K'zoo is unique among historical conferences in having an entire session devoted to joke/spoof/parody papers. Among the beauties I've heard is one claiming that Chaucer has been reincarnated as Bruce Springsteen, another where young St. Godric and his heterosexual life partner had their lives ruined by ordering hand-painted Spanish tiles for the kitchen of their hermitage, and a glorious one last year where the Templars were proven to be Jedi Knights.
This year's sessions were as follows:
The first paper exonerated the Vikings of being bloodthirsty ravening marauders named "Eric Bloodaxe" or something similarly violent. They were actually good-time boys who ran a catering business and got stiffed by a bunch of monks, who, since they wrote the chronicles, got out of paying for a really boffo party by smearing their creditors' reputation. It was fun but not the best I've seen.
Second paper was
hilarious. A dreamy, somewhat dippy woman who bore a strong resemblance to Carol Kane defended one Professor Pinzelbacher from charges that he plagiarized from her discovery of an "autohagiographical poem" by Magdalena von Freiburg. Said poem was a German take-off on "How Pleasant to Know Mr. Lear," and the paper was punctuated by the presenter defending Professor Pinzelbacher and adding in a breathless voice, "Did I tell you a met him once? He's the most
charming man" or "He has - the -
deepest - blue eyes...."
Think Sybil Trelawney in academia and you'll get the idea.
The best was the third paper. A graduate student did a pitch-perfect Hunter S. Thompsonesque rant about how he was an Americanist, not a medievalist, but since the medievalists clearly made more money, he was now determined to marry a rich medievalist like
Caroline Walker Bynum*, and so decided to present a paper at K'zoo so she'd notice him. Said paper was written after the student (who kept swigging from a bottle of "whiskey") downed an astounding quantity of uppers, downers, hallucinogens, etc., and was illustrated by things like pictures of a hellmouth as a rave and the grad student wearing a t-shirt that said "Will dance for graduate funding."
It was one of the funniest Pseudo Society papers I've seen. The best part was when the student finished with yet another plea for Dr. Bynum to marry him...and if she wouldn't, could she kindly pass his phone number along to
Glenn Burger????
All in all, a fabulous way to spend Saturday night. Anyone want to help me work up a proposal so I can present in a year or so?
*His proposed sequel to her
Holy Feast and Holy Fast was the appropriately titled
Holy Crap.
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