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Ten Years Blogging at The Mast
I began this blog on January 21, 2002. My very first post is here. My friend and former colleague iPaulo is still blogging. I’ve started a few other blogs since then, on IT: Technology, Language and Culture (also started in January of 2002, and life in the Pacific Northwest, and an entire site related to the books I co-wrote about the iPad. (And others too!) I’m delighted that Medievalist bloggers Scott Nokes and Michael Drout of Wormtalk and Slugspeak are back blogging. (Professor Drout also began blogging in 2002). The blogosphere, as some call it, has changed a lot since I started, but then so have I. Michelle Ziegler is…
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Smart Essay about Tolkien’s Monster and the Critics
Michael Drout, he of the almost completed second edition of Beowulf and the Critics, has a short piece on a LOTR forum on “”Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics”: The Brilliant Essay that Broke Beowulf Studies.” The essay is, not surprisingly, smart, and well-worth reading. It’s a good background and introduction to Tolkien’s essay, and I suspect even those who haven’t read Tolkien’s essay will read Drout’s piece. I like very much that Drout nods at some more recent Beowulf scholarship in providing a better context for the reactions and reception of Tolkien’s essay. The comments (you can find them here) are worth reading as well, as Drout notes. It…
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Medieval Jousting Bloggers at Inside Higher Ed
The story about less-than-ethical medievalist bloggers that I posted about here, thanks to Another Damned Medievalist and Meg of Xoom has been picked up by Inside Higher Education here. I’ve been thinking about this some more, particularly in light of the Blogspot hosted Medievalist News. There are a few oddities, aside from the less-than-original posts. Not only are links and attributions removed from posts, it’s a one-to-many blog. There are no comment links. All comment are shut off. Blogging is in large part about conversation. As Tor Books editor, writer, and blogger Patrick Nielsen Hayden says: Effective blogging is a combination of good personal writing and smart party hosting. A…
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Birth of a Blog: Reprise
I began Scéla, my first real blog, on January 21, 2002. That’s eight years of more-or-less regular blogging. You can still read my first post, which is very much an instance of me trying to figure out blogging as a tool for sharing content. Since then, I’ve finished my Ph.D. I’m now blogging quite a lot—though not, alas, blogging as often as I would like here. I’ve moved Scéla from my primary site at Digitalmedievalist.com, to here, at Digitalmedievalist.net [ETA: and back again as of 11/15/2014]. I’ve also converted from Blogger to WordPress, and am iconverting the Celtic Studies Resources content from static pages (pages that go back in some…
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Ten Years Blogging at The Mast
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Happy Cotton Library Day
Professor Scott Nokes, over at Unlocked Wordhoard, has announced Happy Cotton Library Day, in celebration of those manuscripts that didn’t burn in the fire of 1731, and solicited our responses regarding our favorite Cotton MS. It’s a hard question, actually. There are a lot of really important, and really famous ms. in the British Library’s Cotton collection. You can see a complete list here, and a list of the “stars” here, a list which includes the unique-but-burned-in-the-fire ms. of Vitellius A.xv Nowell Codex, containing Beowulf and Judith, or the mss. of the major Aelfrich texts, and the only copy of the Gawain Poet’s works. I’d have to say I can’t…
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Happy birthday Richard Scott Nokes!
In honor of Professor Nokes‘ birthday, and given his interest in weasel blogging, I present the following: According to medieval bestiaries, with help from Pliny the Elder and Isidore of Seville, “the weasel conceives through the mouth and gives birth through the ear”—Isidore, after describing this genetic miracle, says it is false, but that didn’t stop John Davies from using it in a sonnet. John Davies of Hereford, Wittes Pilgrimage, Sonnet 29 Some say the Weezel-masculine doth gender With the Shee-Weezel only at the Eare And she her Burden at hir Mouth doth render; The like (sweet Love) doth in our love appear: For I (as Masculine) beget in Thee…
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Muddles, Anonymity, and Scholars
I note that the “muddled” site has this to say for itself: In response to a prior restraint order requested by a university close to government, this blog will be shut down. The owners and contributors will do their utmost to resist this form of censorship. Thank you for reading, and for the emails of support. In other words “The lurkers support me in email.” Yeah. Right. And I was expecting Godwin’s Law to appear in the next post, too . . . It’s terribly disillusioning to see that academics, scholars at the height of their profession, are just as idiotic and cowardly as the dweebs I deal with in my non-scholarly…
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Weblogs and the Academy: Professional and Community Outreach through Internet Presence
I’ve decided to live-blog a blogging session at the 2008 Medieval Congress at Kalamazoo. I’m not a transcriber, so I’m not in any way doing the presenters the kind of justice their thoughtful papers deserve. The session was organized by Elisabeth Carnell, Western Michigan Univ., and Shana Worthen, University of Arkansas–Little Rock, with Elizabeth Carnell presiding. These are the papers that are being presented: “Do I Know You in Real Life? Building Scholarly Communities and Professional Networks through Anonymous Weblogs” Julie A. Hofmann, Shenandoah University “Text in Motion: Navel-Gazing as Pedagogical Strategy” MacAllister Stone, Independent Scholar “Unlocking Wordhoards: Popular Medievalist Communities” Richard Scott Nokes, Troy University Julie Hoffman maintains…
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Carol Dana Lanham requiescat in pace
Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine: et lux perpetua luceat eis. Carol, the beloved wife of Richard A. Lanham, died November 5, 2007 of a brain hemorrhage at age 71. Her husband of fifty years was at her side when she died. Carol was born in Englewood, NJ on January 18, 1936, the daughter of Irma P. and David W. Dana. She was educated at Marblehead High School, Marblehead, Massachusetts; and at Connecticut College for Women, New London, CT, where she graduated, in 1957, cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa. She took her Ph.D. at UCLA in 1973, with a special field in Medieval Latin. She subsequently was a Visiting Assistant…
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Ten Years Blogging at The Mast
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JKW on Culwch ac Olwen
Jeffry Jerome Cohen, medievalist and blogger at In the Middle, is on vacation, so guest blogger JKW who usually blogs at Pistols in the Pulpit is filling in. JKW says of himself: My dissertation, which I’m beginning this summer, is about political language, specifically the language of kingship, in England and Wales in the age of Chaucer. Thus far he’s blogged about Culwch ac Olwen and the implications of the “oldest animals” here.
