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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CFP: Outlaw Bodies, 12th Biennial Conference

The International Association for Robin Hood Studies (IARHS) invites abstract submissions for its Twelfth Biennial Conference, to be held at the University of Montevallo (Montevallo, AL) from 14-17 May 2019. The theme of the conference is “Outlaw Bodies.”

The term “outlaw” is applied to a broad range of entities, in ever expanding contexts. Functionally, an outlaw has become anything that is outside a norm, whether real, perceived, or desired – but the designation of outlaw can have lasting and tangible consequences. The Outlaw Bodies conference, on behalf of the IARHS, invites papers, panel proposals, round table topics, and seminars that discuss those consequences. The IARHS also welcomes and invites papers treating topics and presenting research on outlawry, the Robin Hood tradition, and social banditry. 

The conference seeks to center a discussion of the Robin Hood tradition and outlawry through a focus on bodies and tangibility: human, ecological, legal, and social. Human bodies can be branded, marked, and punished for outlawry. Ecological bodies such as swamps, forests, and wastelands are often figured as outlaws and have traditionally been seen as both sheltering and generating outlaws. Legal bodies, whether codes of law or institutions of law, generate punitive force against outlaw bodies. Social bodies defined, celebrated, or suppressed by social constructs including gender and sexuality. Robin Hood Studies and medievalism have begun to move toward the center of academic conventions, giving up their outlaw status. The November 2018 release of Robin Hood (dir. Otto Bathurst), with an additional half dozen treatments of the tradition apparently in development, demonstrates the truism that Robin Hood is an outsider hero, a figure of apparent rebellion and counter culture that is a reliable blockbuster film subject, as well as offering consumers a rich collection of television, novels, poetry, political iconography, and other ephemera. The new film’s outlaw bodies (whether human, ecological, legal, or social) offer new opportunities to explore the consequences of embodiment within the movie and for the Robin Hood tradition more broadly. We therefore explicitly invite papers that explore issues of race, gender, sexuality, power structures, and ableism.

Please send proposals of no more than 300 words to Dr. Valerie Johnson (vjohnso6@montevallo.edu) by 2 November 2018.

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