Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Introduction

2022; Volume: 36; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/ems.2022.0003

1538-4608

Jilana Ordman, Mickey Sweeney,

Medieval Literature and History

Introduction Jilana Ordman and Mickey Sweeney On February 20, 2021, Dominican University hosted the thirty-seventh annual meeting of the Illinois Medieval Association. Given the world's response to Covid, the theme of "The Medieval Present" seemed utterly appropriate. Participants were invited to explore medieval texts as sources of inspiration, as well as sources of education, for understanding both the present state of the field as it ventured online and the lure of the past to help explain our overwhelming responses of fear and grief to Covid. In only two short years much of the world came to understand the level of loss that often permeated medieval literature, art, philosophy, and theology, to name just a few of the areas we study on the same topic. Given the state of the world at that point, the pivot to online made us eager to welcome our fifty-five participants and create an opportunity to blend their very real-world experiences with their areas of expertise. We had papers as varied as "Getting Medieval on Virtual Space: The Trans and Queer Temporalities of Dragon Age: Inquisition," "Bro! Tell Me We Still Know How to Speak of Kings," and "Inducing a Passion for the Medieval in the Present: Student-led Activities with Manuscripts." Professor Dorsey Armstrong's plenary "Pandemic Fault Lines" created the perfect foundation for this approach: she focused on historical aspects of the plague and its impact, then transitioned to how the fourteenth-century pestilence has been reinterpreted in contemporary fiction and could be understood in contemporary life. We also welcomed Christopher Fletcher from the Chicago Newberry Library, who provided a virtual tour in tandem with a workshop/seminar-style session to share pedagogical methods that focused on relevant elements from the library's collections. Giving context to our Covid world and providing opportunities to better use the new technology that we were all forced to adopt made this particular conference very relevant and practical for our participants. [End Page v] As organizers we were grateful that our participants could clear space in the chaos to share their papers and their experiences. The resilience of the medieval world is our inspiration in many ways, but as the intensity of Covid begins to wane these essays can give us all a chance to reflect on how we were inspired by the past and the present during some very dark days. [End Page vi] Jilana Ordman College of DuPage Mickey Sweeney Dominican University Acknowledgments We would like to thank all the participants, Dominican's IT facilitators Samantha Barr and Peter Serrano, as well as Dominican University Community, for their time and contributions. We offer special thanks to the Newberry Library for sharing their treasures, time, and their expertise with our group. Many thanks as well to the Illinois Medieval Association's community of scholars for participating. And finally, without the patience of Sara Georgi, and others at West Virginia University Press, this collection would not have been realized. Copyright © 2022 Illinois Medieval Association