#survivephd15 - The Curious Medievalist

(Once again, I’m using this blog as a platform to do some of the discussion for the #survivephd15 course run by Dr. Inger Mewburn.)

My thesis (in all it's six-month in glory) is actually the combination of a few elements of my life that have converged: gender, popular culture, and late medieval literature. So, in short: here is what combines to make a medieval PhD (in my case).

1) I am curious about gender because the 'rules' about gender didn't make sense to me.

 I have an older brother, who was my absolute idol when I was younger. We did a lot together but we were also treated slightly differently by our parents. Tree climbing was not acceptable for me, nor was seconds at dinner.  Later, when puberty hit me like a ton of bricks, more rules became apparent. It felt as though all the rules changed overnight - how to interact with boys, how to hold yourself, what to say, how to present yourself. 

In both cases, I noticed the rules because I wasn't always good at following them. And I became increasingly curious as to why the rules were the rules, and what the point of them was.

I spent a lot of time reading, and I spent a lot of time on the internet. And when I discovered feminism, it gave a lot of these rules a name: patriarchy. But, more importantly, it also opened up my mind to all of the ways in that the 'rules' are constructed, and what purpose they might serve. As I read more and more books from varying time periods, I realised that the system had changed over time. So I now realised that the rules that I'd chafed against weren't universal, or constant over time, and that they were made in lots of different ways.

2) I am curious about popular culture because it isn't 'just a film/tv programme/magazine.'

I am a feminist. I am also a lifelong pop culture junkie. I am a pop culture junkie even though pop culture has the potential to be all sorts of other things that make me deeply uncomfortable.

I could (and can) still consume media which I know are questionable. But that lens of feminism doesn't get switched off when I watch TV or listen to music. And - and this is the key point - once that lens was on it made me realise that the 'rules' around gender weren't just made by my parents or teachers or dress codes: they were also made on my TV and at the cinema in the music I liked.

4) I am curious about the medieval period because I’m an accidental medievalist.

This element is the hardest to explain. Unlike most medievalists I know, I didn’t ‘discover’ the period through popular media. I was aware – dimly – of the period, but I didn’t have a specific interest in it.

When I went to university, I was on a very traditional, medieval-heavy course. Which included medieval romances.  And I was hooked: I loved their complexity, I loved their humour, I loved discussing them.

By the end of my second year, I wanted to do an MA. And in my MA I did a fantastic Gender and Sexuality module. It was like these three strands (gender, popular culture, late medieval period) suddenly came together perfectly. The module never felt like work; the essay wrote itself. 

Evidently, I wasn't satisfied with that one essay. Because now my two lifelong curiosities are all wrapped up with another that I only discovered in my second year of university. 

Serious PhD

Hark a Vagrant 332

This is a confession.

I am not a serious PhD student. That is to say, I love the irreverent, the flippant, the funny and the absurd elements of my research. 

It's very rare that I read a new primary text without the little irreverent voice piping up in my mind. Are pilgrimage narratives a little like asking your insufferable travelbug friend about their trip to Thailand? Maybe.* Would Lybeaus Desconus be a good basis for a magic-based RPG that satirises the idea of the hero by having 'fair Elaine' actually defeat each enemy without Lybeaus realising? I think so.**

I have another confession. 

I don't tell many people about these absurd little asides. And, increasingly, I realise that this is partly out of an awareness that there are enough reasons for others to consider me not a 'serious' academic. I'm part-time. I'm self-funded. I study popular culture for goodness' sake. Very often, I feel as though my credibility doesn't need yet another blow.

But as funding opportunities dry up, and as I see academics bringing their research to less 'serious' (read, less overtly academic) spaces, the more I want to interrogate this idea I have about what constitutes a 'serious' academic. Particularly, the ideas of funding and popular culture.

Let's start with self-funding. Funding opportunities are few and far between. Given the changes that are being made to the structure and funding of HE, I don't believe that it's very long before PhD loans become a reality. But unless the application process is academically rigorous, can anyone taking on additional debt be considered as having secured funding? And does this lack of funding directly dictate the quality of their research? (Short answer: no.)


Secondly, popular culture. Poor, poor popular culture. We are increasingly moving away from scholarship which dismisses the vast majority of what actual Late Medieval people were reading as 'minor' poetry. Yet. So many chapters on romances, ballads, comic pieces and lyrics are at pains to stress that the author is only studying this inferior tripe because people actually read and enjoyed it. There's a real sense of distaste that pervades a lot of this writing and which - in my opinion - can weaken the arguments that are made.

Rarely, there is an acknowledgement that even something that isn't poetically brilliant might have constructed meaning for its audience. Even more rarely, an attempt might be made to unpack these meanings.  For me, it seems obvious: if people were reading these works, they had a relationship with them; they took meaning from them; they engaged with them. And how exactly that relationship worked can tell us a lot about a given context.

Perhaps, at heart, the very method and subject of my studies is linked to my love of the flippant, the absurd. For starters, the absurd is in my subject matter: popular culture is of its time, and can sometimes translate as [un]intentionally amusing. Secondly, I have to have a lot of love for my subject to approach it the way I am (see funding, above). And this, fundamentally, is why I wanted to write this post. Because I find my subject deeply, deeply interesting. And I love it. I doubt very much that 'loving' your subject is enough to get a PhD. But I ultimately have to believe that even the most serious academic is driven by a love (or a passion, or an interest) in their subject. Otherwise, what's the point?



* More than maybe. Both accounts will be slightly breathless, overlong, and probably contain some sort of spiritual epithany which you sort of had to be there for.
** This could honestly be a blog post in itself. I have a plot worked out.

Trailblazing Women 2015

(Isn't it just the way? Not long after I resolve to start posting on a weekly basis, things get busy and I get behind. It’s not strictly PhD-related, but I wanted to use this post to talk about a conference I’m attending soon. I should be back to PhD-relating things soon.)

The Aspire Foundation aims to create a world ‘where women and girls are empowered and authentic leaders in both the developing and developed world for the sake of equality, justice, balance and success.’ They’ve worked with over 1 million women since they were founded by Sam Collins in 2001: as part of their aim to reach even more women, they’re running a two-day Trailblazing Leadership event. Which I am absolutely honoured to have managed to secure a scholarship for.

At this point I should give a shout out to Karen, my former colleague (hi!). Without her insistent encouragement, I would never have heard of Aspire. Last year, she suggested I attend an Aspire webinar. I was starting to get cold feet about the prospect of quitting my job, moving across the country, taking on 6 years of self-funded study and then having no guarantee of security afterwards. (Can you blame me?) I think the webinar was ‘Strategic You 2015.’ The aim was to discuss what goals you had in mind for the year ahead, how to implement them and how to balance them. That webinar really helped me: by the time that hour was up, I felt this quiet, diamond-hard certainty that I was ready to take this chance.

Between then and now, I’ve learned a little more about academia. And I wasn’t comfortable with everything I learnt. Some of that diamond-hard certainty was being undercut by the feeling I’m getting (at this early stage) that academia isn’t for people like me. 

So, when I got an email about the ‘Trailblazing Leadership’ event in March, I naturally thought “that sounds great, but it isn’t for me.” I don’t think of myself as a leader. And I certainly didn’t have enough money to fund my attendance. But the more I read about the conference, the more it seemed to me that people like me are exactly the sort of people who don’t have a voice in academia. And when I heard that Aspire were offering scholarships, I felt that same diamond-hard certainty that I should at least apply.  So I sent an email. I was invited to apply. And I did.

I applied because I’ve had female mentors for most of my academic career. These people took an interest in me. They challenged me. They held me to account. My personal and intellectual development has been thanks to them. The only problem is that there seem to be fewer and fewer women available to lead, or to mentor. I’m very lucky that I like and respect my supervisors immensely, but academia doesn’t encourage a culture of mentoring outside of that supervisory relationships. If I look to my peers (fellow PhD students) we’re all competing for finite resources: funding, conference papers, jobs. And I don’t think that this intense culture of peer competition and lack of mentoring makes for happier graduate students, better researchers, or improved academics. In fact, I feel the opposite is true.

I applied because the whole thing about this PhD thing is that I’d quite like to be an academic. (I know, I know. It’s unlikely. But I could post a whole other post about my issues with that. So humour me for now.) So, I’d like to be an academic. Which means I’m effectively training for a career that favours people who aren’t like me.  Peer reviewers will assume my work is biased because I'm a woman. So, this means that when I am trying to publish and get a permanent job I'm less likely to get a permanent, full-time contract than a male. And if I do have children, I’ll be seen as less productive than my male colleagues: in fact, they’ll gain a net benefit from having kids.

 

I applied because this is all depressing and awful. But it isn’t just a broad political point. For me, it’s also intensely personal: my husband is an academic. And he’s a brilliant academic. (Again, I could write an entire post singing his praises but I’ll save that.) He’s an innovative, supportive, dedicated teacher. He’s a flexible, incisive researcher. He’s an engaging, personable presenter. All of these things mean that – as far as I’m concerned – he should have all the accolades in the world. But he should get them because of his qualities, not because of his gender. But as things stand, no matter how much we support each other, he is likely to do better because of something he can’t control.

And that’s not fair. So I applied. 
And I was accepted.

And now I’m nervous! At first, it was about what to wear (business casual? Conference wear? What are either of those things? I can’t afford to buy new clothes!! Will people know if I wear second hand stuff? What do I do??)  Luckily, Aspire have clarified that there’s no formal dress code, smart casual is fine. 

 So now I have to be nervous about the usual things. Like the fact that I’m awful at remembering names, and there are no name tags. Like the fact that when I get nervous I talk a lot. And a lot of it’s nonsense. But I’m also nervous about something specific to this conference: all these women are contributing amazing things to the world. And me? I’m contributing a potential thesis that I don’t have a research question for. What can I contribute?

I hope to find out that answer to that question at this conference. And I’d love to let you know how it goes, if you’re interested.

Photo credit.