please send to Alex Kaufman (alkaufman@bsu.edu) by June 25, 2025 the following items in a Word Document or a PDF for consideration for an IARHS-sponsored session at the SEMA Conference:

1. Your name

2. Your email

3. Your affiliation

4. A 250-word abstract

5. 3-5 keywords

6. If you will need technology to present at the conference

 

15th Biennial Conference Schedule

 

International Association for Robin Hood Studies

15th Biennial Conference

Jagiellonian University

 

Hosts and organizers: 

Anna Czarnowus (University of Silesia) 

Michal Czerenkiewicz (Jagiellonian University) 

Dates: 

26 -27 June 2025

Venue: 

Jagiellonian University, Polish Department, Golebia 18, Cracow 

UTC/GMT +2

 

Robin Hood and Other Social Bandits in Folk and Popular Culture

26.06.2025

 

10:00 Conference opening:

Professor Tomasz Bilczewski, Deputy Dean of the Polish Department, Jagiellonian University

Professor Władysław Witalisz, Dean of the English Department, Jagiellonian University

Professor Adam Dziadek, Dean of the Faculty of Humanities, University of Silesia

 

11:15 Coffee break

 

11:30-13:00 LIVE

Chair: Dominika Ruszkiewicz

 

Joanna Szwed (University of Warsaw), The Hunter Gets Captured by the Game: Hunting Games and Death in Robin Hood Narratives

Andrzej Wicher (University of Lodz), Avatars of Robin Hood in the Works of J.R.R. Tolkien

Łukasz Neubauer (University of Szczecin), The Hooded Man as a Figure of Christ: A Close Look at the Final Episode of the Second Season of the HTV Robin Of Sherwood Series (1985)

 

13:00-14:30 Lunch break

 

14:30- 16:00 LIVE+ONLINE

Chair: Joanna Szwed

 

Berry Wilson (Independent scholar), The English Resistance Leader, Eadric Silvaticus: From Local Hero to Folk Hero LIVE

Iris Freitas Rodriguez (Federal University of Pelotas), The Grimms’ Revisions in Fairy Tales and Their Meritocratic Discourse ONLINE

Rachel Byrd (University of Houston), Becoming Robin Hood and Guy of Gisborne: Adaption in the Robin Hood Ballad Tradition ONLINE

Michael Torregrossa (Bristol Community College), A Connecticut Yankee in Sherwood Forest? Exploring Time-Travel Adventures to/from the Age of Robin Hood

 

16:00 Coffee break

 

16:15-17:45 ONLINE+LIVE

Chair: Gayle Fallon

 

Sherron Lux (Independent scholar), Malleable Maid Marian ONLINE

Alex Kaufman (Ball State University), “Winterwood Bandit Neomedievalisms in Peter Tinniswood’s The Stirk Of Stirk (1974)” ONLINE

Kristin Noone (Irvine Valley College), “When Has A Dead Person Ever Lied To You?”: The Dark Comic Medievalism of Peter David’s Robyne of Sherwood LIVE

 

17:45 Break

 

18:00-19:30 LIVE+ONLINE

Chair: Łukasz Neubauer

 

Lorraine Stock (University of Houston), Free State Of Jones (2016) as Robin Hood Cinema: Medievalism and The American Civil War LIVE

Gayle Fallon (Rocky Mountain College),  “Gamelyn Spreyeth Holy Watere”: The Tale of Gamelyn and Medieval Sanctuary Law ONLINE

Jason Hogue (Texas A&M University-Kingsville), Greenwood Opening Variants in Robin Hood Ballads (Medieval To Early Modern) ONLINE

 

19:30 Dinner

27.06.2025

 

8:00-9:30 ONLINE

Chair: Anna Czarnowus

 

Stephen Basdeo (Elizabeth School of London), Joseph Frank (1773–1838): Editor of Joseph Ritson’s Robin Hood: A Collection of All the Ancient Poems, Songs, and Ballads (1795)

William Hoff (University of Melbourne), Robin Meets His Match: A New Reading of Sporting Challenge in Medieval and Early Modern Performance

Gillian Polack (Deakin University), Eustace the Monk Aka Mr Busket – The Life and Legend of a Scoundrel

 

9:30 Coffee break

 

9:45-11:15 LIVE+ONLINE

Chair: Joanna Szwed

 

Ewa Drab (University of Silesia), The Contemporary Reconfiguration of the Legend in Lavie Tidhar's Fantasy Reading of Robin Hood LIVE

Andrzej F. Hojarski (Jagiellonian University), Mimesis, Friendship, and Steinbeck’s Paisanos LIVE

Anna Czarnowus (University of Silesia)  and Joanna Mleczko (University of Silesia), Haiduks as Social Bandits LIVE

 

11:15 visit at the Early Printed Books Section of the Jagiellonian Library (ONLINE+LIVE)

 

14:00-15:30 lunch break

 

15:30-17:00 ONLINE

Chair: Dominika Ruszkiewicz

 

Whitney Snow (Midwestern State University), America’s Moll: How Virginia Hill Attracted Support from the Public While Being Pursued by The U.S. Government

Ann M. Martinez (Kent State University at Stark), Outlawed: When the Once Privileged Fight the System

Kunnan Muhammed Swalih (Institut Mohammed 6 Pour La Formation Des Imames des Mourchidines Et Mourchidates), Kayamkulam Kochunni: Myth, Legend, and Social Justice in South Indian Folklore

 

17:00 Coffee break

 

17:15- 18:45 ONLINE

Chair: Lorraine K. Stock

Arvind Thomas (University of California, Los Angeles University of California, Los Angeles), Money Talks: Bonds of Narrative in A Gest Of Robyn Hode

Valerie Johnson (University of Montevallo), Neurodivergent Representation in Kelly Ann Jacobson’s Robin and Her Misfits (2023)  

Ananda Majumdar (University of Alberta), The Robin Hood Principle: Redistributive Justice and Its Modern Relevance

18:45-19:45 IARHS business meeting ONLINE

19:45 Closing of the conference