Medieval History
I had the privilege recently of attending (and presenting at) the 2nd Int'l Crusades Symposium at St. Louis University. A good time was had by all.
The conference actually was 2 conferences stuck together. The 1st part was a series of evening plenary lectures, free and open to the public -- indeed, all the talks were exceptionally well-attended. Here, established scholars spoke on all matters related to Crusade Studies. Marina Rustow (late of Emory, soon of JHU) and Jonathan Phillips (Royal Holloway, Univ. of London) spoke the 1st night on the early stuff, the preconditions of the Mediterranean world during the late 11th century and the Genoese response to the 1st Crusade. Next, Ronnie Ellenblum (Hebrew Univ., Jerusalem) and Ahmet Karamustafa (Washington Univ., St. Louis) spoke on life in the East. Finally, John Pryor (Univ. of Sydney) and Michael Angold (Univ. of Edinburgh) spoke on military history and, specifically, the experience of sieges in the East. Generally, all of these presentations were quite good -- a public lecture is a difficult animal to tame, of course, and mixing in an audience partly-composed of specialists doesn't help. Some of the talks walked that tight-rope exceptionally well but others tended, to my taste, too much towards the specific. But I should be so lucky to be a plenary speaker at some point and have such problems...
The 2nd part of the conference was a series of concurrent sessions with papers given by all levels of scholars, from graduate students to the "silverbacks" of the field. Like a typical academic conference -- and, if you've never been to one, this may or may not come as a surprise -- there were some very god papers and some very bad ones. I'll leave it to others to decide where mine falls in that spectrum but I talked about how the ideas of Carolingian exegesis may have shaped Pope Urban II and thereby influenced his call to crusade in 1095. 9th-century ideas of "renovation" and "reform", and the role that ecclesiastics played in guiding (and guarding) the Franks moved forward into the 11th century, adopted by monastic reformers and transferred, eventually, to the papacy. When Urban spoke of these things in the context of the First Crusade, he was using a particular language that the aristocracy would've understood -- and known how to properly respond to.
Other papers of note that I heard: Natasha Hodgson (Nottingham Trent Univ.) gave a deep, rich paper on the prosopography of the marriage relations between Franks and Cilician Armenians. James Naus (St. Louis Univ.) contextualized Suger's Life of Louis the Fat near the response to the First Crusade. Suleiman Mourad (Smith College) talked about the "mainstreaming" of jihad in Sunni Islam during the 12th century. Buy his new book when it comes out. Seriously. Christopher Macevitt (Dartmouth College) pushed the battle between the spiritual and conventual Franciscans to the East and looked at how their martyrdom narratives reflected the struggle back home. Alan Murray (Univ. of Leeds) reminded us of 1 of the difficulties the crusaders must have faced -- they spoke different languages. Councils must have been a freakin' mess... Paul Crawford (California Univ. of Pennsylvania) moved his extensive work on the military religious orders backwards in time, towards Pope Gregory VII, in order to think about the development of holy war. What did he (or others) mean by milites Christi and/ or milites s. Petri? Cecilia Gaposchkin (Dartmouth College) gave a great paper on crusading and liturgy, reminding me (at least) that we don't pay enough attention to those types of sources generally.
Finally, let me say something about the "bad" papers. But first let me say that there's a difference between "bad" and "wrong." "Wrong" papers, to my mind, are simply about points of disagreement -- you and I looking at a different piece of evidence and disagreeing about what it means, or how we should use it. We argue about it during questions, chat over coffee, then go have a beer together at the end of the day. These aren't the papers I'm talking about. A "bad" paper, to my mind, does a disservice to the field. It could contain ad hominem attacks or simply be pseudo-scholarship -- characterized, for example, by a naive or partisan reading of the evidence to advance a particular point. There were, unfortunately, a couple of "bad" papers at this conference.
I bring this up because me and a group of colleagues/ friends were talking about this problem. What do you do about these "bad" papers? Is it worth your time and effort to try to challenge this person or should you just let it go -- giving it the icy silence of "no questions" at the end of a session (quite painful)? Most of us were saying that it's just not worth the time to deal with these people and to just let them stew but 1 person was arguing the opposite -- that the person needs to be challenged. Another person there, a medical doctor, then chimed in to agree. In that person's profession, you don't just let someone spew nonsense (and we all, I think, are glad that medical doctors feel this way). That's really stuck with me. Again, not speaking of "wrong" papers, but "bad" ones -- but we do need to self-police, to challenge, even as exhausting/ infuriating as that may be. You may never change that presenter's mind but the audience, who may not be specialists, at the very least, needs to know the problems with what they've just heard.
So, I ask all you out there: what are your thoughts? Have you had similar experiences? What did you do (please just don't name names)?
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Medieval History
Conference Report: 2nd Int'l Crusades Symposium (St. Louis University)
The conference actually was 2 conferences stuck together. The 1st part was a series of evening plenary lectures, free and open to the public -- indeed, all the talks were exceptionally well-attended. Here, established scholars spoke on all matters related to Crusade Studies. Marina Rustow (late of Emory, soon of JHU) and Jonathan Phillips (Royal Holloway, Univ. of London) spoke the 1st night on the early stuff, the preconditions of the Mediterranean world during the late 11th century and the Genoese response to the 1st Crusade. Next, Ronnie Ellenblum (Hebrew Univ., Jerusalem) and Ahmet Karamustafa (Washington Univ., St. Louis) spoke on life in the East. Finally, John Pryor (Univ. of Sydney) and Michael Angold (Univ. of Edinburgh) spoke on military history and, specifically, the experience of sieges in the East. Generally, all of these presentations were quite good -- a public lecture is a difficult animal to tame, of course, and mixing in an audience partly-composed of specialists doesn't help. Some of the talks walked that tight-rope exceptionally well but others tended, to my taste, too much towards the specific. But I should be so lucky to be a plenary speaker at some point and have such problems...
The 2nd part of the conference was a series of concurrent sessions with papers given by all levels of scholars, from graduate students to the "silverbacks" of the field. Like a typical academic conference -- and, if you've never been to one, this may or may not come as a surprise -- there were some very god papers and some very bad ones. I'll leave it to others to decide where mine falls in that spectrum but I talked about how the ideas of Carolingian exegesis may have shaped Pope Urban II and thereby influenced his call to crusade in 1095. 9th-century ideas of "renovation" and "reform", and the role that ecclesiastics played in guiding (and guarding) the Franks moved forward into the 11th century, adopted by monastic reformers and transferred, eventually, to the papacy. When Urban spoke of these things in the context of the First Crusade, he was using a particular language that the aristocracy would've understood -- and known how to properly respond to.
Other papers of note that I heard: Natasha Hodgson (Nottingham Trent Univ.) gave a deep, rich paper on the prosopography of the marriage relations between Franks and Cilician Armenians. James Naus (St. Louis Univ.) contextualized Suger's Life of Louis the Fat near the response to the First Crusade. Suleiman Mourad (Smith College) talked about the "mainstreaming" of jihad in Sunni Islam during the 12th century. Buy his new book when it comes out. Seriously. Christopher Macevitt (Dartmouth College) pushed the battle between the spiritual and conventual Franciscans to the East and looked at how their martyrdom narratives reflected the struggle back home. Alan Murray (Univ. of Leeds) reminded us of 1 of the difficulties the crusaders must have faced -- they spoke different languages. Councils must have been a freakin' mess... Paul Crawford (California Univ. of Pennsylvania) moved his extensive work on the military religious orders backwards in time, towards Pope Gregory VII, in order to think about the development of holy war. What did he (or others) mean by milites Christi and/ or milites s. Petri? Cecilia Gaposchkin (Dartmouth College) gave a great paper on crusading and liturgy, reminding me (at least) that we don't pay enough attention to those types of sources generally.
Finally, let me say something about the "bad" papers. But first let me say that there's a difference between "bad" and "wrong." "Wrong" papers, to my mind, are simply about points of disagreement -- you and I looking at a different piece of evidence and disagreeing about what it means, or how we should use it. We argue about it during questions, chat over coffee, then go have a beer together at the end of the day. These aren't the papers I'm talking about. A "bad" paper, to my mind, does a disservice to the field. It could contain ad hominem attacks or simply be pseudo-scholarship -- characterized, for example, by a naive or partisan reading of the evidence to advance a particular point. There were, unfortunately, a couple of "bad" papers at this conference.
I bring this up because me and a group of colleagues/ friends were talking about this problem. What do you do about these "bad" papers? Is it worth your time and effort to try to challenge this person or should you just let it go -- giving it the icy silence of "no questions" at the end of a session (quite painful)? Most of us were saying that it's just not worth the time to deal with these people and to just let them stew but 1 person was arguing the opposite -- that the person needs to be challenged. Another person there, a medical doctor, then chimed in to agree. In that person's profession, you don't just let someone spew nonsense (and we all, I think, are glad that medical doctors feel this way). That's really stuck with me. Again, not speaking of "wrong" papers, but "bad" ones -- but we do need to self-police, to challenge, even as exhausting/ infuriating as that may be. You may never change that presenter's mind but the audience, who may not be specialists, at the very least, needs to know the problems with what they've just heard.
So, I ask all you out there: what are your thoughts? Have you had similar experiences? What did you do (please just don't name names)?
- Crusades Symposium Begins Next Week
The Second International Symposium on Crusade Studies begins next Wednesday, drawing in dozens of scholars from over ten countries. Hosted by Saint Louis University and the Crusades Studies Forum, the symposium, entitled Crusades: Medieval Worlds...
- Briefly Noted -- Accessus: A Journal Of Premodern Literature And New Media
Readers of Modern Medieval will want to go take a look at the inaugural issue of Accessus, a publication of the Gower Project. This excellent-looking first issue includes the following essays that bring together disability studies, medieval studies, manuscript...
- Memesak Conference On Once And Future Romance
This year's International Conference of the Medieval and Early Modern English Studies Association of Korea (MEMESAK) took place on October 23, 2010, at Ewha Womans University in Seoul, South Korea. The topic of the conference was "The Once and Future...
- 34th Annual Harvard Celtic Colloquium
10, 11 and 12 October 2014 The Thompson Room (Room 110) Barker Center, 12 Quincy Street ~ Call For Papers The organizers of the 34th Annual Harvard Celtic Colloquium acknowledge with thanks the support of The Provostial Funds Committee for the Arts and...
- Cfp: Irish Conference Of Medievalists
Call for papers The 28th Irish Conference of Medievalists will take place in University College Dublin, 1--3 July 2014 The Irish Conference of Medievalists is an interdisciplinary forum that welcomes papers on all aspects of Irish...