| Title | Being a Medievalist in an A-medieval Country and in Region Overcrowded with Medievality |
|---|---|
| Subtitle | Two Stories from Brasil and Western Balkans |
| Contributor | Ardian Muhaj(author) |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.21983/P3.0205.1.31 |
| Landing page | https://punctumbooks.com/titles/the-ballad-of-the-lone-medievalist/ |
| License | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ |
| Copyright | Muhaj, Ardian |
| Publisher | punctum books |
| Published on | 2018-08-23 |
| Long abstract | Being a medievalist in the Western Balkans, a place overcrowd-ed with medieval documents and monuments (and competing modern explanations of such documents and monuments), can lead a scholar to feel trapped in the midst of plenty. The feeling of isolation this causes is somewhat like the social isolation and loneliness many people experience in modern cities. The feeling is only heightened by the political determinism and interference that medievalists experience in places like the Western Balkans, where almost every site and monument of medieval signifi-cance is reclaimed from different countries. The medievalist of-ten faces a politically imposed isolation or alienation, wherein even historians of neighboring countries try to avoid coopera-tion. How does this politically-imposed isolation compare to the geographically imposed isolation of a place like Brasil? In other words, how does a socio-politically created “lone” medievalist compare to the experience of a medievalist in a place far removed from the historical context she studies? |
| Page range | pp. 355–360 |
| Print length | 6 pages |
| Language | English (Original) |