please do not interpret

by J J Cohen

I had a strange dream last night. Perhaps it was caused by the fact that I've more on my plate right now than a small legion of superannuated scholars could accomplish in a decade, let alone the single month this lone superannuated scholar possesses to finish three essays and an abecedarium, draft a keynote lecture and compose the abstract of a second, and send a special issue of a journal off to press. Or perhaps it was the Dark and Stormies I drank with Steve Mentz last night during our wide ranging conversation about ecocriticism, family, job satisfaction, grad students we know, colleagues, beloved cities, life during a PhD program, recovery from that life, and many other things.

Anyway, last night I dreamt that I was in a theater seating 250 children and adults. For reasons I never questioned, I was in charge of mounting a puppet show featuring Kermit the Frog. I knew that I was supposed to keep the little sticks that move him invisible; not let anyone see that my hand was in his, um, well you know; and ensure that the audience was entertained. I quickly realized that the only trick in my arsenal was to run with Kermit along a low wall, making his feet go up and down as if he were riding a bicycle. That was all I could do, and after the third repetition the cheers of the crowd turned to restless annoyance. Yet I gave the amphibian-on-an-invisble-bike routine two more tries. As the boos erupted I woke up. I cursed Jim Henson, my stupid brain for generating such a stupid dream, and frogs in general, then tried to get back to sleep.

Medieval Race

by J J Cohen

I've been spending the last week or so at work on an essay on medieval race for the forthcoming Blackwell's Critical Theory Handbook to Middle English. Much of the essay pulls together work that exists in scattered places, since race has been an abiding concern of mine: each of my previous books treats the subject, the last two in substantial chapters. Though I doubt I have anything original to say after blathering on about the topic for, um, twelve years, I am trying to come up with something. Below is my draft introduction to the essay. Specifics of what race means take up the remainder.

My chapter itself is supposed to be an research-guide type overview, and accessible to undergraduates. Let me know what you think.

------------

The popular Middle English romance Guy of Warwick contains what should be, within the long history of the genre, an almost unremarkable incident: a heroic knight defeats a brutal giant. Such episodes are ubiquitous, and can be found in numerous Middle English texts: Sir Bevis of Hampton, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Sir Degaré, Sir Eglamour of Artois, and The Sowdone of Babylone, among others. Yet something about this particular encounter proved so fascinating that the battle took on a life of its own. Sir Guy has just returned to England from the Holy Land, where he proved himself well suited to crusading-inspired violence against Saracens (a common medieval designation for Muslims). The bellicose Anlaf of Denmark invades the island with his army. His deadliest weapon is an African giant named Colbrond. On behalf of England’s king Guy agrees to meet this monster in single combat, the victor determining the nation’s fate. A long and brutal clash ensues. Guy eventually prevails against his foe, cuts off the giant’s head, and scatters the Danish enemy. The narrative of this well precedented duel -- a small episode within the expansive narrative of Guy of Warwick -- proved so captivating that it circulated as a song, a Latin prose rendition, a painting in Winchester cathedral, and a fast paced poem (Guy and Colbrand, in the Percy Folio). The story was absorbed quickly into the English historical tradition and appears in numerous chronicles, from Robert Mannyng of Brunne to Holinshed.

Enthusiasm for the battle of Guy against Colbrond owes much to its energetic reduction of the world’s messiness into clean binaries. The romance takes an almost clichéd encounter of knight and giant and hones it to a stark meeting of opposed identities, propelled by nationalism and crusading vigor. A Christian warrior transformed on domestic shores into a hero for the kingdom, Guy triumphs against an enemy whose only thought is “þe Inglisse for to quelle” (“to kill the English,” 255.10). His victory purges English history of its inconvenient Danish and Norman content; both these groups had conquered the kingdom in the past, and both had been absorbed into its population. Guy aligns proper Christianity with his assertive Englishness by accomplishing a second crusade at home. Just as he defeated a “blake sarzine” giant named Amourant in the Holy Land, so he vanquishes the African Colbrand. The skin color of these monsters is not accidental. Their darkness is aligned with demonic as well as geographic origin, theology along with place-determined race. The Colbrond episode depends heavily upon a series of identities that suture together history, nation, religion, and collective identity: African, Saracen, Christian, English, Danish.

Like all supposedly clean divisions, however, those in Guy of Warwick hide complexly entangled realities. The mercenary giant Colbrond likely derives from the African king Gormundus in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain (c.1136). With its charismatic depiction of the Arthurian court, this wildly popular Latin text bequeathed to the Middle Ages its most vibrant mythology, the seeds of the stories that would become narratives like Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Thomas Malory’s Morte Darthur. Gormundus and his army of thousands ravage Britain, whose aboriginal population (the Britons, destined to become the Welsh) Geoffrey celebrates. The merciless African bestows portions of the conquered island to the Saxons, the people who will in time become the English … and who will also assimilate Geoffrey’s British version of King Arthur into a resolutely Anglophone and Anglophile monarch. Behind the giant Colbrond therefore lurk issues of Welsh versus English identity, and a postcolonial struggle for insular dominance. Geoffrey of Monmouth in turn took this African king from a French text, Gormont et Isembart, in which Gormant is a Saracen devastating Angleterre who allies himself with the son of the king of France (Isembart, who renounces his Christianity to assist the Saracen). The chanson de geste may derive from a historical episode having nothing to do with England: the defeat of belligerent Norsemen by Louis III in France in 881. Adding to these cultural peregrinations of Colbrond, in a text written shortly after Geoffrey of Monmouth (De Ortu Waluuanii), Gormundus becomes a large Persian king.

With his dark skin, his African origin, his connection to Islam, and his exaggerated physicality, Colbrond possesses what most modern interpreters would recognize as a racialized body. Like the swarming Saracens of the romance The Sultan of Babylon (“soom bloo, soom yolowe, some blake as More,” 1005), otherness is written on the dermis. Yet the English, Norse, French, Danes, and Britons are not neutral or unmarked national groups. The moment they find themselves in proximity to such an exorbitantly visual display of otherness as that incarnated in Colbrond, their own difference is likewise established, performed, and interrogated. What the shifting versions of Colbrond suggest is that all identities are racialized, even as a dominating group deploys some monstrous Other to cloak themselves in a “default” or “normate” body (a body never given in advance, but produced through contact with and concomitant production of deviant bodies). In a recent essay on late medieval race Geraldine Heng observes:

Race makes an appearance in the late Middle Ages not only through fantasmatic blacks, historical Jews and the collections of hybrid humans pressing on the edges of civilization, but can also be found at the centre of things, in the creation of that strange creature who is nowhere, yet everywhere, in cultural discourse: the white Christian European in medieval time (“Jews, Saracens, ‘Black Men,’ Tartars: England in a World of Racial Difference” 265).

Europeans blanche as the Saracens darken. Medieval race may certainly involve skin color, as it does with Colbrond, yet race cannot be reduced to any of its multiple signs. Religion, descent, custom, law, language, monstrosity, geographical origin, and even species are essential to the construction of medieval race. Race is a phenomenon of the body in motion. Such restless bodies are therefore always also becoming something else, something unexpected: from pillaging Normans to England-invading Saracens to exotic Africans to Danes with giants, all the while troubling what it means to possess and to retain an identity that prefers to remain unremarked.

A conference you don't want to miss, and a looming deadline

by J J Cohen

Don't forget that the New Chaucer Society (which isn't all that new, doesn't focus on Chaucer alone, and offers little in the way of High Society) will convene in beautiful Portland OR in July of 2012. As a biased member of the program committee I am declaring it the best congress ever, but peruse the CFP and decide for yourself. I'm overseeing two ecoconscious threads, Oceans and Ecologies. Those panels are also listed here.

Submit your proposal directly to the session organizer. The deadline is June 1.

Things, ecologies, spectra

by way of entrance

by J J Cohen

GW MEMSI annually sponsors a roundtable on a topic of wide or burgeoning critical interest at each meeting of the International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo. This year's theme was "Objects, Networks and Materiality" (list of participants here; audio files and subsequent Slapapalooza here). Although I am not an impartial judge, it seemed to me that the session was extraordinarily coherent, lively, and provocative. The audience was terrific. Even though the presenters stuck to their eight minute limits (was it the threat of interpretive dance at minute 9?) and left ample time for discussion, there were many more would-be interlocutors than we could involve. I apologize to all of you who tried desperately to get my attention and received nothing from me. Slap me at the next Kzoo.

Clearly much remains to be said on this year's topic. On the flight home I was thinking aloud about our roundtable for 2012. I was especially intrigued by an emergent theme in discussion, the impress of the objects and phenomena under discussion upon the presentations themselves. I've also been thinking a great deal lately about ecologies in their relation to materialities (for me especially this bears upon my stone project): my hunch is that ecocritical approaches have much to add to this ongoing conversation about things and agency.

So here is my idea, as amplified at an overtired moment of dialogue with Liza Blake and Lowell Duckert when we should have been napping on the plane. I'm quite taken by the work of the early modernist Steve Mentz, whose idea of blue ecocritical studies means foregrounding the ocean in all its nonhuman destructive-creative potential (his website here; his wonderful blog here; my review of his recent thalassology book here; my account of a class in which I taught that book here). Steve argues persuasively that the turbulent seas demand a response different from the approaches framed by green criticism's affirmative spaces, often human-centered environments, and pastoral bent. Lowell's Kzoo paper "The Ice Age is Never Over" made a similar claim about ice. Would this be a white ecocritical approach? (and I say that with hesitation, because the argument was more about velocity than color). Would it be useful to think about a spectrum (or even spectra) of ecocritical approaches in which different materialities and environments are allowed their different impresses upon how they are approached, narrated, composed with? That is, I am wondering if verdant hills, ancient or newly seeded forests, cascades, "timeless" rocks, decay, slime, violent weather, wildfire, feral or domesticated animals don't all create middle spaces where they touch the human interpreter/critic/artist, mutually transformative spaces that demand something more focused and more particular than, say, a capacious green approach to culture and literature?

I don't invoke the spectrum to be prescriptive, or even descriptive.* I mean it to be suggestive, a terminological catalyst to thinking about material specificities within larger ecologies. I know of course that white consists of all colors, black indicates the absence of colors, that within the ROY G BIV of the scientific spectrum not everything will fit. Nor should it, as we learned at the Kzoo taxonomies session: sortings must be open to failure, the new, artistry. Here, though, are some preliminary ideas, helped along by Lowell and Liza:

fire (orange)
animal (red)
water (blue)
field and forest (green)
light (yellow)
dark materials (black)
storm (purple)
built environments (brown)
stone (gray)
ice (white)

I'd also like to leave room for the unexpected: would a queer ecology be pink?

Well, it's an idea -- and, to be honest, I would love to have the time to sit down at this very moment and compose an essay on the topic. I may some day. But for the time being: how does something like this sound for the MEMSI roundtable at Kzoo next year? "Ecologies of Things"? What else would you suggest?

*or hokey. That's what I fear most.

Kzoo lessons

by J J Cohen

Larry Swain at the Ruminate posted some post-Kzoo advice to graduate students and (to a lesser degree) to professors that has me thinking. His intentions seem good. He gives advice on how to be professional at a major conference in the field. But reading through the post in its entirety, I can't help thinking that its long list of caveats must be terrifying to its intended audience. Implicit within the lessons is that as a graduate student you are under constant surveillance while attending the event: you will be judged, your future is at stake. Wear a tight dress to the dance and you will never get a job. Many of the lessons are similarly focused on sexuality, and I'll admit on this topic that I am profoundly indifferent to whatever acts nondeceiving consenting adults choose.

I put a great deal of energy into good relations with those who are the future of the humanities. You know from reading this blog that the infantilization of graduate students presses my buttons. Our profession is difficult and uncertain enough without treating those whom we train as anything less than adults and colleagues. That is why Slap a Medievalist made no concessions to academic hierarchy.

Am I taking these lessons the wrong way? Should graduate students worry more than I am inclined to tell them to about judgments while they dance, flirt, speak of their work, and otherwise do the conference?

Making Ourselves Available to Each Other: Kalamazoo and Beyond

Figure 1. gathering at Bell's Brewery in Kalamazoo to celebrate the launch of punctum books [photo by Jonathan Hsy]

by EILEEN JOY

Yesterday, Jeffrey wrote a post, "In praise of new friendships," in which he wrote of how deeply gratifying it is how the Kalamazoo Congress always serves as a site through which new, lasting friendships are produced. I want to echo that sentiment [indeed, it was my first, non-virtual encounter with Jeffrey, Karl, and Mary Kate at a Kalamazoo Congress lo these many years ago, that cemented and extended a friendship--both professional and personal--that I am not sure I could conceptualize my working life without], and I could provide so many names, but what I really want to talk about in this post is how much it has meant to me over the years [and I know, too, to Myra Seaman, my intimate collaborator on all things BABEL and postmedieval, who you can assume is agreeing with everything I write here] to encounter graduate students at Kalamazoo through whom my own thought and writing has been enriched in so many immeasurable ways [for example, Nic D'Alessio told me to read Claude Romano, which blew my mind; Dan Remien urged me to look at poetics more closely, both medieval and contemporary, and also turned me on to John Caputo as well as the language poets--somewhat more painfully, he made me read Heidegger, too--and also published one of my prose poems in his poetry/theory zine Whiskey & Fox, not to mention he wrote an essay for Glossator, "A Prosimetrum for New Work," that I think pushes the envelope for what is possible in the field of Old English poetics merged with contemporary avant-garde poetics; note, also, that Ryan Dobran, one of the co-editors of Glossator, along with Nicola Masciandaro and Karl, is a graduate student; Mary Kate connected E.M. Forster to the Old English "Wanderer" for me; Mo Pareles got me thinking about "archive" in relation to Aelfric and Freud; Dana Oswald, now a professor, energized my thinking on the Old English "Wonders of the East" in relation to sexuality and gender; Liza Blake turned my attention to early modern physics in relation to embodiment and object-oriented philosophy; Julie Orlemanski, starting as a professor at Boston College in the fall, has challenged my thinking on faces and faciality, especially in relation to Levinas's ethical philosophy, and she has also directed my attention to the rich intersections between disease, physiology, and hermeneutics in the Middle Ages; Irina Dumitrescu, now a professor at Southern Methodist, actually made me read the Old English Colloquies with an eye toward their "grammars" of pain and punishment; Lowell Duckert, whose thoughtful presentation "The Ice Age is Never Over" at this year's Kalamazoo session on "Objects, Networks, and Materiality", sponsored by GW-MEMSI, got me thinking, in ways I never had before, about "slow," enworlded composition; Rick Godden directed me to Nicholas Abraham and Maria Torok's The Shell and the Kernel, which I had not read before, and which was enormously useful to my own work on trauma and memory; Travis Neel has helped me refine my thinking on the politics of friendship by way of Aelred of Rievaulx; let us recall here, too, that when Karl first joined In The Middle he was still finishing up his dissertation, which is now forthcoming from Ohio State University Press as How To Make a Human: Animals and Violence in the Middle Ages, and which promises to be one of the most important books in critical animal studies writ large, not just within medieval studies, and I do not say this out of friendship hyperbole]. I would not even know where to begin enumerating my debts to these students, and I am sure I am leaving some out in my account here, but forgive me, as I am ensconced in the lounge at the Sheraton Gateway Hotel at the Toronto International Airport and am seriously sleep-deprived. What's new?

At this year's Kalamazoo Congress, there were still more encounters with brilliant graduate students from whom I expect to see much [both personally and professionally]: David Hadbawnik and Sean Reynolds, both from Univ. at Buffalo-SUNY, who led a session on "Queering the Muse: Medieval Poetry and Contemporary Poetics" for BABEL and who are also co-editors of an edition of excerpts of Jack Spicer's translation of Beowulf, just published by CUNY's Lost & Found Poetic Documents Initiative; Chris Piuma, from Toronto, who gave a stunningly beautiful presentation on the "ex post facto garde" at the "Queering the Muse" session, which has been snatched up by Anna Klosowska and Nicola Masciandaro for their special issue of postmedieval on "FAULT"; Kristin Noone, from UC-Riverside, who at BABEL's Friday business meeting suggested "Cleavage" as a session theme for a future Congress, inspired by China Mieville's novel The City and the City, about a murder in two cities that take up the same geographical space; Benjamin Saltzman, from UC-Berkeley, who I only met briefly at the Saturday dance, but who Mo Pareles assures me is one of the coolest students in Old English studies ever and I hope I'll see him more soon; and finally, Erik Wade, who recently finished an M.A. in English at Oregon and will be starting the PhD program in medieval studies at Rutgers in the fall, and who is hoping to be able to do Old English literary studies and "deep" theoretical readings [uh ... YES! Erik Wade, meet Dan Remein and Mo Pareles; Dan Remien and Mo Pareles, meet Erik Wade]. I might add here, too, that both of BABEL's sessions at this year's Congress were organized by graduate students ["Queering the Muse" by David Hadbawnik and "Madness, Methodology, Medievalisms" by Mo Pareles].

Alongside all of that [and there's a lot there!], these students have made rich and significant contributions to the projects and collective aims of BABEL, and to postmedieval, and to BABEL's new, biennial conference. They are co-partners in all of our endeavors and not apprentices or "junior" members of our collective. This brings me to my larger point here: I hate the term "graduate student," as well as "junior," "apprentice," "mentee," and so on. First, please don't barrage me with all of the ways in which students really do have a lot to learn and we [whoever "we" are] have a lot to teach them, you have to learn to walk before you can fly, you must learn close reading before theory, "experience" matters, and so on and so forth. I'm not saying that these aphorisms aren't true some of the time, but grant me this: I don't see graduate students as students; I see them as peer-learners, and in some cases, as my mentors, but more importantly: as my co-conspirators. Anyone can be a mentor to anyone else at any time: it has nothing to do with age or experience or numbers of degrees earned or whatever. We're all stupid or wise on any given day [sometimes both simultaneously], and you never know where you're going to find wisdom sometimes.

As regards the discipline of medieval studies, I want a level playing field, one in which we don't make presuppositions ahead of time as regards where the next, best idea might be coming from [or whose "current" or "established" best idea we should all be chasing after], and frankly, I'm just not that interested in what some people refer to as intellectual property or even intellectual capital. I just want new ideas, new intellectual provocations, new strategies for thinking in new cross-cultural, cross-disciplinary, cross-temporal, etc. modes and I don't care where they come from. Indeed, the more they might be disapproved of, the more interesting I find them. I don't want to spend too much time being anxious about whose ideas belong to whom, so much as I just want to push the field [the humanities, more broadly] forward, and by any means necessary. As I think is fairly well-established regarding my philosophy by now, I think that has to be done collectively [if even dissensually, without necessarily any common "end" goals], and with as many shipmates as possible, and I don't care where anyone comes from [rank-wise, institution-wise, stage of degree-wise, or whatever-wise], so long as we all agree that a plurality of approaches to our subject matter will likely benefit us more than a winnowing of such approaches. More ideas, not less. More affective propulsions toward and for each other's work, rather than less, even when we disagree. More support for each other's work, for enlarging the possible spaces within which more of us might have a viable place to do the work that is meaningful to us, even if that is just one of us. Not asking ourselves any more, in our encounters at conferences, "are you a student? where do you work? who did you study with? " etc. Just asking: what are you thinking right now? What's moving you right now? What do you care about, and why? How can I help? In short: committing ourselves to doing the [frankly, easy] work of enlivening, through amorous interest, the often cold and forbidding institutional spaces within which we all work. Making ourselves available to each other as interested parties. Again, we don't all have to agree--we just have to actually be interested, and hopefully, interesting.

So, you put a bunch of medievalists into one space together [and maybe some of them aren't really 100% "medievalists," whatever that might mean], like at the gathering to celebrate the launch of punctum books at Bell's Brewery this past Friday evening in Kalamazoo [and here a "shout out" to another student, Erica Carson, who essentially organized this entire event on BABEL's behalf], and you just . . . relax, be convivial, start talking, and stop worrying about who anyone is, who is a "student," who is a "professor," who is worthy of your attention and who isn't. Although, in point of fact, given the title of my post here, what I am also saying is: seek out the students [while also trying not to think of them as "the students"]! The last time I checked, they had all the ideas, the energy, and the affection for joining a field that, just maybe, doesn't even have a future. But if it has any kind of future at all, it's really in their hands, and as for me, I don't know where I, or BABEL, would be without them.

in praise of new friendships

by J J Cohen

A brutal but universal verity: spend sufficient time with any group of friends, especially during an experience as intense as the medieval conference in Kalamazoo, and come the third day you will be slapping them silly (and follow that link to read Eileen's excellent post, not just about the slapfest but the MEMSI roundtable). It's not a pretty truth, but here at ITM we don't candy coat your certitudes for ease of swallowing.

Kzoo 2011 earned infamy through the performance art gone wrong known as Slapapalooza. Eileen didn't realize it was a staged happening, and left her stinging imprint in my tender cheek. I'm still traumatized, and therefore have been offering to slap colleagues at GW. Gil Harris has his day of destiny inscribed for Tuesday of next week. But you know, despite some superficial resemblances the conference at Kalamazoo is not in fact an Icelandic saga, and we should not therefore be concentrating upon the violence done by berserkers like Professor Joy (who, I have it on good authority, is going to attempt the blood eagle next year; stay away, because informing of her of this method of execution's potential historical inaccuracy is unlikely to prevent her from ripping out your lungs).

ANYWAY, rather than revel in this brutality as my esteemed co-blogger does, I want to emphasize something wonderful about Kalamazoo: its ability to generate lasting new friendships. Yes, I know, in three years I will be slapping these parvenu friends while Eileen charges them with a barbed spear, but for the time being, let us celebrate what is good in the world. I was lucky to meet many, many new people at the conference. I am profoundly grateful for that chance. I also apologize if I ever seemed like I didn't give anyone enough attention when introduced: I am terrible at maintaining focus on more than one or two people at a time. I'm working on it.

Two meetings were especially important to me.

Early Thursday Anne Harris (author of Medieval Meets World, one of my favorite blogs) and I had agreed to rendezvous for breakfast. I've known Anne virtually for quite some time, and had met her in the flesh at the AVMEO conference, but this was the first time she and I had the opportunity to sit and have a conversation. We got coffee from Mug Shots, sat outside the dorm on a picnic table ... and talked about everything, from family to philosophy. I'm looking forward to getting to know her work better, but I am certain the field of Art History is fortunate to have her. Indomitable is the word that comes to mind.

Friday I finally met Noah Guynn, the only Exemplaria editor whom I didn't know from some part of my life already. He and I had emailed back and forth several times, and had become Facebook friends, and so I was looking forward to seeing if he was real. Like Anne, Noah is a person who is as full of life as ideas. Like Anne, he is readable and affable. And also, I learned, easy to convince to stay up past the closing of Bells Brewery to have another drink at a nearby bar (this time a cosmopolitan, which I allowed him to imbibe without snarky comment) (but, really, a cosmopolitan??) (In Kalamazoo?) (Really??)

Kzoo always affirms for me why I love the field I study. Spending time with new friends like Anne and Noah also reminds me that even though there is so much that is terrible threatening the future of the humanities, the value of humane relations with each other is absolute.

Kalamazoo Report: Objects, Networks, Materiality, and Getting Slapped

Figure 1. Anna Klosowska getting slapped by Alexis Kellner Becker while Jeffrey Cohen attempts to pretend he is upset

by EILEEN JOY

Another Kalamazoo Congress has come and gone, but we'll always have, not each other [no, never each other], and not fame and riches [some of us forgot to major in finance], but . . . next year in Kalamazoo. This year we celebrated the launch of punctum books: spontaneous acts of scholarly combustion at Bell's Brewery on Friday night, staying up until 4:00 or so in the morning, which probably accounts for what happened on Saturday night, when we returned to Bell's Brewery for a few glasses of beer before the infamous Kalamazoo dance. Although the BABEL Working Group has preached often about scholarship as a form of friendship, about amity and post-institutional affective assemblages, about various small radical acts of happiness and of being-together, and about non-paranoid scholarship as a pleasure garden, the inevitable finally happened Saturday night in Kalamazoo: we're just fed up with and damn sick and tired of each other. So, in order to express that emotion, Jeffrey suggested we start punching each other. Thanks to Jonathan Hsy, who could not bring himself to punch me [thank you, Jonathan], slapping was suggested as a more elegant alternative:

Figure 2. Eileen Joy slaps Erica Carson while Michael Moore and Nicola Masciandaro pretend none of this is happening

It wasn't all fun and games, however, and you might want to know that GW-MEMSI's roundtable session on "Objects, Materiality, and Networks," which kicked off the Congress for many of us on Thursday morning, was a smashing success. For me, what was most impressive about this session was: (1) how zippily it moved along [6 sets of remarks, with each presenter staying at 10 minutes or under], such that there was never one of those painfully dull moments where you have to stab your thigh with your pen to stay awake, (2) the generosity the speakers demonstrated in patiently describing key figures and ideas in contemporary philosophical and sociological discourses that may not be readily familiar to many medievalists, and (3) the fact that each presenter's remarks were clearly designed, not to shut down discussion through negative critique, but rather to open up productive [if nevertheless at times importantly contentious] questions and future avenues for further thought and work on the subjects at hand: materiality, networks, things, gatherings, faces, bodies, allegory, personification, matter, motion, relationalities, writing/discourses, so-called "new" materialisms, remediation, object-oriented philosophy, eco-composition, and slow world-making.

Some of the provocative questions raised by the six speakers--Laurie Finke ["The Parliament of Things"], Julie Orlemanski ["Things Without Faces"], Valerie Allen ["Medieval Nets"], Elizabeth Blake ["Passionate Matter"], Kellie Robertson ["Remediating Matter"], and Lowell Duckert ["The Ice Age Is Never Over"]--included the following:

• If things are also "gatherings," as Latour has argued--real like Nature, narrated like discourse, and collective like society--what are the things/gatherings of medieval studies, and how do we hold these gatherings together? [Finke]
  
• What is the problem to which prosopopoeia is the answer? What is the limit to representation or communication that personification wants to overcome? Without a face, without some medium through which identity becomes perceptible to us, how can we encounter things without faces? Does ethics, does affect, demand the production of faces? Are there alternatives to personification? How can things maybe de-compose the anthropomorphic forms they are given? How does th body both "go missing" but also return in the alphabetic notation of writing? Does the phenomenological body have anything to do with the allegorical body, or is this just a confusion of categories? [Orlemanski]
• If following Latour means taking the "scenic route" through the networks of scholarly discourses and the relations between things at the level of the "tiny" and the "small," where there is no telos or "center," does this mean we never really get anywhere? What might be some possible, if anachronistic relations between medieval net-making and Latourian networks? [Allen]
• If mind is the new body [interest in cognition replacing interest in embodiment in literary and historical studies], then perhaps premodern discourses on the passions may fruitfully illuminate for us medieval thinking on mind? Since physics names and details the forces that traverse both bodies and minds, perhaps premodern discourses on "magnetized" matter might help extend the conversation on Deleuze's still not fully answered question: what can a body do [not in terms of anthropomorphized "animation" or volition, but in terms of motion]? [Blake]
• How does the medieval get repressed in contemporary discourses on the "new materialisms," whether emanating from feminist/geopolitical discussions or the new Continental philosophy sometimes referred to as speculative realism or object-oriented philosophy, and can medieval studies contribute to these discourses? How has the medieval as the "thing" that comes "before" been used as a sub-text for reaching conclusions about the relation of modernity to materiality? How were older, classical materialisms re-mediated in the Middle Ages, and why might post-Kantian object-oriented philosophers benefit from paying some attention to these re-mediations? [Robertson]
• How does ice remind us that we slowly compose with and are composed by the world? What new futures, prospects, collectives, and joys may arrive as a result of paying more attention to this slow composition? What happens when we don't come in from the cold? What sorts of "slow" and "ice-like" writing practices might help us to better "compose" peace with the things of the world which are also, like us, always composing, being composed, and de-composing? [Duckert]
  

For those of you who would like to listen to the individual presentations as well as the q&a afterwards, GO HERE:

AUDIOFILES: Objects, Networks, and Materiality: A Roundtable Discussion [Kalamazoo Congress 2011]

Everyone might also like to know that, ignoring Jonathan's injunction against punches, Karl went ahead and punched Jeffrey anyway. Yes, it was a very good Kalamazoo, after all:

Figure 3. Karl Steel "gets medieval" on Jeffrey Cohen

Ravens, Wolves, and a Different Beowulf

by Mary Kate Hurley

for the first time in my graduate school career, I wasn't able to make it to Kalamazoo. My lovely co-bloggers did, and Jeffrey has posted an initial account of the fun the rest of us missed. In the spirit of the GW MEMSI panel , though, I'd like to offer my own little musing on one of the final scenes of the poem Beowulf. But go read the other posts about the conference now!

Revision is a funny thing. I’d imagine anyone who has written a dissertation has had one chapter that flummoxed her beyond all reason. I’d also imagine that often that chapter takes on a life of its own that might even be larger than the dissertation. After several false starts and a number of revisions, I recently managed to make my Beowulf chapter into something I think I might eventually be pretty happy with. I’d like to re-read the poem about ten more times before I revise the chapter into an article (which I think will be its ultimate destination) but for now, it stands as one of the most frustrating and most fulfilling things I think I’ve ever managed to write. If I ever write a book on Beowulf (a fate I truly hope to avoid), this chapter will be part of the reason.

Part of what’s so funny about revision is that there are whole swathes of the poem that I keep returning to and seeing with fresh eyes. As I made my final substantial revisions to the chapter late last semester, I found something I’d missed in my initial readings. There’s a section of the poem called the Beasts of Battle, a short little set-piece that falls right in the middle of the Messenger’s speech. Describing what will happen after the Swedes destroy the Geats on the field of battle, the Messenger tells us:

ac se wonna hrefn
fus ofer fægum fela reordian,
earne secgan, hu him æt æte speow,
þenden he wið wulf wæl reafode.

(But the black raven, the bird over the fated men, will tell, will say to the eagle, how he succeeded at the meal, when he with the wolf plundered the slaughtered ones, 3024-3027.)

One of the things I’ve been trying to do with Beowulf is to reimagine how the poem might be read. We’re all familiar with the mourning tone the end of the poem sets. Everyone, we are told, will die either soon or late, and though the poem ends with Beowulf’s personal victory over the dragon, the price of that victory for his people is all too clear. With Beowulf gone, the enemies of the Geats will destroy them. The Beasts of Battle are often read as just that—a moment that symbolizes human loss. But, I wonder, what if there’s a larger picture that allows a longer view of the world within the poem, exceeding the loss that permeates its human subject matter? And—crucially to the larger argument of the chapter—what if it’s precisely that larger picture that makes the world of the humans in the poem so endlessly painful and brutal, their achievements so short-lived?

Hence my interest in the raven and the wolf. If the raven “succeeded at the meal,” then there seems to be an intimation that humans can be considered part of a larger configuration than just the endlessly failing human communities the poem portrays. In the chapter, I borrow the Actor-Network theory term collectivity for this, but we could just as easily call it an eco-system or a network. Even the term “reafian” suggests the ways in which the animals here participate in an action that allows them a degree of agency previously granted only to the humans in the poem. The use of “reafian” provides a disjunctive echoing of two earlier uses of the same verb. At 1212, the first use of reafian describes the actions undertaken by the Frisian warriors after a failed attack by Hygelac: “worse battle-warriors plundered the slaughtered” (wyrsan wig-frecan wæl reafeden). Frisian warriors plunder Geatish ones. At line 2985, a similar usage occurs in Wulf and Eofor’s defeat of Ongenþeow: “Then the warrior plundered the other, took from Ongenþeow his iron byrnie, his hard sword hilt and also his helmet” (Þenden reafode rinc oðerne, nam on Ongenðio iren-byrnan heard swyrd hilted ond his helm somod). Human warriors take the things that matter in a human world by plundering bodies for war-gear. The wolf and the raven, on the other hand, plunder human bodies for what such creatures value: a meal of meat.

And in the end, the raven and the wolf seem to be some of the only victors we see in the poem. Heorot burns. The Geats, and their leader Wiglaf, will be annihilated. Beowulf is dead. Even the dragon met his end. But the raven and wolf disrupt the poem’s studied meditation on death and ending. Perhaps they even offer a glimpse of the world in which Beowulf and his Geatish warriors operate – where animals and metals exist on a similar plane as the humans who use and interact with them, and where sometimes these creatures and things “succeed” where humans and human institutions fail. Maybe beyond the poem, and beyond Beowulf himself – there’s a whole world.

memories of Kzoo, 2011

MEMSI panel

by J J Cohen

In no particular order, some images and affects from an intense four days at the International Congress on Medieval Studies.

• I flew from BWI to Detroit with Liza Blake, Lowell Duckert, and the Tiny Shriner. Southwest had given us some drink coupons, so Tiny enjoyed a gin and tonic during the short flight. We rendezvoused with Karl at the airport, then proceeded in what we called our clown car of scholars across Michigan. We raced another such clown car, and even tried to trick its occupants into thinking that we had arrived far ahead of them by texting pictures of a hotel bar in Chicago and telling them we were at the Radisson. Our inability to text images with any of us actually in them proved our undoing.
• As we entered the Kalamazoo city limits, our XM radio blared "You Can Go Your Own Way." Not much of a song, perhaps, but one you might recall from last year's post. It almost seemed too perfect ... and that is why during karaoke at Shakespeare's Pub that evening I was singing the hymn with Lowell and Dan Remein. But we were completely outshone by Air Supply's "I'm All Out of Love" as interpreted by Karl, backing vocals by Lowell.
• Sometimes I think that I should possess more dignity, and maybe even set a better example. I'm not sure from where that thought arrives, and fortunately it never lingers long.
• The GW MEMSI session on Thursday morning on "Objects, Agency and Materiality" was well attended: excellent presentations, lively audience, more to say than we could possibly fit into 90 minutes. Eileen was kind enough to record the conversation, so look for audio files soon.
• I had an unusual and severe bout of insomnia on Wednesday, so by 9 pm on Thursday (right after the "Commentary" session) I was ready to drop. I was back in my room by 9:30 and unable to leave. This marks a first for me, but I was sad to miss Lorraine Stock being awarded the first Bonnie Wheeler Fellowship that evening. 
• The next night, though, was the punctum books launch at Bells: a thronged and exuberant event. The festivities concluded with a feast of Chinese food delivered to the Radisson at 3:30 am, so maybe it is a good thing I got some sleep the previous night.
• Thursday afternoon was Bruce Holsinger and Andrew Coles' series of sessions on "Secularization." Unfortunately the room was far too small, and the talks coincided with the worst of the Kzoo weather: sweltering, humid, stagnant air. It was hard to concentrate, especially by the room's edge: if only these sessions had been in one of the newer buildings ...
• On Friday morning I delivered my paper on the souls of stones in a session on "Medieval Taxonomies" organized by Emily Steiner. Kellie Robertson did a good job of summing up he collective findings of the session when she spoke in the Q&A of taxonomy not as the power-driven control mechanism (as it always turns out to be in Foucauldian readings), but as a kind of messy and creative art. This panel had one of the most engaged audiences of any session I've attended at Kzoo, and there were many people there (about 70 by a quick count). Clearly Emily is on to something with this topic. Michelle Karnes and Claire Waters gave papers from which I learned a great deal. Chris Cannon canceled, so we each got an additional five minutes, and that made quite a difference: more leisurely exposition, more time to chew over our framings and findings.
• On Friday I also attended a poetry reading, mostly because I think so highly of Dan Remein. It was enjoyable to attend a different mode of presentation at this scholarly conference, and in fact that session lead naturally to the rich "Queering the Muse" panel directly afterwards.
• GW MEMSI sponsored a disaster plagued dinner Friday evening that included a monsoon, a restaurant that reserved a table for our large group for the wrong night, a relocation to its sister restaurant, free lobster fondue to apologize, and the most undercooked meal most of us had ever eaten. But there was prosecco, and the twelve of us, and the launch of punctum at Bells thereafter.
• We'd decided to stay up all night on Friday, but do you know what? Everything in Kalamazoo closes promptly at 2 am. If we hadn't been able to track down a Chinese resturant willing to deliver, we would have had to go to bed at 3:30 rather than eat spring rolls and friend rice in the mezzanine lobby of the Radisson as night became morning.
• After the well attended Exemplaria session on Saturday morning, and lunch at a nearby middle eastern restaurant, Lowell and I took off for a walk round the Celery Flats where the ITM bloggers spent their first real day together many moons ago. There isn't all that much to see here: some swamp, some trees, a creek, some birds. But getting away from the conference for a bit was envitalizing. As was the whiskey tasting we did when we returned in a secret and always empty bar that I will never tell anyone else about.
• Patty Ingham twice brought us around in conversations to a topic that is on many of our minds: how do we contextualize what we do within the current animus towards and cuts of scholarly endeavors, especially in the humanities? No easy answers to this one, but a reduction in available resources to many who'd come to the conference was palpable after even a few conversations: many people I know abbreviated their stays and watched their money very closely because so little was being reimbursed by their institution.
• Sunday was our early morning return to Detroit. Liza and Lowell snored in the backseat while Karl and I chatted about, well, everything, and the rain and wind slammed the car. On the plane flight home an idea for how to extend the MEMSI panel's conversation into the sphere of ecocriticism hit me as well.



a lesson from late night food delivery

• And speaking of ecocriticism ... someone peppered the conference with a flyer for a session on ecocretinism, complete with fabricated scholars and universities. It is probably the best joke I've seen worked at Kalamazoo.

More from me, and my fellow bloggers, soon. Those are some quick thoughts on a stormy DC Tuesday.

The Tiny Shriner pauses for refreshment

Bonnie Wheeler holding my handout

Objects, Love, Madness, Queer Muses, and Problematic Pets: Where Will You Be At Kalamazoo 2011?

Figure 1. the Tiny Shriner "in his cups" at yet another medieval studies conference (July 2009)

by EILEEN JOY

The Kalamazoo Congress is a ridiculously large event and it is nearly impossibly to get to everything you want to get to and to see everyone you want to see. I thought I would share here with everyone my own preliminary itinerary, and as long as I don't pass out under some table somewhere after too many martinis early on during the Congress, then this is where you can find me [and it would be lovely to know where the rest of you might be, if you'd like to share]. I also misplaced my program and thought this would be a nifty way to remind myself where I am supposed to be [since I can access In The Middle in special mobile format on my iPhone]!

THURSDAY, May 12th
10:00-11:30 am
Fetzer 1005

Session 21: Objects, Networks, Materiality (Roundtable)
Sponsor: Medieval and Early Modern Studies Institute, George Washington University
Presider: Jeffrey Cohen
Speakers: Laurie Finke, Julie Orlemanski, Valerie Allen, Elizabeth Blake, Kellie Robertson, and Lowell Duckert

*I'll be podcasting this session; some may want to know that at the same time that nets, ice ages, and things without faces are being discussed in Session 21, in Session 5 [Valley II, Rm. 202], Ruth Evans, Tony Hasler, David Hadbawnik, Chris Taylor, and Kate Koppelman will be throwing down with Medieval Lacan

1:30 pm-3:00 pm
Valley III, Exhibits
Myra Seaman and I will be at the Palgrave Macmillan booth in the Books Exhibits, so this is a good time to come and talk to us about possible future special issues of the journal.

*I would like to also point out here that if I could bi-locate, I would also be in Valley II, Rm. 202 so I could attend Medieval Badiou, a panel discussion organized by Ruth Evans and featuring remarks by Eleanor Kaufman, Tony Hasler, Erin Labbie, Kevin Spicer, and George Edmondson. If I could tri-locate, then I would also be in Valley I, Rm. 110 in order to hear Amy Hollywood talk about "Secular Sin."

3:30-7:00 pm

likely sneaking around trying to figure out where the Tiny Shriner hid the bourbon bottle

7:30-9:00 pm Bernhard 204
Session 164: On the Love of Commentary (In Love)
Presider: Nicola Masciandaro
Sponsor: Glossator: Practice and Theory of the Commentary
Speakers: Michael Moore, Anna Klosowska, Valerie Wilhite, Eileen Joy, Karmen Mackendrick

*I'll be podcasting this session; and speaking of Glossator, check out their new issue on Occitan Poetry, co-edited by Anna Klosowska and Valerie Wilhite, and featuring essays by Cary Howie, Virginie Greene, Bill Burgwinkle, Marion Coderch, Huw Grange, and Simone Marchesi, among others.

FRIDAY, May 13th

10:00-11:30 am Schneider 1360
Session 217: The Transcultural Middle Ages
Sponsor: postmedieval: a journal of medieval cultural studies
Co-Presiders: Laurie Finke and Martin Shichtman
Speakers: Lydia Fletcher, Jonathan Hsy, Su Fang Ng, Matthew Boyd Goldie, Heather Bamford

*in the spirit, again, of tri-location, I shall send avatars to Valley II, Rm. 205 for Problematic Pets in the Middle Ages, where our very own Karl Steel will be talking about "dead animals and lost humans," and also to Valley I, Rm. 100 for Medieval Taxonomies, organized by Emily Steiner, and where our very own Jeffrey will reveal to the world whether or not rocks have souls; I would also like to point out here that, although I will not be in attendance, "Death by Hot Tub" [Session 209] wins for best session title in this time slot, and hell, maybe for the whole conference

1:30-3:00 pm
Bernhard 159

Session 276: Madness, Methodology, Medievalisms (Roundtable)
Sponsor: BABEL Working Group
Presider: Eileen Joy
Speakers: Mo Pareles, Jennifer Little, Nicola Masciandaro, and Eileen Joy (Respondent)

3:30-5:00 pm Bernhard 105

Session 332: Queering the Muse: Medieval Poetry and Contemporary Poetics (Roundtable)
Sponsor: BABEL Working Group
Presider: Anna Klosowska
Speakers: Daniel Remein, David Hadbawnik, Sean Reynolds, Chris Piuma, Christopher Roman, Katharine Jager

5:15 pm Valley II, Rm. 204

Business Meeting: BABEL Working Group [this meeting is completely open to anyone interested in BABEL and who would also like to help us discuss session ideas for next year's Congress; the Tiny Shriner will be mixing miniature bourbon cocktails for all comers]

9:00 pm-midnight-ish
The Eccentric Cafe, Bell's Brewery
355 E. Kalamazoo Avenue

Everyone is invited to join BABEL at Bell's to celebrate the launch of punctum books: spontaneous acts of scholarly combustion.

SATURDAY, May 14th

10:00-11:30 am
Schneider 2335

tough choice; still trying to decide between:

Session 389: Surface versus Symptomatic Readings
Sponsor: Exemplaria: A Journal in Medieval and Renaissance Studies
Co-Presiders: Patricia Clare Ingham and Elizabeth Scala
Speakers: Ruth Evans, Mark Miller, Bruce Holsinger

Session 393: Glossing the Past in the Present (Roundtable)
Presider: Dana Oswald
Speakers: Kimberly Bell, Justin Brent, Betsy McCormick, Christine Neufeld, and Teresa Reed

11:30-3:30 pm
recuperate

3:30-5:00 pm Fetzer 1010

Session 471: Beowulf and History (Panel Discussion)
Presider: Diana Coogle
Speakers: Eileen Joy, Thomas D. Hill, James W. Earl

5:00 pm onwards into the night/morning
general debauchery

SUNDAY, May 15th

drive home very early in the morning with apologies to all those giving papers in Sunday sessions; let me just say here that this will be the first Kalamazoo Congress since 2001 at which I do not attend a Sunday session [or two], so I hope I can forgiven, especially since I leave again for the University of Copenhagen 3 days after returning home, where I give another paper at this conference.

And one last thing: bring your umbrella. And remember to also bring your best chain-mail dress:

That quiet class, addendum

I blogged about my 16th and in some ways final Chaucer class (final in the sense that I will completely reinvent the thing when I return from my teaching hiatus). I observed that I've never had so much trouble keeping a lively conversation flowing, no matter how many pedagogical tricks I pulled from my increasingly theadbare sleeve. (And here let me note my gratitude to all those who left suggestions for future tricks to attempt: great, inspirational stuff.)

So here is the odd thing about the course. As unhappy as I was with its general feel, especially compared to its past incarnations (versions of which I bonded so closely with my students that I still remain in touch with them) ... Well, despite my dissatisfaction, the students who took the course loved it. The evaluations they turned in rated the class as highly as one can. In the comments sections students spoke with enthusiasm about their love of the material and how it was taught. Several slipped thank you cards into their final exams. A few others left beautiful notes at the end, or shook my hand as they left the classroom and told me how much they'd enjoyed themselves. In the past few days, many have sent me an email note of gratitude; they even waited until I'd turned in the grades so as not to seem like flatterers.

Clearly what I wanted and what the students desired were worlds apart this semester. Has this ever happened to you?

Professor Wins Fellowship, Will Visit Stonehenge

by J J Cohen

A small piece on my fellowship in the GW Hatchet leads me to observe that (1) whereas athletes winning the Superbowl declare "I'm going to Disney World!" my exuberant exclamation is "I'm visiting neolithic sites that impressed themselves upon the medieval imagination!" (2) the article makes it seem like I've never been to Stonehenge, and that while there I may be digging things up, and (3) I don't know how the Hatchet photographer induce that look I'm giving in the picture. Must be the stone wall next to me. We all know that my latest project reveals that I enjoy snuggling with rocks. Mmmmh, rocks.

Kzoo, Kushner, and Me + more

by KARL STEEL

Been very busy around these parts amid the neverending semester (the light of Summer beckons from yon last week of May). Quickly, here, some promotional links and a dose of political outrage.

KZOO 2011 I'm speaking at the "Problematic Pets in the Middle Ages," Session 175, Valley II 205, on Friday at 10am. Unfortunately this puts me opposite our own Jeffrey Cohen, whose Friday 10am paper ("Lithic Animation, or, Do Rocks Have Souls") can be heard at Session 179, Valley I 100, and opposite, as well, a postmedieval session on "The Transcultural Middle Ages," Session 217, Schneider 1360.

The photo perhaps gives you a sense of what my paper will be about: the canis story from The Seven Sages of Rome, perhaps most famously told about St. Guinefort in Stephen of Bourbon's De Supersticione. Look here for the basic features of this story of a enraged knight who mistakenly kills his dog and then abandons himself and his family in grief. I'm going to talk about the possibilities opened up by the event of incorrect mourning: likely keytexts here include Badiou (on the event); Ahmed (un/happiness); Butler (life, nonlife, violence, mourning); and L. Rickels (on pet grief). Now that I've read 25+ versions of the story, all that remains is to write the paper. As I give it next Friday morning, I'll send my love across the Western Michigan Campus to Eileen and Jeffrey while we each do our own thing.

Self and Other Promotion: The Ohio State University Press has a preliminary webpage up for my book, which looks as though it will really be out, knock on wood, in early August 2011. Other promotion: Speculations 2 is now available: look inside for pieces by several of our favorite folks here at ITM: Levi Bryant, Timothy Morton, Nicola Masciandaro, and Michael O'Rourke.

And the OUTRAGE. University Boards of Trustees are not generally noted for their intellectual sophistication, and CUNY's is no exception. Recently, Trustee Jeffrey Wiesenfeld, former FBI guy, current finance guy, Republican appointee, led a charge to deny John Jay College's offer of an honorary degree to Tony Kushner, whom he characterizes as having incorrect opinions about Israel. The Board went along with this, though some members had no familiarity whatsoever with Kushner's work. As Kushner's response makes clear, Wiesenfeld slandered him. When pushed, Wiesenfeld conjured his mother to call Kushner a kapo; he called (some) Palestinians nonhuman; and note that in the past he has said that "while today most Muslims are not terrorists, virtually all terrorists today are Muslim" (NY Daily News Sept 5 2007). For more information, please look at, and if you're sympathetic, join this Facebook Group, "Tony Kushner: Good Enough for a Pulitzer, but Not for City University NY?"

Medieval Studies Featured at Maney Publishing

by J J Cohen

During the month of May, Maney Publishing is featuring their publications in medieval studies, including Exemplaria (with its sexy new cover design). More than fifty articles may be downloaded without charge. Some examples from the email I received this morning:

• FREE Medieval Studies Virtual Journal: online access to over 50 medieval studies articles in archaeology, history, language and literature throughout May
• Subscription discounts: receive up to 15% discount on subscriptions to all featured journals
• Video interviews
• Hot topic: Remembering the Battle of Towton 
• Hot topic: Resurrecting medieval music
• Hot topic: Early medieval finds in China
• Hot topic: Maria Hayward on Dress at the Court of King Henry VIII
• Hot topic: Unmasking the Lewis Chessmen
• Hot topic: The mysteries of Portolan charts
• Snapshot: Medieval London
  
• Spotlight on: Exemplaria ...and much, much more!

Get over to the site! Distract yourself from grading! Go wild!