Kalamazoo 2012: BABEL & postmedieval panels

47th International Congress on Medieval Studies,  Western Michigan University
10-13 May 2012     Kalamazoo, MI

I. BABEL Working Group panels:

1. Fuck This: On Finally Letting Go (Roundtable)

Eileen Joy (Southern Illinois University Edwardsville) and Myra Seaman (College of Charleston), Co-Organizers

Myra Seaman, Presider

This session is designed to open up a broad and collective discussion on the dark affects and erotics of the concept, situation, scene, gestures, trauma, dilemma, psycho-dynamics, historicity, aesthetics, physics, materialism, ecology, etc. of finally leaving, getting rid of, abandoning, refusing, and letting go of potentially toxic “love-objects,” with “love-objects” here denoting any possible object: ideological, methodological, disciplinary, textual, art historical, codicological, artifactual, historical, archival, literary, geographical, archaeological, etc.  More specifically, some of the remarks will be pitched toward disciplinary, methodlogical, and historical objects (e.g. “Fuck Philology” or “Fuck Deep Reading” or “Fuck the Middle Ages” or “Fuck Chaucer”), or they will be aimed at specific scenes within medieval texts that illustrate in certain striking and illustrative ways the concepts, gestures, acts, and scenes of “finally letting go” and how those textual moments might productively intersect with certain intellectual and professional concerns currently circulating in the larger discipline of medieval studies.

2. Fuck Me: On Never Letting Go (Roundtable)

Eileen Joy (Southern Illinois University Edwardsville) and Myra Seaman (College of Charleston), Co-Organizers

Eileen Joy, Presider

Similar to the session described above, but moving in the other direction, this session is designed to open up a broad and collective discussion on the dark affects and erotics of the concept, situation, scene, gestures, trauma, dilemma, psycho-dynamics, historicity, aesthetics, physics, materialism, ecology, etc. of never being able to dispense with, leave, abandon, or let go of certain (potentially self-destructive) “love-objects,” with “love-objects” here denoting any possible object: ideological, methodological, disciplinary, textual, art historical, codicological, artifactual, historical, archival, literary, geographical, archaeological, etc. More specifically, some of the remarks will be pitched toward disciplinary, methodlogical, and historical objects (e.g. “Historicism, C’est Moi” or “Langland, Only Langland” or “Dear Margery Kempe: You’re Killing Me”), or they will be aimed at specific scenes within medieval texts that illustrate in certain striking and illustrative ways the concepts, gestures, acts and scenes of never being able to let go of the potentially harmful love-object and how those textual moments might productively intersect with certain intellectual and professional concerns currently circulating in the larger discipline of medieval studies

II. postmedieval Panel:

Burn After Reading: Miniature Manifestos for a Post/Medieval Studies (Roundtable)

Eileen Joy (Southern Illinois University Edwardsville) and Myra Seaman (College of Charleston), Co-Organizers

This session will feature twenty 2-minute “manifestos” from a broad variety of persons working in multiple disciplines in medieval and early modern studies, ranging from advanced graduate students to more established professors and scholars, who will offer visions for new directions in medieval and early modern studies and also for new cross- and multi-disciplinary approaches to the study of the Middle Ages and Renaissance. The session will also serve as a sort of “pitch” meeting with the Co-Editors and some of the Editorial Board members of postmedieval: a journal of medieval cultural studies, in order to help them determine future special issues of the journal. The proceedings of this session will then be edited by Eileen Joy and Myra Seaman and published by punctum books: spontaneous acts of scholarly combustion in late summer or early fall of 2012.