I'm a Sci-Fi fan. Always have been. So when the Sci-Fi channel's new show Sancturay aired I was interested, especially as I had viewed Stargate and Stargate Atlantis and Amanda Tapping from those shows was the star of the new one.
The premise of the show is that there are "abnormals" in the world, creatures and beings whose evolutionary path is different. Thus, a chameleon like lizard that walks upright, or a mermaid. Some of these creatures seem benign, others not. Some are sentient, some not. Of late the show has taken a turn toward horror and now we find that the main character, along with a cadre of others in the 19th century, experimented with untainted blood of sanguinus vampirus, which gave each longer life, but also other kinds of "gifts" and abilities. Our heroine, her daughter, and "the new guy" run the "Sanctuary", a safe haven for abnormals of all kinds. There is a nascent werwolf now in the cast, and others.
Ok, what's this got to do with Modern Medieval? Well, what prompted me to mention it here is that in the second or third episode (I'm just finally getting around to addressing this!), they tread onto the medieval board. In that episode, they found the tombs of 3 "abnormals", 3 sisters, virgins of course, Irish, whose presence on the battlefield results in the mass death of the opposing side. As all this is being revealed the following becomes part of the tale: 1) they're ancient, they're medieval...the two adjectives are used interchangeably 2) the 8th century AD is called "ancient" and the Black Plague is said to swept across Europe at that moment 3) the 3 sisters were at Mount Badon, and parts of the episode show them walking through the field, the dead wear armor of a much later period, the late Middle Ages. 4) Being at Mount Badon they fought with/for Arthur.
Ok, I'm for remythologization....a term I'll coin to describe taking our existing myths and rewriting them. Stargate was a show that did just that and did so quite successfully (and before that of course was the movie with James Spader, but I digress). So why not here?
But its the way they're doing it. You see, remythologization takes some accuracy. Let me compare Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the vampires act like mythological vampires are supposed to. They don't like the light, wooden stakes, etc. The Harry Potter series works in much the same way: the mythological creatures who impinge into the real world work by and large because they react and have the attributes we expect them to.
But Sancturary isn't going there. At least the show hasn't so far. Here's what I mean. Let's take "sanguinus vampirus." To the uninitiated, that sounds like good Latin, all very scientific and above board. But it isn't. There is no word "sanguinus", there's sanguineus meaning bloodthirsty though not in the literal sense of needing to drink blood, from the verb sanguino, are. More importantly, "vampirus" isn't a Latin word. I may be mistaken, but I don't believe that it even originates as an Indo-European word, but comes from the Turkic Tartar, gets borrowed into Hungarian and Old Church Slavonic and thence in modern times into French and German and then English. If we wanted to go with Latin, Revenantus (having been brought back) goes back to the 12th century, or we could invent new terms based on Latin like semimortus (half dead) or intermortus, semivivus (half alive). There are certainly other real Latin neologisms that could be used to give real meaning to the focus.
Well, ok, Latin terminology is probably not the most important thing to notice about this, I admit. Its things like putting Arthur in the 8th century, along with the Black Plague (and yes, we know that various kinds of plague probably related to that of the 14th century passed through Europe at various points in the late antique world, esp. in 6th, 7th, and early 8th centuries.) which most people will associate with "the Black Death" and call them all "ancient." That seems a big problem to me. Further, the episode claims that the last reported case of bubonic plague was in Scotland in 880. Uh, no. There's been 20th century cases in Arizona! But 880? Have they heard of the Black Death? There was a wave too in the 18th century in England...just off the top of my head here.
The 3 women I mentioned are called the Morrigan. Some of you will recognize them as the Morrigan of Irish mythology, first appearing in texts (which of course isn't their first appearance!) in The Tain. In the story, they're trying to remember who they are and why and then at the end go meekly with The Cabal, a group that apparently collects "abnormals" to use abnormals' powers and abilities for The Cabal's gain. Ah HA, enter a foil! But the Morrigan in this tale are but three abnormal but mortal women who are artificially (never explained quite how) kept alive in stasis....a condition to which they willingly return "but we know who we are now." In my view, not a successful remythologization of what they demythologized.
And this of course brings us to some of my bigger problems. Technically, the show works in CGI, they work with green screens. Terrific. They've chosen a gothic style cathedral and its close as "the Sanctuary"....ok, we're starting on a good foot. What better use could a cathedral and its environs be put to than the ancient practice of sanctuary, much less the theological point of preserving what the divine has created....very deep religious overtones, not all of them Christian, available to the writers to use here. But they don't. Even when one sees the "security" image the first time, you know, the computer screen showing their security grid for the place, its the plan of the inside of a cathedral! Potentially great stuff to draw on here....but they don't.
But here's what got me and nearly lost me as a viewer. Ok, they have this gothic style place. They're in North America....possible in certain quarters...NYC, Toronto, etc. They live in fictional "Old City". Now when the aforementioned Cabal come looking for their lost Morrigan, they have GPS. And the GPS shows us that Old City and the Sanctuary is NOT on the Eastern seaboard where one might find an oldish Gothic Cathedral etc, but in Northern California. Ok, come on people.
Thing is, this isn't specialized knowledge I'm talking about here. The Latin, the mythology so far invoked, the dates of the Bubonic plague....they're all readily available on Wikipedia! And that's the frustrating part: its medievalism that isn't, but what's more, a faux medievalism that can't be bothered to check the most readily available source of information for the basics!
I haven't given final judgment on the show. I've watched several more episodes. The turn to the horror genre isn't to my taste. But it disturbs me that such a rich opportunity is wasted. There are rich veins that someone on the show seems aware of, but they just can't seem to tap: medieval mythologies and folklore that they can remythologize into a successful show and a new medivalism at the same time. As it is, they have done neither.
Sunday, November 23, 2008
Arthuriana Modern Medieval Style
Its not precisely Medieval nor Modern, part Arthurian, part Star Trek, part Monty Python, but completely and utterly uproarious and priceless. Thanks to Will Wheaton, who thanks his source....
http://wilwheaton.typepad.com/wwdnbackup/2008/11/tis-a-silly-pla.html
http://wilwheaton.typepad.com/wwdnbackup/2008/11/tis-a-silly-pla.html
Thursday, November 13, 2008
A New World
This appeared today (11/13/08) in The Roanoke Times. I invite comments.
-----
In 1492, a small Spanish expedition led by Christopher Columbus reached the Americas. These men were not the first to have reached the Americas from elsewhere – we are now certain that the Vikings did so around the year 1000 – yet that earlier event had all but passed out of human memory, only preserved in the pages of a few, scattered manuscripts, confined mostly to northern Europe. 1492 was something altogether different, not because of what the Spanish actually discovered (the people living there already knew the Americas existed) but rather because of how Europeans understood what they had found.
Columbus died in 1506 still firmly convinced that he had discovered a new route to Asia and that the islands he was exploring were part of a larger archipelago that would, eventually, lead him to Japan. Of course, he was wrong. Or was he?
For the next century or so, people weren’t sure and the discussion finally came to a head in 1550 at the university in Valladolid, Spain. Juan Ginés de Sepulveda, a leading humanist, faced off in a debate against Bartolomeo de las Casas, a Dominican missionary. This debate was superficially about the rights of the Spanish monarchy in the Americas – what they could do with the land and its native peoples. But the debate was about much more than that too. It was about what makes someone human. Why? Because if this wasn’t Asia, this place would have been absolutely new. Were these natives actually people? If so, why had they never heard of Judaism, Christianity, or Islam? None of the ancients – no Romans, Greeks, Muslims, or medievals – had accounted for this place or these civilizations. Does that mean the ancients were wrong? If they were wrong about this, what else could they have been wrong about? As one very eminent historian has suggested, Columbus’ voyages destroyed the “Old World’s” coherence. It made European society rethink everything, from geography to the very nature of man himself.
Columbus setting foot on the island of Dominica in 1492 began a new world, both physical and intellectual, even if few recognized this at the time. When Columbus landed, he (and everyone else) thought they had found a quicker way to Asia. His arrival in the Americas did not immediately change anything, and yet his arrival – that singular moment – fundamentally transformed the world because of the questions it would provoke. The past is full of such moments. As a medieval historian, I could briefly mention as examples, the deposition of the last Roman Emperor in the West (the “fall” of Rome), Pope Urban II’s speech that launched the First Crusade, the arrival of the Black Death in Italy, etc. All of these moments were like 1492 in that they, in the grand arc of history, were not significant moments in and of themselves. But they all would eventually create “new worlds.” Something noticeably different would emerge, something utterly dependent upon the choices made in a particular place at a particular time.
As of November 5, 2008, we – all of us – live in a new world. The election of Barack Obama as our 44th President has changed the world. My life (and I’m sure yours as well) was not unusual when I woke up Wednesday morning. I woke up, ate breakfast, went to work, etc. But the world has changed because the implications of this moment, here in 2008, are extraordinary. Like in 1492, our new world may have little to do with the actions of one individual – Columbus or Obama. Instead, the world changes because of us. It changes because of the questions it makes us ask ourselves. In the end we collectively decided that race didn’t matter when choosing a president and our children will never know a time when an African-American couldn’t hold that office. The world regards us differently now. We, I think, regard ourselves differently now. We should realize that we – all of us together, regardless of party affiliation or even how we voted – have destroyed a great barrier in our path as we continue towards a more perfect union. This realization, I think, is something that should reinforce our love for this country and make us proud of who we are. But, again, this is just a moment. The real change will occur when we ask hard questions and realize the stunning possibilities of what we as a nation can become.
In 1492, a small Spanish expedition led by Christopher Columbus reached the Americas. These men were not the first to have reached the Americas from elsewhere – we are now certain that the Vikings did so around the year 1000 – yet that earlier event had all but passed out of human memory, only preserved in the pages of a few, scattered manuscripts, confined mostly to northern Europe. 1492 was something altogether different, not because of what the Spanish actually discovered (the people living there already knew the Americas existed) but rather because of how Europeans understood what they had found.
Columbus died in 1506 still firmly convinced that he had discovered a new route to Asia and that the islands he was exploring were part of a larger archipelago that would, eventually, lead him to Japan. Of course, he was wrong. Or was he?
For the next century or so, people weren’t sure and the discussion finally came to a head in 1550 at the university in Valladolid, Spain. Juan Ginés de Sepulveda, a leading humanist, faced off in a debate against Bartolomeo de las Casas, a Dominican missionary. This debate was superficially about the rights of the Spanish monarchy in the Americas – what they could do with the land and its native peoples. But the debate was about much more than that too. It was about what makes someone human. Why? Because if this wasn’t Asia, this place would have been absolutely new. Were these natives actually people? If so, why had they never heard of Judaism, Christianity, or Islam? None of the ancients – no Romans, Greeks, Muslims, or medievals – had accounted for this place or these civilizations. Does that mean the ancients were wrong? If they were wrong about this, what else could they have been wrong about? As one very eminent historian has suggested, Columbus’ voyages destroyed the “Old World’s” coherence. It made European society rethink everything, from geography to the very nature of man himself.
Columbus setting foot on the island of Dominica in 1492 began a new world, both physical and intellectual, even if few recognized this at the time. When Columbus landed, he (and everyone else) thought they had found a quicker way to Asia. His arrival in the Americas did not immediately change anything, and yet his arrival – that singular moment – fundamentally transformed the world because of the questions it would provoke. The past is full of such moments. As a medieval historian, I could briefly mention as examples, the deposition of the last Roman Emperor in the West (the “fall” of Rome), Pope Urban II’s speech that launched the First Crusade, the arrival of the Black Death in Italy, etc. All of these moments were like 1492 in that they, in the grand arc of history, were not significant moments in and of themselves. But they all would eventually create “new worlds.” Something noticeably different would emerge, something utterly dependent upon the choices made in a particular place at a particular time.
As of November 5, 2008, we – all of us – live in a new world. The election of Barack Obama as our 44th President has changed the world. My life (and I’m sure yours as well) was not unusual when I woke up Wednesday morning. I woke up, ate breakfast, went to work, etc. But the world has changed because the implications of this moment, here in 2008, are extraordinary. Like in 1492, our new world may have little to do with the actions of one individual – Columbus or Obama. Instead, the world changes because of us. It changes because of the questions it makes us ask ourselves. In the end we collectively decided that race didn’t matter when choosing a president and our children will never know a time when an African-American couldn’t hold that office. The world regards us differently now. We, I think, regard ourselves differently now. We should realize that we – all of us together, regardless of party affiliation or even how we voted – have destroyed a great barrier in our path as we continue towards a more perfect union. This realization, I think, is something that should reinforce our love for this country and make us proud of who we are. But, again, this is just a moment. The real change will occur when we ask hard questions and realize the stunning possibilities of what we as a nation can become.
Monday, November 10, 2008
Job Announcement - Senior Search in ASPECT (Virginia Tech)
In addition to the other search that I already announced, here's another for a senior-level scholar for our new, expanding graduate program in the Liberal Arts & Humanities @ Virginia Tech. Pre-modernists (more than) welcome!
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The successful candidate will hold tenure in one of the four core departments of the program (History [www.history.vt.edu], Interdisciplinary Studies [www.idst.vt.edu], Philosophy [http://www.phil.vt.edu], and Political Science [www.psci.vt.edu]). The position’s two course per semester teaching load will be divided between the program and the tenure department.
All applicants must apply online https://jobs.vt.edu search posting number 081072. In addition, a full CV, list of three references, a writing sample, and any materials not readily posted online should be mailed to: ASPECT Search Committee, c/o Wolfgang Natter, Director, 202 Major Williams Hall, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA 24061. Questions about the application process may be directed to Tamara Sutphin, tsutphin AT vt.edu. Review of applications will begin January 5, 2009.
Virginia Tech is an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer and encourages applications from women, people of color, veterans, and people with disabilities.
ASPECT Senior Position at Virginia Tech
Job Announcement
ASPECT (Alliance for Social, Political, Ethical and Cultural Thought) announces a senior-level faculty position, pending final funding approval, to begin in August, 2009. ASPECT is a theory-based, interdisciplinary, and problem-centered Ph.D. program administratively located in the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences at Virginia Tech (see www.clahs.vt.edu and www.aspect.vt.edu). Candidates must demonstrate a teaching and research record appropriate to appointment at the rank of professor (or advanced associate professor). The search is open to theoretically oriented scholars who have worked in any intellectual tradition, geographic areas and historical periods. Substantial background in more than one discipline is highly desirable. Commitment to team teaching and collaborative research is essential, as is demonstrated familiarity with the scholarly literature on interdisciplinarity.Job Announcement
The successful candidate will hold tenure in one of the four core departments of the program (History [www.history.vt.edu], Interdisciplinary Studies [www.idst.vt.edu], Philosophy [http://www.phil.vt.edu], and Political Science [www.psci.vt.edu]). The position’s two course per semester teaching load will be divided between the program and the tenure department.
All applicants must apply online https://jobs.vt.edu search posting number 081072. In addition, a full CV, list of three references, a writing sample, and any materials not readily posted online should be mailed to: ASPECT Search Committee, c/o Wolfgang Natter, Director, 202 Major Williams Hall, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA 24061. Questions about the application process may be directed to Tamara Sutphin, tsutphin AT vt.edu. Review of applications will begin January 5, 2009.
Virginia Tech is an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer and encourages applications from women, people of color, veterans, and people with disabilities.
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Pick Me
Now that the election has been decided, and our 2 candidates have expressed their respective interests in the Middle Ages, I want to officially throw my hat into the ring to be the 1st ever Cabinet-level "Secretary of Medieval Affairs." A full CV and references will be available upon request...
Thursday, October 30, 2008
John McCain, Medievalist
Following up on "Barack Obama, Medievalist," I wonder how I ever missed this nugget. John McCain claims descent from Robert the Bruce and -- your friend and mine -- the man himself, Charlemagne. Of course, this is utter fantasy -- although proven repeatedly to be attractive fantasy. John McCain, so far as anyone can tell, is NOT related to either of those men and has no perceptible ties to the Middle Ages. And yet, there is this...
Noted, without comment.
Noted, without comment.
Saturday, October 18, 2008
Can We Redeem Medieval Studies?
The following was a post I began at the beginning of September, forgot about, and have now returned to and posted. So its a little dated.....
The good folks over at In The Middle have been discussing how and why to defend Medieval Studies, prompted by a note received by J. J. Cohen from Ken Tomkins. Our good friend and better blogger Scott Nokes of Unlocked Wordhoard has told us about another post on the topic by Nic D'Alessio at Indirections and suggested that he may unlock his wordhoard on the topic.
Considering the emphasis we here at Modern Medieval have placed on outreach and promoting our field, and even hosting a roundtable with great entries that touched on these things, the topic is up our alley.
But rather than repeat some of the really very great suggestions made by others at the blogs linked above (and I encourage everyone to go and read or reread them), I want to ask a question that is related to all this.
Between "town and gown" if I may adapt those terms, or between popular culture and academic culture, we have a rather significant disconnect and a disconnect that results in the situation where we have to apologize (in all senses of the word) for doing medieval studies. Medieval schtuff, that we often call "medievalism(s)," is popular in pop culture! Movies, retellings, books, new translations, newspapers, music, reenactment groups.....almost everywhere one looks one finds a medievalism thriving. Nor have I mentioned the obvious, at least to us, impact of the medieval on current events. Yet in academia, medieval studies is often beleaguered and almost every year since I've decided to become a medievalist a colleague asks for assistance in composing a defense for doing what she or he does as a medievalist in the face of possibly being, well, deleted from the rolls. Quite apart from how we should defend ourselves from such action, I want to try and explore why there is this disconnection between the apparently very avid interest in our culture at large, and the disinterest on the part of the academy at large.
I'm not sure I have any answers. I do have some impressions. The discipline of Medieval studies is challenging. And it takes discipline. We have to study earlier forms of languages, or foreign languages all together: Old Irish, Old Norse, Old English, Old Welsh, Old French, much less Medieval Latin or Byzantine Greek....and we have to play with old manuscripts and travel to these archives and such....Its hard! And we do tend to show up our colleagues....I'll never forget explaining references in Ulysses to a Joyce scholar not long ago.
So that's really two reasons why the academy would rather pass us by: its hard, and not always sexy, to muck about with manuscripts and try to reconstruct a text in Old English with Latin glosses when a great deal of the pages have been eaten by mice! In fact, it isn't sexy at all! Its downright aggravating! And it is also a very great thrill and exciting.....but that's a different post. But a number of our colleagues haven't had the experience of holding in their hands a 1000 year old book and connecting with the scribe. From the outside, it seems very challenging, perhaps too daunting, and if our field is daunting to fellow academics, those fellow academics reason that it must also seem so to students.
Beyond the lack of "sexiness" as perceived by some, accompanied with the difficulty, there's the simple fact that because of what we are forced to know, we actually have the advantage of others. We can work in any field in history or literature without too much adjustment: read a work in Victorian England and there a medievalist will find much that feels very familiar (see Sketches by Boz and compare that to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, esp. the prologue....some great differences, but some great similarities too!). But the opposite is not the case for the Victorianist by and large who find Beowulf or Marie de France to be too far outside their world. Of course, we all know people in later fields who enjoy Medieval literature and who could even teach me a thing or two or three about Medieval literature. These are just broad brush strokes based on observation in departments of which I've been apart and conferences like MLA that I have attended. C. S. Lewis in his first address at Cambridge remarked that pre-Industrial age literature, all of it, shared a worldview forever changed after the Industrial Revolution. I think he happens to be right on that score: there is a large degree of continuity from say Homer through the Roman period through Late Antiquity to the Medieval period to the Early Modern etc....worldview, views of how a king should act, etc. That continuity enables us to move between periods more easily than others in my view.
Another issue is the interdisciplinary problem. Related to the issue of what we do being hard, being a medievalist encourages, nay, all but absolutely requires, one to cross disciplinary boundaries: the historian shouldn't simply read documentary texts and the literary specialist simply "literature" etc. Those who float to the top of the heap generally are comfortable crossing those boundaries. Academia however is housed in institutions, institutions that as a whole like to demarcate and pigeon hole: they are bureaucratic institutions after all. Generally crossing those lines separating disciplines is going outside the pigeon hole, and that creates bureaucratic problems. Ok, yes, I'm more than well aware that there are places where such interdisciplinary scholarship is accepted, even encouraged, and in some few Medieval Institutes even institutionalized. And yes, of course one often finds cross appointments where a scholar works in 2 or more departments. But for everyone one of those there are other institutions that discourage those practices.
Ok, well, Swain, anything else you think you might see? Well, now that I ask myself, yes. There is more. There is a certain elitism. While some in academia are rather fascinated by popular culture, most others find the interests of the great mass uninteresting in comparison to the interests of the tower. This view of course encourages, relishes, and needs a distance from popular culture so that popular interest in things medieval indicates an accompanying disinterest in the field in academia.
Finally, another kind of elitism is that Medieval Studies, like Classics, and Biblical Studies, is "old-fashioned." To some degree, it's a traditional field. Ok, granted, traditionally one hopped from "silver age" Latin literature and Constantine in history to the 12th century and ignored half of the medieval period. Still, though, these traditional fields once held sway and were the foci of higher education. But there was this cultural upheaval somewhere about 40 years ago that changed all that and those who came up then and in the years afterward, who 20 years ago fought in the Culture Wars, eschewed traditional fields and traditional ways of doing history, literature, and the Humanities. Thus the ascendancy of post-modern theory in literary studies that has caused a great deal of discussion among medieval bloggers the last few months. As a result though, some "traditional" fields have been pushed to the side and too often in too many places must face the dreaded "defend your existence" trial.
There must be more. I think these forces work together: other "traditional" fields such as Classics and Biblical Studies (aka Divinity) have also suffered a similar fate: at one and the same time, the greater the level of popular interest, the less interest in academic circles outside those fields and of course all of them require linguistic knowledge and the ability to work across disciplinary lines. And they're traditional.
So that's my take. Mileage may vary according to field and according to location. My impression is that Medieval Studies is safer in Europe and Down Under, though on one forum I read a student in New Zealand reported that Old English was being cut at this institution and not long ago there was a petition to save a program at a German university much less the move at the Univ of Toledo to do away with most Humanities. So the problems are everywhere. Our colleagues have given some great solutions, but to a degree these practical solutions do not address the cultural forces that have led to this point. Some have addressed those forces by applying theory to medieval studies, and many a medievalist gleefully (such a great Old English word too!) engage in various kinds of medievalism study as a side-light to their main research. Others have very popular blogs and engage new technologies which certainly makes medieval studies a whole lot more sexier in the early 21st century than a dozen years ago when this was in its infancy. Still though...do we need another cultural revolution before medieval studies will be popular among administrators again? Or will we simply have to fight to survive long enough for attrition to work on the Counter Culture generation and then those coming up now may change the way the world works, at least in their little corner. Frankly, I suspect the latter.
So there it is. Corrections welcome. Thoughts and responses encouraged!
The good folks over at In The Middle have been discussing how and why to defend Medieval Studies, prompted by a note received by J. J. Cohen from Ken Tomkins. Our good friend and better blogger Scott Nokes of Unlocked Wordhoard has told us about another post on the topic by Nic D'Alessio at Indirections and suggested that he may unlock his wordhoard on the topic.
Considering the emphasis we here at Modern Medieval have placed on outreach and promoting our field, and even hosting a roundtable with great entries that touched on these things, the topic is up our alley.
But rather than repeat some of the really very great suggestions made by others at the blogs linked above (and I encourage everyone to go and read or reread them), I want to ask a question that is related to all this.
Between "town and gown" if I may adapt those terms, or between popular culture and academic culture, we have a rather significant disconnect and a disconnect that results in the situation where we have to apologize (in all senses of the word) for doing medieval studies. Medieval schtuff, that we often call "medievalism(s)," is popular in pop culture! Movies, retellings, books, new translations, newspapers, music, reenactment groups.....almost everywhere one looks one finds a medievalism thriving. Nor have I mentioned the obvious, at least to us, impact of the medieval on current events. Yet in academia, medieval studies is often beleaguered and almost every year since I've decided to become a medievalist a colleague asks for assistance in composing a defense for doing what she or he does as a medievalist in the face of possibly being, well, deleted from the rolls. Quite apart from how we should defend ourselves from such action, I want to try and explore why there is this disconnection between the apparently very avid interest in our culture at large, and the disinterest on the part of the academy at large.
I'm not sure I have any answers. I do have some impressions. The discipline of Medieval studies is challenging. And it takes discipline. We have to study earlier forms of languages, or foreign languages all together: Old Irish, Old Norse, Old English, Old Welsh, Old French, much less Medieval Latin or Byzantine Greek....and we have to play with old manuscripts and travel to these archives and such....Its hard! And we do tend to show up our colleagues....I'll never forget explaining references in Ulysses to a Joyce scholar not long ago.
So that's really two reasons why the academy would rather pass us by: its hard, and not always sexy, to muck about with manuscripts and try to reconstruct a text in Old English with Latin glosses when a great deal of the pages have been eaten by mice! In fact, it isn't sexy at all! Its downright aggravating! And it is also a very great thrill and exciting.....but that's a different post. But a number of our colleagues haven't had the experience of holding in their hands a 1000 year old book and connecting with the scribe. From the outside, it seems very challenging, perhaps too daunting, and if our field is daunting to fellow academics, those fellow academics reason that it must also seem so to students.
Beyond the lack of "sexiness" as perceived by some, accompanied with the difficulty, there's the simple fact that because of what we are forced to know, we actually have the advantage of others. We can work in any field in history or literature without too much adjustment: read a work in Victorian England and there a medievalist will find much that feels very familiar (see Sketches by Boz and compare that to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, esp. the prologue....some great differences, but some great similarities too!). But the opposite is not the case for the Victorianist by and large who find Beowulf or Marie de France to be too far outside their world. Of course, we all know people in later fields who enjoy Medieval literature and who could even teach me a thing or two or three about Medieval literature. These are just broad brush strokes based on observation in departments of which I've been apart and conferences like MLA that I have attended. C. S. Lewis in his first address at Cambridge remarked that pre-Industrial age literature, all of it, shared a worldview forever changed after the Industrial Revolution. I think he happens to be right on that score: there is a large degree of continuity from say Homer through the Roman period through Late Antiquity to the Medieval period to the Early Modern etc....worldview, views of how a king should act, etc. That continuity enables us to move between periods more easily than others in my view.
Another issue is the interdisciplinary problem. Related to the issue of what we do being hard, being a medievalist encourages, nay, all but absolutely requires, one to cross disciplinary boundaries: the historian shouldn't simply read documentary texts and the literary specialist simply "literature" etc. Those who float to the top of the heap generally are comfortable crossing those boundaries. Academia however is housed in institutions, institutions that as a whole like to demarcate and pigeon hole: they are bureaucratic institutions after all. Generally crossing those lines separating disciplines is going outside the pigeon hole, and that creates bureaucratic problems. Ok, yes, I'm more than well aware that there are places where such interdisciplinary scholarship is accepted, even encouraged, and in some few Medieval Institutes even institutionalized. And yes, of course one often finds cross appointments where a scholar works in 2 or more departments. But for everyone one of those there are other institutions that discourage those practices.
Ok, well, Swain, anything else you think you might see? Well, now that I ask myself, yes. There is more. There is a certain elitism. While some in academia are rather fascinated by popular culture, most others find the interests of the great mass uninteresting in comparison to the interests of the tower. This view of course encourages, relishes, and needs a distance from popular culture so that popular interest in things medieval indicates an accompanying disinterest in the field in academia.
Finally, another kind of elitism is that Medieval Studies, like Classics, and Biblical Studies, is "old-fashioned." To some degree, it's a traditional field. Ok, granted, traditionally one hopped from "silver age" Latin literature and Constantine in history to the 12th century and ignored half of the medieval period. Still, though, these traditional fields once held sway and were the foci of higher education. But there was this cultural upheaval somewhere about 40 years ago that changed all that and those who came up then and in the years afterward, who 20 years ago fought in the Culture Wars, eschewed traditional fields and traditional ways of doing history, literature, and the Humanities. Thus the ascendancy of post-modern theory in literary studies that has caused a great deal of discussion among medieval bloggers the last few months. As a result though, some "traditional" fields have been pushed to the side and too often in too many places must face the dreaded "defend your existence" trial.
There must be more. I think these forces work together: other "traditional" fields such as Classics and Biblical Studies (aka Divinity) have also suffered a similar fate: at one and the same time, the greater the level of popular interest, the less interest in academic circles outside those fields and of course all of them require linguistic knowledge and the ability to work across disciplinary lines. And they're traditional.
So that's my take. Mileage may vary according to field and according to location. My impression is that Medieval Studies is safer in Europe and Down Under, though on one forum I read a student in New Zealand reported that Old English was being cut at this institution and not long ago there was a petition to save a program at a German university much less the move at the Univ of Toledo to do away with most Humanities. So the problems are everywhere. Our colleagues have given some great solutions, but to a degree these practical solutions do not address the cultural forces that have led to this point. Some have addressed those forces by applying theory to medieval studies, and many a medievalist gleefully (such a great Old English word too!) engage in various kinds of medievalism study as a side-light to their main research. Others have very popular blogs and engage new technologies which certainly makes medieval studies a whole lot more sexier in the early 21st century than a dozen years ago when this was in its infancy. Still though...do we need another cultural revolution before medieval studies will be popular among administrators again? Or will we simply have to fight to survive long enough for attrition to work on the Counter Culture generation and then those coming up now may change the way the world works, at least in their little corner. Frankly, I suspect the latter.
So there it is. Corrections welcome. Thoughts and responses encouraged!
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
The Crusades Continue
... and not just in my lecture series. Via Naked Philologist, I have just been informed that the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem -- the ultimate goal of the First Crusade (and many others to Palestine) -- is in danger of collapsing in on itself. Most of it has to do with the warring factions of churchmen who dwell within the church. Let The Times 'splain:
The church has been vigilantly managed by six competing and often fractious Christian denominations — Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Armenian Orthodox, Coptic, Syrian Orthodox and Ethiopian — since an agreement reached under Ottoman law in 1757.
Rival denominations often battle for access or space and the congregation at the annual Easter service sometimes resembles the terraces of a boisterous football match. The keys to the main entrance of the church have been held by a Muslim family since the 12th century because the Christians do not trust one another.
2 things here: 1) in all seriousness, see how Jerusalem -- holy space, more generally -- incites such passion, and 2) how quickly that passion can lead directly to violence. Because, it's not just that the factions don't trust each other, it's that they don't trust each other to the point that they actually engage in fist-fights over intellectual slights, be they real or perceived. Oh, and maybe it's just the medievalist in me, but isn't it just plain weird to think of Franciscans involved in fist-fights?
Saturday, October 11, 2008
Ta-Da! (Podcast Edition)
Due to some technical difficulties, the podcast for the 1st event in the lecture series "Crusades, Then & Now," a talk by Prof. Gregory Bell (Duke) on "The Experience of the First Crusade," brought to you by Medieval & Early Modern Studies at Virginia Tech, was NOT a success. Practice, however, makes perfect.So, it's my pleasure to announce that now available for your listening pleasure, Prof. Jay Rubenstein (UT-Knoxville) speaking on "The First Crusade and the Origins of Europe." It was a well-attended event, with an excellent, provactive presentation, followed by good questions from the audience. Have a listen.
Listen to the Podcast
(requires iTunes)
(requires iTunes)
Monday, September 29, 2008
Job Announcement - Assistant Professor (TT), Medieval Peninsular or Spanish American Colonial Studies
UPDATE: Bumped because not much has been posted here lately. This can be the placeholder for a while, I guess. If anyone has any questions about the position, feel free to get in touch. Otherwise, please spread the word far & wide.
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Assistant Professor of Medieval/ Colonial Spanish-----
Virginia Tech (Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University)
The Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures at Virginia Tech (Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University) invites applications for an Assistant Professor of Spanish, specialization in Medieval Peninsular or Spanish American Colonial Studies, for a tenure-track position to begin August 2009 pending budgetary approval.
Please see http://www.fll.vt.edu for a description of the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures and the Spanish Program.
Required: PhD requirements completed by August 10, 2009. Virginia Tech is a Research I institution; therefore, the successful candidate must show evidence of or potential for excellence in research/scholarship. In addition, demonstrated excellence in teaching is required. The candidate must have the ability to teach courses in literature, culture, and language at the undergraduate and graduate levels. Native or near-native fluency in Spanish and English is required.
Preferred secondary field of expertise: Colonial Studies, Medieval Studies, literary theory, or cultural studies.
Candidates must apply online at http://jobs.vt.edu/applicants/Central?quickFind=189488 and attach a letter of application, a curriculum vitae, and a writing sample. In addition, graduate transcripts and three letters of recommendation must be mailed to: Dr. Jessica Folkart, Chair, Spanish Search Committee, Dept. of Foreign Langs. & Lits., 331 Major Williams Hall, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA 24061-0225. Review of applications will begin on November 17, 2008.
Virginia Tech is an EEO/AA Employer.
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