Morning Medieval Miscellany

Today is the last day of the school year for my children. Pray for me. After praying, here are some things you should be reading:

• The Anglo-Saxon Narrative Poetry Project has a bit from Juliana (ll. 105-47)
• Gearwor has lines 260-320 of Beowulf, in Old English.
• Jonathan Jarrett has forgotten more about ancient and medieval coins than I'll ever know.
• Getting Medieval has her new book cover, with an image I think might end of being the wallpaper for many a female medievalists computer. Why is Crispin so absent-mindedly stabbing the ground?
• Hammered Out Bits discusses the Norse in Canada.
• Wombat's World discusses branding oneself as a medievalist, and she has a riddle, too.
• The Heroic Age has an update with some CfPs and such.
• A Stitch in Time has an image of a 14th-century burial garment.
• Heroic Dreams asks for help identifying another medieval castle.
• Steven Till discusses Google tools for exploring medieval history.
• Eileen Joy posts her paper, "The Light of Her Face Was the Voluptuous Index of a Multiplicity of Guthlacs: Desire, Friendship, and Incest in the Lives of Saint Guthlac." h/t In the Middle.
• Steven Hart talks about Simon Armitage's documentary of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.
• Japes for Owre Tymes has a post on Archie and one on Blondie.
• Old Norse News points us to an Old Norse course at the University of Limerick.
• News for Medievalists announces that the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies at UCLA is holding a conference this week on “Mapping Medieval Geographies: Cartography and Geographical Thought in the Latin West and Beyond, 300-1600.”
• Isis at Medieval Silkwork announces that her thesis is finished, and hints at possible English-language publication.

Also, a new medieval blog, Ruff Notes, has made its maiden post. Update blogrolls and RSS feeds accordingly.

How I Single-Handedly Ruined a Scholarly Publication

I ran into Roy Liuzza at the Kalamazoo Congress, and he told me that the Old English Newsletter had some difficult editorial decisions to make regarding my article "Beowulf: Prince of the Geats, Nazis, and Odinists."

The problem they grappled with was how to deal with the various racial epithets in the article. Should the OEN give them voice? Should the OEN bowdlerize them? I myself had given various public presentations of the material, some of which carefully removed offensive material, and others of which smacked the audience in the face with it -- in my mind, it all depends on the audience.

In the end, OEN decided to split the difference. The online version essentially "bleeps out" the terms with asterisks, so you find things like: "beowulf_a filthy N****R???" The paper version of the same article, which I got in the mail yesterday, leaves everything intact.

It seems to me a good compromise. An online publication is the sum of its links, and to include racial epithets in the online version might have affected the electronic profile of the OEN, at least as far as search engines are concerned. The changes are not misleading; I'm guessing any native speaker of English with an elementary school education can figure out what the original said.

As scholars, though, we take the truth to where it leads, even when those places are dark and drear. I'm glad for the paper version, because it takes us to those places without relief. As someone who spent many, many hours trudging through Nazi and Odinist e-mails and websites, I can promise you the article offers only a small taste of what is out there.

So, for those of you who were shocked to get your Old English Newsletter in the mail and find that content, I'm the one who put it there, and for that I offer no apology.

Morning Medieval Miscellany

On this Tuesday, the day of the bellicose god Tyr:

• Notorious PhD asks for help figuring out some manuscript images.
• Archaeology in Europe has an update with about twenty items.
• Carmen Butcher has an article over at Christianity Today on Ælfric of Eynsham.
• A Corner of Tenth Century Europe has a response to “Social Change (and Complexity) in Early Medieval Rome, 700-1000″.
• Dame Eleanor Hull discusses the difference between translation and paraphrase.
• Heroic Dreams has more information on some mysterious halberd heads.
• Japes for Owre Tymes has several new posts, including one on how medieval Ziggy is.
• Lingwe discusses a review of The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún, and Steven Hart discusses the book as a glimpse of Tolkien the scholar.
• The Medieval Garden Enclosed features the cuckoo-pint.
• Waco, TX has a Leonardo di Vinci exhibit. h/t Medieval Material Culture Blog.
• Modern Medieval discusses Newt Gingrich's statement that part of him is "inherently medieval."
• Mony Wylsum Way discusses Latin learning (or the lack thereof) in the Middle Ages.
• News for Medievalists has an update with about a half-dozen new posts.
• Per Omnia Saecula has the cover image for the video George and the Dragon. Oh, Patrick Swayze, why do you mock me so?!
• Quid Plura has an image of the Camelot subdivision of Annandale, complete with street names.
• Steven Till features the medieval castle Dunamase.
• Studies of Popular Culture and the Middle Ages has two medieval Dom DeLuise clips, and a listing of SciFi channel's upcoming medieval offerings. I'm glad to see Joan of Arcadia there -- I only saw one episode and really liked it.
• I have to confess, I have no idea what this post says in Medievaltime, but the word "medieval" comes up, so I assume it will be relevant to those who can read it.
• Breathe Where You Will posts his presentation, "Pride and the Single Guy: Creating Hermitic Identity."

Geoffrey Chaucer's Ghost Offers Parenting Advice on The Simpsons

RIP: Jo Ann McNamara

A few posts on the passing of medieval scholar Jo Ann McNamara.

• Blogenspiel
• Per Omnia Saecula
• U of Penn Press
• Her books on Amazon

Breathe Where You Will

Here's a new medievalist blog: Breathe Where You Will. Update your blogrolls and RSS feeds accordingly.

Trebuchet Bleg

My Cub Scout pack has a Scout-o-rama coming up next March, and since we have a medieval lit prof, a medieval history prof, and two engineers among the fathers, we are strongly considering building a trebuchet as a pack.

Does anyone out there know where we might find a suitable design for a trebuchet? We definitely want something that's a real father-son project, so a design that's too complicated for elementary school boys is not a problem, just so long as it can be broken up into managable pieces.

Also, it's important that the trebuchet be able to launch sometime ostentatious. One that can only lob golf balls or baseballs is too small -- but one that can launch a melon across a field and splatter it on (or near) a target is just the kind of thing elementary school boys can get excited about.

Let other packs demonstrate wildlife conservation or how to build rope bridges. We'll be demonstrating how to crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentation of their women!

A typical Pack 41 den meeting

Morning Medieval Miscellany

A short Miscellany on this, the feast day of St. Barrfoin, who is notable as a friend of Columba and Brendan, and also for having the word "barf" in his name.

• The Heroic Age has a page of links to recent news stories.
• Japes for Owre Tymes examines Overboard as a vision of Hell.
• Lingwe has more information on Tolkien's translation of the Book of Jonah.
• Medieval Material Culture Blog points us to an exhibition of the Middle Ages in miniatures, in Bonn.

Morning Medieval Miscellany

On this Woden's Day:

• Over at Medieval Silkwork, Isis has posted her abstract for her thesis on frills.
• Vaulting and Vellum discusses a modern occurance of medieval superstition involving twins.
• Katrin from A Stitch in Time is seeking advice on the cover of her book.
• Apparently Henry VIII had, among other things, an "unfeasibly large armoured codpiece." h/t Scribal Terror.
• Per Omnia Saecula discusses the new book Arabs and Normans in Sicily and South of Italy.
• News for Medievalists has an update.
• Linda McCabe reviews Mother of the Believers.
• Medieval Material Culture Blog points us to exhibits at Ecouen and Cluny.
• Lingwe discusses teaching Tolkien and JRRT's translation of a French translation of the Book of Jonah.
• Julie K. Rose tells us what rogation days are.
• Deogolwulf has a quote from Chesterton including this gem: "Medieval people never worried about being medieval; and modern people do worry horribly about being modern."
• Japes for Owre Tymes discusses the Roman de la Crock.
• Over at In the Middle, Eileen Joy continues the discussion of a K'zoo panel, and JJ Cohen discusses facts about Sir Gawain learned at the knee of Larry Benson.
• Hammered Out Bits discusses the implausibility (or at least inadvisability) of quenching a sword in a slave, or for that matter anyone else.
• Got Medieval has marginalia about lions rather than monkeys.
• A Viking ship has been found in a Swedish lake. h/t The Cranky Professor.
• A Corner of Tenth Century Europe discusses community organizing* in Kent, and the Case of the Disappearing Abbot.
• Archaeology in Europe points us to an effort to make Wearmouth-Jarrow (the Venerable Bede's old stomping grounds) a World Heritage Site.

And, in my favorite post of the day, Dame Eleanor Hull advises on discretion and propriety in conducting a liaison at the Kalamazoo Congress. Alas, I am inexperienced in this area, though I suppose there is always 2010.

*Insert Barack Obama joke here. I'm too lazy to think one up.

Mony Wylsum Way

The URL for the blog Mony Wylsum Way looks awfully familiar, but it's not on my blogroll or RSS feed, so I'm going to call it a new medieval blog (though it's been around for almost a year) and add it to my list immediately.

Lions Devour Crusaders (metaphorically)

Eastern Nazarene College has changed its mascot from the "Crusaders" to the "Lions" because of "the atrocities of the medieval Crusaders."

Like the Christian Children's Fund (now ChildFund International), they might consider dropping all references to Christianity, and change their name to Eastern College. Or maybe "Eastern" too could be falsely perceived as a veiled orientalist reference, and they could just change their name to "College" and call their sports teams "The Collegians."

Seriously (momentarily abandoning snark), the Lions? As long as they were bowing to popular perceptions, couldn't they at least have picked an animal less commonly associated with eating Christians?

If Robin Hood Were a Somali Pirate...

... then apparently his name would be Ahmed Yusuf ... or at least, that's what his lawyer says.

Morning Medieval Miscellany

On this Monday:

• For those in the UK, the drama 1066 is running on Channel 4 tonight. h/t Stuart Lee via AnSaxNet.
• Got Medieval has a report on the video game Dante's Inferno, and a t-shirt of medieval bear folklore.
• Speaking of bears, Japes for Owre Tymes has a post on the bear's son tale in Family Circus.
• Heavenfield reminds us of the 2009 Jarrow lecture, “Rex Doctissimus: Bede and King Aldfrith of Northumbria," 7PM Friday night.
• Heroic Dreams has medieval castles of Japan, and a post on the similarity between the legends of Tametomo and Beowulf.
• Mulberger has a post on 1976 Robin and Marian as the middle-aged Middle Ages.
• Jennifer Lynn Jordan has a review of Angels & Demons. We offer her both our thanks and our condolances.
• In answer to my prayers, Peter Dinklage has been cast in Game of Thrones! h/t PoliSciFi (I wonder if he'll change it to PolySyFy?)
• Quid Plura discusses Margaret Gelling's obituary as an argument for studying Old English.
• Dr. Virago discusses teaching Chaucer, by which she means teaching students about Chaucer, not having Chaucer as a student.
• The medieval history term of the week is gambeson.
• Wraetlic has a report on K'zoo and a response to some of the discussions.
• Magistra et Mater has a post on how common gay monks were or were not.

Enjoy!

Contagions on the Plague

On the brand-spanking new blog Contagions, Michelle Ziegler's inaugural post is on the plague.

Please note that I'm posting this less than two hours after the blog's inception. Am I good or what?

Morning Medieval Miscellany

I've got Cub Scout camp, so tomorrow there will likely be no MMM. Until then:

• The Anglo-Saxon Narrative Poetry Project comes back to life with some lines from Juliana.
• Archaeology in Europe has an update, with a few medieval items sprinkled among the classical.
• A Corner of Tenth Century Europe has a post on medieval Latin on the internet.
• Wombat's World has a K'zoo round-up.
• Muhlberger discusses The Masculine Self in Late Medieval England.
• Medieval News has a list of links to reviews of new medieval books.
• The Medieval Garden Enclosed has a post on the lily of the valley.
• Medieval Material Culture Blog has details of two exhibits.
• Per Omnia Saecula has a post on Terry Gilliam and Don Quixote.
• StevenTill has Google maps of medieval castles, cathedrals, and abbeys. Now, why didn't anyone think of such a simple and cool post before?
• Eileen Joy asks for help choosing cover art for postmedieval. I really, really prefer the second one because it is both a more attractive color, and it capitalizes Postmedieval.
• Heroic Dreams has a clay castle and an office supply trebuchet.
• The Heroic Age has some links and a CfP for the New College Conference on Medieval and Renaissance Studies.
• Japes for Owre Tymes has a post on a Marvin strip I don't really understand. I assume it is supposed to be funny, but I can't quite get it.
• The WSJ discusses Nascar as an update of the medieval joust. I'm not 100% convinced, but am moreso than Paul Freedman. I think his objection is pretty much refuted by the existence of boat jousting.

That's it for now. Below you'll find my interview with Medievalists.net. Boy, do I look dorky sitting on that table and waving my hands in the same motion over and over.

Morning Medieval Miscellany

A few items for you this morning:

• Getting Medieval comments on this article comparing today's credit woes with those of Edward I.
• A bit more Kalamazoo over at Age of Perfection, as well as Per Omnia Saecula.
• Things Professor Drout Said, Spring 2009.
• Anthromama discusses Modern English in Old Norse meter.
• Steven Till has an interview with Florian Stone Wells, news on a "Song of Ice and Fire" video game, and a post on the Battle of Lewes.
• A Corner of Tenth Century Europe discusses Anglo-Saxon holdings at museums.
• Old Norse News announces that Islandica will now be available online.
• News for Medievalists has an update with several new articles.
• Haligweorc has a post on early medieval monastic libraries.
• Japes for Owre Tymes has a Middle English B.C., and a Marmaduke.
• Lingwe has the contents of Tolkien Studies 6.
• The Naked Philologist argues that Chretien de Troyes is better than modern fantasy in general.

Well, there's much more, but I'm running late, so this will have to tide you over until next time.

Nolan Hatcher, RIP

Though the Wordhoard is generally exclusively for medieval content, I could not let this go unremarked.

Nolan Hatcher, a retired professor from Troy University, passed away yesterday. He was the kind of man we should strive to be: philanthropist, scholar, pillar of the community.

I first met Dr. Hatcher my first year here at Troy, about a decade-and-a-half after his "retirement." For Dr. Hatcher, retirement simply meant he wasn't teaching courses any more. He continued to be involved with the University, particularly international students. Even though most have never heard of him, every international student at Troy University owes Dr. Hatcher a debt of gratitude. It was he who made certain that community leaders were connected with the international students, sometimes by giving int'l student leaders a venue at the Rotary Club to talk about their experiences here, and sometimes by prodding local business leaders into supporting the students in their fundraising.

I don't know if I could tell you the name of another Troy professor who retired 20 years ago, but Nolan Hatcher I knew. He understood that being a professor was an avocation as well as a vocation. I admired him, and our community is diminished by his loss even as we are inspired by his example.

Vaulting and Vellum

Here's a previously-overlooked medieval blog: Vaulting and Vellum. Apparently I met these folks at K'zoo without knowing it. Hope I was charming.

K'zoo Thoughts

Twice in recent years I've been forced to sprint through the International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, including this year. If my schedule allows, I'm making a concerted effort next year to spend three days there.

For the non-academics out there, the Congress is the Big Show for medieval studies on this side of the Atlantic, and I would argue is still dominant over the other Big Show (called the International Medieval Congress) in Leeds, England. Because the two names are so annoyingly similar, for short-hand they are usually called "Kalamazoo" (or "K'zoo") and "Leeds."

Since my sojourn there was so brief, I expected to have little to say about K'zoo this year. As always, I went to various sessions, with papers ranging from the boring-but-important, to the interesting-but-unimportant, as well as the elusive fascinating-and-important, and the dreaded boring-and-stupid. Bilbo's pizzaria might have moved, but it remains the favored watering hole. As usual, I saw grad students make their first forays into the field, I saw seasoned academics cultivating their protoges, and I saw the solid old scholars of the legendary past greeting their old friends as if they were all still in graduate school. If you could see K'zoo from on high, you could trace out the typical career path of a medieval scholar from generation to generation.

Some things, though, are clearly changing. For example, the K'zoo Congress had much more in the way of "poster sessions" (though that's a misnomer from the pre-PowerPoint past, since nearly everything was on a screen) than we've seen in the past, including a lot of work that is difficult to present in the 20-minute lecture style of the humanities. For example, Michael Drout showed his lexomics project at one of the poster sessions, and I confess I had previously misunderstood it; the demonstration at the poster session was a much more effective means of showing off his work.

The poster sessions were also part of a greater tolerance for the study of history through re-creation. I had a discussion with an SCAer about how the SCA had been booted from the Congress years ago, but now was finding its way back in -- largely because both the SCA and the Congress have grown to have their own identities. Even ten years ago scholars involved in the SCA or similar medieval recreation groups tended to keep their associations low-key; today we see that nexus point between the scholarly and the popular celebrated.

Blogging, too, has changed, as JJ Cohen discusses over at In the Middle. This year marked the end of the "Weblogs and the Academy" sessions, in the end killed by the academic respectability of it all. I had a too-short discussion about this with Another Damned Medievalist, who was at the annual blogger get-together. She reminded me about the very first get-together, and how it was fraught with anxiety over pseudonymous bloggers. Some people were afraid to come and be outed, and we went with the early-morning meeting primarily because no one else would be crazy enough to be awake at that time. In those days, except for Drout and me, very few medievalists were blogging in their own names.

The days of Ivan Tribble, when it looked like blogging could be a career-killer, seem like ancient history. I used to run through my blogroll every morning in about 20 minutes -- now, I have to do the Morning Medieval Miscellany as a service to the field. As one person confided to me, "When you didn't have a computer and couldn't do the Miscellanies, my traffic got so low I quit blogging for a while." Today, who could consider himself a legitimate scholar if not at least aware of what's happening on the various listservs, blogs, and static websites?

Naturally, the field is always slowly shifting around; for example, one old lion of the field told me that when he was in graduate school, he was considered a radical for writing a dissertation on prose rather than poetry. What is different today is that the media of legitimate scholarship is changing. Once upon a time, places like the Wordhoard were considered at most a salon, but today they seem to be approaching a new form of legitimate publication.

These changes are both terrifying and exhilarating. On the one hand, I wouldn't want some smart-aleck comment I've made about a high school video version of Beowulf being considered a publication on par with my manuscript research, or my work on popular reception of the medieval. On the other hand, the quickening pace of the field is invigorating, when in some cases you get articles published in months rather than years, and feedback is almost immediate.

If you've never been, join us at Kalamazoo next year, where, God willing, I'll still be enjoying the ride.

Thanks to Karma and Rivkah!

One more time I want to thank Karma from Slouching Towards Extimacy and Rivkah from Medieval Manuscripts Online for helping to pick up the slack on the Wordhoard while I was sans good computer access. Karma, why didn't I manage to see you at K'zoo?

Morning Medieval Miscellany

Believe it or not, there have been a few non-K'zoo items in the medieval world of late. OK, there have been quite a few, but I wasn't able to keep up, so here are some from the last day or so.

• Jonathan Jarrett has some beautiful images from the Anglo-Saxon Art in the Round exhibit.
• Got Medieval has a rabbit poking an ape's butt while its head is in a dragon's mouth. The ape's head I mean, not the rabbit's -- that would just be silly.
• Hammered Out Bits discusses a viking sword being made by Jake Powning.
• Heroic Dreams shows a model of Himeji Castle.
• Quid Plura discusses Tolkien & Wagner in Sigurd & Gudrun.

This discussion of "Blogging in the Academy" in The Valve isn't at all medieval, but I may be disucssing the issue here soon.

Blogging K'zoo '09 Round-up III

The third (and probably final) round-up of posts from the 44th International Congress on Medieval Studies.

• Studies of Popular Culture and the Middle Ages
• Owlfish
• Dr. Virago
• Purring Prophecy
• Medievalists.net (and also their interview with Lisa Carnell)
• Papa's Secret Voodoo Boot
• Lost in Transcription
• In the Middle
• Humanities Reseacher
• Heavenfield
• Haligweorc
• Geoffrey Chaucer Hath a Blog
• Blogenspiel
• Notorious PhD

You can find Round-up I here and Round-up II here. You can find my own K'zoo post above after I've gotten around to writing it now that I'm home!

Blogging K'zoo '09 Round-Up II

Here are some more K'zoo posts:

• Caught in the Snide
• S. Worthen, Owlfish (that's two different posts)
• Got Medieval (written by Carl Puuuuuurdum)
• Heavenfield
• In the Middle
• Dame Eleanor Hull
• News for Medievalists

I can't believe I'm missing the dance right now. I'll bet all the ladies are disappointed...

Blogging K'zoo '09 Round-Up

Since I had to take off from the International Congress of Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo, I'll be keeping up by reading what others are saying. Here's a round-up so far:

• Notorious Ph.D.
• Medievalists.net
• Another Damned Medievalist
• Geoffrey Chaucer Hath a Blog
• Studies of Popular Culture and the Middle Ages (a weather update)
• Papa's Secret Voodoo Boot
• Owlfish
• Slouching Towards Extimacy
• Wormtalk and Slugspeak

I know it doesn't look like much NOW, but most people are still in the thick of it, and haven't had a chance to blog -- plus I left off irrelevant stuff, like announcements of parties and sessions that have already happened at this point, picture of the Tiny Shriner, etc.

I'm not staying at my own home, but I'll continue to post round-ups as long as I have reliable internet access.

Medieval Astronomy

In what is likely my last post before heading off to the Kalamazoo Congress, I give you MS Library of Melk Abbey, Frag. 229, which shows Magister Wolfgang de Styria's lecture notes on astronomy.

K'zoo Nokes Sightings

For those who would like to catch a glimpse of the elusive Nokes in the wilderness of Michigan:

Thursday, 3:30
Schneider 1140
Session 137, Neomedievalist Communities
"Beowulf: Prince of the Geats, Nazis, and Odinists"

... and another opportunity at:

Friday, 3:30
Schneider 1140
Session 345, Teaching the Medieval World with Popular Culture (A
Roundtable)

Unfortunately, because of non-academic issues in my schedule, I doubt I'll be at the conference on Saturday, and I doubt I'll even be able to get a room for Thursday night, so I may not be in Kalamazoo much at all. Catch as catch can this year, I'm afraid.

Science Fair Trebuchet

Students at the Charles Henderson Middle School in Troy, Alabama built a working trebuchet for their science fair project, along with a poster discussing the history of the weapons.

From left to right: Robert Salmon, Jude Taylor, and Preston Rhodes.

Pretty cool, eh? A teacher asked them what they planned to do with it, and they said they didn't know. If I had a place to put it, I'd buy it off them and use it to besiege my enemies.