Sponsored Sessions on Comics (and More) for NeMLA 2025

Cross-posted from the Mass Mediævalisms blog:

We are organizing the following sessions for the 56th Annual Convention of the Northeast Modern Language Association to be held in Philadelphia, 6-9 March. The full schedule is available online and registration is required to attend. 

Thursday, Mar 6 - Track 4 (02:15-04:15 PM)

4.12 Saving the Day for Medieval Studies: Using Comics for Teaching the Middle Ages (Roundtable)
Chair: Michael Torregrossa, Bristol Community College
Chair: Karen Casebier, University of Tennessee-Chattanooga
Location: 402 (Media Equipped)
Pedagogy & Professional & Cultural Studies and Media Studies

"The Medieval Comics Project: Ongoing Efforts to Expand the Field of Medieval Comics Scholarship" Michael Torregrossa, Bristol Community College

"From Borders to Panels: Integrating Comic Books into Medieval Studies Pedagogy" Rachael Warmington, Seton Hall University

"Reshaping Literary Canon: Graphic Novels as the Future of Classics" Derek Castle, University of New Hampshire

"Marvel 1602 and its Connection to the Scientific Enlightenment" Madison Cothern, University of Memphis

Sunday, Mar 9 - Track 22 (08:15-10:15 AM)

22.20 (Re)Animating the Middle Ages: Adapting the Medieval in Animated Media (Seminar)
Chair: Michael Torregrossa, Bristol Community College
Chair: Karen Casebier, University of Tennessee-Chattanooga
Location: 410 (Media Equipped)
Cultural Studies and Media Studies & Interdisciplinary Humanities

"Animating Marie de France : Emile Mercier’s Bisclavret (2011)" Karen Casebier, University of Tennessee-Chattanooga

"Possibilities and Pitfalls in Arthurian Animation: An Exploration of the Darkstalkers Series (1995)" Michael Torregrossa, Bristol Community College

"The Black Knight: Women “Passing” as Knights in Children’s Entertainment" Megan Arnott, Lakehead University

"Cartoon Saloon's Wild Women: Monstrous Genders in Irish Animated Medievalism" Colin Wheeler, Kennesaw State University

"A Modern Look at Late Medieval Religion and Literacy in Obsidian Entertainment’s Pentiment" Olivia Mathers, Lehigh University

"Heresy and Crusades: How Modern Fascists Appropriated the Medieval Aesthetics of Warhammer 40k" William Weiss, Independent Scholar

Comics Sessions at ICSM This Month

Two sessions on medieval-themed comics (one sponsored by us and one independent of us) this month at the International Conference for the Study of Medievalism, a hybrid event hosted by Appalachian State University. The main page for the conference with information on registration and full program can be accessed by clicking this link. Do reach out if you have any issues. Please support both sessions if you can.

Friday, 10/21, at 2-3:30 PM EDT (virtual session)

*XII. Session: Making Comics Matter: A Celebration of Medieval-Themed Comics in Honor of the 85th Anniversary of Prince Valiant.

Sponsored by Association for the Advancement of Scholarship and Teaching of the Medieval in Popular Culture

Presider: Michael Torregrossa, Independent Scholar
Richard Scott Nokes, Troy University, “Beowulf Comic Books as a Critique of Academia”
Carl Sell, Lock Haven University, “Arthuriana Post-Arthur: DC’s Demon Knights and the Extension of the Matter of Britain”
Rachael Warmington, Seton Hall University, From Swords to Lasers: The Evolving Arthurian Mythos in Comics and Graphic Novels
Iain A. MacInnes, University of the Highlands and Islands, “Comic Depictions of The Hundred Years’ War”

Saturday, 10/22, at 9-10:30 AM EDT (hybrid session)

XIX. Comics/Graphic Novels

Presider: Craig Fisher Appalachian State University
Karen Casebier, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga “Merlin’s Pseudo-Brythonic Prehistory in Merlin, the Graphic Novel
*Karl Fugelso, Towson University, “Direct and Indirect Validation in Green Dante/Green Virgil #1”
*Michael A. Torregrossa, Independent Scholar, “Arthuriana vs. the Axis Powers Revisited: Turning the Spotlight on American Comics of World War II
*Holly Aldridge, Appalachian State University, “The Fantastic Misadventure of Hawthorne and Bells”

Rejected (Again) by Kalamazoo

It is with much sadness that I report that the organizers of the International Congress on Medieval Studies have rejected another of our proposals to educate and inform the Medieval Studies community of the value, variety, and availability of comics for medievalist teaching and research.

Details of the now deceased session can be found at https://medieval-comics-project.blogspot.com/2018/06/notice-of-comics-get-medieval-at.html.

If you have any suggestions for other venues, please contact me at Comics.Get.Medieval@gmail.com.

Michael Torregrossa,
Association for the Advancement of Scholarship and Teaching of the Medieval in Popular Culture

Notice of Comics Get Medieval at Kalamazoo 2019

Here are the details of a set of sessions we are proposing for the 2019 International Congress on Medieval Studies. Wish us luck.

The Comics Get Medieval at Kalamazoo I: Medieval-themed Comics and Medieval Studies (Roundtable)

The Comics Get Medieval at Kalamazoo II: Accessing Medieval-themed Comics in the Twentieth-First Century (Workshop)

Most medievalists have come to accept popular manifestations of the Middle Ages and are willing to talk about fiction, film, and television programs in their classrooms, and some are even writing about these items in their scholarship; however, few have as readily embraced the material produced in the comics medium. This fault is not due to a lack of interest. As our sessions over the past two decades attest, many medievalists are curious about how the comics have adapted medieval figures, events, and stories, but a much smaller group knows how to access this corpus and use it profitably for research and teaching. Thus, the goal of these sessions, sponsored by The Medieval Comics Project, is twofold. First, we intend, through a roundtable, to present some overviews, by an assortment of medieval-comics scholars, of how the comics have appropriated some of the most well-known material from the Middle Ages (such as Beowulf, the Crusades, Dante’s Commedia, the Matter of Britain, Norse mythology, and the Robin Hood legend) to provide insight into what has been done so far in terms of comics and comics scholarship with regards to these topics and what kind of work might be done in the future. Equally importantly, we also seek, through a workshop session, to instruct participants in how to use various online tools (such as comics companies’ websites, comics sellers’ store sites, databases of comics, fan wikias, and repositories) to successfully find and access comics of use to them. This last objective is especially vital, as resources like the Grand Comics Database and its various search options, can be invaluable when looking for resources (especially when paired with repositories of comics, like Comic Book + and comiXology). Furthermore, instruction on the various forms of the comiXology platform (both website and app) is of great importance as it stands to revolutionize access to and distribution of comics in the twenty-first century by providing affordable digital editions of books from all eras of the medium’s history. Finally, fans of the comics have produced important resources essential in any quest to track and understand the larger contexts involved in how comics have used medieval motifs; these include various wikis devoted to specific publishers (like the DC Database and the Marvel Database) and sites like The Appendix to the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe. Unfortunately, all of these new resources appear foreign to most medieval. We hope that this session will change that.