tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post3317784176599310303..comments2024-03-10T20:46:19.274-04:00Comments on In the Middle: Returns: A Meditation in two or three partsCord J. Whitakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06224143153295429986noreply@blogger.comBlogger9125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-59384131835161620382010-05-11T00:46:02.649-04:002010-05-11T00:46:02.649-04:00MKH, it really is great to have you back. I'd ...MKH, it really is great to have you back. I'd go on about that a bit more, but people, I have to get on my horse:<br /><br />Y'all want mourners? Come to Dallas! <br /><br />The mourners exhibition will be at the Dallas Museum of Art this fall. What else will be there? Well, for one thing, Profs. Wheeler and Adams will be teaching a course on “Majesty, Memory, and Mourning in the Middle Ages” right at the DMA, along with a team of expert guest speakers. <br /><br />Aaaand... the Texas Medieval Association annual meeting will be in Dallas this fall, September 24-26, and on the same theme. Keynote speakers will be Seth Lerer and Bruce Brasington. More info here:<br /><br /><a href="http://pages.towson.edu/duncan/tmahome.html" rel="nofollow">Texas Medieval Association</a><br /><br />And, as a special offer to ITM readers: anyone who comes down to the conference will be shown by me, personally, where to get the best deep-fried coconut cream pie. It's out of this world, and available "Alamo".ihttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14105686105741162480noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-38727330366468496802010-05-09T23:38:26.388-04:002010-05-09T23:38:26.388-04:00it didn't help that I crept up on him every ti...<i>it didn't help that I crept up on him every time he looked away</i><br /><br />Ha! You're kind of a wicked dad, Jeffrey! I like that about you. And tell Alex that the angels give me nightmares, too.Dr. Viragohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03960384082670286328noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-85425337632167774972010-05-09T18:36:41.490-04:002010-05-09T18:36:41.490-04:00welcome back! indeed.
but one image of the Crucif...welcome back! indeed.<br /><br /><i>but one image of the Crucifixion struck me as particularly unique and even perhaps a bit bizarre</i><br /><br />FWIW, note that the Très Riches Heures of Jean, Duke of Berry, also by the Limbourg bros, does the darkening bit as well, for the Garden of Gethsemane, where Jesus is awake while all other sleep, and, as in the <i>Belles Heures,</i> the death of Christ itself, which is opposite a brightly colored crucifixion, done by another artist.<br /><br />On Friday, I saw Victorian Photocollage exhibit, and also the <a href="http://www.themourners.org/" rel="nofollow">Mourners</a> (this is a GREAT website, by the way) and the Belles Heures. <br /><br />Its Jerome-cycle is something not to be missed. It introduced me, for example, to the story of Jerome inadvertently <a href="http://blog.metmuseum.org/artofillumination/manuscript-pages/folio-184v/" rel="nofollow">cross-dressing</a> when his fellow clergy tricked him by laying out for his morning clothes a lady's dress rather than his monastic habit. This, especially, caused him to flee Rome. I presume there's a rich amount of sophisticated gender scholarship on this episode? <br /><br />Jerome's lion features in a number of the pages, as, wonderfully, the Vita St Pauli, where the L bros perhaps had no idea what an <a href="http://blog.metmuseum.org/artofillumination/manuscript-pages/folio-192r/" rel="nofollow">onocentaur</a> was.medievalkarlhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12440542200843836794noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-13833728293686121482010-05-09T11:07:42.406-04:002010-05-09T11:07:42.406-04:00Dr V: nostalgia for our own childhood TV watching ...Dr V: nostalgia for our own childhood TV watching has inspired me and Wendy to start viewing Dr Who again, with Alex. The weeping angels gave him a nightmare (it didn't help that I crept up on him every time he looked away). It's been so much fun to start watching the show again ...Jeffrey Cohenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17346504393740520542noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-1695059086718737492010-05-08T09:24:30.327-04:002010-05-08T09:24:30.327-04:00MKH: LOVELY post, and I'm so glad you're &...MKH: LOVELY post, and I'm so glad you're "back," in whatever shape. And yes, writing dissertations is incredibly isolating and can also make you feel a bit psychotic toward the end.Eileen Joyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13756965845120441308noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-36256311053145058792010-05-07T10:21:28.628-04:002010-05-07T10:21:28.628-04:00Between your post, Mary Kate, and your comment, Je...Between your post, Mary Kate, and your comment, Jeffrey, now *I* am thrown back into my own past. I never made the connection between Magritte's Les Amants and les pleurants until now, but I *loved* Magritte when I was a teenager, and in every new city I visited I had to seek out any Magrittes they had. Back then I wasn't explicitly interested in the Middle Ages, but when discovered pleurants, I was immediately draw to them, perhaps because I was unconsciously seeing them through the lens of Magritte, but also because I was a pre-goth, morbid little punk rock chick. I've never written about them like you have Mary Kate, but I've always been mildly excited by them. I even bought a set of tiny, dangling pleurant earrings for a friend with an equally morbid love for these mourners. And if I had the money, I would commission pleurants for my own tomb. Seriously.<br /><br />And MK, you'll appreciate this: I both love and am terrified by the weeping angels on Dr. Who, precisely because they remind me of pleurants. (And they're back this season!)Dr. Viragohttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03960384082670286328noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-14722989849090112052010-05-07T10:18:07.708-04:002010-05-07T10:18:07.708-04:00The clementine thing is real; just ask anyone who ...The clementine thing is real; just ask anyone who -- unlike you -- could withstand my withering stare for a whole semester and do independent study with me. <br /><br />Good luck on your dissertation Liza. I won't let you become a hermit.Jeffrey Cohenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17346504393740520542noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-77507918464890568682010-05-07T10:15:11.477-04:002010-05-07T10:15:11.477-04:00One of the funniest things about JJC's teachin...One of the funniest things about JJC's teaching is that even his worst, most tyrannical moments (imperiously declaring that I could not teach myself Old English) turn out to be generative. And maybe also the clementine thing, if that's real.<br /><br />I am about to begin my dissertation -- does that mean I will see you all in a couple years, on the other side ...?Liza Blakehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05105726464955172469noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21165575.post-80100888269165093262010-05-07T09:55:20.961-04:002010-05-07T09:55:20.961-04:00WELCOME BACK. So great to have you posting again, ...WELCOME BACK. So great to have you posting again, Mary Kate!<br /><br />Spoiled by more contemporary images, I can't help but to look at les pleurants and see Magritte's Les Amants (and maybe that was Magritte's wish). And THAT image brings me back to an earlier self, one who loved surrealism and still finds its impress in many of the juxtapositions I find myself making in order to do my work.<br /><br />Thanks for these reflections about the power a committed teacher can have. This is the time of year I think about lasting imprints quite a bit, since every day at this close of the term brings another good-bye to students I've worked with and bonded with, sometimes for several years. But even a relationship of one semester can be quite an intense one. I try to give my students something to remember our time together by: I begin each independent study I undertake with the gift of a clementine, for example, hoping that the student will remember that study is sweet. I try to end with some words that might be worth carrying.<br /><br />But for all this calculation I've been teaching long enough to have found that it is often the offhand remarks or unthought gestures that often leave the most lasting memories: I love have students return after many years and have them narrate how something I or a colleague did but didn't think too much about either bothered them so much that they went and did something crazy, like try to learn Old English in a week (Liza are you reading this?), or gave them confidence in a time of crisis. <br /><br />I am at heart a romantic, and it is really easy for me to over-romanticize teaching (except when grades are due). But I do feel like it is privilege, and your post reminds me of that fact.<br /><br />Dissertations can certainly be journeys into solitude. I recommend more convivial paths, myself.Jeffrey Cohenhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/17346504393740520542noreply@blogger.com