Looming

by J J Cohen

Watch the GW MEMSI blog and the GW MEMSI FB page for an announcement later in the summer involving objects and ethics. And Jane Bennett, Karl Steel, Sharon Kinoshita, Kellie Robertson, Valerie Allen, Carla Nappi, Peggy McCracken, Eileen Joy, Julian Yates, the Tiny Shriner and Julia Lupton.

The end

[a lonely shriner facing an uncertain future, all companions vanished]
by J J Cohen

After almost four years, my time as chair of the English Department of the George Washington University nears its termination.

I'll miss it. Having the chance to get to know my colleagues so well, learning how much their friendship means, having the ability to help them when problems arise, being in the middle of things: all of these are hard to leave.

My position as chair has offered plenty of fodder for this blog (election! memos! bungee cord chair! refusal of a second term! cash infusions! famous writers! take your child to work! strategy! annoyances! creativity! stages and spotlights and lecterns! And so on). But that is not why -- no it really is not why -- I took it. I believe that one loses the right to complain about an entity if, when given the chance to work to change its structure, one declines. So now I have earned the right to whine, bleat and carp until the crack of doom. Colleagues, beware: I will be that infamous faculty member who routinely harrumphs "Well when I was chair we used to find wads of cash in our desk drawers and the queen flew us to England for marmalade-smeared crumpets and we never fought and we had no problems and rainbows shimmered all the day long." Sweet, it will be, repeating my nostalgic lies.

Now I am slowly packing my books for the move to my new digs. I'll miss my office, with its beautiful view of I Street and prospect of Pennsylvania Avenue and passing popes. I'm descending from the seventh to the sixth floor, mainly to be out of the way of the new chair: she doesn't need a whining, bleating and carping former chair hanging around to tell her about how things were in his day (see above). Besides I find it so much more fun to sabotage her behind her back. And when she looks at the budget and beholds the hole I've dug for her ... well, let's just say that the fiscal austerity that I've compelled her to enact is going to make my reign look like the golden age by contrast. Trivia: no chair in GW's history has ever -- so far as I can tell -- expended so much of the department funds on wine and champagne.

So the Tiny Shriner sits alone on his ledge, the very shelf on which he made his first appearance on this blog when I learned that my new window leaks. He is headed down a floor with me, to an out of the way abode that I call the Hermit Hut. It's an undisclosed location, so don't bother trying to track us down after January 1.

Blue, wet day

[illustrations: Tiny Shriner with Blue Tower; Avenue of the Unhappy]

by J J Cohen

On January 1 2010 my four year reign of terror comes to its close.

No longer shall I be chair of the GW English department. That approaching future assists me in getting through some of the soul-grinding tasks that are mine to perform: "I can fill out this Master Course Data Form because it is my last one ever!" "I will obsess over the number of upper division literature courses fulfilling the 1700-1900 requirement because once done, never again!" "I will refuse to nod off, think about lunch, surreptitiously check my email or read the book I have hidden in this folder because I'll never attend this series of meetings in the future!" Through the end of December I will be a good university citizen, attend lunches with potential donors, compose memos, answer thousands of emails, plan events, meet and direct and oversee because on January 1 2010 I become the person formerly known as Department Chair, now referred to as "The Hermit." Fleeting glimpses in darkened corridors will become the stuff of legend. "I think I had a Cohen sighting yesterday" will pass for exciting news among students and colleagues.

It's easy to be glib about the end of my term as chair. I'm an academic, after all, and academics are suppose to be hostile to administration. Yet glibness hides the fact that I'll miss much of what I now do. You'll think I'm being too rosy when I state this, but  it happens to be fully true: whereas in my scholarship I wrestle with intractable problems, one of the joys of being chair is that you can solve, sometimes quite quickly, the problems that students and colleagues bring to you. Having someone leave the office feeling supported, assisted, valued, happy gives me great pleasure. I'll miss being called upon to help.

What I won't miss, though, is the constant song and dance routine that I perform in an attempt to have my university acknowledge frequently and loudly that humanities research matters. Much of my chairly scheming involves placing administrators who are far above my pay grade in situations where they are called upon to praise my department (NB: this works only to the extent that my department is praiseworthy; fortunately my colleagues and our students ensure that it is). Nearing the end of my term, though, I'm a bit worn down by the energy required to keep this attention machine running. I have also grown weary of the narrow minded decisions and facile declarations some administrators are prone to make. We have the chance to hire a famous writer who happens to have both a Macarthur "genius" grant and Pulitzer to his name. "But he didn't earn those while he was at GW" is the latest, tediously dumb objection I have heard to hiring him, stated by someone in great power who ought to know better. Sometimes I fear that faulty logic stated with conviction will make my head pop open and render me the first English chair to die in office of massive brain malfunction.

Of course, I'll still be fighting the good fight, scheming the good schemes, and countering illogic with keen memos and plentiful eye rolling when I am no longer chair: partly because I will not actually become The Hermit (I am a member of a department I care deeply about, after all), partly because I will still be an administrator (Director of GW MEMSI). It will be good, though, to have less email to answer, fewer forms to fill, and a little more time to think about medieval studies.


[x-posted to FLA]

The BABEL Working Group is on Facebook

Figure 1. Tiny in his favorite position: upside-down in a pint glass [University of Leeds, July 2009]

by EILEEN JOY

Just a quick note to say that the BABEL Working Group is now on Facebook, and in addition to our regular website, this is just another way to keep track of the ongoing activities, publishing and other projects, and peripatetic wanderings over land and sea of the Group. Become a fan and we'll send you Tiny Shriner kisses, or Tiny high-fives, or coupons for half-off of Tiny sneers, if that's what you prefer. Plus, you'll be able to access all sorts of embarrassing photos of ITM bloggers, caught with Tiny in compromising positions all over the globe. Seriously, who doesn't want to see those?

BABEL Working Group on Facebook

The Tiny Shriner is Your Facebook Friend

by J J Cohen

Or at least your frenemy.

If you haven't friended (or frenemied him) yet, you may do so here. Don't forget that he is also on Twitter, and the Tiny Shriner Adoration Society is now 42 poobahs strong. Via BABEL, he also hawks merchandise.

If it is 4 AM, everyone is tipsy in the BABEL suite, and the Tiny Shriner ...

by J J Cohen

... is rereading Karl Steel's copy of Israel Yuval's book with you, where else could you be but Kalamazoo?

(photo by Nunzio D'Alessio)

Kzoo Here I Come

by J J Cohen

As soon as the Tiny Shriner finishes packing his collection of thirty-three miniature plastic fezzes, I am on my way. This year -- for the first time -- I am taking graduate students with me. We'll fly to Detroit together, and then drive the rest of the way to the Zoo.

By the way, did I mention that Monster Theory: Reading Culture turns thirteen this year? They grow up so quickly, those "Seven Theses." MEARCSTAPA has even put together a panel to mark the occasion:

"Monster Culture (Seven Theses)": A Roundtable
Jeffrey Jerome Cohen's now paradigmatic manifesto on the importance of studying monsters and the monstrous, both generally in all time periods and cultures as well as in strictly medieval contexts, has influenced and inspired countless students exposed to his text in undergraduate courses, and likewise a great many working scholars and the studies they have produced since its publication in 1996. As an inaugural event for MEARCSTAPA, we seek in this roundtable to re-familiarize ourselves with the critical issues of the text, but also to evaluate, reconsider, and extend these theses for future consideration and deployment in subsequent studies. Founding members of MEARCSTAPA will share their interpretations and experiences of the text in research and teaching.

Session #366: Monster Culture: Seven Theses (Roundtable)
Friday, May 8th @ 3:30 pm [Bernhard 211]
Monsters: The Experimental Association for the Research of Cryptozoology through Scholarly Theory and Practical Application (MEARCSTAPA), Sponsor
Asa Simon Mittman (California State University-Chico), Organizer
Larissa Tracy (Longwood University), Presider

• Mary Kate Hurley (Columbia University)
• Karma de Gruy (Emory University)
• Stuart Kane (Stonehill College)
• Jeff Massey (Molloy College)
• Derek Newman-Stille (Trent University)
• Jeffrey Jerome Cohen (George Washington University)

See you there!

Stephanie Trigg Is Evil

[illustration: Satan with Shriner, the Venetian Room, Hotel Lombardy, Washington DC]
by J J Cohen

Readers of ITM will be heartened to know that I have decided to become an investigative reporter who will publish all kinds of gossip and filth about contemporary medieval studies. The field is, after all, a rancid and festeresque place. My first victim target subject: Stephanie Trigg. Can she really be as affable as her scholarship and blogging suggest? The answer must be (I reasoned long ago) NO.

With such backstabbing character assassination in mind, I invited Stephanie to DC to give a paper in our GW MEMSI speaker series. To a room of about sixty audience members, she delivered an image-heavy talk entitled "Mythic Capital: Medievalism, Heritage Culture, and the Order of the Garter, 1348-2008." The paper employed the logic of the fetish ("je le sais bien, mais quand même...") to explore the enduring popularity of Order theatrics, the ways in which the admission of an inherent ridiculousness does nothing at all to diminish the seriousness of the over-the-top, ostrich-feathers-and-all sartorial display -- indeed, the ways in which this compulsion to foppishness creates a liminal state for the begartered dignitary, enabling (à la Victor Turner) the permanent passage to a more powerful status. With side excursions to the queer garter and the histroy of affect (especially as glimpsed in a certain ashamed-but-defiant look among garter wearers), the talk was at once brilliant and hilarious -- though I think I might have caught one undergraduate, out of the corner of my eye, texting a friend, indicating that maybe the talk did not hold EVERYONE's attention. Or then again maybe that undergraduate was simply googling the word "liminality."

Stephanie's paper was attended by her husband and son. I instructed them to sit in the back and to deploy the kinds of annoying funny faces that I typically make when people I know are presenting serious work, in order to throw off her stride and perhaps cause a complete neurotic breakdown. Although I cannot report that husband and spawn are evil per se, they did demonstrate a shocking lack of immaturity that I will blame upon the family member who was at the front of the room. So there is that.

Ten of us took the Trigg family out to dinner, and then for drinks at the Venetian Room. I would like to write that I gathered further supporting evidence for my thesis about the evil that inhabits Stephanie Trigg but I came up with precious little, even after she had been plied with a Kingfisher beer, a glass of shiraz, and two old fashioneds. She was even kind hearted to the Tiny Shriner, who is now thinking of dumping Kate Moss and moving to Oz. One of Stephanie's former students came with us, and try as I might I gathered nothing but praise about her from him. Apparently Stephanie has never been cross at anyone and when she walks around the corridors of the University of Melbourne a golden radiance follows her and a small choir sings angelic tunes to the accompaniment of multiple harps. I heard it rumored that in Australia she once healed a man of a platypus bite (he had been petting one at a platypussery, it bit him, and the finger that the animal's bill had closed upon was infected), and that cheese in her vicinity seldom grows mold. (I hope you see the potential for evil here, at least: were she to visit Roquefort, the consequences could be catastrophic).

I continued my attempt to trick Stephanie into blogworthy admissions of her iniquity by taking her and her family on a tour of the National Cathedral yesterday, followed by dinner with my family, followed by an evening of sangria blanca and dessert chez Cohen. I can report that her son is quite a piano player; is more sophisticated at the age of fourteen than most adults I know (including yours truly); is a dandy (though no ostrich feathers yet); and gave me no ammunition whatsoever to trapdoor his mom. The rat. I can also report that her husband is an incredibly smart theorist of globalization from whom I learned something new every time he made an off the cuff observation. They brought gifts for my kids (an inflatable spider for Alex that is so cool I am going to steal it later tonight; a stuffed miniature kangaroo for Katherine that she slept with last night). They were entertaining and gracious and funny and warm. Our families hit it off so well that I spent the evening stewing about how little I would have to blog today.

So, I don't have a great deal of evidence against her, I admit. Stephanie Trigg is no Suger of Saint Denis. But there is something dark about this theorist of medievalism all the same, something ominously nefarious and possibly even deleterious. I will see her soon at Kalamazoo, and the investigation will continue.

Stay tuned.

For March 17: A Graveyard in Dover

[image: Though the Tiny Shriner is technically a homunculus rather than a leprechaun, he does enjoy March 17]

by J J Cohen

Ah, Saint Patrick's Day. Debunk your myths here. Celebrate or burn with shame: identity is all about ambivalence towards its history, after all.

Speaking of ambivalence, I have just returned from a visit to see family in New England, where Saint Patrick's Day attracts significantly more hoopla than March 17 earns in DC. Every restaurant we walked into, for example, immediately slapped a shamrock sticker on my daughter Katherine. Leprechauns, green streamers, pots o' gold at the end of rainbows having nothing to do with LGBT rights, shillelaghs, and moss colored balloons dangled wherever the eye glanced. Begora was about all I could say.

My sister lives in Dover, New Hampshire, in a new house nestled among some older ones. We stay with her when we visit, because (1) she has the space for us and (2) she is not as crazy as some other family members. Dover is a small town that grew along the Cocheco River, mainly as a textile mill flourished in the mid 1800s. Its diminutive "downtown" area preserves the red brick mill, now turned into a modest office building. The center of town is as thick with shopping as an English High Street, and most of these stores have been around for quite some time: a run down music shop, a bakery, a tobacco store, a card shop, a funky coffee house where people still wear tie-dye earnestly. Not far from town center have sprouted the required amenities of twenty-first century American living: Pizzeria Uno, Applebee's, Costco. The center, though, has managed to stay (through no particular effort) noncorporate, without becoming a gentrified or Disneyland version of a New England town such as you might glimpse in Hanover or certain overly precious sections of Vermont. If you are looking for a haberdashery or gourmet chocolate, Dover is not your destination. You will find, though, an unpretentious Irish bar on the water, excellent whoopee pies, and a comfortable Indian restaurant run by a family who converted a storefront.

Across the street from my sister's house is a weedy cemetery. Though not the oldest in Dover (there is a "Settler's Cemetery" down the road dating to 1640), the graveyard is impressive: rows of marble and granite-hewn markers, many shaped as angels or crosses or obelisks. My son Alex and I walked through the cemetery when morning sun and white snow rendered the expanse a space where it was hard to think much of death. We squinted to read names, and marveled at the number of markers announcing from which county of Ireland the dead beneath had arrived. We noticed that scores of graves recorded a two year span in the 1860s as dates of death. An epidemic must have carried from life many recent arrivals from County Armagh. Most of them were women. We thought that they must have come to Dover to work at the textile mill, and then perished when whatever fever swept and emptied the brick building. We knew we were being touched by history's receding traces, by stories that we would like to grasp better but that were too distant from us to hold. What did these women leave in Ireland? How frightening and exhilarating was the crossing of the Atlantic? Did the textile mill treat them as badly as the mills of Lowell and Lawrence? Did they die lonely, homesick, afraid?

The graveyard in Dover is not especially well tended. An ordinary feature of an ordinary New England landscape, many of the stones have toppled as ice has shifted the earth and wind has pushed relentlessly against their weight. Few of the markers show any sign of memorial visits. The writing is fading beneath lichens, the rock is cracked. The day will come when something else is built upon that space, or when the cemetery reverts to quiet field.

Festive Friday: Spout a Gnome

by J J Cohen

It's Friday. Your neurons are not firing with the precision they possessed earlier in the week. Your "To Do" list hovers at the same number of items that clogged Monday. That essay which is two weeks past deadline is moving towards three. Your fez needs cleaning.

We know how you feel. But we also want to say: snap out of it! Stop loving yourself so much! Why is it always about you, you, you?

For this Festive Friday, we invite you to spout a gnome. No, not "a legendary creature resembling a tiny old man." Keep that kind of gnome to yourself. By gnome we mean "a short pithy saying expressing a general truth": we're talking wise, not wizened. A kind of Old English-y gnome. Given that aphorisms tend to be highly conventional, we propose the following rule for its articulation: your gnostic utterance must follow the formula "Medieval Studies needs less X and more Y." Example: "Medieval Studies needs less Charlotte Allen and more Tiny Shriner."* You may then follow up with another maxim that is sillier. Mine: "A Tiny Shriner belongs on a bar stool, old and proud of his martini." Got it? And bonus points if you can identify the actual medieval proverb that I warped to create that last one.

Oh, and you are not allowed to think too much before you spout your gnomes. They must spout quickly or they must not spout at all.

*a scholar of proverbial utterances would know that this formulation equates to "Medieval Studies needs less delight in policing its enjoyments, and more creativity in its enjoyment."

GW MEMSI Spring Events

by J J Cohen

Here's the complete listing of GW Medieval and Early Modern Studies Institute vernal festivities, along with a spiffy poster created by Lowell Duckert (click to enlarge).

Events are free and welcome all who would like to attend ... so if you are reading this and live near DC -- or want an excuse to come to Washington and meet the new president -- we'd be pleased to have you join us.

Not that Obama will be joining us, but all you have to do is walk down Penn Ave and you'll probably bump into him. Plus the Tiny Shriner might share the key to the secret bunker where Dick Cheney used to lurk: it's now a fez and scotch storage unit, I've been told, so Tiny has been going there a lot.


Schedule of GW MEMSI Events for 2009

David Wallace (1/30)
"Writing after Catastrophe: Conceptualizing Literary History and the Boundaries of Europe, 1348-1400"
GWU Marvin Center Ampitheatre (800 21st St. NW)
4PM

April Shelford (2/20)
“Reading and Enlightenment in 18th-century Jamaica”
GWU Rome Hall 771 (801 22nd St. NW)
11:30-1:30 PM; lunch seminar with precirculated paper

Andrea Frisch (3/6)
"The Poetics of Forgetting in Sixteenth-century France"
GWU Rome Hall 771 (801 22nd St. NW)
11:30-1:30 PM; lunch seminar with precirculated paper

Lytton Smith (4/3)
“The Unending Medieval and the Edges of Poetry”
GWU Marvin Center Ampitheatre (800 21st St. NW)
4PM

Sponsor of the Thirty-Seventh Annual Meeting of the Shakespeare Association of America (4/9-4/11)
Renaissance Washington, DC Hotel (999 9th St. NW)

Stephanie Trigg (4/24)
“Mythic Capital: Medievalism, Heritage Culture and the Order of the Garter, 1348-2008”
GWU Marvin Center Ampitheatre (800 21st St NW)
4PM

Sponsor of the Roundtable “How to Get the Medieval Studies You Want: Institutional Perspectives” at Kalamazoo (5/7-5/11)

Inauguration Weekend

by J J Cohen

So you may have heard that the DC area has gone a bit overboard in prepping for the Inauguration and its attendant hoopla.

All bridges to Virginia, for example, will be closed -- apparently to prevent Karl Rove from leaving his home in Arlington and mingling with the multitudes. I am gladdened that this longtime security risk has at last been neutralized, but why did it take eight years? Democratic Marylanders like me can just glide on down ... or, in all honesty, walk: it's only five miles, and I have been warned repeatedly that the subway system will be so crammed with people that a stroll will be faster than a Metro ride.

A security perimeter will be set up around the parade, and once the streets have reached their maximum density of revelers per square foot, no one else will be admitted. Expect a small scale riot as would-be Obama gawkers hurl their bottles of spring water and their energy bars at the police (we have been warned to bring our own food and water because it will be very difficult to move once we are inside the security zone). Oh yes, we are also not allowed to pee unless we want to wait in a line that stretches to the crack of doom. So far the only thing that has not been decreed is the hanging of large banners around the District that announce YOUR JOY WILL BE KILLED and WOULDN'T YOU BE MORE COMFORTABLE WATCHING THIS AT HOME?

My university is not all that far from the White House, and so we have been bombarded with messages about safety and security and the apocalypse that looms. My favorite was yesterday's email update, which included this section:

Tips for Personal Safety: Prepare in Advance

• Be sure to purchase in advance and/or pre-load Metro SmartTrip cards before Inauguration Weekend. Also, visit ATMs to ensure you have sufficient cash before the crowds hit D.C.
• Refill necessary prescription drugs and remind your guests and visitors to do so as well.
• Be careful while texting and walking. These activities combined can be very dangerous and may cause falls, collisions, and bottlenecks.
• Be mindful of information from unofficial sources. If you receive e-mails or text messages from unofficial sources that an incident has occurred, proceed with caution and look for official sources to verify it.
• Dress warmly and wear comfortable shoes. Women attending the GW Inaugural Ball should either wear or bring with them comfortable, flat shoes in the event that they must walk unexpectedly.

Yes, mother. My SmartCard will be loaded (even though the Metro will be so crowded that I am supposed to walk). I will visit the ATM so that I will have a wad of cash to bribe my way through the barbed wire of the parade security perimeter. I will load up on extra Zyrtec in case my allergies flare up. I promise to dress in an extra heavy coat (but not TOO heavy: at the security perimeter bulky people will be turned away). My shoes will be flat and comfortable because I know when you say "be prepared to walk unexpectedly" what you really mean is "be prepared to run when the police teargas the excluded people at the security perimeter hurling Cliff bars and Evian bottles." When the Tiny Shriner starts the rumor of "Free booze in the West Wing!" I will ignore it because no one who wears a fez counts as an Official Source. Most important of all, I will not walk and text at the same time because I know that I will stumble, fall, and be trampled until I am a small red spot on the concrete. This spot may freeze up, others will slip, bottlenecks will emerge, and we will have inauguration mayhem, all caused by texting while walking.

Happy Inauguration, everyone.

[x-posted GW English Blog]

Some good reading and some good fun

by J J Cohen

The semester begins and every faculty member has a class that is overcrowded or assigned to a broom closet located within an obscure nook of the campus. And who do they think can reduce the number of living students enrolled in their course, or move their classroom out from the janitorial supplies and into some posh penthouse with a view of the Jefferson memorial? That'd be the department chair.

So in lieu of a post, I offer some links. No rhyme or reason behind them: they are simply sites or stories that have struck my fancy.

• The altered picture of Tiny in Peril was created through a website called Tilt Shift Maker, the effect of which is to render an ordinary picture an image of a seeming miniature. The problem is that the Tiny Shriner is fairly miniature already, so the net outcome is like reducing nanobacteria to nano size: i.e. you are finished before you begin. You'll find a much better selection in the site's Photo Gallery.
  
• Through Gil Harris, I've discovered and now very much like Julia Lupton's Thinking with Shakespeare. The site combines blogging, course links, high theory, design and DIY. You might start with the manifesto, which includes "Scenes of Thought" and "Big Ideas" -- violating the copyright that In the Middle has on both these things.
  
• Gladiators may come back to the Coliseum, at least if a certain person obsessed with their musky sweaty earthy aroma (Umberto Broccoli by name) has his way.
• Dan Kline pointed out in the comments to an earlier post that a Wiki exists where those on the job market can share information about various interactions they've had with institutions. This site seems like a great idea to me, especially because so many schools are so bad about communicating where they are in the search process.
• Another blog I've been reading recently is Jonah Lehrer's Frontal Cortex. Lehrer is the author of Proust Was a Neuroscientist, and had a perceptive review of a book on art and evolution that doesn't seem all that perceptive in Sunday's Washington Post.
  

Identities and Impurities

[illustration: Winter Shack with Child, photo by author]
by J J Cohen

The close of December is a difficult time of year for anyone whose identity is pure. The holiday that looms tomorrow is too secular; is being warred against; is too Christian; is too commercial; carries with it too much paganism; distracts from Easter; doesn't matter; matters too much; carries a weight it does not merit; should be replaced by the ten days of Newton; and so on.

I was going to compose a long post about hybridity versus purified identities, modern and medieval, Christian and Jewish. Some notes (or at least some URLs) towards that post are collected here. I thought I had the duration of The Care Bears Movie to get those words assembled, but a series of phone calls involving an unexpected saving of a stranger's life and the complications of a surgery have conspired to leave me with about three minutes before those polychromatic ursines save the day. Then I've obligated myself to construct a house out of frosting, graham crackers, and leftover Halloween candy.

So I'll say this. Over the past year I have been engaged in two simultaneous reading projects, some small fruits of which have appeared on this blog: surveying new work in the history of Jewish-Christian identities (e.g. Boyarin, Yuval, Elukin, Horowitz), and researching contemporary [youth] reinventions of Jewishness via media old (Heeb, Nextbook) and new (Jewschool, Jewdas, Jewcy and the like). The two projects have much in common, though I'm not certain that the scholars from group one would agree that they have fellow travelers in group two. Both movements redefine what Jewish identity means in the past or the present (and in Boyarin's case, both at once, especially in Border Lines. If Gloria Anzaldua read Talmud and patristics, she'd have composed Border Lines). Both groups have seen strong public reactions against what they propose: Boyarin condemned as anti-Jewish, Yuval having been informed it would have been better had he never published his research, contemporary movements feeling a backlash as in this article from n+1 or the predictable identitarian comments to this story. Two common emphases within this criticism are (1) the border line must be drawn somewhere in order to provide coherent identity, so why not draw the line where it has always been drawn? (2) those who refuse the inherited identity paradigm are actually rejecting the hard work that it takes to merit such an identity.

Neither of these seem to me particularly cogent critiques: if the identity border is arbitrary, then why retain the same-old same-old after all? This same-old same-old is typically NOT the timeless and unchanging identity it has passed itself off as being. A longer historical view provides effective counter arguments to both. And what could be more labor intensive than forging an identity out of inherited and new pieces? Nothing facile about that process...

You'll hear more about this history of hybridity and mutability in the future (though in a way you've heard quite a bit about it from me already, here and here). For the time being, though, I simply offer this thought, appropriate to the ending of the year and the completion of another twelve months of this blog.

The medievalist identity advocated at ITM, often implicitly, always with passion, is an impure one: practicing a contingent rather than a known-in-advance Medieval Studies, touching present and past, embracing the creative potential of both. We've never argued that codicology or paleography or philology or any other -gy ought to be denefestrated from the House of Medieval, but we do want to keep our doors open wide enough to welcome whatever rough beast, Tiny Shriner, Muslim punk, mestizo, or monster slinks our way. We want -- I want -- not so much to change the field, but to acknowledge that medieval studies has already been deeply and enduringly transmuted. If it ever had a stable and well bounded identity, that went out the window some time in the 1980s, when feminism changed its rules, made it a space more welcoming to strangers. Maybe the welcome arrived even before that, when atheist Marxists were grumbling against allegory-mad Robertsonians (or maybe that was just one doctrine replacing another; it is hard for me to tell). I've suspected that sometimes in my own work I've imported new shibboleths, turns of phrase and schools of theory implicitly necessary to belong to the reconfigured field: if you can't say extimité you can't drink mead in this hall, buddy. On this blog and in my work, I've now attempted to submerge the theory somewhat rather than cite it as frequently as I did in some of my earlier publications. I have worked towards a more congenial prose style, one that invites rather than simply sorts its readers, one that develops that lingua franca et jocundissima that I mentioned in my Kzoo paper.

This blog is an ongoing part of that project, and I thank you for being among its community this year. Whether you are in the midst of celebrating Hanukkah, or hanging your stocking for Christmas, or festivating at the solstice, or doing the Saturnalia or holding a Molochmas or even if you are just enjoying the trickling away of the last month of 2008, Wæshail.

So, how are you celebrating? And if you feel like answering a much harder question, for what [medievalist] identity do you yearn?

In the Middle is on Facebook

by J J Cohen

We know readers access our news stream in various ways: sixty of you via Google Reader, for example, and many more via services like Bloglines, email, even direct access to our site ... Now you can also browse ITM via Facebook, here.

And did you know that FB also boasts a Tiny Shriner Adoration Society? ITM is the new media: medieval studies skulks where it has never skulked before.

Gingergrendels

by J J Cohen

Spend enough time in academia and you'll find your office cluttered with those tchockes that kindhearted souls sometimes give to thank you for some kindness, to bribe you, or to bid you good riddance as they depart. The ledge around my windowsill features -- in addition to a Tiny Shriner -- a soap shaped like a shell, a soap with a picture of a moose, two gargoyles, a mug, a small skull, a stack of postcards, some bookends fashioned from polished chunks of blue stone, a Kenyan antelope, a tea box from India, and a tiki idol. Several of these items are gifts from former students; others are payback from colleagues whose travel authorization forms I signed. Today, though, I received an offering that is now my all time favorite: a plastic container filled with Grendel gingerbread men. Yes, one is arm has been lopped off each. You can glimpse five six of them doing a little dance on the napkin on my desk above. Thanks, Lowell!

Here's hoping your grading is going well, and that offerings that bring great cheer are likewise wending your way.

Of Haptic Pasts and Lampshade Fezes

by J J Cohen

Given that the single objective of the recent Touching the Past symposium at GW was to convince Carolyn Dinshaw that a small, burgundy colored lampshade was in fact a fez, and then to photograph said medievalist with said "fez" atop her head, I can without hesitation declare that Touching the Past was a resounding success.

Some highlights:

• More than fifty people participated, filling the room.
  
• Though most of our audience was local (GW, AU and UMD were especially well represented), a hefty contingent came from out of town and spent the night -- gratifying, considering that this hadn't been conceptualized as a "destination" gathering.
  
• Among those arriving from semi-distant parts was a van full of undergraduates from Richard Stockton College in New Jersey. They were a cool, friendly bunch. I also got to meet Ken Tompkins. I wish I'd had more time with him, but could say only a fast hello while dashing between cookie plates and audience herding.
• In fact I wish I had had more time with many people. The problem with running an event like this is the, well, running. I spent so much time on the move that I wasn't able to hear most of the Q&A (I am told it was quite lively, and would love it if someone present would post about the conversation here at ITM). I also didn't get to chat and/or catch up with several people I would have liked to converse with. If I snubbed you, I apologize.
  
• I was so proud of my GW students, former and current. They are the best ... and most of them stayed with the group right up to the end of festivities at 2 AM.
• Among those who came: the polymath Michael Wenthe, the affable Theresa Coletti, the charming Gail Gibson, the ardent Anna Klosowska, the mocking Liza Blake, the Heaney-hating Dan Remein, the splendid Myra Seaman, the elegant Madhavi Menon (the only person in the world who can eat more sweets than me) ...
• Peggy McCracken, Julian Yates, Carolyn Dinshaw, and Eileen Joy have so much in common that they probably formed a secret club together as kids. Hearing how well the four presentations fit together confirmed this suspicion of mine. Many attendees of the symposium asked me if the papers had been shared beforehand among the presenters. They had not. It's just that we had four people interested in the past, touch, pastoral, the early twentieth century, images, bodies.
  
• Possessing more than bare-bones funding for the institute means that we were able to invite as many graduate students as faculty to dinner with us. Twenty-eight of us devoured a vegetarian thali at Nirvana, the kind owners of which even selected two decent Indian wines to accompany the meal. GW MEMSI is trying to foster a community that also lives and breathes outside of the conventional space and formalized interchanges. No better spur to continued connversation exists than good company over good food and good drink.
• Maybe that is why we stayed out until 2 AM at the Orientalist splendor of the Venetian Room (where Anna Klosowska gave us languishing lessons on the opulent divans), and then in the patio of a nearby college dive bar.
• All the ITMers made the pilgrimage to my office to see the Tiny Shriner in his native habitat (a window ledge where he currently stands with a gazelle and a miniature boomerang). If you squint at the picture, above, taken by Karl, you can see the ghostly presence of two ITM commentators and favorite people, who were in attendance at the conference.
• Eileen's paper on the English painter Stanley Spencer condensed all her obsessions into a moving meditation on time, mortality, and letters. Karl gave perfect introductions to Julian and Carolyn, finding resonant fragments of their work. Mary Kate was her usual insightful self in the conversations that followed ... conversations that were errant and energizing.
  
• If you are reading this and you attended the Touching the Past symposium, THANK YOU. I cannot imagine a better inaugural event for the GW Medieval and Early Modern Institute. The convivial philosophizing that took place over that afternoon that stretched into the wee hours of the morning remind me -- again, and again -- of how fortunate I feel to be a part of the field right now.

Although perhaps it goes without saying, still I must say: the symposium would not have been possible without my wonderful GW colleagues Holly Dugan, Jonathan Hsy, Marcy Norton, Jehangir Malegam. Lowell Duckert undertook much of the labor that made the event possible, and Mike Smith and Beth Lattin pitched in at key moments to save the day.

Today is the day

by J J Cohen

I feel touched already.

Secretly we're all hoping the new president-elect will stop in and finger the Tiny Shriner for his cabinet (Secretary of Education and Festive Fezwear, anyone?)

"Bodies, Embodiments, Becomings" Conference: Saint Louis University, Oct. 2-4

by EILEEN JOY

I have finally finished assembling the program for the 34th annual meeting of the Southeastern Medieval Association [theme: Bodies, Embodiments, Becomings], to be held at Saint Louis University from October 2nd through 4th, and I'm quite proud of it, if I do say so myself. Jeffrey, Steven Kruger, and Amy Hollywood are the two plenary and featured speakers, respectively, and the BABEL Working Group has organized four sessions, including two organized by Jessica Rosenfeld on "Eros and Phenomenology," featuring papers by myself, Cary Howie, Anna Klosowska, Tony Hasler, Jessica R., Lara Farina, and Nicola Masciandaro; one organized by Liza Blake on "Bodies in Between," that features papers from some of our favorite people [Liza, Mary Kate, and Dan Remein]; and one organized by Myra Seaman on "The Place of the Medieval in the Present," featuring papers by Myra, Betsy McCormick, and Justin Brent, with Anne Clark Bartlett as Respondent. I also assembled, with individual abstracts that had been submitted a wicked panel on "Waste, Excrement, Ingestion, and Meat," featuring our very own Karl, Michael Johnson, Susan Morrison, and Fabienne Michelet. And I could go on and on, but I won't, so just check out the program, and ask yourself, "what am I doing the first week of October that is more important than this?" Gentleman, get out your Tiny Shriner buttons and affix them to your lapels, and I'll see you in Saint Louis.

Conference Program: 34th Annual Meeting of the Southeastern Medieval Association

As to where to get your Tiny Shriner buttons and other BABEL and SEMA conference paraphernalia, go here.