Still Glowing from RMMRA-Denver
The Rocky Mountain Medieval & Renaissance Association (RMMRA) conference in Denver, April 11-13, was amazing, very thought-provoking and affirming, so while still glowing, I wanted to share a few things about how it went and what impressed me. First, I volunteered to chair a session about male shame and honor in medieval texts, including the poem, "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight." Three graduate students in the Institute for Medieval Studies at The University of New Mexico presented papers. To prepare, I read some literature on the psychology of shame, and also reviewed some literature on gift economies (Lewis Hyde's The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property , a cult favorite). The presenters seemed to assume at first that it was a binary: Either honor or shame, and that this was mostly related to warrior culture. In fact, I found that gift dynamics are inextricably tied in with these other dynamics of violence, honor, and shame, and I would go so far a...