Good afternoon.

Thank you for coming and
being here at this very exciting into

disciplinary Mozilo breaking
new creation program

which serves the entire
against is proud of it.

Tradition of drawing together
colleagues from various

parts of the Institute who have common
interests and in this particular case

we have common interests from long
ago connected with common interests.

Now and we have people from a number
of different does runs this particular

Symposium is the brainchild of one
part your your postdocs liar and

Kelly has for so many people us and
she put together this

concept which brings together colleagues
from different parts of the instance

to share their ideas both about their
scholarship and about their teaching and

how this talked with each other we see
this not just does not return to for

them to speak to us but for
us to speak back to them.

So Kelly if you would like to give
people a little background and

then we can get this I
started my career back on

the everyone on the idea for
the sometimes him and usually came out.

Actually my cock Colter sensibilities and

watching probably a little too much T.V.
was in Washington quite a bit different.

Such shows a series like
Jericho awy the last and

a reading some books by Steve Moyer Ariel
again are a sterling style is

the fire which posits a post-apocalyptic
future that cannot rely on.

On electricity or gas so

in essence kind of plunging the world
back into a medieval status.

And offered intriguing glimpses of how
medieval technology could actually be

used to survive in that type of moral law.

And I was also teaching at the time
an architecture building and

every time I went into my classroom there
are these wonderful drawings on the board

of various buttresses and
medieval arches and that sort of thing so

I knew somebody else from campus was
trying to teach somebody evil history.

Or art history or architecture and

that kind of just combined with Michael
thoughts about how the world can I

originally teaching my specialty is
to the students at Georgia Tech who

I like the Big Bang theory seems
to say that all the engineers

are obsessed with medieval things that
doesn't really seem to be the case here.

Unfortunately but it was worth having
a harder time engaging my students than I

can actually watch it was so

this all just kind of came together in my
head both all the ideas of the class to

teach that combine these ideas of
studying medieval technology and

then being able to apply them for
survival in a post apocalyptic world.

I'm not actually going to be talking about
that today but I will be talking about

that on there for twenty nine of
the writing communication programs first

research in pedagogy include We're of
the year along with two other written

fellows will also be talking about how
they teach the past in their classrooms.

But a lot of the closet is really
when I started thinking about this

larger idea of sort of medieval technology
across Georgia Tech University.

And just in general this
larger question again.

How do we teach the past to students
who I think you are more than

many other universities are really
really obsessed with the present and

the future and don't have much
concern with the past at all.

How do we get them engaged with the.

These topics and that's basically
how I came up with this idea.

So they played right around the time
that I started putting this together.

Richard us was hired as the new chair
of the school Lootera media culture and

he wonderfully It was also meticulous and
also wonderfully

read almost immediately to help me out
by giving the opening remarks today.

So just a little bit more background about
him in case you don't know auction and

this really only touches on all of
his many many many publications

are and accomplishments but Richard is an
established interdisciplinary scholar of

medieval culture and its reception in post
medieval times otherwise known as medieval

isms focusing on the inner connections
between humanistic inquiry and

science technology due to his
international biography and

career he is also developed a special
interest in the genesis of humanistic

inquiry from the beginnings of
the modern university in Germany and

Britain through their various
transformations in North America

within these general areas he focuses
on questions cultural translation

memory identity and discourse that is the
author and poet or of seventeen but later

publications as well as a member of the
editorial advisory board of journals and

book series based in Australia
Great Britain Denmark Germany and

the United States and last but
certainly not least he also serves as

president of the International Society for
the Study of medieval isms with us.

Kindly agreed to sponsor this.

Well thanks

a lot for you for your kind words and
then to be production.

I have to admit when I
signed up to become a cheer

some months ago I had no idea
that I would find myself so

only several months later in this
room with the casual to possible.

On the Middle Ages and

early material that's a huge surprise
to him and I thank you for it.

That's actually just a wonderful thing for

me in my I guess now
fourth month on the job.

So thank you very much
Kelly thank you Rebecca.

The and also think.

Thank you.

The entire team.

I think there is a program events
committee that the fellows have and

I think that we're involved in this too.

So thanks to all of you let me
just make a couple of quick

remarks about the place of the symposium
within a wider academic and

social on context within
the last thirty years

of approaches to studying the medieval and
early March Past have undergone

considerable change on while there
are numerous additional astute pastors

scholars who would attempt still emulating
late nineteenth century paradigms

to find out what really happened in
many new under early modern times

must I think you should be an east
to call a famous German historian.

The many more have now embrace
the notion that the reception history of

medieval cultures be seen as a come caps
a nation of never knew we'd inventions and

greedy imaginations some academics
some popular some gender and

some class related of certain features
of that past describing preference for

a more pressing just oriented paradigm
one that would recognise manifold

human continuity beyond the ocean
of noncontiguous alterity does not

mean of course that we no longer do all we
can to apply the full arsenal of academic

study to this to investigate pre-modern
times however it means that we are allow

ourselves as the investigating subjects
to approach our subjects of investigate.

Not exclusively through a fact finding.

In fact archiving lens but
also with playfulness with

empathy with hope to parity with
the subject to be with resonance with

affection with desire passion
speculation fiction imagination.

All those terms that you can see on
the left hand side recognizing and

openly acknowledging our own place our
own position our deep within the ongoing

process of engaging with the Middle Ages
and or maternity such a self aware

kind of study is all the more crucial
because the study of medieval in the early

modern European culture has always been
decidedly interdisciplinary recognizing

in a unit fashion that its cultural makeup
necessitates the critical cooperation of

linguistic historical textual sociological
archaeological code ecological diplomatic

peculiar graphic climatological biological
architectural perspective to name but

a few in fact as any google and
Graham search demonstrates

the academic study of the Middle Ages
North America coincides with the very

moment when the term interdisciplinary
comes into the priest years and

the founding of the medieval Academy of
American North American medieval studies

should be read as direct responses to
the general narrowing of many other

disciplines and the segregationist
attitude between science and

technology studies on the one hand and the
humanities on the other during the first

third of the twenty of the twentieth
century then enticed by intensifying

specialization the practitioners of
medieval studies became almost as

territorial as their colleagues in
the more part metalized that's actually

cordoning off their own academic space
against the prestigious classical era and

the powerfully progressivist
early in the early era.

Formally Known as you
guessed it the Renaissance.

However researcher of
the French on our school and

later feminist in gender studies school
structuralism in medieval some studies

rendered visible dystonic
she's going to do they

of many of our Again not only
through the eighteenth century.

But even through our own press.

Of course and your visit to an American
medieval and Renaissance Fair.

Would have provided evidence that our
distinctions between the people and

early modern culture are mostly academic
and doctored as Frederick James for

all would say and more often than
not of est the myriad continuity

of what might simply be seen as a early
and a later form of the pre-modern

So I'm thrilled to see that all of
the participants in today's symposium as

far as I can see from the abstract whether
consciously or as part of the ruling

zeitgeist not only show more than a
modicum of awareness of their own role and

position as contemporary scholars
speaking about the past but

also present the medic evil in conjunction
with the early modern despite the latter

terms a level of implication that
both areas be viewed as separate

I also thrilled to see science
technology communication pedagogy

rhetoric literary manuscript studies and
games studies all joining hands as code

disciplinary collaborators in a quest
toward a taking stock of our current

rematch nations of the past and
also thrilled

to see this event organized on
the auspices of our nationally recognized

writing cation program not only because
any such program worth its intellectual

matter will have to assess
its contemporary work

against several thousand years
of preceding practice here but

also because our program
specific multi-modal heuristics

is a perfect fit for understanding
a period in which to all the.

Verbal and the visual strongly rival the
power right in the ongoing strong interest

in the medieval past outside the ivory
tower makes to suppose you stop at a time

but to experience the Middle Ages the
villages as a shadowy simple locker room

as it ever so many recent video games or
in it's green at its material

practice as they do it yourself
construction blacksmithing or fence.

It makes sense for us to be prepared to
respond to our students many motivations

for studying the pre-modern with a wide
range of topics and methods among

these motivations a fake nostalgia for an
idealised social contract among the R.E.

peasants gallant Knights courtly ladies
and allegedly Universal Christian mindset

compete with the pleasures of vicariously
living violence and other baser instincts.

Not yet prohibited by the post-medieval
process of civilization like so

many other signifiers to many people
has been made to represent multiple and

often mutually exclusive semantic shadings
more often than not a veritable Milan

of modernity and
alterity of the past even in Atlanta.

The proverbial modern city founded in the
first half of the nineteenth century and

a contemporary visitor makes
periods this Milan imagine just for

a moment such a visitor arriving
at the airport to use a Kurd

busy band to a hotel a service that
should make her feel like a member of

the nobility that a medieval
court driving through the city.

She will seen the worst
churches among them.

This person material church
was medieval features include

Rose windows pointed arches and structural
busses a visit to the High Museum

right next to the Presbyterian Church will
reveal the nineteenth century paintings

that depict new world landscapes
represented like old world many people

building is on her first evening in tower.

Visitor may decide to go to a midtown
cinema to watch season of the witch

a movie in which a fourteenth century
knight of the name of Nicholas Cage.

I'm thinking our is
the suspect in which Claire boy

claims to be the cause of the Black Death
in the morning she delivered

invited speech on the findings in robotic
assistance at Georgia Tech an institution

that university was intellectual
roots begin in the Middle Ages.

After lunch she will walk through Rose
Hall a Victorian past one peach tree that

depicts the history of the Confederacy in
a series of yes stained glass windows.

Even in a Georgia Tech colleague may take
her to see an Atlanta ballet performance

that creatively commemorates the life of
the late medieval Transylvanian count.

I believe of Dracula.

And finally shortly before boarding her
airplane on the third morning or for

a reason our visitor
reads a color brochure

which makes her realize that she has
missed out on step in and I quote

back in time with epic battles jousting
tournaments royal feasts nights and

romance at the Atlanta
castle of many times.

Clearly it's easy to see the presence of
many people culture in our everyday lives

and I'm very much looking forward to see
if your are today speakers at new and

innovative connections to the ones
that I'm familiar with let me end this

short introduction with an announcement
about the continuity for

the coaches wary study
of matters medieval and

early modern here in Georgia Tech the
roster has just given me the green light

to bring the twenty ninth international
annual conference on the you

to listen to our campus in the early
fall of twenty fourteen for

this conference which is organized of the
auspices of the International Society for

the Study of medievalism we will
look forward to receiving papers

on all aspects of the reception of me
will culture in post medieval times.

We are especially interested in
contributions discussed in the main theme

of the conference transfers
of culture many evils and

on the move more information will be
forthcoming and I very much hope to

welcome many of you at the conference
as presenters session organizers and

station chairs and now that the actual
work of the conference begins.

Thank you.