Conferences and the Medievalist Community

One of the new things we've been trying on this blog is Facebook integration (shorter: we have a Facebook page), following the lead of places like In the Middle. Anyway, I posted something on my personal Facebook page on Sunday 6/16, referring to a number of complaints I saw about entitlement and the process of selecting sessions at Kalamazoo. We can talk about that if people like but, to my mind, the conversation got really interesting.  Essentially, one person suggested that the new Medieval Studies conference at SLU would pick up disgruntled attendees of Kalamazoo. That prompted my response below.

I then asked (after some more discussion) if I could bring that discussion public and the feedback was positive, so here it is. I don't want to use other peoples words without permission, so I'll try to summarize and then offer some thoughts.

One person keyed on my use of "need" and rightly questioned by what standard we'd judge that. Others chimed in to say that we do indeed need multiple conferences because of the disciplinary and temporal diversity in our field, but perhaps as supplementary to existing conferences. This could be modeled on the MLA, which has 1 main conference but then respected regional conferences as well (and I know the American Academy of Religion and American Sociological Association also operate on this model). Further complicating this, however, it was pointed out that even with this larger/ smaller conference structure around 1 organization, there are numerous other groups that host conferences that might be of interest -- the AHA, MESA, the 3/4 (not sure SLU is among the big 3 yet, even if it might be someday) medieval conferences, above, not to mention any independent conferences that might appear in any given year.

And that's kind of my point. As medievalists, we don't have "our" conference. And why can't we? What we have now is this:

• Medieval Academy -- used to be old, stodgy, and patriarchal, though that's better -- but not fixed -- now (or maybe I'm just older). Now not trusted because of the stuff with the former Executive Directors, though I think both sides overplayed their hands and didn't come off looking all that well. 
• Kalamazoo -- big conference, established. Democratic in culture in that rank/ prestige seem to matter much less here than anywhere else. Can be overwhelming to newbies sometimes. Has gained a reputation for a distinct "literary" bent to its program. This year, some have complained about the selection of panels and how they didn't get what they "deserve." The location is difficult to get to and it occurs at a difficult time for a lot of academics who aren't quite done with their semesters.
• Leeds -- big conference, established. Has gained a reputation for a distinct "historical" bent to its program. Expensive. New venue in the city center could be good or bad. Relatively democratic in culture. A bit insular, in that this seems to be "the" medieval conference that UK academics attend every year. This can be good or bad -- good if you know people, alienating if you don't.
• SLU -- new (this is its 1st year). Remains to be seen what it is and what'll become of it.

So what to do? Can one of these serve? Should one of these serve?

I don't have a good answer to this but I want to see what more people have to say about it. Let me, however, close with a few observations.

1. Let me observe that there's only 1 "big" European medieval conference, whereas there's 2/3 in the US. 
2. Let me observe too that many of the complaints/ issues about specific conferences have a disciplinary tinge to them -- they don't like this or that because of what's there, which isn't the "right kind" of medieval stuff they're interested in. Too literary or too historical...
3. Finally, let me observe that this is a particular issue to me as we observe travel budgets becoming increasingly meager. I've always been willing to dip into my own personal income to go to conferences and have been fortunate enough to be able to do so, but I know that that's not a common thing. Grad students, assistant professors, adjuncts, etc. don't have that luxury. Wouldn't it be nice to have 1 large conference somewhere that everyone, across discipline and specialization, could meet to collaborate? Is that a pipe dream?

Our own Orientalism: Why Medievalists are Complicit when Manuscripts Burn and Ruins Crumble

(Modern Medieval is pleased to host this guest post by Prof. Rabia Gregory, University of Missouri-Columbia)

Last month, as French ground forces moved into Mali at the request of Mali’s interim President, horrified whispers spread across the internet: Timbuktu’s manuscripts were in peril. On January 28, the French army moved to recapture Timbuktu amidst rumors that a retreating militia, perhaps the Salafist group Ansar Deine, had torched the Ahmad Baba Library. Later reports revealed that Ansar Deine had protected the Ahmad Baba Library, that the majority of manuscripts had been kept safe by African curators and local citizens, and that rumors of fire were stoked by a Sky News reporter embedded with the French army and confirmed by Hallè Ousmane, Timbuktu’s mayor, exiled 800 km away in Bamako. As images of scorched manuscripts on the tiled floors of the Ahmad Baba library began circulating, medievalists voiced a visceral outrage: to us, more than anyone, the destruction of books is an unfathomable act of barbarism. When fighting in Aleppo set the medieval souks aflame, threatened the Crac des Chevaliers, and endangered Palmyra and Old Damascus, and imperiled the manuscripts of Timbuktu, my friends and colleagues turned to Facebook and blogs to lament that they could never understand how anyone could so callously destroy their own cultural heritage. As if destroying manuscripts marked humans as dangerously different, or subhuman. As if our own armies had not destroyed vast collections of unique manuscript in Hamburg, Dresden, Baghdad, Mosul, Sarajevo, and elsewhere. As if we had forgotten how poor planning, corruption, war, and disaffected citizens had doomed  many of “our” libraries—the 2009 collapse in Cologne, the 1870 bombardment and fire which destroyed Strasbourg’s library and museum, the wholesale destruction and appropriation of books across Europe between 1914 and 1945, the floods which have permanently closed 12 libraries in Louisiana, damaged collections in Iowa, and endangered archives across the Eastern Seaboard. Arson has destroyed more books in the US and UK than in Africa: in 1986, an arsonist destroyed over 400,000 books and manuscripts in the Los Angeles County Library, and the sole surviving copy of the Beowulf manuscript, (BL Cotton Vitellius A. xv.) was damaged by fire in 1731; other unique manuscript copies,including the Life of Alfred, did not survive. Last year, a disgruntled alumnus vandalized and attempted to burn down our main research library last year sprinklers saved the building but water and smoke damaged many books and some of the Missouri State Historical Society’s collection.  Though we now find it quaint and amusing, the Bodleian’s famous oath recognizes the threat fire poses to libraries.

Western-educated medievalists are complicit in the ongoing destruction to medieval culture in Africa and the Near East, just as we passively allow the defunding and desecration of medieval archives and medieval studies programs in Europe and the Americas. There can be no apology for criminal actions under the guise of war, no excuses for the weak corrupt governments which cling to power exploiting the citizens of Africa and the Near East. But, as a medievalist who works with German manuscripts, and an Arab-American who follows the news from the Middle East closely, I must point out that many of the worst losses of medieval books and buildings have occurred in Western Europe. As we sit in our offices accusing them of barbarism, many Arabs and Muslims are mobilizing to protect medieval artifacts and memorializing ongoing tragedies through medieval poetry. The destruction of books, by fire or war, should not be an incomprehensible “act of barbarism” to medievalists, who habitually nuance the “barbaric” and often find our own western manuscripts have been lost to war or fire. My own research is hampered by the losses at libraries in Lübeck, Wroclaw, Dresden, and Strasbourg. Only a small portion of the 100 boxes of medieval manuscripts relocated by the Wroclaw City Library in 1943 under threat of bombardment have been recovered; those lost to fire will never resurface. I expect simplistic narrative of savage Muslim destroying priceless antiquities in incomprehensible acts of barbarism from reporters compiling stories from wire reports. Medievalists, many of whom are widely read in postcolonial theory, and invested in recovering evidence of marginal peoples, should know better.