Learning from the Best: Reflections on IMC 2021

This past week was the second virtual International Medieval Congress--one of the world's largest gatherings of scholars and students of the Middle Ages. For many medievalists, it's known simply after its location, Leeds (as in 'are you giving a paper at Leeds this year?')

An accurate reflection of my conference experience

Although I've attended and presented annually since 2013, for the past few years I have only attended part of the conference, rather than the full five days. I learned early on that less could be more: rather than attending the full five days, I actually got more value for my money if I left blank spaces in my schedule for browsing the book fair, refueling with coffee, or seeking a quiet place to reflect and recharge. One of the advantages of an online conference is that taking breaks can be much easier; but I still haven't gotten used to the disorientation of cutting off a shared experience at the click of a little red button.

Among the many highlights of the online conference (not least among them the famed conference dance, surprisingly successful in a virtual format), was conversations with other early career scholars. This was the first year I have volunteered as a mentee for the Medieval Academy of America's Graduate Student Committee mentoring scheme, which pairs doctoral students and more established researchers for a conversation about careers. Having benefited from mentoring through the program in the past, this year I felt established enough in my own career and goals to try to give back as a mentor, and had lovely conversations with two PhD students.

My conversations made me think about the importance of examples in learning how to do something well, and it just so happened that Session 2026, Monastic Education and Formation in the Early Middle Ages, II: New Approaches and Case Studies picked up on that theme. In a paper on the early medieval saint Radegund (c. 520- 587) as an example for others, Dr Maria Munkholt Christensen introduced the importance of learning from exemplary figures in monastic education by referencing one of the letters of the early Christian thinker Jerome (c. 342/7-420). 

I hadn't read the passage before, so after the paper I went and looked it up:

Every mode of life has its own exponents. For instance, let Roman generals imitate men like Camillus, Fabricius, Regulus, and Scipio. Let philosophers take for models Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Let poets strive to rival Homer, Virgil, Menander, and Terence. Let writers of history follow Thucydides, Sallust, Herodotus and Livy. Let orators find masters in Lysias, the Gracchi, Demosthenes, and Tully. And, to come to our own case, let bishops and presbyters take for their examples the apostles or their companions; and as they hold the rank which these once held, let them endeavour to exhibit the same excellence. And last of all let us monks take as the patterns which we are to follow the lives of Paul, of Antony, of Julian, of Hilarion, of the Macarii. And to go back to the authority of scripture, we have our masters in Elijah and Elisha, and our leaders in the sons of the prophets; who lived in fields and solitary places and made themselves tents by the waters of Jordan.  ~ Epistle 58.5, to Paulinus, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, vol. 6,  ed. Phillip Schaff and Henry Wace (Edinburgh, 1996), online at tertullian.org

This in turn called to mind my earliest memory of writing advice that really resonated with me. In eighth grade English class, I read the novel version of Flowers for Algernon; what I remember most is not the story (though that has stayed with me) but the essay at the end of our Providence Public School District supplied copies, in which Daniel Keyes reflected on the process of learning to be a writer (I remember this as a freestanding essay, but in trying to locate it again, it seems may have been an excerpt from Keyes' book Algernon, Charlie, and I). As I remember it, he wrote that he learned to write science fiction by reading widely, reflecting on what he thought was good, and then trying, as precisely as he could, to imitate it.

Lately, learning by example has fallen out of pedagogical fashion--and for some good reasons. Teachers can alienate and frustrate their students by insisting on rigid imitation of a particular example; prescribed definitions of what counts as excellent can enforce sexist, classist, homophobic, or racist norms. But learning by imitation, when it is directed by the students themselves--when their task is to figure out what they think is good, why it works for them, and how to reproduce it in their own work--it can be an incredibly powerful tool for becoming an effective speaker and writer. Each year, the IMC provides me with the opportunity to work through these ideas for myself--to reflect on what challenged or inspired me, why it did so, and how I might take up those ideas or methods in my own writing. 

The opportunity to learn from the best--it's the best. Thanks everyone. Till next year!