The newest Viking invasion

North_Sea_map-en.png

In my search for a dissertation topic (starting point: Anglo-Saxon prose), I am increasingly interested in exchanges among Anglo-Saxons and their North Sea neighbors.

I've recently been reading about spaces, places, and history (see my new Reading List page), but I keep being pulled by seafaring and its cultural impact on the region. So I started a new reading list, got on Amazon, and behold, the Vikings came straight to my door:

I stand by my tweet: "when vikings show up at your doorstep, let them in!"

My new line of inquiry comes as one of many in a series of summer novelties. Two different batches of baby birds hatched in our stoop; Drew graduated from law school (summa, 1st in his class, tons of awards); I've engaged in some small projects around the house. 

I also spent two weeks in London with librarians. My favorite firsts include seeing Stonehenge, the Alfred Stone, Oxford University Press, Bath, cave-crepes, and a tenth-century manuscript that I HELD WITH MY OWN TWO HANDS. 

After eleven straight weekends of travel, I was finally able to start my research in earnest. Once I realized that my interests were beginning to shift, I started with Haywood's Dark Age Naval Power and Unger's The Ship in the Medieval Economy, 600-1600.  Chapter 3, "Anglo-Saxon Piracy and the Migrations to Britain" was the most useful of Haywood's chapters to my research. It introduced me to the Litus Saxonicum, a series of Roman coastal defenses along both sides of the channel. 

Litus Saxonicum, Wikimedia Commons

If only I'd picked this book up a few months earlier! I've missed the submission deadline for BABEL's 2014 "On the Coast"meeting in Santa Barbara, but I'm encouraged that shoreline studies are now on the cutting-edge (HA. get it? edge?).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Anglo.Saxon.migration.5th.cen.jpg

Aaaaanyway, after the Romans withdrew from Britain in 410, Saxon raids increased. A note on vocabulary here-- at this point in the story, no one's a Viking yet.

Britons were native to the island; Angles, Saxons, Jutes, and Frisians were invaders. 

According to Haywood, archeological evidence suggests that the Anglo-Saxon settlements came in two waves: "the first began in the early fifth century and was confined mainly to eastern Britain and was confined mainly to eastern Britain between the Humber and the Thames"and the second, spanning the middle of the fifth century and the start of the sixth,  included "Kent and the south coast" as well as "the Midlands from East Anglia" (80).

 Haywood reads in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle that, "the Anglo-Saxons who came to Britain after the mid-fifth century, such as Cerdic in Wessex or Aelle in Sussex, did not arive as either pirates or federates but as seaborne conquerors" (83). If those names seem at all familiar (and you're not a medievalist), that's totally legit. Here's where you've heard them before: Cerdic is portrayed the previously blogged-about King Arthur (left). King Aelle(a) is a character on the TOTALLY AWESOME History Channel series, Vikings (right).

Ok, so, back to the scholarship. After briefly discussing the literary accounts of the 5th century invasions (Gildas, Bede, Gallic Chronicles, Anglo-Saxon Chronicles), Haywood reminds us that the Saxon raiders did not limit themselves to Briton--they raided in Gaul as late as the seventh century (though by now they're starting from Britain as opposed to Saxony). Next he goes through the development of shipbuilding by the Angles and Saxons, showing that "by the second half of the seventh century we can be quite certain that the sail was in everyday use by the Anglo-Saxons" (107).  Note his use of Anglo-Saxon here. By now, this can refer to Angles and Saxons living in Britain. 

You're rightly wondering, "where the ___ are the Vikings in this damn post?" Never fear, readers--they arrive just when you don't expect them [kidding; see below].

The beginning of the Viking Age is marked by most at 789, when Scandinavians came to Portland and were mistakenly identified as merchants by an ill-fated reeve. The reason I included all this background is because in a grossly-over-simplified version of reality, the Vikings did to the Anglo-Saxons what the Angles and Saxons had done to the Britons. Just as Angles and Saxons came to Britain in raiding parties and eventually settled, so the Vikings (mostly Norse and Danish) arrived-- at first as pillagers and then, as we can see from place-names, genealogies, genetics, archaeology, history, laws, and literature, as settlers in increasingly important ports. In case you've fallen into the "meh, I don't really care about that" trap, check out McGlashan's 2003 article about the Vikings' generous beach laws, which I found in a perfectly-timed tweet by Medievalists.net.

Despite Haywood's detailed coverage of pre-Viking shipbuilding, Unger's analysis of shipbuilding technology and its economic impact in his chapter on "Vikings and Byzantines: 750-1000" is surprisingly engaging (and I think better researched). Unger traces the development of vessels within the context of technological, military, and economic changes. He shows us that "[t]he development of the Viking ship was the most important change in European ship design from 750 to 1000"because it  "marked a significant improvement in the ability to move people" (Unger, 80-81). And these people, in turn, went south to Iberia and through the Mediterranean to Alexandria; east to the Black and Caspian Seas; and west to Iceland, Greenland, and Canada. The new Viking ships were stable, deep-seaworthy, and light enough to carry on small stretches of land (82). And how do we know this? Because we still have some. 

You can see a few at Oslo's Viking Ship Museum, whose gift shop boasts such gems as Terry Jones's children's book and slides of the exhibits. SLIDES. 

"Wait, what are these?" And yes, it is THAT cold inside Norwegian museums in December

And the Viking warships weren't their only vessels to reflect and affect social, political, and economic change. Here's my last bit from Unger (for now):

The result of Viking voyages was to extend the realm of northern trade, to promote the full integration of Scandinavia into a northern trading network and to intensify trade within that network. The emergence of Europe about the year 1000 from the difficulties, political and economic, of the preceding 150 years was certainly a result of the end of raids by Vikings in their warships. But t was also a result of the ability of Scandinavians to turn their new type of vessel to commercial advantage. (94)

So you see, Vikings were able to conquer and settle; they drew new boundaries on land and carved new "whale-roads" at sea. Awesome, am I right?

My next book to read (and already the prologue was hard to put down) is Studies in the Medieval Atlantic, whose image I posted yesterday to facebook and Instagram. I hope to include it in a shorter post soon, but I'll leave that for another day when I can give it the attention and space it deserves. 

Until next time, wishing everyone the blessings of newness (and no threats of invasion).

Works cited: 
Haywood, John. Dark Age Naval Power: A Reassessment of Frankish and Anglo-Saxon Seafaring Activity. Routledge, 1999.
Unger, Richard W. The Ship in Medieval Economy 600-1600. London, 1980.

A weekend in England

What a trip! I arrived at Heathrow on the morning of the 5th, making the bus just in time to drop my things at Jesus College

Room with a View

and sit down for the first panel of Oxford and Cambridge International Chronicles Symposium (OCICS).  I was only there for two nights, but the trip was well worth the travel.

About eighty scholars had gathered to share interdisciplinary, and just as importantly, global perspectives on Medieval and Renaissance chronicles. I attended first "Shaping the Past in Twelfth-Century Chronicles" and heard papers on a Danish ruler of England being depicted as a humble pilgrim instead of powerful (and foreign) king, images in John of Worcester's Chronicle creating "a new scientific history while upholding older monastic conventions," and William of Malmesbury's interventions in his sources as attempts to "restore the English and their conquerors."

Henry I's dream, John of Worcester (wikipedia commons)

All three presenters ended up speaking about the transmission and transmutations of their texts and the texts' sources. They all seemed to create matrices of comparison: one author changed this to that for reason a; another changed that to this for reason b, etc. They were all quite interesting but almost laden with evidentiary data, and I began to wonder how much time the authors might have saved if they had a program to help them count and track the changes they discussed. It seems like my map project really will have other applications! 

And yet, I was shocked to see no digital projects. I saw pie graphs and flow charts from historians and literary scholars alike, but none questioned the methodology of counting the words, themes, or images they were tracking. When I shared my surprise to this during breaks, the general consensus was that this was a symposium on chronicles, not digital humanities; there are separate conferences for that. 

Oy.

At this point in my post I should explain what chronicles are; this is, after all, a blog for all readers. But if I learned anything from this conference, it's that chronicles are much harder to define than I expected. Basically, they are early histories. They can be arranged thematically, around the church for example, or chronologically, like most annals. 

But history, to medievals at least, was a much broader field than it is now. 

Presentations on Matthew of Paris, a manuscript belonging to the Norwich prior Simon Bozoun, and instructors to the illustrator of Lambeth Palace Library MS 6 showed just how rich the medieval understanding of history is. Matthew Paris collected, collated, and created genealogical trees, astrological tables, computational calendars, natural science treatises, and even drew an elephant from life:

"Drawn from life" is a very, very rare notation in the Middle Ages (Parker Library)

According to Judith Collard, the images and texts of Matthew of Paris have been studied too often as distinct from one another and without the context he provided them. She convincingly argued that more scholars, like Matthew himself, especially look to the science in his manuscripts as incorporations to, not exceptions in, his works.

Sam Rostad, now a history PhD student at Notre Dame, had a great opportunity when his supervisor at Cambridge recommended he look into a manuscript belonging to the prior of 14th century Norwich. This particular book begins with Higden's Polychronicon-- a history of everything. 

From one version of Higden's Polychronicon (British Library)

The eight works that follow range from historical prefaces to Marco Polo's travels, from History of the East to a commentary on St Augustine.  Yet at closer inspection, this textual gathering is not a miscellany. Bringing together global and regional histories with travel narratives and commentary dedicated more to ancient cultures than to navigation or theology, Bozoun really created a historiography. 

Just as the first panel had mined specific, textual differences among chronicles and their sources, this one examined larger, thematic similarities among different genres of history. Fascinating, no?

This is perhaps a longer, or at least denser, post than usual, so I'll cut it here. Stay tuned for my adventures in an 11th-c church and an update on Peterborough Chronicle scholarship!

Until soon, wishing everyone a week free from jet-lag.

On yard work and criticism

I hope you've all enjoyed the spring! Upon my return from Texas, I went right to work on the house. So far, we're trying to convert our too-formal tv room into a more functional space, exchanging our giant sofa (let me know if you want to buy it-- it's only a year old!) for a smaller sofa and chair in addition to a shared "work station."

Sofa, "Toby," Bryant

Chair, Ottoman, sofa with fabric swatch.

Using peppers and tomatoes I brought home from the farm, I made jalapeno (how do I add a tilde on this damn thing?) salsa per Mike's recipe and it is, frankly, divine. Super spicy, totally fresh, and of course, salt-free.

This stuff will change your life. 

And, per my post title, I've also engaged in some heavy-duty yard work. Behold, the fruits of my manual labor:

We're planning to replace all of the pine straw with fresh pine straw, but need to get rid of all the random plants, weeds, and vines plaguing our front yard. The picture above shows the yard a little over halfway through my marathon. I find raking entirely addictive; I love it because it gets me outside and active. And in the front yard instead of the back, I get a better chance of visiting with my neighbors and getting some sun. All around, a good gig.

But let me not mislead you. I am not, in any way, trying to suggest that I like to garden. That is a completely different thing. I prefer deconstruction: clearing, sorting, discovering. And discover I do! I've found tons of interesting things:

Above: the hatch from "Lost," a random drain, and an unlikely tulip with a pretty treacherous vine as a neighbor. 
I was reminded, as I was scraping away the layers of my yard's many years, that my interest in yard work is not unlike my interest in literature. Don't roll your eyes. You knew this was coming.

Upon introducing myself as a PhD student in English, I usually get the question, "Oh, so you want to write novels?" NO. I don't ever, ever want to write novels. Or publish poetry. Or do any "creative writing" of any kind. I love that other people do it, but it isn't for me. I'm not very creative. My skills match my interests: examining, parsing, discovering. And here's my favorite discovery of the day-- one of two beautiful snakes! This fine lady/handsome man was nearly a foot long:

If you can, zoom in to see its tongue out!

I was startled, of course, and then worried that I might have hurt it in some way. It was extraordinarily slow until I stepped towards it; it then slithered, I hope healthily, away. 

I then thought about what I was doing-- all day I'd seen beetles and ants, a worm here and there. I'd uprooted weeds and pulled back vines. I was definitely affecting a mini-ecosystem (stay with me-- I promise this isn't about to go crazy hippie on you!) But I did really begin to consider myself a custodian, rather than an owner, of my own yard. After all, this is my third raking snake, and that got me thinking about my scholarship as well.

The pieces I work on are very, very old. They have their own birth stories and their own growth stories. They've passed through countless hands, crossed countries, and ended up recopied and now, scanned and on a computer screen. And while authorship is a difficult matter, especially in chronicles whose composition actually spans centuries, I should always be aware that they are someone else's creation. They are bequeathed to me, but never mine. I'm participating in a community of scholarship in the same way that I'm participating in my own little ecosystem. It's exciting and challenging; it's rewarding and productive. Its discoveries are delightful, and I claim those moments of uncovering rather than those of creating. I scrape instead of sow.

Until next time, wishing you a summer full of revelation and, if it's your thing, invention as well. 

Mapping Family Value(s)

Thrilling discovery! There is an open, searchable map for the Domesday Book: http://domesdaymap.co.uk

Of course, this bodes well for my large-scale project, because the Domesday site also incorporates IMAGES OF THE ENTIRE TEXT-- with English annotations to the side.  I'm unspeakably excited about finding this source (which is free, miraculously).

On a professional level, the Domesday Map contextualizes the smaller and larger steps of my own mapping project (in case you missed it)
On a more personal level, the site helps me imagine my family history.
My first documented ancestor is Ralph de la Pommerai, or Pomeroy.  He is recorded in the Domesday Book as lord of Berry [of] Pomeroy, whose castle is pictured right. I've spent countless hours wondering what life might have been like here, even in its original structure, but had very little material with which to work.

Despite having a genealogical book of my father's family, I've never known as much about my 11th century ancestor as I would like (indeed, I'm sure I never will).  I could have known more though, had I bothered to look at the Domesday Book myself:

from domesdaymap.co.uk

And although the wikipedia article is similarly helpful, it of course isn't anything like the entry of Berry Pomeroy on the Domesday Map site: 

domesdaymap.co.uk

It's really fascinating for me to have Ralph Pomeroy's holdings-- human, animal, and land-- seen in this way.  The Berry had 45 villagers, 17 smallholders, and 16 slaves.  Land for 25 ploughlands was worked by 4 lord's teams and 17 men's teams; although a seemingly large population, it paid relatively low tax.  How had Ralph managed that? What was his relationship like with William the Conqueror, who landed him in the first place?  With 560 sheep, how often did he eat mutton?

domesdaymap.co.uk

Clicking on him brought me to a map of all sites associated with his name (even if not the same person, as the disclaimer notes).  I found that his holdings extended beyond that one (now purportedly haunted) castle ruins that I've known about for so long. Not surprisingly, all 136 locations affiliated with Ralph Pomeroy are in Devon.

As excited as I am to find personal, familial fulfillment in this project, I'm perhaps equally enthused by its implications for mapping the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles.  Who knows what someone else might find? What personal or academic impact might my project, even in its smallest version, have on someone else?

And this is exactly my purpose, as I've written about in earlier posts.  There is a problem with medievalists, their sources, their audiences, and accessibility.  Amazingly, this map-- a form perhaps first employed to mark boundaries-- is now breaking them down.

Until soon, fellow revolutionaries.
(speaking of ironic use of "revolutionaries"-- has anyone read the article about the Pope's speech in Cuba's Revolutionary Square?)

Meet my mapping project

Old English chronicles only pretend to care about time; they're really more invested in space. 

I'm currently trying to develop a database and platform with which I can map out the content-- the actual narratives-- of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles. For my Duke class, I will start by mapping invasion sites in the Peterborough Chronicle, one version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle(s).

Google Map and Google Earth allow people to add data to a location (see Wallace's map).  The problem with these platforms is that there's no way for the data to interact.  When I make a map of all the invasion sites mentioned in the Peterborough Chronicle, the information that pops up for each place will be isolated.  There isn't  anything else for me to do with it, like search for "Danes" or "heathens" or "William."

I'm hoping to develop a way to get the text of each entry to interact-- an undertaking which has proven quite difficult to begin.  Once I have time to grow the project and incorporate all sites mentioned in the Peterborough Chronicle, having the right platform and database will allow users to search for things like invasions, fires, deaths or births of kings, miracles, and church construction.  It might also be able to limit searches based on areas or time frames.

From there, if I could get a team of scholars (and a grant) to incorporate each version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, we could see some differences among them more easiy, than say, Thorpe's translation:

Thorough though it is, I find this very hard to follow.  Scholars of the chronicles need new ways to rethink these texts, on their own terms and in communion with each other.

Big picture, my project aims to locate the stories of these histories in a virtual space that will help readers reimagine the past.  

But here's what else I think it could do:

bring chronicles back to the classroom

employ digital media for medieval interests other than paleography and digital collections

reinvigorate the scholarly discussion of chronicles, which confront issues of empire, borderlands, nation-building, kinghsip,warfare, changes in the English language, the study of pre-printing book creation, materiality, and paleography
help us reimagine time as space

I'm excited to attend "Cartography and Creativity in the Age of Global Empires," hosted by Duke's BorderWork(s) Humanities Lab.  Here's the description:

Please join us for this inter-disciplinary workshop, which brings into conversation historians, literary critics, artists, geographers, and the digital and spatial humanities to explore the nexus of mapping, art, and global empire. Our day-long discussion will investigate the consequences of treating maps as “image texts” and also the manner in which modern mapping practices have been engaged by artists across a broad range of image media for understanding the acts of demarcation that have parceled the world into sovereign bounded communities as well as contemporary challenges to these borders, boundaries, and lines of control.

And here's the website: http://sites.duke.edu/borderworks/borderworks-events/workshop/

Hopefully I'll have more to report back soon.  In the meantime (and even after), I'd love to know what you think.

Miscellany and Money

It has been too, too long since my last post.  Some updates:
I'm still mapping
My sisters, husband, brothers-in-law, and I surprised my dad for his 70th birthday in Austin thanks to the mad coordinating skills of my stepmom, Heather

For those of you interested in the intersections between digital and print worlds, here is a link about the "listsicle" of Thomas Nashe, who wrote in the late sixteenth-century on "Eight Kindes of Drunkennes" Listsicle Article

For those curious about how exercise can "change your DNA"-- can you smell the spin?-- check out this little ditty about what we already know: working out is the best thing ever, and people who don't do it are lame. Feeling guilty? You should!


[skip transition] I've noticed-- in news and in recent articles floating about my laptop-- an increased curiosity in changing perceptions of wealth.  For instance, Mitt Romney seems rather unapologetic about his gazillions, and his wife doesn't consider herself wealthy at all (see abc article here). 

Mitt and Ann Romney, image from The Telegraph
ARE THOSE PEARLS REAL?

But according to Michael Dean Crews, The US would not be the first nation to pull extraordinary wealth from the flames of socio-religious condemnation.  In his master's thesis, he examines "the various ways that the perception of bankers and banking in Florence changed from the 13th to the 15th century" within "three categories, scholastic attitude, law, and public image, and utilizes a socio-intellectual style of historical inquiry."  
He continues:

Dante in Florence

"The purpose of this study is to demonstrate that the positive acceptance of banking from a formerly profane vocation was due to a more advanced understanding of industry and economics, a more relativistic interpretation of theological and juridical sources, and an aggressive campaign by the humanists to redefine moral values and to reshape the Florentine culture and urban landscape in order to bring esteem and power to the elite bankers. " The rest of the article is here.

Sounds familiar, no?  Allow me to be clear-- I'm passing no judgment on Romney or the Florentine bankers; I'm only drawing a parallel.  

Yet banking isn't the only arena to benefit from the reworking of wealth's righteousness.  In 2007, John R. Black published an article called "Tradition and Transformation in the Cult of St. Guthlac in Early Medieval England" in The Heroic Age: A Journal of Early Medieval Northwestern Europe.  In it he finds that: "[a]nalysis of the variations introduced into the hagiographic corpus, both textual and iconographic, for a saint’s cult over the course of the medieval era demonstrates the vitality of that corpus, reveals the cultural significance of the variations introduced, and offers insights into (re)conceptualizations of sainthood." 

St Guthlac and Demons, Guthlac Roll (13th century)

Fascinating? Yes. Relevant to this post? Almost.  

Here's the good part: "Such analysis elucidates, for example, the ‘evolution’ of St. Guthlac from ascetic solitary to promoter and defender of a wealthy religious establishment." Article here.

I wonder, then, if the Republican voters, and later, the larger body of American voters, will reorder the narrative of Romney's wealth (if they need to).  What other forms might his money-making take in the public eye?

Until soon, patient readers!

On Onus of Ownership

I've enrolled in Fiona Somerset's "Radical Textualities" at Duke this spring, and I'm thrilled to have an opportunity to get some real manuscript experience!  This week we are reading about variance, censorship, and the "great editions" of multi-layered medieval texts.  In an article resisting the bibliographic obsession of previous Wycliffite scholarship, Somerset writes: "In lollard textual culture's mood of radical variance, every version of a text interpolates, excises, or modifies the content they have in common, or else lifts part of it into a different setting.  Often it is impossible to trace how the work developed, in its remaining copies." She focuses on different kinds of books than others working in lollardy usually have; she therefore appropriately hones in on different modes of book production, "that began in the earliest phase of the [lollard] movement, but persisted when the more organized activity that produced large-scale collaborations in England had come to an end"whose "products are more idiosyncratic and decentralized... [and whose] most common venue of assembly is the personal or household anthology..." which was truly piecemeal.
As most of you know, I've had a hard time pinning down a dissertation topic/genre/century, but I do keep returning to manuscript work.  As most of you can imagine, this presents any scholar with the genuine issue of accessibility.  Although Duke and UNC have great collections, getting to them can be more difficult than first supposed.  I'll come back to the accessibility problem soon.

We spent the first couple of classes hashing out ideas about cutting and pasting, remixing, refiguring, re-apropriating (and no, that's not redundant here) manuscripts, printed books, and digital media.  Where do processes overlap?  What do reworking poetry or biblical exegesis, say, have to do with remixing music or other media?  And how does any of this matter now, and to whom?
A visual break from coolest-gadgets.com, to prevent any rabbit-hole vortex of crushingly deep ponderings on this topic:

Of course, central to these questions of remixing is ownership, which I like to distinguish from authorship.  Somerset articulates resistance to a bibliographic impulse in literary studies that coincides with a lesson I taught last week.  I assigned Hegel to my freshmen (muah-ha-ha) to get them into an appropriate mindset about the nature of the course.  I intentionally left off the title and the author so they wouldn't just say "hey, this is boring/difficult/whatever-- I'll just Google it."  Some of them, I found, had pasted in parts of the passage in order to identify the author, and we had an open conversation about this urge to know about the author in order to feel equipped to read the work.  Incidentally, this was the same day as the Wikipedia blackout-- a coincidence whose coolness was sadly lost on some of them.  

Nevertheless, it seems that authorship is visiting some sort of vengeance upon me for all those papers I wrote that "killed the author."  In a time when so much information is free, freely edited, and freely exchanged across different media, what does it mean to be an author, a commentator, a cut-and-paster, a plagiarist?  Authorship isn't always ownership, and that could create great demands on all the other stewards of texts.  What do we owe to audience?  To the text's author? And how much do economic elements of textual production affect its "authenticity" or reliability?  What does the author owe the rest of us?  How influential is money-making to text-making, and why?

Moreover, what are we to make of our transition from this:

No CTRL + C here.

to this?

Inquisitr.com

Is free and full access even conceivable?  At what cost? 

How do we move between prosperity of resources nearly impossible to find (or even to know exist) in our world's best libraries and responsible, equitable accessibility?

Bodleian curator, looking far too cool to let us see this book from the Mary Shelley exhibit.   

Could it be that those Stanford professors have it right after all?

The Art (s and Crafts) and Science of Facial Recognition

Woo-hoo! It's almost Halloween, one of my favorite holidays.  Per a long-time, long-distance tradition with my mother, my first move was to sit "the family" down to watch Tim Burton's strange and inspiring The Nightmare Before Christmas.

Disney (Touchstone), 1993

I've found no better way to get in the goblins, ghosts, and ghouls mood than watching this movie.  To my horror, it was Drew's first time to watch it all the way through; he nevertheless found a noble way of commemorating its important place in our newly married tradition.

Disney.com

 

Impressive, no?

And Drew's not the only skilled at recognizing and rendering graphics across disparate media. 

(How's that for a segue!)  According to this article in LiveScience, Tel Aviv university is using computer software "based on facial recognition technology" to recognize-- and importantly, reunite-- "hundreds of thousands of fragments from medieval religious scrolls that are scattered across the globe" (Pappas).  Evidently, the program can distinguish handwriting, spacing, and even peculiar properties of the pages themselves.  

This new software isn't just for people who love old and dusty esoterica for ancientness' sake.  The Cairo Genizah (storage room for Jewish holy texts), for instance, "contains merchant's lists, divorce documents, and even personal letters" which will give scholars "a firsthand look at hundreds of years of history in the Middle East."  Indeed, scholars are even trying to use this technology to study the Dead Sea Scrolls, shown above.  For those interested, here is a LiveScience article about the Dead Sea Scrolls' digitization.

Well, that's all for now.  Until next time, stay ever-watchful; there's no telling what you might piece together.

Let's do this thing

I'm determined to make this blog work.  Here we go again.

The semester has begun, and I'm on UNC, but not Duke, fall break.  At least I have Friday off!

Some non-academic highlights of the semester:
trying to get involved with Second Chance Pet Adoptions
helping pups get adopted through Middle Mutts (love-out to Nicole Fisk!)
chatting with Brianna about dresses
an amazing weekend in the mountains with Emily, etc.
planning a trip to DC (now postponed until December)
celebrating Tabitha's first birthday with best sister-in-law of ALL time and Drew
started allergy shots-- in a year my eyes might not be puffy all the time!

Teaching this semester has been rough, not least because my class starts at 8am.  And we all know how much of a morning person I'm not.  But I've also tried a lot of new things which have proven less productive than I'd hoped, like my visual analysis of comic books unit.

William Morrow Paperbacks, 1994

I had expected the rhetoric of news unit, which we're in the middle of right now, to be better than it is, but it's an improvement for sure.  Also, we've had our first round of conferences and I always feel like I have a little better grasp on things once I speak to everyone face-to-face.
Sadly, some of my students have had some serious issues, whether personal or physical, and that's been hard to keep track of.  Nevertheless, they are all great, great kids who are tolerating this class admirably.

M Nagle, New York Times

I've really enjoyed my 17th century class at UNC, which is a total shock.  We started with Donne, who usually drives me crazy.  But somehow he was different this time, and that is no doubt due to Dr Barbour's teaching. Un-freakin-believable, this guy.  I could listen (and watch-- his lectures are highly dramatic) to him talk about anything.  He's electric. Even our meetings are awesome.  He is the most thoroughly engaged, inspiring professor I've ever had, and has done more than accommodate me in a class that's so many centuries ahead of my own interests.  I'm totally, totally stoked that he'll be on my minor committee!

The Duke class is challenging, which I love.  Dr Aers leaves it all to us-- here's a recommended reading list, do what you will-- and there's a lot to be said for that kind of self-starting scholarship.  The seminar has warmed up a bit, though it's still a bit awkward at times.  The biggest perk so far is that my new hero, Michael Cornett, gave a presentation on ALL the English (or Latin, written in England) confessions.  I emailed him to follow up and the man replied by sending me his entire nearly 900-page dissertation.  At this point in my career, every book I want to buy is close to $300, so getting his unpublished but invaluable research over my computer rocked my life.  He just sent me this damn thing, and then recommended a seminar paper topic!  Here's the real closer, though.  He scanned a 16th century confession manuscript that follows quite closely an 8th century confessional prayer by Alcuin.  He sent me the images and I'm transcribing it now.

Speaking of book accessibility, I received my Kindle (and its burnt-orange cover) and am loving it!
More details on what I'm reading, how I'm cleaning up a massive, massive pen leak (courtesy of Tabitha) on two carpets, and how we're spending the weekend to come.