Burn after Reading: Vol. 1, Miniature Manifestos for a Post/medieval Studies + Vol. 2, The Future We Want: A Collaboration
- Edited by Eileen A. Joy, Myra Seaman, Jeffrey Jerome Cohen
Published on April 28, 2014 by Oliphaunt Books, an imprint of punctum books
- Pages
- 226 pages
- Languages
- English
- Dimensions
- 5⤫8 in.
- ISBN (Paperback)
- ISBN: 978-0-692-20441-2 (Paperback)
- BISAC subject codes
- BISAC: LIT011000
- Thema subject codes
- THEMA: DNL, DSBB, NHDJ
The essays, manifestos, rants, screeds, pleas, soliloquies, telegrams, broadsides, eulogies, songs, harangues, confessions, laments, and acts of poetic terrorism in these two volumes — which collectively form an academic “rave” — were culled, with some later additions, from roundtable sessions at the International Congress on Medieval Studies in 2012 and 2013, organized by postmedieval: a journal for medieval cultural studies(opens in new tab) and the BABEL Working Group(opens in new tab) (“Burn After Reading: Miniature Manifestos for a Post/medieval Studies,” “Fuck This: On Letting Go,” and “Fuck Me: On Never Letting Go”) and George Washington University’s Medieval and Early Modern Studies Institute(opens in new tab) (“The Future We Want: A Collaboration”), respectively. Gathering together a rowdy multiplicity of voices from within medieval and early modern studies, these two volumes seek to extend and intensify a conversation about how to shape premodern studies, and also the humanities, in the years ahead.
Authors in both volumes, in various ways, lay claim to the act(s) of manifesting, and also anti-manifesting*,* as a collective endeavor that works on behalf of the future without laying any belligerent claims upon it, where we might craft new spaces for the University-at-large, which is also a University that wanders, that is never just somewhere, dwelling in the partitive — of a particular place — but rather, seeks to be everywhere, always on the move, pandemic, uncontainable, and always to-come, while also being present/between us (manifest). This is not a book, but a blueprint. It is also an ephemeral gathering in the present tense.
Contents
Frontmatter (i–xv)
Eileen A. Joy, Myra Seaman, Jeffrey Jerome Cohen
Prefatory Note: Manifest This! (xviii–xx)
Eileen A. Joy
Intentionally Good, Really Bad (1–3)
Heather Bamford
21st-Century Medieval Studies: Seeing a Forest as Well as Trees (5–7)
Frank Battaglia
Net Worth (9–11)
Bettina Bildhauer
Our Feminism/ Our Activism (13–18)
Martha Easton, Maggie Williams
Be Critical! (19–23)
Ruth Evans
This Is Your Brain on Medieval Studies (25–27)
Joshua R. Eyler
Sticking Together (29–36)
Lara Farina
Waging Guerrilla Warfare against the 19th Century (37–39)
Matthew Gabriele
Medieval Studies in the Subjunctive Mood (41–46)
Gaelan Gilbert
Radical Ridicule (47–52)
Noah D. Guynn
Burn(ed) Before Writing: The Late Stages of a Late Medieval PhD and Current Academic Realities (53–57)
David Hadbawnik
History and Commitment (59–61)
Guy Halsall
On Never Letting Go (63–71)
Cary Howie
The Gothic Fly (73–78)
Shayne Aaron Legassie
Fuck Postcolonialism (79–83)
Erin Maglaque
We Are the Material Collective (85–87)
Material Collective
Medievalism/ Surrealism (89–96)
Thomas Mical
De catervis ceteris (97–99)
Chris Piuma
2nd Program of the Ornamentalists (101–104)
Daniel C. Remein
A Medieval: Manifesto (105–107)
Christopher Roman
Homo Narrans (109–111)
Eva von Contzen
Historicism and Its Discontents (113–118)
Erik Wade
Tis Magick, Magick That Will Have Ravished Me (119–126)
Lisa Weston
Field Change/ Discipline Change (127–143)
Anne Harris, Karen Eileen Overbey
Paradigm Change/ Institute Change (145–155)
L.O. Aranye Fradenburg, Eileen A. Joy
Time Change/ Mode Change (157–163)
Allan Mitchell, Will Stockton
World Change/ Sea Change (165–176)
Lowell Duckert, Steve Mentz
Voice Change/ Language Change (177–188)
Jonathan Hsy, Chris Piuma
Mood Change/ Collective Change (189–201)
Julian Yates, Julie Orlemanski
Backmatter (203–204)
Eileen A. Joy, Myra Seaman, Jeffrey Jerome Cohen
Biographies
Eileen A. Joy(opens in new tab) is the Director of punctum books and she has published widely on medieval literature, cultural studies, intellectual and literary history, ethics, the post/human, and speculative realism. She is the co-editor of postmedieval: a journal of medieval cultural studies(opens in new tab), and is also the Lead Ingenitor of the BABEL Working Group(opens in new tab). She is also the co-editor of The Postmodern Beowulf (West Virginia University Press, 2007), Cultural Studies of the Modern Middle Ages (Palgrave, 2007), Dark Chaucer: An Assortment(opens in new tab) (punctum, 2012), Speculative Medievalisms: Discography(opens in new tab) (punctum, 2013), On Style: An Atelier(opens in new tab) (punctum, 2013), and L.O. Aranye Fradenburg’s Staying Alive: A Survival Manual for the Liberal Arts(opens in new tab) (punctum, 2013).
Myra Seaman(opens in new tab) is Professor of English at College of Charleston. She has published on Middle English romance, textual studies, gender studies, dream visions, medievalisms, and posthumanisms (medieval and modern). She is the co-editor of Cultural Studies of the Modern Middle Ages (2007) and Dark Chaucer: An Assortment(opens in new tab) (punctum, 2012). She is also the co-editor of postmedieval: a journal of medieval cultural studies and co-founder of the BABEL Working Group. She is currently working on an extended project that investigates affective literacy among the late medieval English gentry through an object-oriented ontological approach.
Jeffrey Jerome Cohen(opens in new tab) is Professor of English and Director of the Medieval and Early Modern Studies Institute (MEMSI) at George Washington University(opens in new tab). His research explores what monsters promise; how postcolonial studies, queer theory, postmodernism and posthumanism might help us to better understand the literatures and cultures of the Middle Ages (and might be transformed by that encounter); the limits and the creativity of our taxonomic impulses; the complexities of time when thought outside of progress narratives; and ecotheory. He is the author of three books: Of Giants: Sex, Monsters and the Middle Ages; Medieval Identity Machines; and Hybridity, Identity and Monstrosity in Medieval Britain: On Difficult Middles and the editor of four more, including Prismatic Ecology: Ecotheory Beyond Green(opens in new tab) (Minnesota, 2014). He blogs at In the Middle(opens in new tab).
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Genres
- Humanities+University
- Manifesto!
- Premodern
Keywords
- early modern studies
- humanities
- medieval studies
- university