About
Medieval and Early Modern Missouri (MEMMO) is a digital humanities project interested in collecting, exploring, and displaying for researchers, students, educators, and anyone interested in the history of Missouri and/or medievalism/early modernism, the history of Medieval and Early Modern books and manuscripts in the Show-Me state (Missouri) and the influence of these periods on the state.
Missouri, a mid-western state known more popularly for its stubborn pioneering spirit, frontier and Civil War history, and big river culture, has a surprising amount of Medieval and Early Modern influences, books, and manuscripts. A state that often conjures images of Tom Sawyer, Jesse James, and lazy summer days traveling gently down the mighty Mississippi and Missouri Rivers officially became a state in 1820, but the intellectual interests and preoccupations of her citizens and institutions of higher education stretches beyond her 200 years of statehood.
Why does this matter? We are seeing political rhetoric and ideaologies that, perhaps surprisingly, haveconenctions to perceptions of the medieval and early modern period. Earlier American interest in these periods and their written culture has influenced are modern culture and politics. It is important to recognize, collect, and examine, these influences through the study of these texts and the history of their influence in the State of Missouri, a state that historically has always been a political and cultural battleground.