My Year with Bluestone: Research and Collaboration and Tom

On various fronts this week I've been thinking about research collaboration. It's one of my roles for my School this year, to think about how to strengthen and develop research groups, networks and partnerships, so I am starting to map the various forms of collaboration we are involved with, in our School, the Faculty, the University and elsewhere in Australia and internationally.

Our research centre for the history of emotions is all about collaboration (you can download our annual report for last year online here). No longer does the typical humanities scholar work in splendid isolation, though this perhaps still persists as a dream. "If only I could just stay at home and write", we sometimes say.

Today we had a meeting with half our centre and an interlocutor helping us think about possibilities for disseminating our work more broadly, and making connections beyond the usual humanities circles, and it was frankly inspiring to hear about everyone's work. Being part of this Centre keeps me very busy — it's not about having quiet writing time at all — but having this other context to work in and speak to produces a different kind of inspiration, or incentive to work.

And then yesterday I sat with Helen and we nutted out various possibilities for the paper I'm writing for Manchester. Having funded research assistance makes all the difference to my work for the Centre. It makes it possible to work across as many projects as I do. There is a white board in the room where Helen and Anne work with all my deadlines written up there: we regularly meet and update and cross things out as they're done and write up more things to do, and they go off and follow various leads for me. It is superb. But they are also collaborators, in that they are brilliant interlocutors for trying out ideas and following trails down rabbit holes, and reading drafts and telling me when things aren't holding together. Yesterday I sat with Helen  and we spent an hour or so following down some threads that took us from Chaucer to Boethius and Machaut to Petrarch, scrambling across Middle English, Old French, Latin and Old English; and together we made a little map of a tiny nugget of an idea that I will develop over the Easter weekend as I write my talk. So all praise for different forms of collaboration. Helen and Anne are also both doing huge amounts of background work for this bluestone project, which will make it possible to start writing this book in second semester, even though I will be teaching two subjects.

One of my other lovely collaborators is my friend Tom. We had some lovely dinners and outings in the course of our previous collaboration, and we are cooking up another project (and heard some good news about it today). But in the meantime, he boldly took up my invitation to investigate the Bluestone Cafe chain when he was last in New York.  He reports:

So we went to one of the outposts (not the flagship location in the Village—it’s way down at the end of Manhattan and we were in Midtown). There were no pics of Bluestone Lanes, but when I asked why it was called Bluestone Lane, the young woman at the register said she didn’t know (but then asked if I knew—I must have had a knowing smile. To be fair, it was her first day). But the Aussie barista said it was to celebrate all the great coffee that was available on the Bluestone Lanes in Melbourne. Flat White—verdict? Really quite good. There were some promo material. I’ll send it via post.

If you click on the second photo, you can see what an Australian-style café menu looks like in New York. The only thing you wouldn't get here in Melbourne is "hot brew"...  And do we use the word "smashed" for avocadoes if we're not talking about Australian breakfasts taking over the world?

 And here is Tom, suffering in the name of my research...

When Tom Comes to Town

As he starts winging his way to Melbourne, here's a notice about a talk my writing collaborator, Tom Prendergast, will give next Wednesday. All are welcome!!

School of Culture and Communication Seminar
Tom Prendergast

"Violating the Sanctuary: Westminster Abbey and
the Inhabitation of the Middle Ages"

In this talk I will examine how the medieval idea of “chartered sanctuary” was connected to the sacral idea of the inviolable body of the Abbey. I argue that, in fact, it was a violation of this space that led to its delineation and sanctification. In 1378 an English squire, Robert Hauley, was murdered before the high altar. This violation of the sanctuary (a national drama that included John of Gaunt, John Wyclif and Richard II) not only led to the closure of the Abbey for four months and the suspension of Parliament (which then met in the Chapter House), but mapped out a national space for England’s cultural productions. For Hauley’s corpse, reverently buried in what would be Poets’ Corner (the South Transept), became a sign of the inviolability and extralegal status of the Abbey. Connected with, and yet separate from more traditional notions of the saintly body, Hauley’s dead body becomes productive of a kind of secular reverence that anticipates the corporeal aesthetics of Poets’ Corner. My talk, then, will uncover the ways in which Poets’ Corner itself becomes not just a burial site, but a kind of sacred space that enables the process of literary “canonization.” Further, I argue that this largely post-medieval poetic graveyard in the “national Valhalla” of England (Westminster Abbey) continues to be haunted by its own violent history, and that it is this violent history that enables us to “inhabit” the prehistory of Poets' Corner.

Thomas Prendergast is Associate Professor of English and Chair of Comparative Literature at the College of Wooster. He is the author of Chaucer's Dead Body: From Corpse to Corpus and the co-editor of Rewriting Chaucer: Culture, Authority, and the Idea of the Authentic Text, 1400-1602. He is currently working on book entitled England's National Plot: the Secret History of Poets' Corner.

Wednesday October 7, 4.30-6.00 pm. Dennis Driscoll Theatre, Doug McDonnell Building. (NB it is third floor of the building between the ERC Library and the Alice Hoy Building)
http://www.culture-communication.unimelb.edu.au/seminars.html

Drinks at University House afterwards

This seminar is free of charge and open to all staff, postgraduate and undergraduate students and members of the public.

I'm currently washing the sheets and about to clean up the spare bedroom, while making various plans for eating-out and playing tennis. I have also printed out what we have already put together of our book. We have about 50,000 words in five chapters of a draft manuscript now, and a suggested submission date of February. Not quite sure how I came to be at a similar stage of completion of two books at the same time, but there it is. Actually, Tom's book on Poets' Corner is only a little more advanced: we may end up publishing three books between the two of us rather close together. Talk about flooding the market.

What I did at Kalamazoo

At In the Middle, Eileen posts an introduction to the BABEL sessions at Kalamazoo this last May, and links to the full texts of the Roundtable on which I spoke with Tom Prendergast: "Are We Serious Enough Yet? The Place of Ethics in Medieval Scholarship."

Our remarks were brief, as instructed (as you can see), and celebrated the fun we have writing together. At the moment, we are each working on separate projects, but in a few weeks' time we are getting together to do some very serious work on our book (you reading this, Tom?). We wrote these remarks, it should be noted, after sitting in the sun in Rittenhouse Square in Philadelphia for an hour or so until it was decently time for lunch. Milo and Larry wandered around the square and punctuated our deliberations most pleasantly.

But I particularly like the photograph Eileen chose to accompany our contribution, "The Ethics of Trans-Pacific Collaboration", because it reminds me of what fun it is to collaborate. Especially when Chapter Five of the current project is being so recalcitrant. Although perhaps today saw a bit of a breakthrough? Today is also the day Miss Sophie showed me how to do "lunges" (I once saw a woman in Russell Square in London doing lunges, accompanied by her trainer: Oh! that could be me!). Anyway, you can practically see me and Tom in the front of this picture.

Would that all scholarly work were as much fun!

Medievalism at Wollongong

Got back home again on Thursday night, after getting to most of the postgraduate/early career training seminar on medievalism and contemporary media at Wollongong, co-ordinated by my dynamo of a research collaborator, Louise D'Arcens. The idea was to bring a small group of folk together with proposals, drafts, or even just glimpses of ideas for research or creative projects and see what kind of expert assistance and training would be useful to bring them to fruition. In fact the participants were mostly working on film and television, not so much on other media, and so Louise tailored the two main sessions on Wednesday to match.

The event was reported on the University of Wollongong's website, complete with photo of most of the group (curses! got there too late to be in the photo).

Most medievalist scholars in our neck of the woods, at least, have come to the field from medieval literary studies, but there was also a strong interest in the group in music and performance studies. Because I had only got back from the Great North-East Victorian Bike Ride the previous day, I flew up on Wednesday morning and unfortunately missed most of Chris Barker's presentation on Cultural Studies, but boy, am I glad I was there for Adrian Martin's discussion of film and medievalism.

Sometimes when two disciplines meet, or attempt to talk to each other, it's a very wary and uneasy process; by contrast, this was a perfect meeting. Adrian spoke for an hour and a half, and I could have listened to him all day. Just sometimes you get a perfectly pitched, directed and thoughtful talk; and this was one such. Adrian had thought quite carefully about medievalism, and even made me think more warmly of Umberto Eco's Ten Little Middle Ages, which sometimes irritate me. Adrian also moved us away from the obvious territory of Hollywood cinema, and showed us bits of Eisenstein's Alexander Nevsky and Roehmer's Perceval, while also mentioning a number of other European film-makers who experiment with medievalism. He then led an equally long and fascinating discussion.

Wollongong is a most beautiful campus, and the town itself also seems interesting, though I didn't see much beyond a pub and a Thai restaurant. I stayed near the beach and in the morning, took myself for a good long walk along the beach, and ate my yoghurt and muesli and fruit in the sun. It was very warm, and people were swimming sans wetsuits: must be New South Wales.

The second day was devoted to workshopping the various projects, and while we were all exhausted at the end, the session as a whole was wonderful, leading to lots of productive dialogue and plans for future events and collaborations. I wish I had had the opportunity for this kind of seminar when I was a postgraduate. In Australia, the PhD is conducted by research alone, and so our graduate students often have to work extra hard to get the skills and training they need.

And in fact, yesterday, back in Melbourne, we held a meeting of medievalists working in the Melbourne area with Sarah Rees Jones from York, visiting Australia on behalf of the World Universities Network. Interesting to think about possibilities for collaboration with this network, even though neither Melbourne nor Monash is affiliated with WUN. But we also talked about the idea of postgraduates being able to spend time in different universities, so we can all share expertise and resources, as well as the advanced coursework in medieval studies that at the moment is hard to get in Australia. Lots to think about. But a good three days of talking about medieval and medievalist things, and the kinds of connections and networks it's possible to make with different disciplines and different institutions. Lovely!

Chaucer conference blogging (1)

Well, I’m just back from the conference dinner on the last night of the Chaucer conference in Swansea. Lots of great papers, debates, arguments and discussions, which I’ll digest a little before I blog about in more detail.

For now, just some reflections on how to go to a big conference. There seem to be two main options. You can stay in the college accommodation on site, and meet your fellow delegates in the bathrooms down the corridor, and at breakfast, and on the bus to and from the excursions. As well as all day, every day, for the days of the conference. Or you can put yourself in a hotel, and hire a car, and pretend your life is not completely bound to that of the conference. I speak, of course, only of those not on a very tight budget. If you have the choice, there are actually pluses and minuses on both sides. But as the days wear on, in a very long conference, it is often very pleasant to have a little quiet time away from the madding crowds.

For this conference, I made a two-day road trip to get here, stopping at Winchester (Round Table, cathedral, pub lunch), Bath (fabulous restaurant), Wells (cathedral; purchase of green man boss), and Glastonbury (abbey; one of Arthur’s tombs; the chalice well), with three delightful travelling companions. We were all staying several miles out of Swansea, in the seaside town of The Mumbles, and had a hired car, so we could take ourselves back and forth at will. And I’m really glad we did.

It was especially nice to be able to offer lifts to colleagues, and so one night, Tom and I gathered up George and Jeffrey, who were staying in the dorms, and went out to Langland bay for a drink on the terrace, before heading down to a fish restaurant in the Mumbles. We sat in the early evening light, watching some kids digging out a boat of sand, relishing the incoming tide and the way it promised to set the boat free. We all felt, I think, somewhat liberated, to have chosen each other’s company, and to find ourselves observing ocean time, not conference time.

The funny thing was, we were each laughing at the other. Was it more laughable to be staying in humble student quarters on what can hardly be described as a lovely campus, or more laughable to be driving around from hotel to restaurant to beach to pub? Tom and I were expecting Jeffrey already to have blogged mockingly about our taste for the good life; so I’m glad to see, as I think, I have the chance to blog first…

We all had the afternoon off yesterday, too, so Tom and I played tennis, then drove out along the Gower peninsular and watched the tide come in over the Worm’s Head point. I will speak a brief paean to my writing collaborator, who is such a great friend and conference buddy. He is always the one who knows how to find a good restaurant, who always has something interesting to say about the session we’ve just attended, who is funny, and who is kind. When we were playing tennis, he was getting a little frustrated with some kids on the next court who kept wandering back and forwards across the courts, with some girls drinking diet coke and shouting, and kicking a soccer ball around too. It did get a bit hard to concentrate. But when we finished, he gave the new canister of tennis balls, which he had just bought the day before, to the kids, who had been playing with just one raggedy old ball, that was completely bald. “You’re a legend!” one said, and another: “A gift from the Americans!” I thought that was just a lovely thing to do.

A Dylan Thomas-ish moment, too. As the kids were mucking around, a car drew up on the hill above the courts, one yelled out, “Oy.. Pritchard … Dav!”, in that beautiful Welsh lilt.

There’s heaps to think and say about this conference, but for the moment, the thing that’s strongest in my mind are the friendships I’ve made and consolidated over the last few days. And that’s a great thing to be able to take away from a conference.

Doing Things in Groups

If you had asked me, say, four years ago, whether I preferred doing things in groups, or on my own, I would have answered resoundingly with a preference for the latter. Exercise, research and singing would have been three obvious categories for me where solitude was the preferable state.

But over the last few years, I have come to see the fun of working and teaching collaboratively. I still prefer to walk or run (in the rare intervals when I have calves and ankles that will sustain such activity) or swim on my own: that kind of exercise is meditative for me. But now that I am getting stronger at tennis, I am starting to enjoy the communality of playing doubles.

These days, I'm working on three big research projects. One, the book on the Order of the Garter, is a solitary project. I've just finished a draft of Chapter Five (yay me!). Another is a co-authored book and related projects on theories of medievalism with Tom. The third is our collaborative project on Australian medievalism: I love this team, and working with Louise, Andrew and John, and also Toby and Anne. I'm also thinking about cooking up another international collaboration on the teaching of medieval studies and medievalism...

Today, too, I took part in three joyous group activities.

First up, the Middle English reading group. We are reading Havelok the Dane, for an hour, every fortnight. It's hysterical and fun, even on days, like today, when I've been too busy to do any preparation. Anyone in Melbourne want to join in? Email me.

Second, we held the first of our methodology workshops for research students. Now that the old Department of English has become part of the new School of Culture and Communication, our students are part of an enormous cohort that straddles "English", Theatre, Creative Writing, Cultural Studies, Publishing, Media and Communication, Art History, Arts Management, Cinema Studies and parts of the old School of Creative Arts. So when we hold School-based "work in progress" days for students, they are talking into a ferociously interdisciplinary context. And while that's tremendously interesting, there was the danger of losing a degree of focus, so we have decided to hold regular methodology workshops for graduate students in English, Creative Writing and Publishing, and today's was the first. It was wonderful to have two terrific presentations from John and Anne, PhD students approaching the first major hurdle — confirmation — of their candidature. Heaps of people turned up: perhaps 25? People concentrating hard, thinking and talking and asking and answering questions, with a tremendous spirit of collegiality and co-operation. Really, an ideal example of supportive and collegial work. Frankly, I was unspeakably proud of our students.

Third, our weekly tennis fixture. I play with a group of women from this newly aggregated school, plus the partner of one of our male colleagues, plus a woman from another school who's just come through the fiery trials of chemotherapy and radiotherapy, and is grapping with the rigours of hormone therapy. And sometimes Joel comes along, as he did today. The poor boy is still sick. He nearly made it to school today, but couldn't in the end get up from the breakfast table to get dressed. But he dragged his aching knees and his barking cough onto the court this afternoon and had about a fifteen-minute hit with me and Denise. We all love our tennis. You might look at us and think we are very uneven, and not all that good, often, and mock us for not being able, or not caring enough, to keep score properly, but you could not dispute the pleasure we serve up (!) to each other. Even Joel caught the spirit and was cheerfully talking about going back to school tomorrow (he's missed 7 days, which is a lot for a thirteen-year-old).

So... groups? I'm converted!

But what's missing from this picture? "Exercise, research and singing..." I wonder, could I really find a choir to join???