Blogging the Middle Ages

Abstract

Conversation, teaching, conferences, snail- and e-mail, journals, and edited collections and monographs are the long established technologies for sharing ideas and work in progress and then disseminating a “final” form for future readers. Each medium marks a significant stage in a project’s gestation. A typical developmental arc for humanities scholarship in the United States might consist of bringing a thesis or discovery into the world via embodied interaction (from chatting to a colleague over coffee to presenting on a panel), with tentative conclusions refined and solidified through the affirmation and skepticism of interlocutors; teaching a single class or a whole course on the subject to try out a thesis and see how well it works; sharing research in a slightly more formal way by requesting comments from friends or from experts not necessarily well known; submitting portions of the project to a peer-reviewed journal and refining the argument in reaction to criticism; and, if all goes well, ultimate publication of the work as an essay, and then perhaps in its fullest form as a monograph. A blog (short for “Web log,” that is, an ongoing record disseminated over the World Wide Web) offers a kind of ceaseless electronic conversation that may work in tandem with or might even take the place of some of these junctures and media.