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It the wake of what became a bit of a media frenzy, I would like to make a few points about the article and the news coverage. Then I am going back into a nice quiet manuscript reading room to look for more evidence of the contributions of medieval religious women
First of all, please read the actual article before you draw any conclusions about the project itself: advances.sciencemag.org/content/5/1/ea…
As far as interdisciplinary collaborations go, this one was as good as it gets. As soon as the folks at MPI realized what they had found, they reached out to historians, and to the right ones, with expertise in female scribes in Germany and medieval trade.
The media coverage came as a result of a great press release via the MPI. The reporters who called were engaged, respectful, and keen to produce articles that would bring the research into the public spotlight. There intention was to offer the results in that context.
For those saying, of course we knew that: ask who WE are? Most interviews began with some version of "how interesting, I thought that it was monks who copied books," -- and then I began my spiel about that being a common popular perception.
And before we all assume that we all know that women copied books, keep in mind a) that is was a medieval historian first consulted who told the scientific team that women would not have been entrusted with such precious materials, and b) knowing that women copied books and...
...shifting the a priori assumptions of our own broader academic field are two different matters. I still struggle to get some colleagues to consider female production and provenance. And frankly the existence of this new form of physical evidence is just plain awesome.
So rather than lament that people didn't know about my work of 25 years -- I am celebrating that this got the attention it did. Rather than being irritated by excited reporting, I am glad that they called and listened and got the word out.
