medieval

Consuming Cultures and Manuscript Evidence

at the Midwest Modern Language Association Conference

15-18 November, Kansas City, Missouri 

The Research Group on Manuscript Evidence, in keeping with the M-MLA conference’s theme of “Consuming Cultures,” is sponsoring panels on the consumption of manuscripts.  This consumption can be both literal—for example, the destruction wrought by bookworms, fires, and biblioclasts—or metaphorical—where “consuming” can mean textual transmission and reception more broadly.  We invite all approaches, including textual, art historical, codicological, and paleographical as well as all periods.

In her still influential Fantasy and Mimesis: Responses to Reality in Western Literature (1984), Kathryn Hume defines the literary fantastic as any departure from consensus reality, believing that it holds an equally significant position in literary history as mimesis. Rather than being a recent and sometimes academically marginalized genre, fantasy, for Hume, is integral to almost all literature.

This panel welcomes all proposals that address the conference theme of consumption in texts in Old and Middle English. Of particular interest are proposals that address consumerism in all forms, material or immaterial. Examples of material consumerism might include but are not limited to the presence, use, or thoughts of food, goods, bodies, or land, while examples of immaterial consumption might consider ideas, beliefs, values, labels, or practices. Abstracts of no more than 300 words should be sent to Dr. Kathleen Burt at kathleen.burt@mga.edu by no later than April 5, 2018. 

Modern Language Association 2019 National Convention

3–6 January, 2019

Chicago, Illinois

Topic for the allied session WOMEN IN FRENCH: open

San Antonio, TX:  October 11-14, 2018

please see http://www.southcentralmla.org/conference