Tuesday, July 15, 2014

20140715.0750

As I have noted, I spent the weekend just past at the Evil Incarnate: Manifestations of Villains and Villainy Conference at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. The conference ran from Friday through Sunday; I attended sessions on Friday and was present all day on Saturday. Although I did not hear all of what was on offer, I feel that I benefited greatly from the experience in terms of enriching my own understandings and in making useful contacts with other scholars and with those normally outside academe.

While I have yet to fully compile my conference notes, so that I cannot yet "tell all" as a friend has asked me to do, I can offer some observations. One is somewhat self-serving. There was to be a session at the conference titled "Retold Mythology," and I had meant to attend it, as the papers on offer seemed to be relevant to my professional and personal interests. The panel was canceled, however, for reasons that I do not know. (A new friend, one who works in folklore and popular culture, suggested to me that panels with comics papers often falter--although, again, the cause is not clear.) A paper from that panel was shunted to another, one handling evil in television. It was a medievalist paper, one laying out some of the foundations for the current infatuation with the paranormal in mainstream popular media (so it will likely be discussed somewhat on the Tales after Tolkien Society blog, Travels in Genre and Medievalism). And it was both excellent and excellently received. It made those of us who work in medieval studies look good both through its developed and thorough scholarship and through the verve and ebullience that accompanied its delivery. (I would note that many of the medieval papers I have heard given are thus: detailed and energetic.) I had to respond in kind, and the panel discussion seemed to take heart from it.

Another is less fortunate. There were several panels I attended that were also attended by a particular other person. (I will not use names because 1) I am not sure I recall the correct name and 2) Even I maintain some standards of etiquette and behavior.) That person seemed bent on forcing the panels--including one of the keynote addresses--into that person's own narrowly circumscribed, ossified worldview. Questions such as "Are we just using comic books, then, to teach people who can't actually read the things that they should learn from Shakespeare?" punctuated the person's "contributions" to the discussions following panel presentations, bespeaking that person's disdain for the underpinnings of the panels the person attended. Challenge of ideas is good. Challenge of assumptions is good. Dismissive rudeness towards colleagues is not. Nor yet is open attack on junior scholars (and many of the conference participants are yet at work on their degrees). It happens even so, and seemingly at every conference; there is always one person who does such things. That one cropped up at what I am given to understand is the first iteration of the conference bodes ill--although given that the conference was about evil and its nature, I suppose I have to consider it strangely appropriate.

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