Some of my fondest memories from undergrad and graduate school come from my travels to Kalamazoo.
“If you understand this, you understand the International Congress on Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo. Medievalists, who lead solitary and difficult lives, with only books for friends, get together and cavort and dance and talk about the things they love the most in the world, surrounded by people who care about the same things they care about. The frame holds together a vast tangle of contradictory stories—a thousand academic papers, a thousand combative Q&As, a thousand awkward wine receptions—with the glue of a ferocious and shared love for the deep, deep past. As with Chaucer, however, that doesn’t mean anybody actually understands what’s going on.”
I miss medieval studies, even the awkward, annual conference disco.