Medievalism and Reception: Work-in-Progress Seminar and Book Launch

We'd love to see you at both events, but if you can only attend one part of the event, that's fine: there will be an opportunity for you to let us know this when you click "Register".

2:30-4:00: Work-in-Progress seminar

Location: Room 356, Arts West - North Wing Building

Join other receptionistas to share three-minute snippets of work-in-progress across the broad field of reception: authorship and publishing studies; history, sociology, and theory of reading; media history and history of the book; and the exploration of the afterlives of texts both popular and classic in adaptation, fan fiction, rewritings and translations. This will be an informal event with plenty of time for networking and forming connections across disciplines and areas of interest.

4:00-5:00 Book Launch: Medievalism and Reception

Location: Room 356 - Arts West - North Wing Building, followed by a reception outdoors at University House

Raise a glass at the official launch of Medievalism and Reception (Boydell & Brewer, 2024), co-edited by Ellie Crookes (University of Wollongong) and Ika Willis (University of Melbourne.

At the intersection of the twin fields of medievalism and reception studies is the timely and fascinating question of how a contested past is deployed in the context of a conflicted and contradictory present. Despite their shared roots and their fundamental orientation towards the entanglement of past and present, the two fields have developed along parallel but divergent lines, evolving their own emphases, problematics, sensibilities, vocabularies, and critical tools.

This book is the first to reunite reception and medievalism. Its introduction and first chapter clearly set out their tangled intellectual and disciplinary histories. The ten essays that follow reflect upon the relationship between medievalism and reception in theory and in practice, through thematically, temporally, and geographically expansive case studies, engaging with theories of translation, postcolonialism, fan studies, persona studies, and Indigenous studies. Individual topics examined include the cultural impact of Robin Hood; the Tulsa race massacre; the crusades in the nineteenth century; later representations of Chaucer's works; Victorian representations of Anne Boleyn; and media such as Star Wars and Game of Thrones. As a whole, this collection models and demonstrates the value of a new and self-aware approach to medievalism, enriched by a conscious and critical redeployment of reception theories and methodologies.

Enquiries

Contact A/Prof Ika Willis at ika.willis@unimelb.edu.au and learn more about the Australian Reception Network at australianreceptionnetwork.com.

If you have any support requirements in order to participate fully, please contact us via scc-events@unimelb.edu.au.

Image credit: Detail from the cover of Medievalism & Reception.