tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-90717574021864896702024-03-14T04:34:11.372+13:00BavardessThe musings of a feminist medievalist contrarian historian oenophile francophile fromage-fancier.Bavardesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10737120234578385755noreply@blogger.comBlogger110125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9071757402186489670.post-46660914083205975342013-02-09T17:12:00.000+13:002013-02-09T17:15:10.159+13:00On translation, texts, and a conference<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-QFLClUOgMMY/URXIpfEz6rI/AAAAAAAAASE/Ma0YsplasQw/s1600/outdoor+office.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-QFLClUOgMMY/URXIpfEz6rI/AAAAAAAAASE/Ma0YsplasQw/s320/outdoor+office.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">It's been an usually lovely summer here in my part of the world and I've
been spending as little time as possible at the computer (and thus, am
well behind with bloggy stuff). I've even moved my office out into the
garden - one of the perks of working from home. So I've been enjoying the sun but work is also continuing apace. The draft
of my PhD proposal has been reviewed by my supervisor and I've been
given the go-ahead to put in the paperwork for candidacy. I have some
minor revisions to do but I hope to have had my candidacy
hearing/ seminar (basically, what I think you Americans call an oral proposal
defense) by late March or April.<br /> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I'll be getting in a bit of practice for the seminar next week, as
I'm off to Melbourne for the <a href="http://www.arts.monash.edu.au/history/conferences/anzamems-2013/" target="_blank">ANZAMEMS conference</a>. The theme of this year's
conference (always loosely interpreted) is Cultures in Translation. The
paper I'm presenting will be considering language, translation, and the
construction of identity in a case of treason from 1415. The trial and
execution of the accused took place right before Henry V left England on a campaign that included the battle of Agincourt, and the revelation of treason makes for a
pivotal scene in Shakespeare's <i>Henry V</i>. The case generated a series of
intriguing documents, including confessional letters to the king (in
English), a detailed but heavily massaged trial record and later
chronicle accounts that turned the whole thing into a dirty conspiracy
with the French against the English 'nation'. My paper looks at the
operations of translation in the production of these texts, not only the
translation of one language to another (e.g. the English of a personal
letter to the Latin of the trial record and the French of the parliament
roll), but also the translation of a man's story of his loyal service
to the English king and realm into an account of his 'tainting' and
'corruption' by French gold.<br /> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Working on this paper and some related research over the last few months
has got me thinking about translation in a wider sense. When in the
past I'd perhaps only thought of it in its narrow definition - that is,
taking the words of one language and converting them into another one -
it has become clear to me that any act of translation is also an act of
interpretation. Postcolonial scholars talk about translation as an act
of power and from this perspective, there is some fascinating work being
done on the politics of medieval chronicles, and on the tensions and
power struggles generated by later medieval vernacularity. A lot of this
research has been centred on what are broadly thought of as 'literary' texts, such
as chronicles, romances, poetry etc. (although such hard distinctions as
'literature' and 'history' or 'fiction' and 'non-fiction' can be pointless, if not highly misleading, when considering medieval
sources). However, I'm drawn to the much smaller body of work that is
asking these kinds of questions about translation and power about 'record'
sources - the official accounts of law, politics, and government. Trial
records and similar texts have their origins in oral pleas before a
court (or, even earlier, before a lawyer or advocate) and by the later
Middle Ages court pleas were often heard in English. The act of
recording such cases performed multiple translations - from one person's
speech to another's written record, from English
oral testimony to the French and/or Latin of the formal court documents,
and then later, into the French language summaries of the year books
and, sometimes (depending on the case) the rolls of Chancery (a mix of Latin, French, and English) or some
other office of government.<br /> </span><br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-85KClE3yF5o/URXIpB-SnjI/AAAAAAAAASA/zqV4PJwhBvs/s1600/document.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-85KClE3yF5o/URXIpB-SnjI/AAAAAAAAASA/zqV4PJwhBvs/s320/document.JPG" width="320" /></a></span></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">One of the more practical problems in archival research...*</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">As I've been following the fortunes of individuals through these various
texts, I've also been thinking about the acts of translation that I
perform every day as a scholar. A number of the original documents I'm
working with are irretrievably damaged, so there are inevitable gaps in
the stories they tell. Sometimes, I know enough of the context or have
enough other corroborating evidence to make an informed guess as to what
the gap may have contained. Other times - and it is madly frustrating
when this happens - the gap is just too big to fill. I have one letter
of confession where the entire left side is missing, ripped or cut away
at some indeterminate point in the past. Whatever mitigating
circumstances the confessor may have appealed to, or whoever else he may
have tried to implicate or blame for his actions, that information is probably gone
forever. I know this, I do. But every once in a while, I find myself
going back to that document, zooming up my photo of it (the original is
in The National Archives), and trying to read something in the void.
It's so tempting to translate that gap into a story, to make it fit the
narrative I have in my head. But that would be fiction, not history. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>* This is not the letter I'm talking about here but is from a 1414 commission of inquiry into 'treasons and other felonies'. (The National Archives KB 9/205/3, to be exact. Photo by me.)</i></span>Bavardesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10737120234578385755noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9071757402186489670.post-73742451723869551392012-11-16T18:47:00.000+13:002012-11-16T18:48:26.740+13:00Latin revival and a little hope for the humanities<div class="MsoNormal">
Given the generally gloomy (if not downright
apocalyptic) tone of much recent discourse about the humanities
specifically, and higher education more generally, <a href="http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2012/11/13/latin-makes-comeback-australia" target="_blank">this Inside Higher Ed piece</a> on the burgeoning demand for Latin in Australian
universities came as a heartening respite. What was even more
surprising to me than the demand from arts and language students was the
fact that students from the sciences actually narrowly outnumber their
humanities fellows in some of the courses (and these
are big courses, too – 100+ students). </div>
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According to IHE: </div>
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At the University of Western Australia, where
[Rachel] Currie is taking a double major in biomedical science,
introductory Latin this year has 129 students, an increase of 150
percent. Currie prizes Latin as a kind of master key of language
that unlocks scientific terminology and opens up insights into English
grammar as well as Romance tongues for travel in Europe. </div>
</blockquote>
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But sheer fun can't be overlooked, and the textbook
<i>Lingua Latina</i>, with its Roman family saga, helps teachers deliver.
"Marcus beats up his sister, one of the uncles joins the army -- it's
exactly like a Roman soap opera," Currie says. </div>
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(A Roman soap opera <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0384766/" target="_blank">like this one</a>, perhaps...)</div>
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Amusing comments about Harry Potter’s spells giving
Latin a new mystique aside, this actually makes a lot of sense once you
think about it. I’m reminded of the discussions that occurred during the
<a href="http://bavardess.blogspot.co.nz/2012/11/notes-for-method-of-interdisciplinary.html" target="_blank">interdisciplinary research workshop</a> I <a href="http://bavardess.blogspot.co.nz/2012/11/notes-for-method-of-interdisciplinary_11.html" target="_blank">blogged about recently</a>,
where we talked a lot about having to somehow map modern disciplines to
often-noncommensurate disciplines in the past. In other words, in
order to study medieval or early modern <i>scientia</i>, you first need to
understand it on its own terms and in its own language.
It seems that the same questions are occurring to a number of the
science students interviewed in the IHE article. After all, how better to
really grasp the principals of physics and natural philosophy expounded
in Newton’s <a href="http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/newton-principia/" target="_blank"><i>Principia Mathematica</i></a>, or the structuring of biological<i> </i>taxonomy first established in <a href="http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/linnaeus.html" target="_blank">Carolus Linnaeus’ <i>Systema Naturae</i></a>?</div>
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Australia’s ‘Latin revival’ reminded me of a recent
initiative here in New Zealand to teach philosophy to high school
students. Not ‘pop philosophy’ either, but the real deal, like Aquinas,
Boethius and Descartes. (Okay, it is more than
possible that there is also a bit of Alain de Botton in there...)
Naturally, the ‘education should be about teaching skills to get a
job/make money’ crowd have got their knickers in an enormous twist over
this one, but the students themselves are wise enough
to recognise that the skills they are learning in logic, critical
thinking, and reasoned debate will stand them in good stead
regardless of future employment or career trajectories. In what may come
as a shock to hardcore educational utilitarians, the programme
is also supported by the Employers and Manufacturers Association. </div>
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As <a href="http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/education/7873326/No-credit-where-its-due-but-students-are-philosophical" target="_blank">the Dominion Post reported</a>: <a href="http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/education/7873326/No-credit-where-its-due-but-students-are-philosophical" target="_blank"></a></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
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[EMA] Chief executive Kim Campbell said if he found
a job applicant with philosophy skills he would grab them. “Finally I
might have someone who probably has an interest in what is going on
around them as a human being. We're hiring a living
breathing person, not a qualification. Someone who is thinking about
who and what they are, why they are justifying taking up space on earth -
we're hiring people's values and attitudes.”</div>
</blockquote>
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Here at the frontlines of humanities education,
the news these days often seems rather dark. These two stories brought
me just a little glimmer of light and, dare I say it, hope.</div>
Bavardesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10737120234578385755noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9071757402186489670.post-79252433115493905542012-11-13T20:11:00.000+13:002012-11-13T20:12:49.475+13:00Unstuffed<style>
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<span lang="EN-GB">It has to be said that, while I’ve run
quite a few half marathons and even a marathon in my time, there are occasions
when I have quite the affinity for Newton’s First Law. Today was one of those
days. When I got home, I collapsed on the couch with no intention of further
movement. I had overdressed for work (merino dress and boots) because it was
freezing and grim this morning. Then the office was too damned hot and the
weather improved, so by the time I got home I was feeling all headachey and
stuffy. The temptation was to stay right where I was on the couch and take a nap,
but I’m proud to say I levered myself off it and went for an evening walk.</span></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ePko_wl8p8c/UKHwiYwN84I/AAAAAAAAARs/XDGfT_uvSP8/s1600/mahoe.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="219" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ePko_wl8p8c/UKHwiYwN84I/AAAAAAAAARs/XDGfT_uvSP8/s320/mahoe.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Mahoe - the wax-eyes and kereru go crazy for the berries!</td></tr>
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<span lang="EN-GB">No
matter how many times I fight inertia and win, it always surprises me how much of a reboot a decent walk gives me. It was a perfect spring evening. The sun had come out and the
air was cool but not cold, with just the tiniest breeze. I went up the bush
track that starts at the end of my street where it winds to a dead end. The
mahoe and kawakawa are going crazy with spring growth at the moment and the
kiokio and spleenwort are dripping with new, bright green fronds. The track
winds back and forth on itself up the hillside and between the trees the earth
is studded with great granite boulders that give the whole thing a very
sculptural look. At various spots along the track, people have built dolmens and
little rock seats where you can sit and look out across the valley at the ridgeline opposite. </span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">We don’t
have any <a href="http://bavardess.blogspot.co.nz/2012/10/renaissance-architecture-france-1.html" target="_blank">chateaux or palaces</a> in this country, but my track still has a few
things to recommend it for a history buff. On the front side of the hill,
facing the harbour, there are the remains of a quarry where, back in the
nineteenth century, Maori labourers hacked out the rock used to construct some
of the neo-Gothic monuments of colonial government. Slightly off to the
side of another, less frequented, track, is a somewhat mysterious tunnel dug partway into the hill.
This was thought to have been dug in an attempt at gold mining, but an explosion killed one of
the miners and it was abandoned. It’s said to be haunted by the worker’s ghost.
I love a good spook story but I did manage to freak myself out a bit last
winter when I was up there during a storm and decided to go and have a look
inside it. It was only midday but the clouds were hunkered right down on the
hillside (it sits at about 400m) and the mizzling rain made it look like a
scene from an antipodean <i>Hound of the Baskervilles</i>. As a friend of mine once
told me, I’m the only person who can scare myself witless with something I’ve
made up! (Ask me about Pigman…)</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">Anyway, I’m glad I actually made the effort
to get off my bum because I feel loads better now. I’m in the thick of a bunch of
research/writing projects at the moment (PhD proposal, article revisions,
conference paper…) and I sometimes end up sitting at this desk for hours
at a stretch without even realising it. I’m really trying to get a bit more balance and get
outside a few times a day, either for a long walk like tonight’s one or even just
into the garden for 15 or 20 minutes of weed-whacking and tree-wrangling. I keep
a list in a desktop calendar </span><span lang="EN-GB">of all the things I want to get done on each of these projects each
week </span><span lang="EN-GB">(paper calendar – Moleskin actually, with a week per two
pages) and then keep track of the time spent in half hourly blocks. To
my generally somewhat chaotic self, this seems frighteningly well organised but so
far it is working to keep all my projects moving along at
a steady rate (avoiding the temptation to spend all my time on the
easy/enjoyable tasks and avoid the crappy ones).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It also helps me to see that even during
weeks when I think I’ve done squat, I’ve actually accomplished some things.
I’ve now added exercise to the list, mostly walking at the moment but trying to
work in running a few days a week as well. (My days of running six days a week
are behind me, though!) From what I can gather, this problem of balancing intensive reading/writing/desk work with the need to move seems to be pretty common amongst grad students and academics. </span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">What about you? Do you have trouble striking a balance? How do you fit exercise into your daily routine? Share your wisdom before the couch beats me again!</span></div>
Bavardesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10737120234578385755noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9071757402186489670.post-8028635757734010682012-11-11T17:06:00.000+13:002012-11-11T17:07:27.430+13:00Notes for a method of interdisciplinary research Part II<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">This is the second part of a two-part
series summarising my notes and thoughts from a recent <a href="http://anzamems.blogspot.co.nz/2012/04/anzamems-postgraduate-advanced-training.html" target="_blank">ANZAMEMS postgraduate workshop on interdisciplinary research</a>. This part starts with some examples of
areas/topics of study that cannot be approached without crossing disciplines
(in terms of bodies of knowledge and/or specialist skillsets) and then lays out a
practical six-stage heuristic for approaching interdisciplinary research. The
<a href="http://bavardess.blogspot.co.nz/2012/11/notes-for-method-of-interdisciplinary.html" target="_blank">first part of this series</a> described the last two stages of this heuristic: Determining the parameters of your research project (disciplinary, temporal, linguistic etc.) and determining the skillsets you need to do the research
(and where you can tap into these if you don’t have or plan to acquire them
yourself).</span></div>
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<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-JC-29t8blzQ/UJ8jqSencAI/AAAAAAAAARc/opkjTfAiKAc/s1600/John+Dee+Mathematicall+Praeface.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-JC-29t8blzQ/UJ8jqSencAI/AAAAAAAAARc/opkjTfAiKAc/s400/John+Dee+Mathematicall+Praeface.png" width="260" /></a></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">So, day two of the workshop opened with a
session by <a href="http://www.bbk.ac.uk/english/our-staff/full-time-academic-staff/clucas" target="_blank">Stephen Clucas</a> of Birkbeck, University of London, who talked about
his research on <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/22062/22062-h/main.html" target="_blank">John Dee’s <i>MathematicallPraeface</i></a> as a way to explore the question of ‘whose disciplines are we
between?’ He started by asking whether, when we identify a domain to study in
the past (e.g. the history of science, in his case), we are sure we’re equipped
to recognise it in order to study it. As he pointed out, disciplines and
divisions of knowledge that we now consider to be entirely demarcated and
separate were often completely intermingled in medieval and early modern
contexts. For example, early modern writers used a mixture of theology, medical
knowledge and natural philosophy to explain the ‘soul’, while religious beliefs
and outlooks were constitutive of the of the natural philosophy of people like
Dee. Even when working with medieval or early modern disciplines that seem to
map quite neatly to modern disciplinary equivalents, one still needs to
understand the different ends and objects of that discipline in the past. (One
example of this that has applied in my own work is the need to understand the
very different ends and objects of judicial punishment in the medieval past,
even if it is being administered within a legal framework of common law that is
broadly similar to the modern system.) </span></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">After the scene was set with Dr Clucas' paper,
<a href="http://www.otago.ac.nz/philosophy/Staff/peter_anstey.html" target="_blank">Peter Anstey</a> of Otago University presented a framework and practical guidelines for
approaching this sort of research. The notes I took were weighted towards my
own interests as a historian but I think this framework would be applicable
across many disciplines. As I’m in the process of writing my PhD proposal at
the moment, I also found it quite valuable for structuring my thinking as I
work through the questions of scope, theoretical/ explanatory frameworks,
sources and the practicalities of doing my research etc. </span></div>
<h3 class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">A six-stage heuristic for interdisciplinary
research</span></h3>
<h4 class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">1. Frame the research problem/issue</span></h4>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">This needs to be very succinct and as clear
as possible. A good way to start can be to set up a hypothesis and then go
about identifying the evidence needed to prove or disprove it. (This is quite
common for historical research.) At this point, it is important to be clear
about what question(s) you’re asking but be aware that your hypothesis/question
will most likely change as you start to examine the evidence and the research
progresses.</span></div>
<h4 class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">2. Determine your philosophy of history</span></h4>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">This element generated quite a lot of
discussion amongst the attendees. Some of us are novice researchers (e.g. first
year doctoral students) while others were more experienced ‘early career’
researchers who already had their PhDs and were working on post-doc projects,
books etc. At first, the expectation of having a ‘philosophy of history’ kind
of spooked me a bit, but it was reassuring to have Peter point out that as new
researchers, we are forging our personal philosophies as we go along and they
are probably quite immature and fragmented at this point, which is perfectly
okay. ‘Philosophy of history’ turns out to be a pretty broad concept in this
context, and could include things like Marxist, feminist, or postcolonial
approaches, progressive history (seeing history as linear progress/advance over
time), microhistory, and narrative history.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-GB">This question of philosophy of history
interacts with the next element -</span></div>
<h4 class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">3. Identify your historiographical
framework</span></h4>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">This stage is aimed at understanding how
your problem/issue is generally understood and taught, in terms of the major
explanatory frameworks. Once you know what these are, you can then determine
(in part, based on your own philosophy) whether you are working with or against
them. Peter pointed out that for PhD students, this stage is most likely to
involve simply articulating what the historiographical framework is, rather
than coming up with new paradigms.</span></div>
<h4 class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">4. Settle on the genre of the project</span></h4>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">For example, are you creating a PhD thesis?
An article? An edited text or translation? This will determine things like the
length of the project/finished product, the audience, authorial voice etc. This
aspect kind of seems like common sense to me, but I have heard stories of PhD
candidates turning up for the final defence and being told they need to cut
30,000 words from their thesis, completely alter the writing style to suit
their committee, put the whole document into a new format/citation style etc.
So I guess the key message here is to be clear up front, before you even start
the work, what it is that you need to have produced at the end of it. (For PhD
students, this would include things like studying your university’s regulations
very closely to see <u>exactly</u> what is required of you, down to such minutiae
as document margins and line spacing. Also, make sure you are clear on the
citation style you need to use and use it from the start. It is way easier and
less stressful to set that stuff up in your documents at the very beginning of
the process than to have to change it at the end.)</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB"><b>Stages five and six</b> were to set the
project’s parameters (disciplinary, geographical, temporal, linguistic etc.)
and to determine the skills set you require (either skills you need to
have/acquire yourself, such as languages, or skills you need to tap into from
other disciplines/departments). These two stages are quite detailed and were
covered separately in <a href="http://bavardess.blogspot.co.nz/2012/11/notes-for-method-of-interdisciplinary.html" target="_blank">part one of this series</a>.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Thus endeth the lesson. I hope some of you
find this useful!</span></div>
Bavardesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10737120234578385755noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9071757402186489670.post-11193806119035367852012-11-03T13:44:00.002+13:002012-11-11T17:06:57.066+13:00Notes for a method of interdisciplinary research Part I<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">A couple of months ago, I attended a
<a href="http://anzamems.blogspot.co.nz/2012/04/anzamems-postgraduate-advanced-training.html" target="_blank">two-day postgraduate workshop on interdisciplinary research</a> in medieval/early
modern studies. The workshop was convened by <a href="http://www.otago.ac.nz/philosophy/Staff/peter_anstey.html" target="_blank">Peter Anstey</a> of the University of
Otago and included sessions by <a href="http://www.bbk.ac.uk/english/our-staff/full-time-academic-staff/clucas" target="_blank">Stephen Clucas</a> of Birkbeck College, London, <a href="http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/history/people/staff_index/pmarshall/" target="_blank">Peter Marshall</a> of the University of Warwick, and <a href="http://www.maccs.mq.edu.au/members/profile.html?memberID=237/" target="_blank">John Sutton</a> of Macquarie University in Sydney. If you check out the staff pages I've linked here, you'll see that these people (and the other workshop presenters) represent a variety of disciplines from within and beyond the traditional 'humanities'. Hence the purpose of the workshop: It provided a practical framework for pursuing
research that incorporate methodologies, theoretical frameworks etc. from
outside your own discipline. Practical sessions on scoping and planning an interdisciplinary project were interspersed with
papers where these researchers discussed their own experiences and
application of interdisciplinary methods (including active collaboration with
researchers outside their own fields). </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Given my interests, I’m reasonably familiar
with incorporating approaches and ideas from the allied humanities/social sciences
fields that medieval historians frequently draw on – for example, literary
studies, anthropology, sociology, art history, and archaeology. However, I was
pretty interested to hear about some of the collaborations between humanities
disciplines and the sciences. Peter Anstey, whose field is early modern
philosophy, discussed his own collaboration with the botanist/plant scientist <a href="http://dps.plants.ox.ac.uk/plants/staff/stephenharris.aspx" target="_blank">Stephen Harris</a> to research <a href="http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:23102619-340b-4cb5-9426-078168f3e7c0" target="_blank">John Locke’s seed catalogues</a>. There was also a fascinating example of
collaboration between a specialist in Shakespeare and a specialist in cognitive neuroscience for work looking into questions of individual and social memory in the early modern
theatre. As one of the PhD students in attendance later framed it in a <a href="https://blogs.otago.ac.nz/emxphi/2012/09/looking-back-workshop-interdisciplinarity/" target="_blank">post on the Early Modern Experimental Philosophy blog</a>:</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">The workshop made it clear that
crossing the boundaries of a particular discipline is not only fruitful but
even necessary when engaged in early modern research. Given that there is a
natural characteristic of interdisciplinarity to the early modern period we
must leave the comfort zone of our own discipline if we want to carry out our
research projects properly. Most of us have actually done this without noticing
that we are engaged in interdisciplinary research. The workshop brought this to
my attention and I started thinking about the many ways in which my research
would have been improved if I had consciously made an effort to enrich my
understanding of any given topic by allowing myself to explore what other
disciplines have to offer.</span></div>
</blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB" style="mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman";">(Clearly, the same thing about blurred disciplinary
boundaries – for example, between ‘natural philosophy’, ‘medicine’, and
‘theology’ – can be said of research into medieval cultures.)</span><span lang="EN-GB"></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">This set the scene for a couple of extended
practical sessions on approaching interdisciplinary research as a PhD student. Here
and in a planned follow up post (Part II), I’ll summarise my own notes from these
sessions to preserve the information for my future reference and to make it
available to others who may find it useful. What I have noted here is what is most
useful to me and I should emphasise that there were likely other aspects of
this workshop that other students would have found more relevant to their own
work. There was some discussion at the end of the two days about how the
organisers can make this methodology more widely available (e.g. via a website or
publication) so if you're interested, you can keep an eye on Otago’s <a href="https://blogs.otago.ac.nz/emxphi/" target="_blank">Early Modern Experimental Philosophy</a> blog for any updates. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<h3 class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Part I – Determining the research project
parameters</span></h3>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">This forms a subset of a six-stage
heuristic. I’ll write up my notes on the full framework and how this bit fits
into it in Part II.</span></div>
<h4 class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">1) Set your temporal parameters</span></h4>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">a) Choose the historical period(s) you’re
planning to work in</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">b) Identify chronological overlaps and
connections between periods</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">c) Identify the <u>challenges</u> posed by the
chosen chronological period(s) </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Challenges could include the need to master
different languages, the need to get past barriers of terminology in order to
accurately understand key concepts (for example, the term ‘science’ or <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">scientia</i> meant something quite different
to people in 1412 than it does to us in 2012), lack of evidence etc. In my
case, I’m dealing with a period and place where at least four languages (Middle
English, Anglo-French, ‘French of Paris, and Latin) are in regular use in my
documentary sources. As I’m interested in political uses of language – not just
specific words or discourses but also the language strategically chosen to
express them – I also need to come to terms with how I am going to treat
after-the-fact written accounts of oral/aural speech acts (something I <a href="http://bavardess.blogspot.co.nz/2012/09/orality-aurality-and-textuality-in.html" target="_blank">blogged about recently</a>). Another thing to consider is how the historical
period you chose defines to an extent your key terms and concepts. For example,
as a well-known historian of chivalry has pointed out to me, if I chose a
chronological timeframe defined by the reigns of certain kings, then I am
implicitly approaching the concept of knighthood/chivalry in a top-down way, in
terms of the way kings/princes defined and used it – an important and powerful
conceptualisation of knighthood but certainly not the only one. </span></div>
<h4 class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">2) Set your disciplinary parameters</span></h4>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">a) Select the historical disciplines you’re
looking at – e.g. natural philosophy, theology, rhetoric etc.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">b) Select the contemporary disciplines
you’ll be drawing on to help interpret and understand those historical
disciplines. For example, if you’re looking at early modern alchemy you may
also be drawing on the modern science of chemistry.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">c) Regulate any mismatches and determine
how you are going to deal with them. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">The alchemy-chemistry example is a good
one in this context, as early modern alchemy incorporates elements of
mysticism, theology etc. that are utterly foreign to the modern lab science of
chemistry. </span></div>
<h4 class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">3) Set your linguistic parameters</span></h4>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">a) The historical languages of your sources</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">b) Contemporary languages - for example, I
need to incorporate modern scholarship on my topic that is published in German, French
etc. Depending on their topics, others might need to learn the disciplinary ‘languages’
of chemistry (periodic table, chemical formulas...), mathematics etc.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">c) Identify potential issues and problems
so you can figure out how you are going to deal with them. This could be
anything from learning a new language to putting aside funds to hire
translators or engaging in strategic collaboration with someone that does
understand the ‘language’ (a mathematician, a botanist, a theologian etc. etc.)</span></div>
<h4 class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">4) Set the technological parameters</span></h4>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">a) Identify any historic technologies or processes you need to
understand – e.g. printing or book-making, manuscript production, alchemical
equipment, medical equipment etc.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">b) Identify any contemporary technologies
that you need to use – xray, carbon dating, photography etc.</span></div>
<h4 class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">5) Set any other parameters, including e.g.
</span></h4>
<ol>
<li><span lang="EN-GB">geographical, </span></li>
<li><span lang="EN-GB">thematic (‘skills and practical knowledge’,
‘material culture’ etc.), </span></li>
<li><span lang="EN-GB">institutional (church? universities?
medical professions? etc.)</span></li>
<li><span lang="EN-GB">social –<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>is your research focused on elites/nobility? merchants? artisans? etc.
To an extent, this also determines the next parameter, which is –</span></li>
<li><span lang="EN-GB">sources</span><span lang="EN-GB"> - archival records, books, material culture, landscape etc.</span></li>
</ol>
<h4 class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">6) Determine your requisite skill set</span></h4>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Given all of the above, what do you as a
researcher need to be able to do or understand in order to complete your project? Obvious skills for historians
include languages (modern and historical), archival research skills,
palaeography, codicology etc. Someone studying historical boat-building,
manuscript illumination, or alchemy (amongst other things) might also learn a
good deal from some hands-on experience in the practical aspects, tools etc. There was a historian of early music at the workshop who told us they didn’t fully
grasp the logic behind a particular musical notation system until they built a
copy of the relevant historical instrument and tried it out themselves. An
important point made at this juncture was that you don’t necessarily need to
learn all these skills yourself but learn how to find and draw on the knowledge
and skills of specialists. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Finally, on the first day of the workshop
there was a brief session on ‘mapping’ disciplines other than your own. I
thought this would be particularly useful for anyone in a humanities discipline
wanting to get to grips with a field quite a long way from their own – for
example, historians wanting to understand cognitive neuroscience or chemistry.
So to conclude Part I of this series:</span></div>
<h4 class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Mapping disciplines other than your own</span></h4>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">This was presented as a structured way to
go about finding the important and useful ideas in a field and understanding
the wider context they evolved in (including any disciplinary shit-fights and
controversies you may be unknowingly wading into). You can start with popular
works, especially in the sciences (e.g. Richard Dawkins, Stephen J. Gould) to
get a sense of the overall field, but be aware that these people are often
writing outside their own speciality in order to make their works accessible
for a lay audience. You then need to get into the academic literature in order
to understand how the bit you’re interested in fits into the larger field. Start
by identifying the main journals in the field(s) (asking someone in the target
discipline in your university can be a quick way to find out which are the
journals that really ‘count’). Then, hit up the review / ‘state of the field’ articles
to start getting to grips key concepts and theories, how they developed,
dissensions/ debates, counter-arguments etc. You also need to figure out if the
particular theory or finding you want to draw on is considered respectable or
pretty leftfield/wacky. Citation counts on something like Google Scholar are
one indicator of this but they can be misleading. (For example, the person
could be getting cited a lot in articles criticising their work/findings.)
Again, review articles and talking to people currently working in the discipline
are a good way to get some fast feedback. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-GB">Okay, well that was pretty long but I hope
some of you may find it useful. In the second part of this series
(which I’ll aim to get up within the next week or so), I’ll describe the wider
six-stage heuristic that this parameter-setting exercise fits into.</span></div>
Bavardesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10737120234578385755noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9071757402186489670.post-48056880267445421242012-10-27T19:54:00.001+13:002012-10-27T19:54:20.990+13:00Renaissance architecture: France 1, England 0Désolée, mes amis Anglais, but having conducted a completely biased and unscientific survey during my recent travels, I am hereby declaring Francois 1er the winner in the 'I’ve got a better chateau than you' stakes. Seriously, look at Chambord:<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-gy_plMV52I8/UIuBSjgtMZI/AAAAAAAAAQ0/d__oiJRju_0/s1600/Chambord.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-gy_plMV52I8/UIuBSjgtMZI/AAAAAAAAAQ0/d__oiJRju_0/s400/Chambord.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
I mean, no wonder Henry VIII was jealous. Okay, so he had to boot Cardinal Wolsey out before he could pinch Hampton Court but even with his subsequent renovations, at the end of the day it's still a rather grim-looking brick pile:<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/--hAK4sHHb-w/UIuBTDJwmKI/AAAAAAAAAQ8/b8AxbsjKNpI/s1600/Hampton+Court+1.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/--hAK4sHHb-w/UIuBTDJwmKI/AAAAAAAAAQ8/b8AxbsjKNpI/s400/Hampton+Court+1.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
Sure, there is a nice view from the walled rose garden of the wacky collection of Tudor chimney pots (and that's Henry VIII's chapel on the left, where he married Anne Boleyn) ...<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ne18dYoa4qM/UIuBXwwb_LI/AAAAAAAAARE/6zhCAKg5hIs/s1600/Hampton+Court+gardens.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ne18dYoa4qM/UIuBXwwb_LI/AAAAAAAAARE/6zhCAKg5hIs/s400/Hampton+Court+gardens.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
but they aren't a patch on the Disney-esque fantasy that is the roof of Chambord. (Though I'm sure that actually living up there amongst the chimneys and
pigeon poo, as the lower-ranking courtiers were expected to do, was less
romantic and a damned site smellier than Sleeping Beauty ever
experienced.) <br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-9I_Or6tFB8Y/UIuBSOaAIoI/AAAAAAAAAQs/Q2YRCmrVXVE/s1600/Chambord+roof.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-9I_Or6tFB8Y/UIuBSOaAIoI/AAAAAAAAAQs/Q2YRCmrVXVE/s400/Chambord+roof.JPG" width="300" /></a></div>
Hampton Court has also suffered a bit from later episodes of the historical version of <i>60 Minute Makeover</i>. Here is the rather awkward result of William III’s (William of Orange) attempt at modernisation, c/- one Sir Christopher Wren (who really should have known better):<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-kSs4ZH1eGNo/UIuBYftL37I/AAAAAAAAARM/_zRUXKM5wy8/s1600/Hampton+Court.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-kSs4ZH1eGNo/UIuBYftL37I/AAAAAAAAARM/_zRUXKM5wy8/s640/Hampton+Court.JPG" width="640" /></a></div>
Yes, they have simply cut through the old Tudor building halfway down the gallery (right through the windows, in fact!) and cobbled a baroque monstrosity onto the side of it. The half-assed look to this part of the palace was actually the result of that timeless enemy of home renovation projects everywhere: the vision was bigger than the budget and the money ran out. (What would <a href="http://www.channel4.com/programmes/grand-designs" target="_blank">Kevin McCloud</a> say?!)<br />Bavardesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10737120234578385755noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9071757402186489670.post-77535159153452537212012-10-26T15:27:00.000+13:002012-10-26T15:27:21.739+13:00Carolingian and Ottonian manuscripts online<div style="margin: 1em 0 3px 0;">
A quick post and run today, as I'm just taking a short break from writing. My study has been getting a paint job over the last week, so my work has been a bit disrupted. Now I need to do some catching up! (But I'm very happy with my light, bright and funky new working environment. It's made such a difference to me wanting to sit in here for hours every day!)</div>
<div style="margin: 1em 0 3px 0;">
Anyway, for those of you in/near Germany or with an interest in Carolingian, Ottonian and Romanesque history (or who simply love beautiful manuscripts), <a href="http://www.bsb-muenchen.de/Detailed-information.403+M5a20f3cfe33.0.html" target="_blank">this exhibition</a> should be a cracker. There is also a <a href="http://pracht-auf-pergament.digitale-sammlungen.de/" target="_blank">website</a> where you can access digital copies of all 75 manuscripts. It's great to see more and more of this type of material being made available over the web.</div>
<div style="margin: 1em 0 3px 0;">
Via <a href="http://anzamems.blogspot.co.nz/" target="_blank">ANZAMEMS</a> -</div>
<div style="margin: 1em 0 3px 0;">
<a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/%7Er/Anzamems/%7E3/P7TEtDctP-A/magnificent-manuscripts-exhibition.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email" name="13a9a991de633a08_1" style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 18px;" target="_blank"></a>
</div>
<b>Magnificent Manuscripts - Treasures of Book Illumination from 780 through 1180</b><br />
<b>Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Munich </b><br />
<b>October 19, 2012 - January 13, 2013</b><br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.bsb-muenchen.de/Detailed-information.403+M5a20f3cfe33.0.html" target="_blank">Exhibition Website </a><b><br /></b><br />
<span>With 72 extraordinary manuscripts from the
collection of the Bavarian State Library, as well as three exceptional
works from the Bamberg State Library, the Kunsthalle of the Hypo
Cultural Foundation presents a wide overview of the earliest and most
precious examples of German book illumination.These 75 magnificent
volumes represent some of the greatest cultural and artistic
achievements of the Carolingian, Ottonian and Romanesque eras. Within
this library’s extensive collection, the Ottonian manuscripts in
particular form a unique nucleus that is unsurpassed worldwide. Owing to
their extraordinary fragility, these highly valuable works can hardly
ever leave the library’s vault. This exhibition of original manuscripts
therefore offers a unique opportunity to discover thousand-year-old
testimonies to our cultural heritage. </span><br />
<br />
<span>For more information about the exhibition: <a href="http://www.bsb-muenchen.de/Detailed-information.403+M5a20f3cfe33.0.html" target="_blank">http://www.bsb-muenchen.de/<wbr></wbr>Detailed-information.403+<wbr></wbr>M5a20f3cfe33.0.html </a></span><br />
<br />
<span>For those unable to attend the exhibition, digital copies of all
manuscripts on display at the exhibition can be accessed online here: <a href="http://pracht-auf-pergament.digitale-sammlungen.de/" target="_blank">http://pracht-auf-pergament.<wbr></wbr>digitale-sammlungen.de</a></span>Bavardesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10737120234578385755noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9071757402186489670.post-11516080702856375862012-10-11T16:45:00.001+13:002012-10-11T16:45:23.153+13:00Well, call me chuffed with these essays!It is a truth universally acknowledged that a person in possession of a stack of undergrad essays to mark is in want of a lot of red ink (with apologies to Jane Austen.) But...but...but... I've just completed marking a stack of such essays and I hereby declare myself pleasantly surprised. Sure, I had the usual quota of relatively pedestrian, 'too-much-description-not-enough-analysis', and 'wanders from the question in places' examples. But there was not a single one amongst the lot that was so full of spelling errors and crazy grammar that it was borderline unreadable (the <a href="http://bavardess.blogspot.co.nz/2009/12/fourteen-centuries-of-excruciating.html" target="_blank">enduring lament of teachers everywhere</a>). Nor did I have any that didn't include any references, were based entirely on a the textbook, or (even better) where the argument was wholly constructed on the shaky edifice that is History Channel documentaries. (Yes, I have had to have the conversation more than once that the History Channel is not an appropriate source for academic history essays. We give you a course bibliography for a reason, folks.)<br />
<br />
I'm particularly chuffed because this was not an easy assignment and, I have to admit, I'd kind of prepared for the worst. Its for an upper level paper that requires the students to chose a group of primary sources from the course reader and write an essay that locates them in their specific cultural, social and political context. They also need to provide a critical analysis of the significance of their chosen documents, both in their contemporary medieval context and for we historians. The sources they can pick from are organised thematically around broad topics such as lay piety, death and burial practices, guilds, regulation of prostitution etc. so there is plenty of scope for individual interpretive approaches but also, I feared, plenty of room to go wildly astray.<br />
<br />
Grades in my department/school are scaled, although the range is fairly flexible. (For upper level papers, the number of A grades can be between 15-30% while the number of C grades is 25-50%. Anything below a C is a fail.) Normally, my grades tend to weigh towards the higher end of that range for Cs (maybe I am just a tough marker). But this time, I'm pleased to say that the majority of students fell solidly into the Bs (35 - 50%). As always, I also had a few real gems that earned As.<br />
<br />
Incidentally, when it comes to typing up my comments for each student (I handwrite comments as I mark, but also attach a typed summary page), I always save the A essays for last because it leaves me feeling positive and happy. Anyone else do this?Bavardesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10737120234578385755noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9071757402186489670.post-89543429724414011412012-10-03T09:22:00.001+13:002012-10-03T09:22:36.209+13:00Carnivalesque Ancient and Medieval now upThe latest ancient / medieval <a href="http://carnivalesque.org/" target="_blank">Carnivalesque</a> is now up at <a href="http://judithweingarten.blogspot.it/2012/09/bravo-carnivalesque-89_23.html" target="_blank">Zenobia: Empress of the East</a>. (In fact, it's been up for a week or so but I've been buried in teaching and essay marking, so not online much.) For those of you unfamiliar with the blog carnival format, each edition of Carnivalesque is hosted by a different blog and features the best of the last couple of months of posting on ancient and medieval topics. (There is also an early modern version.) It's a great way to get a taste of what's been happening in the world of ancient / medieval studies and check out some interesting new blogs.<br />
<br />
This edition features posts on Jesus' wife, reverse circumcision, and gladiator sweat (along with lots of cool images). On the medieval side, there's Lady Godiva, Edward the Confessor's troubled childhood, and my recent musings on <a href="http://www.bavardess.blogspot.co.nz/2012/09/orality-aurality-and-textuality-in.html" target="_blank">linguistic acrobatics in medieval texts</a>.Bavardesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10737120234578385755noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9071757402186489670.post-56449003450816302312012-09-26T17:21:00.000+12:002012-09-26T17:21:04.870+12:00RIP Maurice KeenI was a bit sad to find out this week that <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_Keen" target="_blank">Maurice Keen</a> had <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/26/books/maurice-h-keen-dies-at-78-redefined-chivalry.html?_r=1" target="_blank">recently</a> <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/culture-obituaries/books-obituaries/9553913/Maurice-Keen.html" target="_blank">died</a>. Anyone studying the broad topics of knighthood, nobility, and warfare in the later Middle Ages will no doubt be familiar with his large and influential body of work. His 1984 book <a href="http://yalebooks.co.uk/display.asp?K=9780300107678" target="_blank">Chivalry</a> remains a seminal text on, well, chivalry, and he was one of the first historians to consider chivalric ideals and practices as core elements in later medieval political culture, rather than seeing chivalry as a rather romantic and frivolous adjunct to the real business of government, war, and diplomacy. <br />
<br />As you might expect of a work first published in 1984, there are certainly things he didn’t cover. Given my research interests, one lacuna in Keen's work was the omission of any analysis of gender and the dynamics involved in the construction of noble masculinity and the idealised male body of the knight. Nevertheless, a dog-eared and well-marked-up copy of the 2005 edition of this classic text remains close at hand on my bookshelf and I still find myself referring to it regularly.<br />
<br />Bavardesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10737120234578385755noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9071757402186489670.post-64201247496316214482012-09-10T17:23:00.000+12:002012-09-10T17:23:06.061+12:00Writing group: Week 2 and all's wellWell, week one of <a href="http://dameeleanorhull.wordpress.com/2012/09/07/sept-dec-2012-writing-group-week-2-check-in/" target="_blank">Dame Eleanor Hull's writing group</a> has come and gone, and it turned out to be just the kick in the pants I needed. I got off to <a href="http://bavardess.blogspot.co.nz/2012/09/writing-group-kick-in-pants-week-1.html" target="_blank">a bit of a slow start</a>, but the knowledge I had to front up to the group with a progress report meant that by the weekend, I'd managed to pull my finger out and get some things done. So, here is a quick update and some new goals for this week.<br />
<br />
<b>Last week's goals</b> were to:<br />- Review article draft for overall argument<br />- Come up with an outline for my proposal and figure out a basic structure/key themes for the historiography section<br />
<br />
<b>What I achieved: </b><br />
I managed to get both of these done. Once I went back and reviewed the notes I've got so far on the secondary literature, I realised I already had a pretty good structure for the historiography section and just needed to do a bit of refining of key themes. I've also set up an outline for the whole proposal in <a href="http://literatureandlatte.com/scrivener.php" target="_blank">Scrivener</a> (this application is a godsend for anyone who doesn't write in a linear way). I'd been putting this task off because I didn't feel like I was ready yet to 'commit' to any particular approach. This changed once I accepted that the proposal is a work in progress, it won't be perfect first-up, and I can (and most probably will) keep changing it as I go through the writing/re-writing process. At least now I've got somewhere to start.<br />
<br />
I seriously dragged my heels reviewing the article. I don't know why. I think I'm just kind of sick of it at this point! A glass of wine and a rugby test on the telly in the background (All Blacks v. Pumas) finally made the job palatable.<br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>Lightbulb moments:</b><br />
The very act of joining the writing group and formally setting weekly goals has made me a bit more self-aware about my writing process and work habits. This week, I had a couple of days where I wasted a lot of time dithering first thing in the morning because I couldn't decide what to work on first. I think this is just another form of creative procrastination but it's one that I find particularly aggravating because generally, I really hate indecisiveness and find it emotionally draining. So, over the last few days I've started experimenting with finishing the day by consciously leaving myself a specific task to start with the next day. I've tried a few different things so far, from the relatively easy (take notes on a secondary source) to the somewhat more intellectually challenging (freewrite for 15 - 30 minutes on a question/quote/conceptual idea related to my project), and I'm still not quite sure which works best. It seems to depend on what kind of mood I wake up in and what sort of dreams I've had. Some days I dream very productively - or rather, I have a very productive little drift through that dozy zone between being asleep and being awake, wherein all my disparate thoughts seem rather magically to coalesce. On days like that, all I have to do is jump out of bed and start writing. (I'm not sure what gets me into this zone, but damn, when I figure it out I'm going to bottle it!) However, I now know that if I don't actually have to expend energy deciding what to do first, I can get going faster and maintain better momentum throughout the morning.<br />
<br />
<b>This week's goals:</b><br />
Article<br />
- Tidy up the draft and send it to supervisor/ co-supervisor for review. This means no more tinkering with the text but simply making it readable by putting in paragraph breaks, removing my in-text notes to myself etc. <br />Proposal<br />
- Complete one thematic chunk of my historiography section<br />
- Draft the section covering definition of terms (This may turn out to be more involved that I originally anticipated, as it is taking me back into the theory stuff.)<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Bavardesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10737120234578385755noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9071757402186489670.post-1050256181946606732012-09-08T14:35:00.002+12:002012-09-08T17:53:36.382+12:00Interpreting medieval sources: Orality, aurality, and textuality<style>
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<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-e4hazGtzZzc/UEqov_MyS1I/AAAAAAAAAQc/_s8qQO0T_XA/s1600/IMG_0048_2.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-e4hazGtzZzc/UEqov_MyS1I/AAAAAAAAAQc/_s8qQO0T_XA/s320/IMG_0048_2.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Treason trial, King's Bench 1477-8. The National Archives, Kew.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 11.0pt;"> I’m in quite a
productive flow state at the moment with the research for my PhD
proposal, and I’ve been thinking a lot about the methodology I'm going to use for interpreting my primary sources. I’ve already talked a bit about <a href="http://bavardess.blogspot.co.nz/2012/08/self-representation-and-identity-in.html" target="_blank">the political uses of language and what it might mean when a writer uses French or English</a> in
a culture where being English was increasingly being defined against French
difference, but where the records of law and government nevertheless remained
multilingual. Another question that is occupying me is how best to deal with
the complex, multilayered nature of these types of sources that were circulated for political purposes.
By this I mean that texts like the letter of the Lords Appellant to the citizens of
London (as <a href="http://bavardess.blogspot.co.nz/2012/08/self-representation-and-identity-in.html" target="_blank">discussed in this post</a>) were initially created as written documents,
but they also circulated orally (read out in public) and so were received in
aural form. In some cases, such as that of statutes, the written text was in
French but was circulated in English through being orally translated as part of the process of public
proclamation. Such texts might then go through another iteration of translation
and circulation as they were copied into chronicles or into the rolls of
parliament. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 11.0pt;">This quite
complicated process of multilingual, multimedia circulation and reception generated some stimulating discussion
at a lecture on politics and government that I taught last week as part of a
course on late medieval England. I don’t like to talk <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">at</i> the students for too long, so I usually break up the lecture
component with discussion of relevant primary sources as we go. In this
lecture, we were talking about contemporary views of what makes for ‘good
governance’ and what avenues for protest were available if people didn’t think they
were getting it. One of the sources we discussed was a text that has come to be known
as the ‘manifesto’ of Archbishop Scrope. Briefly, by 1405, Henry IV’s honeymoon
as the new king of England was over and a group amongst the nobility (centred mainly in the
north of England) was agitating for reform.<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[1]</span></span></span></span>
They had drafted up a set of articles demanding that the king take a series of
measures for the restoration of ‘good governance’. To me, one of the most intriguing aspects of this uprising (which ended with the Archbishop of York
Richard Scrope and the Earl Marshal Thomas Mowbray being executed for treason) was the way the leaders used
the circulation of texts to engage armed support for their cause amongst the
people of York and its surrounding districts. Here is how events were captured
by Thomas Walsingham, the author of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">St
Albans Chronicle</i><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[2]</span></span></span></span>:</span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 11.0pt;">When the
archbishop saw that he was surrounded by many who were willing to fight, he had
the … articles written down, published in the highways and byways of the city
of York, and publicly fastened to the doors of monasteries, so that any person
who wished could ascertain the nature of his case. [<i>The archbishop also had the
articles preached by parish priests.</i>]</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 11.0pt;">…</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 11.0pt;">These are the
articles intended to achieve correction and restoration so as to avoid dissent
and disagreement, which are likely to occur in the kingdom because of a lack of
justice, unless it please God of his grace and the estates of the realm to give
help in these matters.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 11.0pt;">First of all, the
bad governance in the kingdom must be corrected in accordance with truth and
justice, and be so ordered as to deal with the insupportable burdens which
affect all grades of the clergy, to make amends for injustices and calumny
committed against the estates, both spiritual and temporal, for the
preservation and liberty of holy Church…</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 11.0pt;">Secondly, to order
remedial action to be taken about subjection and annulments which lords are
very likely to suffer to the prejudice of both their own persons and their
inheritances, contrary to their station enjoyed by right of birth and the laws
employed and made on behalf of their predecessors.</span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 11.0pt;">Thirdly, to order
the correction of harsh regulations and insupportable taxes and aids,
extortionate and oppressive demands, which rule the lives of nobles, merchants,
and the commons of the realm, bringing ultimate impoverishment and ruin upon
those who would be bound to be true supporters of all the estates, both
spiritual and temporal, if they were well and properly governed. Further, to
punish willful squandering of funds, namely expenses claimed for private
individual advancement from the considerable possessions and wealth of the
aforementioned nobles, merchants, and commons, and to ensure the restoration of
those possessions for the good of the realm.</span></div>
</blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 11.0pt;"> Walsingham then
adds:</span></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 11.0pt;">These were the
articles that were written in English, whose sense I have translated almost
word for word, and have inserted them here as they were expressed, without any
bias. [<i>In other words, he has translated them from English into Latin because…</i>]
This seemed necessary to me because of the plainness and inelegance of the
language, which is not easily rendered in elegant style, if the sense of the
original is to be preserved. </span></div>
</blockquote>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 11.0pt;">Now, the themes of
complaint represented here are rather standard for the time but there are a couple of
interesting features about this text. First, it was written in English and
copies nailed up around the city of York, implying that at least a decent chunk
of its intended audience was presumed to be literate and they, no doubt, were then expected to read it out to their non-literate fellows. The second point is that by
circulating the text in English, the archbishop and his noble supporters seem
to be tapping into a rather dangerous precedent set by <a href="http://bavardess.blogspot.co.nz/2009/06/revolting-peasants-and-whores-of-devil.html" target="_blank">the 'peasant' rebels of 1381</a>, whose supposedly seditious texts were also circulated in English.<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[3]</span></span></span></span>
It has to be said that by 1405, although England was still multilingual, there
were a growing number of literary works being written in English (Chaucer,
Gower etc.) and a number of these contained both veiled and explicit complaints about governance. English texts – particularly the Bible in English – were
also associated with the so-called Lollard heresy, which advocated that the faithful should read scripture directly rather than receiving it through preaching. Mark Ormrod has suggested
that literary and poetic works in English may not have been perceived as
politically threatening in the same ways that a written English Bible was in
part because they were generally circulated by being read out – that is, their
orality/aurality neutralised an implicit threat perceived to reside in a <u>written</u>
English text.<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Cambria; font-size: 11.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast; mso-hansi-theme-font: minor-latin;">[4]</span></span></span></span> If
this is true, then the <u>written</u>
circulation of Scrope’s manifesto <u>in English</u> seems to be a deliberately
provocative political move as well as having more pragmatic purposes given its
intended readership. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 11.0pt;">Finally, it's noteworthy that the monastic chronicler Thomas Walsingham finds it necessary
to translate the articles into Latin before copying them into his chronicle. As
a conservative churchman, he may well have found the English language not only
‘inelegant’ but also theologically and politically dangerous because of its
association with heresy during this period. Or, although I have not a skerrick of proof for this, I suppose it is also possible that as a cleric he was much more comfortable and fluent working in Latin than in English.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: 11.0pt;">So where does this leave me with interpreting these kinds of political texts? Good question, and one to which I certainly don't have an answer yet. As a historian, the written texts are all I have left to work with and - as is clear from Walsingham's tinkering - surviving copies may have strayed far from their originals through the processes of translation and transcription. Within these texts, there may be hints of how they were heard and interpreted at the time and of what actions they precipitated, but there is really no way for me to know definitively how they were received. However, as I'm interested in understanding how these these texts shaped political struggles between living human beings, I need to figure out some way to negotiate their complicated intertwinings of orality, aurality, and textuality.</span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6.0pt;">
<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">[1]</span></span></span></span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"> </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">General studies of this rebellion include W. Mark Ormrod, ‘The
Rebellion of Archbishop Scrope’ in Gwilym Dodd & Douglas Biggs (eds.), <a href="http://books.google.co.nz/books?id=eoDd6UG7_0oC&pg=PA162&lpg=PA162&dq=walker+the+yorkshire+risings+of+1405&source=bl&ots=nea1lUhWXL&sig=PdfDBmL_dLsy2U_Q3tQMXkrSNWA&hl=en#v=onepage&q&f=false" target="_blank"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Reign of Henry IV: Rebellion andSurvival, 1403 – 1413</i></a> (Woodbridge, Suffolk, 2008), pp.162-179; Douglas
Biggs, ‘Archbishop Scrope's Manifesto of 1405: “Naive Nonsense” or Reflections
of Political Reality?’, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Journal of
Medieval History</i> 33, no. 4 (2007), pp.358-71; Simon Walker, </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">‘Rumour, Sedition and Popular
Protest in the Reign of Henry IV’, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Past
& Present</i>, no. 166 (2000), pp.31-65.</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn2" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">[2]</span></span></span></span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"> John Taylor, Wendy R. Childs,
and Leslie Watkiss (eds.), <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The St Albans
Chronicle: The Chronica Maiora of Thomas Walsingham II. 1394-1422</i>, Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2011, pp.442-5.</span></div>
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<br /></div>
</div>
<div id="edn3" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12.0pt; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;">
<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">[3]</span></span></span></span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"> The texts included letters and
poems purported to be by the rebel leaders. On this topic, see Steven Justice, <a href="http://books.google.co.nz/books?id=Z6_oCMAQ068C&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false" target="_blank"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Writing and Rebellion: England in 1381</i></a>
(Berkeley, CA., 1994).</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: Times; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"></span></div>
</div>
<div id="edn4" style="mso-element: endnote;">
<div class="MsoEndnoteText">
<span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoEndnoteReference"><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: "MS 明朝"; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-fareast; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">[4]</span></span></span></span></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;"> </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">W. M. Ormrod, 'The Use of
English: Language, Law, and Political Culture in Fourteenth-Century England,' <i>Speculum</i>
78, no. 3 (July 1, 2003): 750–787, at 783-4.</span><span lang="EN-US"></span></div>
</div>
</div>
Bavardesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10737120234578385755noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9071757402186489670.post-43036638724699353762012-09-06T10:29:00.001+12:002012-09-07T21:21:50.138+12:00Writing group kick-in-the-pants: Week 1If you've been reading here lately, you'll know I've been engaging in
one of my <a href="http://bavardess.blogspot.co.nz/2012/08/fighting-writing.html" target="_blank">periodic tussles with writing</a>. I managed to <a href="http://bavardess.blogspot.co.nz/2012/08/from-blancmange-to-perfectly-structured.html" target="_blank">get the structure of my pesky article sorted</a> out and in the process, I got some good
advice in the comments that can be summed up as 'just send the damned
thing out for review, already'. Rationally, I think it's in pretty good
shape, but emotionally I'm having a little trouble letting it go. (This I
put down to a combination of perfectionism and the occasional crazed
fear that the whole thing really is a load of pants.)<br />
<br />
So, in the interests of moving this sucker along and getting on with a
few other pressing projects (my PhD proposal not the least amongst
them), I have committed myself to <a href="http://dameeleanorhull.wordpress.com/2012/08/31/sept-dec-2012-writing-group-week-1-check-in/" target="_blank">Dame Eleanor Hull's virtual writing group</a> between now and
December. To keep myself accountable, I'll also be posting updates and
(hopefully!) progress here.<br />
<br />
My stated goals for the 15 week writing cycle are:<br />
1. Complete and submit the article I've been working on, which is based
on part of my MA thesis and a conference paper I gave at Leeds this year<br />
2. Complete a solid first draft of my PhD proposal (10,000 words)<br />
3. Write the first draft of a conference paper for the <a href="http://arts.monash.edu.au/history/conferences/anzamems-2013/" target="_blank">ANZAMEMS 2013</a> conference being held in Melbourne next February. (This will be coming
out of work I'm doing for my proposal.)<br />
<br />
My goals for this week are:<br />
1. Article - print out the current draft and review it to make sure all
my tinkering over the last few weeks hasn't totally destroyed the
central argument<br />
2. Proposal - settle on an outline for the overall structure, review my
main bodies of secondary literature and sketch out the historigraphical
framework<br />
<br />
Aaaand - here's what I've done so far (uh oh...)<br />
1. Printed out a full draft of the article as it stands at the moment
(don't discount the progress this represents, given the paper-munting
proclivities of my antiquated printer)<br />
2. Started tinkering with/ re-writing yet another section of the article
(but I re-read a primary source to check a detail and suddenly saw some
more juicy points to be made with it)<br />
3. Sat down to review my notes on the secondary lit but ended up
watching a marathon of <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0489598/" target="_blank">'The Hills' </a> instead (damn you, shiny American youth and
your trivial but oh-so-compelling personal dramas!)<br />
3. Checked out beachy holiday spots to visit after the February conference (this constitutes 'research', right?)*<br />
<br />
Okay, not the most productive start but I have until Sunday to make course corrections and check-in.<br />
<br />
* By the way, any suggestions from locals or those familiar with Melbourne are welcome. Partner is thinking about coming with me and if he does, we will stay on for a week or so after the conference. Not sure whether to base ourselves somewhere like St Kilda or to hire a car and drive down/up the coast. I've heard the <a href="http://www.visitvictoria.com/Regions/Great-Ocean-Road.aspx" target="_blank">Great Ocean Road</a> makes for a pretty amazing journey.Bavardesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10737120234578385755noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9071757402186489670.post-7411651584998257862012-09-02T18:03:00.000+12:002012-09-03T11:31:09.680+12:00Time outI’ve only been at this PhD thing for a few months so far, but based on the self-knowledge I gained through doing my MA and on advice from those wiser and more experienced than myself, I have learned that even in these early days it’s important to maintain a reasonably disciplined (though not exactly *strict*) work schedule. So, on my ‘work’ days, I try to spend seven or eight hours applying myself, either in reading/note-taking on secondary sources, freewriting on ideas and questions around my topic, or doing those annoying yet necessary admin tasks like keeping my working bibliography up to date (I’m using <a href="http://www.zotero.org/" target="_blank">Zotero</a> for this - so much better than crappy EndNote!). <br />
<br />
I’m a bit off-kilter this week, having spent two days attending a <a href="http://anzamems.blogspot.co.nz/2012/04/anzamems-postgraduate-advanced-training.html" target="_blank">postgraduate workshop on doing interdisciplinary research</a> at the University of Otago – full-on but incredibly useful – and then a day on campus teaching. (I'll write more on this workshop soon, once I've had a chance to review my notes and fully digest it all.) These activities were extremely enjoyable but as a natural introvert, I find that after spending so much time talking to other people, I need to go into social hibernation for a bit to recharge. It’s not that I’m antisocial - quite the opposite, in fact. I loved getting the chance to talk to other postgrads about their projects and to find that even though our topics are incredibly varied, we are all sharing some of the same challenges. And while I’m pretty new to teaching, I enjoy the interactivity of the classroom. We spend a good chunk of time reading/discussing primary source documents, so it’s not just me talking at the poor students. It's more that some people need social interaction in order to become energised, whereas I am energised/re-energised by time spent on my own. (What can I say? I make great conversation with myself!)<br />
<br />
Anyway, after all that excitement, Friday evening saw me retire to a bubble bath fortified with a glass of wine and Hilary Mantel's stunning follow-up to <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6101138-wolf-hall" target="_blank"><i>Wolf Hall</i></a>, <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/may/13/bring-up-bodies-hilary-mantel-review" target="_blank"><i>Bring Up the Bodies</i></a>. This woman is such an incredible writer, I have to keep reminding myself I am not *actually* living inside Thomas Cromwell's head. She has a kind of spooky ability to invoke ghosts, and you really feel that after these oh-500-odd years, you are finally getting the inside story on Anne Boleyn’s unlikely rise and horrific fall. The visceral immediacy of Mantel’s writing is at times surprisingly terrifying. I leave you with this scene, capturing the moment when Anne knows things are about to go seriously pear-shaped for her, but she is still boldly preparing to display herself in the royal pageantry of the jousts at Greenwich (pp.287-8):<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
' Now Anne Boleyn calls for her glass. She sees herself: her jaundiced skin, lean throat, collarbones like twin blades. <br />
<br />
1 May 1536: this, surely, is the last day of knighthood. What happens after this - and such pageants will continue - will be no more than a dead parade with banners, a contest of corpses. The king will leave the field. The day will end, snapped like a shinbone, spat out like smashed teeth.'</blockquote>
Bavardesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10737120234578385755noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9071757402186489670.post-66991698264151860592012-08-23T19:49:00.000+12:002012-08-23T20:02:23.553+12:00Self-representation and identity in medieval letters<style>
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<span style="font-size: 10pt;">So, one of the themes that is beginning to emerge in
my research is that of self-representation and identity as it is constructed
through letters. Letters are not really a type of primary source that I’ve systematically
looked at before, but it is becoming clear to me that they are going to be an
important source for me as this project develops. I’m not talking about
one-on-one personal letters here, but letters that were intended to communicate
with a wider reading/listening public (though that distinction is actually
rather blurred, as will become clear from the discussion below). Broadly
speaking, I’m interested in the political phenomenon of treason (as opposed to
the theme of treason as it appears in theological, ecclesiastical and literary
contexts, although of course all these different spheres interact and influence
each other) in England and in English Gascony over a period covering the early
1300s through to about the 1470s. If you’re familiar with English or French
history, you’ll know that this timeframe brackets the on-again off-again
conflict now known as the <a href="http://ehistory.osu.edu/osu/archive/hundredyearswar.cfm" target="_blank">Hundred Years War</a> (a name that was coined in the
nineteenth century). </span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10pt;">It is a truism of histories of the Hundred Years War that
it saw the emergence of a sense of distinct English national identity,
constructed in particular against the French and expressed in anxieties about
both military and cultural conquest. For me, one of the interesting aspects of this process
is the use of publicly circulated letters to spread news in England of the war
effort in France and ginger up support for that effort in the way of money, men
and arms. In 1346, for example, a letter from <a href="http://www.royal.gov.uk/historyofthemonarchy/kingsandqueensofengland/theplantagenets/edwardiii.aspx" target="_blank">Edward III</a> was read out to the
English parliament in which it was claimed that the French king <a href="http://www.france.fr/hommes-et-femmes-dexception/biographie/philippe-vi-de-valois-1293-1349" target="_blank">Philippe VI</a> was
plotting ‘to destroy and ruin the whole English nation and language’.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=9071757402186489670&pli=1#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn1;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[1]</span></span></span></span></a> Letters
were also used as a form of public propaganda in political conflicts at home,
such as when the <a href="http://www.history.ac.uk/richardII/lordsapp.html" target="_blank">Lords Appellant</a> sent a missive to ‘the mayor, sheriffs,
aldermen, citizens, and all the good commons of London’ to try to secure their
support against <a href="http://www.history.ac.uk/richardII/richardII.html" target="_blank">Richard II</a>’s hated favourites (a number of whom were executed
as traitors in 1388’s Merciless Parliament)<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=9071757402186489670&pli=1#_ftn2" name="_ftnref2" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn2;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[2]</span></span></span></span></a>.
After declaring themselves the king’s obedient and faithful lieges, the Appellants
charged that the favourites:</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10pt;">‘Faithless and treacherous all, and each of them
traitor to the king and the realm, who falsely and traitorously have carried
off the king, and by their tendentious advice and contrivance have led his
honourable person into divers parts remote from his council, to the
disparagement of the king and of his kingdom, and have falsely advised him
against his oath to do various things to the disheritance [sic] and
dismemberment of his crown, to the point of losing his inheritance overseas
[i.e. to France] to the great shame and destruction of the whole realm, and
have falsely caused various dissensions between our said lord the king and the
lords of his council, so that some of them were in fear and peril of their
lives.’<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=9071757402186489670&pli=1#_ftn3" name="_ftnref3" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn3;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[3]</span></span></span></span></a></span></div>
</blockquote>
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<span style="font-size: 10pt;">Thinking about Edward III’s earlier political
posturing over the French threat to the English language and realm, I’m
interested in how letters like that of the Appellants construct loyal
subjecthood – their own and others - and whether they consciously deploy
language as one element of that identity. While the Appellants’ themselves,
being of the high nobility, spoke French as their ‘first’ or conversational
language, their letter was written to an urban community who were Anglophone by
this period. Their letter was written in French but it was most likely read
aloud in a variety of public places, translated into English on-the-fly. This
was the process that was commonly used in this period to circulate new
statutes, which were still written in French. It was probably also the way that
newsletters on the progress of the war in Gascony were widely communicated to
the English ‘public’ (though this is a topic on which I need to do more
research).</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10pt;">I’ve just read a terrific article, "The Use of English" by <a href="http://www.york.ac.uk/history/staff/profiles/ormrod/" target="_blank">Mark Ormrod</a> (full
cite below), on this whole question of the use of English and French in
fourteenth- and early fifteenth-century England.<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=9071757402186489670&pli=1#_ftn4" name="_ftnref4" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn4;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style="font-size: 10pt;">[4]</span></span></span></span></a>
His starting point is <a href="http://www.languageandlaw.org/TEXTS/STATS/PLEADING.HTM" target="_blank">1362's Statute of Pleading</a> (36 Edw. III c.15), which mandated that English
rather than French should be the language used for oral pleading in English
courts (excepting ecclesiastical courts). Ormrod contends this has been widely
misinterpreted either to support an argument for the ‘triumph of English’ by
the late 1300s or conversely, for the continued dominance of French, and argues
instead for a much less black-and-white interpretation of England’s
multilingualism in this period. He provides pretty convincing evidence from
judicial and administrative sources to back this up and also makes some crucial
points about the need to distinguish between written and spoken language. From
my perspective, the most interesting aspect of the article was a discussion
about how kings like Edward III and Henry V used language, and particularly
their strategic deployment of English versus French in specific diplomatic and
political circumstances. This brings me back to the question of letters as a
form of self-representation and as a way of constructing identity. As Ormrod
points out, while late medieval kings may have used the English language to score political
points, their personal letters (e.g. those written under the signet) were still
being written in French well into the fifteenth century. </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10pt;">My own interest is chiefly in this
theme of language or ‘tongue’ as it appears in various forms in treason cases
over the later medieval period. There is seemingly a rather obvious
relationship between supporting or aiding the French and being an enemy of the
English tongue, but given the multilingual political culture of late medieval
England, I think this relationship needs to be examined much more closely and
picked apart to see exactly how it ticks. I’m also intrigued by a number of
confessional letters written to kings by accused traitors. Take this case, for
example. A king is consolidating his reign and emphasising his legitimacy by fighting
a war with France. On the eve of his departure on campaign, one of his
most-favoured nobles is accused of conspiring with the French against him and
is sentenced to execution by hanging, drawing and quartering (gruesome). If
this noble – who, under normal circumstances, would probably converse with and
write to the king in French – writes his letter of confession and plea for
mercy in English, how might we interpret that? Can his choice of English be
seen as deliberate? If so, is the choice made with the intention or desire to
represent himself as a loyal English subject by tapping into that whole
discourse that is constructing English language and national identity against
French difference? And who is he primarily ‘talking’ to? The king? The council
of peers and nobles hastily assembled to try the case? The wider urban audience
who would witness his public execution and dismemberment? </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10pt;">Working with letters to explore questions about
identity and reception is a pretty new area for me, so I’d appreciate any
pointers anyone out there can offer to useful interpretive frameworks and
approaches. I’ve found a fair amount of material on early modern epistolary
culture, but not so much at this stage on the later medieval period (particularly in
a secular as opposed to clerical/monastic context). There is obviously a fair
bit of crossover with the field of diplomacy, but things get a bit less clear
when I’m looking at more personal (yet still political) contexts, like the
letters of confession.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 10pt;">Next week, I’m off to attend a two-day postgrad
workshop/seminar on interdisciplinarity in medieval and early modern research
(thanks, <a href="http://www.anzamems.arts.uwa.edu.au/pats_2012" target="_blank">ANZAMEMS</a>!). I hope this will give me the opportunity to ask these
questions of some senior scholars in the field, and also maybe figure out some
fruitful ways to approach my sources with issues of identity (self and
communal) in mind. I just hope Dunedin isn't too cold!</span></div>
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<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=9071757402186489670&pli=1#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn1;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">[1]</span></span></span></span></span></a><span lang="EN-GB"> </span><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri;">Chris
Given-Wilson, ed., <i>The Parliament Rolls of Medieval England, 1275-1504
[CD-ROM Edition]</i> (Leicester, England: Scholarly Digital Editions, 2005): <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">RP </i>ii, 158.</span><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"></span></div>
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<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=9071757402186489670&pli=1#_ftnref2" name="_ftn2" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn2;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">[2]</span></span></span></span></span></a><span lang="EN-GB"> </span><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">The letter
is printed in the contemporary chronicle of Henry Knighton. G. H. </span><span lang="EN-GB">Martin, ed., <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Knighton's
Chronicle 1337-1396</i>. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995, pp.410-13, quote at
411.</span><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"></span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn3" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=9071757402186489670&pli=1#_ftnref3" name="_ftn3" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn3;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">[3]</span></span></span></span></span></a><span lang="EN-GB"> </span><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;">Ibid.</span></div>
</div>
<div id="ftn4" style="mso-element: footnote;">
<div class="MsoFootnoteText">
<a href="http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=9071757402186489670&pli=1#_ftnref4" name="_ftn4" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn4;" title=""><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB"><span style="mso-special-character: footnote;"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span lang="EN-GB" style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-ascii-theme-font: major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-bidi; mso-fareast-font-family: Cambria; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin; mso-hansi-theme-font: major-latin;">[4]</span></span></span></span></span></a><span lang="EN-GB"> </span><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-ascii-font-family: Calibri;">W. M.
Ormrod, “The Use of English: Language, Law, and Political Culture in
Fourteenth-Century England,” <i>Speculum</i> 78, no. 3 (July 1, 2003): 750–787.</span><span lang="EN-US" style="mso-ansi-language: EN-US;"></span></div>
</div>
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Bavardesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10737120234578385755noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9071757402186489670.post-79649573853937908102012-08-08T20:30:00.002+12:002012-08-08T20:30:38.325+12:00From blancmange to perfectly structured gateauWell, after <a href="http://bavardess.blogspot.co.nz/2012/08/fighting-writing.html" target="_blank">struggling with my formless blancmange of an article</a> for a few days, I finally had a breakthrough. Exercise definitely helped get things unstuck, as I was in the middle of a fairly vigorous bush walk when my head miraculously cleared and I saw what I needed to do to tighten this piece up and get it structured properly. (Oddly, I don't really think at all when I run - it's more meditative - but I find walking to be very mentally productive. Not sure why that should be, but as long as some cerebral action is happening at some point, I'll take it.)<br />
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I thought it would be reasonably easy to get this article written because I already had a good chunk of the evidence in place, culled from my MA thesis and a conference paper. But it turns out that was actually part of the problem. In the culling and cutting-and-pasting and reconfiguring process, I also ended up bringing in two related, but ultimately separate, arguments - too much for an article, which needs to have a single central idea to drive it.<br />
<br />
So, Argument Two (and its related evidence, juicy as it was) had to go. It was a lovely argument, sleek and perfectly formed, but it just did not fit. I find it's always painful having to cut stuff that in itself is really good (especially when I've worked hard to make that way!) but it's been put in a safe place for future use.<br />
<br />
Once I'd done that, everything else fell into place. I spent a couple of hours recrafting the opening few paragraphs and making some clearer links to the supporting theoretical framework, but there isn't too much left to do now. Just beefing up some of the primary material with some new sources recently discovered, and tidying up the footnotes and citations.<br />
<br />
So there we go - from wobbly, unappetising blancmange to beautifully disciplined, sharp-edged gateau in just under a week! Mmmmm...gateau...Bavardesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10737120234578385755noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9071757402186489670.post-6996201542150838322012-08-03T17:22:00.000+12:002012-08-03T17:22:40.809+12:00Fighting the writingA <a href="http://notofgeneralinterest.blogspot.co.nz/2012/08/the-cure-for-writing-give-up-and-do.html" target="_blank">recent post by undine</a><a href="http://notofgeneralinterest.blogspot.co.nz/2012/08/the-cure-for-writing-give-up-and-do.html" target="_blank"></a> on finding your writing mojo (I paraphrase) has got me thinking, <a href="http://bavardess.blogspot.co.nz/2009/09/just-write-damn-you.html" target="_blank">not for the first time</a>, about my own writing process. I have read plenty of advice on getting through a PhD thesis that basically says you need to <a href="http://www.historians.org/perspectives/issues/2006/0612/0612gra1.cfm" target="_blank">set up a regular time to write every day</a> and then just sit down and <a href="http://www.insidehighered.com/advice/dissertation/single5" target="_blank">write, whether you feel like it or not.</a> So far, this has been working pretty well for me overall. I've been managing to write something related to the thesis every day, even if some of it is chain of association crap or circular arguments with myself over what my central research question really is.<br />
<br /> I'm having more trouble applying this approach to an article I'm working on. It's based on the paper I gave at <a href="http://www.leeds.ac.uk/ims/imc/" target="_blank">IMC Leeds</a>, which was in turn based on a chapter from my MA thesis, so the overall argument and the supporting evidence is all pretty much there but it needs refining and polishing. I have several friendly readers (including my supervisor) lined up to review the draft and I really don't have all that much to do to finish it off. But several times in the past week, I've sat down at my desk for my designated writing time and - nothing happens! Sure, I tinker with a sentence here and there and maybe do some trimming and re-arranging of the odd paragraph, but I don't feel like I'm really breaking through, if you know what I mean.* I'm not getting that sense of flow when the ideas and arguments seem to appear on the paper fully formed.<br />
<br /> I don't know, it seems like you can force yourself to keep a writing routine but you can't force the actual writing (or at least, you can't force the really good stuff). Sometimes, as for undine, it just happens and all you have to do is go with it. I guess the trick is to figure out, as you do in competitive sports, exactly what triggers and routines you need to go through in order to get into that zone. I think I'll go for a run in the bush and have a cup of tea, and see if that helps. While I'm out, if you have any tips to get the writing flowing (as opposed to just getting yourself to sit down in front of the screen or putting words on paper) please share!<br />
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* It has occurred to me that this could mean the damned thing is done and I should just send it off already. Is my reluctance to call it good simply a species of performance anxiety? Maybe I need to join <a href="http://stu-stusplace.blogspot.co.nz/2012/08/iwsg-next-thing.html" target="_blank">Stu's Insecure Writers' Support Group</a>.<br /><br />(Or, maybe I need to take a tip from Ms Huncamunca Butterball Jones and not take the work so seriously...)<br />
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<br />Bavardesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10737120234578385755noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9071757402186489670.post-13164099530817014452012-07-31T18:01:00.001+12:002012-07-31T18:26:58.247+12:00Saxon England at the OlympicsI'm watching the Olympics coverage of the equestrian three-day event (recorded, as it was on in the middle of the night NZ time). It's one of the few events where New Zealand actually has some realistic hope of winning a medal, but the thing I'm enjoying most is the course! They have really pushed the boat out when it comes to designing cool-looking jumps. There is the 'Ancient Marketplace', complete with what looks like giant Roman amphorae and a very cute stuffed goat; the Tower of London, which is basically the playhouse of my dreams; and 'Over the Moon', a crescent moon on the top of a hill overlooking the city.<br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969);"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969);"><br /></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969);"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969);">But my favourite feature is the 'Saxon Village'. Every time I hear the commentator mentioning it, I get this mental picture of an evil Norman knight riding his horse over a bunch of grovelling English peasants! I realise this picture is probably wildly inaccurate and you early medievalists will be bewailing my ignorance, but clearly I have seen too many dodgy Hollywood movies. (Also, it seems the organisers have no respect for Saxon culture either, because from what I can make out, th</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969);">e 'village' consists of a few piles of stone and what may be a midden...)</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969);"><br /></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-composition-fill-color: rgba(175, 192, 227, 0.230469); -webkit-composition-frame-color: rgba(77, 128, 180, 0.230469); -webkit-tap-highlight-color: rgba(26, 26, 26, 0.292969);">* Edited to add: Maybe I was a bit harsh about the little Saxon house. It actually has a red tiled (!?) roof.</span>Bavardesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10737120234578385755noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9071757402186489670.post-25784405324101563952012-07-28T20:08:00.000+12:002012-07-28T20:09:39.441+12:00I love our Postgraduate Research SeminarsYesterday, I was on campus for the latest Postgraduate Research Seminar organised by my School. This is where the BA Hons. and Masters students present their research projects to the School's staff, fellow students, and the wider research community at the university, and I always find them very stimulating. Sure, you get the odd esoteric philiosophy student whose work goes right over my head, but generally, there are at least a few presentations I find really interesting, and sometimes, the odd one that gives me a new perspective or fresh questions to ask about my own research. Because the School is multidisciplinary, it's always an intriguing mix of topics. I've seen everything from the historico-archeaological debate over the siege of Troy to Christian Science beliefs about reason, and from the the ethics of pre-natal screening to the history of fascism in pre-World War II rural New Zealand. <br />
<br />
This year, one of the stand-outs for me was a case history of an intriguing late nineteenth-century land dispute. The case involved an indigenous Maori woman using the procedures of the colonial legal system to convert lands that had been under native leasehold title into individual freeholds under her own name. This process embroiled her in a long-running and apparently very acrimonious legal battle with another woman landholder of European ethnicity, and the dispute eventually saw the European woman being 'run off' and returning to Europe. The student in question is using this as a case study to explore the workings of the Native Land Court in that era, but I found it a fascinating example of some quite unexpected dynamics of both gender and ethnicity, in that a Maori woman used all the powers of the externally imposed colonial legal system (effectively, 'white man's law') to her own advantage (fee simple land title being more secure and, ultimately, more economically advantageous than either 'native' or Crown leasehold title). While the tiny amount I know about this case is only what was presented in this seminar, it does seem to be one of those examples that reinforces the point that feminist approaches to history cannot ignore other categories of identity - such as ethnicity or class - or they will fail to tell the whole story about how power was operating and being negotiated in any particular historical context. In other words, you can't assume all women are 'sisters' and have common interests just because they share two X chromosomes!Bavardesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10737120234578385755noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9071757402186489670.post-85565671742721590682012-07-23T15:39:00.000+12:002012-07-23T15:40:42.149+12:00The Black Prince rescues the Good Parliament! Er, wait a minute...I was thrilled to discover this rather dashing equestrian statue of Edward, the Black Prince (father of Richard II) outside the railway station in Leeds.<br />
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But take a closer look at the dedication:<br />
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Really?? Edward was the heroic 'upholder of the rights of the people' in the Good Parliament? To my knowledge, the Black Prince was in fact mouldering away on his deathbed somewhere in London while that parliament was sitting, and he was in no condition to do any grand posturing for 'the rights of the people' even had he wanted to. His real achievement was to get his brother, John of Gaunt, to publicly recognise his 9-year-old son Richard as the heir to Edward III's throne (Edward III himself also having one foot in the grave by this point).<br />
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This statue certainly plays fast and loose with the medieval past (and no doubt has been implicated in the odd less-than-accurate history essay written by Leeds schoolchildren). It was erected in the late 19th century (a date in the 1890s rings a bell, though I can't remember exactly when) and I would love to know a bit more about the context in which it was produced, and in which its extraordinarily inaccurate dedication was considered apt. Anyone the wiser?Bavardesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10737120234578385755noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9071757402186489670.post-60164683278367601652012-07-20T10:06:00.000+12:002012-07-20T10:47:18.044+12:00A cultural history of politics, and the politics of cultural history<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: small;">My
experiences at <a href="http://www.leeds.ac.uk/ims/imc/" target="_blank">IMC Leeds</a> - the papers I heard and the many interesting
discussions I had - along with my pre-conference meetings with a couple of
Leading Scholars in my field, have got me thinking about the kind of history
that I want to do, and more broadly, about how various 'types' or approaches to
history get defined (and, at worst, pigeon-holed as hopelessly outdated or
'politically irrelevant'). While to those outside the field/academia, the question
may seem somewhat rarefied, it is an important consideration because the way
your research is perceived and ‘labeled’ can have a significant impact on
opportunities for funding, publication, participation in collaborative projects
etc. Broadly speaking, my thesis could be classed as political history in that
it deals with the actions and motivations of those who hold the reins of power,
both formally through institutions like kingship or parliament and, more
informally, through bonds of personal loyalty and kinship. But, by asking
questions about how perceptions of gender (and ethnicity – but I won’t go there
in this post) shape the way power is distributed, applied, reproduced, and
contested across these institutions and relationships, I'm also taking an
approach that overtly applies 'cultural theory' (let's call it that for
simplicity's sake, as I don't have the space or inclination here to go into the
nuances of my feminist / postcolonial theoretical toolkit) to the analysis of late
medieval politics.</span><br />
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: small;">So does that make me a political historian? A cultural historian? Both?
Neither? Are such distinctions even useful? My thinking on this was in part
prompted by a discussion on the political relevance of cultural history,
<a href="http://tenthmedieval.wordpress.com/2012/06/14/seminar-cxii-ladies-love-generalisations-based-on-gender/" target="_blank">started by Jon Jarrett over at A Corner of Tenth Century Europe</a> and then
<a href="http://magistraetmater.blog.co.uk/2012/06/24/why-cultural-history-1-history-and-political-agendas-13927700/" target="_blank">expanded upon by Magistra et Mater</a>. I agree that for medievalists, making one's
research politically relevant within contemporary culture is more important
than ever in these days of shrinking humanities funding and ever more stringent
demands to prove one's 'impact factor'. (For those unfamiliar with the world of
academia, this is basically the demand - expressed in different ways in
different countries - to prove that taxes invested in higher education/
research are not being 'wasted' on 'frivolities'. Its nastier and more ignorant
face can be seen in the public comments section of any major newspaper when
some hapless social science or humanities researcher <a href="http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/education/6839032/Bogan-researcher-to-graduate-with-PhD" target="_blank">gets a grant for studying bogan subcultures</a> or some other perfectly sound academic question that the Commentariat, in all its collective wisdom, considers outrageous.*)</span><br />
<br /></div>
<div style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS",sans-serif;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: small;">But (getting
back to the point) I am made distinctly uncomfortable by the idea that
political relevance implies an overt association with identity politics, or
that an absence of such overt identification and its agendas infers the
'depolitisation' of cultural history. I'm having trouble articulating this
well, but I guess that as someone who is focused in part on the history of
masculinities, I was brought up short by John Tosh’s claim (via Magistra)
that the cultural turn in the field of gender and masculinity has detached it
from the ‘men’s movement’ of the 1970s, and thus robbed it of its political
edge, an argument that has also been advanced in somewhat different forms by a
number of historians who identify as feminist.** I have
to say, I never considered that my interest in the history of masculinities (in my
case, knightly masculinity in particular) has anything to do with any kind of
'men’s movement' or with unearthing positive male role models from the past, and I’d be pretty
disturbed if other people thought that was an agenda that is driving my
research. I suppose I am thinking of gender in more abstract (but no less
politically relevant) terms, in that I am hoping that by uncovering and
unpicking the hidden gender dynamics that underpinned and supported (and also
contested) particular relationships of political power in the past, I can not only shed new light on historic events and structures, but also make
people look with new eyes on such dynamics at work in the modern world. There
is a clearly a political agenda driving my work on medieval political
history, as I believe that the first step to changing a system is to understand
exactly how it works and how it preserves existing privilege.
I often find that when I start explaining my research to IRL friends and
acquaintances, they very quickly have an ‘a ha’ moment when they recognise
parallels or resonances within a specific contemporary political context.***
(For those of you about to accuse me of shameful anachronism, I’m always at pains to
emphasise that I am not positing any simplistic causal relationship between the
medieval past and the present.) The way I see it, cultural
history is an inherently political (and politically relevant) project, even if it
is not overtly associated with any particular movement or strand of
identity politics.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: small;">* Just
to be clear on this, I absolutely support Dave Snell’s research and think his
PhD topic was completely legitimate (and really cool!) Indeed, his
investigation into the construction of identities bears a certain, if distant,
relation to my own interests.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: small;">** Important
disclaimer here: I have not yet read Tosh’s piece in the edited volume Magistra
discusses (</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: small;">Sean
Brady and John H. Arnold (eds.), <i>What is masculinity? Historical dynamics
from antiquity to the contemporary world</i> (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan,
2011)), so I may be completely misinterpreting this.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: inherit;">
<span style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="font-family: inherit;">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-size: small;">*** I will explore this in
more detail in a future post, as I think it is best done through concrete examples rather
than trying to explain it at an abstract level.</span></div>Bavardesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10737120234578385755noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9071757402186489670.post-19264300154194925472012-07-18T16:56:00.000+12:002012-07-20T10:30:20.813+12:00Home again, and a brief ode to my beloved Tour de FranceIn an unprecedented display of airline efficiency, Air New Zealand managed to fly me from London all the way home without a single delay (this has never happened to me before). Oddly, although I have returned from summer into mid-winter, the weather here is better than my last two weeks in York and Leeds. Sure, it is cool, but the sky today is bright blue and the sun is shining with that intensity peculiar to the southern hemisphere, a far cry from northern England's rather dour display.<br />
<br />
I have had good intentions of sending follow-up emails to all the great people I met at <a href="http://www.leeds.ac.uk/ims/imc/" target="_blank">IMC Leeds</a>, sorting out all my conference notes, doing some free-writing on the thinking I've been doing on my thesis topic, and blogging my Leeds experience. But so far, all I've managed is to unpack and do some (much needed!) laundry. Oh, and catch up with what has been going on in my beloved Tour de France (all the stages I've missed so far have been recorded, per my instructions). I managed to catch the first couple of stages on the TV while I was still in France, but was surprised to find coverage in England pretty limited, especially considering that the Englishman Brad Wiggins is looking solid to take the overall victory! Tonight (NZ time), the riders are off into the Pyrenees. In just under 200km, they'll climb the Col d'Aubisque, the monstrous Col du Tourmalet, the Col d'Aspin, and the Col de Peyresourde (even the names give me a bit of a shiver down the spine). The best will play a six-hour game of extreme chess, testing each other's legs and hearts over and over as they attack up the climbs. For the sprinters and other non-climbers, it will just be a matter of survival, and cyclists that will compete fiercely against each other on the flatter stages will get together in the 'grupetto' and try to drag each other across the stage finish line under the cut-off time.<br />
<br />
Many of my friends are a bit perplexed at my passion for this event, and it's hard to explain the unique combination of sporting endeavour, beautiful French countryside, historic resonance, and cultural quirkery that attracts me year after year. But <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2012/jul/16/tour-de-france-stage-15-report?intcmp=239" target="_blank">a writer in yesterday's Guardian</a> did a pretty good job of describing some of the Tour's characteristic charms:<br />
<br />
"...cars were to be seen parked in the roads leading to the village of Samatan, in the Gers, where the stage began, and which was putting itself on the Tour map for the first time. A field was set aside for a display of local produce, most of it presented under the bizarrely cynical slogan 'Canard heureux, canard savoureux': a happy duck is a tasty duck.<br />
<br />
The break had already formed when the riders entered the village of Bassoues, population 350, where the Frankish army defeated the Saracens in the eighth century. A vast banner of welcome covered the facade of the 43m-high dungeon towering over the village, and the field passed through a medieval wooden hall that straddles the main street. On a relatively relaxed and brilliantly sunny day, in which they were no significant changes to the standings, this was a moment of pure magic such as only the Tour de France can provide."<br />
<br />
I couldn't have said it better myself.Bavardesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10737120234578385755noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9071757402186489670.post-43448962984027678962012-07-16T23:39:00.004+12:002012-07-16T23:39:42.359+12:00Tips for young playersI'm writing this at 30-odd thousand feet, somewhere over the Pacific. I left London at 9:30pm last night, after taking the train back from IMC Leeds the day before. I spent my last day-and-half staying in Kew and madly photographing documents in the National Archives. Lesson learned #1: If you're going to be spending 24+ hours on a plane with nothing to do but read or peer at a tiny TV screen, you may want to spend the day leading up to the flight doing something other than sitting in an archive, peering at old documents. By a few hours into the first 12-hour flight leg (stop off in Hong Kong for refuelling) I felt like I had sand under my eyelids. I found some more good stuff though, and took loads of photos to assist with future deciphering - some of these docs are in pretty bad shape and will need some digital manipulation to make them readable.<br />
<br />
To my severe annoyance (and momentary panic, until I came up with plan B), the battery in my camera died after the first hour, despite it saying it had almost a full charge when I checked it this morning. I should have known it was about to expire because I had been taking video of squirrels, of all pointless things (you Brits probably think this is like filming the rats getting into your rubbish, but to us they are cute little bushy-tailed comics that have the lure of the exotic - no squirrels in NZ). Lesson learned #2: No matter what the stupid camera display says, always give that sucker a full charge before setting off for a day in the archive. Luckily, I had my iPad with me, so plan B was to take my photos with that. They're not as crisp as the ones taken with my camera (the iPad doesn't autofocus the way my camera does and it's hard to hold it steady), but they're good enough to work with. Phew!<br />
<br />
Ah, I hear the happy rattle of the drinks trolley approaching down the aisle. I'm completely turned around at this point, and have no idea what day/ time it is. We had breakfast at dawn just before landing in Hong Kong and now, after a two-hour layover, they're serving us dinner and drinks. Oh well, any time is a good time for a glass of bubbly...Bavardesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10737120234578385755noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9071757402186489670.post-48251234061729379822012-07-13T22:05:00.000+12:002012-07-20T10:31:15.761+12:00Scottish drinks (not whiskey, but drinking with Scots!)I'd like to open this post by stating, with oh-so-good intentions, that when the time is right and I am in the right scholarly atate of mind, I will blog more extensively on my experience at IMC Leeds, and on all the thought-provking/ stimulating/ aggravating papers I have listened to. But for now, I'd just like to extend a hearty 'thank you' to the merry band of Scots and fellow travellers whose drinks party I crashed on Wednesday night. This came of strategically hanging around at a reception hosted by the Medieval Academy of America, which was then sort of overrun by people from a neighbouring session on 'The Breaking of Britain', a brilliant digital humanities project being progressed by Dauvit Broun and various other bods from Glasgow, Edinburgh and farther afield. Check out the website at <a href="http://www.breakingofbritain.ac.uk/">http://www.breakingofbritain.ac.uk/</a>. It's initiatives like these that make it perfectly viable to do a PhD in medieval history fron New Zealand! Anyway, Dauvit and co. hosted a very convivial 'meeting of the minds' back at their accommodation, and I was delighted to be invited along. I think I have mentioned before that I find this ginormous conference (1000-odd people, I believe) somewhat overwhelming, so it's always a relief to me when I get to meet and talk with people on the much more human scale of standing around in someone's kitchen chatting over a beer! It was great to discover several fellow scholars from other corners of the world who have very similar research interests to me, and email addresses and promises to share ideas and work-in-progress have been duly exchanged. At one point in the evening, I found myself talking to someone who has discovered in the pipe rolls (quite by chance, as I understand it) some very interesting and, until now, unpublished, information on the execution of William Wallace (that's 'Braveheart' to all you non-medievalists) and the disposal of the four quarters of his body. There is an article in the works so I won't offer up any spoilers, but given my interest in treason I am naturally dying to know more!<br />
<br />
Leeds is my first major conference, but I'm quickly getting the sense that it is often these serendipitous meetings and conversations that turn out to be the most valuable and interesting bits. So the advice of my university's graduation speaker this year (who is world-renowned in his field but whose name I can't remember at the moment) that 'if you get an invitation, accept it', has proved* to be quite sound. Oh, I also, quite unexpectedly, ran across the very gracious Magistra et Mater (who blogs at <a href="http://magistraetmater.blog.co.uk/">magistraetmater.blog.co.uk</a> **) at this same drinks party. Last I saw of her, she was off to the dance!<br />
<br />
* To Jackson if you're reading this - you will note that I have learned from your legalistic linguistic (lingualistic?) pedantry! (although perhaps in this somewhat-Scots context, you would have allowed me 'proven'...)<br />
** Apologies for the crappy limks. I'm posting this from my iPad (while on a train, no less) and the blogger platform is not entirely iPad friendly. In fact, it's bloody frustrating!Bavardesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10737120234578385755noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9071757402186489670.post-15068414520014808162012-07-10T22:05:00.000+12:002012-07-20T10:07:38.265+12:00On York.I spent last week in York, reputed to be the 'best preserved' medieval town in England (or something along those lines). It's hard for me to know what to say about my experiences thereof. On the one hand, I became fully immersed in my visit to Micklegate Bar, the ancient stone gateway on which the heads of a number of 'my' traitors were displayed to such devastating (though sometimes unintended) political effect in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The Mickelgate museum, although tiny, has a very good exhibition on the battle of Towton, aided in no small degree by a video that explores in detail what has been learned from a recent archeological excavation of a mass grave from the battlefield. (On this, suffice it to say that if 'chivalry' ever lived in the treatment of the vanquished, it seems to have well and truly died at Towton.) At the other end of the historical scale, I also visited a number of wonderful late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century pub survivals. My 'local' was the Mason's Arms, built in the late 1800s and incorporating into its quirky interior a stunningly carved wooden fireplace from the medieval gatehouse of York Castle (long since destroyed). I discovered some of the best architectural and decorative features (art deco tilework, glass etc.) in a couple of 1930s pubs that haven't suffered too much from 1960s and '70s 'improvements'.<br />
<br />
But...( and as a great friend of mine always says, 'everything before the "but" is bullshit'), on the other hand, I can't deny that my first impression of the old town centre was an anticlimax. I had heard so much about York's medieval streets and 'walking the walls' that when I first entered the city, I was utterly shocked and disoriented to find that the first buildings I saw inside the walls were those of a 1960s brick housing estate! To be fair, I came in through the somewhat less tourist-friendly Goodramgate, and was primed with expectations that had been set, just two days earlier, by my experience of Saint Malo. Saint Malo was almost entirely reconstructed stone by stone after WWII, so it was able to be kept entirely 'in character'. By contrast, I imagine York is a more organic survival, so it bears many scars of its industrial past. I had high hopes of the Shambles, which is sold as an authentic medieval cobbled street complete with half-timbered buildings hanging over it at wonky angles. But here again, I'm afraid France won out. I saw much more extensive and better-preserved medieval quarters in places like Vannes and Rennes. I'm probably making myself very unpopular with the locals by saying this, but I'm afraid York was simply too over-built and over-touristed to charm me. Not to mention heinously expensive!<br />
<br />
On the up side, though, I did have a couple of excellent meetings with professors from the University of York, which has a highly-regarded Centre for Medieval Studies and a very active scholarly press. Both the people I visited are senior scholars with big reputations in my field, so as a lowly PhD student from antipodean obscurity, I was initially a bit intimidated. However, they both proved to be very positive and encouraging about my research topic and ideas, and they have given me lots of good advice, contacts etc. It is wonderful to have some validation from scholars of this caliber that I even *have* a research topic and questions worth pursuing. Of particular help, I think, is the offer to read and critique my work as I progress. This is an offer I'll definitely be taking up, starting with my attempt to turn my conference paper from IMC Leeds into a publishable article (my first! in academia, anyway). That will be a project for July-August. I already have a pretty rough draft, so I just need to make sure I dive straight back into it when I get home next week.<br />
<br />
I'm delivering my paper at Leeds this afternoon. I'm much happier with it now, after some late editing has tightened up the argument and trimmed some loose threads (all those weird/funny little bits that you so want to include for their entertainment value, but which sadly suck up precious presentation minutes). I'll write more on the IMC in a future post. It's my first time here, and I'm a little overwhelmed by the scale of it, but I have met some very cool peeps, including some fellow medievalist bloggers.Bavardesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10737120234578385755noreply@blogger.com1