How material exchange and mobility affect people and their ideas? How do these subjects and these objects transform the place of destination and its practices, knowledge, texts, and understanding of the world? This panel will address the consequences of the mobility of subjects and the exchange of objects in the early modern world. Early modernity is a time strongly characterized by the increasing crossing of boundaries. In this sense, this panel wants to analyze how material exchange enables different cultures to cross borders and permeate different social spaces, modifying those who import them and those who export them.

CFP: Shirking the Canon: “Obscure” or “Unpopular” Texts in the Survey Classroom

54th International Congress on Medieval Studies

Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, MI 

9-12 May 2019

"If you're not angry, you're not paying attention"—according to an Esquire/NBC News survey from 2016, "[h]alf of all Americans are angrier today than they were a year ago." Statements like this mirror a perceived cultural and societal change that transcends simplistic partisan divides and has been accompanied by political battles and heated discourse. Though there has been an increased focus on anger in American public life following the 2016 election season, the mobilization of anger has a history that reaches back much further than current debates might suggest.

Public humanities scholar Doris Sommer argues that “learning to think like an artist and an interpreter is basic training for our volatile times.” She encourages teachers to involve students and community members in artistic practices—writing poems, performing skits, sharing music—in order to build critical literacy skills. Like many poets, poet-critics, and poet-teachers, Sommer describes aesthetic engagement as a way to produce critical insights and cultivate political community. According to this view, poetry invites or occasions experiences that alter readers’ perspectives. What we experience as we interpret a poem changes the way we interpret elements of everyday life. And these altered or enhanced perspectives open up new political possibilities.