Who the heck is the audience for a "companion to" piece??

I have been tasked with writing a chapter for one of those "companion to" books, one with a *huge* charge: all of medieval British literature. So I'm writing a single chapter on a single very large genre (rather than, say, writing a more focused chapter for a guide to said genre). And worse, its word limit is 7500 words. (OK, that's 30 double-spaced typescript pages, but still, it's a big topic!) I'm feeling a little overwhelmed by the task before me.

But what most has me puzzled is just who I'm writing *for*. The style guide gives me some help, as it clearly privileges a synthesis of scholarly debates over an encyclopedia-like summary of the primary texts. But then it hilariously says it should be aimed at "undergraduates, graduate students, and scholars." Um, OK, then who the heck *isn't* it aimed at? (Well, a "general audience," I suppose -- but I kind of assumed that already.) And though it emphasizes scholarly debates over the primary texts, it also says I shouldn't assume too much detailed prior knowledge.

*headdesk*

Can my wise and witty readers help me out here? I've got some ideas, but I thought maybe I could spark some discussion about what is and isn't helpful in these guides and companions. In the case of my subject, I see non-specialists in it get all sorts of things wrong because they rely on out of date scholarship (i.e., what they learned in grad school or college years ago), and imho, no subfield of medieval literary studies has changed its mind so much about the basic facts as this particular subfield has. So beginning researchers are entering a minefield of bad sources. I think I should perhaps keep that in mind in my writing, perhaps even make that one of the shaping ideas of it. That would be helpful to anyone turning to it for a crash course in the subject. But I don't want it to sound like my "how to do research" class for first-year grad students; I don't want to talk down to people.

And on the other hand, one of the problems I have with many of these "companion to" essays is that they don't start at the beginning, that they do, in fact, assume too much knowledge, especially for undergrads and beginning grad students, so that reading one is no different than diving into any random point in the scholarship. And I don't want my chapter to be one of those, either.

Oy, what to do? Any thoughts? And if there are models of what you think makes the perfect "companion to" essay, lead me to it. Of course, different series do it differently, but even without those series, there's a lot of variety, so any model is useful. And if you were trying to bone up on a field, what would you find most helpful?

(Yeah, I'm being vague, I know. But hey, now this post applies to ALL the fields of literary studies!)

Where does my research go from here?

As many of you know (because I've been cooing about it on Facebook), my book, published two years ago, now has been reviewed three times and the reviews are all positive. The most recent one, even though it was at times the most critical, was also simultaneously the most enthusiastic. It even made me blush a little bit. It also made me feel pressure to make good on the promise the reviewer seems to think it shows for additional scholarship. As I've been joking, I'm now resting on my laurels, but they're feeling a little prickly.

Like Dr. Crazy, I'm feeling a little like I'm done jumping through hoops, that I don't have to write a second book. Like her, I didn't actually have to write a first book for tenure at my institution, but I did feel I needed to write one to be someone in the field, to feel like I was on par with my peers at fancier universities. But now, also like Dr. Crazy, I'm a little more relaxed about my status and professional identity. (Tenure, promotion, a juicy raise, and good reviews will do that for you.) And unlike what seems to be the case at Dr. Crazy's somewhat similar university, I don't absolutely have to write another book to make full professor; although most of the literature people in the department have done so, a woman in linguistics went up last year with a series of substantial articles (more the norm in her subfield), which helpfully sets a precedent for the department in general. And at our university, the process for full talks about your contribution to and status in your field, and so I'd use reviews and citations of my older work, as well as new work to help establish that (although my previously achieved laurels alone wouldn't do it, of course). That said, our administration seems to want to ramp up research expectations (at the same time that they want to increase teaching load, either by classes or enrollment, of course!), so I need to keep an eye on that and not simply assume that all will continue as it has done. Not to mention the fact that the discipline in general keeps expecting more from each generation. (Why do we do that??)

But the thing is, I'm not sure I have it in me. I have ideas, but I'm just not sure they're book-length ideas. There are two things that I'm spinning my wheels on now. One is on the same genre (in the broadest sense) as the subject of my book, but a different sub-genre from a different part of late medieval/early modern England. That project is definitely only article-length. The other project is related to my previous work only in so far as the socio-economic strata that produced and consumed the texts in question is related to the topic of my first book. It's in a completely different genre, however, and requires of me new skills and knowledge, so it's both daunting and exciting, because it will keep me from getting bored and my work from seeming stale, I hope. It also, at first, seemed like a complex and wide-ranging topic and I thought it would become my next book, but now I'm not so sure. It involves a long list of texts, but the texts themselves are not all that complicated, and I'm starting to think that while it will take a lot of time, effort, and research to show their textual and cultural interrelations and significance, it won't take a lot of pages of writing to do so. I could be wrong -- in the process I might find I have a book after all -- but it looks now like I have another substantial article, perhaps a Speculum-length article, but not a book.

And after that I got nothing. Or at best, I have some very sketchy little obsessions about things I've taught. But see, none of the projects above or the sketchy ideas are really closely related to each other, and so I couldn't put them together to make a book. So what if the second project above really isn't a book-length one? It's possible that I could produce what's 'in the queue' now as articles and maybe a book might germinate out of that. That is, one of those projects might lead to something else that really is a book-length project. Right now, I think that's my plan: keep working on the ideas I've got, following leads and pursuing questions, and keep my eyes open for the bigger picture, if there is one. How I ended up with project number two in the last paragraph, after all, was pretty serendipitous. If not, a series of 4-6 really substantial, well-placed articles would probably get me to full professor, and I've had one come out and one submitted since tenure, so I'm already 1/2 or 1/3 of the way there. I think for my sabbatical application I might still pitch that second project as a potential book, especially since I'll be applying for a whole year, but certainly the manuscript research I need to do will take a year of planning and travelling, anyway, so that will help. But if in the long run it's better as a longish article, that's fine with me.

Of course, if my projects don't turn into books, that means that I take myself out of the running for any moves to more prestigious jobs, but I'm OK with that. First of all, I can't work at the faster or more demanding pace that such a job would require. Take this morning as an example: all I've done is read a chapter of a scholarly work and write this blog post. I'm a slow reader, thinker, and writer. And that's all I manage when I'm not teaching; I manage less when I am. I already have a 2/2 load here (normally 2/3, but I'm grad director, remember) and so a more prestiguous job wouldn't mean any teaching reduction. And these days the grass is no longer looking especially greener at either the public or private R1s or SLACs. Add the greater expecations and pressure to that, and they're really not. And then there's the two-body problem, which Bullock and I conveniently avoided having by meeting here at Rust Belt -- why mess with a good thing?

But staying here at Rust Belt and continuing to publish substantial articles, and doing so in visible places, I think I'd still be contributing to the field, and I'd certainly be contributing to the education of students. I'd still have expertise in the field to share with my students, undergraduate and MA level, and enough visibility and standing that my letters of recommendation for students applying to graduate programs would have substance and weight. And so this is my plan now: keep following the leads and see where they take me, whether that's to articles or a book or a combination of both.

Aaaaaaand cut! That's a wrap!

Remember that insane to-do list I had for the month of August? The one I posted about here? Well it's all DONE!

Yup, that's right -- since August 1 I have done the following:

• Revised an article, doubling its length from 21 pages to 42.
• Written a short book review (after having read the book on trains and planes during my UK trip)
• Read a dissertation (defense not yet scheduled, but I'm meeting with the student this week)
• Corrected proofs of an article
• Prepared for and participated in grad student orientation activities
• And met with my colleague in the theater department re: the medieval plays we'll be producing and teaching in 2010

In addition to that, I have also:

• Put together my annual merit report
• Written two letters of recommendation
• Had minor (very minor) surgery
• Turned in all the texts I'm putting on reserve for the fall.
  

The only thing I haven't done on that original list is read the MA thesis, but only because I haven't been given a copy of it yet.

Now all I have to do if finish up my syllabuses, which are mostly done, and decide what I'm going to do on the first day of my classes which start next week, and I'll be completely ready for the semester!

Medieval Catholics or Christians?

I'm reading two scholarly books right now that refer to the religious practices and beliefs of the Middle Ages as Catholic, capital C. [ETA: I want to add some information to clarify a few things, partly in response to something a friend ask via e-mail. Both books are dealing only with medieval English culture and literature, so there's no pressing need to distinguish the Eastern from Western Christian Church in this context. But they do have to sometimes talk about early modern English culture, and one of them is talking about present day manifestations and uses of medieval texts, so the need to distinguish pre- and post-Reformation English Christianities *is* necessary in some way.]

In one case, the book is by a British scholar writing for a British press, and I suspect the practice is standard to both, and reflects all sorts of legacies of the Reformation still alive and well, if muted, in England. In this case, the word signals something like 'In the Middle Ages, they were Catholic. Now we are proper English Protestants."

In the other case, the book is published by the Catholic University of America Press, so if it's house style, it's of a different ilk, claiming continuity rather than difference. But actually, flipping about, I see this author uses the generic "Christian" more often and seems only to rely on "Catholic" when needing to distinguish it from Reformation denominations and practices.

But I have to say, I've always found the use of "Catholic" with a capital C anachronistic for the Middle Ages, especially if all or most of what you're talking about in a work is the Middle Ages, so both of these examples strike me as wrong in some way. Not hugely, grossly wrong, but wrong in the way a slightly out of tune piano note is wrong -- something's off.

But maybe that's just me. What are your preferences and practices?

Things for which I am grateful at the moment

1. I am grateful that I have a draft of my K'zoo paper. It's 13 pages long and thus needs to be cut, but I'm sure there's a bit of repetition in there that can easily come out. And 2 pages are a long passage of primary text that I won't be reading but referring to. I get a whole stack of final papers from both my classes tomorrow, but I can handle editing and grading at the same time.
2. I am grateful for my friends across the blogosphere and the academic world.
   

Publications and visibility

ETA: Read the comments if you haven't already done so. Thanks to my readers and commenters, there's really good stuff there! ETA (2): Ooh! And now Dr. Crazy and Horace have taken it up, and broadened the discussion beyond us medievalists. (I love Crazy's Star Trek / Lost in Space / Heroes analogy!)

In the comments to a post at In the Middle (unfortunately, I can't remember where or how it came up), JJC posited that the trifecta of article publications for a medievalist in literature was Exemplaria, JMEMS (ETA: that's Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies for the uninitiated), and Speculum. For me that's one down, two to go, and in fact, I've been thinking for some time that I need to develop two projects that I've only been toying with until now, and to develop them with eye towards each of the journals I haven't published in yet.

Other than the one journal I have published in -- my first article, actually; and now reprinted in a large collection of essays meant to represent the "state of the field" in that particular area (how cool is that?) -- my articles, both published and forthcoming, are all in essay collections.

That's not the way to be visible, is it? That's both a rhetorical question and a real one, because while that's my impression, I also want to know what you think. Do journal articles "matter" more than articles in collections in terms of visibility and weight on your CV? (And btw, I know there are different practices out there, but here I'm talking about essay collections that were peer reviewed, both at the individual article level and at the level of the whole collection. So in those terms, they have equal weight.)

And after tenure (assuming that the provost, president, and board sign off on mine -- still haven't heard from them), is publication visibility just about professional reputation and influence? And how much does that matter in promotion to full professor? I mean, presumably one wants one's work read so that it has an influence on the field, but beyond that, what choices should a person be making in terms of where to place things, and why?

Discuss.




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No dogs were mentioned -- and certainly not harmed! -- in the creation of this post.

Oy, reviews are hard

I've been working on a bleepin' review for the last month (not counting the time spent reading the work being reviewed). It's finally done and none too soon, because I now have just a smidge over a month to get a decent draft of an article to the editors of the essay collection to which it belongs. Thank god they only want a draft at this point because that's all I've got time for now. I meant to be done with this freakin' review before Christmas, but didn't finish reading until after the new year. Oy.

And then the writing of it was bloody torture. I won't go into details here, but suffice it to say that there were two camps of people I didn't want to piss off unnecessarily, even as I wanted to write a fair and thoughtful review. Scylla and Charybdis come to mind.

I know reviews are an important service to the profession, but remind me to take them on only when I'm not overloaded with projects of my own. Remind me to take them on in those times when I'm between majors stages of projects and just need to keep active. Those times exist, right?