Co-editors: Gina Brandolino and Moira Fitzgibbons

What happens in our courses when we place medieval texts in dialogue with those of other periods? How might we enrich students’ learning by asking them to consider through-lines connecting medieval works to modes and genres such as horror or graphic narratives? This series will feature answers to these questions drawn from your experiences in K-8, high school, and/or college-level classrooms.

What are we looking for?

We would like to hear about unlikely and intriguing partnerships that you have used, or plan to use, in your classroom. A primary goal of our project is to explore the potential benefits of crossing chronological boundaries in our teaching. For example, reading The Clerk’s Tale by Geoffrey Chaucer alongside Sita’s Ramayana by Samhita Arni and Moyna Chitrakar sheds new light on both texts; exploring the similarities between Beowulf and the 1979 film Alien enriches analysis of both. This kind of textual dialogue also helps us to challenge characterizations of the Middle Ages as primitive, impossibly distant, or culturally homogeneous.

We will enthusiastically welcome video presentations of pairings that include multimodal works (comics, cinema, music) as well as written texts. Examples of our own initial contributions to the video series are available here.

What is the process for contributing?

We will be posting videos on a rolling basis. Please contact us via email with a brief proposal (approx. 250 words) so that we can exchange ideas about your contribution before you create your video. In addition to a 5-6 minute video, contributors will provide a transcript of the video, a set of teaching strategies (e.g. assignment prompts or discussion questions), and a list of resources that will include open-access digital resources as well as print ones.

Questions or proposals?

If you are interested in contributing a video, please consult the call for proposals and contact us with your ideas.