Laura Miles and I have put together a session for the upcoming New Chaucer Society meeting, scheduled to take place July 10th-15th, 2016 in London. Please consider submitting an abstract!

Charisma 
Organizers: Irina Dumitrescu and Laura Saetveit Miles
Paper panel
Why do certain stories become bestsellers, repeatedly translated and adapted to other media? Why are some characters particularly appealing, the stars of vitae, poems, and paintings? This panel examines the workings of charisma, popularity, and fascination in the premodern period. Papers might call on Max Weber’s discussion of charismatic authority, Peter Brown’s of the saint as exemplar, Joseph Roach’s of the celebrity “it” factor, or Stephen Jaeger’s of the redeeming power of enchantment. The goal is to begin a conversation about how charisma – transferred over time between media and audiences but never lost – might function as a productive mode of understanding cultural systems.

You can find the entire call for papers and submission instructions here.