Dr. Paula R. Curtis

The term "period" used so many times today also reflects the tensions between what the "global" does and what the "medieval" does, if it does anything at all.

What does the assertion of doing global history do for us as scholars? Cutting or binding to evoke the global or the medieval as global? Is it resistance? Or asserting our own sovereignty of scholarship?

Fromherz brings up that there's an element of prestige that comes with laying claim to a medieval history, making claims that others without it are deficient. By globalizing the Middle Ages we're also problematizing that inherently nationalistic use of history.

Leitzel - was the Middle Ages global or globalizing? What is it doing? Raises questions of what is the function of the category in history?

@cerydel started thinking of the global as an adjective and in teaching her class began to think of it as a verb-- responding to Middle Ages as a field. It's become less a description of content and more about being an approach.

@James_A_Benn turning this upside down through Buddhist views of the world as flat, not even a globe.

McCarty brings up that at conferences there's often the issue of non-Western scholars having to respond to and be in dialogue with the dominant European scholarship-- do we have a responsibility to? Can we not at all and still create sophisticated work that is "global"?

@sdavissecord: "Is the use of "medieval" and its necessity seen as an imperialist act? An imposition of the dominant Western European ideology on other fields?" McCarty says yes, absolutely that is a discourse that has emerged for Asian Studies.

@sdavissecord : Does doing "global" history do violence to local histories as well?

A historian in the audience asks how those trained in European history can do justice in teaching these global history? Valerie Hansen says just "Just do what you can! Educate yourself. Learn how to pronounce the names, dive deeply into the literature."

It's our responsibility to ask students what's missing and to provoke those dialogues, too.

@cerydel will be teaching her course three times, and plans on rotating different locales and writings each time, incorporating different frameworks in her handouts that respect local perspectives (spelling of names, conceptualizations of dates, etc.).

@Craig_A_Perry : Are there analogies that we can use that don't rely on periodization? A large mix of traits that come into play and appear or retreat at different times.

@sdavissecord returns to @James_A_Benn's question of whether or not people knew they were in a Middle Ages- Europeanists might say no, but her students perceived time very keenly as being represented when looking at medieval maps- something to think about.

Audience member has raised a question: Is there a distinction we should be making between "global" and "world" in our descriptions?

McCarty says that one thing "global" is doing in terms of tackling temporality is helping us to let go the idea of "backwardness" that gets associated with the medieval period and appreciate these people in their moment. (Everyone is "modern" in their own time!)

Everyone in the past was great! Awesome! New periodization: "Cool Medieval"?????

Fromherz: We also need to think about space different, as well as time. And we need to focus as much as we can on those cross-cultural encounters. There ARE events that are important that bring people together, and in that sense are very much global.

One great example is of course the Mongols, who create a space for religious debate and exchange and discourse, with the aim to eventually convert the whole world. We have to reconsider space to help break down the borders.

Fromherz thinks encounters and space have to be our starting point.