Metacommentator:
Paul Strohm, Indiana U.
The conference was devoted to the ways in which medieval literary studies are being
reconceived and redefined with the models for social and cultural history developed in
recent work on cultural studies and post-modern theory.
Medievalism and Postmodernism may seem to represent cultural opposites, but when brought together they create new models for rethinking medieval culture in new contexts. This conference will offer innovative approaches in/to medievalism in the context of an interactive telecommunications environment. The simultaneous location of this conference at Georgetown University and on the World Wide Web invites us to investigate the ways that cultural discourse is deeply implicated in the origins of its production. How are the objects we study entwined with the modes of their critical articulation? What does cultural studies offer medieval studies? Or, more importantly, what does medieval studies offer cultural studies? How does medievalism harmonize with the critical practices that change society and the ways we conceive history? These are some of the questions that will invite a reassessment of what we can expect when postmodernity intervenes in the discipline of medieval studies.
Post-modern theory is also beginning to notice the impact of the new networked hypermedia
environment of the World Wide Web on literary studies and the humanities, and the Web as a
new context for cultural studies will be both a topic for discussion as well as the medium for
transmitting this discussion worldwide during the weekend of the conference.
The conference established two "firsts" for medieval studies--1) the first conference
devoted to the topic of Medieval Cultural Studies, and 2) the first world-wide interactive
conference in a Humanities field that opened up participation and dialogue beyond the local setting.
The World-Wide Interactive Format of the Conference:
Papers presented at the conference are now published on the World Wide Web through the
Labyrinth. Each paper, as well as a description of the theoretical emphases of the conference itself, has a link to a comment
form, which allowed readers around the world to respond to the papers and thus participate
in the conference remotely.
Acting Locally, Thinking Globally