[Kisha Tracy]

Minutes from Lone Medievalist business meetings.

[Kisha Tracy]

The Lone Medievalist held its business meeting at ICMS 2017. The following are the minutes for those who could not attend:

I. Update on 2016 priorities

The 2017 LM roundtable was held at the ICMS on Saturday, May 13. The participants were Kisha Tracy, Geoffrey B. Elliott, Andrew M. Pfrenger, Leah Haught, and Megan E. Hartman, with John P. Sexton moderating.

The language study groups and writing groups suggested at the 2016 meeting are in progress, with an announcement expected later in the summer.

The first LM volume, The Ballad of the Lone Medievalist, has been accepted for publication by Punctum Press and will be forthcoming shortly. An announcement will be made through social media when a definite date is known.

II. Announcements and discussions

The LM is now a CARA-affiliated organization. Kisha Tracy also noted that the Medieval Academy of America, and particularly MAA Executive Director Lisa Fagin-Davis, has been extremely supportive of and interested in LM.

With the forthcoming publication of Ballad, the LM is beginning to consider ideas for one or more additional volumes. Potential idea proposed at the meeting included the significance of studying the Middle Ages, potentially including: the current need for medievalists as public intellectuals (especially as a check on those who would claim a medieval justification for nationalist or racist ideologies); the value of collaborative effort in medieval studies; the “dark ages” problem; the expanding notion of what “the medieval” is and means; and the links between medieval studies and other scholarly allegiances (LBGTQ+, Medievalists of Color, Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship, etc.).

The LM Summer Book Exchange will be repeated in the summer of 2017.

We discussed strategies for expanding the activity of LM into regional conferences, especially as a tool for bringing LMs together at these events. Pursuant to this goal, we will establish a social media presence for the purpose of allowing LMs attending regional conferences to coordinate social and professional contact. We will also look into coordinating with conference organizers to establish a semi-official presence for LM at these gatherings.

We also discussed the ways that LM can expand its support of the scholarly work of isolated medievalists. Besides the support of regional conference attendance, we proposed promoting CFPs (especially those which seem friendly to LM interests) and possibly organizing a forum wherein LMs could ask for help tracking down scholarly materials unavailable to them. We will look into this and determine the best way to proceed with these.

III. Plans for 2018 ICMS

Per suggestions from the assembly at the meeting, we will propose roundtables on the subjects of “Collaboration as a Key to Professional Productivity” and/or “Technology, Medieval Digital Humanities, and the Lone Medievalist.”

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