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AHA Today, Art-Hist, Babel Working Group, DotPorterDigital, Fall of Arthur, Furta Sacra, Gower Project, Histories of Emotions, How Did We Get Into This Mess?, hrj livejournal, In the Middle, International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, MassMedieval, Material Collective, Medieval Ecocriticisms, medievalists.net, Modern Historian Canadian Medievalist, Parasynchronies, Tolkien Society, Using astrolabes
If you regret not being able to go to the 49th International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, Michigan (or you just didn’t get to all the sessions you wanted, or you want to review the ones that you did attend), I’ve collected some blog posts and videos that might give you a taste of the kinds of topics that were discussed. This conference is huge, with over 500 sessions in all fields of medieval studies, so my list is not representative, but the following links will lead you to a few summaries of presentations and in some cases, even entire conference papers.
I’ll start with the Tolkien at Kalamazoo sessions. Although I sometimes write up summaries of Tolkien conference sessions for this blog, this year Andrew Higgins has done the work with an excellent “Kalamazoo 2014 Round-Up” for the Tolkien Society.
Kisha Tracy also commented on the Fall of Arthur session, as well as other Thursday presentations on the Mass Medieval blog.
Moving away from the Tolkien sessions, you can sample some of the following:
- Anticipations of the conference experience: “Kalamazoo Rendezvous” by Kisha Tracy on Mass Medieval.
- A brief impression in “Kzoo2014, first thought” by Karl Steel. In the Middle blog.
- J.P. Sexton and Kisha Tracy on Mass Medieval describe their experiences in various sessions on each day of the conference, including topics such as disability studies, Celtic studies, the Anglo-Scandinavian world, teaching history of the English language, and more. Days 1-2; Thursday; Friday and another Friday report; and Saturday.
- David Perry provides the text of his talk “Going Public: A Medievalist on CNN.com” on his blog, How Did We Get Into This Mess? On Language, Power, and Privilege. He gave this presentation in a session on writing about the Middle Ages for multiple audiences.
- “Kalamazoo 2014.” The Material Collective. Maggie Williams provides a summary of the Faking It roundtable.
- “Kinship: The Material Collective at Kalamazoo.” Medieval Meets World. Anne Harris summarizes the Impossible Words session and a session on Materiality and Aesthetics.
- J.J. Cohen in “The Kalamazoo Gyre” on the Impossible Words sessions, and some other highlights. In the Middle blog.
- Dot Porter at Dot Porter Digital has uploaded a video of her presentation: Disbinding Some Manuscripts, and Rebinding Some Others.
The Babel Working Group sponsored a session on punctuation, and some of the presentations are available in their entirety:
- Corey Sparks: “‽: Interrobanging Chaucer.” Video.
- Jonathan Hsy: “&.” Guest post on Mass Medieval.
- Josh Eyler: “, (A Breath).” Guest post on Mass Medieval.
Medievalists.net also published a few Kalamazoo features. First, two presentations on video:
- David S. Bachrach. “Chivalry, Feudalism, and Source Criticism: The Writing of Medieval German Military History.” Video.
- Danielle Trynoski and Matthew Ziebarth. “Viking Winter Camps: Creating a Model Using Geospatial Statistical Analysis.” Video.
And two reports:
- “Did the Battle of Hyddgen even take place?” — report on a paper by Michael Livingston.
- “Emergency Baptisms in the Middle Ages” — report on a paper by Thomas Izbicki.
And finally, a video with John France, Elizabeth Koza and Danielle Trynoski discussing personal highlights of the conference in “The Medievalverse Roundtable from Kalamazoo.”
Added May 22:
- Thanks to Heidi Estes for this link to the Medieval Ecocriticisms blog, which promises to report on the presentations given in the What is Ecocriticism, Anyway? panel. The first of these, “Kalamazoo 2014: Tangled Banks and Vegetable Bodies” by Rob Barrett is now posted.
- Heather Rose Jones has posted a series in which she was “Live-blogging Kalamazoo” including sessions on Dress and Textiles, Latin Homoerotics, Medieval Magic, Warrior Women in Medieval Eurasia, Merlin’s Colleagues, and more.
Added May 23:
- Vincent Debiais, abstract/introduction to “Sonorous and Brilliant Emptiness: Visual Approaches to White, Empty, Silent in Medieval Art” on Art-Hist: Researches on Artistic Creation from Late Antiquity to Modern Times.
- Yvonne Seale’s Storify of Beyond Medieval Women and Power and The Rules of Isabelle of France.
- Yvonne Seale’s summaries of various sessions including Medieval Manuscripts in the Digital Age, Colette of Corbie, Advances in Medieval Archaeology, Beyond Medieval Women and Power, The Afterlives of Medieval Women, and the plenary on The Libel of the Lamb, on her blog, Furta Sacra.
- Kisha Tracy’s Storify of The Digital Life of Twenty-First-Century Medievalists and The Relevance of the Middle Ages Today.
Added May 25: Megan Arnott’s recap of various Anglo-Saxon and Norse sessions and one on Harry Potter on her blog, The Modern Historian, the Canadian Medievalist, and other such Oxymorons
Added May 27: not exactly a blog post but a webpage for Kristine Larsen’s Intro. to the Astrolabe workshop (see below): Using Astrolabes: Resources for Medievalists and the Astronomers Who Love Them. The page includes a link to the workshop handout and promises more how-to guides and sample problems over the summer.
Added May 28:
- Jonathan Hsy has posted two Storify links: #Kzoo2014 meta-twitter and SMFS Wikipedia Write-In, #Kzoo2014.
- Rick Godden has added the text of his talk for the Disability Studies and Digital Humanities roundtable in “Humanities Accessed” as well as the conclusion to his paper “Prosthetic Neighbors: Enabling Community in the Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnelle.” in “Kalamazoo paper, in closing” on his blog, Parasynchronies.
Added May 29: Jonathan Hsy’s look back on twitter use at Kzoo 2014, focusing on the usefulness and transformative value of twitter for medievalists (and all academics): “#medievaltwitter revisited: #kzoo2014 (BuzzFeed-style wrap-up)” on In the Middle.
Added June 4:
- Laura Saetveit Miles has posted her talk, “Once and Future Feminism” on In the Middle. Her talk was part of the “Writing the Middle Ages for Multiple Audiences” panel. (See the link above for David Perry’s paper from that session).
- Post-Kalamazoo reflections in “On Stillness: #Kzoo2014” on EXM: a blog of theory in medieval and renaissance studies associated with Exemplaria. By Richard Godden.
Added June 6:
- Mary C. Flannery reviews the sessions on medieval emotions in “Emotions Move, Emotions Matter” on Histories of Emotions: From Medieval Europe to Contemporary Australia.
- “Digital Scholarship and Much More at K’zoo 2014” on the AHA Today: a blog of the American Historical Association.
- Karl Steel’s paper “SATISFACTION: Interested; Omnipotent; Implacable” has been posted on In the Middle.
Added June 10: A brief summary of the session on “Gower and Science at ICMS 2014″ on The Gower Project blog.
Any other links that can be added to this list?