Spanking in academia
Posted by Abel on 23 Sep 2006 at 07:58 am | Tagged as: In the Neighbourhood, Startles
I feel like addressing a conference. Not just any conference, you understand, but the ever-so-eminent-sounding 42nd International Congress on Medieval Studies, from 10-13 May 2007 at Western Michigan University.
The sub-title explains why: ‘Capital and Corporal Punishment in Anglo-Saxon England’. I could focus on the interesting stuff, and play truant for the other half of the sessions.
I’ve just missed the 15 September deadline for the call for papers, but perhaps I could sweet talk the organiser (who’s at Cornell) into letting me submit late:
We are looking for papers that deal with the various forms of, concerns with, and issues surrounding both corporal and capital punishment in the Anglo-Saxon period. Papers may address secular, ecclesiastical or combined interests. Legal, historical, and literary treatments are all welcome.
They want twenty-minute presentations, but I’d rather drag Haron along for a practical workshop. After-dinner entertainment, maybe?
I wonder if they’ll publish an anthology of the papers?
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*laughing* I would attend it if I were you. And I’d bring my friends too, for a good giggle. Hey, that sounds like me and my hubby watching ‘Secretery’ in cinema. But then, it cannot be too different, can it? I would like to entertain my ears with kinky words coming from fancy mouths.
I wonder, how many of those who submitted their papers are actually into spanking? This gathering will certainly resemble a fancy-dress ball, only that the masks will never come down. Well, not unless it ends up with a spanking party. hehe
Peace!
I definitely think you should submit a proposal. As I know from much experience, academic deadlines are rarely hard and fast.
However, if you’d been keeping up with my blog, you would have seen the call for papers on September 6 –
http://www.eltercerojo.net/2006/09/when_worlds_col.html#comments
–within plenty of time for an ontime submission.
LOL you’d better all stop tempting me, or I might just submit something… I’d love to see their response. I’m leaning towards the following as a working title: ‘”Ye Olde Punishment Booke” - the Anglo-Saxons and domestic discipline’. Anyone want to co-present with me?
Now, off to investigate why Bloglines didn’t send me the post from Mija’s blog in the first place, and why Haron didn’t mention that she’d already read about this conference there when I mentioned it to her before posting…
Interesting.
The early Anglo-Saxons had slaves. I remember seeing a picture called “washing and whipping” where naked slaves (both sexes) were being washed and then whipped with birches. Impossible to know whether Offa and other pre-christian angosaxons found this at all sexually stimulating; but I would have done.
Unfortunately the copious anglosaxon writings (e.g. “On anginne God cwaeth geweorthe leoght and leoght weorth geworght”) give no clue.