Pre NCS London 2016: Things To Do + Events

by JONATHAN HSY

Bedside reading: guide to Pride in London (festivities just ended in June).
Patience Agbabi's Telling Tales, Lavinia Greenlaw's A Double Sorrow.

The International Medieval Congress in Leeds has just concluded, and the New Chaucer Society Congress in London is approaching!

Here's a quick post with a few items of note ahead of NCS (ITM readers will surely notice that many of these items are responding directly to current events and geopolitics).

The #femfog roundtable at the IMC in Leeds was an animated and productive venue that explored strategies for building a more inclusive and ethical medieval studies. Such conversations are sure to continue at NCS, whether through official sessions or informal venues. Fore more on the Leeds session:

• Check out this archive of tweets compiled by Shyama Rajendran.
• The Mittelalter bloggers have provided timely summaries of many IMC sessions (some in German, some in English), with a femfog session summary (in English) at the end of this post.

Topical reading list for medievalists. See Jeffrey's list of "reading for sustenance" (compiled on 2 July) including Brexit- and femfog-related items by medievalists. See also my posting on refuge and welcome (20 June), and two new items published yesterday (7 July):

• Simon Gaunt (King's College London) on “Europe” as an idea in the Middle Ages, on the Values of French project blog.

• Howard Hotson (Oxford) on medieval universities as institutions beyond nation-states, at the Times Higher Education.

Things to do in London before NCS:

• Chaucer's London Today. A guide to site of interest to Chaucerians around London (document posted by Lawrence Warner).

• The Refugee Tales. Walk and events conclude today (Friday).

• Protest march in Brixton. For people following ongoing developments in the US, consider this rally to be held in solidarity with victims of police brutality (Saturday).

Events associated with NCS:

• Queers & Allies. Informal social gathering for queer (LGBTQ+) medievalists and allies. Tuesday (12 July) starting 9pm at the Royal Oak (at 73 Columbia Road; this is about a 30 minute walk or 2 minutes by taxi from Queen Mary). [h/t to Anthony Bale and to the #QueerMSS crowd especially Diane Watt and Roberta Magnani]

• Safe(r) Spaces Conversation (moderated by Helen Young). “A Pilgrimage to Safe(r) Spaces: Classroom Crossroads of Identity,” Thursday (14 July) at 9-10:30am, Bancroft 1.13a. This event was created to center crip/queer experiences (e.g., issues relating to disability and sexuality), but will no doubt expand to incorporate many other identities.

Some events of note on the NCS program(me):

• The “Corporealities” thread explores facets of identity and experience in the medieval past and the present; note the highly topical "Pale Faces" session interrogating whiteness and medieval studies (Monday 11 July, 2pm, Arts 2 Lecture Theatre).

• Global Chaucers roundtable exploring translation, adaptation, and comparative literary approaches: "Translating Global Chaucers" (Wednesday 13 July at 9-10:30pm in PP1).

• Readings by neo-Chaucerian poets Lavinia Greenlaw (Tuesday 12 July at 5:30pm, People's Place Theatre) and Patience Agbabi (Wednesday 13 July at 8pm, Arts 2 Lecture Theatre).* [note also Jeffrey's post on other events that night]

*A brief blurb for the Patience Agbabi reading (not in the online version of NCS program):

Patience Agbabi is former Poet Laureate of Canterbury. Telling Tales (Canongate, 2014), in which she disperses Chaucerian narratives in present-day multiethnic London, was shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award for New Work in Poetry. Her work appears also in the anthology The Refugee Tales (Comma Press, 2016). She will  deliver an interactive reading “Herkne and Rede” that explores poetry performance as dynamic adaptation.

3,000 Kalamazoos: Play, Change, Community

by JONATHAN HSY

PROLOGUE

My annual swag summary of Kalamazoo (click image to embiggen). [May 18, 2016]

It has been just about a week since the 2016 International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, MI (aka #Kzoo2016). About three thousand attendees made the journey to Kalamazoo this year (note also this great writeup before the conference), and there are thousands of stories can be told about the experience as a result.

The medievalist blogosphere has been active this week, and I'll let these varied accounts speak for themselves:

• Karra Shimabukuro, "#Kzoo2016 Reflections" (May 14 post at Folklore <--> Milton <--> Popular Culture)
• Kathleen E. Kennedy, "The Future of Medieval Conferences" (May 15 tumblr post)
• Maggie Williams, recap of Material Collective activities (May 16 blog post, with links to livetweets from the relevant sessions)
• Travis Neel, general reflections (May 17, public Facebook note)
• Shamma Boyarin, reflections on inclusion and disability approaches (May 16 and May 22)
• Josh Eyler's blog is hosting guest postings from the "Teaching the Humanities in the Current Climate of Higher Education" roundtable at Kzoo: Cameron Hunt McNabb: "Teaching to the Choir" (May 17); Leigh Ann Craig: "So Are You Going to Open A History Store?" (May 19); Kisha Tracy: "A Plea for Research, Part 1" (May 23)
• MW Bychowski, "Genres of Embodiment: A Theory of Medieval Transgender Literature" (May 17 blog post at Transliterature: Things Transform)
• Shyama Rajendran, "Kalamazoo 2016 and The Work We Still Have To Do" (May 18 blog post)
• David Hadbawnik, "Kalamazoo 2016 Redux" (May 21 blog post)
• Danielle Trynoski, "Digital Humanities at K'zoo: A Recap" (May 22 for Medievalists.net)
• Susan Signe Morrison, "Female Fun at Kalamazoo: All the Single (and Married) Ladies at the 51st International Congress on Medieval Studies" (May 23 blog post)

I'm still processing my own intellectual and affective responses to Kalamazoo 2016. Many of my perceptions are shaped by my own idiosyncratic social circles but do I have a general sense that this Kzoo felt … different, in ways I can’t quite express. Perhaps due to #femfog and the whole Frantzen affair earlier this year, Kzoo felt more overtly affirming and welcoming than previous years (more mentorship networks, sessions and panels foregrounding new voices, a range of inclusive gatherings and initiatives) and it also felt profoundly serious about considering the state of the field and how it can improve in structural ways (such as the Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship roundtable on harassment in the academy, online conversations about conference sociality and accessibility, frank discussions about social media use in medievalist circles). 

What sticks with me the most vividly from my own experience of Kzoo this year is a sense that new structures are being built and we don’t yet know what shape they will take. I feel like medievalists are collectively inhabiting an intriguing zone of potential and possibility.

My blog reflections are clustered by three key words: PLAY, CHANGE, and COMMUNITY.

PLAY

BANANA CAR spotting in downtown Kalamazoo! [May 13, 2016]

One reason I enjoy heading out to Kzoo each year is experiencing its sense of play. As always, Kzoo reminded me of the love that medievalists have for what we do (be it teaching, research, publishing, artistic production) and both the sessions and the social events can generate a shared sense of purpose and belonging.

• Medieval Donut 2.0. This donut-centered informal social gathering, graciously hosted by Jeffrey Cohen on Wednesday night, marked the second year of what is now becoming a Kzoo tradition. Although I missed the event (sniffle!), it clearly provided a low-key way to socialize and meet new people. For tweets and photos from this event and related festivities throughout the conference, see this curated 2016 #medievaldonut archive.

• PLAY roundtable. GW MEMSI (Medieval and Early Modern Studies Institute) hosted a ludic roundtable/playground that featured (among other things) balloons, a bouncing beach ball, toys on each seat, and some pretty awesome interactive game-presentations; for photos and tweets that nicely capture the spirit and the intellectual content of the event see here.

• Living Latin. The Paedeia Institute hosted a session on Latin language instruction that was actually held in Latin. *insert shocked emoji*

• Ooh astrolabes! An session teaching medievalists how to use an astrolabe culminated in enthusiastic applause.

• Fandom and role play. I participated in a session (organized by Anna Wilson) on fandom in medieval studies; this conversation touched on topics as wide-ranging as Mandeville marginalia, genderswapping and queer subjectivities in interactive novel roleplaying games, and the contemporary appropriation of medieval storytelling traditions beyond Europe.

CHANGE

Embrace the #femfog! SMFS swag. [May 15, 2016]

Much of this playfulness and spirit of experimentation (with new ideas and new social formations) extended into the conference sessions themselves. Some sessions not only asked how we can push the boundaries of our respective academic domains/disciplines but also explored how we can collectively transform the underlying social dynamics of the field.

• BABEL roundtables. The BABEL Working Group hosted two roundtables: "Where Else?" and "Far Out!" (see this archive of tweets from these sessions). I've been involved with BABEL for a few years now, and what I find so compelling about this community is its capacity to bring together (seemingly) unlikely people and things. In this spirit, the "Where Else?" roundtable incorporated varied disciplines and methods (art history, literature and ecotheory, Judaic studies and world literature, medical humanities and plague epidemiology) and disparate spaces (Cuba, medieval Britain, West Africa, the Bahamas, the Underworld). All of the presentations got me thinking specifically about how medievalists who for a variety of reasons occupy the "margins" of (a habitually Western/Eurocentric) medieval studies can find "homes" within their respective disciplines or institutions while also thriving as deliberate exiles/outsiders to such structures.

• SMFS roundtable on harassment. This session was originally planned around the anonymous online survey on harassment in the academy conducted by SFMS in 2015, and the conversation (as one might expect) addressed not only the climate of medieval studies in the wake of #femfog but also become an opportunity to brainstorm ways to make the profession more supportive for everyone (students and faculty). What was clear to me from this conversation (from survey data, speaker presentations, and some personal stories that emerged in the discussion) was that harassment can affect anyone regardless of gender, status, or sexuality. Harassment is about power, and anyone can be a potential victim or abuser. Consulting my handwritten notes during the session, I notice that just about 70% of survey respondents said they had experienced some form of harassment but around 70% never reported it. What I hope the SMFS survey and conversations can encourage is the creation of clear, accessible resources for those among us who have experienced harassment or seek to help others. For what it's worth, I'll just say that the Shakespeare Association of America has crafted an excellent sexual harassment policy (see page 9 in the January 2016 SAA Bulletin) and other professional societies could think carefully about building and sustaining similar structures. [Side note: SAA deserves kudos for its policies (including sexual harassment and social media usage) for three reasons: the guidelines are clear, the organizational structures are transparent (i.e., each was crafted by an ad hoc committee of scholars of varied stages/backgrounds), and the labor is acknowledged (SAA Bulletin, January 2016, pages 9-10).]

• Twitter roundtable and social media ethics. I took part in a roundtable (organized by Ben Ambler) on the ethics of live-tweeting academic conferences, and it morphed into a broader conversation about the ethics of social media use in academia more broadly. (You can consult this twitter archive for a fuller sense of the whole session and related conversations). The session addressed positive aspects of live-tweeting (such as timely access for people who can't attend, playful banter and community, signal boosting and disseminating work) as well as its negative aspects (graduate students and vulnerable scholars being "scooped," unease about the ethics of twitter as a corporation, potential for users to experience online abuse). Eileen Joy stressed the transformative capacity of social media (it can instigate tough conversations that wouldn't take place otherwise), but Angie Bennett pointed to some of its limits (not everyone has access to technology/mobile devices and conversations can unwittingly exclude as well). I've enthusiastically supported conference live-tweeting in the past, but I've since become ambivalently optimistic (or optimistically ambivalent) about it all. I'd say my "take home" message was that we as a medievalist community need to be better about establishing shared expectations and "best practices" for live-tweeting and clear guidelines would help; see some of the excellent examples and points by various folks near the end of this #Kzoo2016 twitter archive.

COMMUNITY

Donut diversity (photo: Cameron Hunt McNabb). [May 11, 2016]

It's probably no surprise that I'm ending this blog post with a section about community. I felt that community building was one of my personal priorities this year, and I'm so encouraged by the ways medievalists are coming together during and since Kzoo to creating a better field (and world).

• Inclusivity was a major theme in my experience of Kzoo. I was proud to see people wearing T-shirts with affirmative, inclusive sentiments (the proceeds of BABEL's #inclusivity fundraiser campaign go to SMFS) or displaying other signs of support for SMFS and a more capacious medieval studies. I'm also energized by ongoing efforts at Kzoo such as the annual Anglo-Saxonist "New Voices" sessions; mentoring initiatives; various informal gatherings attentive to LGBTQ communities and scholars of color; a BABEL gathering at Bell's Brewery open to anyone; and medievalists asking important questions about uneven access and exclusion in our field (along the lines of class, financial conditions, disability, age).

• Addressing transphobia. Over the past week or so medievalists have been responding to some unfortunately gender essentialist and transphobic presentations at the Pseudo Society session. The Pseudo Society immediately issued an apology and announced a new policy, and it gives me hope that medievalists quickly came together against transphobia: note this moving statement posted by Kaitlin Heller during Kzoo and a very powerful transformative blog post and essay by MW Bychowski (see also here).

• Rethinking access. I've been following with great interest some emergent conversations about accessibility at medieval conferences. Jeffrey's pre-Kzoo 2016 posting gives us much to think about in terms of social venues and practices, and Karra Shimabukuro has shared some good suggestions that she included in her responses to the annual Kzoo survey (here and here). (These links are not specifically Kzoo-related, but check out recent reflections by Rachel Moss on attending academic events as a new parent, and consult the Modern Language Association of America's helpful access guidelines before you prepare for your next conference.)

• Swangate. Last week, a story went viral about medievalist (known only as @chevalier_cygne) who brilliantly responded to a UKIP politician's racism and xenophobia (he had objected to a nonwhite actress portraying [Shakespeare's] medieval queen Margaret of Anjou). The story has since been picked up by the Independent and the Toast (with ancillary "cygnal boost" by Jeffrey and yours truly). If you're on twitter, you can follow the #swangate and #swantruther hashtags for more.

• Medievalist tattoos. Picking up on a recent conversation on social media about medievalists with tattoos, @izzybeth (on twitter) has created a tumblr blog called Badass Tattoos on Medievalists. If you're a medievalist who has a story to share about your tattoo (or otherwise have something relevant to contribute), feel free to check out the site!

This blog post ended up being much longer than I had intended, but I've tried my best to convey my sense of this year's vibe and ethos. I hope that some of the productive energy of Kzoo 2016 will continue to spark new thinking about our understanding of the Middle Ages and the future we'd like to see in our present-day communities.

Alphabetic Reflections on MLA 2016 and Its Subconference

by JONATHAN HSY

[LEFT: A poster for the MLA Subconference on the front door of Cheer Up Charlies. RIGHT: A banner listing the names of MLA forums outside the book exhibit in the Austin Convention Center.]

The Modern Language Association (MLA) Convention in Austin is quickly receding into the past and I’ve tried to put some thoughts together as I returned to the routine of teaching this week. In part to honor Eileen Joy for her presence here at ITM (read her moving “commencement” blog post!) and to acknowledge her work as the Prime Mover in many communities I hold dear (BABEL, punctum books, punctum records, and postmedival among them), I wanted to offer some reflections on the MLA Convention and its Subconference—a recap of my overall experience in Austin, with some thoughts on where we (medieval studies and academia as a whole) might be heading.

#MLA16 and #SubCon16:

Alphabetic Reflections

[originally composed on January 12, 2016]

I’m fascinated by how “keywords” structure an increasing number of academic/activist collections and projects so my initial post-MLA reflections here take the form of an alphabet of keywords. (I’m also hoping to put together a collaborative session for MLA 2017 on keywords as method/practice but more on that soon!)

ACTIVISM is alive and well—in both the official MLA Convention and the Subconference.

BEARDS are ubiquitous in Austin. Locals really commit to their facial hair stylings.

CRIP & Queer Theory entwined in a cool way in "QueerCrips Across Time" (session 619) — a roundtable spanning the 12th century to 2016. An engaging convo about intersectional approaches and the dynamic interplay of historicist and presentist vantage points.

DISRUPTING DH continues to make powerful interventions in the field (yay Dorothy Kim and Jesse Stommel! I learned so much from the other presenters and the audience at #DisruptingDH. We need more "flipped" sessions like these.

ETHOS, not ethics. Medical humanities convos at MLA have reminded me of how important it is to shift from an abstract discourse of “ethics” to a sense of a lived ethos. How do we be/enact change we want in our various social spheres?

FOODOGRAPHY made MLA a joy on social media. Austin has some great food (from cheap tacos to exquisite splurges), and it all looks gorgeous on Instagram.

GOURDOUGH’S DONUTS totally lives up to the hype.

HUMANITY (toward ourselves and toward others) is crucial if we want the humanities to survive and thrive.

INSTITUTIONS can be transformed from within as well as from the outside. I like Eileen Joy’s idea (expressed in various talks she has given) that we need more “out-stitutions” (as well as “un-stitutions”?) that can change business-as-usual.

JOBS (or rather job security) in the humanities is not as strong as it could be. But I find that medievalists overall are especially supportive of one another and look out for earlier stage scholars. I appreciate that people are genuinely happy for others who are doing well, and the “market” does not define your intellect, potential, or worth.

KEYWORDS-based sessions are proliferating at MLA gatherings nowadays (recent examples: Digital Pedagogy, Disability, Medical Humanities, Middle English, Prismatic Ecology). What would happen if such keywords panels/projects started to speak to/work with each other?

LIBRARIANS are fun, smart, radical folks. Professors and academics should collaborate more with them.

MANELS (all-male panels) were thankfully absent in my experience of this MLA. Session 258 on “Interdisciplinary Vocabularies of DH” was an all-female panel, which is pretty awesome.

[ADDED January 14, 2016: Kudos to medievalists like Peter Buchanan who are forcefully responding today to the toxic MISOGYNY of certain scholar; all of this demonstrates that medieval studies (and academia, and the world) can do much better.]

NEWNESS in medieval studies makes me happy: especially global, crosscultural, comparative, and multigenerational approaches.

OPENNESS at MLA is improving but we can do better. I’m glad MLA took its theme seriously and had some sessions open to the public, but in my opinion some other things should really be open to absolutely anyone — especially the book exhibit.

PRESTIGE is still a big part of what MLA is "about" (in terms of the composition of committees and sessions etc.). While I understand that “celebrity sessions” do attract numbers, new voices should always be a part of any convo.

QUEERNESS in the sense of WEIRDNESS seemed to be more prevalent at this MLA (perhaps due to the location?). I am wonder now if I’d rather be “weirding” things than “queering” them.

RANDOM interactions with people in sessions outside your field are sometimes the best part of the conference.

STUDIUM is a great space for incubating art and knowledge, and I love that it has/is a compound.

TWITTER creates intriguingly awkward forms of intimacy. It’s a bit disorienting, in a good way, to meet someone in person and figure out how well they do/not match their avatar/online persona.

UNMAKING disciplines is just as important as perpetuating them.

VIRTUAL presence (tele-presence) was a factor in a few sessions, e.g., “special” cases of papers delivered via videoconference or embodied proxy. Speaking only for myself (and not for any committee or institution), I think MLA should more carefully consider what tele-presence might actually mean, given that not every MLA member can deliver a talk in person (due to financial, physical, cognitive, or other conditions). Having been on both sides of the job search process, I’m also all for more institutions going the Skype route for job interviews. MLA would still be a great wide-ranging conference (even more enjoyable!) without the interviews happening.

WHITENESS in some fields is still overwhelming (read this position paper by Annemarie Perez) but things are changing. The crowds at the #DisruptingDH session and GL/Q Queer Books Party were by the far the most varied of all the things I attended at this MLA. We need to cultivate more spaces where nobody is the “lonely only.”

XENOPHOBIA, Islamophobia, and racism are deeply intwined in US culture, and I’m encouraged that so many people (in sessions, academic work, and their personal lives) are doing their part to challenge these forces.

YOUTH was for me an unexpected theme across sessions: Chaucer and children (and teaching Chaucer to high school students), ageism and ableism in health discourses, generational rifts regarding student protests. I’m thinking more seriously about what it means for the academy to be by definition multigenerational and what that really means for its/our future.

ZONKED. Zen.

Briefly Noted: Reorienting Disability at #NCS14

by JONATHAN HSY

Hope all our readers are doing well, enjoying the last days of summer and (if you're teaching) preparing for the beginning of the new academic year.

The New Chaucer Society Congress held earlier this June in Reykjavik was a memorable conference; KARL blogged on-site about "whale not-watching." JEFFREY offered his reflections on ice and magic rocks; and we had a guest-posting by Boyda Johnstone about twitter at #NCS14.

Here (better late than never!) is an informative blog posting by Julie Orlemanski about the "Re-orienting Disability" seminar that she and I co-organized at NCS. If you weren't able to attend the conference (or were attending one of the other concurrent seminars or poster session), here's a chance to find out more: ‪http://tinyurl.com/ncs14-7d-disability

P.S. Stay tuned for more in these blog-threads at ITM:

• A discussion of race, heritage, and the legacy of the "Vikings" [Read Part 1 and Part 2 of KARL's postings on this topic]

• A series of posts about diversity and "things medieval" (including academic medieval studies). [Read Michelle Warren's posting launching that thread]

#medievaltwitter revisited: #kzoo2014 (BuzzFeed-style wrap-up)

by JONATHAN HSY (@JonathanHsy)

Visualization of #kzoo2014 twitter activity, courtesy of data gathered by Kristen Mapes (@kmapesy); TAGSExplorer developed by Martin Hawksey (@mhawksey). I was apparently the most active tweeter at Kalamazoo! … Or, at least, I was the person to use the #kzoo2014 hashtag most frequently. Screenshot captured May 13, 2014, 11:53 PM EDT.[1]

Kalamazoo 2014 (or rather the International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, MI, May 8-11, 2014) is already feeling like the distant past. JEFFREY has foregrounded some of the exciting new blogs that have emerged (or established blogs that have been resurrected or recently picked up steam again) since the conference, and Anna Smol is collating a grand list of Kalamazoo 2014 “wrap up” blog postings and videos on her blog, “A Single Leaf.”

#medievaltwitter and #Kzoo2014: background, history, stats

In this posting, I’d like to pivot from the blogosphere for bit to reflect on recent medievalist activity on twitter. I feel that this social media platform really “came into its own” at the 2014 Kalamazoo conference. Earlier this year, Dorothy Kim (@dorothyk98) wrote a guest posting here on ITM urging medievalists to make active use of twitter at Kalamazoo. See her #medievaltwitter posting before this year’s MLA Conference; in it, she offered some common-sense guidelines for using twitter at Kalamazoo: e.g., only tweet with permission of presenters, attribute the statements of others, use conference and session hashtags consistently, and respect others on twitter as you would in real life. These principles are in line with the guidelines set forth by Roopika Risam (@roopikarisam) for the MLA. Just before the start of ICMS at Kalamazoo, Dorothy publicized the Wikipedia Write-In organized by the Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship (see also this follow-up posting on ITM, cross-posted from the SMFS blog). The ICMS organizers, meanwhile, publicized #kzoo2014 as the official hashtag of the conference. Although there was some initial confusion about the official hashtag before the conference and not all tweeters were consistent in providing hashtags for session numbers (see this Storify feed for my record of the meta-commentary on twitter about #kzoo2014 as it unfolded), twitter was a lively venue for conversation and dissemination of info throughout ICMS. According to this tweet by Kristen Mapes (@kmapesy) at the end of the conference (well, May 11, 2014, 10:41 PM EDT to be exact) there were a total of 6374 tweets across 1001 nodes (people).

[FYI—just in case anyone’s curious—the most tweeted session at Kalamazoo was #s391, the BABEL session on punctuation organized by Rick Godden (@RickGodden); see also the text of “, (A Breath)” by Josh Eyler (@joshua_r_eyler), the YouTube video-broadcast of “Interrobanging Chaucer” by Corey Sparks (@CoreySparks), and my talk entitled “&” [ampersand]. The second most-tweeted session was #s560, “Strange Letters: Alphabets in Medieval Manuscripts and Beyond II” (org. Damian Fleming, @IPFWMedieval). The third most-tweeted session was #s511, a roundtable sponsored by the MassMedieval blog on “Medievalists and the Social Media Pilgrimage: The Digital Life of Twenty-First-Century Medieval Studies” (it is perhaps not surprising a roundtable with that topic was so actively live-tweeted!).]

So why should we care about twitter? Isn’t this all just ephemeral and frivolous background noise? Well, I’d like to make the case that twitter is not just a diversion or pastime for conference attendees but can actually be a useful tool—and it’s a platform that can be transformative socially, intellectually, and politically.

I shall make my case in the style of BuzzFeed:

8 Reasons You (Medievalist!) Should Use Twitter

1. Twitter is your inside source.

On a very practical level, following tweets can (simply put) give you a timely sense of “what went on” in session if you weren’t physically there—this could be the case if you were presenting in a concurrent session, or indeed if you couldn’t attend the conference at all. When attendees live-tweet the presentations that transpire at a session (thoughtfully and with the presenters’ consent), you can often discern the major points of each presentation and get a feel for the dynamic flow of the conversation—an aspect of conferences that can be difficult to capture for people who aren’t physically present. Such discussion creates a backchannel that emerges via the session hashtags. Kisha Tracy (@kosho22), one of the bloggers at MassMedieval, has used Storify to retroactively collate tweets from the “Relevance of the Middle Ages” roundtable for instance [note archived tweets on Storify sometimes appear in reverse chronological order]; see sessions archived on Storify by Yvonne Seale (@yvonneseale): #s373, “Beyond Women and Power” and #s385, a roundtable on Sean Field’s 2014 English translation of The Rules of Isabelle of France. If you are attending at a session and decide to live-tweet the proceedings, then your tweeting helps to broadcast the session and also act as a memory aid. Going through your twitter feed afterwards can be a great way to refresh your memory on the conversations that transpired.

2. Tweeting can be engaged note-taking.

It’s often difficult to process academic papers when they are delivered aurally, so being forced to listen carefully to a presentation and break the information down into manageable 140-character chunks can help you to focus your attention. The formal constraints of the medium invites the tweeter engage in a kind of rhetorical abbreviatio, compressing complex thoughts into their essence—getting at the heart of an argument more effectively (or composing a series of tweets to convey a sequence of ideas). The kind of “translation” one must do in converting aurally-processed talk into a tweet seems similar to something that teachers do in the classroom all the time. We must be able to rephrase complex ideas (e.g., the operations of a literary text, or a critic’s dense and florid argument) into terms that are accessible to a broader audience (in the classroom, our students; on twitter, a wider public).

3. Tweeting opens up new teaching strategies.

It’s perhaps not surprising, then, that twitter has implications for teaching. In the MassMedieval roundtable, Josh Eyler remarked on his use of twitter to facilitate conversation through a backchannel outside the classroom. The character-limit constraints of the twitter format can also foster creativity-within-constraints, developing new kinds of thinking and writing practices. Check out this twitter essay assignment by Jesse Stommel (@Jessifer) [Not a medievalist, but hey we’re cool with that!] posted on the blog Hybrid Pedgagogy; for more on this, consult his collated twitter-conversations about teaching with twitter.

4. Twitter is a megaphone (or spotlight; pick your metaphor).

Twitter can help to spread awareness and broadcast projects underway—and it can be especially timely to when one has the “captive audience” of a major conference. How Did We Get Into This Mess?, a public blog by David Perry (@lollardfish), was referenced in the roundtable on writing for multiple audiences. A Material Piers Living in a Digital World, a blog on digital visualization and Piers Plowman manuscripts, was created Angie Bennet Segler (@MedievalAngie) and debuted at Kalamazoo. A twitter-project by Carla María Thomas (@cmthomas) on translating the Ormulum also received some play over twitter. I’ve found that following certain session hashtags (such as the #s511 for the MassMedieval’s roundtable on medievalists and social media, mentioned above) helped me to discover new online projects that weren’t on my radar before.

5. Twitter builds community.

Earlier this year the online Medieval Disability Glossary project (discussed by Cameron Hunt McNabb in the “Disability and Digital Humanities” roundtable) tweeted about their entries (or works in progress) using the #DayofDH hashtag; see Kisha Tracy’s collation of tweets. The effort connected linked the work are doing on this project to the broader field of DH endeavors. Kristen Mapes has created a public list of (hundreds of) medievalists on twitter; subscribing to this list can be an interesting way to keep up with what medievalists are doing these days. In a detailed blog posting, she explains how she created the list, taking a tip from a list of DH tweeters created by Dan Cohen (@dancohen). Medievalist communities can be fostered not just through shared scholarly interests but also a sense of play. The Chaucer blogger (@LeVostreGC) is my one of my favorites twitter accounts, and #WhanThatAprilleDay (launched the first day of April in 2014) was his playful invitation to celebrate old languages through tweets and online media; this made for a festive party on twitter and the blogosphere (and also here at ITM).

6. Twitter helps create an archive.

My references to live-tweeted sessions throughout this blog posting have been referring you to Storify, a useful website and tool for curating a bunch of tweets into a more manageable thread [there are many online tutorials on using Storify; see this guide]. After Kalamazoo was over, KARL drew upon some twitter conversations to write his posting on periodicity, medievalism, and gaming, and he used Storify to embed that twitter-conversation into the post. JEFFREY’s post-Kalamazoo reflections opened up a twitter-discussion on how we (scholars and educators and contemporary culture in general) think about and discuss anti-Semitism in the past—and he has since transformed that conversation into a Storify feed.

7. Twitter can be transformative.

My final point about twitter is that it can be a mechanism for provoking meaningful social change: in the archive, in the classroom, on the streets. The use of twitter was a key theme in the roundtable organized by the Society for the Study of Disability in the Middle Ages (SSDMA) entitled “Medieval Disability and the Digital Humanities.” As Rick Godden argued [read the whole text of his presentation on his new blog ParaSynchronies],[2] the use of twitter (e.g., live-tweeting) can be a form of note-taking that is just as effective and cognitively engaged as traditional pen-and-paper forms of note-taking. Indeed, there is not just “one” way to record and process information, and people who use digital technologies (such as tablets, text to speech reader devices, and other assistive technologies) should not be stigmatized or excluded from discussions if they don’t seem to conform to “normative” embodied note-taking practice.

This discussion wasn’t simply full of “twitter utopians,” as it did address some of the potential downsides and disruptive forces of twitter and social media. There is a palpable tension between the fast pace of twitter and the slow, deliberative processing of ideas that scholars tend to cultivate. The sheer immediacy of twitter can cause “information overload” or create venues for aggressive trolling or bullying. Not all people have affordable or reliable access to the internet in the first place—so one can’t assume that twitter is simply “there” for everyone to use. But twitter—for those who use it—is one technology among many, and it can have certain advantages. People who cannot travel to a conference can still benefit when they can participate in discussions virtually—however mediated such an experience from afar might be. And as I maintained in my own talk at the “Disability and DH” roundtable, twitter can be a tool for activism and politically-engaged conversation and a space to express ideas otherwise difficult to discuss openly; just think of the #NotYourAsianSidekick hashtag (shout-out to @suey_park here!) and the very recent #YesAllWomen hashtag conversations unfolding online. Just yesterday, JEFFREY took to twitter to urge users of Facebook collectively respond to a disturbing anti-Semitic “ritual murder” community page, and hopefully many more will pass along the message and act upon it. When the world erupts in violence and fosters online communities that promote discrimination or provoke violence, twitter can be one way we start to change the world for the better.

I could even extend this thinking about world-transformation a bit further and say that the expertise we have as medievalists can be mobilized via social media to change perceptions of the past and to address gaps or biases in present-day scholarship. The SMFS Wikipedia Write-In, for instance, set out to revise entries relating to women and the Middle Ages, and in the process it created entries about feminist scholars who are key figures in medieval studies. The #medievalwiki hashtag chronicled the endeavors of the project over the course of the conference [see my selection of tweets on Storify], and my hope is that such efforts to transform Wikipedia—often the first “point of access” for people researching medieval topics—will result in a more inclusive online resource and a better-informed readership.

8. Twitter (like any technology) is what you make of it!

Such examples show how twitter circulates much more than funny cat memes, as hilarious as they are! It does so many other things. It can also comprise a deliberate note-taking strategy (e.g., via live-tweeting). It can work as a dynamic teaching tool. It can broadcast information for people who cannot physically be part of a conversation (whether they are in another session or not even at a conference). It can capture some of the dynamic flow of conversation (face-to-face or virtual). And it can help to create an archive of links and ideas that can be processed into more meditative blog posts or otherwise advance discussions.

We are at an exciting point in the use of twitter at Kalamazoo and other academic conferences, and I hope that people will continue to find creative ways to use it!

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[1] For more on how to create interactive visualizations of archived tweets, see Martin Hawksey's helpful guide.

[2] For more about this roundtable and other disability-related sessions, see blog postings on MassMedieval by Kisha Tracy and John Sexton.