MLA 2024 will take place in Philadelphia, PA from 4th-7th January. Please consider submitting a proposal for one of the following three sessions sponsored by the Old English Forum. And please share widely–the deadline for all abstracts is 20th March, 2023!
Celebrating Sorrow: Commemoration and Lamentation in Old English
Evocations of sorrow mark loss, but also assert community and endurance: Beowulf’s men mourn together; Deor’s loss animates an imagined shared past. We welcome papers on sorrow and commemoration in Old English. Send 250 word abstracts to smkim2@ilstu.edu.
The Joy of the Feast: Food Production, Consumption and Celebration in Old English
We welcome papers on feast scenes in Old English, representations ranging from celebrations in the hall to the exulting of beasts of prey, from the saints at God’s table to cannibalism. Send 250 word abstracts to smkim2@ilstu.edu.
White Supremacist Myth and the Medieval Past
Contemporary white supremacists using early medieval imagery are part of a longer, troubled history of modern figures writing myths of the medieval world. Examples abound from early nationalist scholarship, Nazi medievalism, white nationalist imagery, etc. This panel seeks papers on the ways that the fields of Old English and Old Norse have been appropriated in white supremacist and nationalist myths. Topics might include contemporary racist imagery and ideology, how the history of medieval studies has colluded with these myths, or how nascent race-thinking appears in the medieval texts themselves. Send 250 word abstracts to heslop@berkeley.edu and jalorden@wm.edu.
Jennifer A. Lorden 