Saturday, October 14, 2006

If you happen to be in Washington DC on Oct. 27 ...

You are most welcome to join the English Department of the George Washington University at our "Futures of the Field: Medieval Studies" Symposium.

The discussion with Bruce Holsinger (University of Virginia), Kellie Robertson (University of Pittsburgh) and Kofi Omoniyi Sylvanus Campbell (Wilfrid Laurier University) will take place on Friday October 27 at 2 PM. Refreshments served.

6 comments:

Eileen Joy said...

I am pretty bummed out that I cannot make this symposium, but I'm also worried. As this symposium is about the "futures" of our field, will I be left behind in the past if I don't attend?

Karl Steel said...

No: you'll just be able to beat a path of your own to the future outside the Sauron-like gaze of hegemonic medievalism. Or something like that.

Consider yourself lucky!

Anonymous said...

My only question is this: will the panelists allow questions from far afield (pun intended), that is, via cell text or BlackBerry? To be left out of this conversation seems a cosmic injustice.

I know Kellie will not be at the Zoo, and for that I am in a state of anticipatory grief. Will Bruce?

dein, Emile

Jeffrey Cohen said...

This is mostly an internal GW event, in that it educates the department for the job search we're embarking upon -- we're not trying to make some grand conclusions of import to all of the field. It's much more selfish, and circumscribed. We welcome outsiders, of course, but the primary audience isn't medievalists.

It would be good to do a version of this nationally or internationally, wouldn't it?

But if anyone has any particular questions they'd like to suggest, I'm happy to add them to our list.

Anonymous said...

Jeffrey knows I'm poking him in the ribs with this, but...

Looking at the GWU job advert:

"Preferred Qualifications: Applicants with research interests in any of the following will be given preference: racial, religious, cultural difference; colonial and postcolonial studies; trans-cultural contact and conflict; trade, travel, and exchange; nonnormative identities (queer, Other, animal, barbarian, hybrid); nations and nationalism; writing in the British archipelago from a non-Anglocentric point of view; periodization and time; England and the world; the complexities of identity in their relation to texts and writing."

I might could see where the department needs the education to which Chairman Cohen refers in the previous post. But then again presumably the department is sufficiently clued in to such concerns since does the list not comprise a neat precis of the Chairman's own career in critical medieval studies?

Perhaps there is another way to read the Ouroboros?

Another Damned Medievalist said...

dang! it would be a nice birthday present to myself, but I will be listening to students peer review a seminar paper.