In which I am confused by the world of publishing

In which I am confused by the world of publishing

I made a day trip to Research Library in the Big City yesterday, where I met up with Tiruncula. We talked a lot about jobs and book projects -- I need one, she has a cool one. In fact, hers is especially cool because it's not history, but I understood exactly what she wants to do, and it sounds fascinating and amazingly simple and clear-gut. Plus, I got to say things like, "Have you looked at X?" so I didn't feel like a complete eejit. Anyway, it was fun to get together with someone who is becoming a better friend the longer I know her, and who knows the most amazing restaurants. OMG people, the food! (and she likes anchovies, too, so we ate things with anchovies AND tentacles!!) I ate more than I needed to, because, well, yummy. And a luscious, if a little spendy, Lacrimae Christi which may now be one of my favourite wine types.

What does this have to do with publishing? I'm getting to that. As I was packing up to leave the library, I noticed a book. I didn't have time to read through it, so I grabbed it and added it to my pile for check-out. Possibly too much of the evening was spent boring my dinner companion with the book's OMG!!WTF??? passages. Later, I had a conversation with Cranky Professor about it. It went something like this:

Me: I could have written that book!
Him: No, you really couldn't. You have standards.

What follows illustrates a collection of problems I have with academic standards, my own academic snobbery (or rather, my uncertainty about whether I'm being a snob or defending my turf or whether my complaints are valid), and how random the standards for academic publication sometimes seem. I'm also thinking in terms of gatekeeping -- if I were employed at a research uni, or even a SLAC with a coherent idea of scholarship and support for research, my work would be judged by people who know my field. But I think many campuses with pretensions are happy to have "books" and "articles" (peer-review is in there somewhere, but I think not necessarily the level of peer review one finds elsewhere), and really have no mechanism for judging the quality of the work. And face it, if the campus offers little support for research, should they expect that their faculty can produce publications equal to those of their colleagues who have access to world-class research libraries, low teaching loads, and sabbaticals? Those are just a few of the things that looking through this book brought to the forefront of my panicky, trying-to-work-on-my-portfolio thoughts.

Before I decided to post about this, I did a little digging. The author's most recent (I think) book, Carolingians in Central Europe, Their History, Arts, and Architecture: A Cultural History of Central Europe, 750-900, published by Brill, was the recipient of one of the most thoroughly painful reviews I've ever read (in one of the last three issues of Speculum IIRC -- I'd look it up, but I keep my journals on campus). The upshot of the review was, "don't buy it, and if your library did, it should ask for its money back!" The book I'm looking at is Schutz, Herbert. The Germanic Realms in Pre-Carolingian Central Europe, 400-750. (Peter Lang: 2000). It's part of Lang's "American University Series." It has disheartened me.

I hadn't really looked at the book, except for the title, when I grabbed it. The title itself made me uneasy, but the name of the author made me think that it was perhaps just an awkward translation of something that had first appeared in German. The back cover dispelled any such illusions. The author of the book wrote his PhD thesis on the 20th c. German novelist and poet Hermann Kasack. This leads me to believe that the author is not trained as an historian. You may have noticed, but I'm an Early Medieval (or incredibly Late Antique) historian. My Doktorvater specializes in Late Antique (but back when he got his degree, that was still the Early MA!), and much of his work is rooted in archæology. I am not a philologist, but most of my Latin and German training came from philologists (I wonder if that's why my French is comparatively not as strong). I may not be quite as au fait at recalling on the spur of the moment secondary sources -- or even some primary ones -- as some of my colleagues, but that's why one has books and notes, right?

So. This book. It follows few of the conventions of my field. Secondary sources and primary sources are not separated. The primary sources are almost entirely in translation, either in English or German. There are a couple of sources from the PL, but you wouldn't know it unless you were familiar, as the bibliographic entries point to Migne (after the occasional misspelling, so that 'Medielanensis' is where Ambrose is from). Again, this stuff isn't a problem, if one already knows what the sources should be. The same is true for the Latin within the book. Some of it is just wrong, both in forms used and in translations thereof. (There's also a lot of random capitalization and italicization that just irritates me. ). In general, the book screams, "The author just doesn't get it!" For example:

The Royal line of the Franks -- Merovech, Childeric, Clodovech* -- contrary to that of other peoples who derived their descent from Wodan/Odin, ⁴⁶ derived their ancestry from a territorial maritime divinity in the shape of a bull, a Quinotaur, ⁴⁷ -- the horse harness in Childeric's grave had the golden head of a bull attached to it -- hence the frequency in the Merovingian names of the syllable mer, meaning ocean/sea, used either as prefix or suffix.⁴⁸ (p. 152). [The author continues with a discussion of the changes conversion to Christianity would have brought to a people used to worshipping a localised deity and posits that the Franks might have seen the Christian god as a local god of Belgica Secunda]

I could go on, but I've spent too much time on this. There's a strange discussion of the relation of the words 'duke' and 'Herzog' via Indo-European, with absolutely no reference to the Latin title and/or office of dux (p.304). There are strange insinuations (I cannot find the pages, but will, if asked) that the Franks may have been Arians before conversion and that the Merovingians were trying to recreate the Roman Empire. There's the strange usage of 'Agilulfingians' and 'Arnulfingians'. But basically, what it boils down to is that this book contains nothing new or insightful, is primarily a synthesis of the stories in the narrative sources and relatively current scholarship, and is frequently just misleading and wrong.

Medieval history is hard. It requires training and skills. It takes most of us years to acquire any expertise, and most of the people I know who are experts are still not experts in everything -- they regularly engage in conversations with their colleagues in order to make sure they aren't missing things. It's not that I don't think people can shift fields and gain the expertise necessary to write in those fields, but I think it's very difficult. The people I know who are best at it are those who have become experts in sf/f, but the historians among them tend to take a more historical approach to the literature and avoid Lit Crit. Also, well, sf/f has had connections to medieval scholars for a long time. Having said all that, I think this is a case where a History Channel person thinks he's a Historian, and hasn't had the training. And yet, the book is here. It's tangible. OK, it's published by Lang, but the book was funded by a major grant from the Canadian government. This series of Lang books seems to have helped the author to have gained a contract with Brill. My mad google skilz show that Schutz's books are being used all over the interwebs by people who aren't scholars -- and he does rely on the works of reputable people, although I really do get the feeling (the one an experienced teacher gets when reading student papers) that most of the references to primary sources are gleaned via the scholarly works. I'm not entirely sure what I'm trying to articulate here, because it's really hard to define things that just create a general unease. It just seems to me that this is an example of several systems having been gamed (and I think with the best of intentions -- someone just fell in love with a topic and decided to write about it), and it makes me feel devalued, disillusioned, and very unsure about how much role luck and chutzpah play in this academic life.



⁴⁶ The Venerable Bede, Baedae, Opera Historica, With an English Translation by J.E. King in 2 Volumes, Ecclesiastical History of the English Nation, Loeb Classical Library, I, XV (Cambridge, Mass. London 1963), p. 73

⁴⁷ Wood, Kingdoms, p. 37, concerning the supernatural origin of the dynasty. This mysterious origin is only reported in Fredegar. Gregory of Tours does not make reference to this supposed supernatural origin of the dynasty. Either he did not know the legend or he deliberately suppressed it. See Graus, p. 319f.

⁴⁸ Kaiser [Das Römische Erbe und das Merowingerreich(1993)], p.83, in his review of the literature indicates that Gregory of Tours tried to displace the sacred, pagan elements of the Merovingian kingship, in order to bring the achievements of Chlodovech to correspond with Christian ideals of monarchy.



*Schutz announces early on that he uses the forms of names that seem least confusing and most melodious to him -- apparently those are better criteria than English-language convention.*

Memorial Day

Memorial Day

Inspired by Karl Steel at In the Middle

The door it opened slowly,
my father he came in, I was nine years old.
And he stood so tall above me,
his blue eyes they were shining
and his voice was very cold.
He said, "I've had a vision
and you know I'm strong and holy,
I must do what I've been told."
So he started up the mountain,
I was running, he was walking,
and his axe was made of gold.

Well, the trees they got much smaller,
the lake a lady's mirror,
we stopped to drink some wine.
Then he threw the bottle over.
Broke a minute later
and he put his hand on mine.
Thought I saw an eagle
but it might have been a vulture,
I never could decide.
Then my father built an altar,
he looked once behind his shoulder,
he knew I would not hide.

You who build these altars now
to sacrifice these children,
you must not do it anymore.
A scheme is not a vision
and you never have been tempted
by a demon or a god.
You who stand above them now,
your hatchets blunt and bloody,
you were not there before,
when I lay upon a mountain
and my father's hand was trembling
with the beauty of the word.

And if you call me brother now,
forgive me if I inquire,
"Just according to whose plan?"
When it all comes down to dust
I will kill you if I must,
I will help you if I can.
When it all comes down to dust
I will help you if I must,
I will kill you if I can.
And mercy on our uniform,
man of peace or man of war,
the peacock spreads his fan.

The Story of Isaac -- L. Cohen

What do Wikipedia and Mel Gibson have in common?

What do Wikipedians and Mel Gibson have in common?

They think they have a clue about history and really don't care if they get things entirely wrong as long as they agree with their friends that they're right. And that other people believe them.

At least it's so bad that if I don't catch my students plagiarizing it, I can still flunk them for using really, amazingly, pathetically wrong information. Because, yeah, we all know that the Carolingian Empire and the Holy Roman Empire were one and the same. Er ... yeah.

Oh Al

Oh, Al ...

"In the Middle Ages, often the Court Jester was the only guy who could tell the truth without getting his head cut off..."


*headdesk*


By the way, what do we even know about court jesters? I can't think of a single reference to them in any historical source. I mean, there's Lear, and there's the elevation of the Fool at Carnival, but does anyone know when/how this idea (and the whole Queen of Hearts, "off with her head" thing) came into our common (mis)perception of the MA?

Chicken or Egg?

Chicken or Egg

So I'm looking at Stafford's Queens, Concubines and Dowagers to see if there's anything useful for the paper-to-article thing. And she says, "During the sixth century the Merovingian kings extended Frankish control and won great though not always lasting victories over Thuringians, Burgundians, and Bavarians" (p. x)

So here's my question, and it's one that has been floating around in my head since I started my PhD thesis:

The who? This is particularly in reference to the Thuringians. Oh -- let me preface this by saying I haven't yet read any of the (end of) Rome/Barbarian books that have come out in the last year or so, nor Wickham. Sorry -- heavy teaching load and job searches kind of got in the way. But anyway ...The who?

Do we actually know anything about the Thuringians, except that we have a law code and Fredegar and (I think) the Annales Regni Francorum. And some of Boniface's correspondence. At least, that's all I can think of in terms of pre-Carolingian stuff. I assume Stafford is talking about the Basina/Basinus/Chlothilde stuff (also in Gregory -- sorry LDW!), and perhaps Radulf, who is put in as dux. But does anyone know of a anything that ties all of these sources together into the same group of people? Because IIRC, Schlesinger, in Geschichte Thüringens discusses the arguments that the Thuringian duces (or is it just the Würzburger duces?) at the time of Boniface's mission are possibly (probably? -- oh hell, that may be Prinz. I should check that.) the descendants of Radulf, which I suppose makes him an analog for Agilolf in Bavaria.

Why am I rambling about this? To figure out one small point that may or may not make it into this article. It would be nice to know which law obtained in the area I'm studying in the period between Boniface's mission and, say the reigns of Pippin or more likely, Charlemagne. And of course, "this area" is also problematic. Anybody know of good maps for C7, C8, and C9 on what areas were considered parts of Thuringia then? Anyway, I'm looking at women and property in this area, and it would be nice to know whether we modern people are calling it Thuringia because that's where the Thuringians were, or if we're calling the people Thuringians because that's where they live.

And yes, I realise that the real answer is probably that we just don't know and who cares? But it's these little details that keep me from fretting about the rest of my life.

Also, yes, I am very aware of Innes' State and Society. It doesn't answer my questions per se, but I suppose I should just break down and buy a damned copy, since CUP lost LDW's order when he tried to get it for me as a gift.

PS -- If this entry tells you for sure who ADM is IRL and you didn't already know, I'd appreciate your not passing it on. Cheers.

Carnivalesque XXVII

Carnivalesque XXVII is up!

Hi all -- Martin Rundkvist at Aardvarchaeology has posted the latest Ancient/Medieval Carnivalesque. There's some good stuff there. And remember,

is certainly not just for academics. Carnivalesque welcomes perspectives from a variety of fields, especially history, literary studies, archaeology, art history, philosophy - in fact, from anyone who enjoys writing about anything to do with the not-so-recent past. You can nominate your own writing and/or that of other bloggers, but please try not to nominate more than one or two posts by any author, and limit nominations to recent posts (in the last 2-3 months, since Carnivalesque alternates between topics monthly).

Potential hosts should be regular bloggers with some knowledge of and interest in pre-modern history (though, again, not necessarily academics). If you are interested in hosting an edition of Carnivalesque, please send an email to carnivalesque AT earlymodernweb DOT org DOT uk, noting whether you are particularly interested in early modern or ancient/medieval, and telling a little about your background and historical interests.

Well, Shoot.

Well, Shoot

The panel I asked for at a big conference got shot down. I'm kinda bummed, because I think it would have been a good one. It was a little weird -- the CFP for pre-modern, especially medieval, was fairly desperate -- I've never actually seen one that said, "hey, we want you all so much that you can give papers you've given at the Zoo and MAA!" Maybe I should have suggested a re-hashed paper panel -- except that most of us can't really get funded to present the same paper twice, and it seems kind of dishonest to just change the name.
So I suggested something else -- a roundtable on the similar challenges medievalists face on different types of campuses (to be fair, they are similar to the challenges faced by Africanists and Asianists -- except that departments large enough to have Africanists and Asianists generally have more support all round, whereas medievalists are often hired as generalists). I think it would have been interesting -- plus it fit in with the call for different types of presentations, rather than the straight paper panels that tend to be the rule. Oh well, live and learn. I just really hope that the medieval panels that got in will be worthwhile, because it's usually damned hard to find something worth seeing there besides the book room.

Another reason to love Joss Whedon

Another Reason to Love Joss Whedon

Via a friend on LJ:

Joss wants to know what is wrong with women.
This is in the context of an honor killing that was filmed and is available via CNN. And an upcoming film about the kidnapping and torture of a young woman. He asks:

What is wrong with women?

I mean wrong. Physically. Spiritually. Something unnatural, something destructive, something that needs to be corrected.


How did more than half the people in the world come out incorrectly? I have spent a good part of my life trying to do that math, and I’m no closer to a viable equation. And I have yet to find a culture that doesn’t buy into it. Women’s inferiority – in fact, their malevolence -- is as ingrained in American popular culture as it is anywhere they’re sporting burkhas. I find it in movies, I hear it in the jokes of colleagues, I see it plastered on billboards, and not just the ones for horror movies. Women are weak. Women are manipulative. Women are somehow morally unfinished. (Objectification: another tangential rant avoided.) And the logical extension of this line of thinking is that women are, at the very least, expendable.


I try to think how we got here. The theory I developed in college (shared by many I’m sure) is one I have yet to beat: Womb Envy. Biology: women are generally smaller and weaker than men. But they’re also much tougher. Put simply, men are strong enough to overpower a woman and propagate. Women are tough enough to have and nurture children, with or without the aid of a man. Oh, and they’ve also got the equipment to do that, to be part of the life cycle, to create and bond in a way no man ever really will. Somewhere a long time ago a bunch of men got together and said, “If all we do is hunt and gather, let’s make hunting and gathering the awesomest achievement, and let’s make childbirth kinda weak and shameful.” It’s a rather silly simplification, but I believe on a mass, unconscious level, it’s entirely true. How else to explain the fact that cultures who would die to eradicate each other have always agreed on one issue? That every popular religion puts restrictions on women’s behavior that are practically untenable? That the act of being a free, attractive, self-assertive woman is punishable by torture and death? In the case of this upcoming torture-porn, fictional. In the case of Dua Khalil, mundanely, unthinkably real. And both available for your viewing pleasure.

The whole thing is worth reading. I know, he's pretty much preaching to the choir, if his readers are like mine. And this is pretty much the subtext of BtVS. But it never hurts to remind people. Again.

Sometimes, it's the little things

Sometimes, it's the little things

More random bullets:

• I cleared out half a file cabinet and shredded tons of stuff today. More tomorrow. Then I'll have more room in my home office! (more being a relative term ... I really need to move a ton of stuff into my campus office, rearrange furniture, and buy another bookcase or two)
  
• I got my contract for next year! It's nice to have that security.
  
• I went out with a colleague last night and listened to some other colleagues perform. Much fun, and it was good to be with people who had been at SLAC for a while and know the system
  
• I scrubbed the bathroom floor the old-fashioned way. Swiffers are all well and good, but no mop really does your standard apartment vinyl very well.
  
• I typed up a list of all the articles I have copies of, so that I can check the list before I go looking for them.
  
• I found a bunch of notes for teaching, and realised I have a bunch of notes from my diss that might be relevant to the articles I'm working on, so maybe I should review my notes before re-taking them?

Friday RBOC -- Returning from the 'Zoo edition

Friday RBOC -- Returning from the Zoo edition

• Cat claws are sacrosanct ... please do not trim them
  
• when given a choice between duty (faculty workshops) and something really cool, like a one-of-a-kind international symposium, take the symposium, because most of your colleagues have already left for forn parts and/or the beach
  
• There is still a large pile of crap on my desk at home. It includes three ILL books. I've got about 10 of the damned things due back on 25 May. I really need them for longer. My ILL librarian and my department chair are going to hate me, because my ILL books tend to cost money.
  
• Also in the pile is are the receipts for two conferences. Got to get those forms in today
  
• I bought new running shoes yesterday (we shall not speak of the price) -- I had them fitted at the running shoe store in Dabbaville. Running up and down the mall seems to have loosened my Kalamazoo back, which was all tweaked from walking in heels and sitting for prolonged periods in very uncomfortable seats -- can I just say how much I loved being able to sit in a panel in Fetzer 1005? mmmmm .... comfy!
  
• I'm thinking back on some of the papers I heard. Some were very good and very cool. Others were really derivative and honestly nothing new. I actually re-capped one to LDW, where he said ... "Well, I said that in X...oh, that's so-and-so in Y... everybody knows that!" But then, there was a different paper where I sat there thinking, "I just read this article!" At the end of a long section of the paper, the person said that the author of said article had made great contributions on the subject or some such thing. Er, no. The author pretty much said in print (from conference proceedings from a few years ago) what the presenter said. Attribution is kind of important. Misleading attribution worries me. I'm going to assume it was the format of the rushed conference paper, and not anything deliberate.
  
• OMG People, Please! I know that Danuta Shanzer's guidelines (I'd link, but I can't find them at the new K'zoo site) are a bit scary, but DAMN! Far too many people tried to fit 25-30 minute papers into 20 minutes. The fact that you can read that quickly, doesn't mean you should. There were so many papers, especially those without handouts, where I just found myself tuning out because I couldn't keep up while trying to weigh the paper's ideas.
  
• And speaking of handouts -- bring enough. If you don't, then please do not assume that your audience knows what you are talking about. At least have the decency to check and make sure the handouts are being shared, and make some changes on the fly to let people know what they don't have in front of them. Don't leave big gaps that can only be filled if a person has the handout.
  
• I've been having a great time reading other people's Kazoo posts.
  
• When a senior Lion said he'd like to send me an article he was working on, I didn't expect it to be in French
  
• Also, cat claws may be sacrosanct, but the cats I serve are very forgiving. It's hard to work with a cat on one's lap.

PSA

PSA

I don't know how many people have been following this story. I sincerely doubt that anyone outside of the UK, Europe, or perhaps Northern Africa will see this child, if she's been transported across borders. But since I have readers well outside the Western Hemisphere, it makes sense to post this:



I know if my child were kidnapped, I would appreciate help from the blogosphere. I doubt I'll make a habit of this, but I've been pinged with it by several friends, and if it's important to them, it's important to me.

Back to SLAC

Back at SLAC

There's an odd trischotomy* between the conference me and the blogging me and the SLAC me. When I am at a conference, especially when I'm presenting, I feel at ease. I'm really worried -- no doubts about that. After all, I'm getting up in front of my peers and, to be realistic, people who are much more advanced and polished than I am. But you know, this time, I felt more comfortable with presenting myself and my work. I was pretty sure that my paper, if not earth-shattering, was solid scholarship. I'm still a little intimidated, of course -- some of these people know a hell of a lot more than I do, at least in the sense that they seem to have more details at their fingertips than I do. But this time, I felt surer than ever that my thought processes and foundation in the field are sound. It helps when people tell you you asked good questions! But anyway, I've got to the point where I feel less like a fraud, and more like someone who needs to work her ass off to keep up. That I can do. I suppose it also helps that LDW and an awesome colleague who specialises on John Chrysostum have helped get it into my head that my knowledge may be shallower, but I really do have a broader range that I shouldn't be ashamed of.

The blogging me, as you may have noted, is both pretty confident and not afraid to be insecure. Frankly, if you know me IRL, you know that I am not all that different in person. At least, I don't think I am. On the other hand, I don't go out on quite as many limbs here as I sometimes do at work. And in some ways, I probably go out on more. But mostly, the blogging ADM is a lot like the SLAC ADM, I think. Maybe more outspoken in terms of length, but less confrontational than I am in faculty meetings.

The SLAC me? that's the me that struggles to reconcile all the parts. SLAC is a teaching uni, but one with a requirement for publication. It's a campus that accepts a wide range of student abilities, and where I am expected to be a generalist. At the end of my first year, I think I have realised that I have more potential as a scholar than I gave myself credit for. I've also realised that I have underestimated the difficulties involved in working as a generalist while trying to maintain the specialist part of my career. I've also been trying to reconcile the different messages that I've been getting from colleagues and administrators on standards and teaching.

As with many campuses in the country, and especially those in transition, trying to become more competitive, faculty often have to negotiate the very grey areas between doing whatever it takes to retain students and maintain standards that are -- or should be -- transferable to any other college or university. Today I had the idea from several of my more senior colleagues that I was mad to try to demand the kinds of work I demand. To be honest, I'm not always sure my standards are high enough in amounts of work, but I feel comfortable with the level of work I assign, and the kinds of analysis and writing my students have to do. Whatever. Despite the feeling that my colleagues rather disapproved of my expectations, I don't see how I can compromise. This evening, I think I found some confirmation that I'm not completely off track. I checked my enrollments for fall. My upper division specialty course is filled, and at least 6 of the students have taken courses with me before, so they know what to expect. A couple are majors, but most aren't. In fact, one is in a very demanding professional program. The student took one class with me to fulfill a requirement last fall. S/he doesn't need any more history classes. This will be the third class the student has taken with me. My other UD class, which is a service class for the major, has all the majors who have not yet taken it. One of my surveys is 2/3 full, and the other is 1/3 full, and freshmen haven't finished registering yet. So it occurs to me that, unless my colleagues are horrible people who scare off all the students (and they're not), my teaching must be all right, because students are taking my classes despite the fact that they complain about how hard they are. Maybe pushing ourselves and our students is a good thing. Who knew?



*I don't know if it's a word. I wanted something that had three poles, rather than two.

Dancing with the Stars (of Academe)

Dancing with the Stars (of Academe)

This year, like Professor Doktor von Kornkrake, I went to the dance. Next year, if LDW comes to the Zoo again, he may have to suffer through a little conversation at a table, even if he absolutely does not dance, because it's fun to see one's friends that relaxed. In return, I promise not to close down the dance! My dance was interesting. Danced with an eminent mediævalist, while Cranky Professor looked on and smirked. The problem with academic siblings is that they can be merciless.

Then, I had a great chat with Mike Drout, whom I hadn't seen in a year, and not enough of a chat with owlfish. I tried to add the Carolingianist from down the road to my dance card, but he had understandably not had enough to drink to dance to the ... eclectic? choice of music. And it was eclectic -- some techno stuff, a bit of not-quite-metal (what Cranky calls Geetar bands), definite oldies (i.e., from my childhood), ABBA-Bowie-Queen kind of stuff, Some rock anthem-y ballady stuff, and, well, how can you go wrong with a dance where people rush to the dance floor to do the Time Warp and that closes with people singing Bohemian Rhapsody in parts?


There were some interesting moments. I realised at a couple of points that some of the people on the floor had danced to some of the songs before some of the other people were even born. Older male faculty tended to think of dancing as something one does with a partner, while many of the rest of us tend to dance in groups, except when doing an actual partnered-type dance. Towards the end of the evening, Cranky pointed out that his college bête noir (someone who actually gave him a C) was trying to edge into our group. The Spanish archæologist from my panel was an amazing dancer -- seriously, he put people to shame with the salsa moves! The guy who chaired my panel, who I always thought was likeable, but whom I hadn't really ever had much of a chance to talk to, and the enormously tall mediævalist from State Polytechnic were huge amounts of fun -- although Cranky and I felt we needed to try to keep them from pouring too much alcohol down our sweet younger academic half-sibling's throat!

So, at the dance, I saw lots of other people, too. Scott Nokes was there, and horribly embarrassed that he couldn't remember what name I blogged under. Another friend from the UK looked fab, as usual -- although apparently he went for subtle, not having brought his glowsticks. Can I just say that he's an impressive dancer? Much of my time on the dance floor was spent near a lovely and hugely fun, very anonymous blogfriend (yay! to have met her!). And a couple of my friends frm Beachy U were also at the dance, although I didn't get enough of a chance to talk to them. That is the one problem -- one wants to see everybody, but when they are in other subfields, it's really hard to connect. I looked around for another anonymous blogfriend, Digital Medievalist, Teresa Nielsen Hayden, and their very cool and nice friend MacAllister Stone, but didn't see them. I did see the absolutely amazing Lisa Carnell, whose thankless hard work helps to keep the congress functioning, but she was always across the room enjoying a well-deserved break!


Drinks were a bit pricey, though. Probably a good thing. Three beers over an evening of dancing is about right. Others might not have been quite as judicious. Still, I think a good time was had my most, if not all, and the standing around singing just about wiped out my voice. It was also a strange discovery that I knew the words to "Livin' on a Prayer" and a couple of other songs that I never particularly liked ... Blowing off steam is a good thing.

How cool is this?

How Cool is this?

Got this from an anonymous friend on LiveJournal: A tour through the Inferno


Kazoo report to come as soon as the regrouping, laundering, bill-paying, and house-cleaning -- not to mention getting the reimbursement requests in on time -- are over!

Conference Blogging

Conference Blogging

So, before I head off to K'zoo, maybe I should say something about the last conference I went to. LDW and I went to a Late Antiquity conference in March. It is the third time I've been to this conference, and it is my favourite. It's small -- 45 papers (44 as it happened, as one presenter was not able to come), and maybe 150 attendees. All of the sessions are plenary, and it's very hard to skip out -- although the quality is so good that there's seldom any desire to do so. So far, I haven't given a paper there yet, because Carolingianists are generally considered to be a bit too late. This time, though, there were definite overtures to try to get some papers after the 5th century, because there seems to have been a bit of stagnation around C4 and C5. It's kind of a funny thing -- the conference is only about 14 years old -- it's biennial. And it was founded by a good friend of DV's, DV, and the Roman historian at Beachy U who was one of the people who contributed the most to my formation as a historian.

Anyway, it's the first conference I ever attended, and the most friendly. It's also small enough that junior people -- and there are some very junior people, i.e., scary-smart grad students -- get to hobnob with some very senior people. This year was interesting because I've now got to know some of the regulars a bit, and am now less in awe, not to mention that I'm now a bit more able to identify different collegial circles. I'm also confident enough that I am willing to feel a bit censorious towards people who are outright rude, talking through presentations, running over time, etc.

Still, it was a great time. It started with an excellent paper by I scholar I find rather intimidating, although she's very warm and friendly, on Boethius and the language he used to express different levels of meaning as a way of mediating between his heterogenous audience. There were also a couple of excellent papers on the decline of the Capitolinum from the age of Jerome, and one of my favourites, which was on the church of SS Cosimos and Damian.
Later, there were three very good an thoroughly entertaining papers around the theme of Constantine's vision. I honestly thought that there was nothing new to say, but I was very surprised. The session on law, which included a fun paper on Lactantius and one on infanticide, was also well worth being there for. As it happens, those two papers were given by people who did undergrad work with DV, one before I ever went to Grad U, and the other by someone who remembered me from when she was an undergrad who took one of DV's grad seminars on Rome. She's got a couple of books out now, and teaches at an R1. By the time we got to the session on Emperors and Bishops, I was getting a bit sleepy, and was really happy that a charming British colleague who teaches north of the border talked about eunuchs, barbarian generals, and other overblown rumours. Amusing and woke me up, it did. Coffee got me through the panel on Ecclesiastical Leadership -- I shouldn't have needed it, but we'd moved to a lecture hall with horribly uncomfortable seats. I tend to get dozy when my back hurts. Fortunately, I had LDW next to me to elbow me set a good example. But the paper on Eusebius Gallicanus was entirely new and interesting, and I'm always happy to hear papers on Ambrose.

The keynote for the night was fun. So much so that my notes for the talk read, "Blood! Gore! Ritual Sacrifice! Malleus Maleficarum!" And there's a large picture of a dragon. The wine hour before the talk had provided us with really good snacks as well. Most of us (the conference runs from 8:00 to 8:00) wandered off after the talk, and some of us reconvened at a room party where I probably drank more than my fair share of wine. But I fielded a couple of personal questions, chatted with other friends, figured out who had the rooms on either side of us, and retired at a reasonable hour.

Day three started with a couple of very good papers on Arian iconography (there isn't any) and Gregory's discussion of Arians. After coffee, a very convincing paper on religious pluralism and factionalism in the east, mostly Antioch, kicked off a bunch of papers on John Chrysostum. I have to say that some of this stuff makes me feel incredibly ignorant, because these people work in Greek all the time. Fortunately, one of the women who presented writes some of the clearest prose ever. And after, when LDW and I were talking about how ignorant I felt -- and that he did sometimes, too, which is ludicrous -- he kindly pointed out that I was a Carolingianist who regularly teaches all of world history, is able to teach upper division courses in Ancient, Medieval, and Early Modern, and is able to ask sensible questions on John Chrysostum. Made me feel a bit better. I'd still rather have a bit more depth to go with the breadth, though.

I was losing steam by the time we got to the papers on Iamblichus and Porphyry, especially when I got entirely lost in the discussion of theurgy, but revived for the papers on religious papers and patronage. The banquet was lovely, although the wine was pricey. LDW and I discovered that, for a dollar more than the wine, we could get seriously generous pours of Glenfiddich, so we sipped whisky after dinner. We then avoided going out drinking and dancing as an end to the evening, preferring sleep.

The papers on the last day were all on the east. I especially liked the one on how rabbis tried to dissuade Jews from attending Roman entertainments and the one on how an emphasis on Mary as theotokos rather than virgin fuelled a rivalry between Bethlehem and Jerusalem and what that meant overall.

So, I think a good time was had by all. I got to talk to a couple colleagues about submitting an article and maybe writing a paper for the next conference. I figure that in two years I'll be ready to get up in front of a bunch of people who intimidate the hell out of me, but whom I now know a bit. Mostly, though, I felt entirely invigorated -- until getting back to the airport on time at 11 p.m., and then waiting over an hour for our luggage and another 20 minutes to get to the car. And then an hour's drive home!

Ta-daah!

Ta-daah!

3,748 / 3,100 (120.9%)

I shall celebrate with radio programming and cleaning up the flat for the cat sitter. Tomorrow? Revising the paper, making handouts and screen caps for the roundtable, possibly taking library books back to Big City U unless I can renew them online, finish cleaning, marking exams, and going for a run.

If I had a wayback machine, pt 1

If I had a wayback machine, pt 1

If I had a Wayback Machine, I would happily use it to go beat one Wenilo, notary of the civitas of Moguntia (that's Mainz to you modernists), soundly about the head and shoulders. Because you know? I don't care if you're just copying things out of formularies (or using formulae from memory) -- pronouns matter! Women aren't men, and the first person singular and plural are different things. Hmph.

Just remind me ...

Just remind me ...

I really don't like waiting till the last minute. I was so much happier last year when I was done with my paper before I turned in my taxes on time! Good news, though -- some of the work I've done for this paper (which will not fit in, unfortunately) has turned up some really interesting stuff. So interesting, in fact, that I think it will make the basis of a decent article all by itself. I ran it by LDW, and he actually used the word 'fascinating'. W00t!

1,929 / 3,100 (62.2%)

update: Progress!

2,199 / 3,100 (70.9%)

Oh joy ... I may end up needing to cut

2,720 / 3,100 (87.7%)

Well, maybe not too much cutting

3,002 / 3,100 (96.8%)

In semi-seclusion

In semi-seclusion

Blogging (and much blog reading and commenting) has been temporarily halted due to paper-writing. Back later. Please continue your happy and efficient lives in my absence. My best to all of you who are grading (I've got that to do, too!). And if you are working on your K'zoo paper, well ... what are you doing here????

1,489 / 3,100 (48.0%)

Of course, this is a first draft ...

Another question

Another Vocab Question

For some reason, I've always translated dos as 'dowry'. But Stengl and Suzanne Fonay Wemple translate it as Morgengabe and 'Bridegift', respectively. Does anyone have a reference or two to whether the same word is used interchangeable for both dowry and bridegift, or when, if ever, that shift is made and dos is more normally used to mean 'dowry'??


Update: If anyone has electronic access to Diane Owen Hughes, "From Brideprice to Dowry in Mediterranean Europe," Journal of Family History 3 (1978): 262-96, and would be willing to send it to me, I would happily buy you a drink at Kazoo!

Update Again: Squadratomagico has kindly sent it to me!

Definition, please?

Definition, please?

Um ... reading a book. Came across the word "rebarbarative." Checked the OED online. It isn't there. I think the author meant "rebarbative"? But does anyone know if the former exists? Because I now know what the latter means -- and the author is right that going through the CDF and the Codex Laureshaimensis are pretty deadly. But I'd like to make sure that there isn't some other word out there that means something else. And ... OMG. I know that one can't simply say, "ploughing through these huge piles of documents, even though some nice German scholars have edited them for us, is a huge pain in the ass and quite possibly duller than watching too-thickly applied paint dry on a very humid day when you've a ton of things you'd rather be doing," but damn. I read a good bit. I'm fairly literate. And I've never seen this bloody word before, and can't really think that it increases clarity.

Well, yes, this does mean I'm working on something not directly related to teaching.

And another thing

And Another Thing

It's book order time. That time of year when some of us say, "Oh bollocks! How am I supposed to know what I'm using for my new preps?" I've ordered for the surveys and one of my UD classes (which class I've never taken, let alone taught -- thank goodness I took a grad seminar with the dread early modern economic historian, or I'd have no idea where to even start!). The other UD class is in Ancient Greece and Rome. It's filled already. Had I known, I'd have done single-semester classes, but I had no idea how popular it would be. Anyhow, now I have to find books. I am not seeing anything, textbook-wise, that I really like. I'm seriously considering putting some general histories on reserve and just teaching primary sources and articles. What do you think? The students I've mentioned this to all love the idea, but I think they're mostly just into saving money.

Wow, I'm in Perspectives!

Wow! I'm in Perspectives!

Why yes, I'm thoroughly in avoidance mode. Not for long. The Kazoo paper (why, oh why, did I say I was going to write this paper?) beckons. I've got pretty much all the marking for my surveys done, and have only the class blog for my upper-division class to finish marking. Then, on Wednesday, the final exams. So after that, I can start blogging important things again. I still haven't blogged the Late Antiquity conference that was so very cool -- I promise I'll get that up before Kazoo, unless my paper reaches a crap level of tragi-comic proportions, in which case, I see e-mails going out to many of you, with huge amounts of begging for help.

Last year, it seemed so easy. My paper was finished by the second week of April, and I was able to enjoy all of LDW's too-short visit. I realise now that last year, I was only teaching two sections of one prep during spring quarter, and had no service obligations. This year, I was constantly informed that I was very lucky to have a 3-3 load (the norm is 4-4, 4-3 if one is producing anything scholarly, 3-3 for a couple of people who are very active and get funds to pay an adjunct to take one of their classes and/or chair major committees). That's true. And boy, am I grateful. As it happens, I taught 4 new preps this year, and just finished up serving on my first-ever search committee last week. Plus a very high-profile university wide committee which, thank goodness, has only met about 4 times since I've been on it. Meanwhile, I've been dealing with an entirely new (to me) type of student, and tailoring and re-tailoring my classes to try to get the best from them.

Last year's paper was also a bit easier -- I was in the same town as a major research institution, and could regularly run over to the library and could borrow up to 20 books at a time, or just work there all day. The paper itself was pulled from the diss in a much more coherent manner. This year's paper is very different in that I've taken subsidiary characters, i.e., women, and put them in the forefront. Since I'm not a women's historian per se, I'm not as familiar with the literature on women and property as I'd like, and it's slowing me down a bit. I'm also finding that, when I built up my database (which reminds me, I have to write a person overseas who might be interested in publishing it!) for my main document collection, it didn't occur to me to have a field for whether or not there were women witnessing land transactions, so I'm having to go through the bastard things one by one. There might be a more efficient way, but if this turns out to be a halfway decent paper, I want to use it as the base of an article, so I might as well do the research the right way in the first place. Oof. I do think I may have to narrow the focus, but won't know that till next week. yeep.

None of this, by the way, has much of anything to do with the title of the post, except that I haven't looked at my copy of Perspectives yet, but I did look at Cliopatria this morning, and Ralph Luker points to Anthony Grafton's column there. I have to say, I'm very chuffed. And frankly, I felt a bit guilty, because I haven't been blogging quite so much this year. I've really wanted to, because I think it's important to talk about that transition from being on the market to actually having an academic job. I suppose I just really didn't think about how huge that transition might be. I also didn't really think about how my own attitude might change towards blogging. Even though several of my colleagues know I blog, I don't know that they know that their colleague is ADM. And I'm not advertising it. There's been a slight shift for me, too. When I was on the market, I felt much more comfortable with the levels of self-censorship I imposed. Now that I'm at the end of my first year, and only have one year more before I have to turn in my materials for T&P (and the whole accelerated track thing is a post in itself), I feel a bit less sure about how much to censor. It's as if keeping the job is a much more difficult prospect than getting one. Or perhaps it's that, like every institution, there are politics at play, and it now feels like there's more at stake if I screw up?

Whatever the various causes for delay, I'll be trying to get some reflections on the past year up before I go off to try and do some research this summer. In the meantime, Professor Grafton's column has reminded me that I submitted a panel for AHA 2008, and I haven't heard back yet, and I really would like to think they'd want to know more about the ways that people in my area cope with being the campus oddball. I suppose we'll see. I'm guessing, though, that it's not been accepted. Maybe I should have submitted it as ADM!?

Carnivalesques!

Carnivalesques!

The newest version of Carnivalesque will be appearing later today at Siris. It'll be an Early Modern version, and should be good, since Brandon always does a good job.

Then, on 24 May, Martin Rundkvist at Aardvarchaeology will be hosting an Ancient/Medieval Carnivalesque. You can send your submissions by email to arador AT algonet DOT se, or the submission form.

We're looking for hosts for the next few months, so please, e-mail me or Sharon Howard at Early Modern Notes if you're interested -- or leave a comment here or there!

Poetry Friday -- More Larkin

Poetry Friday -- more Larkin

Another of my favourite Larkin poems ...

Love, We Must Part

Love, we must part now: do not let it be
Calamitous and bitter. In the past
There has been too much moonlight and self-pity:
Let us have done with it: for now at last
Never has sun more boldly paced the sky,
Never were hearts more eager to be free,
To kick down worlds, lash forests; you and I
No longer hold them; we are husks, that see
The grain going forward to a different use.

There is regret. Always, there is regret.
But it is better that our lives unloose,
As two tall ships, wind-mastered, wet with light,
Break from an estuary with their courses set,
And waving part, and waving drop from sight.

Viral Marketmeme -- my daemon

Viral Marketmeme -- My Dæmon

Poetry Friday

Poetry Friday

Anthem for Doomed Youth

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries for them from prayers or bells,
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs--
The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells;
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of good-byes.
The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

Wilfred Owen

Two of my classes

Two of my classes

That's how many people were murdered at VaTech yesterday. I cannot imagine how the VaTech community will even begin to deal with this. I walked into my afternoon class yesterday, and all I could think was, "I could walk into this room and find them all gone and never see them again. Ever."

I've seen a lot on the internet about how some people hoped that others wouldn't use this tragedy to jump on the gun control wagon. It's one of the reasons I didn't post yesterday. But I think that one of the things tragedies do is make us wonder why they happened -- and like it or not, one of the reasons this happened is that guns are readily (and in my opinion, far too readily and easily) available in this country. We have many, many constitutional rights in this country that we have allowed the government to regulate and, in the case of the so-called Patriot Act, almost entirely abrogate. Why, then, is the one right whose entire underlying premise is the possibility of armed violence against others the only one we seem to hold sacred?

There are many other wagons on this train. Mental Health services in this country, especially for those without insurance, are a joke. And our culture is not particularly good at addressing such issues in the first place. There is generally little awareness and training, and even where one knows that someone is suffering unduly from some kind of deep emotional problems, there's often nowhere to send them -- if they'll accept help in the first place, because there's still a stigma involved. It's very weird to me that we live in a culture that thrives on the emo of reality TV and self-revelatory talk-shows/circuses, and yet can't come up with a way of dealing with the actual, real-life stuff.

The last of my wagons is academic culture. Since I've been blogging, there have been so many posts, here and all over the academic blogosphere, on the changing demographic of our students and the changing expectations of academia. The first is more about the wider range of students and often their lack of academic preparation. That may be true, but my experience also points to a lack of preparation in terms of what a college education, especially one in the Liberal Arts, is all about. The work load, the idea that one's primary focus should be on learning, not that outside job that pays the bills, the huge cultural adjustment for some students when they are thrown into an alien world -- these things can all be very stressful, especially in addition to the normal stresses of adjustment to college life. The second, the changing expectations of academia, only makes things worse. If we are seen as providing a service for customers, and if those customers are putting themselves under huge financial obligations to get that service, it's no wonder that they feel resentful when they don't like the quality of service. The problem is, of course, that we offer a service that is different from the one the customer thinks he or she is buying. We offer access to knowledge and the methods for acquiring it. Unfortunately, the customer thinks that the money is paying for a piece of paper that will hold the key to future success. We all know this is just wrong, but we've been very bad at explaining why. I would like to entirely do away with the customer/service model. But if we are going to be stuck with it, perhaps the analogy we should use is that of buying a gym membership or getting a personal trainer. You can throw all the money down that rathole that you like, but unless you actually use the facilities and watch what you eat, you are not going to get the body you want.

I don't know that anything can stop a determined person from committing mass murder. But I'd like to think that we can try to create a society where fewer people think that's the only viable solution.

Monday, not marking

Monday, not marking

I have much marking to do, but am not in the mood, because really, I've been sort of out of it most of the day, thinking a lot about Va Tech. I kinda know one person there, and I hope he's ok.

But since there are lots of places you can read about that and make comments, I thought I'd distract myself by putting down some thoughts I had about a question Steve asked below: what is with all this Alamanni stuff??

I've been thinking about it, off and on, and here are my rather ill-formed meanderings. For the past couple or so years, Early Medievalists and Late Antiquarians have been looking again, and in more depth, about older concepts of ethnicity and especially what it means to be "German" (or indeed any group of people called 'germanic'). There are also grumblings that Late Anitquity really doesn't exist and that really, there wasn't quite as much synthesis as we'd thought, and maybe we should just go back to saying Early Medieval from around 476. I'm not going there today.

But some fairly big names have been sticking their oars in this particular body of water (the ethnicity one). Goffart, Wickham, Smith, Burns, Ward-Perkins and Heather have all written books dealing with Rome and the Barbarians in one form or another in the past couple of years, and I know of at least two others coming out in the next year. So maybe taking a closer look at individual groups of so-called Germans is the next trend, and the Alamanni are just the first? It will be a while before people start overturning everything we know about the Franks, at least. I'm actually serious about this. Maybe the time has come where we can start examining evidence again, and come to some newer conclusions about who these people that the Romans called Germans really were.

saturday silliness

Saturday Silliness

Via owlfish ...I give you ....

Les Marshmallables

Poetry Friday -- Brain Fry edition

Poetry Friday -- Brain Fry edition

Because my brain hurtz! (still marking ...)

THE TALE OF CUSTARD THE DRAGON
By Ogden Nash

Copyright Linell Nash Smith and Isabel Nash Eberstadt

Belinda lived in a little white house,
With a little black kitten and a little gray mouse,
And a little yellow dog and a little red wagon,
And a realio, trulio, little pet dragon.

Now the name of the little black kitten was Ink,
And the little gray mouse, she called her Blink,
And the little yellow dog was sharp as Mustard,
But the dragon was a coward, and she called him Custard.

Custard the dragon had big sharp teeth,
And spikes on top of him and scales underneath,
Mouth like a fireplace, chimney for a nose,
And realio, trulio, daggers on his toes.

Belinda was as brave as a barrel full of bears,
And Ink and Blink chased lions down the stairs,
Mustard was as brave as a tiger in a rage,
But Custard cried for a nice safe cage.

Belinda tickled him, she tickled him unmerciful,
Ink, Blink and Mustard, they rudely called him Percival,
They all sat laughing in the little red wagon
At the realio, trulio, cowardly dragon.

Belinda giggled till she shook the house,
And Blink said Week!, which is giggling for a mouse,
Ink and Mustard rudely asked his age,
When Custard cried for a nice safe cage.

Suddenly, suddenly they heard a nasty sound,
And Mustard growled, and they all looked around.
Meowch! cried Ink, and Ooh! cried Belinda,
For there was a pirate, climbing in the winda.

Pistol in his left hand, pistol in his right,
And he held in his teeth a cutlass bright,
His beard was black, one leg was wood;
It was clear that the pirate meant no good.

Belinda paled, and she cried, Help! Help!
But Mustard fled with a terrified yelp,
Ink trickled down to the bottom of the household,
And little mouse Blink strategically mouseholed.

But up jumped Custard, snorting like an engine,
Clashed his tail like irons in a dungeon,
With a clatter and a clank and a jangling squirm
He went at the pirate like a robin at a worm.

The pirate gaped at Belinda's dragon,
And gulped some grog from his pocket flagon,
He fired two bullets but they didn't hit,
And Custard gobbled him, every bit.

Belinda embraced him, Mustard licked him,
No one mourned for his pirate victim
Ink and Blink in glee did gyrate
Around the dragon that ate the pyrate.

Belinda still lives in her little white house,
With her little black kitten and her little gray mouse,
And her little yellow dog and her little red wagon,
And her realio, trulio, little pet dragon.

Belinda is as brave as a barrel full of bears,
And Ink and Blink chase lions down the stairs,
Mustard is as brave as a tiger in a rage,
But Custard keeps crying for a nice safe cage.

Apropos of Sharon's post

Apropos of Sharon's post

Sharon at Early Modern Notes asked for some of our favourite song covers, and I came up with some. At dinner tonight, a friend's son asked me if I'd seen this version of Sunday, Bloody Sunday. Needless to say, I had not. Had you?

Something to warm the cockles of a medievalist's heart

Something to warm the cockles of a medievalist's heart

This is so very cool. I can see myself using it in class someday. Damn. Really cool.
As seen on the intrawebs:

Poetry? Friday

Poetry? Friday

Furry paperweight
Obscures screen, sits on keyboard
Flies and lands safely

Water Wings, please

Water Wings, please??

Hello, the blogosphere! Hello, my blogfriends! I really have not been ignoring you ... I'm just trying to catch up. So much has been happening over at What Now's, and maggie's, and B*'s, but I'm so far behind on blog reading, blog commenting and oh! work! So, my apologies. Here's my 'to do' list, in case you are all wondering what I'm up to...

• Vacuum house
  
• mop kitchen and bathroom floors
  
• put away all odds and ends of clothing from conference and trip to Sleepytown
  
• clean bathroom
  
• go through huge pile of stuff on desk
  
• pay any bills I haven't yet paid
  
• put together reimbursement paperwork for conference
  
• write up conference report
  
• make sure I've got all my frequent flyer points
  
• mark three weeks' LJ contributions for upper division class
  
• mark two one week's Blackboard discussions for the two survey classes
  
• check and see what I'm supposed to be doing this week in classes
  
• prep this the rest of this week's classes
  
• prepare for Big Committee meeting tomorrow
  
• check and see what's going on with search committee
  
• Oh yeah ... write a conference paper??????
  
• see if I can get out of going to reputedly worthless faculty development workshops to go to this instead. Still wondering how I got on the invite list, but happy I am
  
• really figure out my summer travel plans
  
• also, post the conference report, for those of you interested in Late Antique sorts of things.
  
• and send back the hard drive that crashed and would not allow re-formatting
  
• and see about getting the cat's teeth checked. Again.
  
• CRAP! TAXES!!!

So ... I'll be around, if not as visible as I'd like.

Carnivalesque XXV

Carnivalesque XXV

While I was conferencing (report on Late Antique/Early Medieval conference to come soon!), Troels Myrup posted Carnivalesque XXV at Iconoclasm. Go and learn and relax while finding out many good things ancient and medieval!

Carnivalesque needs hosts! The next edition some time around the middle of April will be an early modern edition, and the one after that in May will be for ancient/medieval topics. Email carnivalesque AT earlymodernweb DOT org DOT uk if you’re interested!

Head Slightly above water

Head Slightly above water

Conference blogging: today begins my favourite conference. Off to registration in a bit. I'm not presenting, because it's still a bit early for me (in terms of the scope of the conference -- all about Late Antiquity), but I hope to present at the next one. In the meantime, I've been entertaining a houseguest, writing a review, and marking. Oh -- and working on a paper? I miss you all!

Hell and Damnation

Hell and Damnation

So I'm spending my break grading, rather than writing the paper and book review I'd planned on writing. The document analysis essays I'm grading are awful. I had this cunning plan of starting with short writing assignments worth small amounts of points, and building over the course of the semester. So the first assignment was 2-3 paragraphs -- external information about the assigned primary source, and two or three general things that a historian might use the document for, e.g., family life, or gender relations. The next one was about 5-7 paragraphs and asked them to do the same thing, but to choose one theme and give a couple of specific examples from the text, how they relate to the theme, and how those things fit in with the context of the external information. This one, I asked them to compare two documents. I gave them specific instructions on the work I wanted them to do to set up their essays -- lists of information on the external stuff (kinds of documents, authorship, audience, dates, etc.) and internal stuff (kinds of information, subjects/themes dealt with, etc.) Then choose one subject or theme only, and compare and contrast the documents.

Except, well, I kind of figured they would realize that they were supposed to be putting this all together. The good students did. The vast majority did the spadework, and chose a single theme, and compared and contrasted that theme, but included nothing on the externals (even though that was part of the exercise), and NO analysis whatsoever. I asked them to make sure they answered the question of what the documents tell us, and assumed that the "how" was going to be covered. Because, well, when you make a statement in an argumentative essay, you have to support it, don't you? Except that, of course, lazy and untrained brains are not going to go there. Of course, none of them are first-semester students. They should know they have to support their work ...

I'm so thoroughly pissed off right now. Most of it is with myself. I'm usually really careful not to let things like this slip through the cracks. I'm usually the queen of over-explaining. But part of me is really pissed off that I have to do that in the first place. Because when I was at university, I was given a paper topic, and wrote the paper. If I got it wrong, I got a poor grade, and I learned from my mistakes or, if really confused, asked how to fix them. So I am now wondering what to do about the marking -- do I raise every grade by 5 points because my instructions were not as precise as they could have been? Or do I do what I'm tempted to do, and make this a step of the final document paper, and have them re-write it properly for part of their final grade?

Thursday Meme!

Thursday Meme

Seen around and about ...

The Pretentious Dissertation Title Mini-Quiz by MagnaMaxima
Username
Your Field	AnthropologyClassicsEthnic StudiesHistoryLinguisticsEnglish LiteratureGender StudiesReligionPhilosophy
Your Dissertation's Pretentious Title	The Peasant Economy:
Your Dissertation's Pretentious Subtitle	The Cultural Stratagem at Work In McDonald's

For the record, my thesis title was very old-fashioned and had no colon, nor need for one.

Monday Memeage

Monday Memeage

Well, Maggie May did one, so I have to act like a sheep and say, "baa!" Yep, it's Johari Window time. You can contribute to mine here.

Puhleez

Puh-leez!

Dear students with runny noses, aka persons residing in the hell of serious snot-production,

Test-taking time is supposed to be quiet time. Do you know how loud a room full of sniffles is? Also, you are supposed to be (young) adults! Have you not heard of: cold medicine? or at least Kleenex? Amazingly, if you blow your nose really well before class, you might not be making those incredibly loud noises that tell your prof that you don't care if she has both serious work and serious canoodling to do over break, while you're taking your damned colds to the beach! And by the way -- antibacterial hand gel, please. And if the prof offers you a Kleenex? Use it, dammit! Don't tell me you don't need it when you clearly do!

Really, people. Grow up and take some responsibility for your own health and that of the people who come in contact with you. Which reminds me ... I guess I need to go buy some of that anti-bacterial stuff for handling these toxic exam books. Y'all are damned lucky that there were at least 5 of you snortling away and that I'll have finished marking your exams before I can actually come down with something. Because if I do, there'll be hell to pay.

Much love, but with serious irritation,

Dr (not Mrs.) ADM

Wow. Just ... Wow

Wow. Just ... Wow

It's probably clear from my circle of blogfriends (many of whom are now RL friends) that I know some very cool and generous people. Many are medievalists, many are not. I mean this as no disrespect to those of you kind and generous people who aren't medievalists ...but ... can I just say one more time how amazing my experiences with people in my field are? Either I'm terribly naive (possibly), or there is something about the people who do Late Antiquity and the Early MA that seems to make them want to help even people they've never heard of. Maybe it's true for all of us, but I've heard awful tales about un-collegial behaviour from colleagues in other types of history. And definitely from the lit people. So yeah, I'm having one of those "feeling blessed" kind of days.

Carnivalesque 24

Carnivalesque 24

It's a new Early Modern Carnivalesque, up at The Long Eighteenth!

Question about that big conference in May

Question about that big conference in May

Actually, two questions. I have a double room reserved at the conference hotel. The person I had hoped to share with can't come after all. I haven't registered, and you have to pay up front for a dorm room. So I have two questions -- does anybody know if that "can change till April 15" includes getting a refund on a dorm room?

More importantly, does anybody who knows me IRL need a roommate or personally know a likely congenial and safe N/S person who might want to share?

Please reply to my ADM e-mail or to my personal e-mail.

Thinking Blogger Award

Thinking Blogger Award

Marc at Spinning Clio Has given me a Thinking Blogger award!! I'm so flattered, especially as I've been a little derelict in my blogging duties of late. Anyway, that means is that he thinks my blog is "thought-provoking." Since I've accepted the award, I now have to follow the rules:

The participation rules are simple:

1. If, and only if, you get tagged, write a post with links to 5 blogs that make you think
   
2. Link to this post so that people can easily find the exact origin of the meme
3. Optional: Proudly display the 'Thinking Blogger Award' with a link to the post that you wrote (here is an alternative silver version if gold doesn't fit your blog).

So here are my five awards. I'm not going to mention some of the more confessional blogs I read all the time, not because they don't make me think, but because some blogs seems to me the kind of things that are still sort of private -- we meet those bloggers through friends, and there are few "strangers" who come by. Some of these I read every day, some less often. When I do read them, these are the blogs that are most likely to make me stop and mull things over. Honestly, though, I don't read many blogs that don't make me think. And I could easily name more than five. My choices are mostly ones that my normal readers might not read as often as I do and that represent a range of the types of blogs I read. I'm kind of annoyed, because I had to leave a lot of blogs out. So here's my list:

1. Tim Burke's Easily Distracted. Tim's an African historian, and a fantastic writer. He also has an interest in sff, (well, mostly sf) which results in posts that are not only interesting, but warm the cockles of my heart. I met Tim at AHA a couple of years ago. He speaks as he writes, which to me is amazing, because I can be hugely inarticulate. It would annoy me, if he weren't so darned nice!
   
2. Dean Dad, at Confessions of a Community College Dean. Dean Dad is sensible and smart. His blog combines academic life with daily life. The comment threads are filled with fantastic conversations -- and arguments -- about how colleges handle administrative decisions, hiring, and the faculty-admin divide. There's a "been there, done that" universal experience quality to it that I love.
   
3. This next one's an 800-lb gorilla of a blog, but it's one I've been reading for as long as I've been blogging: Crooked Timber. CT also did a lot to confirm for me that I wasn't a total academic fraud -- when a bunch of working academics in a broad range of fields talk to you as an equal, especially when you are in the hell that is The Job Search, it can do a lot of good. I need to get back over there today -- John Holbo has posted on Frankenstein, but in a way that will doubtless spark conversations on public domain, authoritative editions, etc.
   
4. Dr Crazy, at Reassigned Time, is another thought-provoker. I find her posts on teaching and finding balance in the life of a single academic resonate with me and give me lots of ideas for how to re-frame my approach to my own teaching and life.
   
5. My last award goes to another heavy-hitting group blog: Making Light. Nielsen Haydens, sff, and politics, all rolled into one. I especially like Making Light because so many of the posts are things that just don't often get above the radar. And, well, politics and sff. I don't go to cons, although the ones with academic panels where my friends present are really tempting. But that's really only the matter of not having had the money to do it when I had friends who did (Some of my friends and I formed a Star Trek club in 7th grade, which eventually expanded to broader sff -- one of the co-founders -- and a first real crush on a genius -- now teaches condensed matter theory at a big midwestern university), and not having any friends who would go when I had the money. Now I have both (sort of, on the $ side), but I feel like that part of life has passed me by. I'm not a fan-girl, and I feel stupid next to the academics. Making light helps me feel like I haven't entirely lost that. Maybe I'll even get to where I feel I can comment there!

So that's my list of awards. I think I'm supposed to let them know. I hope you find them all thought-provoking, too.

Teaching as Rejuvenation

Teaching as Rejuvenation

Today was a fantastic teaching day. It was such a good day that I thought I should write about it to counter some of the more usual whinges. I should admit that part of it was down to my not prepping as well as I should have for today, at least in some ways. Most of it, however, was because of some things I'd been dissatisfied with in terms of how the classes have been going. Because of a combination of bookstore supply problems and badly-timed snow days, I've not been as assiduous as I'd like in cracking down on students for not being prepared. Last Friday, though, none of the classes were well-attended (still snow and ice), and none of the students really seemed to be more than physically present. Since I'm very much not a chalk-and-talk teacher, even in a class of 25 -- heck, even in a class of 50, to a certain degree -- students who aren't prepared are the kiss of death.

Last night, when I was reading up for today's survey, I realized that I really needed to tie up a bunch of loose ends, some administrative and some content/context. Since that would necessitate moving from one topic (racism with regards to the Atlantic slave trade) to a very different one (the rise of the Ottoman Empire), I thought I'd shake things up with a quiz. The racism question was easy to deal with. It was a problem only because everybody knows that slavery in North America is all about race, right? Except that the primary sources the students read indicated that, although race was a factor, racism as they understand it might not have been. So after everyone asserted that slavery was all about racism, we went back over the documents and secondary readings we'd discussed the week before. The students brought up ideas of civilization and savagery, differentiations between different types of Africans made by Europeans and how that defined their treatment, and eventually came to the conclusion that it was a very complicated subject that couldn't really be reduced to one simple explanation. There was disagreement, but I was so happy to see them accept that history and historical explanations can be messy and complex, and that's okay.

The quiz was equally successful. I handed out ten terms from the reading due for the day. One student complained that they couldn't be expected to remember all of that stuff, and it was really hard, if they did the reading a couple of days in advance. Cue the 'comparison to foreign language' talk. After all, when we take foreign languages, we have to learn vocabulary and grammar and remember them for longer than the next class, right? Well, you have to learn (to a certain extent) what's in the textbook for all the classes ... "but that's foreign language!" "But it's learning!" There were jokes, and students asked if they'd get points for good joke answers or answers that connected to Star Trek, but mostly, they looked pretty embarrassed. We went over the mostly empty quiz sheets, and I asked them to not make me quiz them again. Lesson learned? I think for a few of them. The I related why knowing such things was important for class overall, and the upcoming exam in particular, and we went over how to write an identification paragraph, using one of the terms I'd given them as an example.

From there, it was easy to get them to start reviewing what they were supposed to have read (and many did have notes with them) and relate it to things we'd been studying over the past couple of weeks. How did the rise of the Ottoman Empire fit into what else was going on in Europe and its expansion to the Americas? (etc., etc.) So basically, a good class with all of us a bit more focused.

The upper-level students have been dealing with a very different issue. Well, two. Not posting to our class blog is a big one, but it's been more than that. It took me a long time to figure it out, and it's something I really wanted to work on before we went any further. I like to do a lot of document analysis. These students are very good at reading primary sources and digesting them and synthesizing them. They excel at writing analyses that say, "these laws tell you about social values and gender relations in Frankish Society (or whatever)." Then they take those "about"s and relate them back to the secondary sources. They've been very resistant to starting cold with a primary source and coming up with a bare-bones, "this document tells us that the Franks differentiated between people of different legal and social status. For example ..."

It took me a while to figure this out, but really, it's a problem I think many of us still have. We aren't willing to see ourselves as authorities, even when we should. I mean, I know I can do research and write. I have a piece of paper from a reputable university that says so. I have peers who are vastly better qualified who don't think I'm a complete idiot (I think). And I catch myself getting caught up in secondary literature every time I start researching something. I mean, I know that I should be looking at the actual land transactions I'm working with before, during, and after I look at the secondary stuff on inheritance and property rights and how women exercised them (not that I'm working on anything related to that). I know that. But (partially because I have to carve out chunks of research time and it's so hard to get to the library in the Big City) I still tend to get caught up in "what the experts say." So for my 3rd- and 4th year students, it's got to be much more difficult.

So, today, with apologies to the student who posted a beautifully synthesized essay for the other students to critique, we started from scratch on the same documents. Each student listed general themes for which a historian might use the documents as evidence. They came up with pretty much the same lists as I had, with some variation and a couple of things I hadn't thought of. So, one set of legal cases can be used to talk about women and property and feudal obligations and taxes and revenue collection and the legal system and ...? Yes! Then I put them into small groups, one theme per group, to pick out all the evidence pertinent to their theme and turn it into 2-4 paragraphs of "see? we're trying to think like historians!" Had a great question right off the bat -- two very similar cases separated by 40 years ... "is that relevant?" "Yes, so how do you turn this thing that you've noticed, that over a 40-year span, the government is still dealing with rebels, into a statement using the evidence?" "Like this?" "Yes!" And then a different student piped in with, "wait ... the punishments in the later case are harsher, that seems like it's important enough to mention .. I wish we knew if this was typical!" Such conversations came up with most of the groups, and they seemed to be having fun! Plus, when I reminded them that they should be doing 2 hours of work outside class for every hour in class, and their reading load couldn't take them more than three hours, they agreed that they really did need to be doing more work online.

Anyway, I'm not at all sure what the point of this is, except that having a day where you seem to get through makes the other days worthwhile, and does wonders for keeping my own head in the game. I feel like being productive again.

History Carnival 48

History Carnival 48

The newest History Carnival is up at Aardvarchaeology.
Go and read for a scientific spin on history!
The next one will be at History is Elementary. You can submit entries using the form.

Volunteers to host are still being sought, so if you know anyone interested in hosting an upcoming Carnival or edition of Carnivalesque, please leave a message here or at Early Modern Notes.

Oh, What the Hell ...

Oh, What the Hell ...

It's late in the day, but all the other cool kids are doing it ...




Get your own valentinr

A conversation I'd missed

A conversation I'd missed

While I've been in dog-paddling land (water?), I've not been keeping up with my blogroll as well as I'd like. I had noticed these discussions at Dr. Crazy's (and the places where she links), and wanted to get back to them. I didn't really think I'd have a lot to say, though. Funny, how things change.

Normally speaking, I don't have much of an authority problem in the classroom. First, I'm old enough to be the mother of pretty much all my students. That wasn't true at the CCs where I taught, but there, they dynamic was so different, and I think many of the older students came with a different mind-set that said, "respect for teachers." Second, I know my stuff. The students seem to know that I know it -- although they regularly try to stump me. The good students know I come across as a hard-ass, but that I am happy to make allowances when there's good reason. Life happens.

I'm also confident enough in my classroom that I am pretty easy-going. I allow the students to make smart-ass comments, unless they're rude towards someone. I will occasionally allow students to make a call on how we approach something -- if they really don't feel like formal group work on a particular day, I'll bag it and restructure, perhaps my letting them review for a second with just one neighbor. It hasn't hurt me so far.

When I have had challenges to my authority, though -- not to my subject knowledge, but actual challenges where a student thinks it appropriate to tell me they don't like something about how I'm teaching -- it's always from young men, and it always stems from bruised egos and hurt feelings. I am not mean to my students. I will call them on things -- this semester, I've had to stop class and do The Stare, and have even simply asked, "why is it that I'm talking, and yet you are talking at the same time?" Still, I generally keep a relaxed, productive classroom where students feel free to offer their opinions.

That doesn't translate to written comments. I sometimes write things on papers like, "good point!" "Nice example!" -- and in my closing comments, I always try to say something encouraging. But mostly, especially when students don't follow very explicit directions or Just. Can't. Write., I'm blunt. Not mean. Just blunt. The same is true on Blackboard. When students go off on tangents, or post comments that aren't within the guidelines, I will generally validate what they've said (unless they're asking something that's in the syllabus), and then remind them that they need to follow the guidelines.

But I'm not touchy-feely. I'm not obliged to offer false praise to protect my students' fragile egos. And you know what? I'm not going to muddy the waters of grading by saying a bunch of nice stuff and handing out a D. That can't be good for anybody.

Why am I going on about this? Because I had a student chew my ass in class the other day. I had no idea how to handle it. We walked in, sat down, and I asked if there were any questions before we started. And this student went off on me. He felt he had been disrespected, and not only wanted to let me and the world know that I was out of line, but that he was no longer going to do a certain type of assignment because ...well, frankly, I stopped listening at that point. I stopped listening because I was madly doing about 15 things, all in my head -- trying to figure out all the following things: "Do I tell him to shut up and take it up with me outside class time?" "Will that make things worse?" "OMG, I am now totally fucked, and this class will never listen to me again and this is my favourite class!" "What the FUCK is he talking about??? I know for a fact that I was not rude to him! should I pull up the correspondence on the screen and let the class see that this young man is way the hell out of line?" "How can I fix this?" "Why am I just standing here? Why am I saying nothing?"

In the end, he stopped, I said I was sorry he felt that way, because I honestly couldn't remember saying anything that should have been taken as he'd taken it, but that I would check after class, and that if he didn't want to participate and was willing to throw out ten percent of his grade (and I did not say, "by being a big crybaby"), that was his option. We went on to talk about the reading for the day, and the student politely took place in the discussion, and even engaged with me pleasantly. The whole unpleasant episode took about 5 minutes, but I'm still entirely disturbed by it a few days later. I'm worried about the class, and I'm worried about evals. And I'm annoyed with myself, because I know that race and gender and class played parts in my not responding. All of a sudden, lots of stereotypes come into play. One's actions will reinforce some of them at the expense of others. Which ones would you pick?

Medievalists at AHA

Medievalists at AHA

The AHA panel deadline is Feb 15. I'm thinking of putting together a paper panel or a roundtable on one or two things -- one of them could be broader than early medieval -- could even include early modern. AHA is really trying to get more medieval stuff, and is willing to take papers already given. Please e-mail me offline if you are interested, and I'll let you know what I've got in mind.

More of the same?

More of the same?

One of my commenters below pointed out something important -- this is partially the result of the "prolonged apprenticeship that is academia". I didn't really mean to sound so whiney, because I do like the job a lot. But I think I, like many other people who move from visiting positions to T-T positions, had the idea that it would be easier. You'd think I of all people would know better -- I've been reading academic blogs forever, it seems. But even though I knew it would be different, and even that it would be hard, I don't think I appreciated what the differences would be. It isn't that the work is harder. It's that the stakes are higher. I think it's the knowing that I'm where I was trying to get to ... now, I have to rely entirely on myself. Well, I've had to do that forever. But I guess it seems more real now, if that makes sense. Still, I think I need to get to the gym. That will help. And get caught up on the grading.

Semi-Paralysis

Semi-Paralysis

It's not that I'm not blogging on purpose. Really. I'd like to be blogging more. I have a bunch of good pedagogical things to write about. I have a week to see if anybody is interested in putting together a panel for AHA next year -- that's by February 15. I have dozens of job applications to read by next week. I have stuff to review for Big Committee. I am still trying to keep up with the new survey prep and the brand-new upper division prep in a field not entirely my own. I have a book review to write (currently on a deadline extension). Oh ... and did I mention I have a conference paper to write? A conference paper I've barely started? OK, it's not due till May. But I really need it drafted by the middle of March, because I want to enjoy a visit from a very close friend (plus, I'd like to have it in a stage where he can read it without me feeling like a total idiot!). Somewhere in between, I need to put together a sensible plan and make arrangements to go to do some research this summer. I need to go to England, I think, as Germany is much harder to arrange. So it's BL and maybe Cambridge. And then I have to find funding. And next year, I have to apply for funding ahead of time.

So that's what I'm doing now. Not blogging much seems a good idea till I get a handle on my life.

In the meantime, full-time T-T jobs are hard. Being at a so-called teaching college that wants new faculty to publish is hard. Trying to keep up is hard. And it's different. It's really different. When you're on short-term contracts, you've got the stress of looking for the next job. Even in the best situations, and I was extremely fortunate to have had full-time visiting positions, I think you're never as invested. I was so lucky in that I got the chance to get used to service, and I was supported in my attempts to find a better job and keep up a minimal research agenda. I made great friends, people who will be my friends forever, I hope. But I always knew I'd have to leave.

I really love most of the things about my new job. I've got some great colleagues here, too. And I have never been so scared in my life. I'm feeling like an imposter again. My dean has put me on a Big Scary Committee, and my colleagues seem to think I know what I'm doing. But it doesn't help much. I've never worried so much about doing my job well enough. And, at the same time, the honeymoon is over. I'm starting to get a feel for some of the political currents (really not that bad compared to what I've seen, but they're there) and, like many new faculty, am finding that some of the promises made at hiring were based on what had gone before. In fact, SLAC has not really done the groundwork to support the kinds of things they told us we were hired to do. This makes me even more desperate to do well and get some work in press before I go up for tenure and promotion -- just in case. So, in addition to the stress of the new job, I'm putting more on myself, just in case I need to go on the market. The upshot is, of course, that I seem to be just this side of paralysis.

Ew. I just realised something about myself I'm a little worried about. I seem to be approaching both my professional and my personal life the same way. Not sure I like what that says.

PSA: BL Cuts

PSA: Cuts at the BL

Last week, there was a link to Something Bad Happening at the BL at Cliopatria.

As a followup, I've just seen this posted elsewhere. It's the online petition against the proposed changes and charges for BL use. I don't know where non-UK citizens/residents/ex-pats are supposed to write, though, as this seems to be purely for them:

http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/library/

If you do know where non-UK taxpayers are supposed to write, please feel free to post in the comments, and I'll bring it up to the main post. Thanks!

UPDATE: A suggestion has come through for the correct address for letters:

Rt Hon Tessa Jowell MP
Secretary of State for Culture, Media & Sport
Department for Culture Media & Sport
2-4 Cockspur Street
London
SW1Y 5DH

If you know a better one, though, please let me know, and I'll post.

ANOTHER UPDATE:
From a friend ...

"According to their website, the BL is actively campaigning against the
proposed cuts and Lynne Brindley has asked those who feel strongly about
this issue to contact the library and explain "why the British Library is
important to you and give us permission to use your letter in our campaign.
Please e-mail chief-executive@bl.uk with your name, contact number and
message, or write to Lynne Brindley, Chief Executive, The British Library, 96
Euston Road, London NW1 2DB."
So if you have five minutes to spare, do send an e-mail or letter too."

Asian History Carnival 11

Asian History Carnival #11

Jonathan Dresner hosts Asian History Carnival #11 at Frog in a well.

How cold is too cold to take a walk?

How cold is too cold to take a walk?

It's about 25° F, -4° C right now, with 10-15 mph winds. So kind of cold. But gorgeous. I don't own a hat. At what point is it too cold to go for a walk?

Updates

Updates on Proquest and H-M

Wow! I just checked my ADM e-mail, and there was a note from a nice product manager at ProQuest with a direct url (minus the diss number, which they will look up for me, or which I can add myself) to the diss, abstract, and 24-page sample. This can be done without subscription to ProQuest. How cool is the blogosphere???

I still haven't heard from my H-M rep, so yesterday I called in to the general customer service area (my bookstore having been very non-active until about three days ago)and complained politely. I was immediately transferred to a manager, and the problem was solved in about 20 minutes. My book seems to be on permanent backorder, but it's available in splits. The missing books have been overnighted. Funny how, if one actually follows up (I'm talking to YOU, big uni bookstore company that runs our bookstore), one can get things fixed.