Required classes

Required Classes

In the comments to this post, New Kid and sqadratomagico disagreed with me on whether or not history should be a required subject. I really think that it's important enough to require -- not so much for content as for teaching people how we do history. I've argued before that history is not necessarily -- should not necessarily -- have to be relevant to our students. I think that's very true in terms making connections between, say, what the Romans did and what we do. More importantly, I think that kind of emphasis and (mis)use of historical learning lead us to the kind of thing Matt Gabriele talks about here.
So how do we teach history and not fall prey to teaching false analogies in order to make it 'relevant'? I think -- and this is just a suggestion -- that it is not so much the content that we should make relevant.

Let me 'splain -- No. It is too much. Let me sum up.* I think the information we teach in inherently relevant and interesting. But it's relevant because of the questions we ask. This is at the root of why I think history should be required, and taught in ways that try to inculcate in our students the fundamental processes of inquiry, reason, and explanation that allow students to then look at history by themselves. It's relevant because the questions that we ask and try to answer about the past are the same kinds of questions that we should be asking about the world around us. If we go a step further, we can help students to understand why, for example, neither Vietnam nor The Crusades are good comparisons for the current situation in Iraq or for the cultural conflict between Islam and the industrialized West. If we do our jobs well, I think our students should come out of our classes with the confidence to say, "Yes, I can understand that you think the Iraq War and the Vietnam War look something alike on the surface, but what about X? Y? Z? If we look at those things, we can see that they are not really that much alike. But the answers to X, Y, and Z help us to figure out what really is going on." Or something like that. To really sum up, I think that it's the way historians are taught to interrogate their sources and ask and answer questions that are the most relevant and most transferable skills we have to offer. The content is always there, and I think that we humans always want to make analogies. That need is what drives many people critique and understand the present through the past. And yeah, I think that, if more people had some decent training in history, people might be a little less complacent. It's that tension between the desire to find explanations through analogy and the discipline of picking apart those analogies for a better understanding that lies at the heart of what we do. If we teach that part better, I think we'll be doing a better job and creating a greater appreciation for history. The hard part is that really, what I'm calling history isn't what most of my students think history is. Still, the best comments on my evals come from people who praise the emphasis on primary sources. Go figure.

OTOH ... I was thinking last night that, when I taught at several campuses where history was not required, I had better students. My life was much happier when I had students who actually cared about doing well in my subject, rather than just passing a required class. These days, I have rockin' FTEs, but I also have a ton of students (depressingly, many of them are education majors) who take my classes because they have to, and see themselves as clocking time towards a piece of paper. Alas, my post on student attitudes must wait.


*Apologies to The Princess Bride and Inigo Montoya.

More on Language

More on Language

Ancarett is riffing off the post below, and it reminded me about a concomitant problem with the whole language requirement thing. FTEs and Gen.Ed./Core requirements. I think that the problem may be worse at smaller campuses where smaller also = financially strapped. For any given requirement of a course or courses in one department, another department whose courses are not required will feel hard done by. Sometimes the argument will be phrased as "but this is important in terms of a well-rounded education." And sometimes, that's true. Language certainly fits in there. But there is often pressure from above ("too many requirements mean students have too few choices, and they will leave us and go elsewhere") and from within the faculty ("why do you think your field is more important than mine"). The former argument is dodgy. The latter, just stupid. Some fields are more necessary to a Liberal Arts education than others. Because, well, there are these things we call Liberal Arts. Seven of them, as it happens. History's one of them. The social sciences? not. So I'm all for arguing that History should be required, but that non-majors should be able to satisfy a general social science requirement with Econ, Sociology, Anthro, Psych, PoliSci ... But I also do understand that people's egos are at stake.

In more practical terms, though, I think a lot of it is about funding. The pie is only so big, and smaller departments don't want their budgets diminished at the expense of something as lame as foreign languages. I've seen this happen at a couple of places. The people who side with languages? History (usually, as long as History is already required), some kinds of Lit people, International Relations, and some of the Health Care professions. One guy from the Business School (it's always a guy ... talk about gender imbalance). A cultural Anthropologist, if there is one. For the rest of the faculty, not so much support. Note: this is not true for faculty who went to really good SLACs or universities and had to learn languages themselves. They usually appreciate the value.

But as long as funding is based on enrollments, there will be problems getting meaningful language requirements.

On Language requirements

On Language Requirements

One of the things that many of us mediævalists have in common is that we're snobbish about languages. Ok, so we can't be quite as snobby as the Classicists, because, well, Greek. And some of the Late Antiquity types do Persian or some other Near Eastern language. Since I kind of hang out with those folks, though, I think I'll lump them in for the purposes of this little blog post. So for the sake of argument, let's just say that those of us whose fields of study span the era before about 1500 tend to be language snobs.

This was true in my grad program. I remember group pity extended towards the person whose Latin and French were good enough to pass the requirements, but just not good enough that s/he could work in anything other than English History, and only where OE and ME were not required. A 'lesser' degree seemed in order. Some of you may have noticed that this is gate-keeping again. Yeah, it is. Ancarett made a comment to yesterday's post that made me want to write this. That, and I'm panicking about my travels, due to start next week.

For us mediæval and earlier types, language is the test at the gate. After climbing that nasty mountainous road to a graduate program, you will meet the bridge gatekeeper, and he will say something along the lines of...

Gatekeeper: "Stop. Who would cross the Bridge of Death must answer me these questions three, ere the other side he see"
The intrepid grad student will answer: "Ask me the questions, bridgekeeper. I am not afraid."
G:"What... is your name? "
IGS: "IGS"
G: "How is your Latin?"
IGS: "I will pass the exams, I promise"
G: "do you know or can you acquire a reading knowledge of French, German, and anything else demanded in the next year?"
IGS:"Yes."
G: "Right, yer in."

But then that year is up, and the conversation goes like this:
Gatekeeper: "Stop. Who would cross the Bridge of Death must answer me these questions three, ere the other side he see"
The intrepid grad student will answer: "Ask me the questions, bridgekeeper. I am not afraid."
Gatekeeper: "Did you pass your Latin exam?"
IGS: "Yes"
G:"Lisez-vous français?"
IGS: "Oui?"
G: "Sprechen Sie, Bzw. Lesen Sie Deutsch? Wenn Sie etwas auf Deutsch lesen, wissen Sie unbedingt, dass Ihre Übersetzung korrekt ist?"
IGS: "er ... ja ...peut-etre?"

At this point, the student is not doomed to be cast into the chasm.* There are lots of languages we use. Perhaps the questions should have been posed in Italian or Old Norse (in which case, the student will really need that German, too). My point is that we are expected to have Latin and at least two modern European languages between when we walk in the door (say, for example, at Toronto) and when we get to the writing stage. Presumably our colleagues in the UK and Ireland have the languages when they start, because they don't have coursework. At my grad school, Europeanists needed to pass two language exams, Americanists one (and they could substitute SPSS if it was more relevant). Medievalists needed three plus any other languages needed -- and we didn't get a choice in the first one. Latin.

But languages we must have. They are not always easy to learn. We must also learn other odd and peculiar skills, like paleography, the reading of archæological reports, Orts- or Personennamenkunde, and a working knowledge of a huge number of general primary sources. That may be another difference, come to think of it. I think that the canonical writings in our fields tend to include far more primary sources than secondary sources. But that's another post. Now, we may not have to read all of these languages or acquire all these skills equally well. New Kid, for example, can probably kick my butt at reading unedited legal documents, because almost everything I use has been edited. It's in Latin, and much of it isn't translated, but it's edited. I don't need to read some scribe's handwriting -- although with Carolingian miniscule, at least that's not the most difficult thing in the world! On the other hand, she'll never have to try to trace family relationships through the leading names and name elements! The medievalist's tools are diverse and hard to acquire. I can tell from some of the comments I've seen here and elsewhere that some people think we are using those tools to keep people out. To a certain extent, I guess that's true. But would you hire a carpenter who couldn't use a hammer and saw?

Without the tools of our trade, languages being the most important and basic of those tools, a mediævalist (or Classicist, or Late Antiquarian)** cannot join in the scholarly conversation. I've just glanced over to my collection of library books. For the first time I can remember, the majority of books are in English. That's because I just took back six books in German and because I'm working on a project on women and property, and there is a lot of scholarship in English to weed through, even though it may have very little to do with what was happening in the Lahngau and Grabfeld and Mainzgau in the 9th and 10th centuries. There's one book in French, Sauver son Âme et se Perpétuer. I'm not really looking forward to it because, well, it's in French, which is my fourth-best language. But I need to look at it, because it's part of the conversation. If I ignore what's out there, then my own work will be incomplete and honestly, pretty shoddy -- or at least it won't be able to stand up to close scrutiny.

I'm lucky, in that I have a really good feel for languages. I have to work at them, but I can generally pick up the basics pretty quickly. I also lucked out because my grandfather made me read and speak Spanish as a child (not that I'm all that fluent 40 years later), my counselors made me take two years of French in middle school, and I foundered through two years of high school Latin before I picked it up again my last two years of undergrad, where I took three years of Latin courses and a quarter of Greek in two years. Somewhere in there I took a year of German. Among my friends and colleagues, it's pretty much only the Classics undergrads who have comparable language exposure. Meaningful language requirements at any level seem to have fallen by the wayside in most Anglo-American educational systems (except for the politically-motivated French requirements in parts of Canada). I do know from friends in the UK and Ireland that they often deal with the same issues of under-trained students who wish to pursue postgrad degrees.

I think one of the results of this will be that time to finishing will continue to creep up for people who go into grad programs in Mediæval History -- or those students accepted and/or granted fellowships will be those who already have languages. My guess is that the students who have language skills will be from the high-powered unis or selective Liberal Arts Colleges. I don't like to think what that might mean for demographics. I also don't like to think that our requirements will make others think that we occupy some rarified position -- at least, no more rarified than the people who split atoms or do any number of very specialized things. This doesn't seem to be as much a problem for our Asianist and Islamist colleagues, because, well, what they do is relevant. Somehow, and I realize that none of these thoughts are as well-formed as I'd like, but it was either blog now, or blog much, much later and blog something closer to perfection, I think that that is the problem. When we don't see language as being particularly relevant to our daily lives, we don't see that the fields that require languages are relevant unless they directly connect to politics or economic forces.

Whatever the results, I think that we need to conceive of language requirements (or paleography requirements, etc.) differently. We are used to the gate-keeping/maintaining standards model. What if, instead, we were to see these -- and describe these to others -- not as requirements absent the connection to our work that we know is implicit and absolute, but rather as tools and skills. We cannot do our jobs properly until and unless we acquire them, in the same way that cabinetmaker needs to know the different properties of different types of wood and the kinds of tools (and how to used the tools) to use in their appropriate circumstances.

In terms of those of us who have got through the training and are either on the market or employed, I think there is another battle -- and perhaps another post. I don't know about the rest of you, but my teaching load is detrimental to my getting a lot of scholarly work done during the academic year. This means that I have to come up with strategies (not too many good ones, as it happens) for keeping up my languages. It takes me up to a week of hard work to get to where I feel comfortable in my reading skills again. Mostly, I find myself grabbing dictionaries and actually writing out translations that differ from what I read only in completeness. But the tools seem to rust. Next post -- dealing with rusty tools.

*Apologies to Monty Python
** And yes, I know that we have colleagues in Asian and Islamic (and Eastern European) history who have to learn many of the same types of things to do their work. Although they are in some ways as marginalized as we are, I think that time plays a role here, too. If you are a modern historian, I think that people understand more easily because of the relevance issue I mentioned above.

On Gatekeeping

On Gate-keeping

In the comments to this post, Anastasia pointed out that I was probably engaging in a kind of gate-keeping. I think I was. I've been pondering my own ideas for when I think gate-keeping is good, and when it's bad. Faculty engage in gate-keeping all the time. Grades are a form of gatekeeping. So are hiring committees and T&P committees. Of these, grades are the ones that arguably have the least wiggle room; faculty should be grading almost entirely on the merits of the work and whether it meets the criteria of the assignment. Search committees can be more nebulous -- there's a lot of legitimate room for 'fit', but then there are also discussions of whether candidate A or B is more likely to be a productive scholar ... all kinds of things. T&P committees, so I've heard, can be all over the place. Friends at campuses trying to reinvent themselves often tell me that T&P committees often seem to take great joy in expecting new faculty to meet requirements that far exceed what already-tenured faculty had to meet for their own T&P. Me? I think that it's really important to have standards, but that they have to be applied fairly. If these things are done fairly and transparently, then I think it's not really gate-keeping in the negative sense -- it's trying to maintain standards.

It's when gate-keeping is applied unfairly that I tend to worry. In almost every workplace -- or part of life, for that matter -- we run into people who want to make and enforce rules because they can. The ability to prevent people from doing things -- in fact, to complicate their lives and jobs -- is an expression of their personal worth and power. That's true for the people with some authority as well as the Jobsworths. What surprises me is that often, these are people in support positions. When I worked in support, I got my ego boos by helping people and out of being able to say that I was just doing my job after helping untangle a hopeless crisis. There are definitely people like that out there -- the guy who stayed on the phone with me for two hours after Adelphia accidentally disconnected my internet service (and initially claimed it would take three days to bring back up), talking to managers and getting things fixed was an absolute star.

I've run out of ideas for a snappy conclusion. What are your ideas on gate-keeping? When is it legitimate? When is it just obstructionist?

More Confusion

More confusion -- EndNote version

Can somebody explain to me why one would use Endnote and what might be a better program for what I need? I would like to be able to take all my notes as I'm reading and keep them in my computer. Right now, I use Word and just type in Keyword terms at the end of each note. I've tried Scribe and it's incredibly complicated, even though it seems to duplicate the notecard type of functionality I want. It would be very nice to be able to type in my notes, have them all linked to one bibliographic database, and be able to search for them and put them into my work as I'm writing. Is there such a thing?

RBO Confusion

RBO Confusion

Things that confuse me today:

• Why textbook companies don't just buy into the used textbook business.
  
• Why my campus bookstore refuses to buy back books just because there's a new edition out -- even thought the old edition is still available and I've ordered it.
  
• Why there aren't solar panels on a/c units. Seems to me that the times one is most likely to use a/c are also the times when those solar panels would work best.
  
• Why, if we're trying to conserve energy without hurting the economy, we don't require greener building practices. Unless 'hurting the economy' is some kind of code for, 'people will have to spend more on things and so they'll buy less crap they don't need and then the people who make and sell the crap will be out of work.' Except wouldn't more people be needed to make and sell the things that go into green building? and if we gave incentives to people and companies for green remodeling, then wouldn't that employ people, too?
  

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.