UMatters

[The following was provided by Dr. Kathy Krause, Professor and Chair, Department of Foreign Languages and Literature.]

The Mid-America Medieval Association’s (MAMA) is hosting its 35^th Annual Conference, Feb. 26, 2011, 9 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. at UMKC University Center.  The theme of this year’s conference is “Medieval Recycling.”

At 1:45 p.m. in Pierson Auditorium, Dr. Sarah Kay, Professor of French at Princeton University, will deliver the keynote address: “Recycling the Troubadours: Quotation and the Development of European Poetry.”

Regarding the conference’s recycling theme, the medieval world saw the creative recycling of ideas, images, materials and practices from classical antiquity and elsewhere throughout the span of a thousand years. The conference will explore the re-use and re-imagining of both material objects and ideas in a variety of domains, from things like tropes and citations used in texts and charters, to the copying of images, to the re-using of materials such as parchment (for instance, the discoveries found in things like palimpsests and binding fragments) to the transmission of ideas and techniques through different cultural lenses and perspectives.

The plenary lecture is open to the public. General Conference registration is $15.  RSVPs are not required. More information is available at the MAMA website or by emailing or calling (816-235-1340) Dr. Kathy Krause, Professor of French.