Here is a listing of medieval academic discussion groups you may want to join along with the addresses of the listservers that carry them. Remember that if you are sending a message for the other subscribers to read, don't send it to the listserver but to the name of the network followed by the node address for the listserver. Thus, once you've already joined Ansax-l and want to send a message to its members, you will address it to ansax-l@wvnvm.wvnet.edu, not to listserv@wvnvm.wvnet.edu.
Annotations for some of the networks appear in the paragraphs below the list.
NETWORK: LISTSERVER ADDRESS: SUBJECT AREA:
AARHMS-L listproc@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu Academy of Historians
of Medieval Spain
ANSAX-L listserv@wvnvm.wvnet.edu Anglo-Saxon Studies
ARTHURNET listserv@morgan.ucs.mun.ca Arthurian Studies
CHAUCER listserv@listserv.uic.edu Chaucer and Medieval Lit.
DEREMI-L listserv@ukanaix.cc.ukans.edu Medieval Military History
EARLYM-L listserv@helios.edvz.univie.ac.at Early Music
EARLYMEDNET-L majordomo@cf.ac.uk Early Medieval Studies
(300-700 a.d.)
EMEDCH-L listproc@usc.edu Early Medieval Chinese
Studies
ENGLISC listserv@morgan.ucs.mun.ca Composition in Old English
(in Old English)
GERLINGL listserv@postoffice.cso.uiuc.edu Older Germanic Languages
(to 1500)
HEL-L lp2@ebbs.english.vt.edu History of the English
Language
INTERSCRIPTA listserv@morgan.ucs.mun.ca Directed Medieval
Discussions
MDVLFOLK listserver@lists.acs.ohio-state.edu Medieval Folklore
Studies
MDVLPHIL mdvlphil-subscribe@egroups.com Medieval Philosophy and
(web: http//www.egroups.com) Political Thought
MEDART-L listserv@listserv.utoronto.ca Medieval Art
MEDFEM-L listproc@u.washington.edu Medieval Feminist Studies
MEDGER-L listproc@csuohio.edu Medieval German Studies
MEDGAY-L listserv@ksuvm.ksu.edu Medieval Gay Studies
MEDIAEVISTIK maiser@listserv.ngate.uni-regensburg.de Medieval German
Studies (in German)
MEDIBER liststar@humnet.ucla.edu Medieval Iberian Studies
MEDIEV-L listproc@ukans.edu Medieval History
MEDIEVALE listproc@uqam.ca Medieval History (in French)
MEDIEVAL-RELIGION mailbase@mailbase.ac.uk Medieval Religion
MEDLITERACY-L listserv@uclink.berkeley.edu Medieval Literacy
MEDSCI-L listserv@brownvm.bitnet Medieval Science
MEDTEXTL listserv@postoffice.cso.uiuc.edu Medieval Languages
and Literature
NUMISM-L listserv@univscvm.csd.scarolina.edu Medieval (& Ancient)
Numismatics
OLD-IRISH old-irish-list-request@eskimo.com Old (& Middle) Irish
Philology & Literature
OLDNORSENET listproc@vinga.hum.gu.se Old Norse Studies
PIERS listserv@catfish.valdosta.peachnet.edu Piers Plowman Studies
PERFORM listserv@iubvm.ucs.indiana.edu Medieval Performing Arts
ROBINHOOD-L Majordomo@galileo.cc.rochester.edu Robin Hood Studies
SIEGE listserv@morgan.ucs.mun.ca Medieval Siege Weaponry
TEACHMEDLIT-L listserv@uwplatt.edu Teaching Medieval Literature
TMR-L mailserv@listserv.cc.wmich.edu Medieval Book Reviews
ANSAX-L is the discussion group for ANSAXNET, the Anglo-Saxon Network. It has over 600 members from fifteen or twenty different countries and, as one would expect from such a large membership, has a fairly high volume of mail. Discussions cover not only Old English language and literature, but also Anglo-Saxon archeology, history, philosophy, and the arts. As with other networks, one also runs across calls for papers, job listings, announcements of new journals, new computer services, and the like.
ARTHURNET, a network devoted to all subjects relating to King Arthur and the knights of the round table, has apparently replaced an older and less successful one called CAMELOT, an English network.
CHAUCER, the discussion group for Chaucernet, is, like Ansaxnet, consistently active in terms of mail. It generally confines itself to Chaucer studies, although related fourteenth-century works such as Piers Plowman and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight also get discussed here. Some of the pedagogical discussions on this network can be especially helpful.
EARLYMEDNET-L, a new discussion group for early medieval studies, is relatively inactive. At least in the initial stages of its existence, it has seemed to have more of an archeological bent to its discussions.
EARLYM-L, a discussion group for those interested in early music, is a relatively high-volume network with postings from musicians both inside and outside academe.
ENGLISC is a moderated, discussion group dedicated to composition in Old English. That does NOT mean all postings need be in the ealde spraec, but can be in modern English so long as they focus on the how to's of composing in Old English.
GERLINGL, a discussion group for older Germanic language studies, is a low-volume group, but some good information is presented on it from time to time. If one has interests in this area, then one may wish to subscribe to it in addition to a related higher volume group like Ansax-l.
HEL-L, a discussion group devoted to studies in the history of the English language, is primarily but not exclusively pedagogical. Postings are infrequent with bursts of activity (i.e., 3-6 messages per day) followed by periods of relative silence.
MDVLPHIL, devoted to medieval philosophy and socio-political issues, does not have many postings.
MEDFEM-L is a fairly high-volume discussion group which covers a wide range of issues related to medieval feminist studies.
MEDGER-L is a very low volume discussion group for medieval German studies on all topics besides linguistics. Messages here are typically few and far between.
MEDIAEVISTIK is a new discussion group devoted to medieval German texts and culture. Postings are all in German. For more information, consult the Mediaevistik home page at http://www.uni-bayreuth.de/departments/aedph/mediaevistik.htm
MEDIBER is a discussion group devoted to medieval Iberian literatures, languages, histories, and cultures. It is fairly active. Many of its postings are in Spanish.
MEDIEVALE is a medieval history network from Canada whose postings are all in French.
MEDIEVAL-RELIGION is a forum for discussions related to religious
life and thought in Europe from late antiquity to the early modern period.
Because it uses a mailbase listserver, the command for joining it is
join medieval-religion firstname lastname
(where firstname is your firstname, etc.) Its archives may be accessed at
the Mailbase Web Page (http://mailbase.ac.uk).
MEDTEXTL, the discussion group for medieval languages and literature, also has a large number of messages. In contrast to ANSAX-L and CHAUCER, it has more postings for continental languages, literature, and the arts, and perhaps for that reason has a rule that any postings or quotations in any language other than English include translations along with the originals. This can be a real help for, say, a Germanic scholar trying to follow a conversation quoting medieval Italian or for a Romanticist trying to decipher something from Old Norse.
OLDNORSENET is a discussion group devoted to Old Norse history, literature, and philology. It does not have a high volume of postings.
TMR-L, the Medieval Review (formerly known as BMMR, the Bryn Mawr Medieval Review) is, as its name implies, devoted to the review of books on medieval topics. Members are not only automatically sent reviews of new books as they become available but may also retrieve older reviews from the archives. They may also contribute their own reviews to the network.
BMR-L majordomo@brynmawr.edu Medieval & Classical Book
Reviews
BYZANS-L listserv@mizzou1.missouri.edu Byzantine Studies
CELTIC-L listserv@irlearn.ucd.ie Celtic Studies
CUSCA-L listproc@cornell.edu Society of Creative Anachronism
Medieval Reconstructionists
ESPORA-L listserv@ukanvm.cc.ukans.edu Spanish and Portuguese
Historical Studies
FICINO listserv@epas.utoronto.ca Renaissance Studies
FRANCEHS listserv@uwa.edu.au French Historical Studies
GAELIC-L listserv@irlearn.ucd.ie Gaelic Studies
GRMNHIST listserv@usc.edu German Historical Studies
(from 800 a.d.)
HUMANIST listserv@brownvm.brown.edu Studies in the Humanities
LATIN-L listserv@psuvm.psu.edu Latin Language & Studies
LT-ANTIQ listserv@univscvm.csd.scarolina.edu Studies in Late
Antiquity
MAPHIST listserv@harvarda.harvard.edu Map History Studies
MYSTIC-L listserv@uconnvm.uconn.edu Studies in Mysticism
PHILOSOP listserv@vm1.yorku.ca Studies in Philosophy
REED-L listserv@epas.utoronto.ca Records of Early English
Drama & Related Topics
RENAIS-L listserv@ulkyvm.louisville.edu Renaissance History
SHAKSPER listserv@epas.utoronto.ca Shakespeare Studies
WELSH-L listserv@irlearn.ucd.ie Welsh Language & Studies
Of these related discussion groups, perhaps the one of most general interest would be the first one, Humanist. Devoted to studies in the humanities, Humanist is a little different from the others in that its editors screen the messages and then group them by topic before sending them out. Thus, if you belong to Humanist, you may not get any mail at all for a few days, and then go in and find ten or fifteen messages at once. So even though Humanist has over a thousand members, its volume is not as high as Ansax-l, Chaucer, or Medtextl, but because its postings are screened, the quality of the messages is generally high.
I will give no additional explanation of the other groups listed here except to say that the last one, BMR-L, is the Medieval Review combined with the Bryn Mawr Classical Review. So if you are a classicist as well as a medievalist, you might prefer to subscribe to this network rather than just the Medieval Review.
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