Thriving (A Roundtable)
Sponsoring Organization(s)
postmedieval: a journal of medieval cultural studies
Organizer Name
Eileen A. Joy
Organizer Affiliation
BABEL Working Group
Presider Name
Eileen A. Joy
Paper Title 1
Living and Thriving
Presenter 1 Name
Patricia Clare Ingham
Presenter 1 Affiliation
Indiana Univ.-Bloomington
Paper Title 2
Come Flourish with Me: Critically Mixing Pleasure and Politics
Presenter 2 Name
Randy P. Schiff
Presenter 2 Affiliation
Univ. at Buffalo
Paper Title 3
Provisionality and Provision
Presenter 3 Name
Julie Orlemanski
Presenter 3 Affiliation
Boston College
Paper Title 4
"From His Mouth Delyverly": Thriving in the Nun's Priest's Tale
Presenter 4 Name
Kathy Lavezzo
Presenter 4 Affiliation
Univ. of Iowa
Paper Title 5
Sacrificial Thriving
Presenter 5 Name
Paul Megna
Presenter 5 Affiliation
Univ. of California-Santa Barbara
Paper Title 6
living/riddle
Presenter 6 Name
Daniel C. Remein
Presenter 6 Affiliation
New York Univ.
Paper Title 7
Staying Alive/Radiance
Presenter 7 Name
L. O. Aranye Fradenburg, Michael Snediker
Presenter 7 Affiliation
Univ. of California-Santa Barbara, Queen's Univ. Kingston
Start Date
9-5-2013 1:30 PM
Session Location
Fetzer 1005
Description
The work of Aranye Fradenburg, especially her psychoanalytic criticism of Chaucer, and her formulations of discontinuist historical approaches to the Middle Ages, has been extremely influential within medieval studies for the past 15 or so years. More recently she has been focusing on more broad defenses of the humanities, especially with regard to the valuable role of literary studies relative to the arts of everyday living, eudaimonia [flourishing], ethical community, and well-being, and also on psychoanalysis itself as a "liberal art." Relationality, intersubjectivity, aliveness, resilience, care of the self and also of others, adaptive flexibility, playfulness, shared attention, companionship, healing, and thriving seem, increasingly, to be the key watchwords and concerns of Fradenburg's work, and at the same time, the so-called "literary" mode is still central to these concerns, such that, as Fradenburg has written, "Interpretation and relationality depend on one another because all relationships are unending processes of interpretation and expression, listening and signifying. In turn, sentience assists relationality: we can’t thrive and probably can’t survive without minds open to possibility, capable of sensing and interpreting the tiniest shifts in, e.g., pitch and tone" ["Frontline: The Liberal Arts of Psychoanalysis," Journal of theAmerican Academy of Psychoanalysis and Dynamic Psychiatry 39.4 (2011): 589-609]. This roundtable invites short presentations on the valuable role(s) that medieval studies might play in the future of the liberal arts, especially as they pertain to "thriving" and "living" and to the ways in which living itself is an art.
Eileen A. Joy
Thriving (A Roundtable)
Fetzer 1005
The work of Aranye Fradenburg, especially her psychoanalytic criticism of Chaucer, and her formulations of discontinuist historical approaches to the Middle Ages, has been extremely influential within medieval studies for the past 15 or so years. More recently she has been focusing on more broad defenses of the humanities, especially with regard to the valuable role of literary studies relative to the arts of everyday living, eudaimonia [flourishing], ethical community, and well-being, and also on psychoanalysis itself as a "liberal art." Relationality, intersubjectivity, aliveness, resilience, care of the self and also of others, adaptive flexibility, playfulness, shared attention, companionship, healing, and thriving seem, increasingly, to be the key watchwords and concerns of Fradenburg's work, and at the same time, the so-called "literary" mode is still central to these concerns, such that, as Fradenburg has written, "Interpretation and relationality depend on one another because all relationships are unending processes of interpretation and expression, listening and signifying. In turn, sentience assists relationality: we can’t thrive and probably can’t survive without minds open to possibility, capable of sensing and interpreting the tiniest shifts in, e.g., pitch and tone" ["Frontline: The Liberal Arts of Psychoanalysis," Journal of theAmerican Academy of Psychoanalysis and Dynamic Psychiatry 39.4 (2011): 589-609]. This roundtable invites short presentations on the valuable role(s) that medieval studies might play in the future of the liberal arts, especially as they pertain to "thriving" and "living" and to the ways in which living itself is an art.
Eileen A. Joy