Regional Medievalisms

I led a group of undergraduates to the annual Regional Medievalisms conference, held this time at Wesleyan College. Wesleyan has a beautiful campus, and some of the rooms that housed the sessions were stunning. The conference I organized some years ago had rooms that looked like they had been featured in Boring Classrooms Quarterly.

I tried to get some pictures from the students' session, but unfortunately the data projector was on for the entire time, so in each photo it looks like a gateway from another dimension is opening up right next to or behind the student.

Fortunately, though, we held a symposium here on our own campus the week before, in order to get them used to conference presentation -- and we actually got some usable images from that. The one below looks a little weird because everyone is looking at someone asking a question.



From left to right (standing), we have:

• Jessica Williams, who chaired the Troy University Language and Literature Undergraduate Symposium. She's planning to present a paper at the PCA/ACA meeting in New Orleans this spring. She's also one of my minions.
  
• Joel Norman, who presented a paper entitled “‘The Man in Black Fled Across the Desert…and The Gunslinger Followed’: Jungian Archetypes in Stephen King’s The Dark Tower Series.” Notice, by the way, that his paper is in part about the Man in Black, a demonic figure, and he himself is dressed entirely in black.
  
• Eric Anderson, who presented a paper entitled “Into the Dream Oracle: Examining the Medieval Dream Vision in Troilus and Criseyde and the Harry Potter Series.” As you might expect, he was basically applying Macrobius to both texts.
  
• Rebecca Jordan, who presented a paper entitled “National Treasure: An American Grail Quest.” She's also one of my minions, and her entire family showed up to see her triumph.

I'm pretty happy with my students this semester. All their eagerness is wearing me out, but better that than apathy.