Korncrake!
The Website of Herr Professor Doktor Boethius P. von Korncrake

Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, & 11 Within seconds of taking the floor, my partner Sally, a middle-aged medievalist from a third-tier state university in North Dakota, had proven herself to be the second best dancer at the International Congress on Medieval Studies, and in so doing she leapt […]

Read: Von Korncrake in Kalamazoo, Part 12 »

Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 & 10 Only well fortified by brandy could I confront the Saturday night festivities at the International Congress on Medieval Studies, an unsightly spectacle of several thousand medievalists engaged in a frenzied and arrhythmic St. Vitus, a spastic explosion of flailing limbs and jerking heads […]

Read: Von Korncrake in Kalamazoo, Part 11 »

Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 & 9 I must now confess that I had never been to a medievalist dance. In my younger days, at Patrice Lumumba in Moscow, I had attended more than my share of student dances, events which began with great pronouncements of international revolutionary brotherhood, but ended […]

Read: Von Korncrake in Kalamazoo, Part 10 »

Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 & 8 As I had predicted, my presentation was a rousing success. But then, academics are like swine. As long as the farmer with the slop-bucket seems confident of himself they’ll happily eat up any sort of swill and grunt for seconds. Thirds if the farmer is […]

Read: Von Korncrake in Kalamazoo, Part 9 »

Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, & 7 Finally, Saturday afternoon, the date set for the delivery of my paper, arrived. Still feeling the baleful effects of too much karoke and too many Schlitz, I found my way to the conference room, where a small group was already gathered. “Ah, you must be Professor […]

Read: Von Korncrake in Kalamazoo, Part 8 »

Parts 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, & 6 I still don’t remember exactly how I made it back from the Tick-Tock to my tiny bunk in my shabby domitory room on the campus of Western Michigan University. The last event I can recall clearly is admirably holding up my end of a Karaoke duet of […]

Read: Von Korncrake in Kalamazoo, Part 7 »

Parts 1, 2, 3, & 4. Since the presentation of my opus, “Cultural Semiotics, Semi(n)ology and Semiotics: scientia omnis aut est de signis aut de rebus significatis: Text, Textuality and Semiosis”, would not take place until Saturday afternoon, I abandoned the second Friday afternoon session, a tedious discussion of Carolingian numismatics I had wrongly thought […]

Read: Von Korncrake in Kalamazoo, Part 5 »

The first part of this story may be found here, the second part here, and the third part here. Coffee in hand, I fled the cafeteria and found my way to the first session of the morning. I had selected it whimsically, based solely upon the fact that all three papers being presented had misused […]

Read: Von Korncrake in Kalamazoo, Part 4 »

The first part of this story may be found here, and the second part here. On my first morning in America, I emerged into the Midwestern daylight and was immediately engulfed by the International Congress on Medieval Studies, like a German sunbather in a tsunami, swept up in a roiling mass of 5,000 screechingly insecure […]

Read: Von Korncrake in Kalamazoo, Part 3 »

The first part of this story may be found here. After a lengthy flight from Frankfurt to Michigan, with a change to a regional carrier in Detroit, I arrived in Kalamazoo jet-lagged and exhausted, but happy. I had with me three copies of my paper, one in my suitcase, the second in my briefcase, and […]

Read: Von Korncrake in Kalamazoo, Part 2 »