[co-hosted by Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, Saint Louis University, and the BABEL Working Group]
Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, George Washington University (author and editor: Of Giants: Sex, Monsters, and the Middle Ages; The Postcolonial Middle Ages; Medieval Identity Machines; Thinking the Limits of the Body; and Identity, Hybridity, and Monstrosity in Medieval Britain: On Difficult Middles)
Steven F. Kruger, Queens College, CUNY Graduate Center (author and editor: Queering the Middle Ages; AIDS Narratives: Gender and Sexuality, Fiction and Science; Dreaming in the Middle Ages; Approaching the Millennium: Essays on Angels in America; and The Spectral Jew: Conversion and Embodiment in Medieval Europe)
In his book Medieval Identity Machines, Jeffrey Jerome Cohen writes that we know the human body "is divisible into semidiscrete systems (nervous, digestive, circulatory, excretory, reproductive), but that these structures nevertheless form a bounded whole, a singular organism. The human body is therefore described as a marvel of God or of evolution, a system so autnomous from its environment that it can dream theology and science in order to envision how it came to be the culminating creation in a world of similarly distinct bodies and objects." But what if the body is less than this idealization and also "more than its limbs, organs, and flesh as traced by an anatomical chart"? What if it is "open and permeable," and what if "corporeality and subjectivity--themselves inseparable--potentially included both the social structures (kinship, nation, religion, race) and the phenomenal world (objects, gadgets, prostheses, animate and inanimate bodies of many kinds) across which human identity is spread?" Cohen urges us to see bodies as "sites of possibility" that are "necessarily dispersed into something larger, something mutable and dynamic, a structure of alliance and becoming," and which are always on the verge of escaping "the confines of somber individuality" in order to connect with other bodies and other worlds. Therefore, there is no "being," per se, only "becoming."
For the 34th Annual Meeting of the Southeastern Medieval Association, we invite paper and session proposals on any topic relative to the Middle Ages, but we especially encourage those proposals that address any and all aspects of the body, embodiment, and becoming in medieval arts and letters. Consider our definition of body to be wide open, to include human and nonhuman bodies, bodies of language and manuscripts and texts, bodies of history, bodies of knowledge, and bodies (of all types) as sites of transformation and possibility, of departures and arrivals, of enclosure and openness. Consider, also, if you will, the gendered body, the racialized body, the phenomenological body, the sexualized body, the colonial body, the medicalized body, the pathologized body, the animal body, the erotic body, the loving body, the spiritual body, the abnormal body, the medieval body, the communal body, the hybrid body, the post/human body, and so on. Consider the relationships between body and self-identity, between body and art, between body and mind, body and culture, body and technology, body and world, and so on. Consider, finally, the ways in which bodies and embodiment emerge out of historical times and spaces, and out of historical processes of becoming (coming-to-be through time and space).
Deadline for Submission: Friday, 30 May 2008 **extended to June 15**
Send Paper or Session Proposal Abstracts to:
Eileen Joy
Department of English
Southern Illinois University Edwardsville
ejoy@siue.edu or eileenajoy@gmail.com
*As Eileen is mainly peripatetic these days, submissions must be made via email. Paper proposal abstracts should be in the neighborhood of 250-300 words, and should include contact information. For session proposals, a brief abstract (250-300 words) for the session, along with the titles of each included paper, plus information for each presenter and organizer (name, affiliation, contact information), will suffice.
Hotel accommodations close to Saint Louis University have been arranged at the Water Tower Inn and the Parkway Hotel. Please identify yourself as a conference attendee when making your reservations (the group code at both hotels is "SEMA").
Rate of $75 per night single / double occupancy / Group ID# 1129
Reserve by 1 September to ensure conference rate
Rate of $114 per night single / double occupancy
Reserve by 1 September to ensure conference rate*when reserving rooms online, you will need the Group ID# 1637 & Password 37001922
Transportation
Conference Locations:
1. Busch Student Center (panel sessions, plenary talks, Friday banquet,
and Saturday business luncheon)
2. DuBourg Hall (Thursday evening reception)
3. No. 41 Pius XII Memorial Library, Vatican Film Library, and Knights
Room (Friday evening reception)