Slammed by the Standard

Hey, nice attack piece in the Weekly Standard on medievalists and Kalamazoo -- best of all, it includes a personal swipe at my panel. Whoo hoo:

The blowout, or perhaps the reductio ad absurdum, of these scholarly endeavors was Session 531 on Sunday morning, "Medieval Masculinities on Film." That session featured four separate papers: yet another examination of A Knight's Tale, an effort to prove that the 1961 movie El Cid, starring Charlton Heston, was a piece of Franco-engineered propaganda, a cinematic look at the story of Tristan and Isolde, and "Medieval Masculinity as Modern Monstrosity," a postmodernist analysis of Hannibal Lecter. Such presentations proved to be among the better attended, and at least some of the individual papers (although maybe not those read in Session 531) displayed more literary depth and passion than many of the papers dealing with "real" medieval literature run through the postmodernist meat-grinder.

All of which makes it sounds like she didn't actually attend the panel, which is often the way of these attacks (e.g. there's no doubt that El Cid was Franco-funded propaganda, which paid off big time for Spanish tourism). Looks like Charlotte Allen is trying to be a cut-rate Coulter while using her graduate studies. Wow, she is just chock-full of self-hatred (maybe she looked at how bad the job market was for medievalists, particularly those who research poorly, and decided becoming a conservative opinionator was much easier to do). Gee, maybe things would have gone differently if someone asked her to dance on Saturday night.

Hey, I'm finally as big of a danger to the academic world as my husband. Yes!

Tip o' the keyboard to Michael Torregrossa for passing the link along.

Monster Folk

The monster folk are organized! See their blog -- join their ranks. This may be a new land speed record for acceleration from idea to committee. Partly this is due to the early deadline for Kazoo session proposals (tomorrow). I've already faxed off mine for Medieval Popular Culture.

And home again...

Saturday is often a comedy of errors at Kalamazoo: the best laid plans, etc. Don't trust me: lots of medievalists blog about the 'Zoo. I had dinner plans, but they relied upon catching up with other people. In between, I met up with one of my panelists at the wine hour and tried to find others; seeking out the mead tasting room, I ran into the "monstrous" folks (that's an indication of research interests, not character [for the most part ;-)]) and drank mead and, consequently, missed the phone calls for dinner. For myself, well, I could pay the price, but I'd invited the panelist along and had to apologize for the gaffe. But we went to dinner with the monster folk which was jolly enough -- who but monsters know how to laugh? -- and eventually went back to the monster folks meeting where ideas were explored for acronyms and journal titles.

Next I ran off to the UConn impromptu party where I was aghast at the choice between Miller and Bud until I found there were additional options on the floor. Then it was back to meet up with Miss Wendy and ply her with some Dickies to get her in the mood for the dance. MLA folks, eat your heart out -- while you feast on acrimony and stress, we medievalists dance. It is the heart of Kalamazoo. I made use of any friend who came our way to drag them out on the dance floor. Lacking my sweetie, who is always willing to hit the floor and have fun, I have to often drag the unwilling out (kudos to Will, who asked me -- you are a scholar and gentleman!). Dancing is a joy (although it also tends to remind you in the morning that it's not the years, it's the mileage).

Of course, Sunday morning panels come quite early after the late night dance, but despite the rain, I was there on time. All went well -- the panelists had much of interest to share and we had a lively session even at 8.30 am on Sunday. As soon as the panel was over, the three Furies headed back to Detroit in the rain, but I made my flight, fell asleep quickly and bit my tongue three times (ouch) and then was home where Gene made me chicken curry and we watched Doctor Who, Smallville and the latest episode of Cranford. Simple joys are best.

Tomorrow the summer immersion begins: what was I thinking?

Zoo Life

If you could get them to time it right, the geese make an excellent alarm. They fly to the top of the dorms and honk for all they're worth -- or at least the ones I saw this morning did. Imagine calling the desk to ask for a 8am goose call (be careful what you ask for?)

Animal life today: one bunny by Fetzer, a blue heron flying over head and yes, the ever adorable ducklings following their mother and making all and sundry go "awwww!"

I decided to skip the heavy academic panel I had planned to attend this morning and instead went to the "Play Music" performance at the chapel featuring Early Music Michigan and WMU's Collegium Musicum. Good choice: they presented music from plays by folks as disparate as Hildegard and Shakespeare, including the Jeu de Robin et Marion, which was a lot of fun. Always enjoyable to hear a little early music -- and dance, too. They had some very young dancers and began the program with a processional led by Death. It sounds gloomy, but it was accompanied by the lively "Ad mortem festinamus."

Lunch meeting and then a panel on the Beowulf films have occupied me since. I came to the lab to print my boarding pass. Already nearly time to leave! But of course, first there's the dance tonight, whose legend looms large.

Last night was dinner at the Great Lakes Shipping Co. and their non-nonpareil dish, the schrod in parchment. Wonderful! We headed out there after the UConn reception at which we saw many familiar faces and chatted for a good while (and enjoyed free beer, naturally -- Bell's!). I was strong-armed into the New England Saga Society, giving me yet another affiliation to compete for my time at Kazoo. Always too much...

More Zoo Stories

I saw a little brown bunny on my walk to get tea this morning, just nibbling beside the sidewalk. That's Kalamazoo: birds and fish and bunnies and squirrels -- and all the medievalists you can shake a stick at (if that's your idea of a good time). It must be a reflection of how long I've been coming here that I see people I know just about everywhere.

Today I attended sessions, mostly for Societas Magica -- lunch was a meeting to plan for tomorrow's general meeting. There was a panel on teaching just before I came here that ended a little early because two panelists could not be there (for rather unfortunate reasons). So I came to the lab to see how bad my email was (not too bad) and of course, write up a little news of the day because (let's face it) I write obsessively.

Dinner last night was at the Roadhouse -- always a good meal. Miss Wendy and I met up with my pal Frankie and her student Dawn as well as with Meredith (yes, your pal, Cheryl!) and her friend Oz. Later we hit some of the receptions and drank free beer (always tastes sweeter) and then retired to our room relatively early. I slept better last night with my eyeshades and earplugs, but I guess Miss Wendy fared no better.

Looks like it's just about time to go meet her.

From the 'Zoo

Hey kids -- we're in the 'zoo now. Well, at present I'm in the computer lab at WMU like a bunch of other medieval geeks typing away. I got to Detroit yesterday with no problems. Our plane was so empty I stretched out and went to sleep across the three seats. Once I got to the Motor City, I did some more sleeping while waiting for Wendy and Faye to get there. Once they arrived we had some lunch and then picked up the rental car and headed out on 94. Way too much rain to be fun, but we made good time nonetheless. Outside of Kazoo there was a big accident in the eastbound lane that backed up traffic for miles.

We headed over to registration to find that we were in Valley I; better than Valley II (up the very steep hill) but not as good as Valley III, home of registration, the enormous book room and the coffee & wine hours. We went to Bilbo's for dinner; none of us had been to their new location yet, so it was nice to check it out. It's much bigger and airier, but without the basement there's a certain charm missing. The pizza and beer, however, are just as good -- I had some Dragon Red Ale, yum.

We dropped Faye off at the Radisson (no dorm life for her!) and headed back to our ever-so-charming dorm room. Wendy had work to do on an essay she was editing for Mechademia (I think) as well as looking over her paper for this morning (nice to get done in the first session of the day).

We both woke up early; there was a bird determined to wake the entire state outside our window and lacking a BB gun or trained falcon, there wasn't much else to do but get up. I wandered out to go get some tea and began running into folks right away. Had a long chat with fellow UConn alum John Sexton and ran into a bunch of the other UConn folks, as well as my new local colleagues from Siena, Mary and Pam. Wendy's panel went well, of course. Wendy talked about martyrs from the South English Legendary and was brilliant as usual.

Time to go enjoy the conference and the beautiful spring day. The swans are nesting! They weren't at this time last year, so that's cool. More news as time permits.

Insert Dramatic "Noooooo!"

I pulled a Sunday 8am panel at Kalamazoo. At least I'm only presiding, not speaking, but argh! After the Saturday night dance, Sunday panels are killer -- you're tired and there's often little audience. Sigh.

Kazoo in the Chronicle

This week's issue of the Chronicle of Higher Education has the story on the Medieval Congress at Kalamazoo. Perilous Cheryl tells me that there are, alas, no pictures of me or Miss Wendy, but it should be interesting to see the write up. She's also kindly offered to send me the article as we have only the (lagging a week or so behind, picture-free Lexis-Nexus) electronic version at Saint Rose.

There is, however, an audio story about the dance! And here's somebody's brief YouTube video at the dance. Medievalists rock!