Concerning Eileen Joy’s article on In the Medieval Middle

Without commenting merely on Eileen Joy’s announcement of her resigning her position at SIUE, I wonder how some might react to the ideas in her recent post on In the Medieval Middle. In particular, I find intriguing her idea concerning new modes of practicing the kind of learning traditionally associated with universities. Here at Regent, the faculty and administration have been meditating on learning models offered by Udacity, Coursera,  and others (including Massively Open Online Courses offered by many of the nation’s premier universities, such as Stanford’s recent course on Artificial Intelligence [irony or omen?]). Without speculating whether Dr. Joy intends to gravitate toward this model or not, I wonder if her desire for more communal approaches to learning can be fostered without abandoning (or merely departing from) the traditional brick-and-mortar institution. My mind is racing with free-associations at this point, but I wonder how new and revolutionary ideas in medieval scholarship (and I think many of us in the Woode-Walkers, past and present, can claim to hold some) can emerge in scholarly conversations (i.e. journals) without appeasing many of the gatekeepers that might frown on such crazy stuff. I have no answers, but perhaps you have meditated on this yourselves. Perhaps some of you have even more questions than these. I am interested in knowing your thoughts.

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