Month: December 2021

Medieval Matters: Bliþe Cristes mæsse

by

13/12/2021

12:07

Comments Off on Medieval Matters: Bliþe Cristes mæsse

News

,

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

by

13/12/2021

11:57

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

Around Oxford, opportunities

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

by

13/12/2021

11:54

Comments Off on CFP: Consuming the Middle Ages: 2022 Medieval Studies Student Colloquium

opportunities

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

by

13/12/2021

11:52

Comments Off on Oxford Medieval Graduate Conference 2022

Around Oxford, opportunities

, ,

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

by

13/12/2021

11:05

1 Comment on Scribal Identity and Agency Conference

events

, ,

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.