Palgrave / Macmillan this fall unveils postmedieval, co-edited by our own Associate Professor of English Myra Seaman and Eileen Joy ( Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville).
From the publisher's website: postmedieval: a journal of medieval cultural studies is a cross-disciplinary, peer-reviewed journal in medieval studies that aims to bring the medieval and modern into productive critical relation. The journal will work to develop a present-minded medieval studies in which contemporary events, issues, ideas, problems, objects, and texts serve as triggers for critical investigations of the Middle Ages. Further, we are concerned to illuminate the deep historical structures–mental, linguistic, social, cultural, aesthetic, religious, political, sexual, and the like–that underlie contemporary thought and life, and therefore, we are also interested in attending to the question of the relation of the medieval to the modern (and vice versa) in different times and places. We want to also demonstrate the important value of medieval studies and the longest possible historical perspectives to the ongoing development of contemporary critical and cultural theories that remain under-historicized. Finally, we will advocate for and support the continuing development, from any and all disciplinary directions, of historicist, materialist, comparatist, and theoretical approaches to the subjects of the Middle Ages.
The second annual issue of Folio (available in PDF on the Folio page) features an interview with Professor Larry Carlson, recently retired after 30 years of service to the department, the College, and the profession; an interview with Assistant Professor Kathy Beres Rogers; features written by two alumni; and alumni and faculty updates.
Director of the Film Studies Program and Assistant Professor of English John Bruns published his first book, Loopholes: Reading Comically, in early June. The book brings together contemporary and classic studies of humor with the idea that comedy is not simply a literary or theatrical genre, but a certain way of disclosing or undoing the way the world is organized. Bruns argues against settled views of comedy as “relief” from serious and important matters, or as a “low” form of artistic creation.
From the jacket:
Bruns’ Bakhtin-inspired study does what so few even think of doing: it takes the comic comically – as a way of understanding life in terms of new opportunities, new ways out in a world that has no endings, no resolutions.
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Gary Saul Morson, Northwestern University.
Theories of comedy often falter in their attempts to map exactly where the nub of humor lies, yet this bright and engaging book argues that comedy isn't a definable object so much as a mood, a tone, or a way of thinking absent of objective qualities...it's the essential next step in the discussion and a must for humor scholars everywhere.
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Andrew McConnell Stott, University of Buffalo, SUNY.
In Loopholes John Bruns challenges us to participate in unorthodox frivolity. The challenge, which proves surprisingly formidable, amounts to thinking about comedy comically, outside of bounds and disciplines in an institutional place apt to appear, if not unsettling, then a little ridiculous...One can hardly avoid nervous laughter at the moral anarchy being flirted with here, but if you can lose your grip, the promise is an experience presently beyond our grasp: Cavell's movies without depression, James's sensibilities without detachment, Kafka's labyrinths without fear.
-- R. M. Berry, Florida State University, author of Frank and editor of Forms at War and Fiction's Present.
Palgrave / Macmillan this fall unveils postmedieval, co-edited by our own Associate Professor of English Myra Seaman and Eileen Joy ( Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville). 
Folio - the Department's Annual Newsletter
- Now on the Virtual Shelf
John Bruns Publishes First Book: Loopholes