History Matters: Blog Forum

In case you haven't seen this, and since it's now completed, go read the series of posts around Judith Bennett's History Matters now.

1. Notorious, Ph.D.
2. Historiann
3. Tenured Radical
4. Another Damned Medievalist
5. Judith Bennett herself, via Notorious Ph.D.
   

Also, a related but unrelated series of posts at Magistra et Mater.

1. Post, the first
2. Post, the second
3. Post, the third
4. Post, the fourth
5. Post, the fifth
6. Post, the sixth

Rap Canterbury Tales

So, my google news "medieval" aggregator picked up this gem. Apparently, a medievalist and budding rap artist named Baba Brinkman has put together a "Rap Canterbury Tales." Enjoy.

There's more on Youtube, or you can buy it via iTunes, if you're interested...

The Humanities and the Financial Crisis

Via InTheMiddle, there's this article in today's Chronicle of Higher Education by the director of the National Humanities Center. Allow me to quote some:

Why should society support the humanities when so many people are suffering from the effects of the economic crisis? What claim do the humanities, or scholarship generally, have on increasingly limited resources? Shouldn't such pursuits be considered luxuries at a time when we should be focusing on essentials...?

The humanities are, if not the top priority right now, at least one of the areas that must be recognized as crucial, and supported accordingly. The present crisis does not eclipse the humanities but rather reveals the need for the skills, dispositions, and resources that the humanities, and only the humanities, cultivate....

I am struck by the recurrence of two statements in the numerous analyses I've read: "It is all so obvious in retrospect," and "Our models failed to predict this." Put those two together, and it becomes clear that the most sophisticated tools developed to analyze and predict movements in the economy failed spectacularly to grasp some very large, crucial, and — in retrospect — fully visible facts....

What was missing, some analysts have concluded, was a deeper understanding of the relationship between value and confidence. It was presumed that the value of, say, houses was always going to rise. Beneath that assumption was another, that the value had a certain solidity, like the house itself. However, as Paul S. Willen, a senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, recently noted, "The price of an asset, like a house or a stock, reflects not only your beliefs about the future, but you're also betting on other people's beliefs." He went on, "It's these hierarchies of beliefs — these behavioral factors — that are so hard to model...."

So our models failed not because they were imprecise but because they were too precise, too neat and crisp to take in the imaginative and social nature of value. Nor did they take in the fully human character of the behavior of lenders, borrowers, analysts, shareholders, or traders, all of whom were driven by largely unconscious and partly irrational beliefs, including the simple desire for social approval, even as they were persuaded of their own powers of analysis and of the underlying "rationality" or "efficiency" of the market....

Well, consider this: When we read a novel, watch a play or a film, listen to a concerto, or read a historical narrative, we are not just attending to the moment but forming expectations about what will come next. Surprise endings surprise only because they do not conform to our expectations.... Being able to engage in such anticipation is an essential part of general intelligence, and developing that ability is one of the primary goals of teaching in the humanities....

Our material lives are sustained by our belief in... fictions, and when we stop believing — as we now have [in our financial system], temporarily — we see revealed the immaterial foundations of the real world. When, a generation ago, a few "postmodern" theorists began to talk about the fictional character of reality, they were laughed at by those who considered themselves hardheaded realists; nobody... is laughing now.

So why support the humanities? The answer is... that the humanities elicit and exercise ways of thinking that help us navigate the world we live in. For my money, that's about as essential as it gets.

My only qualm here is that the article is too confrontational, even manichean, for my taste. Yeah, economists/ social scientists don't have all the answers. Yeah, those in the Humanities do have some. But, speaking as a scholar in the Humanities myself, they do have some answers and we don't have them all. While I agree that we ought strenously to defend the value of the Humanities, we ought not be so doctrinaire in our thinking that we succumb to that which we so deplore -- rigid, disciplinary thinking that excludes perspectives categorically. We can reject bad ideas while realizing that the people behind those ideas might have good ones down the road.

Against Academic Journals: Opening Thoughts

Some thoughts.

Budgets suck, especially when they're being cut. We're being socked, which really shouldn't be that big of a surprise, given every state's financial situation -- ours included. But, now having served on a library committee, I think I actually understand budgets a bit better -- or at least how they work regarding academic libraries. To that end, I have a modest (if, perhaps, controversial) proposal. But, before I go there, let me simply say that this has nothing specifically to do with my university but is a bit more "meta" thought regarding academia generally. It also has to do with two things that I'd previously read at InTheMiddle and one thing at QuodShe that have stuck in my craw. So, here it is:

Academics ought move their publishing away from academic journals.

In their place, scholars should work with publishers to introduce new book series exclusively dedicated to themed, peer-reviewed collections of essays.

First, let me say that my reasoning has nothing to do with quality. Most academic journals are excellent and most of the articles in those journals are wonderful examples of how scholarship is produced.

My reasoning is more practical -- fiscal, if you prefer. Ongoing costs are the bane of academic libraries. They eat into the library's core budget, are subject to excessive, inflationary price rises every year, and are often subsumed by big aggregators that require libraries to purchase "packages" of unrelated content in order to get the specific journals they want. Thus, academic journals always seem to be the 1st things on the chopping block when budgets get tight. Things cannot stand as they are for long. Libraries know this. Publishers (probably) know this. Academics should know this. If academic journals are to survive at all (meaning if anyone's going to be able to afford to subscribe to these things for much longer), my guess is that open source, open access is the way to go.

But back to the now. Because of how academic libraries' budgets are structured, there always seems to be $ available for one-time purchases -- in other words, books. In the new model I'm suggesting, you would create a book series that would be dedicated exclusively to collection of essays. One could run this book series much like a journal, complete with editorial board, stable of peer-reviewers, etc. This series would then put out publications on a regular basis and, while the prices of individual volumes might be high (no different, I'd guess, than something already published in the New Middle Ages series), libraries would be able to make a decision on purchasing each volume on a one-off basis because they'd know the (general) content beforehand. You want the volume on the postcolonial Middle Ages and have some $, great. You want the volume on the legend of Charlemagne but don't have the $ that year, perhaps you pick it up the following year. You don't want something else, fine. But you're never tethered to the subscription and can't get anything in that series if there are budget cuts. Pecia could be a rough model here (although I don't know enough about how it operates to endorse that model more fully), or perhaps JMEMS could transition towards this different financial model, given all their themed issues.

Thoughts?

UPDATE: Slightly related, via ADM, an interesting post from Ruth Mazo Karras on publishing in academic journals.

Popular Culture and the Middle Ages

Via our good friend, the Great Nokes, at Unlocked Wordhoard, I learn that not only does the Society for Popular Culture and the Middle Ages exist, a fact that had previously escaped me, but they have a web page/blog:
http://popularcultureandthemiddleages.org/

Put Me in the Zoo

Won't you see what I can do? I can't make my spots disappear though...

Anyway, since it's coming to that time of year again, and others are promoting themselves, why not do the same?

Sat. 5/9
1:30pm
Session 456
Fetzer 2020

Medieval across Time and Space (A Roundtable)
Organizers: Matthew Gabriele, Virginia Tech and Julie Hofmann, Shenandoah Univ.

• Julie Hofmann
• Matthew Gabriele
  
• Manan Ahmed, Univ. of Chicago
• Kofi Campbell, Wilfrid Laurier Univ.
• David Spafford, Univ. of Washington–Seattle
• Janice Liedl, Laurentian Univ.

This panel will address intersections between medieval scholarship and popular understandings of the Middle Ages. The boundaries of the Middle Ages have always been rather fuzzy and they are progressively becoming more so. In addition to traditional challenges from classicists and early modernists, many colleges and universities have recently been changing their curricula to include World History and non-western fields. This gives medievalists of all stripes the opportunity to see the Middle Ages in ways that challenge a purely Eurocentric definition of what "medieval" is. At the same time, those outside of the academy are privy to myriad interpretations and re-interpretations of the medieval in media including (but not limited to) video games, blogs, architecture, popular literature, and film. And especially since 9/11, we must include journalism as well. Medievalists are called upon to comment and correct these interpretations at a time when their own understandings of what makes the Middle Ages are themselves being challenged.

We see these developments not only as challenges, but also as opportunities to engage with our colleagues, our students, and the wider community in new and interesting ways. Thus, a roundtable, recognizing the vast number of topics that could be discussed, is not constrained by the panel’s expertise. Instead, the format allows the discussants to start new dialogues with the audience.