Online Event: SWORD STONE TABLE: King Arthur’s Court Reenvisioned 8/3/2021

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SWORD STONE TABLE: King Arthur’s Court Reenvisioned

August 3 • 7:00 pm - 8:00 pm



Featuring Sword Stone Table: Old Legends, New Voices editor Jenn Northington and contributors Alexander Chee, Maria Davahna Headley, Daniel Lavery and Nisi Shawl in conversation with Dr. Dorsey Armstrong

With A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, Mark Twain gave his own time travel twist to the Arthur legend. With Sword Stone Table, a whole new generation of writers bring their own takes on Arthur, Merlin, Mordred, Guinevere ,and Lancelot.

From the vast lore surrounding King Arthur, Camelot, and the Knights of the Round Table, comes an anthology of gender-bent, race-bent, LGBTQIA+ inclusive retellings. Here you’ll find the Lady of the Lake reimagined as an albino Ugandan sorceress and the Lady of Shalott as a wealthy, isolated woman in futuristic Mexico City; you’ll see Excalibur rediscovered as a baseball bat that grants a washed-up minor leaguer a fresh shot at glory and as a lost ceremonial drum that returns to a young First Nations boy the power and the dignity of his people. There are stories set in Gilded Age Chicago, ’80s New York, twenty-first century Singapore, and space; there are lesbian lady knights, Arthur and Merlin reborn in the modern era for a second chance at saving the world and falling in love—even a coffee shop AU.

Brave, bold, and groundbreaking, the stories in Sword Stone Table will bring fresh life to beloved myths and give long-time fans a chance to finally see themselves in their favorite legends.

Sword Stone Table features stories by:

Alexander Chee • Preeti Chhibber • Roshani Chokshi • Sive Doyle • Maria Dahvana Headley • Ausma Zehanat Khan • Daniel M. Lavery • Ken Liu • Sarah MacLean • Silvia Moreno-Garcia • Jessica Plummer • Anthony Rapp • Waubgeshig Rice • Alex Segura • Nisi Shawl • S. Zainab Williams

FREE program, but donations are gratefully accepted. REGISTER HERE.

Copies of Sword Stone Table signed by the editorsare available for purchase through the Mark Twain Store; proceeds benefit The Mark Twain House & Museum. Books will be shipped after the event. We regret that we are NOT able to ship books outside the United States as it is cost-prohibitive to do so.

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About the Editors & Authors:

Swapna Krishna: https://www.swapnakrishna.com/bio

Jenn Northington: https://jennirl.com

Alexander Chee: https://www.alexanderchee.net

Maria Davahna Headley: https://www.mariadahvanaheadley.com

Nisi Shawl: http://www.nisishawl.com

Daniel Lavery: https://slate.com/author/danny-m-lavery


Our moderator: Professor Dorsey Armstrong



Professor Dorsey Armstrong—a specialist in medieval English literature—joined the Purdue faculty in 2002, where she currently serves as Head of the English Department. The holder of an A.B. in English and Creative Writing from Stanford University and a Ph.D. in Medieval Literature from Duke University, she also taught at Centenary College of Louisiana and at California State University, Long Beach. Her research interests include medieval women writers, late-medieval print culture, and the Arthurian legend, on which she has published extensively. In addition to numerous articles published in journals such as Exemplaria and Arthurian Literature, chapters in various academic books, and serving as co-editor for several scholarly essay collections, she is the author of Gender and the Chivalric Community in Malory’s Morte d’Arthur (University Press of Florida, 2003), Sir Thomas Malory’s Morte Darthur: A New Modern English Translation Based on the Winchester Manuscript (Parlor Press, 2009) and Mapping Malory: Regional Identities and National Geographies in Le Morte Darthur (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014; co-authored with Kenneth Hodges). In January 2009, she became editor-in-chief of the academic journal Arthuriana, which publishes the most cutting-edge research on the legend of King Arthur, from its medieval origins to its enactments in the present moment.

Winner of numerous teaching awards—including Purdue’s Murphy Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Instruction—Professor Armstrong has also written and taped several lecture series for The Teaching Company/The Great Courses. These include: “The Medieval World”; “Turning Points in Medieval History”; “Analysis and Critique: How to Engage With and Write About Anything”; “Great Minds of the Medieval World”; “1215: A Year That Changed History”; “King Arthur: History and Legend”; and “The Black Death: the World’s Most Devastating Plague.” Additionally, she has produced two short lecture series for Audible–one on “Powerful Medieval Women” and another on “Medieval Myths and Mysteries.” She currently sits on the executive and advisory boards for numerous scholarly and academic entities, the Bonnie Wheeler Fellowship, and the International Arthurian Society. She is currently at work editing a volume on Approaches to Teaching the Arthurian Tradition for the Modern Language Association.


Programs at The Mark Twain House & Museum are made possible in part by support from the Connecticut Department of Economic and Community Development, Office of the Arts, and the Greater Hartford Arts Council’s United Arts Campaign and its Travelers Arts Impact Grant program, with major support from The Travelers Foundation. For more information call 860-247-0998 or visit marktwainhouse.org

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CFP Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Brut (9/15/21; ICMS 2022)

Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Brut-ICMS 2022

deadline for submissions: 

September 15, 2021

full name / name of organization: 

International Lawman's Brut Society

contact email: 

kjt9t@uvawise.edu

Source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2021/07/12/interdisciplinary-approaches-to-the-brut-icms-2022

This session calls for papers that explore ways to incorporate the Brut—Layamon’s Brut and its analogues—into interdisciplinary studies, seeking to situate the Brut in a broader academic and pedagogical context.  How can the Brut, a text that has traditionally defied categorization, provide a way to introduce the interdisciplinary nature of medieval studies?  How might different disciplinary approaches broaden the appeal of a medieval historical poem to twenty-first century students and readers?  The session encourages proposals on teaching the Brut as part of an interdisciplinary curriculum.  We welcome studies that combine traditional academic disciplines, such as history, literature, and art, but we also look for papers that approach the Brut from new perspectives, including, for instance, media and popular culture studies.  

Please submit proposals (250-300 word) to the ICMS submissions website (https://icms.confex.com/icms/2022am/cfp.cgi) by September 15.

Please direct any questions to:

Kenneth Tiller

Professor of English

University of Virginia-Wise

kjt9t@uvawise.edu

cfp Language, Space, and Place in the Brut (9/15/21; ICMS 2022)

Language, Space, and Place in the Brut-ICMS 2022

deadline for submissions: 

September 15, 2021

full name / name of organization: 

International Lawman's Brut Society

contact email: 

kjt9t@uvawise.edu

source: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2021/07/12/language-space-and-place-in-the-brut-icms-2022

Scholarship on the Brut has begun to reexamine the role of space and place in the text’s presentation and readers’ reception of insular history.  The Brut texts provide fertile grounds for such discussions, as much of the legendary history documented in the Brut involves reshaping and redefining insular territory, including descriptions of the island and its wonders, the construction of cities and castles, the renaming of places and cities by rulers and conquerors, among others.  This session seeks proposals that further the critical conversation about territorial and textual space and its relation to language in the Brut and in its analogues.  We are particularly interested in proposals that examine ways the Brut texts engage medieval concepts of space and place: how is space defined, perceived, and navigated in the Brut?  How does Layamon’s own sense of place or space inform his identity?  Possible topics include: local space in the Brut, boundaries and territorial limits, text as space, Layamon in his West-Midlands context. 

Please submit proposals (250-300 word) to the ICMS submissions website (https://icms.confex.com/icms/2022am/cfp.cgi) by September 15.

Please direct any questions to:

Kenneth Tiller

Professor of English

University of Virginia-Wise

kjt9t@uvawise.edu

Arthuriana Spring 2021 Contents

The latest issue:

Arthuriana, Vol. 31, No. 1

Spring 2021

Source: http://www.arthuriana.org/access/31-1Contents.html.

(The journal can be purchased from the press and viewed at Project MUSE. It is also archived on JSTOR behind a moving wall.)

Table of Contents

‘Truth as They Heard’: Fama in Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte Darthur
Louis J. Boyle	3
The Second Coming of King Arthur: Conspirituality, Embodied Medievalism, and the Legacy of John F. Kennedy
Ellie Crookes	32
The Romance Forests of Medieval Iceland
Maj-Britt Frenze	56
Love out of Measure: Comparing Malory’s Palomides and Lancelot
Dana Omirova	78
Winner of the ‘Fair Unknown’ Award
They ‘Laȝed . . . Þoȝ Þey Lost’: Laughter in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Jennifer Fast	92
REVIEWS
Simon Armitage, Pearl: A New Verse Translation
Ryan Buchanan Allen	116
María Odette Canivell Arzú, Literary Narratives and the Cultural Imagination: King Arthur and Don Quixote as National Heroes
Juan Miguel Zarandona	117
Glenn D. Burger and Rory G. Critten, eds., Household Knowledges in Late-Medieval England and France
Wesley Chihyung Yu	119
Benjamin A. Saltzman, Bonds of Secrecy: Law, Spirituality, and the Literature of Concealment in Early Medieval England
Craig R. Davis	121
Charles Russell Stone, The roman de toute chevalerie: Reading Alexander Romance in Late Medieval England
Su Fang Ng	122

Arthuriana Winter 2020

Catching up:

Arthuriana, Volume 30, Number 4

Winter 2020

Source: http://www.arthuriana.org/access/30-4Contents.html.

 

Table of Contents

‘I rebel against the story. I am sure the half of it was never told us’: Elizabeth Stuart Phelps’ ‘The True Story of Guenever’ and Nineteenth-Century Women in the Literary Marketplace
Virginia Blanton and Jennifer Phegley	3
The Hero and Severed Heads: Moral Display in the Prose Lancelot
David S. King	26
Colgrevaunce’s Supposed Shame in Ywain and Gawain
Ryan Naughton	41
Malory’s ‘Fyne Force’: Motion in Le Morte Darthur
Thomas Schneider	56
REVIEWS
Valerie Hansen, The Year 1000: When Explorers Connected the World—and Globalization Began
Jonathan Good	70
Carissa M. Harris, Obscene Pedagogies: Transgressive Talk and Sexual Eduation in Late Medieval Britain
Amanda Joan Wetmore	73
Kevin J. Harty, ed., Medieval Women on Film: Essays on Gender, Cinema and History
Susan Aronstein	74
Joachim Heinzle, Wolfram von Eschenbach: Dichter der ritterlichen Welt
Judith Benz	76
Stephen Rayne, dir., Xcalibur, The Musical
Kevin J. Harty	78

Rejected Again by Kalamazoo

I am sorry to report that our proposed sponsored session on "Fair Unknowns: [Re]Claiming Popular Representations of the Matter of Britain" was rejected for inclusion in the 57th International Congress on Medieval Studies.

The rationale for our dismissal was as follows:

Your proposal was rejected because its content was duplicated by other Arthuriana proposals that were more strongly conceptualized. The Committee believes that the subject of the Matter of Britain proposed by the Alliance for the Promotion of Research on the Matter of Britain can be addressed by papers submitted to those other sessions. 

 

The response is, in part, a valid critique. While there are a number of Arthurian-related sessions that were accepted, the majority appear limited in scope, both in terms of their temporal context and media focus--aspects we were concerned with widening. As our blog title denotes, King Arthur seems to be forever. The Arthurian tradition spans the past, present, and future. Focusing on the Arthuriana of now (as seems the plan of many of the accepted sessions) may fill Zoom rooms, but it doesn't help to explore (and hopefully start to fill) the gaps in our knowledge, as was our intent. Therefore, please be on the lookout for a related call, where we hope to continue our work elsewhere.

Michael A. Torregrossa
Founder, Alliance for the Promotion of Research on the Matter of Britain 

Guest Post - Mediavilla on Legendborn

Deonn, Tracy. Legendborn. Margaret K. McElderry Books, 2020. The Legendborn Cycle 1. 501 pages. Hardcover: $18.99, ISBN 9781534441606.

 

Bree Matthews, a Black sixteen-year-old high-schooler, is about to start a pre-college residential program at UNC-Chapel Hill when she becomes embroiled in the machinations of a secret society, called “Legendborn,” made-up of students who are all blood descendants of King Arthur and his most trusted Knights of the Round Table. The Legendborn are on the verge of fighting an epic good-vs.-evil battle, known as Camlann, coming soon to campus. But not all is as it seems. The more Bree learns about the Legendborn, the more she suspects a connection to her mother’s recent death and so, with the help of Nick Davis, Arthur’s heir apparent, begins to investigate the group’s darker magical side. Along the way, she discovers her own magical powers, called “rootcraft,” which she traces back to her enslaved ancestors.

 

To become more familiar with the Legendborn ethos, Bree decides to train as a squire and, in so doing, becomes romantically involved with Nick. She also suddenly finds herself strangely attracted to Selwyn, Nick’s “Merlin” and protector, who recognizes in her a kindred spirit. Could Bree be destined to play an important role in the upcoming battle of Camlann even though she is not Legendborn?

 

Though overly complicated, the majority of the story is conveyed through dialog and so moves rather quickly. Nevertheless, the nearly 500-page book is too long by half, especially whenever Bree is tutored on the history of the Legendborn. Too much extraneous detail that, in the long run, has little to do with the plot. Furthermore, unlike other recent young adult novels set in Arthurian times, Legendborn takes place in the present-day, which demands more than a passing suspension of disbelief. Do the residents of UNC truly not hear the climactic battle that occurs on campus at the end of the book? And how does Bree find time to study between falling in love with Nick and training to become a squire?

 

Still, the novel remains compelling thanks to the author’s mostly subtle nods to the racial disparity Bree encounters as she struggles to become part of Nick’s all-too-White world. Ultimately, this is a contemporary—and extremely timely—parable about White privilege, told through the first-person eyes of a Black teenager descended from slaves. As Bree is acutely aware, the only people of color she sees at the Legendborn’s lodge are the servants who work for the students. Though she does not try to intentionally shatter the group’s color barrier, this is exactly what she eventually does. Looking gorgeous in a borrowed gown, she approaches the upscale club where a posh Legendborn gala is being held. “All right, sis,” the appreciative Black doorman says. They then knowingly smile at each other as Bree triumphantly enters the event (p. 401).

 

An “Instant New York Times Bestseller,” Legendborn was named to several “best books” lists of 2020/21, including YALSA (Young Adult Library Services Association), School Library Journal, Bookpage, New York Public Library, Indigo, BuzzFeed, and Amazon. Plus was named the winner of the American Library Association’s Coretta Scott King “John Steptoe Award for New Talent” in 2021. This book is recommended for all readers who enjoy contemporary adaptations of the Arthurian canon. A Legendborn sequel is in the works.

 

Cindy Mediavilla

 

Cindy Mediavilla is a retired public librarian who has collected, read and written about Arthurian fiction for more than 40 years. Her publications include Arthurian Fiction: An Annotated Bibliography (Scarecrow Press, 1999), "From 'Unthinking Stereotype' to Fearless Antagonist: The Evolution of Morgan le Fay on Television" (Arthuriana 25:1), and an article on Arthurian romance in Encyclopedia of Romance Fiction (2018). Cindy's MLS and PhD are from UCLA, where she also taught as a lecturer for 16 years.