My Grad Training Taught Me Something!

I was in Oxford this past weekend as a symposium on the broadside in Europe. The presentations covered material from 15th century Germany to 19th century Italy - ballads, proclamations and study guides for French monks. It was wonderful to talk with scholars who work with the same material and speak the same "language". This is fairly common in academia and why we have conferences and symposia in the first place. I managed to make good connections with the English Broadside Ballad Archive at UCSB. This is a group that combines my interests in ballads and digital humanities, and we're set to touch base in January regarding specific projects I can become involved with. I also met and exchanged cards with several other scholars, most of whom have said they will be happy to meet with me while here in London.

But, perhaps most importantly, I was able to make an excellent impression in the final round table discussion of the day. The moderator asked the question: from religious proclamations to songs to study guides - are we really all dealing with the same material? Most of the speakers tended to point the uniqueness of what they do and emphasize the role of difference in their projects, but mentioned that they still struggled to get a grasp on exactly what were broadsides anyway? When I got the floor I got to make a really good plea for the inderdisciplinarity of broadside research, that we are a field in which we must consider how these objects were seen, heard, read, produced, and consumed. That this requires working across the standard disciplines of history, literature, music, art history, and performance, and that that struggle is in deed difficult, but also what makes this field so dynamic. I got to look out to head nodding, murmurs of approval, and had the final remarks of the day. It was awesome. So funny that the interdisciplinary, trans-national, world historical, cross-whatever approaches that are common currency at SC to the point of seeming trite were really new and novel. I had several people come up to me to tell me how much they liked what I had to say and the way I described our joint venture with material that often ended up as loo paper.*

I'm back in the British Library with only 3 weeks left here. I absolutely love it here and am going to be sad to leave. On the other hand, I'm ready to be back stateside and closer to family and friends. I have to get my tush to the British Museum Prints and Drawings, the Tate, and sort through 2 more collections. The scary thing: I think I'm going to be able to get it all done by the time I head home.

*I'm working with original ballads now and let me tell you, they are soft and could give Charmin' a run for their money.