Cultural Frictions:
Medieval Cultural Studies in Post-Modern Contexts
Conference Proceedings

A Local and World-Wide Interactive Conference held at
Georgetown University
October 27-28, 1995


Conference Papers


The Conference was sponsored by:
Georgetown University
(Medieval Studies Program and Graduate Program in Communication, Culture, and Technology)
George Washington University
(Program in Human Sciences)
The Catholic University of America
The University of Maryland
(Dept. of English and the Center for Renaissance and Baroque Studies)
The University of Virginia
West Virginia University

Plenary Speaker:
Carolyn Dinshaw, UC-Berkeley
"Margery Kempe Answers Back"

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 World-Wide Interactive Format of the Conference:
Acting Locally, Thinking Globally

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.

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 Local Arrangements Committee


* Conference Papers


* Cultural Studies Resources

* What is Medieval Cultural Studies?, by Michael Uebel and Vance Smith

* Medieval Cultural Studies: A Basic Reading List, edited by Martin Irvine and Michael Uebel

* Cultural Studies: A Bibliography, edited by Michael Uebel


* Send Comments * Labyrinth Home Page