For I consider this blog.
For my activity has been limited this term.
For I apologise to any readers still left.
For this I perform in ten degrees
For first semester 1 is always busy.
For secondly the university has been re(dis)organised in a truly horrendous way.
For thirdly no one knows who’s who or what’s what.
For fourthly we may be getting there, slowly.
For fifthly my grandfather would have said ‘and so’s Christmas’.
For sixthly, I sigh deeply.
For seventhly I have had significant new teaching with lovely colleagues
For this module has been on the Vikings no less!
For we’ve had a lot of fun (mostly).
For I hope to blog about fancy new interdisciplinary teaching in the future.
For eighthly Orderic Vitalis has been sadly neglected.
For the final conference on the Norman Edge is coming up soon.
For I shall definitely blog that.
For ninthly sometimes there just isn’t time
For sleep and friends and fun.
For tenthly one’s best is never quite good enough
For there is always something else on the list.
For having considered what I have done,
For what myself and others have accomplished,
For we should carry our heads high.
For having neglected the blog I am sorry, but
For now can I sleep?

My favourite session of this year’s Leeds, if not of all time, was ‘Wanting more and wanting it fast: rebels and rebellion in England and Normandy from the tenth to the twelfth centuries, organised by Joanna Huntington at Lincoln. It was introduced by Chris Lewis thus: ‘I’ve always wanted to chair a rebellion. On my signal, break up the furniture and march on the bar’. The panel was certainly notable for its allusion to song lyrics, but chiefly for the quality of its papers and discussion. First up was Ryan Lavelle talking about ‘Places of rebellion in England and Normandy’ in which he considered the memory of locations in later sources as well as the idea that there were actually such things as ‘places of rebellion’ that had very real meaning and resonance for contemporaries. As Ryan said, if you have a grievance, you want that grievance to be heard so you don’t pick a marginal location. This may sound obvious, but the role of geography and place in the writing of Norman and allied histories has not been studied extensively as readers of this blog know. Ryan’s main example was the battle of Val-ès-Dunes of 1047 in which Duke William II in alliance with Henry I of France defeated a disparate group of rebels and, as tradition tells us, asserted his authority in western Normandy.

Next up, and following smoothly from Ryan’s paper, was Mark Hagger talking about ‘Duke William and the rebellion of 1046-47′. Mark took us through the historiography of the events surrounding Val-ès-Dunes in which historians have previously focused on William as a foreign ruler, the battle as a Scandinavian last stand, its nature as a family quarrel and about a hundred other interpretations.** What Mark showed was the participants all had very different reasons for joining in the rebellion – self-interest, hurt pride, legitimate grievance – and had little in common. The sharp ones among you will therefore be wondering how this fits in with Ryan’s idea of a central place of rebellion and I did ask the question. Unfortunately I didn’t jot down the answer.

The final paper was given by Joanna Huntington with her customary aplomb who used rebellion as a starting point to talk about miracles and rebellion in the context of Orderic Vitalis’s Ecclesiastical History (now, you were thinking ‘we haven’t heard much of Orderic recently’ weren’t you). What I particularly liked about Joanna’s paper was that she considered the Historia as a whole, thinking about how the different sections link up and relate to each other. Too many people still dismiss Orderic as a gossipy old monk,*** but everything he wrote for a purpose and with intent. Joanna pointed out that, for example, the miracles in book VIII come before and after examples of lay men rebelling and in book III with the spiritual maturation of the monastery of St-Evroult. As such, they reflect Orderic’s shifting priorities and preoccupations (correct monastic behaviour, expectations of lay masculine conduct).

On the Wednesday of Leeds, I also dipped my toe into the world of charters. I have a colleague who finds my attitude to charters baffling, but the couple of sessions I went to in the strand organised by Charles Insley, did make me appreciate them if not in a new light, then in a light that had been shining dimly in the darker recesses of my brain. I shan’t embarrass charter scholars out there by stating the blindingly obvious, though I will admit to being totally lost in the labyrinthine world of administrative history.

On the Thursday morning I listened to a very interesting session on bishops which I would write about, except I can’t decipher my notes. This may have something to do with going to most of the dance (to the bitter end), then chatting in the bar (though not drinking) and the aforementioned disruption to my sleep. I can tell you it involved Emily Winkler, Bjorn Weiler and a great deal of William of Malmesbury, but not much beyond that.

Although Leeds was superb this year and I got a lot out of it, both socially and intellectually, I am not going next year. It may be the last year it is in Boddington, there may be lots of interesting Norman related sessions in the offing, but I am so, so tired and need an end of academic year when I am not running around trying to write (and too often) research a wing and a prayer paper.

*The fact that Dr Jarrett hasn’t got to Leeds yet is a small comfort, but at least he’s managed more interesting posts in the meantime.

** I exaggerate, but not by much and anyway, this is a post about rebellions

*** Sweeping generalisation number 7,324

The first session focused on medieval historiography, specifically Robert of Torigni, Reginald of Durham and non-Norman continental chroniclers. David Bates talked about ‘Robert of Torigni and Normannitas’, a chip from a larger piece on Robert of Torigni and Historia anglorum, in which he asked why was Robert the only Norman to write a history of England? He discussed the links between Robert and Henry of Huntingdon who met at Bec in 1139 where, famously, Robert showed Henry a manuscript of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia. Robert also used Henry’s work extensively in his own writing and, interestingly, the authority he gives to this work exceeds the authority Robert accords to his own work. When he and Henry record the same events, Robert prefers Henry’s version as, for example, in his account of the murder of the Atheling in the Gesta Normannorum Ducum. The Normannitas aspect comes into the equation in terms of context and reasons for writing. David put in a plea to read Ailred of Rievaulx alongside Henry of Huntingdon and Robert against the rise of Henry II, the spes anglorum.

Margaret Coombe used the life of Godric of Finchale by Reginald of Durham to discuss the disputes at Durham in the twelfth century and to emphasise the need to look beyond national identity to discern the workings of self-interest in conflicts between groups like bishops and monks. Pondering this problem would go some way to answering why assimilation was so complete between Normans and English. Finally Xavier Storelli discussed ‘Le myth de la Normannitas vu par les chroniques anglais, angevins et francais au XIIe siecle’. In essence this paper considered how the Normans were viewed by their neighbours. Xavier concentrated on military concepts of Norman identity and, particularly, battle rhetoric and the geography of the Norman conquests in Baudri of Bourgueil’s poem to William the Conqueror’s daughter, Adela. Xavier’s paper also illustrated another strength of this strand and, indeed, the conference as a whole. Many people felt there were more continental Europeans at Leeds this year than there had been in previous years and it was particularly good to see the French in attendance and contributing to the Norman sessions.

The second session in the strand focused more on social structures and processes with papers on the settlement of Normandy, ducal marriages and exile. Again, we had an international feel to the panel with a French scholar and two Americans (though one of the Americans had done her doctorate in Britain). Pierre Bauduin gave us a careful consideration of the sources for the settlement of Normandy and how the social changes this brought about affected those sources. Recent archaeological work has still not uncovered a distinctive Scandinavian influence or mixed culture in the region, though Pierre did discuss recent coin finds at St-Pierre-de-Fleurs. His conclusion was that the process of assimilation still alludes us and that we have to consider the context of document production more carefully (following the work of Mathieu Arnoux and others). We then moved from a broad sweep of sources to one in particular, Dudo of St Quentin’s history of the Normans, and a consideration of the marital status of ducal women by Charlotte Cartwright (who is now teaching at a branch of  New York University). Charlotte was attempting to untangle the nature of unions between the dukes and women who have been seen in the historiography as their ‘Danish’ wives – a state more like concubinage. Much of her argument hung on the word conubium, and this certainly sparked a lively debate with Benjamin Pohl in the questions who had resorted to scanning through photos of one of the manuscripts of Dudo. Charlotte’s conclusion was that we can’t see different types in marriage in Dudo’s chronicle along the lines of ‘Christian’ and ‘Danish’, but more a process of legitimising unions to ensure stability. The final paper in this session was on exile, given by Melissa Sartore.

I deal with the rebellions in another post, but the last Norman session of the day featured two excellent talks by Greg Fedorenko (who can still be found on brass band websites) and Ben Pohl. Unfortunately, this was the session in which I was speaking and so, as is always the case, my notes on the other papers are a little sparse. The session was all about problems of translation and transmission, whether of sources, ideas or traditions. Greg considered vernacular rewriting of the Gesta Normannorum ducum and the shift from French as a language of verse chronicles to prose. Ben focused on the mother-offspring motif in the chronicles, particularly the idea of ungrateful offspring. He also did me the immeasurable service of starting with William Blake, so when I got up to talk about a load of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century antiquaries, it didn’t sound so odd. My own paper was on ways of ‘seeing’ the Norman landscape, essentially how centuries of thinking about the landscape have affected the way we understand medieval writing about it. I also questioned why there was little or no discussion of representation when authors chose to illustrate their work with antiquarian engravings. I admit to being a little cheeky and starting with some audience participation by getting participants to try to spot the modern translations of medieval chronicles and the nineteenth-century historian out of five quotes which included an eighteenth-century antiquarian and a travel writer!

Fortunately, my paper did not let the other two down and we all had a jolly time answering questions. I thoroughly enjoyed the freedom of talking around slides, rather than having a scripted paper (I recommend this – it’s extremely liberating), and it was a privilege to take part in such a wonderfully organised strand by Katy Dutton, Charles Insley, and others. Circumstances dictated that once again I missed the bloggers met-up, though I did at least managed to say ‘hello’ this time. The strand left my brain buzzing, which effectively destroyed my sleep patterns for the rest of the conference, but it was certainly worth it.

Next post: rebellions, charter geekery, bishops and a bit of dancing.

I spent Monday in the ‘Rhetoric and Reality in Norman Italy’ strand organised by Alex Metcalfe and Graham Loud. Unfortunately, this strand had met with the Leeds curse of late withdrawals, but it is testament to medieval studies at Leeds that two willing students were found to plug the gaps. In recent years, I have found following a strand a better way of negotiating the warren that is many parallel sessions and this was no exception.

The first session was essentially given by what the French would term a laboratoire, i.e. three people working on the same project. In this case, the people concerned were Alex Metcalfe and two of his graduate students, George Lincoln and Emily Mead, who took us through the twists and turns of the Focero rebellion (early 12thc.) in the context of settlement patterns in the Val Demone region of Sicily. The session was nicely interdisciplinary with documentary, narrative and archaeological evidence all discussed. The archaeology was particularly interesting with a consideration of the difficulties in locating the settlement and difficulties investigating it. Apparently, the site is owned by a local Mafia family, has been raided by the Carabinieri, and when the land owner realised the site was of interest, destroyed some of the surviving buildings. It goes without saying that we await detailed survey and excavation of this area.

Session two in this strand was the curse of the absent speaker. In theory, it was supposed to focus on rhetoric and historical writing, but in the event, only one of the papers was a detailed consideration of narrative histories, Markus Krumm on Alexander of Telese’s  Ystoria’. Markus focused on the question ‘Why did Alexander write?’ in order to question historiographical orthodoxies that see this text as the work of a panegyrist and royalist propaganda for the court of Roger II. I’ve always been uneasy with the use of ‘propaganda’ as term applied to medieval history writing so it was good to hear someone question whether this framework of analysis is embedded more in the context of modern mass media than medieval book culture. Markus cast the Ystoria  much more in a framework of negotiating relations between Alexander’s abbey of San Salvatore and King Roger, particularly a shift in support from Rainulf , count of Alife, which put reciprocity at the heart of the narrative. Unfortunately, the moderators of the Italian sessions decided to allow questions after each paper, rather than at the end of the session, which meant the audience did not have time to ruminate on this very interesting paper and discussion never really got going.

The final session in this strand did contain more discussion of narrative histories (sandwiching a charter paper), but from different angles. Paul Brown talked about chronicles as sources for the composition of Norman armies, with the ‘Norman’ aspect firmly in scare quotes. Paul comes from a classics background and I always find it fascinating to hear former classicists talk about medieval chronicle writing as they are far more attuned to some of the influences than those of us who haven’t spent many years immersing ourselves in Caesar, Lucan, Cicero etc. As with many things that fall under the umbrella of Norman southern Italy, there was a great deal of untangling of Greek vs Latin terms. The third paper, given by Joanna Drell, provided another slant on southern Italian Norman history, this time from the point of view of its reception in the north of Italy in the later middle ages. She posed the question ‘Why is Robert Guiscard in Dante’s Paradiso?’ Dante’s opinions seem to be greatly at odds with the much more ambivalent and, at times, downright unflattering, characterisation we find of Robert in the eleventh-century sources. At the heart of Dante’s portrait, written in exile, is his vision of Italy as a place of unity over particularism and competing interests: Robert thus becomes an example.

The sign of a good strand or session is that people continue to talk about it. As I left in search of food and drink, the speakers were still being asked many questions by both the audience and session organisers as they tried to pack up their things. From my point of view, still being pretty much a novice as far as southern Italian history is concerned, this strand got my Leeds off to a good start. Momentum was gathered by good beer and chat with Normannists and associated others before the rigours of a Tuesday filled with wonderful sounding Norman sessions and pre-paper jitters sent me to a relatively early bed.

To be continued…

911 to someone who works on the central middle ages means something entirely different from the vast majority of the population: it is, of course, the traditional date of the foundation of Normandy and this year is the eleven-hundredth anniversary of that event. To mark the occasion the Battle Conference, Haskins Society and Centre Michel de Bouard are sponsoring a strand on ‘Normans, Normandy and the Wider Norman World: 911 from a 2011 Perspective’, comprising four sessions on the Tuesday. Having sworn blind I was not going to do anything at this year’s Leeds, naturally I find myself speaking in one of these sessions on a surprising topic that has been a great deal of fun to research, though the actual writing is proving tricky.

Normans are a bigger theme, with three sessions on the Monday organised by Alex Metcalfe and others on southern Italian material, which will hopefully give me pause for thought regarding my teaching and also a new book project (more later on that). More royal than Norman, but still of interest, is the Thursday morning session on ‘Royal Authority I: Kings and Restraint in Anglo-Norman Historiography’. I should also mention Wednesday’s sessions on ‘New Directions in Charter Studies’. Like the Norman sessions, these are sponsored by the same three institutions and organised my much the same people. I shall drop in and out on my quest to know more about charters.

Clashes with other good stuff abound, the most irritating being the third Norman session and ‘Wanting More and Wanting it Fast: Rebels and Rebellion in England and Normandy, From the 10th to the 12th Centuries’. This panel has a strong line-up, is organised by a friend and just looks so good. I shall just have to beg indulgence from my co-speakers in the strand and hope they forgive me.

The round tables are the usual eclectic mix. Recent years have seen a move to more professional development-type sessions on publishing and this year, there are panels on ‘Surviving the Academic Interview‘ and teaching. The most intriguing one has to be ‘Monkeys: Attractive and Repelling‘. I may well go to ‘The Making of Medieval History‘, though why are all the listed participants male?

It goes without saying that I am looking forward to catching up with numerous people, some of whom I haven’t seen in a while, and that there will be a good blog presence also. My sympathies to Jon Jarrett who has the unenviable task of chairing and speaking on the Thursday morning: I’m sure he will cope admirably. All we have to do now is write those damn papers…

Yesterday wasn’t the first time I’d heard this piece: that was three carol services ago. I remember it distinctly as I was sitting in the sanctuary, next to the choir, with the rector. If memory serves, in terms of readings this anthem sat between the ‘Wise men go to the manger’ and ‘St John unfolds the great mystery of the incarnation’. My reaction was similar: although I was sitting, I did not move a muscle until the end, nor for sometime after. Once the service had ended, all anyone could talk about was ‘Lux’.

I have since found out something about this piece. It is not, as you might think, based on a medieval Latin text. Whiteacre apparently came across a very simple poem by Edward Esch and asked the American poet, Charles Anthony Silverstri, to translate it into Latin. As a medievalist this appeals, especially as the trend tends to be to translate the Latin into various vernaculars. Latin is a good language to sing in and it’s the music of plain chant and polyphony, both made to be sung in beautiful spaces. You can see both the poem and the translation on the link above the cut.

Sometimes a piece of music ambushes you so completely that all you can think about is immersing yourself in it. I’m not talking the annoying tune that you can’t shake out of your brain, but an all encompassing bubble of sound, which literally rings in your ears. In my case, this happens both with orchestral music and also choral music. I should also stress that the vocal works that affect me so are, in the main, sacred works.

St Augustine is often paraphrased as saying ‘(s)he who sings prays twice’ (according to the Latin on this blog, not quite what he said) and perhaps this is why I let the music ambush me and make me late: I pray best with music. When I open my heart and mind to sound like Lux Arumque, or some of the anthems and songs I have linked to below, I open my heart and mind to God. It may be human voices that produce the music, but the bubble that surrounds and protects is the divine.

Some links for you to immerse yourself in.

Allegri, Miserere

Bairstow, Let all mortal flesh keep silence

Faure, Cantique de Jean Racine

Tallis, Spem in alium

Mathias, As truly as God is our father (a setting of Julian of Norwich)

I can’t find a decent recording of Sheppard’s Media vita, so you will have to make do with this advert instead. I can highly recommend the recording.

It’s interesting how often we’ve covered TV series, mainly on historical topics. My favourite post from this would be on Rob Bartlett’s Normans series, in part because it was so interesting to watch. Historical TV programmes are definitely the ones we’ve looked at the most (although the classification of some of them as “historical” is questionable, as shown by gesta’s evisceration of it), which probably shows up my weariness with a lot of scientific programming, where even the best seems repetitive.

There are a fair number of posts on our own efforts at outreach and popularisation. Here I’d pick my post on the Royal Society Exhibition, largely because it was such an interesting experience to be involved in. Outreach remains something that universities need to do continuously, and whilst I think experiences such as the above fit well with our skills and work really well, it feels in the current climate that something broader and shallower is required – getting the mainstream press to replace the low (or even high) level hostility against “boffins” and “ivory tower pedants” with more enthusiasm for the fruits of HE.

Broader posts about communication of what we do are also a theme, with one of the earliest being a general plea in this direction. However, my favourite would be a slight rant about a particularly idiotic proposal (in HE? surprised?), largely because of the fun I had categorizing the links…

I’ve not written a huge number of specialist science posts, and (theme alert!) the one I like the most again revolves around communication. I still think highly of Harry Collins’ work, but I still think the idea that mathematical literacy is optional for physicists (caricature!) is as unreasonable as general literacy being optional for humanities researchers.

And finally, simply because it makes gesta happy: fiction may not be better than history, but is it more true?

It is important to remember, especially at the end of a long and tiring academic year, why we do research and, in my case, history. It’s exciting, and I hope I capture some of the wonder and excitement of looking at the past in this post about faces.

The nominal topic of this blog is boundaries, especially the boundaries between scientific and humanistic ways of thinking about life and scholarship. We are also interested in ways in which aspects of our own life cross boundaries. You’ll find one under faith at the end of this post, but here faith, the middle ages and modern life all collide. Reivers has been known to blog about the past, in this case King Alfred, and I’ve occasionally ventured into the realms of science.

It’s probably fair to say that I am better at blogging about conferences and the such like than Reivers. Most of the medievalists who blog tend to write up Leeds, Kalamazoo, the IHR seminars etc. but I haven’t seen any others on David Bates’ Ford lectures. These lectures are at the forefront of my mind for various reasons that I will write about later, but you can read about them by following the links here.

Scholarship, pedagogy and education in general are big topics, both on the blog and in life. In the light of the recent funding cuts to HE, then just about all the posts that we have written about our work could be highlighted, but in terms of explaining what it is we try to do, then Reivers’  post, ‘What is 2+2 4?’ from our first month blogging needs reiterating. Of course, the questions have changed somewhat. In these testing times, will the RAE/REF be put in its proper place by fees? Will we finally see a more balanced teaching and research role for academics?

What would life be without a rant or two? Now, I’m given to sudden explosions when I think people are being idiots, but in the lights of recent events, I’d have to pick this one. I’m still trying to think of a suitable medieval punishment for anyone who starts an argument with ‘Why should tax payers…?’ or ”As a tax payer…’.

After ranting, in the words of a colleague, we need to ‘calm the fuck down’, so finally, faith, hope and caritas (if I may stretch a definition).

It goes without saying that I have some major problems with this set up. I don’t believe in for profit education.* Universities are not nurseries for training graduates for prospective employers in job-specific skills. Distinguished does not mean inspiring, or even effective, on the teaching front. More contact hours does not mean better teaching. How will these degrees prepare students who wish to go on to do research? How much teaching will these distinguished professors actually do?

I shall watch developments here with interest and probable unease. At the moment, and I should be honest about this, I’m struggling to say or think anything sensible due the power of instinctive gut reaction based on strong political sensibilities.

*I may be wrong about this point, but it seems that only part of the college is governed by a charitable trust as suggested by a post by someone listed as A.C. Grayling on the Student Room:

We have set up a charitable trust alongside the College to raise money in order to make as many places free or affordable as possible.

Dear Students

What is feedback?

Feedback is a means of obtaining information on your progress at all stages of your degree. It is not confined to formal assessments, but also to your participation in class, presentations and through talking to your tutor. Feedback is not a passive process; it requires engagement on your part. Above all feedback is a dialogue and requires questions and answers from both parties.

Let me give you some examples.

1) A student is having difficulty understanding the reading for a particular week. She could wait until the seminar to see if all will become clear. Alternatively, she could visit the tutor during her office hours with her notes or the reading, and discuss the problems  with that tutor. This process would allow not only for clarification on the content, but also feedback and advice on reading skills and note-taking.

2) A student or group of students give a presentation. The tutor concerned talks to them afterwards or sends and email highlighting the good and bad points. This is also feedback and you should ask questions if you do not understand anything or want further advice.

3) Participation in class and comments from both the tutor and fellow students is a form of feedback.

4) An assessment hoves into view and the student has questions about what is expected or how they should approach the topic/exercise. Read the guidelines carefully and then  go to see the tutor in her office hour and engage in a conversation. Bring along an essay plan and talk through your argument. This all counts as feedback. It is much better to find out you’ve got the wrong end of the stick before the essay is written.

5) The tutor marks a piece of assessment. Practice will vary from institution to institution, but on the whole tutors will make notes on the work itself and then provide comments on the coversheet highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of the work. The aim here is to provide constructive criticism in order that you may learn from the process and improve future work. We generally aim to say something positive, but sometimes, it isn’t possible when the work is truly awful (and this usually happens when no formative feedback has been sought prior to handing in the exercise). The process does not stop here though. You should visit your tutor in her office hour and discuss the comments, asking for any clarification or explanation as necessary.

6) Your academic adviser or personal tutor sets up termly meetings. Go along armed with your marked work, ask for suggestions on what to work on. This is all feedback.

7) At the end of the module you may be asked to fill in questionnaire about different aspects of the course. Just as we aim to be constructive in our comments on your work, so should you aim to be constructive in assessing the module. Just because the module was not your cup of tea, doesn’t mean to say the lecturer was a bad teacher or that the module is poorly conceived. Confine your comments to the module and not other factors. Some examples of unhelpful feedback might include:  ‘too much gender’ on a course specifically about gender (that just shows you missed the point) or ‘lecturer should be available every day’ when the lecturer works part time. Comments like ‘ the pace was too fast’,  ‘seminar should not be held in lecture theatres”, ‘greater guidance on reading’ etc. are very helpful, though remember to speak up earlier if you think your lecturer is talking too quietly, too quickly, too loudly, too slowly, etc.

Feedback is not…

1) The mark/grade. The mark, often expressed as a percentage,  is just a means of quantifying your achievement in relation to an agreed mark scheme and your peers. A mark without comments tells you very little.

2) Telling you what to write in your essay. You can discuss the content and reading for the essay with your tutor (see point three above), but she won’t essentially write it for you. We want to see your understanding of and thinking about the topic. Often the best essays make us think about the topic in a different light, a process which is not achieved by giving you a list of points to include and then ticking them off as we mark the work.

3) Spoon-feeding. See the previous point and it applies to teaching in general.

These points are just my thoughts and I’m sure others will want to add more nuance. None of us ever stops learning: feedback and constructive criticism are invaluable to us all in improving our research, our methods and our writing.