Some months ago, I wrote a piece commenting on my expected involvement in the 61st International Congress on Medieval Studies, hosted at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, Michigan. The time for it has come; I am amid its proceedings even as this piece reaches the greater outside world, and I’ll have more to say about it than I do at the moment. But I do have something to say about it at the moment, and even if some other projects I have going are on a bit of a break while I address the ‘zoo and other matters, I do feel some need to keep things going here.
Image is mine from before.
As has been the case for several years, I am attending the Congress virtually, meeting in a series of online sessions to listen to papers, give talks, and enter into something like learned discussion with my peers and with people who have succeeded where I failed to secure a continuing faculty position. (That I could not still rankles, even though I know that 1) I’m in a pretty good spot and 2) the professoriate is not quite so delightful as it might be thought from my comments. I do still have friends and acquaintances on that side of things, so I do still keep at least a little bit abreast of what’s going on in academe.) Given my schedule and finances, as well as the needs of my family and of the small Hill Country town where I live, I can’t (at this point) justify the expense or time away that visiting the ‘zoo in person would require, but I am happy to get as much engagement with such things as I have been able to get. The work I do now is good work, being generally helpful to people and, it must be noted, intellectually stimulating, but I do miss being able to sit around and go on at length about the kinds of things I spent a couple decades getting good at; it’s nice to touch base with that every now and again.
I’ll admit to missing being on site, even if it is the case (as I have been told) that the event is much reduced from when I was able to attend in person. Video conferences are fine and good, and I very much appreciate sleeping in my own bed at night and sitting in my good chairs. So much being said, I also benefited from running into people in the hallways and around campus, not only my colleagues as medievalists, but the people who inhabit a campus year-round, as well as the people of the surrounding city, whose offerings have been edifying and whose food and drink were delicious. Impromptu meetings and discussions illuminate in ways that no preplanned talk can (which is not at all to say there is no value in the preplanned talk; there are definitely things it can do that don’t work, or don’t work well, off the cuff). That kind of less-mediated exchange (I say “less-mediated” because there’s always some mediation; there’s always some mediation at work, if only because language is limited) does not really happen online, and it is admittedly not always to the good, but it can offer unanticipated and unpredictable insight and inspiration.
It may be the case that I will be able to get back to the ‘zoo in person. I imagine that I will find some things greatly changed if I do, not least the lodgings available; the traditional places are being taken down and replaced with new things, and others yet have been added. The meeting sites, themselves, are other than when I was there before, if the program I received in the mail is to be believed (and I am sure that it is). The people will be different; I was privileged in past years to speak with and learn from people whose names were on the books I read for classes and for my dissertation, but as I have grown older, they have, too, and there are fewer of them now than before. So much is the way of things, of course, that some pass on and there is lamentation for it. But as the poet puts it, “Þæs ofereode; þisses swa mæg”; as someone who trained as a medievalist, someone whose life has benefited from the study of such things, I would do well to keep it in mind.
Until and unless that happens, though…I have more to say about the ‘zoo this year, and I’ve got some work to do to put together things for next year. I find that, even if it’s only online, I want to do it again.
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Elliott RWI 