| Abstract | Paper -a:
The historiography of Winchester’s medieval Jews has been characterised by omission and marginalisation. Until 2015 there had been no public recognition of the city’s medieval Jewish history, but the creation of the Medieval Jewish Trail (2015) represents a new dialogue between the local council, academics, heritage officials, and the contemporary Jewish community. This paper will: explore the approaches of Winchester’s museum and tourism services towards medieval Jewish history, analyse the development of the trail, and assess the latest proposals designed to remember local medieval Jewish history, asking crucial questions about the future of medieval Jewish memory in this city.
Paper -b:
The York Mystery Plays were performed in the streets of York (UK) from the 14th to the 16th century; a tradition revived in 1994. Although previous research highlights the importance of sound and acoustics, such studies have focused on theoretical and textual analyses. However, sound recreations are the only means by which sound interaction and its effects on perception can be understood. This paper discusses the British Academy-funded project 'The Soundscapes of the York Mystery Plays', which uses sound design techniques to recreate York's 16th-century soundscapes during the performances allowing reflection on their impact on the plays. Modern aural considerations are also investigated through the collection of oral histories of organisers and performers, in order to establish parallels between the medieval and modern experiences, allowing us to highlight the value of medieval studies in the modern world.
Paper -c:
Today's business students are taught modern management techniques and thought processes with little attention typically paid to the historical roots of these practices. When history is examined, it rarely goes past the 20th century. Medieval business models are treated as 'Other' in that they are outside modern conceptions of the 'Management Self'. Omitting important historical developments fails to expose students to the cultural challenges and resulting responses that underlie our modern political economy and corresponding management models. In developing a course on the history of management thought, we embrace the Other by exploring the importance of Medieval developments on current management practices. By engaging in a forum for discussion, we explore many broad themes, such as communication, legal models, monetary systems, philosophical developments, trade, and technological advances during the Middle Ages as antecedents of current managerial thought.
Paper -d:
This presentation demonstrates how the Middle Ages and service learning can co-exist harmoniously and synergistically, enriching each other in meaningful ways. I draw on my experience of teaching a senior capstone course in the General Education Honors Program at California State University, Sacramento. This interdisciplinary course immerses students in medieval texts in tandem with service-based pedagogy. As students examine ideas about the public good and theories of social control, about characters and the social construction of identity, and about power dynamics of social class that play out in pivotal works such as Chaucer and Marie de France, they also are invited and challenged to become intellectually, publicly, and socially engaged in these issues as they are experienced in their own local community. I make a case for why such an approach can benefit the study of literature- and why service-learning pedagogy can benefit from a broader application in literature departments.
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