| Title | Perpetual Invention and Performance-Based Research |
|---|---|
| Subtitle | The Case of The Ballad of Robin Hood and the Potter |
| Contributor | Carolyn Coulson (author) |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.21983/P3.0205.1.09 |
| Landing page | https://punctumbooks.com/titles/the-ballad-of-the-lone-medievalist/ |
| License | https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ |
| Copyright | Coulson, Carolyn |
| Publisher | punctum books |
| Published on | 2018-08-23 |
| Long abstract | When I was in graduate school, I had a secret, albeit not a very well-kept one. Before I moved across the country to study the Middle Ages, I was an actor and director, working consistently in California’s regional theaters. I had always been torn between my creative instincts and my intellectual pursuits, and, when I entered my MA program, I thought that intellect had prevailed and I had left theater behind for good. I remember that, when my peers in the English department would lament the state of the academic job market, I would shrug and think, “I was an actor. The job market doesn’t get worse than that.” I am not sure if I ever said it out loud after the first month because my experi-ence as a theater practitioner was alien to most of my peers and professors. It was not academic. It was not literary. It was not historical. Even to me, it seemed to have little relevance to my new field, except for lending me some comfort in front of a class of undergraduates. My past, therefore, was essentially erased, and I reinvented myself as an academic. |
| Page range | pp. 95–108 |
| Print length | 14 pages |
| Language | English (Original) |