Funny name for a place, isn’t it? It’s home to all kinds of interesting things, including a celery museum, a Lord of the Rings themed pizza parlour, and the University of Western Michigan, where I’ll be spending most of my week, along with over two thousand other scholars. It’s time for the International Congress on Medieval Studies, the largest medieval studies conference in the world. This year is pretty special, because I’m presenting. It’s my first conference presentation, and I’ll go into it a bit, but more about the ICMS.
I went for the first time about two years ago, with a bunch of other students and one of our professors. It was a fun road trip, and I was utterly unprepared for the experience. Previously, all I knew about academia was from the student’s point of view. Professors were people who lectured in your class and held office hours, and there was an abstract notion of them doing research on the side. Kalamazoo was the home of the academic in their natural habitat, each one of them neck deep in their research and excited to talk about it with anyone. It was five days of sleepless nights because I was up talking with scholars about anything and everything. Up to that point in my life I’d met a lot of people who were passionate about things, and who were extensively knowledgeable, but the intersection of the two was a bit new to me. I always had the sense that, when we got on to the topic of their research, it wasn’t just a job. It was their life’s work, and there’s something amazing about that.
The days were filled with lectures on every topic imaginable, as well as some pretty good food in the Western Michigan cafeterias. I heard talks on philosophy, literature, myth, values, and a dozen other subjects. Every hour had three or four lectures that I wanted to go to, and there were hands on workshops on textiles and board games, as well as swordsmanship demonstrations and an amazing book sale. My first year at Kalamazoo was transformative. It showed me the kinds of things that I could look forward to if I pursued a career in academia, and more importantly the kinds of people I would get to work with. I took that knowledge home with me, and in the following year got to help organize the trip. That year I was introduced to a new perspective in medieval studies, the study of neomedievalism. Not just about the middle ages, but about how we think about the middle ages, the lens through which we look at it with television, movies, fiction, and video games. I joined the Medieval Education through Multimedia Organization (MEMO), and when I got their calls for papers to talk about ethics and video games, I couldn’t resist. My first conference acceptance will have me talking with people and giving a hands on demonstration of the kinds of ethics in play in Overlord, an adorable medieval fantasy game about, well, being evil.
I’m going to be tweeting a lot from the conference, so if you want to get updates on the awesome lectures I’ll be attending, check out my Twitter. Also, next Sunday’s update is actually going to happen on Monday, so I have a bit of a chance to collect my thoughts.
This week’s Concept Crucible talks about why I’m committed to supporting Child’s Play and introduces two new substitution rules. TPK introduces a short series on secrets, and this week’s wiki update is on the gnomish homeland of Maharashtra.
