SNEAK PREVIEW: BABEL and postmedieval Sessions at the Kalamazoo 2010 Congress

Figure 1. abandoned, never-completed hotel on the north coast of Taiwan

by EILEEN JOY

Yes, it's early to be looking this far ahead, but since many of us were scrambling today to get our session paperwork into the mail for the 2010 International Medieval Congress in Kalamazoo, Michigan next May, I thought I would share here the details of two roundtable discussion sessions organized by the BABEL Working Group--"On the Question of Style" and "On Collaboration"--and two other roundtable discussion sessions co-organized by Anna Klosowska and Nicola Masciandaro on behalf of postmedieval: a journal of medieval cultural studies, on the theme of "The Post-Abysmal." We are pleased to announce that Michael Snediker (Queen's University, Ontario), a published poet and scholar of American poetry and the author of the gorgeous new book Queer Optimism: Lyric Personhood and Other Felicitous Persuasions (Minnesota, 2009), will be participating on several of these sessions as our modernist interloper (or is that as our co-affective session-mate?). Those who might want to catch Michael in the flesh earlier than May might recall that he will also be participating in the seminar on Cary Howie's book Claustrophilia: The Erotics of Enclosure this coming November at GWU's Medieval and Early Modern Studies Institute.

In the meantime, GO HERE for more information on the Kalamazoo sessions.

And I suppose I should also share here, too, that BABEL will also be at the 35th annual meeting of the Southeastern Medieval Association in Nashville, Tennessee within the next couple of weeks (October 15-17, 2009, to be exact), and more information about our panel on "Knowing and Unknowing Pleasures" can be FOUND HERE.