New Page!

Hi again, readers--

I've decided to add other pages to this site. The first, "Academic Sources," shares websites, articles, and apps about digital humanities, medieval manuscripts, and more.

I'll be adding to it as the year goes on, so check in on it every now and then.

To come:
1) the "Suburban Sources" page-- probably about low sodium food and dogs
2) a TimeGlider timeline I've been working on for exams
3) a translation website in the works for an Old English class

Also check out the new sites on my new blog roll-- they're all pretty amazing.

Until next time, wishing everyone a productive winter!

A manifesto

I've recently contributed to HASTAC'S Future of Higher Education Forum, "inspired by a recent workshop called Rethinking Humanities Graduate Education, which was organized by the Scholarly Communication Institute (SCI) and the Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes (CHCI)" (hastac.org).

We were asked, 

"If you could change one component about your own academic program, what would it be, and why?"  

You can bet your next holiday Starbucks drink that I was (and have been for some time) quite ready to answer. 

via Debra Rae Cohen

Here's a brief run-down of my experiences, disappointments, and minor miracles over the past few years. At the end you'll find my mini-manifesto on graduate education. 

What do you think? What would you change? I open these questions to those within and outside of academia because I think it's an important question to raise about one's professional development track, no matter what the profession is. 

Answer: coursework/exams

I  had a great two years in my master's program, but found my PhD program difficult from the very start. I've spent the past two and a half years taking courses of no interest to me or relation to what I'd like to study. Perhaps I should have spent that time trying to publish something that didn't matter to my future work, but frankly I was so disheartened that I spent most of my energy just convincing myself to stay in the program. With little faculty support and a massive, hard-to-navigate administration (who three years later still has my last name wrong), I passed these years in social and academic isolation. 

If the emotional toll that this system has on us is extraordinary, the anxiety is made even more accute by the exam process.

I don't mind that PhD exams exist, of course. But I do mind that I'm responsible for the equivalent of 2 years of coursework in material that I've had to read on my own, outside of my classes. If courses don't matter to my exams,  I shouldn't have had to take them-- or not four semesters' worth, anyway. And now that I'm interested in pursuing digital humanities, I feel that I've run out of time to commit to classes on programming or other interdiciplinary integrations to my field.

The members of my exam committee have been extraordinarilly understanding about my situation, and I'm quite grateful for their support. Still, in a conversation about funding by, support in, and general funcitonality of higher education, my case illustrates the too-frequently ignored example of an outdated system that costs the university money and the students time-- time that is especially precious to those who want to have families, and whose biological clock seems occasionally at odds with our professional plans.

I am not as productive (and by that I mean as published) as those who had the luxury of faculty support during their coursework years. Indeed, of the three medievalists in my cohort, I'm the only one who made it through to the exam stage. And now that I'm here, and now that I have a bit of support, I wonder if it will all be worth it in the end, given what so many people in the third year of their PhDs have already accomplished.

This is not a situation unique to my program or even my school. There needs to be a re-evaluation of what's expected from PhDs and a re-assesment of how programs can position us to be successful-- within and outside of our programs.

I call for a radical streamlining that promotes faculty-student interaction and mentorship, interdisciplinary graduate courses, and a plan of study tailored to students' scholarly interests and professional goals. Such a system would be inherently and necessarily transparent; it would reduce administrative red tape and demystify the process of applying for fellowships or assistantships. This new system would require and reward mentorship by making it easier for students to participate in professors' research or teaching. By inspiring and fostering collaboration, this system would make candidates and professors more productive and more valuable. 

Most importantly, a new system would help students spend less but better time in their programs. 

Until next time, stay radical, readers.

Fly to Faustus!

A short and urgent post, kind readers.

I'll begin by recalling the inscription that appears on Faustus's arm after he signs away his soul: "Oh man, fly." 

Faustus wonders "whither" and even if he can fly, but you shouldn't have to suffer from the same directional despair. 

I know exactly where you should go: the movies.

http://www.screenvision.com/cinema-events/doctor-faustus/

I've JUST THIS SECOND returned from seeing the Globe's production of Dr Faustus on screen. That's right, The Globe. 

On Screen.

Dr Faustus is one of my favorite plays to read, but seeing it (especially with a friend who studies Early Modern drama) has sent me over the moon.

Some points of extraordinary awesomeness:

- Mephistopheles: portrayed differently from how I read him, but the actor is so compelling, so moving, so authentic, even, that I found myself nearly overcome by his performance. 

-Robin: I usually skim the comic interludes, but the actor who plays Robin is simply brilliant. 

-costumes: right for the stage of the Globe, the costumes are period-appropriate with the perfect amount of contemporary ingenuity. 

-props: fantastic-- a couple of elementary magic tricks, a few trap doors, and some damn-near-War-Horse puppets take advantage of the setting without getting carried away. (nb: COOLEST DRAGONS EVER).

-it's the feckin' GLOBE, yet the director for the screen is as gifted as that for the stage. This was no "stick a tripod in the corner" production. The camera gives great balance between zooming in and letting us see the stage as a whole; watching it on screen didn't feel inorganic or forced.

The next **and only other** showings seem to be on November 13. 

You can look for screenings in your area here:

http://www.screenvision.com/cinema-events/doctor-faustus/

Until next time, readers, may you fly closer to the theater than to the sun. 

Feedburner is a piece

Dear readers,
To those of you who subscribe to this blog, thanks and apologies are in order.
First, thanks for following. I can't tell who you are, but I'm glad you're out there.
Second, sorry for the fake-out this weekend. Apparently some of you received that really sad post I wrote a year ago.
Feedburner won't give me any data whatsoever, and I can't figure out how or why it sent that out again.
In any event, hope it won't happen again!
-R.

On our choices

Mother Sawyer and her devil/dog. 

Reading Arthur F Kinney's introduction to sixteenth-century The Witch of Edmonton I came across the following line:
"There was inherent in communities like Edmonton a necessity for witches."
A necessity for witches.

Whoa.

But why did communities need witches, and why did the witches comply?

Evidently, in the early sixteenth century about 80% of England's population was rural. The manorial system was breaking down, so poverty increased, leading to more desperate times and of course, more desperate measures. When cattle died or crops failed, there needed to be a scapegoat. And what better scapegoat than one who doesn't fit in-- what Kinney calls "unassimilable women"?

This reminded me instantly of the symposium I recently attended at Duke: "Thinking through Death: Corpses and Mortality Strategies in Medieval and Early Modern Europe" [check my twitterfeed for Oct 19]. At the symposium, Diana Presciuti gave a presentation on fifteenth-century Italian paintings of a saint who reassembled and revived a victim of maternal infanticide. Each image illustrated that patriarchal anxieties about infanticide and cannibalism were at once "utterly alien but uncomfortably close to home" for men who feared even the most domestic women. To men frightened by women within the home, women living without the patriarchal buttressing of the "standard" domestic setting must have seemed even more horrifying.

But what about these women? Are they only the victims of social construction? Not in their literary forms, I don't think. What makes early modern drama so awesomely exciting is the tension between victimization and choice. What complicates this further are the uncomfortable overlaps between necessity and evil, justification and sin, predestination and despair.

Particularly, it's the very idea of justification-- and the horror of its potential realities-- that so motivates The Witch of Edmonton.

And guess what?
The witch of Edmonton was real.

Murder pamphlets were popular for generations. This is a late 17th-century example.

Yep. The play was inspired by the real trial and real execution of real woman. The details of these events were published by HER CHAPLAIN-- a man in the habit of publishing and profiting from the confessions of the condemned under the auspices of "exempla." This guy makes Chaucer's Pardoner look like Santa Claus. 

Here's a snippet from Sawyer's "real" interrogation:

Question (paraphrased): "What did you and the devil talk about when he appeared to you? What did he ask of you, and you of him?"

Answer (paraphrased): "He asked how I was, and what he should do for me, and demanded that I give him my soul and body or he would shred me to pieces."

In what kind of state must someone be in to utter these words?  How is she understanding her own complicity in her witchiness? Does she think she had a choice?

Most importantly, does she know, or can she sense, that her role as a witch was one that the community required of her? If so, is her demonic demise a device of her her own wicked will, or of inevitable fate?

From here, I'll briefly summarize one of the play's plots (there are two-- the second concerns a pregnant woman, a secret shotgun wedding, her husband's bigamy and eventual murder of the second wife, and the involvement of a lecherous noble named Arthur) and compare it to Dr Faustus. You'll have to read to the end to get to the non-academic part :)

"Mother Sawyer" has been stealing firewood from her neighbor, who hits her for the theft. We quickly learn that the whole village thinks she's a witch. Inevitably, she stops fighting it and embraces the label. Ironically, she learns how to be a witch by what she hears from the rumors.

The stick-stealing-turned-neighbor-beating is the last straw for her; she  curses her neighbor and declares that she wants revenge. And as soon as this declaration is made, Dog appears (as a dog in name and form, though he is admittedly a devil).
You see, in the early modern theology explored here and by Marlowe in Dr Faustus, a demon appears any time someone disavows God. Indeed, Dog's first words are, "Ho! Have I found thee cursing? Now thou art mine own" (II.i, 120).
Compare that to the similar explanation Mephistopheles gives to Faustus:

For when we hear one rack the name of God,

Abjure the Scriptures and his Savior Christ, 

We fly in hope to get his glorious soul,

Nor will we come unless he use such means

Whereby he is in danger to be damned.   

            (I.iii, 48-52)

In both plays, then, the devil comes when he's called.

In Marlowe's play, there are some pretty intense suggestions that Faustus is already damned. If he isn't one of God's elect, there's nothing he can do about it-- his is a hopeless case.

But the tensions of "God's elect" and "reprobate" are not as pronounced in The Witch. 

The playwrights show her  to be an impoverished victim of her cruel community more than a power-hungry academic driven by boredom and hubris (Faustus). And in a play that opens with a pregnant woman threatening the good name and fortune of two men (the second plot), we know that ladies have more than marginal or superficial roles. 

There are whole scenes dedicated to onlookers and rumor-mongers-- to those looking upon, judging, and condemning the "unassimilable woman." In this sense, The Witch is nearly opposite Faustus. Sawyer is condemned outside her home by her neighbors who point and jeer. Conversely, Faustus calls the devil into his study, to the ignorance of most of his friends. Hers is a public offense; his a tellingly private and personal transgression.  

Still, Sawyer's character is no mere scapegoat. Like Faustus, she knowingly makes a contract with a devil in her own blood. And as my students have pointed out, a blood oath usually betokens something bad. Surely she knows that she's involved in an evil act. In the play, the first thing she asks of her demon familiar is that he kill her neighbor. He can't (or won't), but we now know that she has violent intentions. 

NB: If you're about to sign in pen and the second party suggests you sign with blood instead,  RED FLAG.

Sawyer is arrested, tried, and hanged. Her last words are those of regret; she sees that she has not been in power at all: "There is no damned conjuror like the Devil" (V. iii, 51). 

This seems like an admission of guilt. But could it be an indication of her victimhood, too?

If the real Edmonton needed witches, does Sawyer's conversion suggest that she was more "assimilable" than we thought?

I invite you to reflect on this post about communities, choices, and the legacies of both. 

So close to an election, our choices make all the difference. 

Don't they?