But Should We Innovate?

Four years ago Marc Renaud, the ebullient president of SSHRC, appealed to Canadian scholars in the humanities and social sciences to change our ways. Deploring the “death of a thousand journal articles,” most of them attracting at best a handful of readers, he called upon us to “go public or perish.” By “going public” he meant two things: seeking commercial partners and publishing our research electronically. Unless we did so, we were doomed to social irrelevancy and ever-decreasing public support. This year his message is more radical. In his most recent address, “The Human Sciences: The Challenge of Innovation” (available on the Federation website) he urges us to adopt strategies “to survive and succeed in this fast-forward age”: collaborating, especially with our colleagues in the natural and bio-medical sciences, focusing on contemporary problems, and making greater use of leading-edge technologies...in a word, innovating. Those who find Renaud’s analysis persuasive might ask how well Canadian medievalists are meeting this challenge. Those who do not might object that the challenge was never an appropriate one for us in the first place.