Arthurian romance conjoins the vitally heterogeneous Arthurian legend and a multifarious genre characterized by exotic adventure into a complex hybrid of dynamic literary and cultural translation, imagination and reinvention. Given its supposed origins in the British defense against Saxon invaders in the aftermath of Roman withdrawal and its growing popularity after the Norman takeover, the Arthurian matter evokes, against the ambivalent yet contested backdrop of borderland and homeland, ever-going negotiations with identity, gender, power, colonial fantasy, postcolonial desire, relations of self and other, etc. This seminar will reorient Arthurian romance in the complex cultural contexts of romance and the medieval and use it as an important platform for vigorous critical inquiries and theoretical explorations into problems of hybridity and alterity that relate romance and the Middle Ages in general. Readings will include Geoffrey of Monmouth, Chretien de Troyes, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, The Travels of John Mandeville, and Malory’s Morte Darthur. In accordance with the texts under consideration, relevant background material and criticism will also be covered.