Year: 2021

Medieval Matters: Bliþe Cristes mæsse

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13/12/2021

12:07

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Term has ended, but there are still Medievalist happenings going on in Oxford! As we look forward to Christmas, I come to your inbox bearing gifts: CFPs, Save-the-dates, and, of course, some Old English wisdom. First of all, an incredibly wise saying to ponder as we approach the new year:

God ger byþ þonne se hund þam hrefne gyfeð.
[It is a good year when the dog gives to the raven]

May 2022 be filled with such fortuitous events! On to the other gifts:

Save the Date:

  • We are delighted to announce that our OMS Lectures will take place on 8th February (Lucy Pick: title tbc) and 26th April (Caroline Danforth: Paper, Linen, Silk, and Parchment – Material Fragments from an Extinguished Convent). Full details to come shortly on our blog.
  • The Oxford Medieval Society Relaunch Party will take place at 5pm on 13th January 2022 at Kendrew Cafe, St John’s College. For queries, email oxfordmedievalsociety@gmail.com.
  • Please get your submissions for the Hilary Term OMS booklet to me by January 5th 2022.

Events:

Opportunities:

  • The Oxford Medieval Graduate Conference, in association with Oxford Medieval Studies and sponsored by TORCH, has just released their call-for-papers for its 2022 conference on ‘Medicine and Healing’. Graduate students are invited to submit a proposal of up to 250 words to oxgradconf@gmail.com by 15th January.
  • The Medieval Studies Program at Cornell University is pleased to announce its thirty-second annual graduate student colloquium (MSSC), which will focus on the theme of ‘Consuming the Middle Ages’. The conference will take place on the 23rd of April, to be held virtually over Zoom. The colloquium will be preceded by a small lecture series. We invite 20-minute papers that investigate consuming the Middle Ages as defined within a range of different disciplines and perspectives. Please send abstracts by January 30, 2021, to Sarah LaVoy at sfl39@cornell.edu. 
  • The Early Text Cultures research group based at the University of Oxford invites abstracts for its research seminar in Hilary Term, running from January to March 2022, which will be on ‘Gender Identities in Early and Premodern Text Cultures.’ Please send abstracts of no more than 300 words to earlytextcultures@humanities.ox.ac.uk by Friday 7 January. The seminar will be held in a hybrid form, with Zoom connection complementing a limited on-site presence in Oxford. 

And finally, some wisdom to keep in mind when enjoying your festive mulled wine / hot chocolate:

Swa fulre fæt, swa hit mann sceal fægror beran.
[The fuller the cup, the more carefully it must be carried]

As this is my last email of the term, on behalf of all of us at OMS, I’d like to wish you all a Merry Christmas / Buon Natale / Bliþe Cristes mæsse! I hope that you all have an enjoyable and restful break, and I look forward to seeing you in the new year. 

A Medievalist attempts to explain that Shakespeare isn’t Old English to confused family members over Christmas dinner
Merton College, MS 249, f. 3r.
View image and text in the Taylor Edition by Sebastian Dows-Miller
https://editions.mml.ox.ac.uk/editions/bestiary/#Leun2

Call for Papers: Gender Identities in Early and Premodern Text Culture

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13/12/2021

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The Early Text Cultures research group based at the University of Oxford invites abstracts for its research seminar in Hilary Term, running from January to March 2022, which will be on ‘Gender Identities in Early and Premodern Text Cultures.’    

As is often recognised, the dominant voices in the premodern world have been men’s voices. Yet textual sources––from the literary to the administrative––are critical to recovering the heterogeneity that in many cases characterised ancient and premodern societies. Women were inspiring muses; but they also expressed themselves in poetry and participated in cultural productions. In some cases, there is ample evidence that they held leading roles in politics and the economy. We invite papers from graduate and early career researchers that give a stage to these voices, as they speak to us from premodern textual cultures. We also welcome proposals that consider the varying intersections between gender and identity, as well as on how gender representation interacted with that of other (potentially) marginalised social groups. Topics include, among others:    

·  Authors and/or texts that represent genders;    

·  How the presence of women’s authorship (factual or attributed) affects the reception of texts;    

·  The role of texts in presenting alternatives to a patriarchal, aristocratic world;  

·  How texts may have acted as instruments to shape normative social views, or to uproot them;  

·  The nexus between gender, marginality and oppression;  

·  The relationship between language and gender;    

·  How texts were read and performed to express genders and social identities.    


Presenters will speak alongside another contributor treating a different early or premodern text culture. They are encouraged to engage with theoretical perspectives and to draw out productive points of comparison with the research of their fellow speaker. These papers will serve as starting points for a discussion with the other participants in each session, which will promote an interdisciplinary and intercultural approach to the material under consideration.    

Please send abstracts of no more than 300 words to earlytextcultures@humanities.ox.ac.uk by Friday 7 January. The seminar will be held in a hybrid form, with Zoom connection complementing a limited on-site presence in Oxford. Speakers and auditors may choose whether to attend in person or online. Persons of all backgrounds are extremely welcome, and women and non-binary academics are highly encouraged to submit papers and attend the seminar.  

CFP: Consuming the Middle Ages: 2022 Medieval Studies Student Colloquium

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13/12/2021

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The Medieval Studies Program at Cornell University is pleased to announce its thirty-second annual graduate student colloquium (MSSC), which will focus on the theme of ‘Consuming the Middle Ages’. The conference will take place on the 23rd of April, to be held virtually over Zoom. The colloquium will be preceded by a small lecture series. 

We invite 20-minute papers that investigate consuming the Middle Ages as defined within a range of different disciplines and perspectives. Consuming can denote both physical consumption as well as the act of consuming and making sense of the medieval past through scholarly productions, creative media, and cultural phenomena and practices. How were medieval feasts organized and what socio-cultural function did food and the act of consuming it serve? What are possible connections between the life cycle stages of consumed goods (e.g., from cultivation to processing, to consuming, to disposal, etc.) and climate, migration, economics, etc.? What material and immaterial substances were subject to consumption and what religious or cultural roles did they play? How do postmedieval writers and thinkers configure the medieval? What are the ramifications of consuming the past and is this the nature of periodization? How are the traces, artifacts, or influences from the medieval past consumed by later or contemporary individuals, communities, and cultures? Papers may respond to (but are not limited to) one of these questions. 

Preference will be given to papers from underrepresented backgrounds and disciplines. We strongly encourage submissions that expand these themes and categories of inquiry beyond Christian, Western European contexts. We invite submissions in all disciplines allied to Medieval Studies, including Asian Studies, Africana Studies, Critical Race Studies, Indigenous Studies, Near Eastern Studies, literature, history, the history of art, archaeology, philosophy, classics, theology, and others. Abstracts on all topics will be considered, though priority will be given to those which address our thematic strand. 

Please send abstracts by January 30, 2021, to Sarah LaVoy at sfl39@cornell.edu. 

Oxford Medieval Graduate Conference 2022

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13/12/2021

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The Oxford Medieval Graduate Conference committee is thrilled to announce that the theme for 2022 will be Medicine and Healing. We look forward to hearing talks from our keynote speakers, Professor Emilie Savage-Smith and Dr Hannah Bower. The conference will be held in person (with limited measures in place for online papers) at Ertegun House, Oxford, on 21 and 22 April. We are pleased to call for papers which relate to all aspects of medicine and healing in Medicine and the medieval world.

Examples of areas of interest include but are not limited to:
o Ecocriticism
o Theology; faith as healing
o Humours
o Plague
o Childbirth
o Veterinary medicine
o Mental health
o Magic and amulets; folklore
and belief
o Manuscripts
o Hagiography
o Gendered approaches
o Technologies of healing

Papers should be a maximum of 20 minutes. We intend to provide bursaries to help with speaker travel costs, and we are welcoming applications from graduate students at any university. Please email abstracts of 250 words to
oxgradconf@gmail.com by 15th January.

Scribal Identity and Agency Conference

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13/12/2021

11:05

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We are pleased to announce the programme of the conference that will conclude the seminar series on Scribal Identity and Agency, hosted by the Early Text Cultures research network at the University of Oxford. The event will take place online on Zoom (UK time) on 16 – 17 December 2021 and will include talks on the Late Bronze Age city of Ugarit, ancient Rome, medieval Christianity and Islam, and monastic communities in early modern Ethiopia and Tibet. To receive the link please register here. 

Abstracts can be found here.

PROGRAMME (UK TIME)

DAY 1 (16 December)

4—4.15pm

Introduction & Greetings

Session 1. Urban Scribes in Mediterranean Antiquity: East and West

4.15—4.45pm

Philip Boyes (Cambridge)

Script and Identity in Late Bronze Age Ugarit

4.45—5.15pm

Benjamin Hartmann (Zurich)

Consequences of Literacy: Identity and Agency of Roman scribae

5.15—5.45pm

Joint Q&A

Session 2. (Non-)Marginal Scribal Identities  in the Christian and Islamic Middle Ages

6.15—6.45pm

Elaine Treharne (Stanford)

Networks of Female (?) Scribal Activity, 1100-1250

6.45—7.15pm

Vevian Zaki (Oxford)

To be a Scribe of Christian Arabic Texts: Skills and Challenges

7.15—7.45pm

Joint Q&A

DAY 2 (17 December)

Session 3. Inscribing Religious Communities into the Modern Era

4.45—5.15pm

Brenton Sullivan (Colgate)

Monastic Constitutions and the Dissemination of Administrative Power in Premodern Tibet

5.15—5.45pm

Denis Nosnitsin (Hamburg)

Scribes from Ethiopia (East Tigray): Practices, Profiles, Portraits

5.45—6.15pm

Joint Q&A 

6.15—6.30pm

Break

6.30—7.30pm

Final Roundtable

Everyone is extremely welcome.

Medieval Matters: Week 8

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29/11/2021

15:01

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Somehow, we are already at Week 8, and the end of the term. What a busy and exciting term of medieval events it has been! We are incredibly lucky to have such a large and diverse community here at Oxford: afterall, the Durham Proverbs remind us that:

Nafað ænig mann freonda to fela.
[Nobody can have too many friends.]

Thank you so much to everyone who has organised events, given papers, or turned up to seminars this term: you have made the Oxford Medievalist community richer! Here’s our last week of events for Michaelmas 2021:

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

  • Save the date! Our OMS Lectures will take place on 8th February (Lucy Pick: title tbc) and 26th April (Caroline Danforth: Paper, Linen, Silk, and Parchment – Material Fragments from an Extinguished Convent). Full details to come shortly on our blog.
  • Announcing the publication of a new volume of essays co-edited by Laura Varnam (Oxford) and Laura Kalas (Swansea): Encountering The Book of Margery Kempe. The volume is published this month by MUP (and is currently 40% off with the discount code ‘Kempe21’). There will be an online launch with the volume contributors on Thursday 16th December at 5pm on Zoom. We’d be delighted if you wanted to join us! Sign up here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/launch-of-encountering-the-book-of-margery-kempe-registration-209741030067

EVENTS THIS WEEK:

Monday 29th November:

  • The Byzantine Graduate Seminar meets at 12.15-2pm on Teams. This week’s speaker is John-Francis Martin (Oxford), ‘Byzantine Catholics (exact title TBC)‘. To register, please contact the organiser at james.cogbill@worc.ox.ac.uk or visit the eventbrite page.
  • The Medieval Latin Manuscript Reading Group meets at 1-2pm on Teams. Contact Matthew Holford, Andrew Dunning or Tuija Ainonen to be added to the Teams call.
  • The Medieval Archaeology Seminar meets at 3pm Online via Teams. This week’s speaker is Pieter-Jan Dekkers, ‘Metal-detector finds and Flemish coastal settlement, 600-1100.’
  • The Medieval History Seminar meets at 5pm on Teams and in the Wharton Room. Attendance at the Wharton Room is by advance booking only as the room has a strict Covid-19 capacity limit. Bookings can be made at https://medieval-history-seminar.reservio.com. This week’s speaker is John Blair (Oxford), ‘Anglo-Saxon Landholding: the Unimportance of Bookland’.
  • The Old Norse Reading Group meets at 5.15pm on Teams. Please email Olivia Smith (olivia.smith2@linacre.ox.ac.uk) to be added to the mailing list and Teams group.

Tuesday 30th November:

  • The Islamicate Manuscripts and Texts Reading Colloquium 2021 meets at 3pm on Zoom. This week’s speaker is Arash Zeini, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Institute of Iranian Studies, FreieUniversität Berlin, ‘Is there a Middle Persian epistolary tradition? A survey‘.
  • The Medieval Book Club meets at 3.30pm in Magdalen College, Old Law Library. This week’s topic is ‘Alchemy and the Philosopher’s Stone’.
  • The Continental Old French Reading Group meets at 3.30pm at St Hilda’s College. Anyone interested in joining should send an email to sebastian.dows-miller@st-hildas.ox.ac.uk.
  • The Early Slavonic Webinar meets at 5pm on Zoom. This week’s speaker is Zofia Brzozowska (The University of Łódz), ‘The image of an Arab woman in medieval Rusliterature (11th–16th century)‘.
  • The Medieval Church and Culture Seminar meets at 5pm in Old Dining Hall, Harris Manchester College. This week’s speaker is David Addison (All Souls), ‘Isidore of Seville, the Carolingians, and the idea of the laity‘.
  • The Oxford University Numismatic Society Graduate and ECR Colloquium 2021: “Base Metal Coinage in Antiquity and Beyond” takes place at 5pm on Teams. To receive meeting links and further updates, please email the Secretary at daniel.etches@new.ox.ac.uk.
  • The Meet the Manuscripts Autumn Series takes place at 5.30, online. This week’s speakers will be Micah Mackay, doctoral student in the Publication Before Print Doctoral Centre and Andrew Dunning, R. W. Hunt Curator of Medieval Manuscripts, ‘Correcting Christmas Carols‘. Book online here.
  • The Women, Legends and Texts Talk takes place at 7pm at Jesus College Chapel. This week’s speaker is Laura Saetveit Miles, giving a short informal talk on ‘St. Birgitta of Sweden: late-medieval England’s favorite visionary[?]‘.

Wednesday 1st December:

  • The Medieval German Seminar meets at 11.15-12.45 in New Powell Room, Somerville College. If you are interested to be added to the mailing list for the seminar, write to Linus Ubl.
  • The Workshop on Manuscript Description and Cataloguing: encoding in TEI xml takes place at 1-2pm in the Weston Weston Library Centre for Digital Scholarship. Places strictly limited: email matthew.holford@bodleian.ox.ac.uk or andrew.dunning@bodleian.ox.ac.uk
  • The Medieval Trade Reading Group meets at 1-2pm in Mertze Tate Room, History Faculty, and Online. To be added to the mailing list and team please email Annabel Hancock.
  • The Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar meets at 5pm on Google Meet, followed by drinks at 7pm at Corpus Christi College. This week’s speaker is Elisabetta Neri (Liège), ‘Glass in transition (4th-12th c.). Production, trade and networks in southern Italy’. This week’s seminar is in collaboration with the Maison Française d’Oxford.
  • The Medieval English Research Seminar meets at 5.15pm in Lecture Theatre 2, Faculty of English. This week’s speakers will be Rachel Burns (CLASP, Oxford), ‘Psalms and Psychogeography in the Old English Solomon and Saturn’, and Anthony Harris (CLASP, Oxford), ‘Science and Literature – a Marriage of Ideas: “The Sun in the South” Revisited’. For further information, contact daniel.wakelin@ell.ox.ac.uk.

Thursday 2nd December:

  • The Middle High German Reading Group meets at 9-10.30am on Zoom. This week’s topic is ‘Der Renner: Ziegenschwank (Hugo von Trimberg) ‘. If you have any questions or want to participate, please send an e-mail to melina.schmidt@lincoln.ox.ac.uk.
  • The Archives de l’Athos reading group meets at 3-4pm at Campion Hall. All interested in Byzantine history, non-Latin diplomatics, Greek palaeography or diplomatic edition are welcome. Contact marek.jankowiak@history.ox.ac.uk or olivier.delouis@campion.ox.ac.uk to sign up and receive the texts in advance.
  • The Imaging Belief Seminar meets at 4pm on Zoom. The speakers will be Prof Boaz Huss, ‘“Martyr of the Word”: Imagining Abraham Abulafia in Modern Literature, Arts and Popular Culture’. and Prof Annette Volfing, ‘Misdirected Visions: Doubt and Confusion in the Middle High German Sister Books’. Further information on Oxford Talks.The seminar will take place on Zoom. For the link, please email either rey.conquer@pmb.ox.ac.uk or mary.boyle@mod-langs.ox.ac.uk. 
  • The Greek and Latin Reading Group meets at 4pm in St Edmund Hall. Room TBC: contact John Colley or Jenyth Evans to be added to the mailing list. This week’s text will be Homer, Iliad, 19.303-39.
  • The Seminar in Medieval and Renaissance Music takes place at 5-6.45pm on Zoom. If you are planning to attend, please register online. This week’s speaker is Brianne Dolce (Fitzjames Research Fellow in Music, Merton College, Oxford), ‘The Confraternity of Jongleurs and Bourgeois of Arras: A Reappraisal‘. The Discussants are Catherine A. Bradley (University of Oslo) and Barbara Haggh-Huglo (University of Maryland, College Park).
  • The Celtic Seminar meets at 5pm on Zoom. For Zoom link, contact a.elias@wales.ac.uk. This week’s speaker is Michael Cronin (Trinity College Dublin), ‘Minority journeying in the Age of the Anthropocene‘.
  • The North Sea Crossings Virtual Panel takes place at 5pm, online. The discussion will be streamed on this page and on the YouTube channel.  

Friday 3rd December:

  • Pre-Modern Conversations meets at 11am-12pm on Teams. For more information and to be added the the PMC Teams Channel, email lena.vosding AT mod-langs.ox.ac.uk.



OPPORTUNITIES:


Finally, some more wisdom on friendship from the Durham Proverbs:

Freond deah feor ge neah; byð near nyttra.
A friend is useful, whether far or near (near is better though).

I interpret this to mean: let’s make the most of the closeness of our friends and colleagues before we all scatter after the end of term!

A Medievalist enjoying a colleague’s research paper (complete with flashy powerpoint presentation!)
Merton College, MS 249, f. 10v.
View image and text in the Taylor Edition by Sebastian Dows-Miller
https://editions.mml.ox.ac.uk/editions/bestiary/#LeunCocs

CFP: Passages from Antiquity to the Middle Ages VIII, Experiencing Space

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29/11/2021

14:10

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Tampere, August 17-19, 2022

The focus of the Passages conference series lies on society and the history of everyday life. This time we are concentrating on the social construction and experiences of space, aiming to understand how it affected social frameworks, built communities and shaped individual lives. The “Spatial Turn” has directed scholars’ interest towards the interconnection between communities, individuals and space, but larger comparisons between eras and cultures are still mainly missing. We aim to approach space as an analytical tool, “experience” offering a novel conceptual method for the study in this field.

We are interested in everyday interactions within and between communities, groups and individuals and their relations with the environment. How did people negotiate the borders between built and “wild” environments, urban and rural space, the public and the private, the secular and the sacred? How were ideas, ideologies and identities reflected in the built environment and how were they shaped by space and perceptions of it? How did bodily practices and emotions create spaces, and how did space shape rituals and produce emotions? What was the role of sensory perceptions when living in and moving through space? How was space imagined and how did spaces, landscapes, buildings and monuments occupy a place in the private and public imagination? How were space and memories/narrations interconnected: how were spatial experiences inscribed in the preserved sources? In which ways did the political and legal, but equally religious spheres play a role in the formation of social spaces? We invite papers that focus on social topography, the lived experience of space, the normative and legal construction of space, the sensory perceptions of spatiality, and participation in constructing and regulating spaces.

We aim at a broad coverage not only chronologically but also geographically and disciplinarily (all branches of Classical, Byzantine and Medieval Studies). Most preferable are those contributions that have a comparative and/or interdisciplinary viewpoint or focusing on a longue durée perspective. We particularly welcome papers, which have a sensitive approach to social differences: gender, status, health, and ethnicity.

***

If interested, please submit an abstract of 300-400 words (setting out thesis and conclusions) and a short biography (50-100 words) for a twenty-minute paper together with your contact details (with academic affiliation, address and e-mail) https://www.lyyti.fi/reg/passages2022cfp. The deadline for abstracts is January 31, 2022 and the notification of paper acceptance will be made in March 2022. Conference papers may be presented in major scientific languages, together with an English summary or translation, if the language of the presentation is not English. The sessions are formed on thematic coherence of the papers and on comparison between Antiquity and the Middle Ages, thus session proposals focusing on one period only will not be accepted. If the Covid-19 situation so requires, the conference has the option of participation via Zoom.

The registration fee is 130 € (post-graduate students: 60 €), online participation for presenters 50 €. For further information, please contact conference secretary saku.pihko@tuni.fi. The registration opens in April 2022.

The conference is organized by Trivium – Tampere Centre for Classical, Medieval, and Early Modern Studies (Faculty of Social Sciences/Tampere University) in collaboration with the ERC project Law, Governance and Space: Questioning the Foundations of the Republican Tradition (SpaceLaw.fi, University of Helsinki). This conference has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No 771874).

Webinar: The Murbach Hymns (MS. Junius 25) – Vernacular Glossing in the Early Middle Ages

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26/11/2021

17:58

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This webinar (17th/18th of February 2022) centres around the Murbach hymns, a Latin hymnal with Old High German interlinear glosses from the ninth century, whose manuscript and textual context will be examined, as well as, on a wider scale, the use and function of vernacular language in the early Middle Ages. The manuscript MS. Junius 25 and other glossed manuscripts from the Bodleian Library will be presented and analysed, giving the audience the opportunity to view these valuable objects up close. In three discussion sessions, the materiality of the manuscripts and their content will be set in context with each other, drawing a connection between the object and its use. The focus will initially be on the texts of MS. Junius 25. In further sessions, the use of vernacular language in different cultural contexts and the emergence and function of (vernacular) glosses will be explored.

PROGRAMME
All times are GMT.

Thursday, 17 February 2022

2-3 pm: Meet the Manuscript: MS. Junius 25 and the Murbach Hymnal

MS. Junius 25

  • Prof. Dr Daniela Mairhofer (Princeton)
  • Luise Morawetz (Oxford)
  • Prof. Dr Henrike Lähnemann (Oxford)
  • Dr Matthew Holford (Oxford)

3.45-5 pm: A Textual Analysis of the Manuscript

  • Prof. Dr Michael Stolz (Bern): Marginalien zu MS. Junius 25
  • Dr Elke Krotz (Vienna): The Glossaries Junius A, B and C
  • Dr Matthias Standke (Berlin): Murbacher Hymnar? Begriffs‑ und Überlieferungsgeschichte: Versuch einer Einordnung

9.15 pm: Latin-Old High German Compline in the Crypt of St-Peter-in-the-East. Live streamed via youtube. Booklet with texts.

Friday, 18 February 2022

9-10 am: Vernacular Language in Use

  • Prof. Dr Alderik Blom (Marburg): Two Old Frisian Glosses on the Psalms
  • Dr Helen Gittos (Oxford): Vernacular languages in medieval liturgy

11-12 am: The Practice of Glossing

  • Prof. em. Dr Elvira Glaser (Zurich): The Functionality of Vernacular (Old High German) Glosses
  • Prof. Dr Stephan Müller (Vienna): Alliterations and Abbreviations. How to discover the German language between Latin lines of the Murbach hymns

2-3.30 pm: Meet the Manuscript 2: Consultation of other Glossed Manuscripts from the Bodleian

MS. Auct. F. 1. 16, MS. Rawl. C. 697, MS. Canon. Pat. Lat. 57

  • Prof. Dr Daniela Mairhofer (Princeton)
  • Luise Morawetz (Oxford)
  • Prof. Dr Henrike Lähnemann (Oxford)
  • Dr Matthew Holford (Oxford)

The presentations and papers will be published online before the event. Questions for the speakers can be asked during the sessions or before the event via Twitter (#MurbachHymns) or email (luise.morawetz@mod-langs.ox.ac.uk, reference: Workshop Murbach Hymns). Papers here (password protected; please register here for the event to get access). If you have any questions, please contact Luise Morawetz (via email or Twitter).

In association with the Bodleian Libraries and Oxford Medieval Studies, sponsored by The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities (TORCH) and the University Council of Modern Languages (UCML).

The first lines of the Murbach hymns (fol. 122v, Oxford, Bodleian Library MS. Junius 25).

Medieval Matters: Week 7

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22/11/2021

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It’s not even December yet, but the Oxford Christmas lights are now twinkling away on High Street and in colleges, Christmas trees have started to pop up in restaurants, and Oxmas is just around the corner. For those people starting to panic about buying gifts, here’s some wisdom for you from the Old English Maxims I:

Maþþum oþres weorð,
gold mon sceal gifan.
[One treasure deserves another; gold should be given away.]

We have a veritable wealth of medieval treasures for you this week, and it is my great delight to ‘give away’ their schedule to you, so that you might enjoy them:

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

  • Upcoming conference and exhibition on Anglo-Dutch Relations: As part of the Leverhulme project The Literary Heritage of Anglo-Dutch Relations 1050-1600, by Ad Putter (Bristol) and Elizabeth Van Houts (Cambridge), there will be a hybrid conference in the Bodleian Library (6-8 January) to accompany an exhibition of manuscripts and early printed books (3 December 2021 – April 2022) on the same subject. There is also a livestream panel discussion to mark the opening of the exhibition on 2 December at 5PM, online.


EVENTS THIS WEEK:

Monday 22nd November:

  • The Byzantine Graduate Seminar meets at 12.15-2pm on Teams. This week’s speaker is Callan Meynell (Oxford), ‘Roman? Greek? Byzantine? Some thoughts on the trial of Maximus the Confessor and Roman identity‘. To register, please contact the organiser at james.cogbill@worc.ox.ac.uk or visit the eventbrite page.
  • The Medieval Latin Manuscript Reading Group meets at 1-2pm on Teams. Contact Matthew Holford, Andrew Dunning or Tuija Ainonen to be added to the Teams call.
  • The Medieval History Seminar meets at 5pm on Teams and in the Wharton Room. Attendance at the Wharton Room is by advance booking only as the room has a strict Covid-19 capacity limit. Bookings can be made at https://medieval-history-seminar.reservio.com. This week’s speaker is Rebecca Darley (Leeds) ‘The Diffusion of Governmentality in the Western Indian Ocean, c. 300-800 CE’.

Tuesday 23rd November:

  • The Islamicate Manuscripts and Texts Reading Colloquium 2021 meets at 3pm on Zoom. This week’s speaker is Arietta Papaconstantinou, Associate Professor, Department of Classics, Reading University, ‘Letters from Early Islamic Egypt‘.
  • The Medieval Book Club meets at 3.30pm in Magdalen College, Old Law Library. This week’s topic is ‘Invoking Rituals’.
  • The Early Slavonic Webinar meets at 5pm on Zoom. This week’s speaker is Florentina Badalanova-Geller (Royal Anthropological Institute), ‘Ascending to the DivineScriptorium (The Concept of Heavenly Writings in the Slavonic Apocalypse of Enoch)‘.
  • The Medieval Church and Culture Seminar meets at 5pm in Old Dining Hall, Harris Manchester College. This week’s speaker is Benjamin Thompson (Somerville), ‘Open or Closed? Late Medieval Monasteries and their Visitations‘.
  • The Medieval French Research Seminar meets at 5pm at Maison française d’Oxford. This week’s speaker is Dr Joseph Mason (New College, Oxford), ‘Sound, Music and Violence in the Old French Pastourelle’.
  • The Oxford Numismatic Society meets at 5pm on Teams. This week’s speaker will be Dr. Anna Blomley (New College, University of Oxford), ‘Between Magnesia and Macedon: The Bronze Coinages of Eastern Mount Ossa (Thessaly)‘. To receive meeting links and further updates, please email the Secretary at daniel.etches@new.ox.ac.uk.

Wednesday 24th November:

  • The Medieval German Seminar meets at 11.15-12.45 in New Powell Room, Somerville College. If you are interested to be added to the mailing list for the seminar, write to Linus Ubl.
  • The British Archaeological Association Postgraduate Conference takes place online at 1-5:30pm. Register for the conference here.
  • The Workshop on Manuscript Description and Cataloguing: Physical description and provenance takes place at 1-2pm in the Weston Library Horton Room. Places strictly limited: email matthew.holford@bodleian.ox.ac.uk or andrew.dunning@bodleian.ox.ac.uk
  • The Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar meets at 5pm on Google Meet, followed by drinks at 7pm at Corpus Christi College. This week’s speakers are Luke Lavan (Kent), ‘Everyday life beyond Symeon the Fool‘, Geoffrey Greatrex (Ottawa), ‘From Constantinople and its hinterland to Theophanes and Procopius‘, and Vincenzo Ruggieri (Pontificio Istituto Orientale), title tbc.
  • The Medieval English Research Seminar meets at 5.15pm in Lecture Theatre 2, Faculty of English. This week’s speaker will be Carl Kears (King’s College, London), ‘MS Junius 11: A Poetic Manuscript’. For further information, contact daniel.wakelin@ell.ox.ac.uk.

Thursday 25th November:

  • The Middle High German Reading Group meets at 9-10.30am on Zoom. This week’s topic is Die Suche nach dem glücklichen Ehepaar (Heinrich Kaufringer). If you have any questions or want to participate, please send an e-mail to melina.schmidt@lincoln.ox.ac.uk.
  • The British Archaeological Association Postgraduate Conference takes place online at 1-5:30pm. Register for the conference here.
  • The Archives de l’Athos reading group meets at 3-4pm at Corpus Christi College. All interested in Byzantine history, non-Latin diplomatics, Greek palaeography or diplomatic edition are welcome. Contact marek.jankowiak@history.ox.ac.uk or olivier.delouis@campion.ox.ac.uk to sign up and receive the texts in advance.
  • The Greek and Latin Reading Group meets at 4pm in St Edmund Hall. Room TBC: contact John Colley or Jenyth Evans to be added to the mailing list. This week’s text will be Seneca, Apocolocyntosis 10-11.
  • The Celtic Seminar meets at 5.15pm on Teams. For Teams link, contact David Willis. This week’s speaker is Deborah Hayden (Maynooth), ‘Cryptography, linguistic origin legends and medical education in medieval Ireland‘.
  • The Old English Reading Group meets at 5.30-7pm. For more information and to be added to the mailing list please email Eugenia Vorobeva.

Friday 26th November:

  • The Seminar in the History of the Book takes place at 5pm in the TS Eliot Lecture Theatre, Merton College. The speaker is Dr Daniel Sawyer, Merton College, ‘Manuscript Fragments and Manuscript Concepts‘.
  • The Anglo-Norman Reading Group meets at 5pm on Zoom. For texts, joining instructions, and further information, please email Stephanie Hathaway or Jane Bliss.

Saturday 27th November:

  • The Church Monuments Society Lecture Series: Whose Dead in Vaulted Arches Lie meets at 5pm on Zoom. This week’s talk is ‘A crate of bones & gristle’: Welsh cadaver tombs & the art of the macabre’ with Professor Madeleine Gray. Attendance is free, but places must be booked via Eventbrite.



OPPORTUNITIES:

  • Call for Papers: Speculum Themed Issue: “Race, Race-Thinking, and Identity in the Global Middle Ages”: We invite proposals for full-length essays (8,000-11,000 words) that interrogate race, race-thinking, and identity in the Middle Ages. The themed issue on race, race-thinking, and identity and the articles selected for it will be in keeping with Speculum’s purview as stated in the Guidelines for Submission: “preference is ordinarily given to articles of interest to readers in more than one discipline and beyond the specialty in question. Articles taking a more global approach to medieval studies are also welcomed, particularly when the topic engages with one or more of the core areas of study outlined above. Submissions with appeal to a broad cross-section of medievalists are highly encouraged.” Proposals should be no more than 500 words in length and should be submitted by email to cord.whitaker@wellesley.edu with SPECULUM PROPOSAL in the subject line by 31 January 2022. The authors of selected proposals will be notified by 28 February 2022. Completed essays will be expected by 1 December 2022.
  • Call for Papers: 16th GRACEH conference in European History. If you are a graduate student, please consider submitting an abstract to the 16th Annual Graduate Conference in European History (hopefully in-person at Oxford, 11-13 April 2022). The theme for this year is ‘Nature’, and the deadline for the submission of abstract is the 15th of December. Please find the link here (https://graceh2022.wordpress.com/blog/), along with the CFP.


Finally, some more Old English wisdom regarding gift-giving:

Gyfu gumena byþ gleng and herenys,
wraþu and wyrþscype.
Gift-giving amonst men is a glory an honour, support and worthiness.

In other words: not only is it lovely to give gifts to people, doing so will bring you some honour too!

A medievalist finds the perfect gift for a colleague who likes to wear scarves
Merton College, MS 249, f. 4r.
View image and text in the Taylor Edition by Sebastian Dows-Miller
https://editions.mml.ox.ac.uk/editions/bestiary/#Cerf

Call for Papers: Speculum Themed Issue: “Race, Race-Thinking, and Identity in the Global Middle Ages”

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22/11/2021

11:18

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opportunities

Editors:

François-Xavier Fauvelle, Collège de France

Nahir Otaño Gracia, University of New Mexico

Cord J. Whitaker, Wellesley College

For far too long, scholarly consensus held that race and racism were mainly Enlightenment innovations, datable to no earlier than the seventeenth century. As long ago as the early twentieth century, some scholars pushed race’s origins to the sixteenth or even fifteenth centuries, but these scholars were few and far between. The Middle Ages and, with them, medieval studies were set off as a time and discipline innocent of race and racism. This remained generally true until the advent of critical medieval race studies in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Now, in 2021, special issues in major journals and no less than six full-length scholarly monographs have treated the imbrications of race with medieval art, literature, religion, and even the periodizing concept of the Middle Ages itself. Many more studies in medieval literature, history, art, religion, and culture have been conceptually informed by race, as have many studies in the modern perceptions and deployments of the Middle Ages. Speculum: A Journal of Medieval Studies calls for proposals for a themed issue, to be published as one of Speculum’s four quarterly issues, to recognize the intellectual value of the study of race to a comprehensive understanding of the Middle Ages.

We invite proposals for full-length essays (8,000-11,000 words) that interrogate race, race-thinking, and identity in the Middle Ages. For example, essays might consider the roles of race-making and racialization in the Islamic world; how race and identity, together with religion, was negotiated and navigated in border regions such as al-Andalus, Sicily or the Levant (between Latin Christendom and Islam), the Sahara and the Sahel region (between the Islamic world and Subsaharan Africa); how the dynamics of race-thinking informed relations between Latin and Greek Christendom and Islam or the Mongol Empire, or between the Muslim/Islamicate world and Christian, Jewish, Hinduist, and traditional-religious societies within it or beyond its reaches; how race intersected with the dynamics of trade and connectivity, religious affiliation and conversion, slavery and emancipation, peace and war. Essays may also take on the roles of race, race-thinking, and identity in the geography and periodization of the Middle Ages: Are historical moments that are quintessential to the history of race also relevant to medieval-and-modern periodizations? Essays may also consider how and why race, race-thinking, and identity have shaped modern concepts, uses, and scholarship of the Middle Ages.

The editors are open to essays that interrogate race, race-thinking, and identity in the Middle Ages by asking these and other deeply probing questions. Additionally, we are especially interested in essays that consider the globality of the medieval world: those that examine the networked interrelations and interdependences of Africa, Asia, the Americas, and Europe. In addition to scholarship in history and literature, we invite proposals using the tools and methods of anthropology, archaeology, art history, book history, historical linguistics, religious studies, sociology, and other fields germane to the studies of race, identity, and the Middle Ages.

The themed issue on race, race-thinking, and identity and the articles selected for it will be in keeping with Speculum’s purview as stated in the Guidelines for Submission: “preference is ordinarily given to articles of interest to readers in more than one discipline and beyond the specialty in question. Articles taking a more global approach to medieval studies are also welcomed, particularly when the topic engages with one or more of the core areas of study outlined above. Submissions with appeal to a broad cross-section of medievalists are highly encouraged.”

Proposals should be no more than 500 words in length and should be submitted by email to cord.whitaker@wellesley.edu with SPECULUM PROPOSAL in the subject line by 31 January 2022. The authors of selected proposals will be notified by 28 February 2022. Completed essays will be expected by 1 December 2022.