Plans and plotting

For a while now I’ve been wanting to write a detailed piece on the cuts currently faced by most areas of education in this country, regressive policies on what constitutes education and why Gove was wrong to call for ‘a cultural revolution just like the one they’ve had in China’. I’ve started the post several times over and every time it has degenerated to a rant bigger than those I am usually given to. I’ve decided it’s time to go back to blogging about Normans for a little while, so herewith, plots and plans in the life of Gesta.

The Vikings are coming!

Many things have been happening in the lives of Reivers and myself lately – some good and some bad and which I am not going to talk about here. On the wider stage, parliament has decided that higher education is no longer a public good; more locally an extremely tiring and unusually busy term finally grinds to a halt today. This at least means I have a small amount of time in which to update those of you who are interested in teaching on some very exciting developments that I’ve been involved in and, in a small way, leading.

Norman Edge IV: Local boundaries and national frontiers of the Norman world

I have returned from my progress of the North simultaneously refreshed and knackered. Never again will I do two papers in such a short space of time. Fortunately, the hours spent on trains and their associated stations were rewarded with two very good and thought-provoking conferences: the IMC at Leeds and also the Norman Edge at Lancaster. I’ll blog Leeds in due course, but herewith an account of the latest adventures on the Norman Edge, which also returns us to the notional them of this blog – boundaries.

The 2010 Ford lectures V: Centre, periphery and networks

This time around tea with two fellow Normannists preceded the latest installment in David Bates’ journey through the murky realms of empire and Norman history. I confess I was probably more interested in this lecture’s title than the others. Regular readers of this blog know that Reivers and I have an interest in life on boundaries in all sorts of senses. Also, my more recent research has focused on looking at the relationship between centre and periphery as made manifest in chroniclers’ descriptions of the landscape. What David did here was to underline how networks in particular perpetuate empire and how, in the case of Normandy, the centre/core remained remarkably resilient.

Normans on the edge and an edgy Normanist.

Earlier this year, I wrote about a new project at Lancaster called ‘The Norman Edge‘ and briefly commented on its first symposium. Unfortunately, I missed the second one in the summer due to a combination of circumstances, but did make it to the third one on ‘Colonial mentalities’ last week. Not only was this a very interesting collection of high quality papers, but it left me feeling reinvigorated after a long term. There are very few occasions as an historian when you feel part of something much bigger than your own research, but the Norman Edge is really fostering an idea of scholarly community, and what is more, inclusive of people at all stages of their careers from MA students right the way through to distinguished professorial types.

Back in the North: Hadrian’s Wall

During the Easter break, I escaped the confines of the south of England and headed north. The North is where I grew up and while visiting friends and family, I took the opportunity to visit Hadrian’s Wall. I’d never been before, or at least, I don’t remember having been before. Given that this blog is allegedly about boundaries and what happens on them, this post is in the manner of a postcard from the limits of empire.

Into the wilderness

What is a wilderness? How did medieval chroniclers and other writers describe it? What is the significance of the wilderness? These and other questions were the subject of my most recent paper at a workshop on monasticism held to launch three books (mine and two of my colleagues’).

Looking and seeing

Diamonds have been in the news; at least the Diamond Synchrotron has. The brightest X-ray in the world, it has been touted to read the unreadable, such as some of the Dead Sea Scrolls. But it does not; it is another tool for looking, but it will not see.

Murder in the cloister

It could be straight from the pages of my favourite chronicler, Orderic Vitalis. Two nuns in Greece have been murdered for their monastery’s treasure. This week, the team rector of Southampton city centre parish who also happens to be the chaplain of Southampton United Football Club was attacked by one of the Saints’ fans.

The sacred and profane

One of the main dichotomies I wrestle with in my work is that of the sacred vs the profane: temporal authority vs spiritual. More often than not, the dichotomy is shown up, if not to be false, then not really meaningful. Recently, both through my teaching and through reading other comment and blog sites, I have begun looking at this dichotomy afresh in terms of modern British society, or to put it another way, are we living in such a secularized or individualistic society, that there is no place to seek understanding of or tolerance of faith or ideologies in society?