The View From Kalamazoo

It’s been wicked hot and humid, I’m still trying to slowly move in fits and starts, I’m behind in painting, 2 weeks past due picking some things up and finishing them at the KIA, and it’s clear I’m hopelessly behind on reading, responding, and writing here.

SO while I’ll eventually post some more photos, and I really hope I will find all of my work still at the KIA and not disposed of unceremoniously, I do need to comment on this gem from a few days ago.

Of Chivalry and Convention Badges

It’s interesting. I was an odd bystander. At the time I had fielded questions about the missing affiliations (a technical error, basically)…some from those truly Irritated (if not Insulted) souls, some from the curious, and others who commented that they really, really liked it and we were geniuses, geniuses. It was fascinating to watch Congress wander by and observe who were the first to write their affiliations in under their names, watch as the number of those uncomfortable with relative anonymity grew somewhat…and those who stood pat – sneeches without stars and sneeches with stars on thars danced before me in some sort of psychological experiment in this multidisciplinary microcosm of medievalists. Others on the home team received comments, some that made perfect sense (exhibitors, for example, should be plain both for our staff and for participants to easily identify), some tilting toward the rant side, and others offering applause.

From the beginning the success of the Congress has been fed by the camaraderie and free exchange of research and ideas fostered by a level playing-field “…the most important was the egalitarian strategy successfully argued by Sommerfeldt. Invitations to present papers at the Kalamazoo conference went out to everyone in the field, and abstracts were invited from anyone who wished to be considered. This approach was considered radical at the time, but served to open scholarship to a much broader range of individuals, including advanced graduate students who sometimes read their first papers at Kalamazoo.” (from this history) There have never been titles, no herrprofessordoktors cluttering the name-tag landscape – those who attended were and are medievalists, brought together by a common bond of time-period, not driven apart by jockeying and hierarchical hoo-ha. I first attended as an interested undergraduate minoring in medieval studies. I marveled then, and still do marvel (frankly), about what has been built here. I won’t start in on utopian monologues, but what is here was radical, has been inspiring and influential, and is, still, unique.

As WMU has been on my tag all along, the affiliation game I was most often pulled into was that of giving directions and asking questions, but on more than one occasion a fellow grad-student from a Much More Important Place had turned around, looked at my tag, sniffed haughtily and turned away. I’ve read responses from others who have felt the affiliation elitism sting personally. Even given the intention of creating a space where equal footing to exchange ideas can flourish there are those who will still try to subvert it.

The decision is not mine (I am, you realize, merely Chief Minion…still, at the end of the day, a minion) but I rather hope to see the blanks under the names again next year. Not only because observing the tango of the self-secure with the self-important in the form of the write-in affiliation is darn entertaining, but because I think the spirit of the conference and the intentions of those who conceived it are served.