Synopsis
We’ve just spent the month of June watching innumerable students progress across the stage in their long gowns. Where does the tradition of wearing black robes, mortarboards, and stoles/hoods as academic regalia come from? Hint: it’s the Middle Ages! Join Em and Jesse as we discuss the origins of universities (and some of the oldest ones) and learn about some of the earliest women scholars and professors.
Annotations and Comments
1/ You can find out more about rules for academic dress at Oxford here and for Cambridge here–both still have several styles of academic gown that are worn for exams, ceremonies, concerts and presentations, festivals, and the like. You’ll note that the Cambridge version is so complex it requires a flow chart to help students determine which gown is most appropriate.
Academic hoods!
Also, you’ll notice that Hogwarts requires students to wear robes. Yes, this is because they’re wizards (although that style of dress is also based on medieval clothing), but it’s also because of English schools (the real ones, for Muggles).
2/ Spoiler alert: the whole Dr. Jill Biden thing pretty much died about two days later.
3/ “Why are (male) surgeons still addressed as Mr?” tl;dr: it’s because surgeons and physicians trained separately and only physicians were allowed to use “doctor.” This was a time when physicians were educated gentlemen and surgeons were people who cut off your arm if you needed it cut off.
4/ Plato’s Academy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academy
Aristotle’s Lyceum: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyceum_(Classical) vs modern usage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyceum
5/ As seen in the movies, the teachers at Hogwarts sit at the High Table. For more on the High Table tradition in academia in England, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_table
6/ Scholasticism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scholasticism
Trivium: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trivium
Quadrivium: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quadrivium
The Phantom Tollbooth (GREAT BOOK!) https://www.amazon.com/Phantom-Tollbooth-Norton-Juster/dp/0394820371
The Jane Austen novels that treat on university educations and the clergy most directly are Mansfield Park and Northanger Abbey.
7/ Universities and Schooling in Medieval Society, edited by William Courtenay and Jürgen Miethke, with the assistance of David Priest (Leiden: Brill, 2000). https://www.amazon.com/Universities-Schooling-Medieval-Society-Studies/dp/9004113517
8/ Joan of Arc was in episode 9.
9/ Relevant: https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/faq-the-snake-fight-portion-of-your-thesis-defense
10/ True story about the two of us going to Italy in 2003(ish). I (Em) also threw up in a Cracker Barrel on this trip and have never been back to one. Uh. And then when we finally got to Italy, I think I lived on basically cappuccino and gelat...