Medieval History
And so here we sit (sweat, panic, work), the week-end before another rousing semester starts on Monday. Mac (to the left) and Iris returned safely and ecstatic from Paris and Berlin (Iris has asked, presciently, "Where's the graffiti?"); my Crusades classes ended fine (world enough and time, I would bemoan a winter storm thwarting our Medieval Times spectacle - grr); and our little community is regathering unto itself. Modern and predictable as our timetables are, I wonder if there was a "beginning of the semester" feeling when Abelard was about to teach a new class. I rather doubt it. When I participated in Jean-Claude Schmitt's "Images" seminar at the Ecoles des Hautes Etudes in Paris, his opening remark was "In this, the tenth year of our seminar..." - and then a smile, a collective shift of the shoulders, and the whole group got back to its work, negating any pesky interruptions to the task at hand. Here (and I think I mean America), there's a sense of a fresh start each semester - better readings, savvier assignments, a more ambitious meta-narrative, more effective means of engaging students, and (as one of my favorite colleagues says) "a moratorium on negativity." And yet, it's all (lucky, marvelous) continuity, isn't it? I know that, but what I feel is the new, the possible (some perpetual naïveté). Still, I like to think of Abelard hunching his shoulders right before crossing the threshold into his classroom space and saying "here we go."
And so genius friends of ours organized a Mad Men dinner party last night, based on The Unofficial Mad Men Cookbook, written by a cousin of one of the friends. At first, we were all very focused on the cocktails, truth be told, but then, without even conferring with each other, we all realized that we could actually play dress-up as well: nude hosiery was procured, heels were donned, lipstick applied, and dainty purses found. The guys were bedecked in hats, drank second martinis rapidly after firsts, and admired each other's shoes. It was a complete blast. I will confess to tremulously confessing to my friends at some point "Thank God feminism happened" - how can I be so freaking humorless? (And yet it's true - charivari for us, stricture upon stricture for them). (Having said all that, the show itself is brilliant at letting you feel the phenomenal power shift that's occurred since the early 1960s - as my friend said "The show horrifies [in its sexism and racism and bigotry], and we are eager to be horrified.")
I volunteered to make the Beef Wellington, epic in its construction and phenomenal in conception. And so what can I do but leave you with the scene from Woody Allen's Love and Death in which Napoleon frets that Wellington will invent an eponymous dish before he will? Onwards, friends!
- "long Live Restless Texts!"
Yvain Lunete, Laudine. Paris, BN, fr. 1433, f. 118 It's that moment of the semester in which I oscillate wildly between a lapel-grabbing "Have I taught you nothing?" and a tender "Soft, what light from yonder blue book breaks?" It's exam...
- Almost A Palimpsest
Little did I know when I wrote that last entry that it would herald a road to nowhere. Yeesh. I have felt the slow erasure of all vitality this semester - a short series of rubbing away that has changed the picture. Nothing drastic, nothing tragic...
- The Fragility Of Goodness
Sometimes the reminders of the above are incredibly swift. Iris had a bicycle accident yesterday - in the strangeness that follows, we spent five hours in the emergency room, were under lockdown for an altercation in the waiting room, had conversations...
- Pur Beurre
Can I do this? Is this allowed? Just put up images of delectable pastries from the day Miss I and I went to choose her birthday cake? Now the unnecessarily sinister name of "Divorce" for the half coffee/half chocolate puff pastry seems unbearably...
- Tech Gets Medieval Fall 2012 Symposium Now Viewable
In the fall semester of 2012, Brittain fellow Dr. Kellie Meyer and colleagues from different areas of specialty at Georgia Tech organized a symposium, Tech Gets Medieval: How Medieval Technology Can Teach the Past. The complete symposium is now available...
Medieval History
Once More Unto the Breach, etc.
 |
| Mac |
 |
| Me |
I volunteered to make the Beef Wellington, epic in its construction and phenomenal in conception. And so what can I do but leave you with the scene from Woody Allen's Love and Death in which Napoleon frets that Wellington will invent an eponymous dish before he will? Onwards, friends!
- "long Live Restless Texts!"
Yvain Lunete, Laudine. Paris, BN, fr. 1433, f. 118 It's that moment of the semester in which I oscillate wildly between a lapel-grabbing "Have I taught you nothing?" and a tender "Soft, what light from yonder blue book breaks?" It's exam...
- Almost A Palimpsest
Little did I know when I wrote that last entry that it would herald a road to nowhere. Yeesh. I have felt the slow erasure of all vitality this semester - a short series of rubbing away that has changed the picture. Nothing drastic, nothing tragic...
- The Fragility Of Goodness
Sometimes the reminders of the above are incredibly swift. Iris had a bicycle accident yesterday - in the strangeness that follows, we spent five hours in the emergency room, were under lockdown for an altercation in the waiting room, had conversations...
- Pur Beurre
Can I do this? Is this allowed? Just put up images of delectable pastries from the day Miss I and I went to choose her birthday cake? Now the unnecessarily sinister name of "Divorce" for the half coffee/half chocolate puff pastry seems unbearably...
- Tech Gets Medieval Fall 2012 Symposium Now Viewable
In the fall semester of 2012, Brittain fellow Dr. Kellie Meyer and colleagues from different areas of specialty at Georgia Tech organized a symposium, Tech Gets Medieval: How Medieval Technology Can Teach the Past. The complete symposium is now available...