Megan Maldonado, a medievalist and doctoral student, explores the richness of medieval literature and its contemporary relevance. From discussing Dante's Divine Comedy to addressing the challenges of AI and technological shifts, this episode bridges the past with the present in a thoughtful and engaging dialogue.

This episode of Lutheran Answers features Megan Maldonado, a medieval literature scholar and Lutheran, sharing her insights on the enduring significance of the Middle Ages. Megan recounts her journey into medieval studies, sparked by a love for English literature and a pivotal class on Dante’s Divine Comedy. She highlights the interplay of theology and literature, emphasizing how medieval works allow for a nuanced exploration of faith and morality in an academic context.

The discussion also touches on misconceptions about medieval life, such as myths about holiday frequency and idealized portrayals of peasants' lives. Megan critiques the oversimplifications of medieval history and literature often perpetuated online, advocating for a more informed and nuanced understanding. Additionally, she delves into modern topics like the rise of AI, its impact on education, and the challenges of navigating misinformation in the digital age. Throughout, Megan underscores the timeless human struggles found in medieval works, offering camaraderie across centuries.

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Transcript

Remy: Then we'll have a podcast episode and if something weird happens, then we will have had a fun conversation.

Megan: Sounds good.

Remy: Okay, great. Megan, thank you for being on the Lutheran Answers Show.

Megan: I'm happy to be here. Thank you for having me.

Remy: Tell me, are you a Lutheran? Tell me more.

Megan: I am a Lutheran and I have been one since I was about a month old. That was when I was baptized into an LCMS church and I have been lifelong lcms.

There was a time where I was close to becoming a Calvinist or Reformed Baptist.

I was kind of taking, not membership classes, but I was doing a Bible study with the wife of a pastor at a Reformed Baptist church when I was, I think just out of high school, but narrowly escaped that. And here I dodged a bullet. Dodged a bullet, yeah, indeed. I. I have a lot of love and respect for those people, but the theology just wasn't. There's the issue of the sacraments is actually where we got into a little bit of an argument.

Remy: So still Lutheran, your husband, is he lifelong Lutheran or did you missionary date him in.

Megan: Oh, no, he was.

When was he baptized? He was baptized as a child, not as an infant.

Yes. So he was already also lcms Lutheran by the time I met him. So solid. Yeah, yeah. The missionary dating, I think is.

I, I understand why, especially for women, it can be hard to find. Well, depending on where you are, it can be hard to find men in the church, even the Lutheran Church and the church in general. But yeah, no, I didn't have to do that, thankfully.

Remy: That's awesome. That's so great to hear.

So you're moderately Twitter famous.

Megan: Am I? I've got like 1300 followers.

Remy: 1300. I was actually just pulling up your Twitter account to look at it.

Megan: Not that I keep track exactly of my 1300 and I don't know what it is.

Remy: Yeah, no, I don't keep track of my 1,372 Twitter followers.

You're moderately Twitter famous. And also you have a YouTube channel, which I also totally knew about. I promise I did. I'm subscribed to it, so I did know about it.

Megan: It's still pretty new. And I'm still.

It's not that I'm thinking up more content is that I think I was putting in too much thought thought into how like detail oriented it needed to be. And then I. The more I'm on Twitter and the more I'm posting about medieval stuff, the more I'm realizing like, oh, like even what is to me very basic level knowledge could actually just be What I need to do. And I think I was hyping myself up too much of like, oh, I need to read this book first before I can even talk about King Arthur. Like, no, I don't need to get there.

Remy: That's the. That's the trap I fall into myself, honestly, where I'm like, oh man, I need to read this and learn more about that before I can talk. A. And then I. The thing that helped me was Dr. Cooper, Dr. Jordan. Jordan B. Cooper.

He did not give me any advice on this at all whatsoever. But I realized that the. The compulsive need to read a book and thoroughly understand a topic before making an hour and a half video on it is. That's what Dr. Cooper does. And he does that really well. And I don't need to do that. You know what I mean? I can just, you know, my. My most popular video is like a. Like a 15 second video where it just has a splash screen and it's like, is the coin shortage a sign of the end times? And it just cuts to me saying no and then it. That's it. That's the end of the video.

Megan: Yeah, that's right.

Remy: That's where I'm at.

Megan: Yeah. I think I am so concerned about positioning myself as like semi expert that if I get a thing wrong or I misspeak or I don't give the appropriate context, then I have this ide that like my advisors from my dissertation committee will track me down and punish me. Like not literally, but it's. That's the kind of vibe. But yeah, I.

More. More to come on the YouTube channel and especially with the beginning of the year, I think once the Christmas season ends, because I'm not doing New Year's resolutions personally, but I think once Christmas ends then we can kind of begin in earnest and some more reading together.

Remy: Absolutely. So you.

You do. We've already said it. You do medieval stuff on Twitter.

Megan: Such.

Remy: Tell me more. Why are you into that?

Megan: Good question. So, long story short, I got into medieval literature because I failed at the actual thing that I wanted to do in undergrad. I really wanted to.

I knew I wanted to study English. I really enjoyed writing and I wanted to have a focus in creative writing. So I went to community college. I transferred to UCLA and I applied for the creative writing workshop because at that point I was a junior and I didn't get in because I didn't. Well, I was told by a director I didn't have any of the kind of preliminary workshops. This is becoming longer than I Intended it to be.

Remy: It's fine. We have, like, a lot of time to fill. Just go for it.

Megan: So I had to take my backup class that I scheduled, which was a Dante in English class. Now, by this point, I had read Chaucer. I'd done, like, my general survey of the pre1750 or pre1800 English lit. That's a very standard course for the major. And so I had some medieval experience, literary speaking, literarily speaking. But I got into the Dante in English, and I really enjoyed it. Not just because it's an amazing read. This was almost the entirety of the Comedy. So not just the Inferno, which is typically what you get assigned.

Yes, it's amazing.

Yes, the language is really rich. It's a beautiful work. But I had felt like I could talk about theology and have it be treated as a serious philosophical and moral undertaking. One that was academic, not just, you know, fundamentally academic, but, you know, it had an academic component to it where I could be taken seriously, I guess. And that was an insecurity I was going into college with. For whatever reason, I think God's not dead had already come out. There was already this vibe of like, you're gonna have the atheist professor, you know, bullying you into whatever didn't actually happen. I mean, some you could have who are just a little more condescending than others. But the going assumption really is that most people are not believers, especially at a higher academic level. But I. I really enjoyed that. I could kind of dig into theology, but also, it didn't have to be just like I was doing religious studies. It was also the marriage of literature and something that was very personal to me, which is my faith. But it was also a little bit removed because I'm Lutheran, I'm not Roman Catholic, so the stakes were low for me and kind of exploring or seeing any issues or contradictions or problems, you know, because literature is all about, I think, looking at problems.

And so from there, I got really into some other research stuff. Took more classes in my own major, English for Medieval Things. Wrote a senior thesis covering some medieval English literature. And, yeah, I debated going to grad school. Worked two years at an elementary school after graduation, and I thought, you know ...

Medievalism & AI, with Megan Maldonado