Revisiting a Racialized Camelot: Lesser Known "Knights of Color" and Addressing Lacunas in Our Approaches (A Round Table).
Sponsored by: International Arthurian Society, North American Branch (IAS/NAB)
Co-Sponsoring Organization(s): Monsters: The Experimental Association for the Research of Cryptozoology through Scholarly Theory and Practical Application (MEARCSTAPA)
Keywords: Arthur, Arthurian, Camelot, knights, race and racialized, monstrosity.
This session contributes to ongoing discussions about "Race in the Middle Ages," focusing on minor "Knights of Color" in Arthuriana and how their characterizations might nuance scholarly perspectives of the racial dynamics at Camelot. We emphasize that the expected categories for determining race such as skin color, physiognomy, costume and, at times, religion remain insufficient and inconsistent when dealing critically with premodern race. Thus, the modifier of "Color" here should be understood to cover a variety of polities and geographical locations and not just epidermal difference. While a great deal has been written about Palamedes, Morien, and Feirefiz, we seek to forefront lesser-known, non-Latin Christian knights, including those with “monstrous” origins, present in Arthurian narratives. Additionally, given that the majority of medieval critical race frameworks come out of literary studies, this session seeks to create a crucial opportunity for other fields such as art history, performance studies, and philology, as well as more "global” approaches, to provide new lenses for understanding a racialized Camelot.
This session is especially interested in: the borders between race & monstrosity in Arthuriana, methodological lacunas in approaches to Camelot material, Arthurian enemies, the relationship between "Knights of Color" in Arthuriana and such knights in different traditions that appear in the same manuscripts, philological studies about the "garbled" names of “Knights of Color,” their linguistic origins, the presence of Arthurian narratives in non-Latin Christian contexts, teaching experiences around “Race in Arthuriana” and the roles “Knights of Color” play in medievalism when imagining a post-racial Camelot without having a post-racial present.
Please send an abstract (300 words maximum) to the ICMS Confex site https://icms.confex.com/icms/2023/cfp.cgi & Drew Narayanan at tnarayanan@wisc.edu by September 15th. The session will consist of 6 ten-minute papers followed by questions. The session will be In-Person at the International Conference on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo 2023.
