Medievalists.net

We profile Anachronista, which is written by Carrie Russell.  Entering its fifth year, Anachronista was one of the first blogs that I regularly followed, because of Carrie’s interesting and often funny posts and her web savvy.

We interviewed Carrie Russell by email:

Why did you decide to start your own blog?

As a child I was apparently great at the creative writing and composition assignments in school. At the time, those classes were just an easy “A” for me, as I was more interested in art. I thought maybe I’d like to write a novel someday, but that seemed like too huge a project.

Then, in 2004, I was reading a few blogs and submitted a story to one of them and received a great response (http://www.geekbooks.com/a_tale_of_call_center_magic_231.html). I figured a blog of my own would be good ‘practice writing’ and a way to catalog interesting things I found on the internet, and comment on them. It would be a good outlet for my creativity and sense of humor. Now I believe writing can be therapeutic, and I think it’s much cheaper than an actual therapist.

You are a photographer, Henna artist, and Celtic artist. From a business and a personal perspective, what are the challenges in being an artist?

Well, one of the big challenges many artists face is that it’s very hard to market yourself objectively. I’m pretty bad at that one. Then there’s pricing your work and billing for services and such… and if there’s anything I really hate, it’s accounting, so the business end of my creative efforts just sucks the life out of me. In the past, schedules and deadlines were also a source of stress, when I’d say ‘yes’ to too many projects at once. Over time, I’ve learned how to create on a schedule, and how to say ‘no’ better.

When you add together writing, photography and all the other crafty things I do, sometimes it feels like my creative faucet is on full blast, all the time. But finding uninterrupted time to create is much harder than just ‘being an artist’. I get cranky when I don’t get enough time to create something the right way, or a deadline is moved up or changed at the last minute. Then I have to rearrange my personal life to get something done. It is hard on others in my life sometimes, when I disappear for a week or more to finish a project. Seriously, I have imprisoned myself in my room and locked the door and said ‘don’t talk to me unless you have food for me.’ It would be funny if it weren’t so dysfunctional. My home is pretty distracting, so that’s why one of my current projects is taking place elsewhere, in a nice quiet offsite location. It’s the largest set of canvases I’ve ever worked on, and it would NEVER get done if I had to do it in my home. So I made a mobile art studio, and just take it with me. I learned to pack light and move fast while doing henna…

Henna is one of my main forms of artistic expression lately, but it’s seasonal here. So I’m really busy during the summer and use the winter months to plan events and marketing for the next summer. I like that henna is so impermanent, and to be really good at it, you have to draw quickly. I saw that as a challenge 10 years ago, but now it’s second nature to draw that fast. That has helped me speed up all of my forms of artistic expression too. I did quit hennaing for a few years, as it was creating Carpal Tunnel symptoms for me. Now I limit the amount of time each week that I’ll do henna to no more than 10-12 hours, and I try not to do it for more than four hours at a time.

Besides your Anachronista blog, you have other online presences, including Facebook and Twitter accounts, and your own virtual person in Second Life. Do you find it increasingly difficult to keep up with all of your online activities as they compete with each other?

I’ve found a few online tools that help with social marketing and status updates, so when I write something new in Twitter, it automagically updates many of my other profiles. My blogs are updated as I find the time, or when I’m inspired by something relevant to write about. Admittedly, that is much less often than it used to be, as I’m not as active in the SCA (Society for Creative Anachronism) lately. The poor economy in the last couple years has put such a huge dent in my entertainment budget that I don’t really “walk the walk” anymore. It sometimes feels like there isn’t much left to say, and any cool news gets covered by the many other medievalist blogs that have popped up in the last five years. I’m not too worried about keeping up, I’ve probably only got about 100 consistent readers anyway. And they have all found me on Facebook or Twitter now.

As for my virtual presence in Second Life, I’m coming up on my five year mark, which is pretty old, as far as avatars go. I use Second Life to experience things I wouldn’t get to do in real life, like visit castles and go scuba diving. If I’m frustrated with a project, or need inspiration, I can go visit virtual places that are relevant to my interests. I’ve even got an apartment in Second Life where I’ve hung a few of my real life maps, art works, and photos of henna. Not that I expect to get any ‘real life’ work from it, but I do seem to want to have a connection to my real life there, in case I forget I’m real or something. My virtual self is very similar to my real self: we like all the same things and look alike! I even hang around with other SCAer’s in Second Life. Now THAT’S geeky.

Finally, what other blogs do you read?

I have over 300 subscriptions in Google Reader, so you could say I operate on ‘information overload’ most of the time. Many of them are about design, photoshop and photography. My favorite of those is PhotoshopDisasters.com because I am well acquainted with the retouching industry and the abysmal and laughable horrors that can occur. I’ve got 25-30 blogs to read in the ‘medieval’ category, a few of which I re-syndicate in the sidebar of my own blog. I also read Felicia Day, because she’s a fellow redhead and is changing online entertainment for the better. Also, if there’s ever a movie made about me, I want her to play me. She’s funnier and prettier.

Here are some of Anachronista’s posts:

And verily doth she mock and meme

Crusoe: or, as I like to call it, MacGuyver Pirates!

The Renfair approacheth, just in time for a sanity check

In which Wal Mart is challenged to a duel…

We are profiling a brand new blog – The Heptarchy Herald – which offers just a few posts so far, but it looks as if it will provide some interesting discussions:

We interviewed the blogger behind The Heptarchy Herald:

I normally start my questions with why you started your blog, but I think you wrote up a pretty good first post on that subject. Instead, I will ask how you got interested in the Early Middle Ages?

I got into the game kind of late, college in my mid-thirties. I have studied the Middle Ages as an amateur since junior high, discovering Tuchman’s “A Distant Mirror” in seventh-grade. When I entered college, I intended to focus on parliamentary history in the High MA. In one of my classes, however, I wrote a term paper over Female monasticism in early A-S England. That is when I “fell in love” with early medieval studies.

You just started your blog a few days ago – have you developed a kind of overall plan on what you will be blogging about over the coming weeks and months, or will your future posts emerge from what you will be doing and reading?

I don’t really have a plan, other than using the blog as a way to interact with other scholars. I’m rather isolated at my university. I’m the only Ango-Saxonist in the department, including the faculty, so I thought a blog might help by allowing me the opportunity to engage in discussions that otherwise would have to wait for conferences. I am also working on my thesis, so I will occasionally post with issues that might pop up there. Overall, the response to the first few posts has been incredible. One of the things that first attracted me to medieval blogs was the community that they seem to have built, and I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge the cooperation and encouragement of Dr. Nokes at Wordhoard, Jennifer at Per Omnia, Jonathan at Tenth-Century, and Dr. Swains at Ruminate. They have been wonderful and accepting. So much for the insularity of the “Ivory Tower!”

You are blogging anonymously, or at least anonymous enough that it would be hard for someone to figure out who you are. Why did you choose to be anonymous?

The anonymity question is interesting. I didn’t really think of my blog along that line. I certainly don’t have any reason to remain anonymous. The day of my first post one of my Facebook friends even commented, “Have you read the new Medieval blog, wink, wink.” I never told him I was starting a blog, so maybe the issue is a dead end. Honestly, I haven’t had a lot of time to tinker with the “about me” section of the blog, but my name is Michael Fletcher and I attend Middle Tennessee State University.

What other blogs and websites do you follow (medieval or non-medieval)?

There are several blogs that I read religiously; Tenth-Century Europe, I think Jonathan is a top-notch scholar and I love the detail of his posts; Unlocked-Wordhoard, a great way to keep up with important issues on the blogosphere and also for his insights into medievalisms; Per Omnia, I thought her summer series over bad medieval movies was hilarious, she’s also quite the scholar; Heavenfield, Michelle tends to focus on Northumbria, but her blog has frequently forced me to look closer at some things. I also love Magistra et Mater, Got Medieval (go Carl!), Dr. Swain’s Ruminate, and I would be horrible if I did not note Another Damned Medievalist, she’s great. Medieval News, Anglo-Saxon Archaeology, and, of course, Medievalist.net are all valuable resources that I mine frequently.

Back in 1997, when the Internet was still young and good content was hard to find, one of the first websites to start producing quality information about the Middle Ages was http://historymedren.about.com/

Under the direction of Melissa Snell, this website has offered news, resources and links about the medieval period.  Although the site has a blog, it is more a guide for students and readers interested in the Middle Ages.

We interviewed Melissa Snell to ask her about her experience in running this website:

How did you get involved in doing the medieval history section for About.com?

In January of 1997 I moved out to the country to take care of my disabled mom, and I started looking for work I could do from home. My first move was getting on the Internet; I’d surfed the web before, but now, having 24-hour access led to an explosion of learning. While I paid my way with a little freelance web design and some online marketing, for fun and personal growth I spent most of my time investigating websites on medieval studies, especially those posted by professors for their students.

In August I answered an ad on Yahoo Classifieds for writers. I was invited to check out this relatively new website called The Mining Co. and see what topics were available. I noticed that their history coverage at the time, which was arranged chronologically, jumped from Ancient/Classical History (guided then, as now, by N.S. Gill) to the 1700s. I’d just spent several months enjoying medieval websites of all kinds, so I proposed Medieval History as a topic. I wrote an “audition” article and selected interesting websites to showcase, and I was hired as the Medieval/Renaissance History Guide.

Scott Kurnit, the founder of the Mining Co., changed its name to About.com a few years later.

You have been working with About.com on developing website materials since 1997. What are your impressions of the online world has changed in the last 12 years and how it has effected the way you write your blog?

The sheer number of Internet users today is amazing; it probably would not be an exaggeration to say that there are 1,000 times the number of people online now than in the late 90s. And a greater percentage of them are far, far more technologically savvy than those I encountered when I first became a Guide. In the 90s, I often had to explain some of the most basic web-browsing features when answering email questions or dealing with visitors to my forum. Fortunately, I rarely have to do that anymore, although I always keep in mind that there are still newcomers to the whole computer/Internet thing. What this means for me as an About.com Guide is that I can spend more time on Medieval History and less on Internet 101.

In addition to a greater volume of users, it seems to me that most of them have shorter attention spans. Everyone is in a hurry, and few people take the time to browse a site. When I write my blogs, I try to be concise and get to the point quickly — a skill I didn’t have 12 years ago. There’s so much out there now for people to see and enjoy, that a rambling blog about medieval history isn’t likely to hold a visitor’s attention for long. Of course, with some of my articles I can afford to get more in-depth, but they are written specifically to provide that in-depth info for people who are looking for it.

Your work on About.com is more than just a blog – could you tell us more about what can be found on the Medieval History section and what kind of reader you aim for?

I have articles on a variety of topics, from post-Roman Britain to medieval Africa, and from misconceptions about life at the time (The Bad Old Days) to The F-Word (that would be Feudalism). Most are fairly introductory, but some are rather more substantial; they are all aimed at a broad general audience.

My Who’s Who in Medieval History resource offers brief, informative profiles of, currently, nearly 200 interesting and important individuals of the era. These pages are designed to get a student or history enthusiast acquainted with the bare facts of the individual, then lead him on to more in-depth info and resources, either at my site, in books, or at other authoritative websites.

There is also a fairly extensive directory of historical maps, both on the web and at my site, including images of some maps that were made during the Middle Ages. I’ve written reviews of books and films, and I’ve created quite a few quizzes. There are a few collections of images, most notably from the Tres Riches Heures Book of Hours and a history of the Tudors in portraits. I also maintain a “This Date in Medieval History” feature, and my most recent addition to the website is a glossary of terms. And, of course, there is a substantial directory to useful websites, organized by topic. Furthermore, my website, like all About websites, offers a forum and a weekly e-mail newsletter.

There are several other projects waiting in the wings, just as soon as more hours are added to the day ;-)

The bulk of my traffic is, by far, students looking for quick answers to homework questions or help with projects. Virtually all the material at my site will help students, though junior-high and grammar-school students may have a little difficulty with some of the more esoteric stuff. However, I consider my core audience the history enthusiast — people who are seeking information about the Middle Ages because they enjoy history in general or the medieval era in particular. These include authors, reenactors, gamers, college- and graduate-level students, autodidacts, and the good old-fashioned history buff. There are also, occasionally, budding enthusiasts — avid high-school students (and sometimes even younger), who are discovering history as an interest either apart from school or as a possible major in college or even a full-fledged career.

So, when I write, I try to make make my material both substantive and accessible to virtually any reader who might need it or enjoy it.

Finally, what other blogs and websites do you like to read?

I don’t have as much time as I’d like to read blogs, but I try to check in with those I link to in my blog roll and any associated blogs that I might add. Of these, my particular favorites have been Unlocked Wordhoard — Dr. Nokes has a great sense of humor, and I enjoy getting his viewpoint from Academia — and Per Omnia Saecula, because Jennifer Lynn Jordan is so sharp and very likable. I also regularly read all my fellow history Guides’ blogs at About.

For non-history, I’m a big classic film buff, and I regularly read what Laurie Boeder has to say at About Classic Film. And, occasionally, I check out the Borowitz Report for a touch of the absurd.

Most of the rest of my web-surfing time is spent researching specific topics, and I get a lot of enjoyment out of that.

We thank Melissa Snell for answering our questions.

Muhlberger’s Early History

In a first of our series of blog profiles, we take a look at the postings of Steven Muhlberger, Professsor of History at Nipissing University.  His blog, Muhlberger’s Early History, has been online since December 2005, and includes many items related to the Middle Ages, and others involving other history and non-history topics.  Professor Muhlberger’s research involves the study of chivalry and deeds of arms, and has written several books and articles, including Fighting for Fun? What Was At Stake in Formal Deeds of Arms of the 14th Century?

Examples of his posts include:

Things I learned teaching “Crusade and Jihad” this fall

A thought-provoking characterization of the First Crusade

Crusading trivia II: Markward of Anweiler

My review of Yuval Harari’s Special Operations in the Age of Chivalry

We asked Professor Muhlberger a few questions about his blog:

Why did you decide to start your own blog?

I started my own blog because I was constantly being asked to make announcements about special events of interest students, and there was no good way of transmitting that information. How many students actually write down the time and date of the history seminar being presented later on in the week? Even if they are interested in the subject? There was no good place to put such announcements so I created one. At the same time I knew that a blog would be a good place to post links to interesting resources and news stories with relevance to my subject matter. I was teaching introductory world history at the time so I knew there would be lots of relevant material. Once I got rolling on the blog, I found it to be so much fun that it has been no burden at all to continue.  I called the blog Early History because I used to be the only historian here whose interests were pre-1800. And when that was the case I felt obliged to as much for the early history segment of our programs as I could.

Do you find that this blog is useful as a teaching tool for your courses and with interacting with students?

Like anything a teacher does, some things work better for some individual students than others. I know my blogging interests some and that’s good enough. A few have found my main blog to be interesting enough to continue to read it after graduation.

I knew from the beginning of my students would not be my only audience, and so I have never tried to keep the main blog strictly focus on my courses.  (I have occasionally launched special purpose logs that are restricted to the students of a specific class.)  I consider blogging for nonstudents to be part of my community service obligation as a faculty member at Nipissing University.  There are certainly plenty of intelligent people interested in history who are not affiliated with any university.

Many of your posts talk about Nipissing Univesity, where you are a Professor of History.  Could you describe the university and its history program.

I “advertise” Nipissing University because I think very highly of the place, and think at least a few readers will be interested to know where I’m coming from.  Nipissing University is a smallish university with about 4000 students in the arts and sciences, business, and education. Our History program has grown over the last decade from having five full-time faculty members and the occasional part timer to now having almost 20, mostly full-time. This means we can offer courses in many more areas than we used to be able to, and that makes me very happy and appeals to students.  This year we have launched a Masters of Arts program in history, which has eight very good students in it. It is pretty intensive and does not allow a student to specialize in a single field, although of course the Major Research Paper will focus on something definite. We like to think that our students, if they go on to a PhD program, will be able to handle anything that is thrown at them.

Your readers can have a look at our website: http://www.nipissingu.ca/history/

Finally, what other blogs do you read?

One of my favorite medieval blogs  is A Corner of 10th Century Europe (http://tenthmedieval.wordpress.com/) by Jonathan Jarrett, who is a specialist in Catalonian history who uses charter evidence to track social and political change in an interesting but poorly documented era of “early feudal” Europe.  He explains the details of his research and their connection to bigger issues and the Catalonian landscape in a thoroughly charming way.  And he has a great sense of humour.

Harkening back to my days as a world history teacher, I find two photography sites to be constantly rewarding. One is called the Big Picture (http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/) is the news photography site that posts the most amazing pictures from all over the world on a variety of subjects.   English Russia is an amateur collectively run site which posts pictures from Russia with English explanations. It’s justification for existing is “just because something cool happens daily on 1/6 of the Earth’s surface.” Hard to argue with that! (http://englishrussia.com/)

I love these sites because they show you things you would never stumble across elsewhere, and sometimes show you very important things about what’s happening in the world.

We thank Professor Muhlberger for answering our questions.

See also his profile from In the Middle