Almost two months ago, Brenna and I had the opportunity to go to a conference on all things Medieval and Renaissance in Wise, VA. One day in April, an email went around about a Medieval and Renaissance Conference at the University of Virginia's College at Wise, which is way the heck in southwest Virginia (really, really close to Kentucky--I direct you to the map the school provides on their website as a reference throughout this post), although we didn't fully appreciate that at the time. Anyway, we thought it would be great to go, so over the summer we assembled abstracts for our papers (my paper from last fall on the Visigoths and Brenna's paper from the spring on the Dukes of Normandy and the Kings of France) and Dr. Sorrentino was wonderful and wrote us letters of recommendation to accompany our abstracts and sent everything in. There was some confusion in arranging everything and in determining when our presentations would be, but in the end everything worked out. We were slated to present in the 10:10 session on Friday, September 21, and there would be one other presenter.
We left on Thursday the 20th after my 1:00 class. Brenna and I both missed music rehearsals that afternoon, so we were able to hit the road a little after 3. We had made arrangements to stay with Brenna's wonderful aunt and uncle in Roanoke, VA, which is 5.5 hours from Chestertown and 3.5 hours north of Wise. We didn't run into traffic at all over the Chesapeake Bay Bridge (even though two way traffic on the west-bound span terrifies me and I hate when I have to drive with two way traffic) or even in rush hour traffic around the Capital Beltway, and we stopped in Fairfax, VA, for about half an hour around 6:15 or so, just after we had gotten on I-66. As soon as we got out of Fairfax, we were instantly in the middle of countryside--rolling hills, lack of urban stuff, etc. It was really beautiful, especially as the sun continued to go down.
The drive progressed fairly well until on I-81 just south of Staunton (birthplace of President Woodrow Wilson), I started seeing signs that the right lane would be closed ahead for construction. No big deal, I said to myself, and I moved into the left hand lane. Well, everyone else had the same idea. Traffic stopped. It was about 8:20, and it was 8:40 before we even saw the next construction sign, and even farther after that when we saw the actual construction. So we crawled along at about 10 miles an hour for about half an hour, and then we were able to speed up to a whopping 30 miles an hour as we passed the construction, which was taking up about a mile of the right hand lane. When we finally passed it, it was 9:00, we had gone about 3 or 4 miles in the previous 40 minutes, and still had over an hour left to go before we got to Roanoke. We got in at 10:20, which was about two hours later than we planned, but I guess that happens when one travels. While we drove, we listened to the radio, then as we lost the Baltimore stations, we switched to CDs; Brenna put in a Celtic Flute CD, which I really enjoyed. It was really cool to be driving down a highway in such a beautiful area (foothills of mountains) looking up at the almost full moon and the light it casted on the thin clouds in the sky while listening to Celtic Flute music. When we got to the Bychowskis', we chatted for a while with Brenna's uncle and then went to bed, since we had a long day ahead of us on Friday.
That long day started at 5am since we had to hit the road at 6 for the next leg of the journey. We had a wonderful breakfast with Brenna's aunt before she left for work and we left for the conference. We got back on I-81 (still dark at this point) and remained on 81 for the next two and a half hours or so. We drove almost 300 miles on 81, starting at exit 300 coming off of 66 and going to exit 150 to Roanoke and then getting off on exit 17 in Abingdon, VA, and in that time, we passed every exit for every college, from driving through the campus of James Madison University to passing the exits for Virginia Tech, Washington and Lee, and a whole bunch of other schools. After getting off 81, we continued on toward Wise, driving through a bunch of small towns, including Castlewood, which is, according to the sign we saw (in the side of a mountain), the birthplace of Daniel Boone. For that reason, Castlewood is now numbered among my favorite small random towns, along with Pheonixville, PA. But I digress.
We got a little turned around between Coeburn and Wise (the two towns are right next to one another), but we successfully reached our destination. Our directions made things more complicated than they actually were, but it all worked out. To get to the town of Wise, we had to wind our way up this mountain. From the top, things looked something like this:
When we got to the school, we parked, then attempted to figure out where we were supposed to go. After a few minutes, we finally found the Chapel of All Faiths, where the main sessions were and where the registration table was.
We checked in and shortly after made our way over to the Slemp Student Center, where the undergraduate panels were held. By this time, it was about 10 and almost time for our panel to start. The chair of our panel was a student at UVA Wise and we chatted with him until we started. The third presenter didn't end up coming, so Brenna and I read our papers (in that order), then there was time for questions. None of the students in the small audience asked any questions, but the moderator and the professor who organized all the undergraduate panels both posed some very interesting questions. I also realized while I was reading that both of our papers echoed some of the same themes about medieval kingship. Our panel ended extremely early, so we went back to the car and dropped some stuff off, and walked around the campus, which looked like this:
Then, it was almost time for lunch, so we went to the dining hall, which is set up very much like ours here at WaC and is supplied by the same food service that feeds us here. After lunch, we went to the two other undergraduate panels, the first entitled "Medieval Art and Literature," in which we heard a FASCINATING paper about Fra Angelico's fresco of the Annunciation and the importance of the birthing stool as a symbol in the painting. The second panel was called "Renaissance Drama and Gender," and featured papers about The Roaring Girl and Shakespeare, the latter of these two Shakespeare papers being extremely controversial and sparking a lot of discussion. This presenter's thesis was that Shakespeare plays, especially Romeo and Juliet are being used to brainwash young girls and enforce the patriarchy. At the end of the day was the keynote lecture, given by Bonnie Wheeler of Southern Methodist University on the idea of reputation in the Middle Ages in general and in Sir Thomas Malory's Sir Lancelot in particular. It was a really fascinating talk, even though I've never studied Malory and am really unfamiliar with the context of the discussion.
After the keynote address, we headed back for Roanoke. We left Wise at about 6 and got back to the Bychowskis' at about 9:30. We spent more time with Brenna's uncle and then started moving toward bed at about 11:30. We got up at 7 the next morning and had breakfast with Brenna's aunt and uncle and then left for Chestertown at 8:15. The various legs of the trip back were pretty uneventful, marked only by stops for food at McDonald's, stops for gas, and then hitting almost a dead stop on US-50 in Annapolis (Navy played Duke that day, so both Annapolis exits were packed), but as soon as we got over the Severn River, it was smooth sailing all the way back to WaC. We arrived back at 1:45, ordered pizza for dinner, and didn't do much else for the rest of the night. It was an awesome experience to go to the conference, and both of us were really, really glad we went. We'd both like to see more students from our school consider going; between Dr. Sorrentino's classes, Prof. Olsen's classes (his field is Medieval literature), Prof. Moncrief's students (Shakespeare), and the various art classes that are offered, we bet we could send a lot of students. And since there were people from as far away as Canada, Texas, and Florida at this conference, it's not like we would be the only ones who traveled great distances to be able to attend. Will Brenna and I take pieces of our theses back next year? The jury is still out on that one, but I for one would love for other students to have this same experience, and I'm excited to attend and hopefully present at Phi Alpha Theta's conference in the spring.
1 comment:
Nicely described and great photos!
J. Bychowski
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