☛ Space City Medievalism is a series of events that stage encounters between contemporary poets and medieval literature in Houston, TX. During the 2024-25 year, we are hosting a series of workshops between scholars of medieval literature and creative writers that explore different aspects of medieval poetics. Creative writers will then create their own responses to medieval literature, ranging from translations and adaptations to pastiches and confrontations, to create original compositions that intertwine contemporary and medieval poetics. The program culminates in April 2025 with a public lecture on medieval poetics from Pulitzer-Prize winning poet Carl Phillips and the final project reading by program participants at the Menil Collection. Further details about registration to be announced in 2025.

Tuesday, April 8 | Lecture from Carl Phillips, Elizabeth D. Rockwell Pavilion, University of Houston, 7pm

Wednesday, April 9 | Space City Medievalism Final Reading, Menil Collection, 7pm

☛ Houston and medieval are words that do not sit easily together. Houston’s
relationship to the past is often one of ambivalence, if not outright
aggression: its urbanism is based on knocking down the old to build the new,
and the legacies of environmental disasters have further frayed the ties
between the city and its past. Similarly, Houston’s orientation towards the
present and the future sits at odds with the medieval, the name given to a
period of history post-antiquity and pre-modernity, roughly aligned with 500-
1500 CE. Space City Medievalism uses this tension between place and time to galvanize creative responses to medieval literature in Houston.

☛ Just as Houston’s identity is continually in formation and defined by
multilingualism, so too is the Middle Ages changing as a concept. As a term,
“The Middle Ages” is a post-medieval invention. Academic study of the period
formalized during the nineteenth century, driven by imperialist and
nationalizing narratives. These vestiges remain within the academic
discipline of Medieval Studies, but recent work has sought to confront the
field’s imperialism and racism. Space City Medievalism contributes to these
efforts reimagining the futures of Medieval Studies by fusing contemporary
and medieval poetics.

☛ The participants of Space City Medievalism are grateful for support from the Medieval Academy of America’s Centennial Grants Program, the Houston Arts Alliance’s Let Creative Happen Grants, and at University of Houston, the Center for Public History, African American Studies, Women’s Gender and Sexuality Studies, and the Martha Gano Houstoun Distinguished Visiting Professors in Literary Criticism Grant and the English Department.

For additional information, please contact ddavies@uh.edu