Last month I attended the annual meeting of the Canadian Society of Medievalists, held this year at Brock University in St Catherines, Ontario.

I’ve been to the International Medieval Congress in Leeds a number of years now, and I’ve followed the proceedings of the International Congress on Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo on Twitter.  Each of these conferences consists of over 500 sessions on medieval topics over a period of three to four days.  Leeds has an attendance of over 1,800, Kalamazoo of more than 3,000, and all the conference attendees are there for papers, panel discussions, roundtables, workshops and performances related to medieval studies.  (When I tell non-medievalists about this, they are shocked that there are that many of us and that such an event could exist!)  The experience is thrilling and inspiring for someone who repeatedly gets the response ‘What is that?’ —or worse, ‘Why?’— when revealing my…