Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Teaching (SMART)

CURRENT VOLUME 2025


Spring 2025 (Volume 32, Issue 1)

The focus of this spring issue of SMART is on social justice and the early modern Spanish text for the contemporary classroom. Early modern literature is exemplary in its treatment of social (in)justices of the period. This collection of articles is a foray into the task of aligning the methodology of Spanish literature programs with the theoretical framework of social justice theory, focusing on applying it through high-impact learning strategies and experiential learning projects as essential parts of the learning process and thereby including principles of diversity, equity, accessibility, inclusion, and awareness. These articles are a starting point for scholars to think about how their pedagogy and research interact in ways that allow students to see themselves in the works of the early modern period and to recognize their relevance to contemporary society. As you will see, social justice pedagogy can be a workable and effective approach to teaching literature.

ANA L. MÉNDEZ-OLIVER, GLENDA Y. NIETO-CUEBAS, and ERIN A. COWLING Introduction: Social Justice and the Early Modern Spanish Text: Pedagogy and Practice for the Contemporary Classroom

NURIA ALONSO GARCÍA and ALISON CAPLAN Demystifying the Canon: Engaging in an Anti-Bias Examination of the Spanish Golden Age Comedia

ANA L. MÉNDEZ-OLIVER Teaching the #MeToo Movement through Early Modern Spanish Texts

CHRISTINA COLE “Yo nací libre”: Foregrounding Women’s Agency in Don Quixote through Music Playlists

GLENDA Y. NIETO-CUEBAS and HENRY BLUM The Witching Hour: Effectiveness of an Interdisciplinary Cross-Course Experience for Social Justice-Oriented Pedagogy

LISETTE BALABARCA-FATACCIOLI Moriscos in the Classroom: Teaching the “Other” Spanish Empire’s Subjects

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WILLIAM F. HODAPP Book Review: Minstrels and Minstrelsy in Late Medieval England, by Richard Rastall with Andrew Taylor

CHRISTINA FRANCIS Book Review: The Medieval Changeling: Health, Childcare and the Family Unit, by Rose A. Sawyer

LESLEY COOTE Book Review: Three Preludes to the Song of Roland: Gui of Burgundy, Roland at Saragossa, and Otinel, translated by William H. Kibler and Catherine M. Jones

JENNY REBECCA RYTTING Book Review: Women, Dance, and Parish Religion in England, 1300–1640, by Lynneth Miller Renberg

THOMAS H. CROFTS Book Review: Textual and Bibliographical Studies in Older Scots Literature: Selected Essays of Priscilla Bawcutt, edited by Janet Hadley Williams

LAINIE POMERLEAU Book Review: Ethics in the Arthurian Legend, edited by Melissa Ridley Elmes and Evelyn Meyer

MICHAEL CALABRESE Book Review: William Caxton’s Paris and Vienne and Blanchardyn and Eglantine, edited by Harriet Hudson

MARILYN OLIVA Book Review: England and Bohemia in the Age of Chaucer, edited by Peter Brown and Jan Ĉermák

LESLEY COOTE Book Review: The Thun-Hohenstein Album: Cultures of Remembrance in a Paper Armory, by Chassica Kirchhoff


Fall 2025 (Volume 32, Issue 2)

The fall issue of SMART is a miscellany of interesting articles. There is discussion on medieval misinformation and disinformation and a designed intervention to this problem;  changes that have taken place in Old English classrooms, and how this language can benefit from second language acquisition and communicative language teaching instructional methods; how medievalists at colleges have long wrestled with the problem of how to get the Middle Ages into course offerings and to compete with other electives, and that visibility of the Middle Ages is key to marketing medieval classes to students; and  teaching the information science principle of authority control, with a focus on name disambiguation, to a group of medieval history graduate students, and how this knowledge changed their information-seeking behavior during future research projects. 

KRISTIN LEAMAN Medieval Misinformation and Disinformation: Filling a Gap in Medieval Studies

DONNA BETH ELLARD and TRISHA TEIG Second Language Acquisition and Communicative Language Teaching in the Beginning Old English Classroom: A Mixed Methods Research Study

EMILY E. REDMAN A New Red Dress and a Big Old Sword: Marketing the Middle Ages to the Undergraduate Audience

ALLISON M. MCCORMACK Which Gertrude? Which John?: Name Disambiguation and Controlled Vocabularies for Medieval Studies Students

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JENNY REBECCA RYTTING Book Review: Medieval Women Religious c.800–c.1500: New Perspectives, edited by Kimm Curran and Janet Burton

WILLIAM F. HODAPP Book Review: A Liturgical Play for the Feast of Fools: The Laon Ordo Joseph, by Robert C. Lagueux

LESLEY COOTE Book Review: Medieval Arms and Armour: A Sourcebook. Volume 1: The Fourteenth Century, edited and translated by Ralph Moffat

CHRISTINA FRANCIS Book Review: The Broadview Anthology of Medieval Arthurian Literature, edited by Kathy Cawsey and Elizabeth Edwards

YVONNE BRUCE Book Review: Women and Devotional Literature in the Middle Ages: Giving Voice to Silence. Essays in Honour of Catherine Innes-Parker, edited by Cate Gunn, Liz Herbert McAvoy, and Naoë Kukita Yoshikawa

MICHAEL CALABRESE Book Review: A Companion to Chivalry, edited by Robert W. Jones and Peter Coss

JENNY REBECCA RYTTING Book Review: A Soldier’s Chronicle of the Hundred Years War: College of Arms Manuscript M9, edited and translated by Anne Curry and Rémy Ambühl

BRIGITTE ROUSSEL Book Review: The Hero’s Mortal Walls: Identity and Defenses in Early Epic and Romance, by William F. Woods

SCOTT LIGHTSEY Book Review: The Dutch Hatmakers of Late Medieval and Tudor London: With an Edition of Their Bilingual Guild Ordinances, by Shannon McSheffrey and Ad Putter

BRIGITTE ROUSSEL Book Review: Heirs of the Vikings: History and Identity in Normandy and England, c. 950–c. 1015, by Katherine Cross

WILLIAM F. HODAPP Book Review: The Medieval French Ovide moralisé: An English Translation, translated and edited by K. Sarah-Jane Murray and Matthieu Boyd

MICHAEL CALABRESE Book Review: The Lover’s Confession: A Translation of John Gower’s Confessio Amantis, edited and translated by Brian Gastle and Catherine Carter, with Latin translations by Andrew Galloway


Please share information on the SMART journal with friends, colleagues, and libraries, alerting them to the wide contribution that this publication makes to Middle Ages and Renaissance pedagogy. We are always interested in new submissions, either individual papers or collections of essays around a theme. If you have a project that you think might be suitable for SMART, please let us know.

Thank you for reading SMART.

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The Fairmount College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Wichita State University continues to fund and support the mission of SMART by providing readers with quality pedagogical instruction.


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