Holy Grail, Batman? Expanding Knowledge of the Grail Legends in Popular Culture (Online)
62nd International Congress on Medieval Studies, Western Michigan University (Kalamazoo, MI), Thursday, 13 May, through Saturday, 15 May, 2026
Co-sponsored by Alliance for the Promotion of Research on the Matter of Britain, Association for the Advancement of Scholarship and Teaching of the Medieval in Popular Culture
Co-organized by Michael A. Torregrossa, Bristol Community College, and Carl B Sell, University of Pittsburgh
Rationale
The Holy Grail remains a powerful symbol in the post-medieval world; however, while its story continues to feature across popular culture, scholarship tracing its manifestations within mass media remains limited. Previous studies have concentrated predominantly on fiction and film, but the Grail legends extend into many other forms.Using Richard Barber’s The Holy Grail: Imagination and Belief (2004), James B. Marino’s The Grail Legend in Modern Literature (2004), Juliette Wood’s Eternal Chalice: The Enduring Legend of the Holy Grail (2008) and Holy Grail: History and Legend (2012), and contributions to the collections The Grail: A Casebook (2000), Perceval/Parzival: A Casebook (2002), The Grail, the Quest, and the World of Arthur (2008), and The Holy Grail on Film: Essays on the Cinematic Quest (2015) as starting points, we seek in this session to expand our knowledge of the Grail’s presence in modern media.
Our objective is twofold. Linking past research and present texts, we ask panelists to share information about additional media (such as anime, bandes dessinées, comics, games, genre fiction, manga, memes, picture books, streaming video, and television programming) to help enlarge the corpus of Grail texts. In addition, we hope their presentations will also demonstrate a widening of the chronological and geographical scope of research on modern use of the Grail legends beyond the range of previous scholarship to illustrate the distribution of these stories across time and space, attesting to the prolonged global spread of these stories.
Topics might include representations of the Grail and/or legends about the Grail in any form of modern media, as well as depictions of Grail keepers (such as the Fisher King) and Grail seekers (including Bors, Galahad, Perceval, and Perceval’s sister, in addition to other questors) in similar texts.
We are especially interested in seeing submissions on the following:
- Arvid Nelson’s Rex Mundi
- Big Bang Comics’ Galahad and Kid Galahad
- Colleen Doran’s Chivalry, adapted from the work of Neil Gaiman
- Colleen Doran’s A Distant Soil
- Elaine Lee’s Indiana Jones and the Spear of Destiny
- Four Knights of the Apocalypse
- Greg Weisman’s Gargoyles
- Hugo Pratt’s Corto Maltese: The Secret Rose
- Image Comics
- Jean-Pierre Pécau’s The Secret History
- Jed MacKay’s Avengers
- Kieron Gillen’s Once and Future
- Knightfall
- Lloyd Alexander’s The Black Cauldron and the Disney film adaptation
- Malcolm Guite’s Galahad and the Grail
- Marvel Comics
- Matt Wagner’s Mage series
- Merlin TV series
- Mike Barr’s Camelot 3000
- Mike Mignola’s Hellboy
- P. Craig Russell’s Parsifal
- Preacher comics
- Sailor Moon
- Stargate franchise
- Tainted Grail
We are not currently seeking proposals on the Grail in the DC universe, Fate/stay night, Slaine, and vampire/zombie fiction, as well as representations of Galahad in Golden Age comics. (This list will be expanded as more submissions come in.)
Submission Information
Please post paper submissions into the Confex site using the direct link https://icms.confex.com/icms/2027/prelim.cgi/Session/8804.Do send any questions to the organizers at medievalinpopularculture@gmail.com. Submissions are due no later than 15 September 2026.
For this event, individuals are invited to make ONE paper proposal to ONE session of papers: either the sponsored or special sessions OR the general sessions. You may propose an unlimited number of contributions to roundtables, but you will not be scheduled to actively participate (as paper presenter, roundtable discussant, poster author, presider, respondent, workshop leader, demonstrator, or performer) in more than six sessions. See the conference’s policies page for more information at https://wmich.edu/medievalcongress/policies-guidelines.
Please be aware that those accepted to the panel must register for the conference in order to present. Past registration costs can be viewed at https://wmich.edu/medievalcongress/registration. The International Congress on Medieval Studies does offer limited funding as travel awards and subsidized registration costs; details are available at https://wmich.edu/medievalcongress/awards.
For more information about the Alliance for the Promotion of Research on the Matter of Britain, do check out our website, King Arthur Forever: The Matter of Britain Lives: https://kingarthurforever.blogspot.com/.
For more information about the Association for the Advancement of Scholarship and Teaching of the Medieval in Popular Culture, do check out our website, Mass Mediævalisms: The Middle Ages of Popular Culture: https://medievalinpopularculture.blogspot.com/.
