Old English Happenings in New York: The ASSC

So those of you who have perused my links to the side, under the topic of legitimate procrastination, may have have found the link to the ASSC website -- the Anglo-Saxon Studies Colloquium. Formed by four professors at four tri-state universities -- Kathleen Davis, from Princeton; Hal Momma, from NYU; Stacy Klein, from Rutgers; Patricia Dailey, from Columbia -- the ASSC has, for two and a half years now, been sponsoring Old English lectures and workshops at each of the four universities, open to the public and aimed at fostering a new forum for professors and graduate students interested in Anglo-Saxon literature.

Through my time in NYC, the ASSC has had a lot of really fascinating and thought provoking events. Most recently was a two-day pairing of events in New Brunswick, at Rutgers. Elaine Treharne gave a talk on the Ideology of Early English, followed by a workshop the next day on Manuscripts. Treharne recently started teaching at Florida State.

More to the point of this post, I wanted to mention the third annual graduate conference being sponsored by the Colloquium. This conference is, traditionally, a graduate student organized and oriented conference, from the topics under discussion to the people discussing them, and this year's organizers have done an amazing job. The topic is Echoing Anglo-Saxon England: Continuities, Encounters, Influence, and the response to the call for papers was really great, and it's definitely reflected in the schedule. With topics ranging from Anglo-Saxon pedagogy to Ezra Pound to Dan Beachy Quick, the topics look intriguing and it should be a really thought-provoking conference. Those in the New York area should definitely try to attend. It's taking place this year at Columbia University, on February 16th. More information can be found at the website, which I've linked to in this post.

This isn't the only conference the ASSC has held, nor the only one that its been involved in. Last year's Kalamazoo featured a panel organized by the ASSC, and there was also the International Anglo-Saxon Futures Conference organized by Clare Lees at King's College last March. You can access other past events of the Colloquium here, including a roundtable discussion on subjectivity in the Wanderer and a conference last year on friendship and community in Anglo-Saxon England.