More than Marvel: Representations of Norse Mythology in Contemporary Popular Culture

Sponsored by the Association for the Advancement of Scholarship and Teaching of the Medieval in Popular Culture

54th International Congress on Medieval Studies

Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, Michigan

9-12 May 2019

Proposals due by 15 September 2018

 

Myths and legends from the Middle Ages remain important links to the past, and there has been much interest in recasting this material into post-medieval contexts, forging a bridge between our forebears and our modern selves. Creators of our own time have been especially prolific in reviving these stories for new audiences. The tales told of the gods of the Norsemen are one such medieval legacy to find currency today, and they have appeared in a variety of media, including comics. For example, Marvel Comics’ representation of the Norse god Thor has been an important element of its shared world since his debut in 1962, and, in its incorporation of the character into the Marvel Universe, the publisher has done much in the service of Medieval Studies through its widespread dissemination across the globe of a relatable depiction of the Norse Gods and the intricate mythology associated with them. Marvel’s account of Thor and his compatriots has also featured in an array of media beyond the pages of its long-running comic book series, and the recent release of three feature films centered around the Asgardian as part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, one of the world’s most popular and prosperous movie and television franchises, has provided additional texts to further knowledge of the Nine Worlds and its inhabitants. Nonetheless, while Marvel remains the most prominent creator of modern tales of the Norse gods, the company does not hold the exclusive rights to this material. Other writers, comics creators, filmmakers, television producers, and game designers have also appropriated the stories and legends of the gods of Asgard and further individuals within the cosmology of the Nine Worlds for their own purposes, yet their work remain relatively unknown when compared to the phenomenal success and reach of Marvel Comics and Marvel Studios.

It is the intent of this session to shed the spotlight on these other examples of Nordic-inspired medievalisms and to bring them into ongoing conversations and debates about the reception of the medieval in the post-medieval world. We are especially interested in the reach of Marvel’s versions beyond the United States and how other approaches to the material engage with, react to, or ignore Marvel’s work. In addition, we hope to include coverage of texts from non-Western media (like anime and manga) that have embraced the traditions of the Norse gods in innovative ways.

Potential Topics: (a good starting point is the “Norse mythology in popular culture” page on Wikipedia at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norse_mythology_in_popular_culture)

• The Almighty Johnsons
• American Gods
• Day of the Giants (Lester del Rey)
• Fafner in the Azure
• Doctor Who
• Everworld (K. A. Applegate)
• Gods of Asgard (Erik A. Evensen)
• Graphic Myths and Legends series
• Hammer of the Gods (Michael Avon Oeming and Mark Wheatley)
• Hercules: The Legendary Journeys / Xena: Warrior Princess
• The Incredible Hulk Returns
• Last Days of the Justice Society of America
• The Life Eaters (David Brin and Scott Hampton)
• Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard (Rick Riordan)
• The Mask
• The Mythical Detective Loki Ragnarok
• Mythquest
• Norse Myths: A Viking Graphic Novel series
• Odyssey of the Amazons (DC Comics)
• Oh! My Goddess!
• Ragnarok (Myung Jin Lee) / Ragnarok Online
• Stargate
• Supernatural
• Valhalla (Peter Madsens)
• Witches of East End

Presentations will be limited to 15 or 20 minutes depending on final panel size.

Interested individuals should submit, no later than 15 September 2018, (1) paper proposal or abstract of approximately 500 words, (2) a 250 to 500-word academic biographical narrative, and (3) a completed Participant Information Form (accessible at https://wmich.edu/medievalcongress/submissions) to the organizers at Comics.Get.Medieval@gmail.com using “More than Marvel” as their subject heading.

In planning your proposal, please be aware of the policies of the Congress (available at https://wmich.edu/medievalcongress/policies).

Further information about the Association for the Advancement of Scholarship and Teaching of the Medieval in Popular Culture and its outreach efforts can be accessed at The Medieval in Popular Culture (https://medievalinpopularculture.blogspot.com/).

Of especial interest, the Association hosts sites devoted to both medieval-themed films and comics. These can be accessed at Medieval Studies on Screen (http://medievalstudiesonscreen.blogspot.com/) and TheMedieval Comics Project (https://medieval-comics-project.blogspot.com/), respectively.

A Conference at the Hagley Museum and Library

Wilmington, Delaware, November 8-9, 2018

 

The history of surveillance is often associated with the history of the state. However, commercial organizations in the United States – from insurance companies to audience rating firms and database marketers, to corporate personnel and auditing departments – also exercise power over citizens through systems of identification, classification, and monitoring.  The history of commercial surveillance thus intersects with key issues concerning the history of privacy, information, social sorting and discrimination, and technologies of discipline and control.

 

For a conference sponsored by the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society on November 8-9, 2018, we invite proposals that explore the history of commercial surveillance in the United States, from settlement to the present. These (non-state) surveillance activities might be found in a variety of business settings and industries, involve a range of formal or informal practices, and might be directed at customers, media audiences, borrowers, consumer markets, employees, or labor. The long history of commercial surveillance serves to illuminate the precursors, continuities, and logic of today’s “surveillance capitalism.”

 

We are interested in original, empirically-grounded unpublished essays that consider one or more of the following questions:

 

• How have commercial surveillance systems contributed to the production of knowledge about individuals or populations? To what extent have private-sector classification systems shaped categories of identity and social status in the United States?
• In what ways have commercial surveillance systems contributed to understandings of gender and race in the United States? How have these understandings been formalized or institutionalized?
• How does the development of commercial surveillance fit into broader social, political, or economic efforts to discipline behavior or control risk?
• To what extent have commercial surveillance systems overlapped – or collaborated – with state surveillance systems, such as law enforcement, social services, or statistical data gathering?
• What legal issues have attended the history of commercial surveillance? How have commercial surveillance practices been regulated, particularly with regard to discrimination and privacy?
• To what extent have distinctions between work and leisure been blurred by commercial surveillance?
• How does the history of commercial surveillance help contextualize the development of big data and predictive analytics in our own time? What underlying structures, norms, or business objectives can be discerned?
• What technologies have been developed, and for what specific purposes, to facilitate commercial surveillance?

 

Sarah E. Igo (Vanderbilt University) will open the conference with a keynote address on the evening of November 8. She will discuss her new book, The Known Citizen: A History of Privacy in Modern America, to be published by Harvard University Press in May 2018.

 

If you are interested in proposing a paper, please submit proposals of no more than 500 words and a one-page C.V. to Carol Lockman at clockman@hagley.org by May 1, 2018. We welcome submissions from historians as well as ethnographically oriented social scientists.  Presenters will receive lodging in the conference hotel and up to $500 to cover their travel costs.

This conference was initiated by Josh Lauer (University of New Hampshire), and he is joined on the program committee by Roger Horowitz (Hagley Museum and Library) and Ken Lipartito (Florida International University).

Armistice & Aftermath: A World War One Symposium Sept. 28-29, 2018 at Michigan Technological University, Houghton MI Call For Papers Armistice Day 2018 marks the centenary end of World War I. This symposium explores the conditions and impacts of the “Great War,” as experienced during and afterwards, with a special focus on the perspective from the American Heartland. The war had tremendous human and economic repercussions. It also motivated technological, medical, and cultural advances, and it paved the way for transformative social change, from Prohibition to women’s suffrage. Keynote speakers: Dr. John H. Morrow, Jr., Franklin Professor of History, University of Georgia. Author (with Jeffrey T. Sammons) of Harlem’s Rattlers and the Great War: The Undaunted 369th Regiment and the African American Quest for Equality (2014) and Dr. Lynn Dumenil, Robert Glass Cleland Professor Emerita of American History, Occidental College. Author of The Second Line of Defense: American Women and World War I(2017). We invite papers that examine a wide range of topics such as, but not limited to ●      Domestic and regional mobilization and demobilization Social implications of technologies and industries of war ●      Reintegration and post-war shifts in gender, class, and labor relations ●      Cultural representations of war, home-front support, and life in the aftermath ●      Memories of the war in music, literature, film, drama, art, graphic arts ●      Civil rights, social stratifications, and diversity in the military and civilian life ●      The peace and anti-war movements Please spread the word by forwarding this announcement. DEADLINE FOR 350-500 WORD ABSTRACT: May 1, 2018 Please include a brief biography. Submit to ww1cc.mtu.edu/cfp Accepted papers may be published as Proceedings in the Michigan Tech Digital Commons. Selected revised papers may be included in a proposal for a published collection. There is no registration fee for attendance. Approval for State Continuing Education Clock Hours (SCECHs) is pending. More details will be available once the program is finalized. CONTACT INFORMATION WW1CC • Dr. Patty Sotirin • (906) 487-3264 Department of Humanities Michigan Technological University A series of free and public exhibits and installations will take place at Michigan Tech and the Carnegie Museum of the Keweenaw during the symposium. ●      Europe, America, and the World: An Outdoor Concert. Featuring the music of James Reese Europe performed by MTU Superior Wind Symphony, MTU ●      An Evening of Silent Film. Featuring Charlie Chaplin’s Shoulder Arms (1918) with live musical accompaniment, Rozsa Theater ●      Interactive WWI Trench. With battle soundscape, readings from soldiers’ memoirs, and war poetry, MTU ●      American and French Propaganda Posters and the Great War. Exhibit, Rozsa Gallery, courtesy of Marquette Regional History Center ●      Shell-shocked: Footage and Sounds of the Front. Film with sound installation, Rozsa Gallery ●      Philosophy, Technology, & Warfare. A multimedia screens exhibit, Immersive Visualization Studio, MTU ●      Soldier Stories: The U.P. in World War I. Exhibit, Carnegie Museum of the Keweenaw, courtesy of Beaumier U.P. Heritage Center ●      World War I & the Copper Country Home Front. Exhibit, Carnegie Museum of the Keweenaw ●      Copper Country Voices of Dissent in the Great War. Exhibit, Finnish American Heritage Center, Finlandia University WW1CC is made possible in part by a grant from the Michigan Humanities Council, an affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this program do not necessarily reflect those of the National Endowment for the Humanities or the Michigan Humanities Council.

New York City April 14-15

Details found here: http://www.rosalux-nyc.org/black-radicalism-in-the-united-states/ 

Sponsored by The Association for the Advancement of Scholarship and Teaching of the Medieval in Popular Culture for the Medieval & Renaissance Area of the Mid-Atlantic Popular & American Culture Association

29th Annual Conference of the Mid-Atlantic Popular & American Culture Association

Lord Baltimore Hotel, Baltimore, Maryland

8-10 November 2018

Proposals due by 30 June 2018

Monsters remain fascinating subjects, and intense discussion in recent years has focused on their representation in medieval texts, including stories as well as the art of the period. However, scholars have largely neglected the post-medieval afterlife of these horrors in later works. Monstrous entities manufactured to exist within re-creations of the Middle Ages in contemporary media share a similar fate in the academy. In short, medievalists appear to like monsters, but they do not always seem willing to explore their depictions in modern texts. Despite this neglect, the monsters found in medievalisms have merit in our classrooms and research, and we need to promote their exploits as well as those of the creatures existing within medieval artifacts.

In furtherance of the goals of The Association for the Advancement of Scholarship and Teaching of the Medieval in Popular Culture, we seek in this panel to unite Medieval Studies, Medievalism Studies, Monster Studies, and Popular Culture Studies to highlight connections between medieval monstrosities and their post-medieval incarnations and successors. We hope to explore both continuity and change in addressing how terrors rooted in the medieval have been portrayed and how their inheritors have been developed.

Possible topics might include:

Demons

Dracula

Dragons

Elves/Fairies/Tuatha Dé Danann

Fomorians

Gargoyles

Giants

Golems

The Green Knight

The Grendelkin

Incubi/Sucubi

Loathly Ladies

Melusine

Merlin

Revenants

Shrek

Werewolves

Wild Men / Wild Women

Witches

Presentations will be limited to 10-15 minutes depending on final panel size.

Interested individuals should, no later than 30 June 2018, notify the organizers of their topic via email directed to MedievalinPopularCulture@gmail.com using “Monsters and Medievalism” as their subject heading. They will also need create an account with the Mid-Atlantic Popular & American Culture Association at https://mapaca.net/conference AND submit into the system both an abstract of no more than 300 words and an academic biographical narrative of no more than 75 words.

Again, please send inquiries and copies of your submissions to the organizers at MedievalinPopularCulture@gmail.com using “Monsters and Medievalism” as the subject heading.

In planning your proposal, please be aware of the policies of the Mid-Atlantic Popular & American Culture Association (available at https://mapaca.net/help/conference/submitting-abstracts-conference).

Further details on The Association for the Advancement of Scholarship and Teaching of the Medieval in Popular Culture can be found at its website: https://medievalinpopularculture.blogspot.com/.

Sponsored by The Association for the Advancement of Scholarship and Teaching of the Medieval in Popular Culture for the Medieval & Renaissance Area of the Mid-Atlantic Popular & American Culture Association

29th Annual Conference of the Mid-Atlantic Popular & American Culture Association

Lord Baltimore Hotel, Baltimore, Maryland

8-10 November 2018

Proposals due by 30 June 2018

Monsters remain fascinating subjects, and intense discussion in recent years has focused on their representation in medieval texts, including stories as well as the art of the period. However, scholars have largely neglected the post-medieval afterlife of these horrors in later works. Monstrous entities manufactured to exist within re-creations of the Middle Ages in contemporary media share a similar fate in the academy. In short, medievalists appear to like monsters, but they do not always seem willing to explore their depictions in modern texts. Despite this neglect, the monsters found in medievalisms have merit in our classrooms and research, and we need to promote their exploits as well as those of the creatures existing within medieval artifacts.

In furtherance of the goals of The Association for the Advancement of Scholarship and Teaching of the Medieval in Popular Culture, we seek in this panel to unite Medieval Studies, Medievalism Studies, Monster Studies, and Popular Culture Studies to highlight connections between medieval monstrosities and their post-medieval incarnations and successors. We hope to explore both continuity and change in addressing how terrors rooted in the medieval have been portrayed and how their inheritors have been developed.

Possible topics might include:

Demons

Dracula

Dragons

Elves/Fairies/Tuatha Dé Danann

Fomorians

Gargoyles

Giants

Golems

The Green Knight

The Grendelkin

Incubi/Sucubi

Loathly Ladies

Melusine

Merlin

Revenants

Shrek

Werewolves

Wild Men / Wild Women

Witches

Presentations will be limited to 10-15 minutes depending on final panel size.

Interested individuals should, no later than 30 June 2018, notify the organizers of their topic via email directed to MedievalinPopularCulture@gmail.com using “Monsters and Medievalism” as their subject heading. They will also need create an account with the Mid-Atlantic Popular & American Culture Association at https://mapaca.net/conference AND submit into the system both an abstract of no more than 300 words and an academic biographical narrative of no more than 75 words.

Again, please send inquiries and copies of your submissions to the organizers at MedievalinPopularCulture@gmail.com using “Monsters and Medievalism” as the subject heading.

In planning your proposal, please be aware of the policies of the Mid-Atlantic Popular & American Culture Association (available at https://mapaca.net/help/conference/submitting-abstracts-conference).

Further details on The Association for the Advancement of Scholarship and Teaching of the Medieval in Popular Culture can be found at its website: https://medievalinpopularculture.blogspot.com/.