Category Archives: Organizing

Ideas from Mediber Postings

Organizing
Estimados Colegas —
Finally! I’ve made this space… proposed back in the spring:
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The most immediately useful for those of us in medieval, it seems to me, might be a site for teaching medieval Iberian literature and culture, with topics and a repository of syllabi.  We could, in addition, develop a teaching anthology with open-source texts, and the possibility of comments via CommentPress.

Another site that would be useful would be one for teaching “intro to medieval studies” and/or “intro to studying spanish” — at various levels and with various orientations.
One of the problems with publishing a guide or manual or overview is that it can’t be updated dynamically and the cost is often escalated with newer editions.  Both of these problems are solved with such a site as MLA Commons.  We “give up” royalties, to be sure.  Is that a huge loss for tons of people?

I am also offering to take responsibility to whatever degree works for the project, and look forward to hearing from anyone interested, preferably in open discussion on the list, but also off-list if you prefer.

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The most immediately useful use of MLA Commons for those of us in medieval, it seems to me, might be a site for teaching medieval Iberian literature and culture, with topics and a repository of syllabi.  We could, in addition, develop a teaching anthology with open-source texts, and the possibility of comments via CommentPress.

Another site that would be useful would be one for teaching “intro to medieval studies” and/or “intro to studying spanish” — at various levels and with various orientations.
One of the problems with publishing a guide or manual or overview is that it can’t be updated dynamically and the cost is often escalated with newer editions.  Both of these problems are solved with such a site as MLA Commons.  We “give up” royalties, to be sure.  Is that a huge loss for tons of people?

I am also offering to take responsibility to whatever degree works for the project, and look forward to hearing from anyone interested, preferably in open discussion on the list, but also off-list if you prefer.

1) sections?

  • considerations on the curriculum
  • key terms in Ibero-Medieval Studies
  • introduction to (medieval) (iberian) graduate studies
  • Journals and series
  • the various levels (intermediate undergraduate, advanced undergraduate; master’s level, doctoral-level)
  • topics (skills, areas/domains, themes)
  • Recent Dissertations (harvested from ProQuest or posted by stakeholders)
  • Links / resources

One of the things I’ve noticed in preparing the Spanish medieval report for Year’s Work in Modern Language Studies is that there are areas that we have yet to come to a practical set of gathering terms, particularly those areas that cross the various languages/ethnoreligious categories.  For example, what term do we use for all the iberomedieval studies, including what I have termed in YWMLS “Ibero-Christian,” “Ibero-Judaic,” and “Ibero-Islamic,” including them all in the category “Medieval Iberian Cultures and Confessions.”

While we should indeed be careful about what those terms are in relationship to their ideological implications, we very much need them.  In fact, the linkage between the literature and the subject headings (SHs) developed by the Library of Congress is crucial, and the latter depend on the terms that we begin to deploy consistently in the literature.  At present the SHs for the multiple confessions/ ethnoreligious groups available to us remain very blunt instruments.  If anyone’s interested, I can prepare a report of sorts (though it can’t be at the top of my priority list for a couple of months), and post it to our new site.