"Reception" is meant in several senses. The picture is not the official Worldcon reception at City Hall (which was a bit too washed out to make a good image)...but I get ahead of myself. One of the fascinating things about online culture, is that not only am I meeting people that I've known for years but have never seen face to face, but in some cases I'm meeting people I've known for years and realize I have no idea what their real names are.
Conventions
Blog entry
This will be an irregular chronicle of My Summer Vacation, beginning in Helsinki, Finland. Seeing all sorts of online friends reporting late planes and missed connections, I have to count myself lucky at getting a non-stop flight (though we were delayed an hour taking off, so good thing I didn't have a connection to miss). I spotted several other Worldcon-bound fans in the waiting room for my flight, in some cases due to strategic use of the "Helsinki 2017" bright blue t-shirts, but in some cases because it was someone I actually knew (waves at David Peterson).
I confess I'm only now getting around to posting my Worldcon schedule because, dear reader, you're either going to be there or you aren't, and if you're going, you're going to pick your program items to attend based on topic and triaging all the wonderful possibilities, not based on whether I'm on the panel. The only plea I have is that if you're at Worldcon and haven't bumped into me yet, consider swinging by my "signing" session Friday at 1:00 to say hi.
Session 537 - Female Friendship in Medieval Literature II
- Sponsor: Medieval Studies Institute, Indiana Univ.–Bloomington
- Organizer: Usha Vishnuvajjala, Indiana Univ.–Bloomington
- Presider: Karma Lochrie, Indiana Univ.–Bloomington
Models of Female Friendship in the Lives of Saints - Andrea Boffa, York College, CUNY
Session 515 - Islamic Magic: Texts and/as Objects
- Sponsor: Research Group on Manuscript Evidence; Societas Magica
- Organizer: Liana Saif, Univ. catholique de Louvain
- Presider: Liana Saif
Books as Robots: Authorship and Agency in Islamicate Alchemical Manuscripts - Nicholas G. Harris, Univ. of Pennsylvania
I had some difficulty in taking notes on this session. Part can be attributed to my unfamiliarity with the material, making it harder to sort out the relevant details from the background. But the speakers also rattled off their papers at great speed, which didn’t help.
Session 437: Occult Capitals of Islam
I should have noted earlier in this process that my notes must be understood as a quick-and-dirty attempt to summarize. All mistakes of interpretation, typos, and mis-transcribed data are my own fault. (With a plea for forgiveness due to the speed and not having time for close proofreading.)
Session 355: Reading Magic West to East
Not-a-session: Manuscripts to Materials
- Sponsor: Research Group on Manuscript Evidence;
- Societas Magica
- Organizer: David Porreca, Univ. of Waterloo
- Presider: Jason Roberts, Univ. of Texas–Austin
Practical Magic: Making Magical Artifacts and Using Them
There always seem to be a number of “emergent themes” each year at Kalamazoo. This year, Islamic topics are one of them, along with disability studies and themes of anger and despair. I’ve been keeping an eye peeled for books on Islamic mystical and magical traditions in order to do deep research for some topics that will appear the next Alpennia book I write (i.e., the one after Floodtide).
Session 233: Dress and Textiles II: Real and Unreal
- Sponsor: DISTAFF (Discussion, Interpretation, and Study of Textile Arts, Fabrics, and Fashion)
- Organizer: Robin Netherton, DISTAFF
- Presider: Gale R. Owen-Crocker, Univ. of Manchester
A Change of Face, or, A Man in an Otter Suit
M. A. Nordtorp-Madson, Univ. of St. Thomas, Minnesota
[Speaker was unfortunately not able to attend.]
The Real Unreal: Chrétien de Troyes’s Fashioning of Erec and Enide
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