Welcome to Medieval Meets Modern, a Middle Ages for Educators Series that explores options for teaching medieval texts alongside more recent works.

Series directors Gina Brandolino and Moira Fitzgibbons want to generate classroom dialogue about medieval and modern texts that might initially seem quite different from one another. The goal is to encourage students to see medieval works not as an impossibly distant body of literature, but as participants in artistic conversations that continue to this day.

Current video titles include:

• Hip-hop and Holy Grail, by Richard Sévère
• "Sir Orfeo" and the 2019 film Portrait of a Lady on Fire, by Rachel Linn Shields
• Book of the City of Ladies and Fun Home, by Moira Fitzgibbons
• Beowulf and Ridley Scott's Alien, by Gina Brandolino
• Robert Mannyng of Brunne's "bleeding baby" exemplum (from Handlyng Synne) and the 1953 horror comic Foul Play, by Gina Brandolino
• Geoffrey Chaucer's "The Clerk's Tale" and Samhita Arni and Moyna Chitrakar's Sita's Ramayana, by Moira Fitzgibbons
• Medieval Blood Libel and Anti-Asian Racism, by Magda Teter and Michelle C. Wang

What unconventional literary pairings have you used in a K-8, high school, or college classroom?

If you are interested in contributing a video, please contact us.

We would love to feature your teaching strategies in our MMM series!

See the call for submissions here

Gina Brandolino                       Moira Fitzgibbons

[email protected].         [email protected]