Thursday 30 May 2013

The future of the seventh century?


Dear everyone,
Before discussing the future of the seventh century, I want again to extend my deepest thanks to everyone who made our colloquium so successful, to my fellow organisers and our assistants, our wearied partners and supervisors, but, especially, I want to thank all of our speakers, respondents, and interrogators.  Without the amazing communications contributed by so many, the Colloquium could not have been the tremendous success that it was.  Again thanks!
We hope to publish a volume based on the proceedings from the colloquium.  We are currently working to ensure a subvention and hope to have that finalized soon.  We will be communicating individually with all our authors in the weeks ahead regarding what we will need from them.

We are also hoping that this colloquium will not be a one-off event and have already begun informal discussions regarding the 2014 Edinburgh Seventh Century Colloquium, an event that we hope will be even better.  All of you, of course, will hear from us once we have some sort of details regarding that!

We don’t, however, only want whatever comes out of this to be an exclusively Edinburgh project but something that will foster further collaboration between different universities, disciplines, nationalities, and perspectives.  As a very first step, we will host a social gathering at the International Medieval Congress in Leeds on 2 July.  One of our speakers, Kıvılcım Yavuz (University of Leeds) has generously helped arrange this.  Details can be found on facebook at:
We will also be submitting applications for sponsored panels at the medieval congress in Kalamazoo for 2014 within a few days as well as for the 2014 IMC in Leeds.  Once these are prepared, they will also be circulated to everyone on our mailing lists.

In hopes of fostering dialogue and sharing ideas, as well as news of events relevant to our period, an on-line mailing list/newsgroup will be formed.  (For the moment, I will serve as moderator though a volunteer for a second would be helpful.)  This will serve as a forum for communication.  Members will be encouraged to post cfps, publication announcements, reviews, articles, etc. as well as use it as a place to seek advice or comments, for help with translations and so on (this will be similar to the H-MEM, BYZANS, and other existent lists).

Similarly, the blog will be transformed from simply carrying information about the Edinburgh colloquium to being a news and announcement site.  (Again, for the moment, I will continue as webmaster).

All of this will be in aid of forming an ongoing Seventh Century Studies network.  For the moment, this will be informal, but, when we meet again, we may discuss something more developed.

If you are interested in any of these projects, please let us know!

Hopefully, this is only the beginning!
Gratefully,
Tom MacMaster
(on behalf of the entire organizing committee)

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