from Medieval Academy News (Winter 2004)

Building the International Medieval Society, Paris
by Meredith Cohen

While my department assured me that I was prepared, at least academically, to go to Paris to embark on the primary research for my dissertation, when I arrived—full of anticipation and eager to get started—it was immediately clear that I still had a few things to attend to. Entrance into those institutions where I needed to conduct research was easy enough, but even though I had taken the requisite Latin and paleography courses, I could not honestly write now that those sixteenth-century registers of thirteenth-century documents were actually legible to me when I arrived. I needed some more training. Eventually, I found myself at the door of the Ecole des Chartes, and before I knew it, I was in a course that taught me, with care, to decipher the archival scrawl.

But that was not all. As an architectural historian, I needed special permission to enter certain parts of the churches that were on my research list, and this proved especially difficult without authorization from the top: the head architect of the Monuments historiques. Only by luck did I meet someone who knew someone who knew this dignitary, and after a few lunches and a number of letters, I was able to plead my case.

Though I had lived in France as a college student, when I came to conduct research for my dissertation, I simply did not have the stature or the academic connections that could start me on my way. It seemed that before I could get any research done at any of the institutions where I needed to work, I needed to negotiate my way to the proper person who could provide the necessary information and access. Though I was ultimately successful at finding what I needed, the process took months, during which I could have been much more productive had this all somehow been more transparent.

As I progressively found my place in the Paris research network, I learned that I was not the only one to land in this situation. There were many other international researchers in Paris who felt both frustrated by the same procedures and alone among the many researchers. While the resources in France and especially in Paris are innumerable, they are not exactly user-friendly and far from unified.

“Why is there no central institution for international researchers in Paris?” I kept thinking. It is not that Paris lacks research materials or facilities, but learning about them can be very time-consuming. It took me well beyond the single year that many of us receive for research before I felt integrated into the world of French medievalists, but it does not have to work that way. After all, Italy has the American Academy in Rome and England the Warburg Institute (among other havens in Europe). It is time that something similar exists in France.

This is why, with the aid of a good friend and colleague, Danielle Johnson, I established the International Medieval Society, Paris (IMS–Paris). While we are still far from having the illustrious stature and magnificent facilities of those other institutions, we aim to grow into a center that brings together and assists the large community of international scholars of the Middle Ages in Paris through information sessions, lectures, symposia, informal gatherings, an annual bulletin, and eventually research fellowships.

We were officially founded as a non-profit organization under French law 1901 (the equivalent of the US 501c) in July 2003, and the success of our first year has been a true surprise. Admittedly, we were not sure from the outset whether any interest would exist at all, and we thought that it would take much longer than it actually did to become operational, especially because at our first orientation, we only had two people! But soon after, we scheduled what I think has become one of our unique, if not one of our defining, events: the monthly apéritif.

On these informal occasions, members and prospective members are invited to one of our houses for a drink at the end of a day of research, where we have the opportunity to discuss the daily routine, ask questions that arise in the course of doing research, and meet other medievalists. By our first apéritif last October, I had gathered a few more names and made a few more contacts. Each person seemed to know someone and so from four at the first meeting we were soon ten. The following month there were easily twice as many people, both international and French. My small apartment could not hold everyone; people were sitting on the floor, the bell was constantly ringing, I was pouring kirs and soft drinks and had to enlist others to answer the door and greet newcomers.

When it seemed everyone had arrived, we went around the room and introduced ourselves and what we study. I had invited a guest, a recent Ph.D., to present a paper on his research to add to the event, and despite the cramped quarters of my apartment, a good discussion on the topic followed. There was plenty of energy, and people made plans to hold Latin study sessions, to meet at the archives, and to visit medieval sites. The society was full of promise.

There was only one problem—just that day, I received an offer I could not refuse to teach back in the States. I was about to finish my dissertation, and it was time for me to get some independent teaching experience. Just when it seemed that the society would have a future, the person who was organizing it was going to leave. While this could have been the end, perhaps it was ultimately the best thing that could have happened, for in that second semester, while I handled administration from afar (in the wee hours of the night during the final phases of my dissertation, while teaching two courses with 160 students and experiencing reverse culture shock), the monthly apéritifs continued, and the members of the society somehow bonded. By the time I returned to France in June, the society had taken on a life of its own.

For the summer, I had planned a symposium, scheduled for early July, in which papers would be given by members who had participated in the society that year. The theme was to be Medieval Modernism, but I had been able to organize only one panel on that theme during the previous semester. The other papers were to be given by those who participated in the society in the course of the year.

The location was to be generously provided by the Ecole des Chartes, so it seemed there were only some publicity and some final arrangements to take care of. But when I called to confirm the location two weeks in advance, it turned out that our prestigious locale was under construction and would no longer be able to host the symposium! After a few days of anxiety, the Secrétaire général of the Ecole heroically procured an equally glorious locale for our event, at the Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art.

The day itself could not have gone better—all of our nine speakers arrived, the papers were extremely interesting, the audience was larger and more distinguished than expected, and there was (truly) a great deal of discussion among the different disciplines.

The symposium officially closed our first year of activities, and a modest Bulletin of the International Medieval Society–Paris will be completed, we hope, some time this Fall. The society has turned into a much larger operation than ever expected, and even though there is admittedly a great deal of room for improvement and an increasing number of things to do, I remain optimistic, and honestly a little beside myself, that there has been such a positive response.

From only two, there are now nine of us, a truly diverse group of international professors and graduate students of different specializations working to further establish the International Medieval Society. I do not know whether the IMS–Paris can achieve its long-term goals without full-time personnel and a real budget, but for the moment, it seems there is every reason to be optimistic.

Editor's note: To contact the IMS–Paris: contact@ims-paris.org.; for further information about the society and its activities, visit the IMS website at http://www.ims-paris.org.