Wednesday, June 4, 2008

Call for Submissions (?)

Building off of Larry Swain's initial post, the comments engendered by my little response, and (more generally) by BABEL's recent session at Kazoo and 2 sessions I'm hoping will get accepted for next year's Kazoo, I want to run something by you, oh internets.

How about a blog forum about what medieval studies and/ or medievalism has to offer a wider public? But not pitched to other academics? How would you talk about a topic of your choosing to a group of community members in a public library, for example? How do you talk about "relevance" (or the lack thereof) to undergraduates? etc.

So, let's try this. If it doesn't work, it doesn't work.

Details:
  • Use the questions above as general guidelines. Feel free to do something else related, if you so choose though.
  • You can either email me a link to something you've already written somewhere else or you can email me "new" text and (with your permission) I'll post it here.
  • Anonymity will absolutely, positively, be respected.
  • I welcome anything thoughtful, be it short (~ 1 PP) or long.
  • This can also be an ongoing conversation, so as this goes on, longer responses to earlier posts (responses too long for comments) are welcome.
  • Please spread the word far and wide, to blogs, listservs, etc. We welcome, of course, people who don't normally blog and people outside of academia.
  • Initial deadline for submissions will be next Friday, 6/13.
Update/ Clarification: The deadline is not hard-and-fast. Let's call it simply the "1st of many" deadlines, just to get the ball rolling. I certainly won't turn a thoughtful contribution away...

3 comments:

theswain said...

Hey Matt,

I'd be interested in hosting such a discussion on The Heroic Age in a future issue.

Matthew Gabriele said...

Sounds good. Let's see where this blog forum goes 1st though (if it goes anywhere).

theswain said...

Also Matthew, might I suggest in this continuing conversation that we look at now only how to pitch it to non-academics, but a related though different issue of pitching what we do to fellow academics, sometimes within our own departments. There'll be some overlap, but enough different to make it really two different, though vitally important conversations.