The journal invites submissions for the upcoming themed issue Creating the Medieval Now, which will be guest edited by Eleanor Barraclough and Laura Varnam. 

The deadline for submissions is 1 May 2026.

Description

This special issue investigates the dynamic crossroads of medieval scholarship and contemporary creative practice, presenting auto-ethnographic and creative-critical reflections from medievalists who are also practicing artists— poets, writers, musicians, visual artists, storytellers, and zinesters— to bring fresh, imaginative, and embodied perspectives to the study of the medieval past.

We invite contributions of 2000-3000 words from medieval scholars who are engaging in creative practice not as outreach or supplement but as a core mode of their scholarly inquiry into the Global Middle Ages. Rather than focusing on how the Middle Ages are used in popular culture— as in much traditional work in medievalism— this collection turns inward, towards the creative outputs of trained medievalists themselves, to ask: 

• How do artistic processes inform and reshape scholarly research?

• What resources does creative practice offer to mainstream/traditional scholarship?

• How might scholarship itself become a creative artform?

 This issue is interested in topics including: creative re-imaginings of medieval voices through poetry, fiction, and performance; the use of autoethnography, memoir, and trauma-informed methods; feminist, queer, and intersectional engagements; the public-facing power of creative dissemination via radio, zines, podcasts.

Contributions should include examples of and reflections upon the contributor’s creative work to show how ‘making with’ the Middle Ages creates new possibilities for the forms and modes of academic criticism, and offers the potential for new, recreative methodologies that are transferable beyond the individual practitioner’s skillset. 

We are actively seeking submissions from early career researchers and from Global South and non-white contributors, across disciplines, especially those who are engaging with Islamic, Byzantine, African, and East Asian medieval worlds. In addition to essays reflecting on past and ongoing projects, the issue may also feature new creative-critical pairings: original artistic pieces published alongside scholarly reflections.

All submissions should be written in accessible language for audiences within and beyond the academy.

We are now preparing a collective volume and seeking additional chapters to complement the proceedings. We particularly welcome contributions that engage with Axis 1 (Medievalist Echoes of Chaucer’s Work), including studies focusing on the theatre, William Morris, and the use of Chaucer in contemporary creative projects, such as Patience Agbabi’s Refugee Tales (2016) and its engagement with issues of memory, identity, and inclusion.

Far from being confined to his era, Geoffrey Chaucer’s work continues to resonate through the centuries, inspiring a multitude of post-medieval representations. The poet himself remains an evocative figure, sometimes invoked even without direct reference to his texts, suggesting an autonomous legacy of Chaucer both as author and cultural symbol. Whether through cinema, music, theatre, television, poetry, or other artistic forms, Chaucer’s influence continues to manifest in diverse and often unexpected ways. This volume invites contributors to examine how adaptations and reinterpretations of Chaucer and/or his work by artists from varied cultural backgrounds enrich our understanding of his legacy. These modern and contemporary re-imaginings raise compelling questions concerning intercultural dialogue, the politics of memory, and the evolution of popular culture.

Practical Information

• Deadline for submissions: 19 December 2025

• Length of submissions: 1,500 characters (including spaces) / approx. 250 words

• Deadline for the accepted chapters: 15 March 2026

• Length of chapters: 30,000 characters (including spaces)

• Submission and contact: Please send your chapter proposal jointly to
  Justine Breton (justine.breton [at] univ-lorraine.fr) and
  Jonathan Fruoco (jonathan.fruoco [at] gmail.com).