The Semester Begins . . .

Phew. The first week is over. We managed to do pretty much what we had planned:

Lecture #1: Introduction

I arranged my introduction a little differently this time; rather than handing out the syllabus right away, I waited until the end of class. I spent the lecture time covering two main things:

1. Medieval Europe History. I took each of these words apart, which enabled me to talk about (a) how “medieval fits into the master narrative of Europe history, (b) how “Europe” is an iffy geographical and institutional concept that nevertheless is very imaginatively powerful (also how it arose from Carolingian discourses and was linked with “Christendom”), and (c) what “history” is and is not. Along the way, I got them thinking in terms of timelines and maps, and I also offered them what I call “swing dates”—that is dates that a novice can hold onto in order to master chronology: 476; 800; 1215; 1348; 1517 (I almost used 1453 . . . and probably should have).

2. The Course. Before I gave them the syllabus, I outlined the course objectives and modes of evaluation. We returned to these the next day.

Lecture #2: The Middle Ages as “Other”

I ended up squeezing three things into this class:

1. Discussion of the syllabus. All the usual enthusiasms and admonitions.

2. A brief warm-up for their reading of Beowulf. I focused mostly on the history of the manuscript, which gave me an opportunity to show them said manuscript and let them consider its challenges.

3. The Middle Ages as Other. Because my course fulfills a diversity requirement, it’s important set up terms at the beginning. So I defined what I meant by “other” and “othering”; I explained that we will often observe medieval people doing this “othering” (e.g., Christians & Jews, English & Irish, etc.); and I then offered the historiographical example of how the middles ages are constructed as utterly “other” in relation to the modern—either utterly horrible or utterly sweet. This enabled me to (I hope) demolish and delegitimize “othering.” We’ll see.

Discussion #1: Imagining Beowulf, Then and Now

READING: Beowulf, lines 1-2210 (pages 3-151). Question posed in advance: What in Beowulf’s world is familiar even today?

I don’t actually teach the discussions, I can report only on my design and hopes. In this case, I figured probably half of this discussion section would be consumed by nitty gritty stuff—details of the course and getting to know each other, so I assigned only the first bit of Beowulf. I told the students that they would find it fun and rousing . . . and weird, and that I wanted them to work against that weirdness by *not* “othering” the people of Beowulf—that is, by looking for the ways in which its characters were as human as we are. Hope it worked!

That’s it. A decent start, but oh is my desk piled high with stuff to do! Another semester begins . . .