This still makes me laugh, two days later

On the way home, I read Nick Hornby's Juliet, Naked, which I thoroughly enjoyed. A fantastic, funny and sad meditation on careers that falter, the idea of wasting a life, and on internet fan communities. Towards the end there is a tense family scene: the previous partner of one of the main characters has taken a child (not her own) to the zoo. People are trying to behave well.

"He was impeccably behaved," said Natalie. "A pleasure to be with. And he knows more or less everything there is to know about snakes."
"I don't know how long all of them are," said Jackson modestly.

Medieval Literature at Tasmania

I was very sorry to hear about the proposal to abolish the teaching of Medieval English Literature at the University of Tasmania. Like lots of other places around the country — my own Arts Faculty; ADFA — the School has become overstaffed, and they are looking to abolish medieval literature (and the position of Jenna Mead, who teaches there).

This kind of thing is always tricky. It's a small department; and enrolments in medieval literature will never be enormous. But there are certainly ways to integrate medieval literature into the curriculum. The School has particular research strengths in C19 and C20, and in regional literature and colonial and post-colonial studies, and wants to focus its undergraduate teaching in that area. (Oh, but an exception is made for Shakespeare, which just seems weird to me.) All the more reason, then, to give students the historical depth that medieval studies offers.

I've just written to the vice-chancellor at UTas. In part, my letter read:

Contemporary medieval studies is a cutting-edge field that readily engages not only with its traditional interdisciplinary partners — historical studies, art history, architecture, music, etc. — but also with a wide range of sophisticated theoretical approaches to literature and cultural studies. Moreover, medieval studies is an exemplary way to study the literature of the past, of cultures and societies other than our own, especially through dialogue with the field of medievalism, the study of various attempts to revive, re-create and re-work medieval culture in contemporary literature, film, and in other cultural forms.

Professor _____ remarks that medieval literature is not taught in many Australian universities. All the more reason, then, to preserve it in the syllabus at Tasmania, where it is well supported by the team of excellent medievalists in the School of History and Classics. English departments, even small ones, have an obligation to give students the widest possible exposure to the many traditions of English literature, not just those relevant to the School’s research strengths. Professor _____ comments that Medieval Literature is a specialized subject that “cannot be readily integrated into a reinvigorated and restructured English programme”. Permit me to register my most profound disagreement with this statement: the teaching of Middle English language skills may well be specialised, but there is no reason why medieval literature and medievalist literature and film cannot be fully integrated into a lively curriculum, as is seen in other universities in Australia and internationally.

It felt a bit odd to be writing, given that my own Faculty is grappling with forced redundancies of our own, though there is a growing tide of resistance to this next stage. Anyway, if you are reading this with concern, and would like to know more, and perhaps write your own letter, I suggest getting in contact with Jenna directly, or leaving a comment here in support of medieval literature.

Rivalries: Cities, Nations, States and Genders

My favourite gag about Sydney-Melbourne rivalries goes like this: "If someone in Sydney has an idea, they throw a party; in Melbourne, they start a journal."

Further grist to this particular mill is provided with UNESCO's announcement that Melbourne is to be the new City of Literature, following up on Edinburgh's achievement in 2004.

Of course this is all falling into the background behind the Olympics, and especially behind Sally ("Oh my God, is this real? You've got to be kidding me, right? Did you see me? Did you see how pumped I was? I was more pumped than I've ever been in my life. Shit, I could see a girl passing me but kept running my own race. Amazing. I can't believe it.") McLellan's unexpected (she was supposed just to be getting some experience) silver medal in the hurdles, but how these things do chase each other around the world.

England and Australia have always had tremendous sporting rivalries, most notably in cricket, and our sports minister, Kate Ellis, was foolish enough to bet we would do better than the UK in Beijing, vowing she would wear the union jack colours to the next sporting event if the Brits did better than we did. They are creaming us! But of course, our coaches have been poached by China and the UK, paying them more than Australia can or will afford for their expertise. I gather, too, that the UK has been diverting lottery money away from the arts and into their sporting programmes. Yeah, but we've got a city of literature now!

Amid all the talk of international rivalries, and the new country of Phelpsville (which on the medal-per-head-of-population chart would look pretty incredible), a number of commentators here are talking about the brilliant success of Australian women, compared to our men. It's also the case that most of them come from Queensland. So I'm proposing a new state of Femenye (I'm teaching The Knight's Tale this morning). They don't even have to change the name: just enter women from the northern state in their own right. Problem solved!