Random Pre-Kalamazoo Thoughts

I had hoped to put up a followup post on Symmachus before heading to Kalamazoo but while I’m about 750 words into one, I don’t think I’m going to finish it by the time I leave.

Last week I posted about the Statues of Late Antiquity Project, even though the database wasn’t yet active. It is now and it’s SWEET! I haven’t messed with it a ton but the search options seem to work fairly well. Since I’ve been reading on him I did a search using the terms “Symmachus” and “Rome” and came up with 10 results. Now only one of those was for Q. Aurelius but I was pretty happy with it anyway.

I’ve underplanned for Kalamazoo I’m afraid but I’ll get that figured out. Last year I had a feeling going in that I’d pretty much go to sessions, buy books and be an antisocial SOB the rest of the time because of a project I was working on at the time that had gained some urgency right then. Not so this year. I’m planning to take absolutely no work from my real job with me. However I’ve made zero social plans.

Speaking of books, I am hoping for a return to sanity this year. For me, sanity means that my book haul will be in the 30′s, not in the 60′s like it was last year and the year before.

How might I do this? you may ask. Or maybe you may not, but I have been. Right now, 24 hours before leaving, my thoughts are that I will buy nothing on the Carolingians. There are two reasons for this. First, at this moment I have 24 books on the Carolingians on my to-read shelf (one of them anyway). That is sufficient. Second, my reading up on early Christianity is taking a while. I shouldn’t be surprised by this as I had 37 books to go through when I started and have bought more but I was going to start from the late 4th/early 5th centuries and work backwards right to reading the New Testament. Er, I’m still in the late 4th century, working on a new micro-periodization which seems to exist between Julian and the death of Theodosius, or roughly 360-395. I still have Evagrius Ponticus, Gregory of Nazianzus, Gregory of Nyssa, and others to read. This will take a while. I won’t be working my way forward to the Carolingians for quite some time. Last year I bought 33 Carolingian Books at Kalamazoo. Cutting these out of my menu will help a LOT.

I’ve tried one other strategy. In past years, knowing I would be buying tons of books at Kalamazoo, I imposed a book buying moratorium on myself starting from when I registered in early February. I’ve come to wonder if the result has been the same as for any other addiction/obsession where I overindulge once I proverbially “fall off the wagon” – and in a veritable den of sin, at least when it comes to the availability of books. There was no moratorium this year. If I came across something I really wanted, I bought it (within reason – I still have nothing published by Brill or any volumes of the PLRE). We’ll see how that works.

Hopefully I’ll see some of you there. As of now I’m leaning toward no prior social planning on my part. I haven’t done that in several years but I remember the first few years I attended when I’d hang around at wine events, drinking crummy wine (it’s improved – I now consider it mediocre which, considering it’s poured from gallon jugs, ain’t bad) and frequently a conversation with someone turned into, “A bunch of us are going to _____ later, why don’t you join us?” I’m yearning for those aforementioned free-spirited days.

 

New Late Antiquity Resource

I’m basically reblogging this from Research News in Late Antiquity. On Friday, May 4 the Oxford Centre for Late Antiquity will launch their Statues of Late Antiquity or LSA online database.

Once it’s active (it isn’t yet but part of my reason for posting this is to remember to go back and look at it) the database will be located here. The project is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and headed by R.R.R. Smith and Bryan Ward-Perkins.

This looks like it might be pretty good. You can read more about it at the Last Statues of Antiquity Project page. The project will focus on new statuary, not renovation and appears to have the boundaries of the Roman Empire as its focus (though I couldn’t find this flatly stated – for example, based on the project descriptions, including research method, I can’t exclude the possibility that Roman-influenced statuary found outside the Empire or statuary created within the Empire but exported to other regions may be included).

Statuary and inscriptions are areas I’m just beginning to look at. The whole concept of the role public acclamation and image making played in governance of the later Roman Empire seems pretty important to me, at least in some regions. This project and database may be very useful in looking at this, particularly since the project goes beyond simply listing statues and inscriptions and will include contemporary literary references/copying as well as modern analyses.

 

Great Resource at Historian on the Edge

This’ll be short and sweet. If you haven’t taken a look at it, make sure you head over to Guy Halsall’s blog for his recent post of his list of Late Antique Sources in Translation. Nobody who’s been reading this blog for very long will be surprised at how much I appreciate this.

It also provided me with a bit of an impetus to get back to work cataloging all of my sources, something which I’d planned to have finished months ago. Not sure if I’ll post it like I did with my hagiography sources but I’ll give it a shot. It will make a nice test on whether I can post tables in WP.

 

Good Resource for Late Antique Sources

I recently finished Stephen Mitchell’s A History of the Later Roman Empire, AD 284-641. As I was reading it the thought was in the back of my mind that I might write a review but there are plenty of publicly accessible reviews out there already, ranging from people who are disappointed at the general track he took to those who are very pleased. For me, I’d say I’m fairly pleased. I have a few quibbles with areas he chose/didn’t choose to focus on and I thought he questionably used some sources but it is a good overview, shorter than AHM Jones and I think he covers most of the major issues, excepting a lack of emphasis on the last 40 years which is a bit perplexing.

The reason I want to talk about the book has to do with a small section. If you’re interested in finding English translations of sources for Late Antiquity, Mitchell’s bibliography makes a great starting point. Pages 426-9 (I have the paperback) include a wide variety of sources. What was most useful to me, in particular, was the section sub-headed “Collected Sources in Translation.” When I scan lists for books I might be interested in, titles such as, Pagans and Christians in Late Antiquity or Religious Conflict in Fourth-Century Rome don’t scream “Source Collection” to me. I’m at the point where I need to find a table of contents because I may already have many of the sources in these books but that doesn’t keep this from being a very useful method of arranging a bibliography.

While I’m sure Blackwell would love it if you ran out and bought the book (the paperback isn’t too expensive), my suggestion is that if you’re interested in finding English translations of sources but don’t want to read this volume, head to a library or use Inter-Library Loan and photocopy these four pages.

Jones, AHM, The Later Roman Empire, 284-602(2 volumes). Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press (1986). ISBN: 978-0-8018-3285-7.

Mitchell, Stephen, A History of the Later Roman Empire, AD 284-641. Malden, MA/Oxford: Blackwell Publishing (2007). ISBN: 978-1-4051-0856-0.

 

This Looks Like it Might be Really Good

My annual May migration has usually been to Kalamazoo but at some point I may need to deviate from that. Research News in Late Antiquity just posted the CFP for the North American Patristics Conference.

I have to say, the open call session topics are really interesting. Narratives of Religious Conflict in Late Antiquity? Yup – I’m very interested in this. The Cults of Saints as Social Capital? Well – yeah. The New Prophecy: Montanism in the Light of Recent Research is the same – very interesting movement.

Plus I like Chicago and know the city reasonably well. Obviously, a Chicago Conference will cost more than one in Kalamazoo and I’m even less qualified to attend a Patristics meeting than a meeting of Medievalists but I’ve had plenty of practice in sitting in the back of a room and keeping my mouth shut. This appears to be a biennial Conference. I may need to think about it.

And I just joined. I took a look at the Journal of Early Christian Studies online and loved it. It may be stupid to pay $50 for something I already have free access to but A) I’ll be much more likely to read it if I have a hard copy (I still haven’t gone through the August Issue of EME) and B) More importantly, sometimes you see something that’s good and decide it’s worth supporting. I’ve done the same with the Journal of Late Antiquity for a couple of years now.

 

Online Medieval Resources and Really Cool Stuff Other Folks have Written

Before I get to the post I want to note that other bloggers will now find my comments signed as “Medieval History Geek” rather than as Curt Emanuel. This isn’t a move toward anonymity or anything. We’re going to be developing a blog for work and I don’t want people going to that blog to somehow run across my description of my knowledge level for this blog which basically says “I have no training and really am not qualified to say much of anything on this topic but I think it’s fun and interesting so I’m going to anyway.” When it comes to my job, I am trained and I do know what I’m talking about (for the most part anyway) so I’m going to use my real name for that blogger profile and MHG for this one and hope to avoid any confusion.

Posts to Check Out

Before I start putting together Kalamazoo summary posts I want to put up a quick post one discussing some online resources. 1 First, and something I’ve been remiss about lately, are good posts from other blogs.

Guy Halsall has two recent posts I strongly encourage people to read, Warfare and Society in the Early Medieval West and Warfare, the “State” and Change Around 600. For the latter post, take a look at it and see what you think about what it says on defining an entity as a state in the medieval period. This is something I am uncertain of myself and unable to say what I think of the various “state” opinions out there as I find myself swinging between arguments however this post made me think about it quite a bit which, for me, is a pretty strong recommendation in itself. 2

For the earlier post I want to pull out an excerpt and emphasize a point that over the last few years I’ve come to believe is essential for looking at all aspects of medieval history.

“Talking about all this as an issue of Roman continuity or new barbarian methods entirely – as I see it – misses the point. This was neither the take-over of western Europe by immigrant barbarian military societies with new social and military practices and nor was it – evidently – a simple continuation of the Roman regular army. It was an evolution that took place within the particular, distinct circumstances of the fifth and sixth centuries.

This general point, about seeing early medieval warfare in its own terms, applies to another common view of the period, which would understands it by extending the observed features of central and later medieval warfare backwards into our era. Thus it is sometimes said that battles were rare in this period. They were risky and therefore they were not generally sought. Instead sieges were the most important feature of warfare. This is, as far as I can see, a reasonable description of warfare in the age of castles and knights, from the eleventh century, perhaps the tenth, through to the end of the Middle Ages, but, as I will argue later, it is quite mistaken for the period between the sixth century and the ninth.”

This points to something I’ve come to believe very strongly; that examining aspects of history independently and without contamination from knowledge of other aspects, is essential to gain the most unbiased information possible (every single Human, historian or not, has biases) for the aspect under study. Chris Wickham in Framing the Early Middle Ages was highly influential in my believing in this for geographic regions, that they need to be examined on their own terms before you start looking for other regions to compare/contrast/group them with. I’ve mentioned before how Dr. Halsall, in Barbarian Migrations and the Roman West, 376-568 helped me to realize that the same holds true for other pieces of evidence – each piece needs to be examined independently, on its own terms, before looking at it in relationship to other pieces. Here he applies this same reasoning with regards to warfare – don’t allow your knowledge of other periods to contaminate (I don’t think this too strong a word) how you perceive or examine the period you are investigating.

The reason these things are important to me is so I can assess what I’m reading. As I’ve (hopefully) made plain, I am not a historian. I am not engaged in historical research. Among other reasons (there are a lot of them but this is the most critical), I do not have the skills, particularly the language skills, to investigate source material in their original language, even if I had access to them. So what I do is read stuff – stuff written by historians. For me to asses what I think of their work, how much influence it should have on me, I need to be able, as much as possible, to evaluate their argument. A critical component of that is their use of evidence. Now I can’t examine the evidence itself so it’s the argument, as presented in their writings, that I have to look at.

I apologize for the digression in the previous paragraph but I try to throw something like this in every now and then so you can figure out where I’m coming from, particularly since, based on site traffic, there seem to be some new folks reading this blog recently.

New Online Resources

Right before Kalamazoo I posted about the Digital Poster Session. I had a chance to briefly look at the booths (it was a shame more people weren’t there) before the Cistercian session I attended and some seriously good online resources were displayed. I’ll note that I’m highlighting the ones which myself, with no Latin or Medieval languages skills, found interesting. Others may well be as or more useful to professionals, or serious amateurs with those skills I lack.

Cusanus Portal – This site is devoted to resources related to Nicholas of Cusa. The main site is in German but some information in English is also available.

Early English Laws – This is a project to provide online translations and editions of all English law codes and related texts produced prior to the Magna Carta in 1215. They do not have anything up yet but are looking for people to help with the translations so if you have language knowledge in Medieval Latin, Old English, Old French, etc., I encourage you to contact them and offer your assistance.

St. Gall Monastery Plan – I know; you read the title and think, “The plan of St Gall? I can already find that online“. In some ways I think the title does this site a disservice, though it will likely show up well on internet searches. First, the plan will be displayed in over a hundred images, providing far more detail than has previously been available. However the treasure is, “Besides a variety of digital representations of the plan itself, the site includes a graphic representation of how the plan was physically made, detailed information on each of the component elements of the plan, and transcriptions and translations of its inscriptions. In addition, the site contains a series of extensive data bases including one presenting physical objects found across Europe that add to our understanding of Carolingian monasticism, one devoted to the terminology of Carolingian material culture, descriptions of all known Carolingian religious edifices, and an extensive bibliography on both the Plan itself and Carolingian monastic culture generally.” I think this will be a wonderful resource.

1 Uh, sorry – when I started I thought this would be a short, quick post. Then my enthusiasm got the better of me. And it’s still too short to really talk about uses of evidence which I’m very interested in.

2 Steve Muhlberger recently posted a link to an interesting essay by Susan Reynolds on this topic. I’d encourage you to also look at the articles she mentions in it.

Halsall, Guy, Barbarian Migrations and the Roman West, 376-568. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (2008). ISBN: 9-780521-435437.

Wickham, Chris, Framing the Early Middle Ages: Europe and the Mediterranean, 400-800. Oxford: Oxford University Press (2006). ISBN: 9-780199-212965.

 

Kalamazoo Update

I’m taking a break from working late on work stuff. Not sure how late I’m going but the more I do tonight the less time I’ll need to spend on it in Michigan.

I want to mention a program addendum which may interest some people. This may be in the addendum you get at registration, the Corrigenda but in case it isn’t, I thought I’d post it here.

Dot Porter just posted the following on the Congress Facebook group:

Digital Poster Session

The Medieval Academy of America’s Digital Initiatives Advisory Board and Digital Medievalist have co-organized a poster session and reception, scheduled for Friday evening at 7pm in Fetzer 1035. The complete list of participants is below. Hope to see you there!

*****

Julian Hendrix and Richard Pollard (UCLA), “Reconstructing the libraries of Carolingian Reichenau and St. Gall”

Joshua Westgard (U. Tennessee), Demonstration of Bede Manuscripts Database

James Ginther (Saint Louis University), Demonstration of T-PEN

Eleonora Litta Modignani Picozzi (King’s College London), Early English Laws and Gascon Rolls

Daniel O’Connell (American Cusanus Society), Demonstration of the Cusanus-Portal

Dot Porter (Indiana University), Demonstration of TILE (Text Image Linking Environment)

Grant Simpson (Indiana University), “Proactive Preservation: What Every (Digital) Medievalist Should Know”

Debra Lacoste (Wilfrid Laurier University), Cantus Database Demonstration

Adam Oberlin (University of Minnesota) “XHS: eXtensible Handschrift – A Proposal for Open Source Manuscript Editing Software.”

Richard Harris (U. of Saskatchewan), Concordance to the Proverbs and Proverbial Materials in the Old Icelandic Sagas

Kate Helsen (U. of Toronto), The Optical Neume Recognition Project

Michael Drout (Wheaton College), Lexomics group from Wheaton College

I have to say, this looks like one kick-butt poster session. The session is listed in the program but not the details. I’d penciled in to attend a session starting at 7:30, “Cassian’s Long Shadow” and still want to make it but it’s going to be hard getting through all those posters in under half an hour. I’ll work at it though and make sure I have a couple of minutes to spare – the last thing I want to do is be forgetful and lose more years off my life like I did two years ago by entering another Cistercian Studies Session unprepared.

I’m also having trouble figuring out what to bring to read. I just finished reading a couple of Byzantine sources and wanted to start on William Harmless’ Desert Christians. The problem is, though I want to start looking into desert monasticism and asceticism more closely, this book contains excerpts and I know I’ll want to refer back when those are from something which I have here in full. I have Cassian’s Conferences and Institutes but those things are thick. It might be time to grab something from out of my period that I can just sort of read, not study while on the road. I have a book on Beckett and a couple from the Yale English Monarchs series I haven’t read.

I’ll see some of you up there this week. Have a safe trip everyone – at least, as of now, you don’t have a volcano to worry about if you’re coming from overseas.

 

Amateur Tip: A Few of My Favorite Things

I’ve highlighted some of my favorite blogs before. Thought it might be helpful if I did the same for some websites.

On the left of this page, part way down, are some links I consider useful for folks like me without access to some of the academic resources historians have access to. Actually, I have a lot of that access since I work for a University – I just don’t know how to use all of it. In any case, I have over a hundred medieval and ancient sites bookmarked for my use but including all of those on my blog wouldn’t help anyone. The ones I’ve included on my blog page are those leading either to online journals or source material.

Maps

If you’re into maps, these sites may be of interest:

• Euratlas is the map site I visit most frequently. It has dozens of maps of interest ranging from the 4th millennium BC to now. I particularly like the century-by-century progression of Europe myself.

• The Ancient World Mapping Center goes well beyond providing some free maps (which you may find through a link on the left of the main page). It also includes information and links related to current research into mapping and cartography.
• The Collaborative Numismatics Page has much, much more than just maps. I’ve linked to the map page here but you’ll want to check out the Numiswiki main page for loads of information, primarily ancient.

Art and Images

One of my very favorite, recently discovered sites is Kornbluth Photography. I probably shouldn’t call this a “discovered” site so much as one I was led by the nose to. Genevra Kornbluth gave a very interesting paper on archaeological finds in 5th-7th century Western Europe at the 2010 International Congress for Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo. She provided her website address there. After looking through it, I was hooked. If you’re into Art History – or, like me, just like looking at very old pretty stuff – she has bushels of images with accompanying descriptions. And if you’re an academic and looking for an image for your current book project, you may find something of use (this is what she does for a living so there will likely be a fee – these images are NOT public domain or for indiscriminate use). I also love the fact that when; in addition to never bathing, indiscriminately killing one another and nobody reading; someone throws the old, “after the fall of Rome nobody did any art” at me, I have a wonderful site to point them to that illustrates that no, this is very, very wrong.

Texts and Source Material

I’ve mentioned before how I like to do my reading. Generally, I read several secondary works covering a topic at the same time. While taking my notes, on a separate sheet of paper I also write down a list of materials I want to find; additional secondary works, journal articles, etc., and; primary and contemporary or near-contemporary source materials. The following sites are those I’ve found very useful when looking for sources:

• The Medieval Sourcebook is such an astonishingly useful site that I have a hard time describing it. Dozens of sources translated into English, or links to them. Paul Halsall, the author, is a God – at least when it comes to his contribution to access to Medieval resources. Even though he is no longer (I don’t believe) actively maintaining the Sourcebook, it remains a wonderful resource.

• I’d call Roger Pearse a God too except I know he’d prefer some other term. So I’ll revert to Steve Muhlberger’s characterization of him as a Benefactor of Humanity. The Tertullian Project is his main page (he has others) where the results of his effort to translate public domain source material into English are displayed. If you’re looking for materials on early Christianity, this is a wonderful site.
• Another excellent source covering the same general area (and one I know Roger has contributed to) is the Christian Classics Ethereal Library. This site contains a treasure of source material related to Early Christianity and the Early Church, translated into English. Downloading materials requires a small fee however you may read them online for free.
• The final site I’m going to point out today is Fordham University’s Bibliography of Medieval Sources Page. When I start looking for source materials, this is one of the first places I look. The bibliography is searchable and easy to use. Generally I only input the medieval author name, the original language, and that I’m looking for materials translated into English. It includes materials available online as well as those that have been translated and published. Obviously, it’s not 100% complete but it’s a great starting point and, if you happen to go there and notice they’re missing something, use their feedback page to help them update the site.

So these are just a few of the sites I consider useful for finding source materials for those without access to a university or comprehensive public library system. This is just the tip of the iceberg and most of my links here are to other collections of sources, or online journals. If you have other sites to add, please either e-mail me or include them in comments on this page.

 

Random and Not-so-Random Thoughts

I had a brief moment of delusion a month or so ago that my usually torrid (from a “real job” perspective) summer was easing up. A second wave of “business” started a couple of weeks ago and looks to continue at least through the next two weeks. Without time to really research and develop a content-driven post, I thought I’d highlight a few of my favorite blogs and throw in a couple of introspective notes.

Of course you can look at my Blog List on the left side of my web page. I like all of these and will at least scan them whenever a new post comes up, though David Beard’s Archaeology in Europe Blog sometimes overwhelms me with the amount of information. However right now I want to mention a few blogs which are largely focused on the Early Medieval/Late Antiquity periods.

Burgundians in the Mist is a blog devoted to the 5th and 6th century Burgundian Kingdom. The Burgundians were one of the Roman successor states, first settled as foederati and then carving out their own kingdom. In 534 they were defeated and their kingdom absorbed into that of the Merovingians. This website helps remove them from obscurity. One of the items which makes the Burgundians so interesting to me is that through the writings of Avitus of Vienne we’re provided a window into the struggle between Arian and Orthodox Christianity for Western supremacy. Outside of the Franks, all of the barbarian groupings that entered the former Roman territories were Arian and, one by one, they converted – or were destroyed by Justinian.

Grateful to the Dead is authored by Dr. Chris Armstrong, Professor of Church History at Bethel Seminary. The blog is not exclusively about the early Church, which is my main interest, but it has a lot of information about it, as well as the development of doctrine. I’ve only been following it for a short time but have found it very interesting.

Magistra et Mater has a blog which is a combination of her work on Early Medieval Europe and her current job as a Librarian (somehow “librarian” doesn’t seem to capture the essence of this – Library Scientist? academic librarian?). I’ve found her posts on the Carolingians very interesting and look forward to more of her work being published. I’m very interested in the role(s) of women during the Medieval period and her work on masculinity includes a tremendous amount of information on this. See her recent post on methods of study regarding the level of freedom women hold in societies for an example.

I’ve only recently been introduced to The Lost Fort through the recent Carnivalesque hosted by Jonathan Jarrett at A Corner of Tenth-Century Europe. Gabriele Campbell is a writer of historical fiction and fantasy who has done extensive research on the Ancient and Medieval periods. I haven’t had the time to go through her blog in depth – yet – but from what I can see, there’s a wealth of information.

You may wonder why I’ve left A Corner of Tenth-Century Europe so late. Alphabetically, Jonathan Jarrett’s blog is the first on my Blog List and anyone who’s read my blog knows how much I appreciate what he’s put together. That’s because I’m going to use his blog as a segue to another topic. Jonathan’s blog is remarkable for a couple of things. First, and most obvious, is the content. Absolutely loaded with information, not just about the 10th century and his most recent research interest, Catalonia, but about the Carolingians in particular, and Medieval History in general. Also, I’m a huge footnote-chaser and Jonathan includes these liberally. One of the things which characterizes all Medievalist blogs that I’ve come across is the love they have for the period and their work in it. I think this comes across particularly strongly in Jonathan’s blog. I’m certain there are Medievalists out there a bit discontented with their work, or wishing they were doing something else. But you don’t find them blogging.

Jonathan recently posted about his trip to the New Chaucer Conference in Siena a month or so ago. The post was interesting enough, but he was kind enough to include a link to his paper on blogging. I’ve read it 3 times.

Jonathan’s paper tells a story of how and why he began blogging, and how his blog has evolved. It’s good reading, but it speaks to me because I’m still trying to figure out what my blog is “about.” I know it’s about Late Antiquity and the Early Medieval period and I know it’s very much an amateur effort. But why does it exist? I started it because I enjoy conversations about medieval history and have engaged in multiple online forums related to this, and wasn’t happy with the level/content/something indefinable on any of them at the time. Mixed in with this is my enjoyment of teaching and my hope that I could provide some sort of amateur-professional “link” which other amateurs might find helpful. I’m certainly not a Medieval Historian, but when I get in a room full of them I can generally understand what they’re saying – something which wasn’t true at, say, my first International Congress on Medieval Studies ten years ago where I pretty much sat meekly in the back of the room during sessions.

That takes care of the why. How about the content, the what? As some have noted, I read a lot. I thought most of what I’d do would involve posting book reviews. It didn’t take very long to realize this wouldn’t happen. For one thing, while I read a lot, I don’t whip through a 500-page book every week and I feel it’s important to post regularly, at least weekly. However I don’t want this blog to be about my real job, my real life, or anything but medieval history.

So reading Jonathan’s paper has me thinking, again, about the purpose of this blog, the message I’d like to communicate. I’m not sure I have one beyond “the Middle Ages fascinate me.” No overarching theme or concept. This will likely result in a continued mixture of posts with a fair level of content, interspersed with those such as this one which include resources and introspective thoughts (nobody should interpret this post as even hinting that I don’t enjoy blogging or am thinking of stopping). And while I don’t want to “post just to post” I find this happening – where, when I’m busy, I throw something like this out (which I can put together in an hour without digging through references) so I can have a post up at least weekly, even when I have nothing to say.

Not to worry though. I’ve just started Allen Jones’ Social Mobility in Late Antique Gaul: Strategies and Opportunities for the Non-Elite. I think I’m going to enjoy this, and I expect I’ll have something to say about it when I finish.

 

Information Request: AP Medieval History Textbooks

This will be a bit different – I don’t usually use this blog for this.

My A World Lit Only by Fire review has, ever since I posted it, been one of the most popular pages on this blog. Kind of warms my heart actually – maybe I’m doing some good in the world.

The problem is that while I blast this book fairly well, I don’t provide any alternatives for high school teachers who may be looking for something that covers the Middle Ages for their AP class. A recent thread on mediev-l has brought this to my attention and I’d like to provide something.

I’m not familiar enough either with AP history or with all of the medieval history overviews to come up with something on my own. If anyone has a suggestion or suggestions, please send them to me, either by e-mailing me, or by posting comments to this post. Also, I will include your name (not contact information) as a contributor unless otherwise requested.

As a very brief introduction to a topic I’m not very familiar with, in the United States Advanced Placement (AP) courses are offered to high school students, usually Juniors or Seniors. On completing the course and exam, students receive college credit for the course.

A separate issue is/are the AP history test(s) itself – if A World Lit Only by Fire is considered appropriate to provide students with information to pass the exam(s), then the exam(s) may need some work. This goes beyond what I plan to address with this request though as I learn more I may become inspired. This book should not be given to high school students as a reference.