Mearcstapa Annual Meeting and Monstrous Panels at Kalamazoo

Come one, come all!  Step right up and see the most remarkable monster (scholars) you have ever seen!  Only one thin dime, one tenth of a dollar!  Step right up!

This year, our annual MEARCSTAPA meeting will be held at the International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo.  Please let anyone you see there who would be interested know about it.  Everyone is welcome.  We will be discussing ideas for next year’s sessions at KZoo and Leeds, as well as any suggestions for other venues and projects.MEARCSTAPA Annual Meeting
Friday, May 10, 6:30-7:30
Bernhard Lounge (Main Floor)
Western Michigan UniversityNote:  we have no dues and anyone is welcome to join.

Bring or wear your sexy MEARCSTAPA swag:
http://www.cafepress.com/mearcstapa

If you have any questions, please let me know.

I hope to see many of you there!

With Monstrous Affection,
Asa
PS.  Be sure to attend our two sessions, as well:

Monsters I: Haunting the Middle Ages
Friday, 1:30, Session 282, Schneider 1360

Presider:  Thea Cervone, Univ. of Southern California

The Mysterious Case of the Ghost Who Was Not There
Amy Amendt-Raduege, Whatcom Community College

Kinship with Ghosts: The Reappearing Dead and Purgatory in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries
Caitlin Saraphis, Univ. of North Carolina–Greensboro

Mere Dead Things: Transi Tombs, Lollards, and the Haunting of Sculpture
Marian Bleeke, Cleveland State Univ.

AND

Monsters II: Down to the skin: Images of Flaying in the Middle Ages
Friday, 3:30,  Session 340, Schneider 1360
Presider:  Larissa Tracy

A Window for the Pain: Surface, Interiority, and Christ’s Flagellated Skin in Late Medieval Sculpture
Peter Dent, Univ. of Bristol

Getting under Your Skin: The Monstrous Subdermal
Derek Newman-Stille, Trent Univ.

The Flaying of Saint Bartholomew and the Rhetoric of the Flesh in the Belles Heures of the Duke of Berry
Sherry C. M. Lindquist, Western Illinois Univ.

English Cycle Passion Plays
Valerie Gramling, Univ. of Massachusetts–Amherst

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Kalamazoo 2013 CFP

MONSTERS I: Haunting the Middle Ages
Organizer: Asa Simon Mittman, California State University-Chico; Sarah Alison Miller, Duquesne University

This panel proposes to explore those monstrous figures that haunt the borders between the living and the dead: ghosts, revenants, animated corpses and skeletons. What do these figures reveal about the porous boundaries between life and death, soul and body? What do they communicate about the relationship between haunting, trauma and memory? How is haunting associated with space, whether that space be a geographical location, a physical structure, a fantasized realm, or human consciousness? How were these figures depicted in art and material culture? How might monster studies be considered a haunted domain? How might the Middle Ages be considered a haunted age?

MONSTERS II: Down to the skin: Images of Flaying in the Middle Ages
Organizers: Larissa Tracy, Longwood University and Asa Simon Mittman, California State University-Chico

Presider: Larissa Tracy

From images of Saint Bartholomew holding his skin in his arms, to scenes of demons flaying the damned within the mouth of hell, to grisly execution in Havelok the Dane, to laws that prescribed it as a punishment for treason, this session explores the gruesome, even monstrous, practice of skin removal—flaying—in the Middle Ages. This session proposes to examine the widely diverse examples of this grisly practice, and explore the layered responses to skin-removal in art, history, literature, manuscript studies and law. How common was this punishment in practice? How does art reflect spiritual response? How is flaying, in any form, used to further political or religious goals? The papers in this session will literally get beneath the skin of medieval sensibilities regarding punishment and sacrifice in a nuanced discussion of medieval flaying.

Send proposals to Asa Mittman, Kat Tracy, and/or Sarah Alison Miller.