Navigating the Middle Ages: From Medieval to Neo

Claire is working with Dr Emma J. Wells (University of York) on an exciting new academic series entitled ‘Navigating the Middle Ages: From Medieval to Neo’ which will be published by Brepols. With an esteemed editorial board of scholars from across Europe and America, the aim of the series is to provide a publication platform for interdisciplinary studies of the Middle Ages (research which analyses the impact and approaches to the study of the medieval era from its origins to the present day) in order to create a unique dialogue between scholars, professionals, and practitioners.

The series will move away from traditional approaches, and towards the inter- and multi-disciplinary, the premise is to gain a snapshot of how (and why) the Middle Ages have been formed and are perceived across copious platforms as well as over vast periods of change across countries, boundaries, and borders. The Series offers radical, exciting, informed, and innovative readings of the importance and prominence of the Middle Ages in the twenty-first century, how and why its significance has endured since the post-medieval era and, most importantly, how critical curiosity of the era has been received, imagined, invoked, used, abused, and refashioned in the Medieval, Early Modern, Modern and Contemporary periods.

Titles will cover all forms of engagement —from the academy to modern pedagogies and constructs in popular culture from a multitude of fields, including history, art, architecture, archaeology, literature, musicology, public engagement and interpretation, digital humanities and heritage. Welcoming burgeoning topics such as film and television, video games, social media, performing arts/cinema/drama, and particularly education, race, gender and decolonisation, as well as traditional approaches including historiography and renaissance/revival studies, it is based on the premise that the Middle Ages should be cultivated within and expanded beyond the academy, and thereby bring the media, education, popular, historical, and political discourses, into an engagement and dialogue with the past.

The first two volumes for this series are:

Decoding the Medieval: Teaching the Medieval in the Modern Age (edited by Claire Kennan and Emma J. Wells).

Bringing ‘Sexy’ Back: The Middle Ages as ‘Other’ in the Public and Popular Sphere (edited by Claire Kennan and Emma J. Wells).

Further details TBC.

(Image credit: dragon illustration, BL Harley MS 3244, c. 1236-50, available under the Creative Commons Licence).