Early Modern Notes

Let there be much quaffing and stuffing of the face and loosening of the waistbands.

Have a good Christmas or [your preferred festivities] and New Year. See you in 2006.

Over at Neural Gourmet

I think I’m starting a cold.

I’m going to be mightily pissed off if I’m right.

A new stall at the farmers’ market yesterday – Elan Valley Mutton. Oh yum yum yum.

I haven’t eaten mutton for nearly 15 16 years. And that was in Mauritius.*

I shall mostly be eating mutton curry tomorrow (one for the Zanzibar curry mix, methinks) and there should be plenty for the freezer too.

Update:

Happiness.

…….

*Terrifyingly, this also means that it’s almost 15 16 years since I got married. I could have been celebrating my 15th 16th wedding anniversary next year. I could have had a house – and a mortgage – for almost 20 years. Instead… I have a PhD. [But I still can't count.]

I can live with that trade-off.

A Making Light chat about the Demonic Dan Brown leads to a post by the linguist Geoff Pullum about Dan Brown’s opening sentences.

So I learned the proper term for that irritating thing undergrads often do in essays: “Historian Jane Brown says such-as-such”. (Even worse, they sometimes capitalise the word when it’s in the middle of a sentence.)* At least, I find it irritating. It nearly always seems completely irrelevant and besides, even if a specific essay might require the identification of writers by their disciplinary backgrounds, it just feels wrong to leave out the definite article.

The post points to an explanation both of why students do this and why it jars with me: as Pullum points out, it’s a common construction in newspaper articles. He comments that it feels odd in a novel, but I think it feels equally out of place in academic writing. It’s the wrong style.

Or am I just being peculiar?

….

*Although I find that generally undergrads capitalise words pretty liberally anyway: Early Modern or Eighteenth Century or Capitalism, etc etc. And History, of course. It doesn’t usually bother me that much, but it feels oddly dated.

sharon.howard6 {at} btinternet(.)com/hcbuttonblock.jpg" width="107" height="68" border="0" alt="History Carnival Button" align="right" />Up at Frog in a Well Korea. Many thanks to Jonathan for putting it all together.

And now we all have a well-earned break until 15 January. (Because I said so and I’m in charge.)

Thanks to everyone who sent in nominations and volunteered to host and wrote great posts since kicking off in February. I might write something reflecting on how it’s gone over the last 11 months. It’s been interesting, yes?

The 22nd History Carnival – and the last of 2005! – will be tomorrow, Thursday 15 December, at Frog In A Well: Korea.

You have just a few hours left to submit nominations for recently published posts about history (a historical topic, reviews of books or resources, reflections on teaching or researching history) Email Jonathan Dresner at dresner[at]hawaii[dot]edu or use this submission form.

The 2006 competition is open. The BA PDFs are three-year research fellowships in the humanities and social sciences, “designed as early career opportunities for recently postdoctoral scholars to develop experience of research and teaching in the university environment”.

You must either have recently completed your PhD (viva on or after 1 July 2004) or do so by 30 June 2006, and have ‘a prior connection with the UK academic community’ (primarily through British citizenship and/or a PhD from a UK university), but must not have held ‘an established teaching post’ in a higher education institution. And of course, you need to have a well-thought-out research project proposal. Remember: it’s all about grantsmanship.

The competition is stiff, but if this is what you really want to do with your life, it’s worth a try.

Bill Rammell, higher education minister, reckons the latest survey proves that the public supports its policy on tuition fees.

So take a slightly closer look.

Yep, 77% of respondents think that students should ‘pay something towards going to university’. Well, no shit. I don’t have a problem with that (as long as they don’t have to pay up front. Although, for the record, I’d like to point out that the way in which paying my student loan is organised is A PILE OF CRAP).

Unfortunately for the government, same public doesn’t like its top-up fees: 65% think ‘there should be a fixed price for all degrees’. This bit is not mentioned by the minister. (What’s that Mr Rammell? ‘La la la la I can’t hear you…’)

Largely unrelated: sometimes I think that academics should never try to be funny.

Expect light posting from now until, well, possibly mid-January. I really do have a lot to do before and after Christmas.

But as a quick comment, yet again, on the ‘why blog?’ question: well, I’m currently thinking and writing about my research interests for applications, and I’ve been able to use various things I’ve written over the course of the year to focus my thoughts: from quite solid ideas about my naughty gents (who are heading slowly towards the status of serious scholarship. and I promise there will be more about them in the new year… when this damned book manuscript is done), to my fuzzier long-term thoughts, once I get this stuff about people battering the crap out of each other out of my system (I’m a pacifist really! honest!), about travellers and border crossings, and somewhere inbetween, work I’d really like to do on servants and masters. See: blogging is not a frivolous waste of time. Well, not all of it.

Anyway, back to work.

PS: how’s about this for an alternative to “keeping a blog”: “developing the potential of the Web* to communicate scholarly research to non-academic audiences in accessible forms, to foster communications between researchers and to increase understanding of history (as a subject and a discipline) in general and my field in particular”…? Am I full of it or what? Heh.

*or maybe more specific: “new forms of web software” rather than “the Web”.

A quick roundup: this side of Christmas, there’ll be an Asian History Carnival (12th December), History Carnival (15th), Feminists’ Carnival (21st) and Carnival of Bad History (22nd).

A real challenge would be to write a single post that would get into all four…

Plus: Teaching Carnival (15th).

The 22nd History Carnival – and the last of 2005! – will be hosted on Thursday 15 December by Jonathan Dresner at Frog In A Well: Korea.

Email nominations for recently published posts about history (a historical topic, reviews of books or resources, reflections on teaching or researching history) to: dresner[at]hawaii[dot]edu – or use the submission form provided by Blog Carnival.

The History Carnival is not just for academics and entries don’t have to be heavyweight scholarship, but they must uphold basic standards of factual accuracy. If you have any further questions about the criteria for inclusion, check out the Carnival homepage (link above).

You should include in your email: the title and permalink URL of the blog post you wish to nominate and the author’s name (or pseudonym) and the title of the blog. (I also recommend that you put “History Carnival” somewhere in the title of the email.) You can submit multiple suggestions, both your own writing and that of others, but please try not to submit more than one post by any individual author for each Carnival (with the exception of multi-part posts on the same topic).

Additionally, the 2nd Asian History Carnival will be hosted by Konrad Lawson at Muninn on Monday 12 December. Nominations for posts on Asian history to: konrad[at]lawson[dot]net.

I have two job applications in hand. One must be completed and posted within the next two weeks (and the other needs to be substantially done by then, although I’ll have a few days to finish it off after the Christmas break) and the sooner I can get it done the happier I’ll be.

So, of course, I’ve spent half of the afternoon tinkering with the materials for the course that I’ll be teaching next semester, which doesn’t start until the end of January.

I hear a rumour that The Carnival of Bad History is looking for its next host. (From Science & Politics, also noting the posting of the latest Skeptics Circle.)

I’m still always amused* at this sort of entry in an archival catalogue:

No. 59
1673-1689
REGISTER of the names of those who personally appeared, as required under the Test Act, at the Quarter Sessions for co. Denbigh from 15 July 1673 to 15 Jan. 1688/9, to deliver certificates of receiving the Sacrament according to the usage of the Church of England, to take the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy, and to make a declaration against Transubstantiation.
(Roll; parts destroyed by vermin) [my emphasis]

And the next one “helps to fill up gaps nibbled out of No. 59″. Lovely.

*Well, amused as long as it’s not a document I need to call up.

I swear, my next research project will be based on printed sources.

I think it really does get worse every year. (Fortunately I have a relatively small circle of friends and family to deal with. But at this rate they’ll all be getting book tokens and chocolate. Admittedly, extremely good quality chocolate, but still. Or socks.)

It’s partly having spent so long in a fairly small town with a limited set of choices. Let’s face it, I know every bloody shop in Aberystwyth. I know exactly what’ll be there. And the Christmas Craft Fair increasingly saps my will to live. (I’m sure it used to be pretty good…) And I’m not at all sure I can face several hours on a train to the nearest real city shopping centres.

Anyone got any online gift shopping favourites? (Speaking in practical terms, they need to be UK-based – it’s getting too late for things from anywhere else to arrive in time.)

While still thinking about children’s books, as a more positive followup to yesterday’s post, a question:

Which children’s book (or series of books) do you wish you’d read when you were a child?

Perhaps you couldn’t have read it because it hadn’t been published yet, or you simply didn’t come across it until later. Something you like very much now, but you just wish you could have experienced it without all your grown-up knowingness. (Examples that don’t include the words ‘Harry Potter’ are especially welcome…)

Alternatively, maybe there’s something you’ve never quite got round to reading at all but always rather wanted to?

For me, it might well be Philip Pullman’s Sally Lockhart mysteries (rather than the Dark Materials trilogy, which I do like a great deal, but don’t quite give me that ‘Oh, I wish I’d found this when I was twelve!’ effect). They are absolutely terrific. I only wish there were more of them.

So there’s this huge movie coming out, and I read an essay by Alison Lurie (whom I generally love), and even a spirited defence by Brandon. All of which got me mulling something over.

I suppose I have a problem with Lurie’s piece from the moment she claims that children either love the Narnia books or hate them, since as a child I had no strong feelings about them one way or the other. I read quite a few of them at one time or another but in no particular order (except that I know I did start with The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe). I consumed a lot of books in my pre-teen years and the Narnia series was just another one that I dipped into and out of.

I had no idea LWW was an allegory of anything. And to tell the heretical truth, although the story was fine, it didn’t spark any passion. I picked up other books in the series here and there along the way; I remember almost nothing about any of them. I think it all felt rather boringly middle-class, and perhaps the earnest pious highmindedness underlying it all just turned me off – even though I didn’t know that was what it was all supposed to be about.

Now, I would read books about middle-class children, no problem (Famous Five: yep, had fun with those. Not that I could tell you any of the plots of those books either… but I think they were all the same really, weren’t they?). Mind you, the children’s books I really devoured were nearly all about kids who might be middle class but were a sort of quirky middle class (probably with struggling writers or artists for parents, or poor clergymen, or something equally threadbare): they were the poorest girls at the local stables (or in the boarding school, where they were probably scholarship girls) – but in the end they beat all the rich kids hands down.

Pony books, more pony books, and sometimes girls’ boarding schools books. How middle class is that? I devoured them.

What worked best was a good rousing narrative where the heroine starts in the mud (it was always best if she was completely useless when she first climbed on a pony and fell straight off again, even more useless than me) with everyone laughing at her and by a mixture of unexpected talent, passion and downright hard work ends up with the big shiny silver cup. Up yours, spoilt rich brats! (Ah, Jill and Jinny, my friends.)

And I could dream that one day I might do the same.

Perhaps, then, the Narnia books didn’t cut it because they weren’t for me particularly good stories. They weren’t tales I could insert myself into, aspire to, with characters I would particularly like or want to be like. They had really very little to say to me: to my inner fantasy life, or my outer social one either.

And so, really, all I’m saying is that I wish so many people wouldn’t make so many assumptions that everyone cares about them one way or the other. Because I still think they’re mostly rather dull and vastly overrated.

At Blogenspiel. (In progress.)

Just a quick addition: there will be no Carnivalesque in January. We’ll start again in early February with an early modern issue… as long as someone volunteers to host. If you think you might like to try it, get in touch.

Also, I think I forgot to mention that the next History Carnival will be on 15 December, hosted by Jonathan Dresner at Frog in a Well Korea. (Email: dresner [at] hawaii [dot] edu) After that, the HC will also be having a New Year break and will return on 15 January. We have a good variety of hosts lined up for the first months of the year.

And I have finally got the hang of what you can do with WP Pages: a nifty new page for early modern news.

It lists upcoming conferences and other events of interests to early modernists and recently noted resources. And because I’m using the miniblog plugin to do the listing, all the new additions will show up in the miniblog RSS feed.* Clever, huh?

Sometimes I even amaze myself.

……

* In theory. On putting it to the test I had some trouble with it in Bloglines; I don’t yet know if I’ve fixed it properly or not. (That’ll teach me to get cocky.) Further update: The feed does work in Bloglines, it seems. So that’s OK then. (But I’ll be keeping an eye on it.)

I can’t believe the things that some people do… Hilarious.

(Thanks to scribblingwoman.)

Bonus silly photo: Kitsch Goose Nativity. (Hat-tip: Horizon.)

I have mentioned this before, but now Jonathan at Head Heeb has made it official. ‘Symposia’ – when a group of bloggers gets together to write essays about a pre-specified topic – are becoming a regular feature of academic blogs, but so far they’ve usually focused on books (eg, fiction or non-fiction). I think this will be the first blog symposium for historical research based on primary source material: the Old Bailey Proceedings Online.

The Old Bailey database is, quite simply, the largest primary source collection currently available online, with reports (and often complete transcripts) of more than 100,000 criminal trials from 1674 to 1834. As such, it provides almost unlimited opportunity to use the online medium for original historical work.

This symposium isn’t just for those with an interest in crime or legal issues. Court records are a slice of life, and the Old Bailey papers provide an unparallelled look into the daily life of early modern London. My own online explorations of the Old Bailey records have revealed scenes from the class struggle, glimpses of London’s Jewish and black communities and quack medicine as well as early forensics. The academic conference held on 2004 at the University of Hertfordshire involved an even wider range of topics.

The symposium will probably be held in late January, and “submissions ranging from the scholarly to the entertaining will be welcome”. You don’t need to have a website of your own: Jonathan and I will both lend space if needed. Read the rest of Jonathan’s post, take a look at the OBP (try out a few keyword searches relevant to topics that interest you and see what happens!), and if you think you could take part, get in touch.

Coming of age at Clews. Lots of good stuff!