Twenty-Third Annual
1984
Northern
Illinois University
Officers
President: John Bell Henneman,
Jr., Princeton University
Vice-president: E. Randolph Daniel, University of Kentucky
Secretary-Treasurer: Richard Kay, University of Kansas
Councilors: Gregory G. Guzman, Bradley University; Kathryn L.
Reyerson, University of Minnesota
Program Chairman: John F. McGovern, University of Wisconsin -
Milwaukee
Local Arrangments: David L. Wagner and Thomas Blomquist, Northern Illinois
University
Program
Friday, October 19, 1984
8:30
p.m. Informal Reception (cash
bar)
Sky Room
Saturday, October 20, 1984
8:30
a.m.
Registration
Heritage Room
9:30
a.m. General Session: The Early Middle
Ages Heritage Room
Presiding: Ronald D. Ware,
University of Massachusetts
Welcome: James D. Norris,
Acting Provost
David
Pelteret, University of Toronto
"Slavery in the Domesday Book"
Armand O. Citarella, St. Michael's College, Vermont
"The Origins of Western Overseas Trade: The Cities
of
Campania in the Ninth Century"
William E. Kapelle, Brandeis University
"Feudalism and the Conquest of England"
12:00
noon. Luncheon and Business
Meeting
Pheasant Room
Presiding: John Bell
Henneman, Jr., Princeton University
1:30
p.m. General Session: The Later Middle
Ages Heritage Room
Presiding: Lon R.
Shelby, Southern Illinois University
Megan
McLaughlin, University of Illinois
"Nothing but the Best: Services for the Dead and
Social Status
in Twelfth-Century France"
Lynn T. Courtenay, Madison, Wisconsin
"Gothic Roof Construction: The Technology of
Stability,
1180-1250"
John Muendel, University Wisconsin-Waukesha
"Medieval Urban Renewal: The Communal Mills of the
City
of Florence, 1351-1382"
4:00
p.m. Panel and Audience Discussion: "What's Wrong with
Medieval
German History in the United States?"
Presiding: Boyd H. Hill, Jr.,
University of Colorado
Panelists: John B. Freed, Illinois State University
Steven W. Rowan, University of Missouri-St. Louis
William L. Urban, Monmouth College, Illinois
5:45
p.m.
Reception
University Suite
Host: John E. La Tourette,
Acting President
7:00
p.m.
Dinner
Sky Room
Presiding: John Bell
Henneman, Jr., Princeton University
Address: Karl F.
Morrison, University of Kansas
Meeting
Minutes
CANTO
ULTIMO
Magisterwise
we talk for fifty minutes
but are willing to listen only to twenty
minutes from colleagues or even from linnets.
I know you have had to listen to plenty
from me--nineteen in fact--so here is the
last
before I claim my dolce far niente.
Dare I invoke the muse of minutes past?
No! for my farewell I have another ploy
and will my envoy in terza rima cast.
We met in DeKalb at Northern Illinois
University, which both Tom Blomquist
and David Wagner had urged us to enjoy.
Everyone was pressed by Wagner to persist
in drinking til the cash bar sales surpassed
the minimum guaranteed by this optimist.
So the first evening's social hour quickly passed
in the Skyroom high above the urban glare
of Greater Dekalb, with medievalists massed.
The provost said he was happy we were there,
so happy he paid for it; and the Early
Middle Ages began with Ronald Dean Ware
Maintaining order during a hurly-burly
discussion that was longer than the paper
on Norman slaves, so David Pelletret surely
Emancipated us from any dark vapor
left from last night. Then William
Kappele destroyed
Round's proof that feudalism was a caper
Done in England by the Normans, who employed
it for a century without leaving a trace.
Next we heard how tiny Amalfi deployed
Itself with profit as a Byzantine base,
and after Armand Citarella we went
to lunch and business (alas without grace).
Eulogies for our hosts and those who ferment
the program, with Jack McGovern at their
head,
were made by John Henneman, or president.
Verger of CARA, David Wagner, next said
nothing surprising, except that we might dial
a Byzantinist this year, and need not dread
A new competitor, founded without guile,
the Illinois Medieval Association.
The next year's officers were revealed in
style:
Led by President Daniel's due elevation,
his vice, Tom Blomquist, and councillors two
(Louise Robbert and Ron Steckling in this
station)
Completed the quota, assuming you knew
who would be secretary. Next year the
meeting
takes place in Urbana but no rendezvous
Or invitation for eighty-six, completing
our plans, was forthcoming. Before we
went back
to work, the minutes were read, not worth
repeating.
Next Megan McLaughlin did a kind of black
history, about funerals as symbols of status;
Lynn Courtenay with slides showed the
carpenters' knack
For building Gothic roofs and such apparatus;
John Muendel showed slides too, of communal
mills
that crowded the Arno before the hiatus
Effected by urban renewal. The ills
of medieval German history were next
mooted, and Urban and Rowan and Freed and
Hill's
Responses only left the question more vexed.
Some oblations later, after the dinner,
Karl Morrison's address found us perplexed:
Esau and Isaac and every saint and sinner
are bonded in sympathy malevolent,
which somehow makes Newman and Joyce akinner.
Now mightily disposed to be ambivalent
we flocked to the Lutheran Student Center,
where by midnight we were again benevolent.
Comes now the time when I, your tormenter,
must stop and step down, for surely nothing
worse
can happen now, so buy me book--don't rent 'er:
Ever avoid a scribe who writes in verse.
Lore
This
was Skip Kay's last year as secretary-treasurer, an office he had held
for two decades.
From
the Program: The Midwest Medieval Conference, comprised primarily of
historians, meets annually in October at different campuses throughout
the region. Membership of the Conference is drawn primarily from
Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota,
Missouri, Ohio, and Wisconsin, although medievalists from regions
outside the Midwest often attend.
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