[This announcement is on behalf of the BABEL Working Group Steering Committee]

2016 Winners of James J. Paxson Memorial Travel Grant

The BABEL Working Group would like to congratulate the five winners of this year’s James J. Paxson Memorial Travel Grant for Scholars of Limited Funds. They are 

• Matthew Evan Davis (Texas A&M University, Ph.D.)
• Melissa Ridley Elmes (University of North Carolina Greensboro)
• Jacquelyn Hendricks (Santa Clara University)
• Christine Kozikowski (The College of The Bahamas)
• Megan McNamee (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Ph.D.) 

These scholars will receive a financial award to offset costs of attending the International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, MI, this May. Applications were judged by a committee of Rachel Dressler (SUNY Albany), Richard Godden (Tulane), and Julie Orlemanski (University of Chicago).

Alas, there were many, many more deserving – indeed, exemplary – applicants than there were grants to distribute. With that in mind, the BABEL Steering Committee calls your attention to its spring fundraiser, with hopes of distributing EVEN MORE Paxson grants in 2017. If you value conference access for scholars of limited means, please contribute now. 

(Really, follow the link, just this second!, and give something if you can. BABEL promises to put it toward more just and more joyous intellectual futures....)

The James J. Paxson Memorial Travel Grant for Scholars of Limited Funds was initiated by a generous gift from a former student of Jim Paxson’s at the University of Florida, Mead Bowen, and is sponsored by the BABEL Working Group. It honors the late Prof. Paxson, an energetic and creative scholar who was particularly devoted to exploring medieval allegory, Piers Plowman, the relations between literature and science, medieval drama, and the works of Chaucer. The grant aids scholars to travel to the International Congress on Medieval Studies, held each May at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, Michigan. In brief, for those scholars who have had a paper accepted by the Congress, but for whom travel to the Congress presents a financial hardship (due, especially, to lack of institutional and other support), we have established this grant in memory of Jim Paxson, and, more pointedly, for persons presenting on topics that would have been dear to him. 

Congratulations to this year's winners!

#Kzoo2015: some suggested sessions

 by J J Cohen

This week begins the annual pilgrimage of medievalists and their friends to Kalamazoo, Michigan for the FIFTIETH International Congress on Medieval Studies. I'm looking forward to seeing many of you there ... and on behalf of the BABEL Steering Committee want to bring to your attention two events you are most welcome to attend: the BABEL Party Friday at Bells and the BABEL/Material Collective Bar&Business Meeting Thursday (see below).

Here are also some suggestions for sessions to attend. The list is to be read alongside the Material Collective's collation of awesomeness (50 Kalamazoos). Please add your own suggestions to the comments!

THURSDAY 10 AM Fetzer 1005
Carolyn Dinshaw’s Chaucer’s Sexual Poetics, 1990–2015 
Sponsor: BABEL Working Group
Presider: Bruce Holsinger
Hermeneutics as Autobiography Steven F. Kruger, Queens College and Graduate Center, CUNY
Glosynge Is a Glorious Thynge Emma Maggie Solberg, Bowdoin College
The Tex(t)ual Body Myra Seaman, College of Charleston
Materna Lingua Nicholas Watson, Harvard Univ.
Chaucer’s Deadly Text Lynn Shutters, Colorado State Univ.
Documents and Doctrine: A Case for Chaucer’s Discerning Women Elizabeth Robertson, Univ. of Glasgow
Response: Carolyn Dinshaw, New York Univ

THURSDAY 3:30 PM Sangren 1710
Critical Imperative: The Future of Feminism 
Sponsor: Exemplaria: Medieval / Early Modern / Theory
Organizer: Patricia Clare Ingham, Indiana Univ.–Bloomington
Presider: Tison Pugh, Univ. of Central Florida
Feminism beyond Skepticism Ruth Evans, St. Louis Univ.
New Materialism and the Future of Feminism: The Case of Le Menagier de Paris Glenn Burger, Queens College and Graduate Center, CUNY
Not Your Mother’s Historical Continuity: Feminism, Historicism, and the Case of Christine de Pizan Lynn Shutters, Colorado State Univ.

THURSDAY 5:15 p.m. Fetzer 1035
BABEL Working Group and the Material Collective 
Reception with open bar
Please bring your ideas for next year's BABEL + postmedieval sessions!
NOTE FROM EILEEN: we will also be giving away copies of Cohen & Co.'s INHUMAN NATURE and Kathleen Kennedy's MEDIEVAL HACKERS at this reception!

FRIDAY 10:00 AM Bernhard 158
Quantum Medievalisms (A Roundtable)
Sponsor: postmedieval: a journal of medieval cultural studies
Organizer: Eileen Joy, BABEL Working Group
Presider: Angela R. Bennett Segler, New York Univ.
Schroedinger’s Woman Tara Mendola, New York Univ.
The Piers Plowman Uncertainty Principle James Eric Ensley, North Carolina State Univ.
Bedetimematter Christopher Roman, Kent State Univ.–Tuscarawas
Quantum Memory and Medieval Poetics of Forgetting Jenny Boyar, Univ. of Rochester
Quantum Queerness Karma Lochrie, Indiana Univ.–Bloomington

AND ALSO FRIDAY 10:00 AM Schneider 2355
False Friends: “Translation,” “Adaptation,” or “Creative Interpretation” of the Medieval Text? 
Sponsor: eth press
Organizer: Chris Piuma, Univ. of Toronto, and David Hadbawnik, Univ. at Buffalo
Presider: David Hadbawnik
The Nonce Taxonomies of Translation and Mary Jo Bang’s Inferno Lisa Ampleman, Univ. of Cincinnati
The Well of Anachronism: Experimental Translation, Medievalism, and Gender in Contemporary Poetics Shannon Maguire, Wilfrid Laurier Univ.
Return to Sender: Re-Flemishing Chaucer’s Flemish Tales in Verhalen voor Canterbury Jonathan Hsy, George Washington Univ.
“The harlot is talkative and wandering”: Conduct Literature, Medbh McGuckian, and the Postcolonial Subject Katharine W. Jager, Univ. of Houston-Downtown

AND ALSO ALSO FRIDAY 10:00 AM Bernhard 106
The Secret Life of Medieval Plants
Organizer: Rob Wakeman, Univ. of Maryland, and Danielle Allor, Rutgers Univ.
Presider: Rob Wakeman
Human-Plant Assemblages in Cornish Ordinalia Plays, Robert W. Barrett, Jr., Univ. of Illinois–Urbana-Champaign
What Makes the Cut: Selection and Omission in the Tree Catalog, Danielle Allor
The Secret Life of Dead Plants, Haylie Swenson, George Washington Univ.
“Ripeness is all”: Plants, Oedipal Myths, and King Lear, Vin Nardizzi, Univ. of British Columbia

FRIDAY 1:30 Fetzer 2030
Feeling Medieval: Teaching Emotion in the Middle Ages 
Sponsor: TEAMS (The Consortium for the Teaching of the Middle Ages)
Organizer: Thomas A. Goodmann, Univ. of Miami Presider: Thomas A. Goodmann
A Is for Affeccioun: Strategies for the History of Emotions in the Classroom Rebecca F. McNamara, Univ. of Sydney
“The folk gan laughen at his fantasye”: Contexts for Understanding Emotion in Several Medieval Genres Anne Scott, Northern Arizona Univ.
“Parzival’s Fear and Werther’s Loathing”: Teaching Emotions in Medieval and Modern German Literature to High School Students: An Experiment Ricarda Wagner, Univ. Heidelberg
Teaching Feeling: Asceticism, Critique, and Affective Piety Paul Megna, Univ. of California–Santa Barbara
Object Emotion: Inter- and Extra-disciplinary Graduate Teaching Stephanie Downes, Univ. of Melbourne

FRIDAY 3:30 Schneider 1140
Lost (A Roundtable)
Sponsor: Medieval and Early Modern Studies Institute (MEMSI), George Washington Univ.
Presider: Jeffrey J. Cohen
Lost Speech Randy P. Schiff, Univ. at Buffalo
Lost Time Christopher Roman, Kent State Univ.–Tuscarawas
Lost in Love Lowell Duckert, West Virginia Univ.
Lost English Dual Number Pronouns Daniel Remein, Univ. of Massachusetts–Boston
Lost at Sea / Adrift Eileen Joy, BABEL Working Group
Lost Causes Jonathan Hsy, George Washington Univ.
Lost in Thought Anne F. Harris, DePauw Univ.

FRIDAY 5:30 Bernhard East Ballroom
Medieval Originality: Looking Back, Looking Forward (A Panel Discussion)
Sponsor: Material Collective; Medieval Institute, Western Michigan Univ.
Organizer: Maggie M. Williams, William Paterson Univ./Material Collective
Presider: Maggie M. Williams
A panel discussion with Eileen C. Sweeney, Boston College/Society for Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy; Pamela King, Univ. of Glasgow/Medieval and Renaissance Drama Society (MRDS); Martha Bayless, Univ. of Oregon/Platinum Latin; Robert F. Berkhofer, III, Western Michigan Univ./Haskins Society; James Borders, Univ. of Michigan–Ann Arbor/Musicology at Kalamazoo; and, as respondent, Elizabeth C. Teviotdale, Western Michigan Univ.

FRIDAY 9 PM onwards (some of us might still be there Monday morning)
BABEL Annual Party at Bells Eccentric Cafe 355 E Kalamazoo Ave (an easy walk from the Radisson, where the shuttle bus lets off).
Make sure you ask a member of the BABEL Steering Committee for a wristband so that you can enjoy the fermented beverages in radical conviviality. Also, if you don't know anyone who is a member of BABEL, that is all the more reason to come. All are welcome, but especially YOU.

SATURDAY 1:30 Fetzer 2016
Unsettled Marks: To #;()@?”:—*!… and Beyond! (A Roundtable)
Sponsor: Grammar Rabble
Organizer: Richard H. Godden, Tulane Univ., and Shyama Rajendran, George Washington Univ. Presider: Shyama Rajendran
☧ Chrismon “Can Be Set Down as a Sign Wherever the Writer Likes” Damian Fleming, Indiana Univ.-Purdue Univ.–Fort Wayne
Students, Period Kisha G. Tracy, Fitchburg State Univ.
In Search of Lost Punctuation: The Medieval Uses and the Modern Absence of the Paraph Sarah Noonan, Lindenwood Univ.
You’ve Been Punc’t Cameron Hunt McNabb, Southeastern Univ.
Tiro and the Druids Bruce Holsinger, Univ. of Virginia
Poetry / Chris Piuma, Univ. of Toronto, and David Hadbawnik, Univ. at Buffalo

SATURDAY 3:30 Fetzer 1035
Medieval Ecocriticisms: What Can Medieval Studies Bring to Ecocriticism? (A Roundtable)
Sponsor: Medieval Ecocriticisms
Organizer: Heide Estes, Univ. of Cambridge
Presider: Jeffrey Cohen
Medieval Reliquaries as Functionally Differentiated Environments Rachel S. Anderson, Grand Valley State Univ.
Ecocriticism and Medieval Eschatology Justin Brent, Presbyterian College
Ecolinguistics: Deep Time and Medieval Language Contact Jonathan Hsy, George Washington Univ.
Medieval Gardens Allyson McNitt, Univ. of Oklahoma
Animals and Gods without Us in Medieval Religious Literature Mo Pareles, Northwestern Univ.
The Early Middle English Alliterative Tradition: Husbandry, Class, Economics, and Ecocriticism Matthew Pullen, South Dakota State Univ.
Patience, ISIS, and the Ecological Scars of Perpetual War Rob Wakeman, Univ. of Maryland

SUNDAY
If you make it all the way until Sunday ... well, just stay the night with the rest of us. Seriously. Enjoy a quiet transition into the ending of the semester. Starting later in the afternoon all who are still in Kalamazoo are most welcome to rendezvous, one last time, at Bells for food and drink and conviviality. AND here is a suggestion for your Sunday morning pre-brunch treat (yes! you can eat brunch with us afterwards!):
Sunday 10:30 AM Ecotastrophes (A Roundtable) Fetzer 1010
Sponsor: Oecologies: Inhabiting Premodern Worlds
Organizer: Robert Allen Rouse, Univ. of British Columbia
Presider: Robert Allen Rouse
Plague, English, and Other Natural Disasters David K. Coley, Simon Fraser Univ.
Cultivating Catastrophe in Medieval Anglo-Welsh Literature Daniel Helbert, Univ. of British Columbia
Neighboring Wastelands, Catastrophic Hospitality, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight Richard H. Godden, Tulane Univ.
The Shape of Catastrophe
Jeffrey J. Cohen, George Washington Univ., and Lowell Duckert, West Virginia Univ.
Dark Skies and Black Gardens: Jessie Redmon Fauset’s Harlem Lady in the Medieval World Cord J. Whitaker, Wellesley College

(this post has been edited, with some of the comments moved into the main body to offer a more complete Kzoo list)

SNEAK PEEK: Preview of Materiality Sessions at #Kzoo2015

by JONATHAN HSY

Hey medievalists! You can now take a sneak peek of approved sessions for #Kzoo2015 (i.e., the 50th International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, MI, May 14-17, 2015). The sneak preview information is on this page; you can also directly view the sneak preview of sessions as a PDF.

One idea that emerged through some private discussions on Facebook was to think creatively about more dynamic and deliberate "cross-fertilization" across disciplines and subfields. Some of my Facebook friends picked up on a real interest in materiality at the 2014 conference. Through such virtual correspondence it has been noticed (for instance) that musicologists and literary scholars don't actually interact with each other as much as they could (should!) about the intertwined materiality of sound, text, and notation -- so it would be great to put our heads together to think about things like aurality, language, embodied performance, etc. In what other ways can we all move out of our various bailiwicks and "mix things up" in our sessions?

Here's a list of materiality-related sessions for #Kzoo2015. Full contact info is on this PDF.

It's a great slate of sessions. Think creatively! Consider sending in a proposal to a session that is outside your (sub)field or discipline or otherwise allows you to interact with new people! Perhaps a compelling (unofficial) "Materiality" thread can emerge from the conversations that transpire.

Sessions with materiality in title:

Association for Spanish and Portuguese Historical Studies (2): Material Iberia I: Devotional Objects, Devoted Bodies; Material Iberia II: Shaping Bodies in Literature and Art

Friends of the Saints (1): Material Engagements with the Friends of God in Post-Roman Europe (panel discussion)

Magistra (1): Mysticism and Materiality (panel)

Material Collective (1): Transgressive Materialities

Medieval Romance Society (3): Romance Materiality I–III: The (Im)materiality of the Book; Romancing the Material; The Material Afterlife

Mid-America Medieval Association [MAMA] (1): Economic and Material Collectivity and Exchange

Musicology at Kalamazoo (1): The Materiality of Music (panel)

postmedieval: a journal of medieval cultural studies (1): Quantum Medievalisms (roundtable)

Societas Magica (1): Magic and Materiality

Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship [SMFS] (1): Gender and Materiality in the Middle Ages

Society for the Study of Disability in the Middle Ages [SSDMA] (1): Disability and Material Cultures (roundtable)

Special Session: (Im)Materiality in English and Welsh Medieval Culture (1)

Special Session: When Objects Object: Misbehaving Materiality (1)

Sessions otherwise interested in materiality:

George Washington University Medieval and Early Modern Studies Institute [GW MEMSI] (1): "Lost" (panel)

Grammar Rabble (1): Unsettled Marks: To #;()@?”:-*! . . . and Beyond! (roundtable)

Kalamazoo 2013 in Five Words

by ALL OF US (JEFFREY, EILEEN, KARL, MARY KATE, JONATHAN)

Cavorting with a pinniped companion in Kalamazoo.

We should really be photoshopped into one image, but whatevs.

We're back from the International Medieval Congress in Kalamazoo! Detailed blog postings will surely follow -- but (for now) each of us has selected one word to sum things up. Here are the words (in no particular order):

Eileen: EMERGENT

Jeffrey: IMPOSSIBLE

Karl: SLATHER

Jonathan: UNCONTAINABLE

Mary Kate: HOPE

(Questions, reactions? Dish in the comments section below!)

Karl's Kzoo2013 Paper -- Feeding the Dogs / The Queer Prioress and Her Pets

Grave Stele of the Dog Parthenope

by Karl Steel

My Kalamazoo session, as I mention in comments below, is at an unfortunate time for fans of this blog, opposite the 10am Saturday MEMSI Session (The Future We Want: A Collaboration [roundtable: GW-MEMSI]) described in Eileen's post. I don't mind speaking to a room of (mostly) strangers; I don't even mind speaking to an empty room (but I hope I don't); but I do mind your not getting to encounter my paper.

So, there it is, down below.

It's a longer version of a blog post from last September, and, in a way, a development of another one from 2006 about Tristan's loving dog. It's also, I think, more worrying at the problems of pet love I play with in this Studies in the Age of Chaucer piece.

On a related note, if you haven't read Will Stockton's beautiful piece here, "Steiner Crushes Derrida: Or, Veganism for Boys," do that, too, as its material on inapt affect harmonizes with what's below, which I'm now calling "The Queer Prioress and Her Pets."

====

Everybody knows what we should think about the Prioress’ love for animals.¹ She steals from the poor by feeding her “smale houndes” roast meat and good bread. And she’s breaking the rules just by keeping pets. As we all know, lapdogs are less appropriately at home in a convent than in the houses of secular noblewomen. The criticism then tends to list a set of prohibitions against conventual pet-keeping,² which other articles counter by cataloging the very many nuns who did keep pets.³ But whatever the actual practice of actual nuns, it's clear enough that Chaucer's portrait isn't praising the Prioress for her dogs. Something is off here.

And then there’s still the weeping, for dogs and even for mice. All this together has produced a steady run of more and generally less sympathetic commentary on her emotions or what’s been called her emotional displays, commentary whose tone seems to modulate according to the critics’ attitude towards both nonhuman animals and women. Marking how her compassion for mice of all things shows her “delicate sensibilities”⁴ is perhaps as kind as the criticism gets.⁵ Here’s a sample of the others. First, Kittridge, who diagnoses the Prioress’s dogs as a symptom of her “thwarted motherhood.”⁶ By observing that the milk, bread, and softened meat the Prioress feeds her dogs matches what Avicenna recommends as a suitable diet for infants, Edward Condren likewise pegs the Prioress as acting out “maternal instincts.”⁷ More recently, the animals have been identified as evidence of her stunted psychological development, evidenced elsewhere in her excessive concern for the integrity of own orifices.⁸ She’s otherwise been called an insincere show-off,⁹ inane,¹⁰ and extravagant,¹¹ isolated from proper human sentiments.¹² She’s been charged with demonstrating--and this is my last one--"the suppressed sexual instincts of a big girl who has transferred her emotional needs to dogs, rather than to human charity or spiritual devotion.”¹³

What I’ve rehearsed just now has been played through many times. And I trust you to sense that I’m not on board with everything I’ve been reporting, though, as you’ll hear, I’m going to do something different than just the usual agonistic response to my critical forebears. In fact, I’m going to agree with them, sort of, even while arguing that previous criticism has been too confidently human, too confident in what affections are appropriate to humans, and too unwilling to let their sense of human community be challenged by how the Prioress loves.

Let me restate what we've been told. The Prioress is impractical. Eating for her is a ceremony of politeness, not simply a way to get fed; per the record of the General Prologue, she’s the only one of the pilgrims to attempt any refinement in her table manners. She takes particular pains with her dress, as with her eating, tending towards the impractical and decorative. And above all she loves and grieves for the wrong things. She has not given herself to proper society. Instead of loving children, she devotes herself to what tend to be called only inauthentic and somewhat pathetic substitutes. While the monk keeps hunting dogs, working animals with a purpose, and suitable to his rowdiness, she keeps animals just as companions, as delicate as she is, not there to run with men but to be beaten by them. She herself suffers from arrested development. Her prayer and her tale both suggest an excessive attachment to mothers. She’s insufficiently linguistic. She attaches herself to mute beasts; she has the little clergeon of her fatherless tale prefer to learn language ‘by rote,’ to devote himself to his mother and the Mother Mary and to keep himself from from the social language of the Symbolic.

Another restatement: The Prioress refuses the straight time that requires her to develop into proper adulthood, with a proper family, proper loves, appropriate sentiments.¹⁴ She won’t leave off play. She’s decorative.

Bluntly put, according to any number of standard catalogs, the Prioress is queer.¹⁵ To point out that nuns often kept pets, to call her compassion excusably feminine, to observe that we never do actually see her weep for mice--which, we’re told, would be “the height of satire”¹⁶--to suggest that the Prioress’s actual profession would have required her to take on the characteristics of a secular noblewoman: all of this normalizes her. I think straightening her out is a mistake.The oscillation of the critical tradition between condemnation and indulgence is evidence enough that there is something off about her. With all due respect to source studies, I don’t think we should seek to find a literary or historical spot for the Prioress that can arrest that oscillation. She’s never going to work quite properly.

But to condemn her as misdirected or even as an inauthentic fraud is just as much a mistake. Even the General Prologue does this when it speaks of her taking pains to “counterfeit” the behavior of the well-bred. The claim of inauthenticity of course allows us to pretend that authenticity exists somewhere, that somewhere out there, maybe even in our own tastes and behavior, there’s authentic Thai food or blues, the “real Paris,” the sincere neighborhood or street or diner as yet unmarred by hipster irony. In this case, we get to pretend that what we have what the Prioress doesn't, an authentic, deep, true, and appropriate feeling for our fellow human beings and own, real children. If the Prioress’s inauthentic feelings, or, to make this even clearer, her drag of proper emotions, are made to perform any function, it’s less to condemn her than to let the rest of us pretend that we’re doing it right. Or that there's a chance to do it right at all.

It’s particularly galling to call the Prioress’s love inauthentic or misdirected, as if love elsewhere works any better. Love is great, sure, but as we know simply from reading The Canterbury Tales, it's also generally improper, a bad fit, a morass of bad feelings, an incitement to jealousy, grotesque embarrassment, and confusion. Here I think of Dominic Pettman’s Human Error, which, while discussing the films Zoo and Tierische Liebe among other works, reminds us how love can entail “monomania, projective narcissisms, and so on,” a “familiar libidinal economy, involving the kinds of struggles around difference and recognition that can lead to passive-aggressive sulking because of perceived miscommunication.”¹⁷ But I could just as well direct you to the grotesque love of medieval animal stories: the suicidal horse Bonus Amicus in the Otia Imperalia, the suicidal knight in some versions of the Guinefort legend. By comparison, the Prioress’s animal love seems to work well, better than what we find even in the Franklin’s Tale.

Like other loves, hers centers around the hearth, which is to say, around eating. Her portrait links together the weeping, her charity, and her eating with these animals. Her charity and pity are such that she would weep for trapped mice, which were, presumably, themselves caught pilfering the abbey’s food. As we all know from the Canterbury pilgrims themselves, eating together makes community. These animals, then, form the Prioress’s other community. Becoming messmates with these nonhumans opens the Prioress to a emotional connections unavailable or even incomprehensible to those humans willing to share a meal only with members of their own species.

And making such a community means making new vulnerabilities, likewise incomprehensible to other humans. This isn’t simply cute or silly. (For something like that--though not just that--I direct you to the website for the “Freedom to Marry Our Pets Society,” run by the Bully Bloggers, a collective of several notable queer theorists.¹⁸ It’s hilarious but maybe not relevant to what I’m doing today.) The Prioress weeps terribly if one of her dogs dies. This is her own, animal community, one no one else respects. Though she’s a prioress and thus a person of no small authority, even her own beloved dogs might suffer the “yerde smerte” of men indifferent to her position and insensible to the significant vulnerability of nonhumans.

Alone with these humans, she weeps. It’s typical in commentary to talk about weeping as a sign of penitence; but it can also be identified as a voice. Medieval linguistic treatises classified weeping and sobbing as vox confusa along with “voces volucrum aut bestiarum,” the voices of birds and beasts.¹⁹ By weeping over them, the Prioress speaks their language, a language that no one else is willing to hear.

The Prioress’s critics might respond by observing that at least two late medieval conduct books, Symon’s Lesson of Wysedome for all Maner Chyldryn and Caxton’s Book of Curtesye, specifically recommended that children learn not to beat anyone’s dog with a stick, which once again suggests that the Prioress is just “wel ytaught” (I.127), still just putting on airs; but again, I wouldn’t rely too much on the distinction between authentic and inauthentic, the true and the supposedly merely performed. More to the point, no courtesy manual would ever recommend that its readers habituate themselves to weeping for mice. The Prioress does, and, at the very least in the eyes of her critics, isolates herself as thoroughly as another of Middle English literature’s famous weeping women.²⁰

For those familiar with critical animal studies, my talk of messmates and companions will necessarily recall Donna Haraway’s When Species Meet. As much as I like it, I’m not going to be turning to her work, however, because I don’t think her primarily ontological proposals would lend themselves to the Prioress’s portrait without a lot of straining. More light can be shed on on the isolations the Prioress risks in her own community through Kathy Rudy's Loving Animals: Towards a New Animal Advocacy. Here Rudy talks about finally breaking up with what she is certain will be her final girlfriend and deciding to devote her household life entirely to her dogs. This wasn’t easy. She writes that "the task of coming out as gay was a piece of cake compared to coming out as--what?" She observes "there is not an adequate name for the kind of life I lead, the way my desires organize themselves around animals, especially dogs",²¹ that "it's not so much that I am no longer a lesbian...it's that the binary of gay and straight no longer has anything to do with me. My preference these days is canine."²²

Rudy cooks for her dogs. One loves any kind of meat, another needs a lot more food than you'd think to look at her, and another, Duncan, a yellow lab mix, loves breakfast food: oatmeal and scrambled eggs. Rudy's learned a lot more about her dogs by feeding them; it's another way to "talk" to the dogs, to build affection and knowledge, another way, she writes, to make "their subjectivity more visible."²³ She's made a better love between them, which is to say, this queer animal lover is making love to them in a new, better way. And Rudy, too, risks making herself ridiculous.

The Prioress’s love is unjustifiable.That’s part of what lets it be love. But it's beyond the love that’s normally thought appropriate. There’s no human reason to it. It’s directed at mice who want her food, dogs that can offer nothing in return but play, loyalty, and love. Though it’s earned her mostly contempt, she persists in it.

In a more moral sense, her love is also unjustifiable. While commentators delight in condemning the Prioress for the extravagance of feeding her dogs roast meat, none that I know of has got her for the hypocrisy of weeping over animals while feeding her dogs the flesh of who knows what slaughtered beast. Some animals matter to her; most don’t; and so we have, seemingly, what Cary Wolfe and Jonathan Elmer nearly 20 years ago called “the logic of the pet,”²⁴ which leaves human privilege in place by exempting housepets from a system that condemns most other domestic animals to butchery. So much for her conscience, we could say: but more about that very soon.

Moreover, when she feeds her dogs “rosted flessh, or milk and wastel-breed,” she is--per the Bookof the Knight of the Tour-Landry and the Johns Bromyard and Wyclif--misdirecting resources that would better be given to the poor.²⁵ If this flesh and bread are table scraps, perhaps slipped to begging dogs, then the Prioress is committing a kind of “alms-fraud,” short-circuiting the compulsory reliqua almsgiving that alone justified what’s been called the extreme “overprovision” of feasts in monastic and other houses.²⁶ We have records of people dying while waiting for charity like this.²⁷ It may be still worse if she pilfers this food not from her own setting, but rather from the abbey’s own stores. Wastel-bread was far from the low-quality “horsebread”²⁸ more suitable for provisioning animals, and, in a Benedictine convent, roast meat was at least de jure meant only for the sick. In this case, we wouldn’t have misdirection but rather a kind of embezzlement.

But, as I draw towards my conclusion, I’m not going to link the Prioress’s sentimental, embarrassing, unjustified, and selfish charity for animals directly to her hatred of the Jews. This move is usual, if not in the criticism, then certainly among my students and possibly yours too. The Prioress loves little things--dogs, mice, children--and conflates Jews and excrement to tell what has become the ugliest and most embarrassing Canterbury Tale. The logic seems to be that she has two things terribly wrong with her and that they must be linked. So, for example, if only she felt more proper compassion, her tale wouldn’t have been so hateful. Sentimentality and hatred of “the cursede Jewes,”²⁹ to use the Parson’s language: one of these, it’s not clear which, is a symptom of the other. But such an argument saves mainstream late medieval Christianity--and above all Chaucer--from anti-semitism. I think this is special pleading and probably the wrong way to go at the problem.

The problem may be with love and community themselves.³⁰ Cases like these, where the love looks monstrous, where it doesn't follow the rules, helps us see that better. The Prioress never lets us forget love’s exclusions and even violence. Love makes choices, and hers are strange and horrible, as much to her contemporaries as to us. On the inside, her dogs and mice, and on the outside most other animals, the poor, and Jews.

Her brooch, which I’m concluding with, lets us know how this works. It doesn’t say AMOR AMAT OMNIA but, as you know, AMOR VINCIT OMNIA. This is a metaphor of violence, but also a metaphor of conquest, which is to say, a metaphor of claiming territory, of drawing lines, of borders, and dividing the whole between valued subjects and those compelled to serve. This is a love that fights on behalf of some and lets the rest be butchered or executed. We shouldn’t simply condemn the brooch as being the wrong kind of love; rather, I’m hoping that we can use it to probe our own good conscience, to wonder at love, at what’s left out, and whether it’s possible to get it right.³¹

Thank you.

1 For a review of viewpoints, most of which remain current, see Malcolm Andrew, ed. A Variorum Edition of the Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, Vol II: The Canterbury Tales, The General Prologue Part One B Explanatory Notes (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1993), 146-54.

2 R. D. Simons, “The Prioress’s Disobedience of Benedictine Rule,” CLA Journal 12.1 (1968): 77-83, 81, citing Manly 216, address given to Benedictine nuns of Chatteras in Cambridge in 1345.

3 Henry Ansgar Kelly, “A Neo-Revisionist Look at Chaucer’s Nuns,” The Chaucer Review 31.2 (1996): 115-32

4 Robert Raymo, “The General Prologue,” in Sources and Analogues of the Canterbury Tales. Vol 2., ed. Robert M. Correale and Mary Hamel, (2005/2009), 15. See 18 n34 for a summary of criticism on the dogs.

5 Further judgments: “clearly at fault,” in Thomas J. Farrell. "Hybrid Discourse in the General Prologue Portraits," Studies in the Age of Chaucer 30.1 (2008): 39-93, 84-85, who also emphasizes that her weeping for mice is only hypothetical (“if that”); William Rothwell, “Stratford-at-Bowe Revisited,” The Chaucer Review 36.2 (2001) 184-207, 186, which contrasts her properly feminine love of dogs to the Monk’s “boisterous hunting” with greyhounds

6 "What can the Prioress know of a mother's feelings? Everything, though she is never to have children, having chosen, so she thought, the better part. But her heart goes out, in yearnings which she does not comprehend or try to analyze, to little dogs, and little boys at school. Nowhere is the poignant trait of thwarted motherhood so affecting as in this character of the Prioress." Chaucer and His Poetry (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1915), 178

7 Edward I. Condren, “The Prioress: A Legend of Spirit, A Life of Flesh,” The Chaucer Review 23.3 (1989): 192-218, 194 and 214 n16.

8 Marrall Llewelyn Price, “Sadism and Sentimentality: Absorbing Antisemitism in Chaucer’s Prioress,” The Chaucer Review 43.2 (2008): 197-214.

9 Eg R. D. Eaton, “Sin and Sensibility: The Conscience of Chaucer’s Prioress,” JEGP 104.4 (2005): 495-513

10 Simons, “Prioress’s Disobedience,” 80.

11 Helen Cooper, The Canterbury Tales: An Oxford Guide, “her extravagance towards her lapdogs,” 38

12 Eaton, again.

13 John Finlayson, “Chaucer’s Prioress and Amor Vincit Omnia,” Studia Neophilologica 60.2 (1988): 171-74

14 Considering lines like “But as a child of twelf monthe oolde or lesse / That kan unnethe any word expresse, / Right so fare I” (7.484-86), Stephen Spector, "Empathy and Enmity in the Prioress's Tale," in Love, Friendship, Sex, and Marriage in the Medieval World, ed. Robert R. Edwards and Stephen Spector (Albany: SUNY Press, 1991), 211-229, 220, observes that the Prioress is no thwarted mother but rather, in her prologue’s self-presentation, a child.

15 Most recently, I have in mind a recent facebook post by JJ Cohen sharing a draft of the introduction of essay on queer theory and disability studies: https://www.facebook.com/jjcohen/posts/10200545803381303 “In this arrested temporality the queer is also frequently represented as residing: within a failure of maturity and progress, within a refusal of straight time.” In a longer version of this paper, a response to Traub would go here

16 RD Simons, 80; “Hilarious” Kaske review of Robertson, cited in Eaton, “Sin and Sensibility.”

17 Human Error 95

18 http://bullybloggers.wordpress.com/freedom-society-page/; Lisa Duggan, Jack Halberstam, José Estaban Munoz, and Tavia Nyong’o.

19 Thomas of Cantimpré, Liber de natura rerum, p. 26: “Omnis autem vox articulata est aut confusa: articulata hominum, confusa animalium. Articulata est, que scribi potest ut a, e; confusa, que scribi non potest ut gemitus infirmorum et voces volucrum aut bestiarum” [All voices are either distinct or indistinct: the human voice is distinct, and animal indistinct. A distinct voice is one that can be written, such as A or E; an indistinct voice is one that cannot be written, such as the moaning of the sick or the voices of birds and beasts].

20 A longer version of this paper will do much with Jeffrey Cohen’s reading of Margery Kempe’s tears, “most prevalent at those moments when [Kempe] is moving away from socially legible categories like mother, brewer, miller, pilgrim and becoming something other, something difficult to articulate in advance,” Medieval Identity Machines (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003, and perhaps even reframe Cohen’s provocative question “Was Margery Kempe Jewish?” to include the Prioress.

21 Loving Animals 35

22 Loving Animals 41

23 Loving Animals 184

24 “Subject to Sacrifice: Ideology, Psychoanalysis, and the Discourse of Species in Jonathan Demme’s The Silence of the Lambs,” boundary 2 22.3 (1995): 141-170, 149, reprinted in Wolfe Animal Rites: American Culture, The Discourse of Species, and Posthumanist Theory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), 97-121.

25 Wyclif, "But now þe more þat a curat haþ of pore mennys goodis, þe more comunly he wastiþ in costy fedynge of houndis & haukis, and suffre pore men haue grete defaute of mete & drynk & cloiþ," quoted in Richard Rex, The Sins of Madame Eglentyne: And Other Essays on Chaucer (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1995), 102.

26 Maria A. Moisà, “The Giving of Leftovers in Medieval England,” Food and Foodways: Explorations in the History and Culture of Human Nourishment 9.2 (2001): 81-94. Cites Bishop Wykeham 1387 nuns depriving poor of alms by keeping pets

27 Moisà, “The Giving of Leftovers in Medieval England,” 82.

28 for example, "Cornelius Walford, "Early Laws and Customs in Great Britain Regarding Food," in Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, ed. Charles Rogers, Vol. 8 (London, Royal Historical Society, 1880), 70-162, 145-46. See also Variorum Edition 152-53.

29 XII, p. 307b, Riverside Chaucer

30 Long note about Esposito might be happy here!

31 Obviously working in the tragic mode of Derrida’s Gift of Death, e.g.,”What binds me to singularities, to this one or that one, male or female, rather than that one or this one, remains finally unjustifiable....as unjustifiable as the infinite sacrifices I make at each moment,” but also beginning to think through Cary Wolfe in Before the Law, 83, “Is there not a qualitative difference between the chimpanzee used in biomedical research, the flea on her skin, and the cage she lives in—and a difference that matters more (one might even say, in Derridean tones, “infinitely” more) to the chimpanzee than to the flea or the cage? I think there is.”

Now, Kalamazoo Voyager!

by EILEEN JOY

The International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, Michigan is fast approaching, so if you have not ordered your steampunk glasses and hauberk, I recommend you do so now. The BABEL Working Group, GW's Medieval and Early Modern Studies Institute, and postmedieval are all sponsoring sessions, which are described below, and I invite everyone to use the comments section here to direct our attention to other sessions which you think would be of interest to readers of the In The Middle or just to say, "I'm in this session; come and heckle me!" In the meantime, in order to further our project of a drunkenly deranged medieval studies in which all of our critical faculties are thrown to the wayside in favor of a micropolitics of disruption, revelry, and indiscriminate affection [and maybe a few fistfights and sudden sing-a-longs of Neutral Milk Hotel], please consider yourself invited to the following social events:

Karaoke @Shakespeare's Pub
Wednesday, May 8th, 9:00 pm onward

BABEL Working Group: Open-Bar Reception/Meeting
Friday, May 10th, 5:15 pm, Fetzer 2020
*we will be giving away punctum books [Thomas Meyer's Beowulf, Dark Chaucer: An Assortment, Speculative Medievalisms: Discography, and Animal, Vegetable, Mineral: Ethics and Objects], and also taking suggestions for panel themes for the 2014 Congress

BABEL Working Group + postmedieval: Annual Party
Friday, May 10th, 9:00 pm onwards
@Bell's Brewery
*all the beer is on BABEL [wristbands to be distributed at brewery]

I want to mention here, also, that Palgrave has finally agreed to a special discounted price [$49 per year for 4 issues, print + online] for graduate student subscribers to postmedieval, and you can see more about that HERE.  Related to that, we are also giving away 3 annual subscriptions [print + online] to the journal via a special Twitter contest, and you can see more about that HERE.

Thursday, May 9th @1:30 pm, Fetzer 1005

THRIVING [roundtable: postmedieval]

The work of Aranye Fradenburg, especially her psychoanalytic criticism of Chaucer, and her formulations of discontinuist historical approaches to the Middle Ages, has been extremely influential within medieval studies for the past 15 or so years. More recently she has been focusing on more broad defenses of the humanities, especially with regard to the valuable role of literary studies relative to the arts of everyday living, eudaimonia [flourishing], ethical community, and well-being, and also on psychoanalysis itself as a "liberal art." Relationality, intersubjectivity, aliveness, resilience, care of the self and also of others, adaptive flexibility, playfulness, shared attention, companionship, healing, and thriving seem, increasingly, to be the key watchwords and concerns of Fradenburg's work, and at the same time, the so-called "literary" mode is still central to these concerns, such that, as Fradenburg has written, "Interpretation and relationality depend on one another because all relationships are unending processes of interpretation and expression, listening and signifying. In turn, sentience assists relationality: we can’t thrive and probably can’t survive without minds open to possibility, capable of sensing and interpreting the tiniest shifts in, e.g., pitch and tone." This roundtable features short presentations on the valuable role(s) that medieval studies might play in the future of the liberal arts, especially as they pertain to "thriving" and "living" and to the ways in which living itself is an art.

• Patricia Clare Ingham, "Living and Thriving"
• Randy P. Schiff, " Come Flourish With Me: Critically Mixing Pleasure and Politics"
• Julie Orlemanski, "Provisionality and Provision"
• Kathy Lavezzo, "'From His Mouth Delyverly': Thriving in the Nun's Priest's Tale"
• Paul Megna, "Sacrificial Thriving"
• Daniel C. Remain, "living/riddle"
• Aranye Fradenburg, "Staying Alive"
• Michael Snediker, "Fuzzy Thinking"

Saturday, May 11th @10:00 am, Fetzer 1005

The Future We Want: A Collaboration [roundtable: GW-MEMSI]

Building upon a series of sessions at last year's International Medieval Congress that focused on the active engagement to which humanists must commit in order not to find themselves in merely passive, reactive, protest-oriented positions, we hope to extend and intensify a conversation about how to shape the humanities, and ourselves, in the years ahead.

• Karen Eileen Overbey + Anne F. Harris: Field Change/Discipline Change
• Aranye Fradenburg + Eileen Joy: Institutional Change/Paradigm Change
• Will Stockton + Allan Mitchell: Time Change/Mode Change
• Lowell Duckert + Steve Mentz: World Change/Sea Change
• Chris Piuma + Jonathan Hsy: Voice Change/Language Change
• Julie Orlemanski + Julian Yates: Collective Change/Mood Change

Saturday, May 11th @1:30 pm, Bernhard 158

Plunder [roundtable: BABEL Working Group]

Fifteen of Hrothgar's house-guards / surprised on their benches and ruthlessly devoured, / and as many again carried away, / a brutal plunder. 

~ Beowulf, trans. Seamus Heaney

This session features short presentations that explore texts and other artifacts, and/or any aspect of scholarship on the Middle Ages, that engage, practically and theoretically, consciously or unconsciously, in plunder and plundering -- defined as taking, stealing, pillaging, rapine, ransacking, spoiling, piracy, embezzlement, thieving, booty, depredation, conquest, despoiling, desolation, capture, seizure, sacking, looting, and robbery. It is hoped that presentations will trace some of the ways in which "plunder" has served as an historical actant, "making things happen" (for good or ill) that could not be anticipated in advance and which (somewhat and somehow) escapes full human control.

• Kathleen E. Kennedy, "The Wycliffite Bible as Foxe's Furta Sacra"
• David M. Perry, "Venetian Vectors of Plunder"
• Anna Klosowska, "The Math of Longing"
• Susan Nakley, "Chaos and Noble Designs, or, Blunder then Plunder?"
• Laurie A. Finke and Martin B. Shichtman, "Plundering History: Fraternal Organizations and the Middle Ages"

Saturday, May 11th @3:30 pm, Bernhard 158

Then, with chaos and blunders encircling my head, / Let me ponder.

~ Oliver Goldsmith, "Retaliation 21"

This session features short presentations that explore medieval texts and other artifacts, and/or any aspect of scholarship on the Middle Ages, that engage, practically and theoretically, consciously or unconsciously, in blunder and blundering -- defined as confusion, bewilderment, trouble, disturbance, clamour, discomfiture, turmoil, mistakes, stupidity, carelessness, bumbling, errancy, confounding, foolishness, foiling, stumbling, perturbing, mayhem, fracas, and noise. It is hoped that presentations will trace some of the ways in which "blunder" has served as an historical actant, "making things happen" (for good or ill) that could not be anticipated in advance and which (somewhat and somehow) escapes full human control.

• Mary Kate Hurley, "Blundering at the End in Beowulf"
• M.W. Bychowski, "The Fruit of Failure"
• Nancy F. Thompson + Maggie Williams, "Speculations"
• David Hadbawnik, "Scribal Blunders, Poetic Wonders: Reports from a Modern-Day Scribe"
• Marianne Bleeke + Anne F. Harris, "Slices and Splices"
• Asa Simon Mittman + Shyama Rajendran, "Failblog/Fumblr"

Don't forget to also pack your crowns:

Medieval Congress Preview Schedule

by KARL STEEL

A sneak preview of the schedule for the 46th International Congress on Medieval Studies (aka, Kzoo, aka The Zoo) is available here.

We'd love to see you at the following sessions:

Thursday 10am, Session 21, Fetzer 1005

Objects, Networks, and Materiality (A Roundtable)

Organized and Presided over by Jeffrey, and Sponsored by MEMSI

"A Parliament of Things?" Laurie A. Finke

"Things without Faces" Julie Orlemanski

"Medieval Nets" Valerie Allen

"Passionate Matter" Elizabeth "Liza!" Blake

"Remediating Matter" Kellie Robertson

"The Ice Age Is Never One" Lowell Duckert

Friday 10am, Session 179, Valley 1, 100

Medieval Taxonomies

Organized by Emily Steiner. Presided over by Martha Dana Rust

"Beauty" Michelle Karnes

"Lithic Animation, or, Do Rocks Have Souls?" Jeffrey!

"Social Registers: Homily, Satire, and the Classification of Persons in the Thirteenth Century" Claire M. Waters

"An Encyclopedia of Kinds: Varieties of Knowledge in Schoolroom Learning" Christopher Cannon

Thursday 7:30pm, Session 164, Bernhard 204

On the Love of Commentary (In Love)

Sponsored by Glossator: Practice and Theory of the Commentary

Organized and Presided over by Nicola Masciandaro

"The Grace of Hermeneutics" Michael E. Moore

"Love and Fragments: Medieval Aristotle after Barthes" Anna M. Kłosowska

"Vestiges of a Lost Pedagogy: Medieval Commentary and the Love of Reading" Valerie M. Wilhite

"I Will Restore to You the Years that the Locust Hath Eaten: Spencer Reece’s Addresses" Eileen!

"I Love It When You Call My Name" Karmen MacKendrick

Friday 10am, Session 217, Schneider 1360

The Transcultural Middle Ages

Sponsored by postmedieval: a journal of medieval cultural studies

Organized by Eileen! Presided over by Laurie A. Finke and Martin "Marty!" B. Shichtman

"Chaucer, Graunson, and Juan Ruiz’s Libro de buen amor" Lydia Fletcher

"Caxton’s Betweenness: Polyglot Printing and Translingual Mediation" Jonathan Hsy

"The Traffic in Monsters: The Scottish Buik of King Alexander and the Malay Hikayat Iskander Zulkarnain" Su Fang Ng

Friday 1:30pm, Session 276, Bernhard 159

Madness, Methodology, Medievalisms (A Roundtable)

Sponsor: BABEL Working Group

Organized and presided over by Eileen!

"What Looks Like Crazy: Margery Kempe and the Meanings of Diagnosis" Mo Pareles

"Transversing Our Soundscapes of Lunacy: Agoraphobia and (Un)Masking Madness" Elliot A. Jarbe

"Madness, Masculinity, and the Feminine Audience in Hoccleve’s Series" Jennifer Little

"Ni Wood for Sorow: On (the Necessity of) Being at One’s Wit’s End in The Cloud of Unknowing" Nicola Masciandaro

Respondent: Michael G. Sargent

Friday 3:30pm Session 332 Bernhard 105

Queering the Muse: Medieval Poetry and Contemporary Poetics (A Roundtable)

Sponsor: BABEL Working Group

Organized by Eileen! Presided over by Anna M. Kłosowska

"Jack Spicer and Robert Duncan: The Serial, the Field, and the Medieval" Daniel C. Remein

"'Beowulf is a hoax': Jack Spicer’s Medievalism and Queer Translation" David Hadbawnik

"Jack Spicer’s Interlinear Death in the Translation of Beowulf" Sean Reynolds

"Anticipatory Plagiarism and the Ex Post Facto Garde in the Middle Ages" Chris Piuma

"A Basket of Fire: Anne Sexton’s Radical Mysticism" Christopher Roman

"'Timor mortis conturbat me': Death, Representational Making, and the Poetics of the Possible" Katharine W. Jager

Saturday 3:30pm, Session 471, Fetzer 1010

Beowulf and History (A Panel Discussion)

Sponsored by Oregon Medieval English Literature Society (OMELS)

Organized by Danna Voth, Marcus Hensel, and Diana Coogle. Presider over by Diana Coogle

A panel discussion with Eileen A. Joy, (“The Time of Beowulf Is Infinite in Every Direction: Redux”); Thomas D. Hill; and James W. Earl (“The Swedish Wars”)

Friday 10am, Session 175, Valley II 205

Problematic Pets in the Middle Ages

Sponsor: Medieval Association of the Midwest (MAM)

Organized by Peter H. Goodrich. Presider over by Kristen M. Figg

"'Neither Person Nor Beast': Dogs as the Liminal Human in Medieval Literature" Alison Ganze Langdon

"Ridiculous Mourning: Dead Animals and Lost Humans" Karl!

"Pets and Other Animals in Richard of Venosa’s De Paulino et Polla" John B. Dillon

You have five months, starting roughly now, to procrastinate on writing your papers. Please use the time as wisely as you can.

Photo of Kalamazoo from Dave Sizer via a Creative Commons attribution license.

Kalamazoo 2011: Some panels and roundtables of interest

by J J Cohen

The International Congress on Medieval Studies (AKA Kzoo) CFP 2011 is out. Here are a few panels that seem to my untrained eye a bit promising, along with contact information.

1. Medieval and Early Modern Studies Institute (MEMSI), George Washington Univ.: Objects, Networks, and Materiality (A Roundtable): Jeffrey J. Cohen George Washington Univ. Dept. of English Washington, DC 20052 (jjcohen@gwu.edu)
2. BABEL Working Group: I. Madness, Methodology, Medievalisms (A Roundtable); II. Queering the Muse: Medieval Poetry and Contemporary Poetics (A Roundtable). Eileen A. Joy (ejoy@siue.edu)
3. Exemplaria: A Journal of Theory in Medieval and Renaissance Studies: Surface versus Symptomatic Readings. Tison Pugh (tpugh@mail.ucf.edu)
4. Glossator: Practice and Theory of the Commentary: On the Love of Commentary (In Love) (A Roundtable). Nicola Masciandaro (nicolamasciandaro@gmail.com)
5. Monsters: The Experimental Association for the Research of Cryptozoology through Scholarly Theory and Practical Application (MEARCSTAPA): I. Outlaws, Outliers, and Outsiders; II. Prehuman, Nonhuman, Posthuman: Monsters in the Middle Ages. Renee Ward (rward@wlu.ca)
6. postmedieval: a journal of medieval cultural studies: The Transcultural Middle Ages. Eileen A. Joy (ejoy@siue.edu)
7. Imagining English Territory in Middle English Romance. Randy P. Schiff (rpschiff@buffalo.edu)
8. Silent Knights: The Unspoken, the Unspeaking, and the Unspeakable in Courtly Narrative. Michael Wenthe (wenthe@american.edu)

That's just from a quick skim; please add what I've missed in the comments. 

Also, if we had a contest for longest name for a medievalist organization, I'm sure the "Alliance for the Promotion of Research on the Villains of the Matter of Britain and the Virtual Society for the Study of Popular Culture and the Middle Ages" would win. The International Marie de France Society is sponsoring two sessions with titles I love: "Death by Hot Tub: Performances of Equitan" and "Tub Tales: Equitan and Other Short Narratives involving Adventures in a Tub." A question that has long plagued me is being posed at this conference ("The Enigma of Medieval Gruit: What Were Ales Like before the Advent of Hops?"). And I did notice that there is a proposed session on "Medieval Cougars" -- that would be the medieval women of a certain age who, well, you know. Right?

Memories of Kalamazoo (2010 edition)

by J J Cohen

Monday, gray rain, and an office full of papers in folders and in stacks and in small messy strews. Before the return to that which must be done, though, some lingering over Michigan pleasures enjoyed.

1. Swag I. My Facebook status on the eve of Kalamazoo departure: "Do you like decorative accessories that can poke people so sharply as to draw blood? ESPECIALLY if this swag is emblazoned with an Englishman on an elephant? AND has a Latin inscription? Stop me and ask me for yours if you see me at Kalamazoo. I may poke you with it, but the gift is well worth the bleeding." Can you guess what I was distributing on behalf of GW MEMSI at Kzoo (besides pain and suffering)?
2. Swag II. The best swag was -- of course -- the free copy of the initial issue of postmedieval that Palgrave gave to those stopping by their table at the book exhibit. Palgrave also had gray plastic yoyos emblazoned with the postmedieval logo. None of the five toys I snatched actually worked (strings not tied properly? moron attached to the end of the string?). The yoyos did, however, make impressive weapons when swung around the BABEL suite. I brought two home for my kids, and they've been using theirs to annoy and attack each other as well.
3. Gifts. The following purchases from the exhibit area accompanied me home: a blue t-shirt with armored men in disco poses, the words Saturday Knight Fever across its back (for my son); a book of fairy tales involving dragons (daughter); chocolate bark made by Trappistine nuns (spouse; I told her that the confections had been imbued with the sublimated sexual yearnings of its chaste preparers, and that nothing adds to the flavor of chocolate like sublimated sexuality. Personally though I think conventual desires have a slightly leek-like aftertaste, but that's just me).
4. Music 1. Lowell Duckert, my traveling companion, put together a playlist of songs on his iPod for us to listen to on the trip from Detroit to Kzoo. Lowell is an old soul in a young body; most of the songs I recognized from having an older sister who adored the music when it was new. So in our electric blue Hyundai Elantra we grooved to Fleetwood Mac, America, Boston, the Eagles ... 
5. Music II. Late in the night in the BABEL suite we engaged in a Tuneless Karaoke. No machine is necessary for this one: you just sing as if you had a soundtrack, preferably with a serious introduction about how the music speaks to your soul. Favorite: a skillful version of "You Can Go Your Own Way" (J J Cohen, Dan Remein, Lowell Duckert; it began by my emphatic asking of the eternal question "Can you go your own way?") and a beautiful cover of "Grendel's Mother" (J J Cohen, Dan Remein, Brantley Bryant). 
6. Feats of Strength and Poetry. For reasons that escape me I frequently invent useless contests at Kalamazoo. I convinced Eileen Joy to arm wrestle Jonathan Jarrett to see whether Literature or History would prevail. Predictably literature was crushed, leading Eileen to exclaim: "History wins again! Literature is in second place, call it last place: whatever you want. We are the orphan of history and we like it that way. We gather in back alleys and we lose arm-wrestling contests all over Europe and Russia!" I don't know what that means. We later had a push-up contest (other medievalists possess very little upper body strength, I discovered) and then a 3 AM poetry recital that was, I must say, achingly beautiful.
7. The Abyss, I & II, plus Laurie and Marty.  I can't say that this was my favorite Kzoo for panels; in fact I attended one so poor I left before its conclusion, because I was afraid I might die (thank you, Mike Pryke, you weedy Englishman, for that near lethal event). Anna Klosowska and Nicola Masciandaro put together two panels on the post-abysmal that provided me with plenty to think about, while an evening session on Laurie Finke and Marty Shichtman's King Arthur and the Myth of History was pure enjoyment.
8. And Two Kisses. Hanging out with Laurie and Marty at the postmedieval launch party was also great. Marty surprised me with my first big wet kiss on the cheek that night; Garrett Epp startled me with a second. I would describe both as good kissers, in case anyone wonders.
9. Promiscuous Blurbing. Speaking of being startled, as I browsed the book exhibit I was a bit taken aback by the number of books I picked up that had an endorsement from JJC on the back. I hope I am making a lot of money by lending out my name so freely. Some day people will pay NOT to have their book blurbed my me, it's so predicatble. Don't believe me? Some evidence here here here here...
10. postmedieval I. Did you know that postmedieval is more than a journal, it's an event? I said that, I really did, and I meant it -- but who knew it would end up on brochures, posters, advertisements, and a mega-sized banner at the Palgrave booth?
11. postmedieval II. That my blurb isn't hyperbole, though, was suggested by the lavish launch party. We mingled to champagne cocktails and fancy finger foods. I got to climb a balcony to give a toast, an act I was happy to undertake until people spotted me up there and started chanting JUMP JUMP JUMP. Seriously, though: to Eileen Joy, Myra Seaman and Holly Crocker I say well done.
12. Exemplaria. Two panels and a reception thanked Al and Judy Shoaf for the twenty year labor of love that is Exemplaria. I attended the second panel and was especially impressed with Liz Scala's paper on women medievalists, work, and the messiness of human relations. Unfortunately I was late getting from dinner and missed the reception to honor Al and Judy, for which I am very sorry. Congratulations to Liz, Patty Ingham, Tison Pugh and James Paxson for taking over the editorship of the journal: long may it flourish.
13. Plotting and Scheming. Sure, there were the usual intrigues (who will murder whom and who will pay for it and how will it be hidden), but I was also happy to conspire on two future issues of postmedieval: New Critical Modes with Cary Howie, and Ecomaterialism with Lowell Duckert. More information on both soon. I also think I told about 17 people I'd give them essays for various projects and collections. I warn you now, I was drunk and I didn't mean it so don't even try to follow up.
14. The Chaucer Blogger reveal.
15. Things I am forgetting. More happened at this conference than I can keep track of or relate. If you don't see your name here, it isn't because seeing you wasn't a highlight; there were just too many highlights for me to type out without my fingers wearing down to bloody stumps. So to all the friends old and new who made this an enjoyable and provocative experience ... thanks.

What did I miss? Please add your own observations in the comments below.

From the Tiny Shriner's Twitter Feed

by J J Cohen

Yes we know, not everyone had the time and inclination and wherewithal to follow the Tiny Shriner's Twittered adventures at Kalamazoo. Below are some of his favorite tweets from the conference. Enjoy.

-----------
TinyShriner ....

is not sure which ITM co-blogger he finds more repugnant

wants you to know that he was born to Twitter. OK, he was poured into a mold in China by child laborers, but same thing.

is itchy and would like to remove his fez, but fears his head is hollow.

Got the invitation to the BABEL party (misaddressed to JJC). Going. Sweet. Hope not to vomit in fez this year.

is not pleased to be on that damn ITM blog so much. They should live their own lives, not vicarious bon vivanting via me.

was discovered rubbing himself with Renuzit® air freshener gel in the Super Odor Neutralizer scent. Is that so wrong?

snuggly in a bookbag munching Breathsavers like donuts

wonders what his shelf life is, because he has lived much of his life upon a shelf

wonders if the lascivious antelope on JJC's shelf will miss him while he is gone to Kzoo

wants you to know he types by jumping up and down on the keyboard. It ain't easy, esp. when the martini spills.

REALLY misses the Lascivious Antelope

is packing his tighty whities.

has decided to mail all new Twitter followers tiny plastic fezes.

warning: a tiny plastic fez that you may receive as a gift will bind to your skull and cannot be removed, even surgically

The surgeon general has determined that plastic fez wearing may be injurious to your cerebellum.

is ALMOST finished packing. Final count: 17 small suits, 33 miniature plastic fezzes, 6 photos of Kate Moss, and a cattle prod

@jeffreyjcohen dude where is my fez cleaning brush?

is in a snit. He may not go to Kzoo after all.

@jeffreyjcohen NO, you had it last

@jeffreyjcohen your ability to annoy is matched only by your propensity to irritate

@jeffreyjcohen never mind, found it, we r cool

is going to Kzoo after all

Landed in detroit

awaits his luggage while the UMD delegation has departed for rental car lot

is hellbent on beating Theresa Colletti to Kzoo. She has a head start.

may have to sabotage TC's car

Medievalist Highway Bumpercars

at Radisson, using coffee mug as jacuzzi. Beat TC -- woot!

feels like the bean burrito he ate on the plane is never going to leave his GI system

is happy to be at the Zoo again. The air is crisper, the hair taller, the grunge more scabrous.

Thinks Eileen is less charming than she thinks she is

failed in objective (there is some vomit in my fez this morn)

poisoned the olive in JJC's martini; now he thinks he has swine flu

can't seem to find the turquoise fez he packed; will go with the burgundy one today

can't seem to get his tie in the Windsor knot he prefers. Stupid clip on.

just ingested a scone roughly seven times his size

dwells at the gates of difference

BABEL party just ended not sure where I am

woke up in bed with Eileen Joyless, Stephanie Trigg, Dr Virago and a tall guy from the Babel party -- not sure of his name

glistens with day old Renuzit

has been spitting in the cups at the Kzoo wine hours, hoping to give everyone Shrine Flu.

dreamt he met a Tiny Anchoress last night

woke up in a champagne flute not his own

would attend the Kzoo dance tonight, but finds the plastic base to which he is melded an impediment.

declares the Best Kzoo ever then packs his spare fezzes to head home

wants you to know that he attended your Kzoo panel. Though he will quibble with your translations, it mainly pleased him.

wishes you safe travels homeward. Life after Kzoo = falling action and anemic dénouement.

is home.

realizes he left a chartreuse fez in Kalamazoo