Past, Present, and Future of Digital Medievalism Larry Swain* Bemidji State University Abstract In this article, the author looks back at over 30 years of experience with ‘‘Digital Humanities’’ and argues that while our media for research, delivery, have changed, our methodologies have not. That fact poses a significant challenge for Digital Medievalists because the author believes and advocates for a significant change not just in our delivery systems, but that the digital tools we now have should be changing the way we think and do research, teach, and advertise Medieval Studies as a whole. At once a personal story of experience in the field and an analysis of current practices, this article critiques practices frequently touted as innovative and the wave of the future as nothing more than the same old packages using a new delivery system that may or may not be as effective as the previous delivery system. This critique in the author’s view applies to our teach- ing as well as to our research. Finally, the author offers some suggestions for both research and teaching that attempt to break out of the old molds and methods and use the digital tools we have in innovative ways that do change the way medievalists research and teach and take fuller advan- tage of what working digitally offers the field. Over the last 20 years, a lot of hype has been spewed about the use of the Internet and its transformative effects on academia. At the same time, there have been articles that ask whether the Internet killing academia. As is the nature of things, evaluating the hype reveals that while a nugget or two may underlie the dust devils whirling about the issue, in the end it was much ado about nothing at all. After all the hype about the impact of the Internet on academia, the topic I wish to explore in this essay is what has changed, if anything at all, after a little more than three decades of computer connectivity between university campuses. In the paragraphs that follow, I would like to share a little of my own experience interwoven with the growth of what we now are so familiar with on the ‘‘information superhighway’’ as it was called in the glamour days of the 1990s. I will begin with the entrance of universities into a system begun by the Defense Department in the United States of America. Arpanet became a reality when two computers communicated with one another in 1969 between UCLA and Stanford; shortly thereafter two other comput- ers were added. Eleven years later the network had grown to 213 with a new computer added approximately every 20 days. This was chiefly in the U.S.; international collabora- tion was all but non-existent. Meanwhile, efforts in Britain and other parts of Europe were underway to do something different; the earliest effort in Britain was the NPL net- work and in France the Cyclades network. Simultaneously, in Michigan the Merit net- work was underway developing key programming that would become the basis of the Internet as we know it. Skipping some of the details, there were few humanities users of computers in these early days. There were some. In 1972, James Powell published a collection of essays titled Medieval Studies that meant to introduce the student to the various sub disciplines of the field. One of those sub disciplines was the use of computers by principally historians for statistical purposes. Fifteen years later in the second edition, that article speaking of punch Literature Compass 9/12 (2012): 923–932, 10.1111/lic3.12011 ª 2012 Blackwell Publishing Ltd