20140104.0822

With the new year well begun, my mind turns to the scholarly activities I know await me.  I am looking to attend three conferences this year: CCCC in Indianapolis, Indiana; the International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, Michigan; and the South Central Modern Language Association conference in Austin, Texas.  (Others may pop up later.)  The latter two are repeat trips for me; I try to make it to both Kalamazoo and SCMLA each year.  They both produce excellent work, they both offer remarkably good networking activities, and they both provide wonderful experiences.

In support of my trip to the last, the South Central Modern Language Association conference, I am putting together another of my special sessions, albeit on a more "legitimate" topic than the last one I submitted.  As I have noted, I am looking to fill a panel titled Them's Fightin' Words: Implicit and Explicit Combat Methodologies.  One of my colleagues has already suggested a paper to me, but I can use two or three more, so those of you who might like to take a trip to Austin and have some academic inclinations--or who know others who might, so that you can forward this information to them--please note the panel description (which I repeat from the earlier post with some emendation):

The will to fight is embedded in human nature and so in human languages and literatures.  Many of the most widely-read works in any language have much to say about the ways in which people work to injure and destroy each other's properties and bodies.  Even many texts which perhaps do not count as "literary" treat the matter; most systems of martial arts have guidebooks written by advanced and expert practitioners of those arts, and militaries throughout the world publish manuals to assist in training people better how to kill.  Because so much effort is spent in describing and teaching fighting in the written word and other media, it seems appropriate to examine such depictions to uncover what they say about their writers, their readers, and the world in which they all exist.  This panel [Them's Fightin' Words] seeks to examine overt, and explicate covert, textual discussions of how best to fight; abstracts of papers for possible inclusion in the session are welcome.  They should be no more than 300 words and should be sent to geoffrey.b.elliott@gmail.com before the end of the business day on 14 February 2014.

Works in any textual or verbal medium are up for consideration: books, movies, covertly recorded training sessions with grand masters of esoteric physical disciplines, okuden, or whatever else uses words and/or sequenced images to try to teach ways to take apart things violently (or less so, as the case may be).  There is much material dealing with teaching people how to enact harm, and so there is ample opportunity for us to learn more about ourselves, each other, and the cultures in which we are enmeshed through the study of that material.  Your contribution to that study is most welcome.