Dragon*Con 2011 CfP

The CfP for the Comics and Popular Art Conference at Dragon*Con is up! For those who are interested in presenting your work before a popular audience, this is a great opportunity. The conference is a legit academic conference, but since it's housed within Dragon*Con, you can expect fans to show up at your session too. I should note that even though the first word is "Comics," we have lots of work that's not about comics -- in fact, I've never presented on comics there at all. Last year my work was on the depiction of the Norse gods in Stargate, and in the past I've presented on trolls & shape-changers in medieval lit, as well as C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien. Submit your medieval-themed topics, present at an academic conference, then mingle with 40k+ fans!

Nokes Sighting Expected in Louisville

Want to punch me in the face, but live too far away to do it conveniently? Well, if you're in the Louisville KY area, you're in luck!

This Friday I'll be giving the keynote address at the Association of Humanities Academics meeting at the University of Louisville. My address will be entitled "Professor Awesome vs. the Nazis: Mythic Transference and Fanaticism." I'll be talking about my research into popular medievalism, the experiences of my semi-comic alter-ego "Professor Awesome, PhD" in those communities, and how I ran afoul of the Nazis. The first half will be blah blah theory blah blah set up, and the second half will be the anecdotes about my misadventures.

No, I won't just skip the academic part and get straight to the anecdotes. If you don't eat your meat, you can't have any pudding. How can you have any pudding if you don't eat your meat?

Woruldhord Project Launched

Good news! The long-awaited Woruldhord Project (no relation to the Unlocked Wordhoard) was just launched.

It is with great pleasure that we would like to announce the launch of the Woruldhord collection, a set of free reusable resources to help with the teaching/study of Old English and the Anglo-Saxons. The project ran from July-October 2010, and asked academics, museums, and members of the public to submit - via a website - material that had to do with the period that they wouldn't mind sharing with others. The response was very impressive, and we assembled about 4,500 objects covering art, archaeology, history, language, literature, music, and modern day representations. The database actually holds over 16,500 files as some of the objects submitted were entire web sites.

Congratulations to Stuart Lee and the whole Woruldhord team!

Witan Publishing's Sample Book

A lot of the inquires we've gotten for Witan have been essentially "What are these e-pub books going to look like?" Now we have an answer for you.

Our sample "book," Old English and Samwise Gamgee's Genealogy: Eden and the Unfallen Hobbit is available through Amazon and Barnes and Noble for $1. If you don't have an e-reader but you want to see the book, you can download Kindle for PC (Amazon), Kindle for iPad (Amazon), Nook for PC (Barnes & Noble), Nook for iPad (Barnes & Noble), all sorts of apps to read it on your phone if you want.

In fact, the "book" itself is only about 15 pages long; it is truly designed to be a sample, which explains why something so short has a foreword almost as long as the main text, table of contents, dedication, etc. This sample was written, edited, and published by me, so it is the very definition of self-published, but fear not! Witan Publishing is not a vanity press; I have no plans to publish any more of my own work. We just needed something I wrote for the sample.

For those of you who buy it, please read the foreword, which is in my mind more important than the article itself. In the foreword I discuss the philosophy that led to the founding of Witan, and it will likely answer many of the questions people have regarding it.

Now that people have seen our sample, many have asked me if we would consider publishing new editions of 19th & early-20th century medieval scholarship that has fallen into public domain. Most of what is out there are so poorly-scanned and converted that they are basically unusable (for a good example of this, go look at the e-pub version of Albert S. Cook's A Concordance to Beowulf). Much of the remainder is more carefully converted, but doesn't really make use of the e-pub format, and so amounts to little more than a .pdf file.

The short answer is yes, but we don't have anything immediately in the pipeline. Since we would have to make major editorial interventions to make such texts work in the e-pub format (doing such things as converting footnotes to endnotes, etc.), we would also want an introduction by a new editor discussing the importance of the work, a new bibliography of the subsequent critical reception of the work, etc. In other words, we wouldn't simply want to slap up an old edition, we would want our new e-pub edition to be an homage to the work of our scholarly ancestors.

So, buy our sample book, read our sample book, and please give us feedback on it in the comments section below! We already see some things we'd like to improve on, but the feedback of interested readers is gold. Also, if you have something you'd like to see published, whether a work of your original scholarship or an edition of an older public domain work you'd like to see produced, please go to our Submit a Proposal page and, well, submit a proposal.

Also, don't forget to "like" Witan Publishing on Facebook, to keep up with our latest titles as they are produced, and Witan Publishing on Twitter as well.

Some of My Best Friends are Medievalists

I've spent the last three days writing personal e-mails to all my medievalist friends inviting them to submit a project to Witan (or get involved as a peer reviewer or booster), and I'm still only through the letter D.

If I've learned nothing else through this process, it's that I've got a lot of medievalist friends! It's a lot like sending out wedding invitations -- I just know I'm going to forget someone important, and since I'm using my e-mail, those who are Facebook friends but not in my e-mail contacts might slip through the cracks.

It's been heartening how many have replied with ideas for texts, but if you've already got a substantial amount written (at least one chapter or the equivalent), a personal e-mail to me isn't enough -- you're going to have to submit your proposal through our Submissions page, for reasons both bureaucratic (so our other editors get to see the proposal) and political (so hiring and tenure & promotion committees see it's all legit).

It's been exciting to see how many of you all are excited! There will be some bumps and snags at the beginning (for example, our submissions page stopped working for a few hours on the first day), but we're pushing the frontier of medieval scholarship. In five years time, I'd like to see this e-pub medium be the new normal for disseminating scholarship.

Witan Submissions Page Back Up

For those who e-mailed me to say, "Hey, I tried to submit to Witan, but it didn't work," the problem should be fixed now. Go ahead and submit your proposals.

Witan Publishing CfM

I know a lot of folks have been waiting for this -- Witan Publishing's Call for Manuscripts. We are now ready to start reviewing them! Also, we have published our sample book, "Old English and Samwise Gamgee's Genealogy: Eden and the Unfallen Hobbit," which should be available in Amazon and Barnes & Noble by tomorrow. You can be sure I'll post when that is available.

Witan Publishing welcomes submissions of scholarly work addressing medieval studies and medievalism. Because Witan produces high-quality double-blind peer-reviewed scholarship in e-publishing formats only, we are not bound by print market prices; therefore Witan especially welcomes conference proceedings, Festschrifts, and other edited collections. Although Witan will consider manuscripts of any length, we are particularly interested in monographs between 40-200 pages that are too long for journal articles, yet too short for print books.

Witan Publishing is dedicated to creating an e-publishing revolution in medieval scholarship by producing professional-grade peer-reviewed work, distributing it through all major online booksellers, and pricing it very affordably for the widest possible audience. To that end, we welcome journals that have found the print market financially untenable. Witan Publishing will produce your journal for free and distribute it extremely inexpensively through major online booksellers.

To begin the submission progress, visit our proposal submissions page.

Medievalists.Net on Witan Publishing

Never let it be said that the folks at Medievalists.net don't work hard -- Peter started the interview after 11:30 at night. Methinks from now on he should be called "Scoop" Konieczny. Here's the first article on Witan Publishing.

Launch of Witan Publishing

Press Release

February 18, 2011
Witan Publishing launched a new service to the medieval academic community today, focusing on e-publishing peer-reviewed scholarship. Witan’s goal is not merely to be another academic publisher, but is instead something much more ambitious: to change the way scholarly research is produced, distributed, and received. This new service will benefit scholars the most, freeing their work from the old market restrictions, distributing scholarship more widely, and putting texts within the budgets of even struggling graduate students.

According to Dr. Richard Scott Nokes, Academic Editor for Witan, “If you look at what other academic publishers are doing in the e-publishing market, they are either putting poorly-scanned and unreadable work online, or they are selling more current scholarship at a very high price. Witan Publishing will offer high-quality peer reviewed professional work and extremely reasonable prices.”

“It is important for academics to embrace the new and ever-growing world of e-publishing,” says Nina McNamara, Technical Editor for Witan. “E-books already outsell paperback and hardcover books on major online retailers, like Amazon.com. Soon, students will replace their hardcover textbooks with e-books all together.”

The existing academic publishing world typically ignores the burgeoning electronic frontier of e-books. Seizing this opportunity, Witan Publishing produces electronic texts of the highest quality, viewable on nearly every platform available to consumers today.

Witan Publishing will be accepting submissions soon.

Firefly Arthuriana

A quick bleg -- has anyone written about Arthuriana in Firefly? I had a student ask me today about Arthurian allusions in Firefly, and I couldn't remember any off the mere 16-or-so episodes, but maybe others have written about it.

Now Where Will We Incarcerate Unruly Anglo-Saxons?

Lancaster Castle, a Norman structure built in the 1090s, has housed a prison for the last few centuries. Now, however, the prison is being closed in part because the age of the structure limits the ways it can be used.

This is one of those places of which we can say "It's a nice place to visit, but I wouldn't want to live there."

"Medieval" Torture Devices

Even though the word "medieval" is used here, most of what is described is early Modern, but here's a guy who probably lives a half-hour from where I grew up and has a barn full of "medieval" torture devices.

Next time I'm up there I think I'll spend the money to visit Carder's Variety Land.

Starz Camelot Trailer

Here's a trailer for the new Camelot coming out on Starz. h/t Medievalists.net



Joseph Fiennes almost made me spew root beer from laughing.

Modern Illuminators

This is pretty interesting: A studio where artists are producing gold-leaf manuscripts on vellum. The Illumination Atelier website has even more information, including some more images and a series of YouTube videos showing the production of the works.

Hitchcock's Revenge

Just so that we understand there is nothing new under the sun, the other day thousands of birds fell from the sky in Arkansas -- and in 671, according to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, there was also a great mortality of birds.

If the pattern continues, perhaps we can see the events of 672 repeated this year. In that year, king Cenwahl died, so if I were actor Ken Wahl, I'd watch my step.

The "Ultimate Medieval Glossary"

The awesomely-named Serena Castleton sent me a link to Costume Supercenter's "Ultimate Medieval Glossary." I'm not really sure why it has such a glossary, since many of the terms have nothing to do with costuming.

Academic medievalists won't find anything new there, but it seems like a really great resource for popular medievalists. If you're sometimes confused by the terms you see thrown around, check it out and you might find it helpful.

Jeremy's Dragon Corner

Apparently there is something on G4 (a channel I don't get) called "Jeremy's Dragon Corner." Why wasn't I informed?!

Why Medieval?

I Suppose I Will Often Eat Beans at a BBQ...

When I think of Joan of Arc, the first thing I think of is "kidney beans."

I can't sense any irony in the description on the B&G Foods website, but I really wish I did:

Joan of Arc was an amazing woman – she lived and died for her beliefs. We think Joan would have been proud of the beans that bear her name.

Yes, that's what Joan d'Arc died for ... her pride in her beans.

And when it comes to Latin American and Creole cuisine, Joan of Arc is a real leader!

Yes, she really strove for leadership in Latin American and Creole cuisine. I mean, I'm all about medievalism, but it's got to at least have a fig leaf of relevance.

For Black Friday

For anyone wondering what to get me for Christmas this year, I recently heard that CastlePost in Kentucky is on sale for only $30 million.

Here's a photo gallery of what you'll be getting me.