Graduate Workshop with Professor Rachel Koopmans (York)

Our final alumni speaker, Prof. Rachel Koopmans, will offer a workshop for Notre Dame graduate students. The invitation (with RSVP link) and the seminar readings will go out by email. 

In the first part of the workshop, Prof. Koopmans will discuss her experiences working with journalists interested in her discoveries in Canterbury’s stained glass from 2018–2021, and her expansion into writing for a more general audience. She will discuss what this transition was like and share some of her tips and suggestions for being interviewed, being filmed, and getting accurate information out there and available to a general public.

In the second part of the workshop, attendees will discuss the recent prominence of medieval studies in the news in the context of far right (mis)appropriations of the medieval past and parallels between current events and medieval history. What responsibilities do medievalists have to combat ill-informed understandings of our subjects of study? What do you do if a reporter contacts you, or if you yourself would like to write about medieval studies and current events? How should we react when we ourselves become news?