Medieval Academy News

CARA Mia

The Medieval Academy of America's Committee on Centers and Regional Associations (CARA) usually holds its annual meeting on the first weekend in October. It is hosted, like the Academy itself, by a different institution each year; most recently, by The Ohio State University.

Strictly speaking, I had no business attending the meeting when I first went, for while my home institution, the University of Miami, has come close a couple of times to starting a program in pre-modern studies, we do not have a program or host a regional association that would make us obvious participants in CARA.

All the same, Richard K. Emmerson, the previous Executive Director of the Medieval Academy, encouraged me to come to CARA in 2000, when the meeting was held at the College of William and Mary. I understood the invitation to be in tune with his efforts to expand participation in the CARA and in the Academy from faculty and graduate students in medieval studies across the country. Nancy Van Deusen, then CARA's chair, was as welcoming then as her successor, Bob Bjork, has been since, along with the Academy's current Executive Director, Paul E. Szarmach.

Two things happened at that first meeting that have kept me coming back to CARA ever since, and that might encourage others to join CARA, support its sponsored sessions, and attend its annual meeting.

A small gathering, usually including three or four dozen people, the size and relaxed atmosphere of the CARA conference offer opportunities for collegial exchange that are not always available at larger meetings with crowded agenda and competing sessions. The business of the CARA meeting takes place over two days, Friday and Saturday, with many participants arriving on Thursday evening and staying over until Sunday. CARA's Executive Council meets on Friday morning, while other participants are usually given a tour of a local archive or museum. The afternoon session is given to presentations on a topic relevant to programs in medieval studies; "Teaching the History of the Book," for example, was the topic at the 2009 CARA meeting. A reception and banquet follow on Friday evening, while the Saturday morning session is usually given to a "grab bag" discussion as representatives from institutions and programs small and large offer reports on the past and present year's activities.

The first of my "take aways" was a list of potential initiatives anyone might pursue, from linked courses to multi-million dollar grants to found a new program. While the array of appointments, lecture series, grants and scholarships at the largest programs is sometimes intimidating to those of us without any program, the initiatives in interdisciplinary teaching, public outreach, and program development at regional and liberal arts institutions suggest how all of us might do something more regarding undergraduate and/or graduate students and medieval studies.

By noon or so on Saturday, those interested take lunch and go on excursions that have included ancient petroglyphs in Ontario's Lake Country, Acoma Pueblo in New Mexico, the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, and the Hopewell earthworks in Newark, Ohio. ("Medieval" North America has figured prominently if not exclusively in these outings). Most participants join the excursion, which sometimes includes a stop for dinner, while others make their way home, or use the time otherwise.

That in a nutshell is the CARA meeting. I took away much more than some good ideas for programming, however, from that first meeting in Willamsburg. It happened in a casual moment that Rick Emmerson, Felice Lifshitz, Professor of History at Florida International University, and I were talking, when Felice suggested that Miami might be a location for a future CARA meeting. Rick asked, "Why not host the Academy?" Neither Felice nor I knew what doing so involved in strategic or financial terms, yet in April 2005, our institutions co-hosted the Academy's annual meeting on Miami Beach. The successes of that meeting were due in large part to the remarkable planning skills and energies of Felice, and to colleagues from our respective institutions and from other colleges and universities across south Florida, ranging from Tampa to Palm Beach, who gave generously of their disciplinary, planning, and technical expertise.

Whatever your institutional size, mission, or program commitment to the field, the CARA meeting serves as an amicable, traveling venue to check in with colleagues from the wide range of medieval studies in the United States and Canada, including representation from the European Union's CARMEN organization. Among other activities, CARA sponsors a plenary session at the annual meeting of the Medieval Academy, and two sessions at the International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, where it also hosts a Friday luncheon for members. More information about CARA, including its tuition scholarships for graduate students participating in summer Latin programs and for the Leyerle-CARA dissertation prize, may be found on the Medieval Academy's website (http://www.medievalacademy.org/cara/cara.htm).

I encourage all members of the Academy, as well as those who represent programs and regional organizations, to come to the annual CARA meeting. You will come away with a sense of the vitality of medieval studies, along with ideas for new courses, a program or grant application or-who knows?-maybe even the notion to host CARA or the Medieval Academy at your own institution.

Tom Goodmann is associate professor of English at the University of Miami, and serves as Director of Conference Programs on CARA's Executive Committee.

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