In the year since we went to press with Studies in Medievalism XXI: Corporate Medievalism global finances have hardly improved. Indeed, in some ways they have declined. By many measures unemployment and consumer confidence in the United States have worsened. Much of Europe is suffering under ever-growing austerity. And the so-called developing world has seen a dramatic slowing, and in some cases even reversal, of its recent gains.

All of which may explain why we received an extraordinary number of emotional responses to SIM 21. Already underpaid academics are increasingly experiencing the pinch through not only their students (and perhaps research) but also their wallet. As employer expectations grow, salaries are shrinking, philanthropic organizations are downsizing, publishers are disappearing, and entire departments are being eliminated. This has resulted in the time for the research needed to produce papers being increasingly at a premium.

But several authors managed to fend off other responsibilities long enough to address the ways in which medievalism has been affected by corporations, particularly those of a financial nature. Elizabeth Emery discusses commercial factors behind medieval references in the Woolworth Building, which, upon its completion in 1913, was the tallest and most opulent skyscraper in New York. Amy S. Kaufman examines how the novelists Margaret Atwood, Octavia Butler, and Suzanne Collin refract modern corporations through an imagined and highly dystopic Middle Ages. And Richard Utz observes that Google and other technology companies not only provide tools to refine our study of medievalism, but also advertise their efforts to emulate idealized medieval institutions.