A tribute site for Anne Clendinning

Tributes to Anne Clendinning by both students and colleagues can be found here. You're free to add your own.

41,000

On the week of the 25th anniversary of the Tien An Men repression, an event that has disappeared from the official record in China, it is sobering to learn that there are 41,000 political prisoners in Egypt.

Loss of a colleague -- Dr. Anne Clendinning

From Dr. Katrina Srigley, Chair of History, Nipissing University

Historian, mother, sister, friend, Dr. Anne Clendinning started her life adventure in Ingersoll, Ontario and ended it in North Bay on June 1, 2014.  She lived her life to the fullest.  She loved to learn. She was fierce and determined. She was beautiful and the master of her own fate. She met the love of her life, Dermot Wilson, hiking in the Kananaskis Valley. Together they travelled around the world for two years. Travel was always a passion and source of inspiration for Anne because she wanted to understand other peoples and cultures. Her younger sister Lynda will always remember her as the cool older sister with wonderful tales to share about her latest adventures. Dermot and Anne had two beautiful daughters, Imogen and Aurelia. As infants they attended doctoral classes and a dissertation defence at McMaster University. Before she left us she made a point of telling her girls she was so proud of them.
A farm girl at heart, Anne had a way with plants and, unbeknownst to most people, studied horticulture at the University of Guelph.  She loved visiting the land of her childhood where her father, Eugene Clendinning, still farms today. Her siblings include: Lynda, Joyce, David and Douglas.

Anne was always by disposition a historian. She was a skillful storyteller. She had a mind for detail. A women's and gender historian of Victorian England, her first book examined the impact of the gas industry on women. She was passionate about her latest project on the gendered world of The Wembley Exhibition of 1924/25. It broke her heart not to finish it. Anne was also a mentor to her students. She took such pleasure in sharing her ideas and time with them, and delighted watching them develop as young scholars. She thrived working through complex ideas and watching their minds open up in different ways. Like with all people she came into contact with, she deeply respected her students and teaching them gave her great joy and satisfaction.

Her friends admired her strength, dignity and wit. They loved her style and choice "finds," which she so generously shared. She developed a preeminent international Mode Barbie and Ken collection, the last piece of which is yet to arrive. She was an artist in the kitchen, particularly with pies. She was very proud of her apple pie, and for good reason; she often talked about her mother Marjorie at these times. Anne was deeply interested in popular culture. She wanted to write to the director of Mad Men to request he release the last episodes.

Anne was a passionate historian, loyal friend and devoted mother. She was deeply loved and will be sorely missed by everyone. Most of all she was a dignified, strong and compassionate woman.

Donations can be made to the newly formed "Dr. Anne Clendinning Scholarship Fund" at Nipissing University in the following ways:
Online: www.nipissingu.ca/giving
Mail: Make cheque payable to Nipissing University
Nipissing University- Development Office100 College Dr.,North Bay, ON P1A 3W2
Phone: 705 474-3450 x 4361

Unhelmed

As portrayed in Froissart's Chronicle; and thanks to Raymond Hindle.

Chivalry Today: Scott Farrell interviews Christian Cameron

It is the first of June and I'm going to celebrate this beautiful day by taking a moment to talk about Scott Farrell's interview with the historical novelist Christian Cameron.

I was enough impressed by Cameron's novel of the 14th century, The Ill-made Knight, to review it in this blog. Somehow, I missed the fact that an interview on the same subject had appeared in the exemplary website Chivalry Today. Anyone who is interested in modern ideals of chivalry, and why people still find it attractive despite obvious reasons they shouldn't be may very well want to have a look at this.

Cameron comes across as the very intelligent person that he is. But I should point out that I am extremely impressed by Scott Farrell here and elsewhere. He is as good interviewer as you will find in any walk of life. I don't know if he  would be interested in doing other kind of work that had nothing to do with chivalry but if I was looking for an interviewer, I'd be knocking at his door.

The age of the monks

This fall I will be teaching, for the first time in a very long time, part of our second-year survey of the Middle Ages. I will be teaching the first half of the course, up to about 1100.

I feel very capable when it comes to the period up to about 600, and after 1100 would not be difficult for me either. But I have to say that I am looking at the period in between is a certain amount of trepidation.

My guide for the Carolingian period and the period just before and after is going to be my textbook, Rosenwein's Short History of the Middle Ages. Dr. Rosenwein's first fame was as a student of the prominent Burgundian monastery at Cluny, so of course she emphasizes the monastic aspect of the early Middle Ages. The thing is, both the textbook and her other works convince me that I have to come to grips with this age of monks and somehow get across to my students that the real politics of the era are the ecclesiastical and especially the monastic ones. Her brief but well-written discussion of the iconoclastic movement and how it affected the entire Western world – well, it was convincing. That experience has also made me think that minimizing my discussion of and the investiture controversy would not  necessarily be very honest.

I can hear my colleagues who specialize in the Carolingian and post-Carolingian period laughing at my "predicament." Making this era comprehensible is their meat and drink and I have to say I don't envy them.

I am fortunate to have as my partner in this enterprise someone who knows much more about the monks that I do and she can logically take the investiture controversy at the beginning of the second term.

Image:  An Armenian monastery.

Living your ideals

In light of a conversation I had earlier today,

something that other people have noticed

occured to me : a lot of the problems of the SCA derive from the fact that it is trying to re-create not reality but an ideal creation. Take it a step further. In a sense an SCA member is on the same level of reality not of Count Roland in Charlemagne's time – a real human being – but Roland of the song of Roland. Does this make sense? Roland of the Song of Roland was an attempt to portray an ideal knight. An SCA knight is an attempt to portray an ideal knight. Neither poets nor re-creationists can manage that trick though. Once you start trying to fill in the details the ideal figure becomes less and less believable.

My low level of blogging comes from the fact that I have moved again. I am now in Windsor Ontario.