Here Be Dragons

Some medieval and early modern maps bear the inscription ‘Here be dragons,’ or even simply the images of dragons or other monsters, to denote an area that was unknown – an area where there could be anything. As a medievalist entering the last stage of her career as a student, this phrase proves to be particularly apt in describing my current academic position.  I am one comprehensive exam away from submitting my proposal and becoming A.B.D. – all but done on optimistic days, all but dissertation the majority of the time. Deciding on a dissertation topic, and trying to do it before I take comprehensives so I do not master a bibliography that has little to do with what I will ultimately write about is a daunting task.  Unlike some of my fellow colleagues, I did not know what I wanted to do the first day I stepped into graduate school.  I took courses on the Puritans as a master’s student working in the late medieval and early modern world.  Although fascinating at the time, I sometimes wish I had been a little less eclectic and had taken more Latin or German or early medieval history. Then again, I will be teaching HS 201 – US Colonial History to 1865 this fall. The community college where I will be teaching does not offer much history pre-1500, and they are grateful that I can teach pre- and post-1500, and Europe and America.  Right now, at the end of my teaching assistantship, I am grateful for a job and the prospect of food in my future.  And with the economy as it is, I am also grateful that I can teach a variety of subjects.   The juncture that I find myself at is filled with uncertainty – what will I write about, will I be able to find manuscripts once I find a topic, will I be able to read those manuscripts if I even find them, will I get a job?  When I first encountered the phrase, ‘here be dragons,’ it sounded exciting and almost magical – but I never suspected that I would feel such an affinity with that medieval map maker.

But if there’s anything a good medievalist knows, where there is a dragon there is a St. George or a St. Michael.  And so, amidst the uncertainty, I soldier forward.  I have found a medieval author that fascinates me and – praise be! – on whom no one has written much.  My advisor barely looked at me twice when I told her that I needed to drastically change my major comprehensive reading lists, (though after listening to me talk about why I should take courses about the Puritans, I suppose switching from Germany to Italy was not that great of a shock to her).  My comprehensive lists are taking shape, and as I read I can slowly see all the disparate pieces of my career fall into place and my future taking shape.  As I read through old papers I have written, secondary sources that have grabbed me, and the primary sources I will use for my dissertation, I realize that it is reconstructing how medieval (and sometimes early modern!) figures grappled with the uncertainty of their own era, understanding how they came to terms with the dragons that surrounded them, which has always interested me.   And so I go forth, navigating, like them, around dragons, in order to make my own history.

Mary Zito is a graduate of Colby College now working on her Ph.D. at The Catholic University of America.