New Approaches to Old English Biblical Poetry

Kalamazoo 2016 #Kzoo2016

Call for Papers:

51st International Congress on Medieval Studies at Western Michigan University
12-15 May 2016 in Kalamazoo, Michigan

Session Title: New Approaches to Old English Biblical Poetry
Session Organizer: Jill Fitzgerald
Session Sponsor: Dept. of English, United States Naval Academy

This session welcomes papers that examine fresh methodological and critical approaches to Old English poems recounting both Old and New Testament events. Biblical poems such as Genesis A, Genesis B, Exodus, Daniel, and Judith (to name a few) continue to invite scholarly attention because they reveal predominant Anglo-Saxon attitudes towards issues such as lordship, land, inheritance, exile, invasion, migration, corruption, warfare, rebellion, and conquest. Possible paper topics for this panel might include, but are certainly not limited to: those addressing sources (patristic, apocryphal, liturgical, iconographic), cultural and historical contexts, manuscript contexts, translation and the vernacular transmission of biblical concepts, how biblical poems offer insights into early medieval social groups, reforming communities, Christian identity and subjectivity, and how Anglo-Saxons understood their place within salvation history.

Please send abstracts of no more than 300 words and the Participant Information Form to Jill Fitzgerald at jfitzger@usna.edu by September 15th. The Participant Information Form and additional information can be found at:

http://www.wmich.edu/medieval/congress/submissions/#PIF