Month: March 2021

Dear all,

You haven’t seen the last of me yet! Every time I sign off on a Week 8 email, a slew of exciting opportunities and events immediately comes to my attention, and so I must bring these delights to your attention as well.

First and foremost: The Oxford Medieval Studies Trinity Term Seminar, long awaited, often imitated but never duplicated, will be on Tuesday of Week 1 (27 April) at 5 pm, live-streamed on the OMS YouTube channel! The speaker will be our very own Jim Harris, Teaching Curator at the Ashmolean Museum, taking us through some of the Ashmolean’s fascinating medieval holdings. Mark your calendars now!

Looking for your vacation Byzantine fix? Look no further than the latest event from the New Critical Approaches to the Byzantine World Network, presenting ‘Our Daily Byzantium: Medieval Heritage, Nation-Building, and Politics in Serbia’, bringing together an international group of historians, art historians, and cultural theorists to discuss cultural heritage and nationalism in Serbia and the wider Balkans. The seminar will be held on 25 March, 4-6 pm, on Zoom. Full details, further reading, and registration here.

Calling all graduate students of Old Norse: the annual Norse in the North Conference, hosted online this year by Durham University on 12 June, has opened its call for papers. The theme is ‘Transformation and Preservation in Old Norse Studies’, with keynote speaker Ármann Jakobsson (Háskoli Íslands). 300-word abstract submissions from postgraduates at any level and discipline are welcome by Friday 16 April. For further details, see their website here.

And another graduate opportunity: Oklahoma State University is hosting a Graduate Workshop on Diversity in the Medieval Middle East. This workshop invites early graduate students (considering their options for research topics) to discuss the place of various forms of diversity in the region and consider topics which cross the communal and linguistic boundaries imposed on premodern history by most graduate education today. The workshop will take place May 17-21, 2021 via Zoom. Masters or early PhD students interested in any part of the Middle East (from Cairo to Samarqand and the Black Sea to Yemen) between the seventh and fifteenth centuries CE are welcome to apply by March 26. Inquiries and applications should be sent to thomas.a.carlson@okstate.edu, and must include a cover letter explaining the applicant’s interest in medieval Middle Eastern diversity and current state of thinking about future research projects (two double-spaced pages maximum), a CV mentioning language skills (two pages maximum) and a current graduate transcript (official or unofficial).

A conference to register for at Fordham University: ‘Medieval French Without Borders’, the 40th Annual Conference of the Center for Medieval Studies, 20-21 March. This digital conference addresses the multilingual contact zones and social, cultural and literary contexts of exchange in which French featured between the ninth and the sixteenth centuries. For the full program and registration, check out the conference website.

And another: the launch of a new project and the inaugural event of the Medieval World Seminar at Johns Hopkins University, ‘Crusading Things and the Material Outremer: The Account-Inventory of Eudes of Nevers, 1266’, on 26 March, 5:30-7 pm GMT. Project website here, and registration link here.

Closer to home, the Anglo-Norman Reading Group is have an extra session this Friday, the 19th, at their usual time of 5-6:30 pm.

And finally, if you’ve been missing last term’s troubadour content, the Voices from Oxford documentary has been selected for Luchon’s International Film Festival! Read more here.

Until next time!

Dear all,

Here we are in Week 8! The last official Monday email of Hilary Term 2021! We made it, mostly intact, to the finish line, and the joys of the Easter vac beckon. Before that, though, we have wonderful seminars for you to enjoy, to sustain you over the break.

A few announcements:

• The TORCH OMS Small Grants are now accepting Trinity Term applications! Get grants in the region of £100-250 to support your conferences, workshops, and other forms of collaborative research activity that take place between April and October 2021! Use the grant application form and submit to lesley.smith@history.ox.ac.uk by Friday of Week 0 of Trinity.
• Registration is now open for the Cambridge Colloquium in Anglo-Saxon, Norse, and Celtic (CCASNC) 2021, a great graduate conference on the languages, literature, history, and material culture of early medieval northern Europe. The conference takes place on 8 May 2021, and registration will be open here until 7 May.
• A reminder that your applications for the SOAS University of London ‘Medieval Eastern Mediterranean Cities as Places of Artistic Interchange’ are due today by 5 pm. Research students at an advanced stage of their studies and early-career academic researchers and tutors working in historical research institutes (such as archaeology centres, museums, and government and non-governmental agencies dealing with history, art or archaeology) are invited to join a collaborative online learning programme comprising eight seminar discussions taking place between March and May 2021, with £2000 awarded to each participant to be used for research purposes. Full details here.

Wel bið þam þe him seminares seceð, / frofre to læreowes on Oxnaforda, þær us eal seo fæstnung stondeð [It will be well for him who seeks seminars, consolation from teachers in Oxford, where for us all true security stands]. – The Wanderer, undoubtedly

MONDAY 8 MARCH

• The Oxford Byzantine Graduate Seminar meets at 12:30 pm on Teams. To join and for information, please contact james.cogbill@worc.ox.ac.uk. This week’s speaker is Paul Ulishney (Christ Church, Oxford), ‘The Hexaemeron Commentaries of Anastasius of Sinai and Jacob of Edessa’.
• The Medieval Latin Reading Group meets at 1 pm on Teams, continuing with Abelard. Submit your email address here to receive notices.
• The reading group GLARE (Greek, Latin, and Reception) meets at 5 pm on Teams. Email john.colley@ell.ox.ac.uk and jenyth.evans@ell.ox.ac.uk to be added to the mailing list. This week readers will return to Horace’s Ars poetica.
• The Medieval History Seminar meets on Teams at 5 pm (search for the seminar in Teams with code rmppucs and then click ‘join’). This week’s speaker is Maryanne Kowaleski (Fordham University), ‘Seamen and the Realm: Were Medieval Mariners “Political”?’

TUESDAY 9 MARCH

• The Late Medieval Seminar meets at 2 pm on Zoom (Meeting ID: 962 7053 8553, passcode: 078931). This week’s speaker is Neta Bodner (Open University of Israel), ‘“…And he changes into a white shirt and receives his new name”: Changing and Washing of Clothes in Jewish Medieval Religious Ceremonies’.
• At 3:30 pm on Google Meet  we have the Medieval Book Club (for more information, get in touch at oxfordmedievalbookclub@gmail.com). This week’s theme is Recipes, exploring a variety of texts.
• The Early Slavonic Seminar meets at 5 pm on Zoom (register here). This week’s speaker is Kirił Marinow (University of Łódź), ‘Turnovo: Capital of the Second Bulgarian Tsardom’.
• The Oxford Numismatic Society Seminar will have its Graduate Circus at 5 pm on Teams. Email daniel.etches@new.ox.ac.uk for the link.
• The Oxford Pre-Modern Middle Eastern History Seminar meets at 5:30 pm on Zoom (register here). This week’s speaker is AliAydın Karamustafa (Oxford), ‘Tribes, Bandits, and Minstrels: A Shared Popular Culture as a Response to Ottoman and Safavid Power’, with respondent Edmund Herzig (Oxford).

WEDNESDAY 10 MARCH

• The Medieval German Seminar on Arnold von Harff is now finished but from 3-4 pm on Teams, there will be a joint special session with the History of the Book Seminar with a viewing of Oxford’s copy of the travelogue (crocodile and all!), Bodleian Library MS. Bodley 972. Join on teams. 
• The Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar meets at 5 pm on Google Meet (link here). This week’s speakers are Kristoffel Demoen and Floris Bernard (Ghent), ‘Collected From All Kinds of Places: Building and Exploring a Corpus of Byzantine Book Epigrams’.
• The Medieval English Research Seminar meets at 5:15 pm on Teams. This week’s speaker is Emily Thornbury (Yale), ‘The Old English Daniel’s Baroque Design’.
• The Hebrew Bible in Medieval Manuscripts reading group will meet at 7 pm on Zoom; email judith.schlanger@orinst.ox.ac.uk for further information.

THURSDAY 11 MARCH

• The Celtic Seminar meets at 5:15 pm on Teams. Contact david.willis@ling-phil.ox.ac.uk for a link. This week’s speaker is Wilson McLeod (University of Edinburgh), ‘The Influence of Wales on Gaelic Language Policy in Scotland’.
• The OCHJS David Patterson lectures will be held at 6 pm on Zoom. This week’s speaker is Elena Lolli (OCHJS), ‘Scribal Habits and Codicological Features of the Oldest Hebrew Account Book in Italy’. Register here.
• The Medieval Trade Reading Group meets at 7 pm. To be added to the team and have access to the materials and meetings, email Annabel Hancock at annabel.hancock@history.ox.ac.uk.

FRIDAY 12 MARCH

• The work in progress workshop Pre-Modern Conversations meets at 11 am on Teams. Email lena.vosding@mod-langs.ox.ac.uk for further information.
• The Seminar in the History of the Book meets at 2:15 pm. To register, email bookcentre@bodleian.ox.ac.uk. This week’s speaker is William Stoneman (Cambridge, MA) ‘Buying Incunabula at Gimbel Brothers Department Store: A Curious Chapter in the History of American Book Collecting’.

Have wonderful vacations, all. Get some R&R, as the Americans say; revel in the good weather; snag that day-after half-price Easter chocolate; and start looking forward to all of the thrilling seminar events that Trinity has to offer. As always, it’s my honour to fill up your inboxes on a Monday. Until 0th week!

Dear all,

Week 7 commences on the Kalends of March! I hope you all got to enjoy the sunshine this weekend; I for one was out in Port Meadow, where I will now remain ensconced for the entirety of the spring. Please address all post to ‘that spot with the good view by Burgess Fields’. I’ll have to arrange for an internet connection, though, because as usual we have an incredible bounty of seminars this week to enjoy.

Some announcements first:

• Another Oxford Bibliographical Society Lecture, on Thursday 4 March at 5:15 pm on Zoom! Paul W. Nash will be speaking on ‘The Mystery of the Catholicon: Did Gutenberg Invent Stereotyping?’ Contact sarah.cush@lincoln.ox.ac.uk to attend.
• Henrike Lähnemann will be hosting Joachim Hamm and Michael Rupp from Würzburg talking about their ‘Narragonia Digital’ project during the History of the Book seminar, on Wednesday 3 March, 3-4 pm. The session will explore the European distribution of the early modern bestseller of the ‘Narrenschiff’ in German, Latin, French, and English, and offer some remote viewings of manuscripts. The session will be partly in German, partly in English; all welcome; Teams link here.
• The IHR Earlier Middle Ages Seminar returns with more spring dates. Wednesday 10 March at 5:30 pm is Leslie Dossey (Loyola), ‘“Why all this zeal about light for a sleeping city?” (Libanius, Orationes 33, 35): The Puzzling Invention of Street Lighting in Late Antiquity’. Register for this first seminar here. Wednesday 24 March at 5:30 pm is Steffen Patzold (Tübingen), ‘Beyond Eigenkirchen: Local Priests and their Churches in the Carolingian World’. Register for this second seminar here.
• The Early Text Cultures Research Group invites contributions for its online seminar series for Trinity Term 2021! The theme is ‘Astronomy and Astrology in Early Text Cultures’ (topics include but are not limited to: origins, forms, and functions of astronomical and astrological texts; cross-cultural and cross-generic reception of such texts; astronomy as system of cultural symbols; portents and prognostications; constellations, catasterisms, and mythology), and postgraduates and early career researchers working on such themes in any culture can submit informal expressions of interest of no more than 250 words using this Google form by 25 March. Get in touch with earlytextcultures.ox@gmail.com with any queries. 

‘[Seminars] halt he heorte hal, hwet-se þe flesch drehe; as me seið, ‘Ȝef [seminars] nere, heorte tobreke.’ – Ancrene Wisse, which I’m definitely remembering correctly

MONDAY 1 MARCH

• The Oxford Byzantine Graduate Seminar meets at 12:30 pm; to join and for information, contact james.cogbill@worc.ox.ac.uk. This week’s speaker is Ewan Short (Cardiff), ‘Imperial Women and Political Legitimacy in Byzantium, 976-1103’. 
• The Medieval Latin Reading Group continues with Scito te ipsum on Teams at 1 pm. Submit your email address here to receive notices.
• The Seminar in Palaeography and Manuscript Studies meets at 2:15 pm on Zoom. Registration required; email bookcentre@bodleian.ox.ac.uk. Today’s speaker is Marc Smith (École des chartes), ‘Latin Medieval Writing Models: Contextualizing MS Ashmole 789’.
• GLARE (Greek, Latin, and Reception) meets at 5 pm on Teams. For info and queries, email john.colley@ell.ox.ac.uk and jenyth.evans@ell.ox.ac.uk. This week continues on with Xenophon’s Anabasis, Book III.
• The Medieval History Seminar is at 5 pm on Teams (code rmppucs). This week’s speaker is Henry Tann (Balliol), ‘Measure Endures: Merchants in Late Medieval Italy and the Virtue of “Misura”’. 
• The Old Norse Reading Group meets at 5:30 pm on Teams to plough ahead with Hervarar saga; email bond.west@lincoln.ox.ac.uk for details.

TUESDAY 2 MARCH

• The Late Medieval Seminar meets at 2 pm on Zoom (Meeting ID: 962 7053 8553, passcode: 078931). This week’s speaker is Maria Feliciano (Independent Scholar), ‘Iberian Silks for a Mediterranean Market: A Commercial Approach to the Study of Nasrid Textiles’.
• At 3:30 pm on Google Meet we have the Medieval Book Club (for more information, email oxfordmedievalbookclub@gmail.com). This week’s theme is ‘The Eucharist’, exploring a variety of exciting medieval texts.
• The Early Slavonic Seminar meets at 5 pm on Zoom (register here). This week’s speaker is Yulia Mikhailova (New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology), ‘Religion and Warfare in Pre-Mongol Rus’. 
• The Medieval French Research Seminar meets at 5 pm on Teams, papers commencing 5:15 pm. This week will feature graduate students’ work-in-progress presentations, with speakers Elizabeth Cullinane and Ramani Chandramohan. Email charlotte.cooper@st-hildas.ox.ac.uk for information.
• The Oxford Pre-Modern Middle Eastern History Seminar is at 5:30 pm on Zoom (register here). This week’s speaker is Neguin Yavari (Columbia/Oxford), on ‘The Language of Politics in Wā’iẓ Kāshifī’s Futuwwatnāma-i sulṭānī’, with respondent Alan Strathern (Oxford).

WEDNESDAY 3 MARCH

• The Medieval German Seminar, continuing with Arnold von Harff, meets at 11:15 am, with the Graduate Reading Group meeting at 11, on Teams (link here).
• The Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar convenes at 5 pm on Google Meet (link here). This week’s speaker is Warren Treadgold (St Louis), ‘George Pachymeres and the Decline of the Restored Byzantine Empire’. 
• The Medieval English Research Seminar meets at 5:15 pm on Teams. This week’s speaker is Christine Rauer (University of St Andrews), ‘Fontes Anglo-Saxonici: Source Study in the Twenty-First Century’. Email andy.orchard@ell.ox.ac.uk for information.
• The Hebrew Bible in Medieval Manuscripts Reading Group meets at 7 pm on Zoom. Email judith.schlanger@orinst.ox.ac.uk for further information.

THURSDAY 4 MARCH

• The Seminar in Medieval and Renaissance Music meets at 5 pm on Zoom (register here). This week’s speaker is Cristina Alis Raurich (Schola Cantorum, Basel and Universität Würzburg), ‘Flos vernalis and Robertsbridge Intabulation Style: Ornamentation, Diminution, and Intabulation in the 14th Century’.
• The Old English Reading Group continues with Bede on Teams at 5:30 pm. Email tom.revell@balliol.ox.ac.uk or eugenia.vorobeva@jesus.ox.ac.uk for details.
• The OCHJS David Patterson lectures continue at 6 pm on Zoom (register here), with this week’s speaker Jodi Eichler-Levine (Lehigh University), ‘Painted Pomegranates and Needlepoint Rabbis: Crafting and Material Religion Among Contemporary Jewish Americans’.

FRIDAY 5 MARCH

• The Seminar in the History of the Book meets at 2:15 pm. To register, email bookcentre@bodleian.ox.ac.uk. This week’s speaker is Benjamin Wardhaugh (Oxford), ‘Hunting for Readers in Sixteenth-Century Editions of the Works of Euclid’.
• The Anglo-Norman Reading Group continues with the Life of Godric at 5 pm on Zoom. Contact stephanie.hathaway@mod-langs.ox.ac.uk for details.

‘March is the Month of Expectation’, according to Emily Dickinson. I think we can expect good things.