"Medievalism in the Age of COVID-19: A Collegial Plenitude" (Medievally Speaking, 2020, R. Utz dir.)
Medievalism in the Age of COVID-19: A Collegial Plenitude
Compiled and edited by Richard Utz
Medievally Speaking, May 4, 2020.
Introduction
About four decades ago, when Leslie J. Workman organized the first sessions on the subject of Medievalism at the International Congress on Medieval Studies, few people listened. As a paradigm, Medievalism Studies questioned the prevalent scholarly notion of an unbridgeable chasm between ourselves and the medieval artifacts and subjects we study. Only a scientific and distanced approach to this almost incomprehensibly different era, so scholars of Medieval Studies professed, would yield reliable results. Medievalism was branded as something amateurs, dilettantes, and enthusiasts do.
As I am writing the intro to this collection of news, reflections, reports, shout outs, and vignettes, it is as clear as is the summer sun that the paradigm of Medievalism has helped transform the way we study and engage with the medieval past. By focusing on the humanity of medieval people and their emotions and motivations, and by understanding and embracing our own (sublimated) desire for a deep engagement with the medieval past, we have enriched and humanized our own present as well as the past we investigate, re-present, and reenact. Journals, book series, essay collections, blogs, radio programs, videos, podcasts, and annual conferences attest to an almost omnipresent multimodal rendezvous with the past that investigates and acknowledges the multiple mirrors through time that influence our contemporary scholarly and creative reinventions of the Middle Ages.
Another essential insight medievalism studies has revealed is how scholars, artists, practitioners, and fans all collaborate, albeit often in their own groups and in diverse ways, at increasing what we know about the Middle Ages and its continuities in the present. Appropriately, then, the authors of the short pieces assembled below include not only those who work at (or alongside) educational and research institutions: graduate students, retired faculty, full-time tenure track faculty, contingent faculty, independent scholars, software developer, administrators; but also those in non-academic or academy-adjacent professions: publishers, writers, a medieval coach, a composer, an industry analyst, and a jouster and professional fencing master. The contributors are based around the world, including Australia, Austria, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, France, Hungary, Iceland, Japan, Switzerland, Turkey, the UK, and the USA; and their areas of interest, from the medieval through the contemporary, include Art, Comparative Literature, English, Church History, Cultural Studies, History, Latin, Linguistics, Literature, Media, Music, Political Science, and Philosophy. Because such is the collegial plenitude of Medievalism.
Despite this plenitude, this compilation of more than 40 voices is not meant to be a formal and comprehensive survey of the current state of medievalism studies. However, in the time of COVID-19, when we cannot meet in person during our annual pilgrimages to Kalamazoo or Leeds, where we usually refresh our batteries and learn about our projects, I thought it would be a good idea to share publicly what’s been happening in our field of engagement. I contacted colleagues either because I knew they were working on projects or had presented papers and plenaries at our past conferences and events. I originally imposed word counts, only to abandon them when confronted with a somewhat longer well-wrought urn (well, some contributions were so long that they will be published in full in Medievally Speaking as individual pieces in the near future); I did not edit everyone into one style sheet or variety of English; since not everyone sent me a “title” for their entries, I invented some; I added some links and visuals not originally included by contributors; and I specifically asked about personal as well as professional news, impressions, and messages, which means that readers will learn about a joyous wedding (cum picture) right next to the announcement of a new essay collection. I encouraged this conscious mélange of the personal and professional because, most of all, I wanted this project to offer a collegial sign of hope and continuity in a world that has been too much with us in recent months.
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List of contributors
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News, reflections, reports, shout outs, and vignettes
All we need is … Radio Medieval
Teodora C. Artimon, Publisher, Trivent Publishing, Hungary
What did the Tudors think of Middle English?
David Matthews, English, University of Manchester, UK
Medievalism at the Met
Sylvie Kandé, History & Philosophy, SUNY Old Westbury, USA
Et Nolite Te Buteones Carborundorum, or advice on making it through this mess with your feathers intact from two reprobate gamers )
Brent A. Moberly, Software Developer, Indiana U, USA
Kevin A. Moberly, English, Old Dominion U, USA
Bayeux Zoom
Arwen Taylor, English & World Languages, Arkansas Tech, USA
The Afterlives of Vienna’s Jews
Siegrid Schmidt, Medieval German Literature, Paris Lodron U of Salzburg, Austria
Living the Medieval Podcast
Danièle Cybulskie, Author/Historian/Medieval Coach, www.danielecybulskie.com
The Kilwa Coins: Australia and the ‘Global Medieval’
Louise D’Arcens, English, Macquarie University, Australia
Receiving the German Middle Ages
Mary Boyle, Medieval and Modern Languages, University of Oxford
Medievalism’s relevance, right now
Jonathan Good, History, Reinhardt University, USA
Entrenched stories of ancient national exceptionalism
Matthias Berger, Medieval English Studies, U of Berne, Switzerland
Memory in the age of antihumanism
Dina Khapaeva, Modern Languages, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA
Anglo-Saxonism during a lockdown
Dustin M. Frazier Wood, English & Creative Writing, U of Roehampton, UK
Memories are made of this
Martha Oberle, Retired-Independent Scholar, USA
(Neo)Medieval(ism) reaches out
Kelly Ann Fitzpatrick, Industry Analyst, RedMonk
Medievalism matters both “there” and “back again”
Alexandra Sterling-Hellenbrand, Languages, Literatures, and Cultures, Appalachian State U, USA
What might be our future?
Simon Forde, Director, Arc Humanities Press, Europe
Medievalisms in music and religion
Nils Holger Petersen, Church History, University of Copenhagen, Denmark
Reading communities past and present
Mimi Ensley, Literature, Media, and Communication, Georgia Institute of Technology
Participatory networks
Andrew B.R. Elliott, Media and Cultural Studies, University of Lincoln, UK
Medievalism-ists, meet Joscelyn?
Jenna Mead, English and Literary Studies, University of Western Australia, Australia
Anglo-Saxonism and Englishness
Clare A. Simmons, English, Ohio State University, USA
Hope in the time of COVID-19
Kevin J. Harty, English, Lasalle University
Contingent medievalisms
Ken Mondschein, kenmondschein.com, USA
Medievalism, musealized
Richard Utz, Literature, Media, and Communication, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA
Making research lemonade
Susanne Hafner, German, Fordham University, USA
Making the handbook, on music and medievalism
Kirsten Yri, Music, Wilfrid Laurier University, Canada
The Plague of memeing about hope
Fernando Rochaix, Art, Georgia State University
Vanishing communities of medievalism
Susan Aronstein, English, University of Wyoming, USA
Tison Pugh, English, University of Central Florida, USA
After continuities, continuities
Jan M. Ziolkowski, Medieval Latin & Comparative Literature, Harvard U; Director, Dumbarton Oaks, USA
A Grail in the Philippines
Stephanie Matabang, Comparative Literature, UCLA
Médiévisme v. Médiévalisme
Anne Berthelot, Literatures, Cultures & Languages, University of Connecticut
Medievalism musings
Juanita Feros Ruys
Medievalism lost: A lament for the 2020 season of Texas’s Sherwood Forest Faire
Lorraine Kochanske Stock, English, University of Houston, USA
Learning from literary texts
Ann F. Howey, English, Brock University, Canada
Research continuity in dire times
Luiz Felipe Anchieta Guerra, History & Political Cultures, Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil
My thoughts on medievalism
Yoshiko Seki, Humanities and Social Sciences, Kochi University, Japan
The Middle Ages for Educators
Laura Morreale, Independent Scholar, Washington, DC, USA
Modernités Médiévales
Vincent Ferré, Literature and Humanities, U of Paris-Est Créteil, France
Health and Healing
Huriye Reis, English, Hacettepe University, Turkey
Banal medievalism?
Jan Alexander van Nahl, Icelandic & Comparative Cultural Studies, U of Iceland, Iceland
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When reposting or quoting this compilation, we request you attribute its first place and time of publication: “Medievalism in the Age of COVID-19: A Collegial Plenitude,” comp. & ed. Richard Utz, Medievally Speaking, May 4, 2020.