Tag: Coding Codices

Global Chaucers and Global Conversations 

By Candace Barrington  

March 14, 2022.

On 11 March 2022, for the first time since the MLA Conference in January 2020, I presented at a conference. When Lauren Van Nest (representing the Medieval Academy of America’s Graduate Student Committee and the Interdisciplinary Graduate Medieval Colloquium at UVa) contacted me in May 2021 about joining a roundtable titled “Going Digital and Online: Opportunities for Sharing Graduate Student Research,” the world was opening up and travel was beginning to resume. I assumed that I would travel to Charlottesville, Virginia, and present in person.  

As it turns out, the conference had to limit the number of in-person participants. I did not attend in person, so my first conference presentation in two years was virtual. From what I could observe, the program committee co-chairs—Bruce Holsinger, Deborah McGrady, and Eric Ramirez-Weaver—showed what can be done with a hybrid format. Everything wasn’t perfect, but I appreciated that many of us (both there and virtually) had an excellent conference experience. 

The roundtable I joined was moderated by Reed O’Mara, organized by Katherine Churchill, and chaired by Lauren Van Nest. It featured six speakers: Candace Barrington (“Publishing Online and Global Conversations”), Jack Chen (“Early Career Publications: Then and Now”), Danièle Cybulskie (“The Medieval has Two Faces”), Anne Le (“Comitatus: Insights from a Graduate Student Journal Editor”), Aylin Malcolm (“Podcasting for Postgrads”), and Sam Truman (“Between the Classroom and the Gallery: Publishing Opportunities for Graduate Students in a Museum Setting”). Each presentation was focused and insightful. And the discussion itself was lively and informative. 

My contribution focused on two online platforms I’m associated with: New Chaucer Studies: Pedagogy and Profession and the Global Chaucers project. In addition to providing a brief history of each, I also shared research and publication opportunities each provided. Because it’s always good to remind our readers about what Global Chaucers does and provides, here’s the outline of my Global Chaucers overview. 

  • The most immediately available resource that Global Chaucers provides is its List of Lists. Our online bibliography identifies (and sometimes provides links to) 
    • Translations into over 50 languages 
    • Novels, verse, and other retellings 
    • Recordings of Chaucerian texts 
    • Theatrical Performances 
    • Musical Adaptations 
    • Film 
    • Visual arts 
    • Online media 
    • Scholarship 
    • Teaching aids
  • In addition to the List of Lists, we maintain a blog that publishes 
    • Short essays about global Chauceriana 
    • Announcements about new translations 
    • Notes & queries 
    • Notices of forthcoming conferences 
    • Call for papers 
    • Descriptions of new scholarship 
  • We invite you to send us discoveries and announcements that would interest our global community. 
  • You can also become involved with the project by 
    • Considering the role of Global Chaucers’ translator interviews in your scholarship 
    • Incorporating Global Chaucers’ student surveys in your teaching 
    • Sharing what you learn from the Global Chaucer resources with a blog posting  
    • Joining the conversation: twitter and fb 
    • Subscribing to updates 
  • In whatever way you decide to engage with the Global Chaucers project, you can be part of proven efforts 
    • to amplify voices outside the Anglophone inner circle 
    • to transform and redefine the field of medieval studies 
    • to think across institutional boundaries 
    • to recognize the limits of seeing the past through only a Eurocentric lens.  
  • Additionally, we invite your ideas for creating more robust networks that facilitate research and support graduate students and early-career medievalists, especially those who are geographically or institutionally marginalized. We want to help scholars make their research more visible and to create global opportunities for collaboration. Please send us your ideas! 

In sum, I left the roundtable excited by the variety of opportunities we now have for sharing our research. I’ll continue to follow medievalist.net, and I’m adding to my listening rotation The Medieval Podcast and Coding Codices: A Digital Medievalist Podcast.