The View From Kalamazoo

Shana Worthen and I have co-organized the series of sessions at the International Congress on Medieval Studies on ‘Weblogs and the Academy’ for the past three years.

2006 – Weblogs and the Academy: Internet Presence and Professional Discourse among Medievalists (A Roundtable)

2007 – Weblogs and the Academy: Pedagogy, Professionalism, and Technical Practices (A Roundtable)

2008 – Weblogs and the Academy: Professional and Community Outreach through Internet Presence

And this, our final year:

2009 – Weblogs and the Academy: The Scope of the Professional and Boundaries of the Personal in Open, Pseudo-Anonymous, and Anonymous Blogging — Please join us Saturday, May 9, at 3:30 p.m. in Bernhard 213!

We’ve enjoyed organizing the sessions, and they’ve been very good (if I do say so myself – and this year looks excellent, too!) To our delight they’ve resulted in spirited discussion both at the conference and online, and they’ve helped in the creation of a real and lively community of medievalist bloggers. We’ve been fortunate in the wide and outstanding variety of scholars who have come aboard, and in the generous support the medievalist blogging community has given us in the form of suggestions, ideas, and kudos – many, many thanks to all!

I’m (inordinately!) pleased that academic blogging in our discipline is still going full-force, that sessions on blogging have become (almost) commonplace at other academic conferences, and that our sessions have helped shine a spotlight on the bloggers who have spoken in them and on the greater world of medievalist bloggers.

But wait – I said final, didn’t I?

Shana and I have decided to exit, stage left. The topic is hardly exhausted, despite our presenting speakers on some of the biggest issues that either we identified or that grew out of previous sessions, but we’re bowing out while we’re ahead — and that means there is an opening for any of you to continue the show. I can’t think of any major issues we’ve missed – but I suspect you may have ideas (that is, if the sessions are still of interest and still needed – and that’s a question only you, collectively, can answer), and we’re happy to support you in organizing these sorts of sessions at Kalamazoo in the future.

But ya gotta let us know.

So – what do you think?