The Ballad of the Lone Medievalist

the ballad of the lone medievalist Before you start to read this book, take this moment to think about making a donation to punctum books, an independent non-profit press, @ https://punctumbooks.com/support/ If you’re reading the e-book, you can click on the image below to go directly to our donations site. Any amount, no matter the size, is appreciated and will help us to keep our ship of fools afloat. Contri- butions from dedicated readers will also help us to keep our commons open and to cultivate new work that can’t find a welcoming port elsewhere. Our ad- venture is not possible without your support. Vive la open-access. Fig. 1. Hieronymus Bosch, Ship of Fools (1490–1500) the ballad of the lone medievalist. Copyright © 2018 by editors and authors. This work carries a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0 International license, which means that you are free to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format, and you may also remix, transform and build upon the material, as long as you clearly attribute the work to the authors (but not in a way that suggests the authors or punctum books endorses you and your work), you do not use this work for commercial gain in any form whatsoever, and that for any remixing and transformation, you distribute your rebuild under the same license. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ First published in 2018 by punctum books, Earth, Milky Way. https://punctumbooks.com ISBN-13: 978-1-947447-54-7 (print) ISBN-13: 978-1-947447-55-4 (ePDF) lccn: 2018940292 Library of Congress Cataloging Data is available from the Library of Congress Book design: Vincent W.J. van Gerven Oei The Ba lad Medievalist Edited by Kisha G. Tracy & John P. Sexton Contents Who Was That Masked Monk? 13 John P. Sexton and Kisha G. Tracy The Lone Medievalist: Casting the Net 17 Sarah Barott and Rachel Munson The Lone Medievalist as Teacher Breaking Free of the Cloistered Classroom Not So Lonesome Anymore: Bridging the Disciplines through Pedagogy 31 Peter Burkholder Keeping It Old-School on the New Faculty Majority 51 Geoffrey B. Elliott Interdisciplinary/Team Teaching and the Lone Medievalist 65 Natalie Grinnell And Gladly Wolde He Teche: The Medievalist and the History of the English Language Course 71 Robert Kellerman I Know! Let’s Put on a Show! 79 Robert Stauffer Perpetual Invention and Performance-Based Research: The Case of The Ballad of Robin Hood and the Potter 95 Carolyn Coulson What’s the Message?: Building Community through Tolkien’s Beowulf 109 Holly M. Wendt Why Read That?: Selling the Middle Ages 119 Diane Cady A Trip to England: Discovering the Ties between Medievalism and Pop Culture 137 Danielle Girard, Sarah Huff, Justine Marsella, Alicia Protze, Ab- bie Rosen, Jacki Teague The Lone Medievalist as Scholar: Opus Clamantis in Deserto From the Monk’s Cell to the Professor’s Office 145 Kisha G. Tracy Embracing the Medievalist Margin 161 Alicia Spencer-Hall The Medievalist’s Soliloquy: Struggles and Advice for Lone Medievalists 169 Tiffany A. Ziegler Reflections of an Embarrassed Medievalist 177 Michael Elam The Unicorn Learns Accountability 189 Misty Urban How to Stop Being a Lonely Medievalist 199 M. Wendy Hennequin Blended Medievalist Careers: Staying Optimistic While Balancing Passion and Job Market Realities 205 Timothy R.W. Jordan and Aubri Anne McVey A Study of the Unexpected: The Advantages of Being the “Lone Medievalist” 221 Nikolas O. Hoel Saga Thing and the Benefits of Podcasting the Medieval 227 Andrew M. Pfrenger The Lone Medievalist at Work: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Job Building Your Own Villa 249 Jane Chance Twice Marginal and Twice Invisible: On Being the Lone Medievalist Twice in One State 259 Michelle M. Sauer Pushing Boundaries: Making the Medieval Relevant through Public History and Engagement On and Off Campus 267 Amber Handy Brought to You by Your Friendly Campus Medievalist 281 Lee Templeton Down with Dante and Chaucer? Navigating a Great Books Curriculum as a Medievalist 289 Sarah Harlan-Haughey Of sondry folk: What I Learned After My First Year as the Lone Medievalist on Campus 305 Ann M. Martinez The Collaborative Medievalist 311 Courtney Rydel Make Yourself At Home 319 John P. Sexton This Eremitic Life Notes from the North 341 Laura Saetveit Miles Being a Medievalist in an A-medieval Country and in a Region Overcrowded with Medievality: Two Stories from Brasil and the Western Balkans 355 Ardian Muhaj Is the Academic Medievalist Alone? 361 Kouky J. Fianu A Philosopher’s Approach to Being a Lone Medievalist 365 Pilar Herráiz Oliva A Lone Medievalist on the Island 369 Christine E. Kozikowski Contributors 373 introduction Who Was That Masked Monk? John P. Sexton, Bridgewater State University Kisha G. Tracy, Fitchburg State University Hi. Are you a Lone Medievalist? This volume is a sequel, of sorts, to an ongoing series of round tables at the International Congress on Medieval Stud- ies held at Western Michigan University, beginning in 2015. The impetus for those sessions, and for this book, is the sense of isolation many medieval scholars feel in their professional lives. Often the only scholar of the period in their departments, their universities, or their surrounding area, medievalists can find it challenging to advocate for their work and field. The problem is only more pronounced for the medievalist in an adjunct teaching position or without an institutional position at all. When we work alone among colleagues, teach mostly (or entirely) outside our specializations, and compete with “more easily” understood or well-funded research, it is easy to feel disconnected from the larger discipline of medieval studies. Our scholarly production slows or ceases. Our language skills atrophy. Our knowledge os- sifies. Soon, even attending a conference of fellow medievalists can feel isolating. Surrounded by scholars with greater institutional support, lower teaching loads, or more robust research agendas, we may feel alienated from the field we love — the work to which we’ve dedicated our careers. 13 the ballad of the lone medievalist The Lone Medievalist exists as a partial antidote to the problem of professional isolation. The nature of medieval studies has always been collaborative — paleographers, editors, trans- lators, archeologists, preservationists, librarians, scholars, and students may all play a part in the creation of a single so-called “monograph.” Yet our physical distance from one another (and the preferences of a professional system that privileges the individual scholar) tends to de-emphasize the work of the medieval collective. Our other duties, especially teaching and institutional service, have traditionally been even less connected to that collaborative spirit. Fortunately, the advent of the internet age, and with it, social media, digital reproductions, remote-confer- encing, and long-distance collaboration have all improved the lot of the solitary scholar. Knowing and working with our fel- lows has never been easier, and with the right encouragement can result in remarkable new directions for the field of medieval studies as a whole. Our organization builds on those new connective conduits. The goal of the Lone Medievalist sessions was and is to encour- age far-flung and isolated medievalists of all stripes to share their knowledge, experiences, and strategies for successfully pursuing and sharing their work. We hope to build a platform for medievalists to provide support to one another. The Lone Medievalist isn’t focused exclusively on scholarship, on teaching, on institutional life, or on the pursuit of new learning — it’s focused on all of them. We privilege all aspects of the professional and intellectual life of medievalists. Our experience in this new era is, we hope, surprisingly akin to the monastic vocation itself. The medieval monks, whose sim- ple anonymity inspired the look of our organizational mascot and whose cloistered lives were a combination of eremitic and collective experience, knew that a supporting institution and like- minded colleagues provided the energy that made many things possible that would be exhausting, lonely, or even impossible for a single individual. Though our profession often requires that we work in disciplinary isolation, we are more connected than our predecessors could have imagined. In our work, and in our intel- 14 who was that masked monk? lectual lives, we have the chance to build a new kind of cloister for ourselves — one that encompasses the entire world. A Lone Medievalist need no longer be an isolated medievalist. The idea for this volume grew out of our very first Interna- tional Congress round table. It was clear then that Lone Me- dievalists had much to say and much to offer each other. We all have our own stories and our own strategies for managing our “lone” status. We thought that a collection of these stories would be useful and unique — if not also cathartic for the contributors and the readers — and thus this volume was born. We were pleased and surprised by the response to the original call for submissions. It seemed that the topic was of great interest to many, and both those who volunteered to contribute as well as others have expressed the desire to read about such experiences. We were also pleased by the range of responses we received, the varying types of emphases that contributors identified in their contributions. In the end, these responses have naturally organized themselves into four sections. The Lone Medievalist as Teacher: Breaking Free of the Cloistered Classroom In this section, Lone Medievalists discuss how to approach the classroom, from turning students into colleagues to bringing the medieval into non-medieval courses.

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