IMC 2014: Sessions

This round table will engage United States and European medievalists in a conversation on cultural transfers and discursive sites that manifest as both American and contemporary yet also as European and historically specific. The round table aims to deepen understanding of our collective connections to the past and its survival in multiple cultural contexts by paying attention to transatlantic exchange and transmutations. In the arts and entertainment, especially in film, literature, and tourism, a transfer of the European Medieval as a practice of Americanization and Euro-American heritage identification, contradictory processes of displacement, fragmentation, and idealization work their way into the nation's symbolic and imaginary systems. The American/Medieval shapes landscapes, architecture, recreational sites, fashion, and the stories Euro-Americans tell themselves about who they are and who they wish to be. Each round table participant will contribute to the conversation through a particular research project.

Participants include Tina M. Boyer (Wake Forest University, North Carolina), Liz Herbert McAvoy (Swansea University), Mary Kate Hurley (Ohio University), and Clare A. Lees (King's College London).