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

Biennial IARHS Conference CFP

 

Robin Hood and Other Social Bandits in Folk and Popular Culture

HYBRID biannual conference of

the International Association for Robin Hood Studies

26-27 June 2025

The Jagiellonian University, Cracow (Poland)

(and ONLINE)

The Robin Hood tradition has inalienably been a part of popular culture and some of its elements undoubtedly come from folk culture. Already Robin Hood ballads or rhymes, as they are also called, represented popular culture. The idea of a social bandit or a bandit rebel, understood by Eric Hobsbawm as the one who “challenges the economic, social and political order” (Bandits 7), is related to social justice and injustice, which has always been present in folklore. Not only the medieval and later Robin Hood can be defined as a social bandit, but such outlaws as Janosik and Ondrašek, provincial as they are according to Hobsbawm (Bandits 47), fulfill the criteria for it. The two lived respectively in the Slovakian and Polish mountains in the 18^th and 19^th centuries and in the legends they opposed both aristocracy and the Hapsburg rule that stood behind this aristocracy. In Australia Ned Kelly has its admirers, who relate him both to the class conflicts of the 19^th-century Australia and to the social wrongs that supposedly affect some Australians at present.

            Both folk and popular cultures have been open to the concept of social ills that outlaws may oppose, or at least such are the legends about them.

 

The topics related to this may refer to literary texts, films, graphic novels, and all the other material that represents popular and folk culture. The topics may include, for example:

 

-outlaws that opposed social injustice: the legend and the historical background

-reworking old myths into those that cater for the current needs

-ideologies behind the idea of social justice in the texts of culture about outlaws

-the concept of the law and justice in outlaw narratives

-popular reworkings of old myths about social bandits

-nationalistic and racist uses of the outlaw myths

 

All other topics related to this are also welcome.

 

Please send your 200-word abstract by March 31, 2025 to Dr. Anna Czarnowus at:

annaczarnowus@tlen.pl