I picked this session for the “transvestite saint” paper, given my own interests in the how that topic intersects my interests. (Also, given the intersection with my own ‘zoo paper a couple years ago on gender-disguise narratives.) The other papers are less directly interesting to me, so I’ll probably be multi-tasking during them.
Revisiting the "Transvestite" Saint - C. Libby, Pennsylvania State University
I dithered between two sessions—neither being recorded—in this time-slot. The one I didn’t choose was #28 Homosocial Communities and Seclusion, because there was only one paper that looked like it might possibly be related to relationship potential in homosocial environments. (What can I say, I have highly specific interests.) Instead I chose this session, which looks at several topics relating to cross-cultural interactions during travel.
(Chosen because of the paper on Amazons.)
The organizing theme of the session is to examine topics that occur across cultures, or where different cultural perspectives may provide insight.
The Amazons in Medieval Arab and Western Travel Accounts - Sally Abed, Alexandria University
Yes, it's that time again! Time to blog the papers presented at the annual International Medieval Congress (at least, the ones in the session I attend). Normally, I'd be in Kalamazoo for this, enjoying the company of my fellow medieval history geeks, pretending the entire thing is intended as my birthday party, and limited to attending one session of papers at a time. This year, of course, I'm attending from my home office, zooming with my fellow medieval history geeks, and not quite as limited because some of the sesions will be recorded for later viewing.
When last we saw our SFF adventurer (i.e., me), it was Sunday late afternoon and I was getting a post in before figuring out what to do for a pre-Hugo dinner. Given the timing, I decided not to try to coordinate with anyone else and had a solo-but-not-exactly-alone dinner at a small sushi place on the river bank between my hotel and the convention center. I'd been eyeing it speculatively for several days and can now confirm that you can find excellent sushi in Dublin (J2 Sushi & Grill).
Let's see, where was I? Ah yes, up to dinner time on Friday with no definite plans. I was reminded at that point that I had a loose date to meet people for ice cream at Murphy's after dinner-ish, so I got a bite of something more substantial at a cafe across the street from the ice cream shop then joined an amorphously shifting group in the back of Murphy's for chatting and ice cream.
Let's see, where were we? Thursday was the first full day of the convention. I picked up my participant's packet and wandered around orienting myself to all the locations it would be useful to know about. (Since the numbering on the function rooms is cometimes ambiguous, this was not an idle task.) My first panel was "Dragons and Debutantes" on the topic of Regency fantasy (moderated by Mary Robinette Kowal, with me, Zen Cho, and Susan de Guardiola).
Wednesday was all about moving from vacation mode to Worldcon mode. Breakfast in my room, working on various computer housekeeping things, then the hike down three floors of stairs with my luggage to check out. By pure coincidence, I got to the Hilton check-in desk just as my roommate arrived from the airport. As expected we couldn't get into the room yet, but after dumping luggage we went over to the convention center to register. I then spent entirely too much time and wandering between venues to get my transit pass for the second half of the week.
Last time I was in Dublin, two years ago, I spent a very intensive day in the archaeology museum, taking lots of photos and careful notes on things of interest. This time I simply did a casual walk-through, enjoying the flow of the layout and organization. The individual item labels do well enough, and there are a small number of larger "context" explanations, but it would be great if they could do some mid-level interpretation.
Today was the only pre-booked tour on my schedule. Some friends were going on a bus toor to Tara and Newgrange and I took the opportunity to tag along. Tara is the sort of site where you need some deep background to understand what you're seeing. The tour guide did a great job of sketching in the background in the available time, but I suspect for many of the tour members it was simply a big hill with a bunch of bumps on it. The tour was enjoyable, but there was a certain sense of being processed through a tourism machine.
