Today was the second day of the SEMA conference.

I went to three sessions today, as well as Jeffrey Jerome Cohen's plenary. Below are some highlights.

Session: Vagina Dialogues: Sexual Dynamics in Medieval Comic Literature.

• this session focused specifically on French fabliaux
• Nathaniel Dubin's paper provided some interesting information on medieval sexuality and recounted some very interesting moments from various fabliaux, which I must now make a point of reading

Session: Chaucer I

• all three of these papers were very interesting, but the one that sticks out is Joseph E. Marshall's, which is titled "Sterile Bodies: Simony, Sodomy, and the Summoner's Compeer"
• Marshall's paper discussed the necessity of viewing the Pardoner, a member of Chaucer's band of pilgrims who is often viewed only in physical terms, in both spiritual and physical terms. The really interesting point that the paper makes is that simony and sodomy were considered equally sterile acts--one leading to no growth in the spiritual life, the other resulting in no chance for conceiving life physically.
• there is also apparently a trend in French, Spanish, and perhaps in Middle English literature of using the image of a coin or relic bag as a euphemism for testicles

Session: Lyricism, Sin, and Divided Holy/Secular Bodies

• this was the session in which I presented my paper, which unfortunately means I missed the BABEL Working Group sponsored session for which Amy Hollywood was the featured respondent
• Curtis Jirsa gave a wonderful paper on Piers Plowman and associated medieval lyrics, and he gave me some fine suggestions to incorporate into my own work after the close of the session
• Candace Gregory-Abbott gave an intensely interesting paper on a 15th-century English text that even in discussing the spiritual, does so in very physical terms.
  
• Cynthia Ho gave a paper on St. Francis and the avoidance of sexual temptation in the records of his life that are extant.
  

Plenary: "Bodies in Motion/Mandeville, Defective"

• Cohen's plenary was an examination of the text(s) of Mandeville's Travels, and it probed the meaning of travel, return, and cicumnavigation of the world, of identity.

Exhibit: "What a Piece of Work Is a Man--Reading the Body in Medieval Manuscripts"

• This display featured a number of facsimile images from Books of Hours to treatises on food preparation

I also made it to the book exhibit and to the Vatican Film Library.

Today was the first day of the SEMA conference in St. Louis. So far the atmosphere has been pleasant and friendly, especially to those medievalists who enjoy modern critical theory.

I was able to see two sessions:
Faces, Nudity, Angel Bodies, Friendship and The Literary Construction of Religious Bodies: The Human, the Divine, and the Profane.

Among the papers from these two sessions, one particular point seems to stick out in my mind. Rabia Gregory's paper, "Naked Mystic, Naked God" and Brittany Whitstone's paper, "Revelation, Consecration, and Embodiment: Touching the Invisible World in AElfric's Easter Sermon," both made the point that the body and the spirit/soul are not so cleanly divided in the medieval period as we would perhaps sometimes like to suggest. In particular, Whitstone notes the need to tame the flesh, not reject it. This idea resounds nicely with Michael Edward Moore's paper, "Meditations on the Face in the Middle Ages," which dealt beautifully with the idea that the face of man is a reflection of the face of God.

Books I found out about today that I must read (links are to Amazon):
Alterity and Transcendence by Emmanuel Levinas
Cities of Ladies: Beguine Communities in the Medieval Low Countries, 1200-1565 by Walter Simons

I also discovered another reason to read the OE Andreas: it contains cannibalism.

Tomorrow afternoon I will be presenting my paper after which I will be able to attend the first plenary, which is to be given by Jeffrey Jerome Cohen.

Perhaps the most delightful thing so far has been my discovery of a paper title associated with a roundtable that makes reference to lolcats. I'm hoping to attend that session, but there are some other sessions looking equally interesting.

More to come...