Kalamazoo -OR- Cedric in Michigan for the 44th International Medieval Studies Conference

Wednesday evening:

After 8 hours drive from State College, arrived safely at Kalamazoo. The campus of Western Michigan University is pretty.

Checked in in my dorm (yes... in real life I am poor) and went to this crazy place called 'Bilbo's pizza' inspired from Tolkien. Got a Medium (that is 'large' in European scale) 'Dragon's hunger Pizza' (pretty much all kind of meat topping you can ever fancy) and a Mug (that is two pints) of 'Red Dragon Ale' brewed by the owner himself. Just awesome... but could not get much wasted that night... even though I was with friends.

Got back to the dorm... Finished a paper about medieval fables ... (that tells you why i could not party) and now typing this message in the main hall where I can get internet before getting 5 meager hours of sleep until tomorrow's first conference session.

Internet is not working well ... campus has problems ... this message might arrive later on forum.

Pass the word about this daily 'blog' and check it every day. Tomorrow you'lee be jealous about some of the sessions I am attending to (MMORPG themes, Dracula, Mead in Viking Society) but I'll let you know...

Love from Kalamazoo,

Ced

Thursday:

Sessions attended:

THE CHANSON DE GESTE AND THE EUROPEAN EPIC: (10 a.m)
- Birds, Beds, and Broads: The Degeneration of an Epic Motif
- History and Prophecy in the Song of Roland
- The Song of Roland: Understanding the Epic Self
- Pagan and Christian World views in Huon de Bordeaux

MEDIEVAL THEMES FROM THE END OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY TO THE END OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY: (1.30 p.m)
- Inventing a Medieval Romania: Dracula and the Western Look
- First Knight, Idealism, and Medievalism
- Quantum Miracle or Quantum Curse? The Identity of the Medieval Scholar in Micheal Crichton's Timeline

NOEMEDIEVALIST COMMUNITIES: (3.30 p.m)
- Guilds, Community, and Spectacle in MMORPGs
- Music and Culture(s) across Time: Understand Sid Meier's Civilization IV
- Joining Robin's Gang: Forging a Neomedieval Community with BBC's Robin Hood
- Beowulf: Prince of the Geats, Nazis, and Odinists

THE BEVERAGE OF VALHALLA: MEAD IN THE VIKING WORLD: (7.30 p.m)
- The Drink of the Gods: The Origins of Mead Supremacy in Northern Europe
- Of Horn Maidens and Hostesses: The Role of Women in the Drinking Rituals of the North
- "Site nu to symle, and onsael meodo": Quaffing Mead with the Vikings


First day... So many cool things... We go at a Cajun New Orleans Restaurant that night where i have to eat so many spicy cool things and drink three liters of beer (in three pints s'il vous plait). Go back on campus to talk with the late night roamers about the sexuality of Lancelot. Go back to bed at 2.30 a.m...

So far so good... The best is to come...

Friday:

Slept in the morning because spent part of the night before finishing a paper and grading my students' finals.

Sessions attended:

WOMAN/MAN/GOD: (1.30)
- The Head of a Woman: Reading Serpents Beyond Cultural Differences
- Women, Men, God: Sexuality and Social Order in the Kabbalistic Literature of Sixteenth-Century Safed
- Sexual reproduction: strategies of Biblical Interpretation and History in Cursor mundi

MANY MEDIEVAL GUINEVERES: (3.30)
- Geoffrey of Monmouth's Guenevere and the Near-Reign of Emperess Matilda
- Ghostly Mothers and Fated Fathers: Gender and Genre in The Awntyrs off Arthure
- Guenevere: The Abbess of Frontvaultian Amesbury and the Mark of Reparation
- "A nuinne in whyght clothys and black": Malory's Guenevere at the Royal Priory of Amesbury
- Response: Is Guenevere Dangerous for Girls? Reading Arthurian "Misogyny"


Chill out, then go back to Bilbo's Pizza... Get quite fairly drunk...
Come back home, met a girl who offers me to eat some space cakes... go in her room... she offers more than I expected...... I gently decline and grab another space cake on my way out...
Go to my Friends' dorm... chill out... they go to sleep... as I exit the building there are music sessions outside... i play guitar and sing with them until 4.30 a.m. Another girl, being surprisingly astonished I am French offers to accompany me back. We proceed..., but I feign to be exhausted and leave her alone. i am sure she wanted, if I may quote a Medieval Fabliaux, "that which women desire most". Too sad I am a faithful boyfriend...

Great times!

Woke up late with my head in the ass (as the French say)

Sessions attended:

CELESTIAL AND SUPERNATURAL PHENOMENA IN LATE ANTIQUITY: (1.30)
- Christ as a Solar Deity: The Helian and Sarapean Origins of Early Images of Christ
- Seeing Stars: Moveable and Immoveable Celectial Phenomena in Gregory of Tours
- Magicians and Witches in Late Antique Gaul
- John Lydus' Use of Sources and Exempla in the De ostentis

ROUNDTABLE OF SCHOLARS: (3.30)
- Guiding Light: Feminine Judgement in Malory's Morte
- Words and Deeds: Then and Now
- Wyclef's Eden: Sex, Death, and Dominion in Paradise
- Margery Kempe and Julian of Norwich as Feminist Theologians
- The New Age of Holy Grail

The huge event of the evening was the Ale & Mead tasting, which ended up being a drinking, then an orgy...
Then we went oput to eat and back for a medieval ball that ended up in 2 a.m where I met some really neat people.
After the Ball, more drinking and guitar playing until 6.30 a.m...

Sunday:

Time to leave: noon

Time I woke up: 11.45... ooops

Try to manage the headache and the fact that I am still drunk in the morning. Rushes to buy some neat books before I leave. Get 75%. Try not to scream too loud in joy because it hurts my head.

Head to the car... 8 hours drive back home

God I love being a scholar!