Abstract: Conjectural emendation is one long-established method of last resort by which editors deal with nonsensical or missing portions of ancient and medieval texts. It is often controversial even as a last resort because it relies upon conjecture—the editor’s subjective sense of the text or author in question—rather than the empiricism by which textual editing has tended to define itself. This talk uses a single contested word in line 735 of the medieval poem Pearl to propose ’speculative expansion’ as an alternative to conjectural emendation. I ground this proposal in theories of speculation as developed by medieval philosophers and theologians, for whom it served as a midpoint between cognition and contemplation, subtended by both thought and feeling. I propose expansion rather than emendation so as to respect the inherent multiplicity of literary and aesthetic meaning, which Pearl in particular performs with exquisite beauty. With the audience’s help, I also hope to think through the practical ramifications of such theories upon readers today. Bio: Arthur Bahr is the author of Chasing the Pearl-Manuscript: Speculation, Shapes, Delight (Chicago, 2024) and Fragments and Assemblages: Forming Compilations of Medieval London (Chicago, 2013). With Alexandra Gillespie, he co-edited a special issue of The Chaucer Review (47.4, 2013) on “Medieval English Manuscripts: Form, Aesthetics, and the Literary Text.” […]

Tuesday, November 7th @ 5:00pm Building 14, Room 14E-304 (map)   Presented by: Eric Driscoll, Lecturer in Ancient and Medieval Studies Literature & History, Massachusetts Institute of Technology   Abstract: This talk offers a reading of Kostas Vrettakos’s 1980 documentary short, The Layer of Destruction, in the context of the modern Greek archaeological and folkloric imaginaries. In the 1970s, Greece constructed a dam across the Mornos river, near the southern end of the Pindus Mountains, to create a reservoir that would supply Athens with drinking water. Today, below the waters of this artificial lake lie the remains of an ancient city, Kallipolis or Kallion. In Layer of Destruction, Vrettakos creates a lyrical memorial for Kallion by depicting his visits to the excavations conducted in the late 1970s as the reservoir’s rising waters threatened and eventually covered the site. In the Greek national narrative, archaeological excavation is conceived as an additive process that recovers what Yannis Hamilakis calls “fragments of national memory” and thereby restitutes missing fragments of a collective history. But in Vrettakos’s film, archaeology emerges instead as a form of destruction, a force that—in the language of Jacob Taubes—reinserts time into eternity and suggests that “the order of the world is gripped by […]

Abstract: Historians have long debated the forces that led to the collapse of the Frankish empire under Charlemagne’s descendants around the year AD 900. Various arguments have been offered: dynastic conflict, incompetent kings, succession crisis, Viking invasions, the proliferation of castles, “Feudal Revolution,” even “Feudal Mutation.” I offer a different explanation based on the neglected topics of warfare and military logistics. I argue that the Carolingian military underwent a profound yet largely overlooked transformation during the ninth century that created growing challenges for the supplying and garrisoning of soldiers and their horses. These logistical problems increasingly led to illegal requisitions and violence committed by Frankish soldiers against the common people, a phenomenon that chroniclers and royal laws described as “rapine.” This growing problem of rapine committed by Frankish armies undermined the legitimacy of the Carolingian dynasty in the eyes of the Church and facilitated the breakup of their empire in the late ninth and early tenth centuries. Bio: Eric Goldberg is a professor of medieval history at MIT. His research explores the vibrant politics and culture of early medieval Europe under the Merovingian and Carolingian dynasties. Image: ”Le comte Eudes défend Paris contre des Normands, 885-886 (Count Eudes defends Paris)" by Jean Victor Schnetz, 1834-37

presented by danah alfailakawi predoctoral fellow, Literature Section at MIT tuesday, december 5th @ 5:00pm building 14, room 14E-304 (map) abstract: this talk is excerpted from the second chapter of a larger dissertation project titled "the abject queer: barelybeing, nonhumans, and deathworlds on the arabian peninsula." the project redefines queerness as that which absorbs the violence necessary for the erection of subjectivity. turning to contemporary (twentyfirst century) literary and visual texts emerging from the arabian gulf (iraq, kuwait, bahrain, the united arab emirates, and yemen), i locate particular modes of abject queerness that make possible the cohesion of the postoil gulf subject, from the citizen to the family unit to the nation. in this chapter, i discuss the invisible bodies of predominantly male migrant workers in public spaces and the queer worlds that lie within the recesses of global racial capitalism. i engage with abu dhabian author deepak unnikrishnan’s novel temporary people (2017) in order to examine the migrant worker’s proximity to the nonhuman, as well as the modes of barelybeing and ungrievability that characterize racialized labor in the gulf today. i find that the body of the migrant worker gendered as masculine embodies a distinct variant of queerness, one that exiles […]