Joshua Colin Birk is the Millicent Mercer Johnsen Post-Doctoral Rome Prize Fellow in Medieval Studies and Assistant Professor in the Department of History at Smith College.
What part of the United States did you come from?
The academic life frequently keeps you on the move; I don’t think I have lived in the same house for more than two years since high school. I had been living in Western Massachusetts for three years, but I grew up in San Francisco and Los Angeles and always consider myself a Californian.
Why did you apply for the Rome Prize?
Why not? It’s hard to keep track of all the benefits of being at the AAR. Time to devote exclusively to research, proximity to a wealth of primary source material, outstanding logistical support in gaining access to all of the research materials of Rome, in incredibly exciting intellectual environment and the chance to live in one of the most amazing cities in the world.
Have you had any "eureka!" moments or unanticipated breakthroughs in the course of your work here?
I’m just getting started, but I found textual evidence for Muslim participation in the siege of Amalfi in 1096. That may not sound like much to non-medievalists, but that siege is an iconic monument in medieval history when Bohemond and other Southern Italian elite commit to join the first crusade. The presence of Muslims fighting side by side with the men who would join the crusade challenge a number of our preconceptions about how southern Italian crusaders understood Islam. I had suspected that Muslims took part in the siege for a couple of years but doubted I would find a source that explicitly acknowledged their presence.
What aspect of your project are you most looking forward to?
The opportunity to work with manuscript sources from the Vatican archives. Most of my experience with medieval texts comes from working with parchments (individual charters, letters, administrative documents and things of that nature), but I haven’t spent much time looking at actual books. Some of the texts at the Vatican have incredibly rich marginalia that are central to the argument I am trying to make. That kind of evidence doesn’t make the transition to printed sources and I can’t wait to spend some time pouring over that material after my shoptalk.
What part of your project has been or do you anticipate will be the most challenging?
In the past decade English language scholarship on medieval Sicily has flourished, but very little of that material is read by anyone other than the small group of scholars who work on that particular place and time. I want to produce a manuscript which situates Sicilian views on Muslims within a wider Latin European context. I want produce a text that engages the wider field, but breaks new ground for specialists as well. Trying to stay true to both of those goals can be a tricky balancing act.
What is your favorite spot at the Academy? or in Rome?
The bar and dining area at the academy. Obviously, the food is amazing, but the social and intellectual culture that the Academy has fostered blossoms in those areas. First you are spending the year with a group of other amazing artists and the meal space allows you to develop and sustain long term conversations that challenge some of your basic assumptions about your own work and push you to become a better scholar. At the same time, you have a constant stream of new arrivals that reinvigorate the discourse with new perspectives and new questions. Centering social life around the communal meal space allows these conversations to develop organically, without any of the posturing that comes with more formal settings. Spending time socializing with the other residents of the academy always reinvigorates my interest in my own work.