News, Communication, and Current Events in the Middle Ages

Sponsoring Organization(s)

Centre for Medieval Studies, Univ. of Exeter

Organizer Name

Helen Birkett

Organizer Affiliation

Univ. of Exeter

Presider Name

Michael Hanrahan

Presider Affiliation

Bates College

Paper Title 1

News and Communication in the Carolingian Empire

Presenter 1 Name

John-Henry Clay

Presenter 1 Affiliation

Durham Univ.

Paper Title 2

Letters, Communication, and Networks: Peter Damian's Lay Correspondence

Presenter 2 Name

Leidulf Melve

Presenter 2 Affiliation

Univ. i Bergen

Paper Title 3

The Fall of Jerusalem, 1187: An Immersive News Event?

Presenter 3 Name

Helen Birkett

Paper Title 4

The Messenger Is the Message: Social and Communicative Roles of Couriers in Fourteenth-Century Europe

Presenter 4 Name

Eve Wolynes

Presenter 4 Affiliation

Univ. of Notre Dame

Start Date

14-5-2016 3:30 PM

Session Location

Bernhard 209

Description

Although the exchange of news is widely regarded as a transhistorical element of social interaction, scholarship tends to associate it with print media and modernity. Other assumptions concerning communication, travel and the perception of time, combined with misunderstandings of the nature and dating of medieval source materials, have contributed to growing conceptual gaps between those working on news and communication in the periods before and after c.1450. Yet in the Middle Ages, as now, members of dispersed communities and organizations – whether large or small, international or local – relied on the effective transmission of recent and new information to function as unified social, administrative or emotional bodies. The papers in this session will explore the dissemination, gathering and experience of news in the Middle Ages, as well as the communication networks that made this possible.

Helen Birkett