Month: November 2023

Somehow we are now at the very end of Michaelmas Term! It seems to have flown by so quickly. We’ve had such a wonderful range of talks, seminars and reading groups, representing an increasing number of disciplinary approaches, languages and thematic approaches. Thank you all so much for making this such a wonderful term!

This may be the end of term, but this week’s blog post celebrates new beginnings: namely the beginning of a new TORCH network! Dr Ugo Mondini’s blog post gives us an insight into exciting things to come from the new network Poetry in the Medieval World, which explores premodern literature from a global perspective. To find out more about this exciting new network and the opportunities it presents, check out Ugo’s post here.

For the full line up this week, please see below:

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

• Call for Readers! For the relay-reading of two German pamphlets, see below Friday. Full instructions, audiofile, and pdf of the new edition
• “A Modern Idea of a Medieval College: John Henry Newman’s Medievalism” Tuesday 28 November, 4–5 pm, Oriel College, 1^st Quad, Staircase 3 Room 3. All are welcome to this talk given by Dr Christopher Snyder, Senior Academic Visitor (Michaelmas Term 2023) and Professor of History, Mississippi State University. John Henry Newman’s brief time as a Tutorial Fellow at Oriel College (1826-32) was formative in many ways, not least in providing the young tutor and scholar with an intellectual and spiritual home that served as a collegiate ideal for him long after he left Oxford. This informal talk will raise issues of Newman’s interest in and understanding of the medieval university and of residential colleges as well as his arguments for the continuing relevance of “medievalist” ideals in modern higher education.
• The British Archaeological Association Post-Graduate Online Conference take place on, 29 November 2023, 12.30pm – 17.35pm (GMT). The British Archaeological Association are excited to present a diverse conference which includes postgraduates and early career researchers in medieval history of art, architecture, and archaeology. See the conference programme here and register for the conference here.

EVENTS THIS WEEK:

Monday 27th November:

• The Medieval Latin Manuscript Reading Group meets at 1-2pm66 on Teams. A friendly venue to practice your Latin and palaeography on a range of texts and scripts over the year.  Sign up to the mailing list to receive weekly updates and Teams invites.
• Queer and Trans Medievalisms: A Reading and Research Group meets at 3pm at Univ. All extremely welcome! This week is a Florilegium: bring in your own queer medievalisms to discuss! W. H. Auden! Leslie Feinberg! BBC Merlin! Lil Nas X’s ‘Montero (Call Me By Your Name)!’ Endless possibilities! To join the mailing list and get texts in advance, or if you have any questions, email Rowan Wilson.
• The Medieval Archeology Seminar meets at 3pm at the Institute of Archaeology, Lecture Room. This week’s speaker will be Sarah Semple, Durham University, ‘People and place in the early medieval kingdom of Northumbria. New fieldwork.’
• The Medieval History Seminar meets at 5pm in the Wharton Room, All Souls College. This week’s speaker will be Rory Naismith (Corpus, Cambridge), ‘Coined Money in the Early Middle Ages: did it matter?‘. The seminar will also be available via Teams: the Teams session can be accessed by logging in to Teams with your .ox.ac.uk account and joining the group “Medieval History Research Seminar” (team code rmppucs). Alternatively, it can be accessed via this link. If you have any difficulties please email: medhistsem@history.ox.ac.uk.
• The Old Norse Reading Group meets at 5.30-7pm. We’ll be translating a range of exciting Old Norse texts! To join the mailing list, email Ashley Castelino.

Tuesday 28th November:

• “A Modern Idea of a Medieval College: John Henry Newman’s Medievalism”, a talk given by senior academic visitor Dr Christopher Snyder, will take place at 4–5 pm, in Oriel College, 1^st Quad, Staircase 3 Room 3. All are welcome to this talk.
• The Seminar in Medieval and Renaissance Music meets at 5-7pm, online via Zoom. This week’s speaker will be Peter Lefferts (University of Nebraska): ‘Disiecta Membra Musicae: A new facsimile edition of music manuscript fragments from 14th-Century England’. The discussants will be Andrew Wathey (The National Archives / University of Northumbria) and Jared Hartt (Oberlin College). If you are planning to attend a seminar this term, please register using this form. For each seminar, those who have registered will receive an email with the Zoom invitation and any further materials a couple of days before the seminar. If you have questions, please just send an email to all.souls.music.seminars@gmail.com. Please note, this address will now be the main point of contact for these seminars.
• The Medieval Church and Culture Seminar meets at Wellbeloved Room, Harris Manchester College. Tea & coffee from 5pm; papers begin at 5.15pm. This week’s speaker is Eleanor Birch (Pembroke) ‘Medieval Misogyny: horned women and unhorned men‘. Everyone is welcome at this informal and friendly graduate seminar!

Wednesday 29th November:

• The Medieval German Seminar meets at 11.15, at Somerville College. This week we have the chance to discuss with the forthcoming study edition by Christine Putzo of Konrad Fleck’s ‘Flore und Blancheflur’ with Christine herself. Please email Henrike Lähnemann if you would like to attend or if you have suggestions for next term’s theme!
• The British Archaeological Association Post-Graduate Online Conference takes place from 12.30pm – 17.35pm (GMT). See the conference programme here and register for the conference here.
• The Centre for Early Medieval Britain and Ireland meets at 12pm in the Memorial Room, Worcester College for this term’s lecture. This term’s speaker will be Dr Janina Ramirez FRSA FRHistS (Harris Manchester College), ‘Are Early Medieval Woman “Unrecoverable”?’. Everyone is welcome! Light refreshments beforehand in Worcester Cloisters. Please note the change of room!
• The Medieval Latin Document Reading Group meets at 4-5pm on Teams. A document is sent out in advance but homework is not expected. Please contact Michael Stansfield for further details and the Teams link.
• The Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar meets at 5pm at The Ioannou Centre for Classical and Byzantine Studies 66 St Giles and online via Microsoft Teams by clicking here. This week’s speaker will be Peter Bara (The Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest), ‘Translators, Patrons, Scholars: Greek Texts in Latin Translations from Production to Audience, ca. 1050–1350‘.
• Dante Reading Group meets at 5.30-7pm in St Anne’s College, Seminar Room 11. The group is open to those with or without a knowledge of Italian, the reading being sent out in the original and in translation. Refreshments, both alcoholic and otherwise, will be provided! To register or ask any any questions, please email Charles West 

Thursday 30th November:

• The Medieval Hebrew Reading Group meets at 10-11am in Catherine Lewis Lecture Theatre, Clarendon Institute, and online via Zoom. In order to attend this reading group via Zoom, please register here. This reading group is an opportunity to practice reading directly from images of medieval Hebrew manuscripts in an informal setting. All skill levels are welcome! There will be coffee, tea and cake afterwards in the Common Room of the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies for those attending in person. For further information, please email Joseph Ohara.
• The Digital Editions Community of Practice Group meets at 1-2pm in the Taylor Institution Library Room 2. Each session will include a brief talk, followed by an opportunity for discussion. Hot water, tea, coffee, milk and biscuits will be provided. Please feel free to bring your own lunch (and a mug for the hot drinks!). This week’s speaker will be Emma Huber, PRISMS – linking data and creating knowledge with Digital Editions.
• The Medieval Women’s Writing Reading Group meets at 3-4pm in Lincoln College Lower Lecture Room. This week’s reading will be Christine de Pizan’s Epistre a la reine. Please email katherine.smith@lincoln.ox.ac.uk to be added to the mailing list and get texts in advance, or to find out more.
• The Medieval Visual Culture Seminar meets at 5pm in St Catherine’s College, Arumugam Building. This week’s speaker will be Alexandra Gajewski (The Burlington Magazine), ‘Theodechilde, Potentin and Osanna: Saints and Cult at Jouarre Abbey in the Middle Ages’. For queries, contact Elena Lichmanova.
• The Celtic Seminar meets at 5.15pm, in the History of the Book Room, English Faculty, and online via Teams. Please contact David Willis if you need a link to join online. This week’s speaker will be Oliver Currie (Ljubljana), ‘The linguistic testimony of Early Modern Welsh manuscript sermons’.

Friday 1st December:

• The Medieval Coffee Morning meets as usual 10:30am in the Visiting Scholars Centre of the Weston Library (instructions how to find it) with presentation of items from the special collections, coffee and the chance to see the view from the 5th floor terrace.
• The Byzantine Text Seminar meets at Ioannou Centre, Outreach Room, 10:00 – 11:30 a.m. We are reading passages from Medieval Greek historians. Intermediate knowledge of Greek is required.
• The Lectures in Byzantine Literature take place in the Ioannou Centre, Seminar Room, 12:15 – 1:15 p.m. We are speaking about Byzantine education. No knowledge of Greek is required.
• Exploring Medieval Oxford through Lincoln Archives meets at 2-3pm, Seminar Room 2, EPA Centre, Museum Road, OX1 3PX. Anyone interested in analyzing primary sources and conducting a comprehensive examination of the documents are welcome to attend. As well as collaborating on unpublished sources, attendees will gain experience in digitisation of sources and publish their analysis online. Students will prepare their item for exhibition, and a one-day workshop on these sources will be held in Trinity Term. Those who are interested can contact via email: Lindsay McCormack and Laure Miolo
• Monk-calf and Nuns on the Run: Launch of the new edition of two pamphlets by Martin Luther from 1523, Taylor Institution Library, Room 2, 3-4pm with a relay-reading of the two texts. Please email Henrike Lähnemann if you would be prepared to read a paragraph. Full instructions, audiofile, and pdf of the new edition available on the History of the Book blog!

OPPORTUNITIES:

• PhD Opportunity at Ruhr-University Bochum (Germany) The Junior Professorship of Medieval Studies at the Department of English addresses different aspects of the English Middle Ages (c. 700-c. 1500) in both research and teaching and invites applications for a PhD Assistant. The successful candidate will conduct their own doctoral research project in the areas of Old and/or Middle English language, literature, and/or culture. For full details, please click here.
• Acta Mediaevalia. Series nova – Call for papers The first issue of the journal, entitled “The Age of Transition. Crisis, Reform, and Renewal in Late Medieval Central and Eastern Europe,” will be devoted to the “long fifteenth century” (c. 1375–1525). The editors invite you to submit papers until the end of May 2024. For more details, please click here.

This is our last email of the term. Many of you will remain in Oxford, at least for another few weeks; others will be leaving the city to enjoy the vac whereve they call home. Wherever you are this vac, here is some wisdom from the Epistolae project for anyone gift-giving or receiving:

Huius muneris magnitudinem ut non consideres, sed spiritalis caritatis amorem adtende, poscimus.
[We pray you not to think of the size of the gift but to remember the loving spirit.] 
A letter (732-42) from Denehard, Lul, and Burchard to Cuneburg

Thank you for all of your hard work organising, attending, and presenting at events this term. The medievalist community at Oxford is such an incredible gift, and your loving (intellectual) spirit is what keeps it going. So thank you to you all. I wish you all a wonderful vac, and hope you enjoy both gifts and loving spirit. See you again in January!

This coming Saturday brings us to Oxmas: Merry Oxmas to one and all! For those new to Oxford, ‘Oxmas’ refers to Christmas at Oxford, which takes place on 25 November – exactly one month before Christmas day. Here is some seasonal advice from the Epistolae project:

Libenter nanque atque gratanter vestrae salutationis munuscula suscepimus […] isdem digna reconpensare disideramus
[Willingly and gratefully we received the little gifts of your greeting and […] we desire to repay them worthily]
A letter (729-44) from Cuneburg, Cuneburga/Cuniburg to Coengils of Glastonbury

Of course, your seminar papers, reading group organisation, and participation are always willingly and gratefully received. What a wide array of gifts we have on offer, this week and every week! We have a particularly wonderful line-up this week, including a special guest lecture from Professor Miri Rubin (QMUL), organised by the newly re-established Oxford Medieval Society – this Thursday at 5pm.

Speaking of gifts, this week, our blog spot is a CFP for the Oxford Medieval Graduate Conference. This has long been an important event in the Oxford Medievalist calendar, and is a wonderful opportunity for our youngest and newest medievalists to meet each other and also medievalists outside of Oxford: please do disseminate this widely! For a taster of the kind of excitement that might lie in store, see the write-up from last year’s conference, by OMS’ own Ashley Castlino.

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

• In Memoriam: The community will be sorry to learn of the death (in her mid-nineties) of Pauline Matarasso, medievalist, literary scholar, translator, poet, Benedictine Oblate, on Nov 15, 2023, at Sobell Hospice. Although she had been ill for some time she was alert and working until the end. She was a singularly gracious, grace-filled woman and had many friends from various walks of life. The funeral will be at the Oratory, but the details and date have yet to be announced.
• Oxford Medieval Society invites you to their Michaelmas lecture at 5pm on Thursday, in the Old Law Library, All Souls College. Professor Miri Rubin (QMUL) will be exploring medieval race, beauty, and biblical exegesis in her lecture: “Black/Beautiful: Song of Songs 1:5, A Verse with a Difference”, followed by a wine reception.

EVENTS THIS WEEK:

Monday 20th November:

• The Medieval Latin Manuscript Reading Group meets at 1-2pm on Teams. A friendly venue to practice your Latin and palaeography on a range of texts and scripts over the year. Sign up to the mailing list to receive weekly updates and Teams invites. https://web.maillist.ox.ac.uk/ox/info/medieval-latin-ms-reading
• Queer and Trans Medievalisms: A Reading and Research Group meets at 3pm at Univ. All extremely welcome! This week’s discussion will centre blood, saints, leprosy, AIDS (The medievalisms of Derek Jarman (1942-1994)). To join the mailing list and get texts in advance, or if you have any questions, email rowan.wilson@univ.ox.ac.uk.
• The Medieval Archeology Seminar meets at 3pm at the Institute of Archaeology, Lecture Room. This week’s speaker will be Elisabeth Lorans (University of Tours), ‘Transformation of Roman capital cities in Gaul between the 4th and 10th centuries‘.
• The Medieval History Seminar meets at 5pm in the Wharton Room, All Souls College. This week’s speaker will be Nadine Viermann (Durham) ‘Translating Holiness: Relics and the Dynamics of Empire in the Late Antique Mediterranean‘. The seminar will also be available via Teams: the Teams session can be accessed by logging in to Teams with your .ox.ac.uk account and joining the group “Medieval History Research Seminar” (team code rmppucs). Alternatively, it can be accessed via this link. If you have any difficulties please email: medhistsem@history.ox.ac.uk.

Tuesday 21st November:

• The Medieval Church and Culture Seminar meets at Wellbeloved Room, Harris Manchester College. Tea & coffee from 5pm; papers begin at 5.15pm. This week’s speaker is Charlotte Wood (Univ), ‘Combs and Inhumations: the presence of combs in burials c. 700-1000‘. Everyone is welcome at this informal and friendly graduate seminar!
• The Medieval French Research Seminar will meet at the Maison Francaise d’Oxford on Norham Road. Drinks will be available from 5pm; presentations start at 5.15pm. This week’s speaker will be Miranda Griffin (Cambridge): ‘Don’t look now: missing images and prohibited vision in Bodley 445‘. All are welcome! For more information or to be added to the seminar maillist, please contact helen.swift@st-hildas.ox.ac.uk

Wednesday 22nd November:

• The Medieval German Seminar meets at 11.15, at Somerville College. In Michaelmas Term, we are going to discuss the forthcoming study edition by Christine Putzo of Konrad Fleck’s ‘Flore und Blancheflur’, this week the figure of Charlemagne with Karen Wenzel and Kira Kohlgrüber. Please also consider which text we should discuss next term! Further information and reading recommendations via the teams channel; if you want to be added to that: please email Henrike Lähnemann.
• TORCH Book at Lunchtime meets at 12.30pm for lunch, 1pm- 2pm discussion in Seminar room, Radcliffe Humanities Building, Woodstock Road, Oxford. TORCH welcomes Nicholas Perkins, Professor of Medieval Literature and Fellow of St Hugh’s College to discuss his book The Gift of Narrative in Medieval England. The book places medieval narratives in dialogue with theories and practices of gift and exchange. Join Professor Perkins and an expert panel including Professor Helen Swift (Medieval French Studies, Faculty of Medieval & Modern Languages) and Dr Lucy Brookes (Fitzjames Research Fellow, Medieval English Language and Literature) to discuss The Gift of Narrative in Medieval England.
• The Medieval Latin Document Reading Group meets at 4-5pm on Teams. A document is sent out in advance but homework is not expected. Please contact Michael Stansfield (michael.stansfield@new.ox.ac.uk) for further details and the Teams link.
• The Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar meets at 5pm at The Ioannou Centre for Classical and Byzantine Studies 66 St Giles and online via Microsoft Teams by clicking here. This week’s speaker will be Paolo Sachet (L’Institut d’histoire de la Réformation, Geneva), ‘The Greek Fathers in Print: the AGAPE Database and the Early Modern Patristic Editions.‘
• Dante Reading Group meets at 5.30-7pm in St Anne’s College, Seminar Room 11. The group is open to those with or without a knowledge of Italian, the reading being sent out in the original and in translation. Refreshments, both alcoholic and otherwise, will be provided! To register or ask any any questions, please email charles.west@regents.ox.ac.uk 

Thursday 23rd November:

• The Medieval Hebrew Reading Group meets at 10-11am in Catherine Lewis Lecture Theatre, Clarendon Institute, and online via Zoom. In order to attend this reading group via Zoom, please register here. This reading group is an opportunity to practice reading directly from images of medieval Hebrew manuscripts in an informal setting. All skill levels are welcome! There will be coffee, tea and cake afterwards in the Common Room of the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies for those attending in person. For further information, please email joseph.ohara@ames.ox.ac.uk.
• The Environmental History Working Group meets at 12.30-2pm, in the History Faculty, Gerry Marton Room. This week will be a discussion with Venus Bivar, Associate Professor of Environmental History post-1750. For further information, please contact ryan.mealiffe@wolfson.ox.ac.uk.
• The Germanic Reading Group meets at 4pm, online via Zoom. Please contact Howard Jones Howard.Jones@sbs.ox.ac.uk to request the handouts and to be added to the list. This week’s reading will be Thor poetry in Norse (Nelson Goering leading).
• The Oxford Medieval Society Lecture takes place at 5pm at All Souls College, Old Library. The lecture will be given by Prof. Miri Rubin (QMUL), speaking on ‘Black/Beautiful: Song of Songs 1:5, A Verse with a Difference’.
• The Celtic Seminar meets at 5pm, online via Zoom. Please contact a.elias@wales.ac.uk for the link. This week’s speaker will be Sara Elin Roberts (Chester), ‘”O’r llyvrev gorev a kavas”: Cynnull y Llyfrau Cyfraith’.
• The Old Occitan Literature Workshop meets at 5-6pm at St Hugh’s College, 74 Woodstock Road, Office A4. The topic of this week’s meeting will be Making a Tradition: Celebration and Satire (Peire d’Alvernhe (1149-68): Vida, “Cantarai d’aqestz trobadors”; Lo Monge de Montaudon (1193-1210): Vida, “Pus Peire d’Alvernh’ a cantat”). To sign up, or for any other queries, email Kate Travers: katherine.travers@st-hughs.ox.ac.uk. 

Friday 24th November:

• The Medieval Coffee Morning meets as usual 10:30am in the Visiting Scholars Centre of the Weston Library (instructions how to find it) with presentation of items from the special collections, coffee and the chance to see the view from the 5th floor terrace.
• The Byzantine Text Seminar meets at Ioannou Centre, Outreach Room, 10:00 – 11:30 a.m. We are reading passages from Medieval Greek historians. Intermediate knowledge of Greek is required.
• The Lectures in Byzantine Literature take place in the Ioannou Centre, Seminar Room, 12:15 – 1:15 p.m. We are speaking about Byzantine education. No knowledge of Greek is required.
• Exploring Medieval Oxford through Lincoln Archives meets at 2-3pm, Seminar Room 2, EPA Centre, Museum Road, OX1 3PX. Anyone interested in analyzing primary sources and conducting a comprehensive examination of the documents are welcome to attend. As well as collaborating on unpublished sources, attendees will gain experience in digitisation of sources and publish their analysis online. Students will prepare their item for exhibition, and a one-day workshop on these sources will be held in Trinity Term. Those who are interested can contact Lindsay McCormack and Laure Miolo via email: lindsay.mccormack@lincoln.ox.ac.uk and laure.miolo@history.ox.ac.uk
• Guest lecture by Julia Frick Zürich) ‘The Bible in Three Songs’, 3-4pm, Taylor Institution Library, Room 2 (part of Henrike Lähnemann’s lecture series ‘Poetry 1400-1600’). All welcome!
• The Anglo-Norman Reading Group meets at 5-6.30pm, in the Julia Mann Room, St Hilda’s College, and Zoom. Please let us know if you would like to attend, either in person or on Zoom; reminders including the Zoom link will be sent to those who have expressed interest. To register interest, or for more information, please contact Jane Bliss jane.bliss@lmh.oxon.org and/or Stephanie stephanie.hathaway@gmail.com.

OPPORTUNITIES:

• We are pleased to announce that the 26th Biennial SASMARS Conference will be held from 1 to 4 August 2024 at the Mont Fleur Conference Venue in Stellenbosch, South Africa. Papers may cover any time period within the Middle Ages and Renaissance, and deal with any area of interest or discipline that could be relevant to the topic “What Lies Beneath”. For full details, please click here.
• The Society for the Study of Medieval Languages and Literature warmly welcomes entries to the 2024 Medium Aevum Essay Prize. Please note that this year the deadline is on Monday 4 December 2023. For more information see https://aevum.space/EssayPrize 
• Neil Ker Memorial Fund 2023-2024: The object of this fund is to promote the study of western medieval manuscripts, in particular those of British interest. Applications are invited from early career and established scholars of any nationality, engaged on original research intended to produce monographs, editions or studies of documents, texts or illustrations, that include the analysis of the material features of original manuscripts. Applicants should be of postdoctoral status or have comparable experience. For full details, please click here.
• St John’s College, Oxford, 5^th-7^th September 2024
• CFP: The Fifteenth Century Conference 2024. This annual meeting brings together established scholars and new researchers in the field, acting as a showcase for current research and a forum for encouraging new directions of enquiry. We invite proposals for research papers on any subject relating to the history of the long fifteenth century in the British Isles, Ireland, or in the French territories of the English monarchy. Proposals on all kinds of history are welcome, as are interdisciplinary ones. For full details, please click here.

Finally, some advice from the Epistolae project ahead of this weekend’s festivities:

Nos tamen sanae ieiunamus cottidie praeter dies dominicos et Natalis.
[Those of us who are healthy fast every day except Sundays and Christmas.]
A letter (1238) from Clare of Assisi

I take this to mean: no work is so important that we cannot take at least a small break for Oxmas celebrations! I hope everyone takes this as a chance to rest, recuperate, and celebrate with our community before we go into the last week of term.

The academic year is now well underway, and I am sure that everyone is feeling extremely busy. The days are getting very dark and cold, and at this point in term things can feel rather overwhelming. Here is some solidarity from the Epistolae project to remind us that even the greatest minds in history sometimes struggled to find their motivation and energy:

Sed utinam tantum mihi sapientia et potestas quae competit suppeterent
[If only enough wisdom and vigour as I need would come to me]
A letter (1102-03) from Anselm, archbishop of Canterbury to Matilda of Scotland

I’m afraid that bringing sufficient amounts of wisdom and vigour to you all lies outside of my remit as communications officer, but I can offer you a wonderful schedule, full of exciting papers and lectures, that are sure to inspire plenty of thought, and reinvigorate you during these cold, dark days. Please see below for the full round-up.

This week’s blog spot, by Luise Morawetz, explores times when manuscripts hold much more information than meets the eye, and grants a fascinating insight into the use of digital tools in manuscript work on the ARCHiOx project (ARCHiOx: research and development in imaging). In her blog post, Luise explains her use of the Selene scanner to investigate two puzzling glosses to the last words of bishop Cassius of Narnia in Bodleian Library, MS. Laud Misc. 429: ‘[…] braht’ and ‘upbraht’. To find out what these puzzling additions might have meant, learn about what they tell us about manuscript usage, and to see MS Laur Misc. 429 in ways you have never seen it before, visit Luise’s blog post here.

Please note the change in arrangements for this week’s Medieval Church and Culture Seminar: normal format to resume next week. Please also note that this week’s Medieval Archeology Seminar is cancelled due to illness.

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

• Save the Date: Oxford Old English Work-in-Progress (WOOPIE) will meet at 5.15pm in St Cross Room, St Cross College on Thursday 29th February 2024, for a talk by Prof. Daniel Anlezark, (University of Sydney): ‘The Origins of Anglo-Saxon Chronicle in the eighth century’. The talk will be followed by a drinks reception.

EVENTS THIS WEEK:

Monday 13th November:

• The Medieval Latin Manuscript Reading Group meets at 1-2pm on Teams. A friendly venue to practice your Latin and palaeography on a range of texts and scripts over the year.  Sign up to the mailing list to receive weekly updates and Teams invites.
• Queer and Trans Medievalisms: A Reading and Research Group meets at 3pm at Univ. All extremely welcome! This week’s discussion will centre Queer adaptations. (Alex Myers’ The Story of Silence (2020) with Le roman de silence (13^th c)). To join the mailing list and get texts in advance, or if you have any questions, email Rowan Wilson.
• The Medieval Archeology Seminar is cancelled due to illness.
• The Medieval History Seminar meets at 5pm in the Wharton Room, All Souls College. This week’s speaker will be Liesbeth van Houts (Emmanuel, Cambridge) ‘Towards a New Biography of Empress Matilda: what can be known about the women around her?‘. The seminar will also be available via Teams: the Teams session can be accessed by logging in to Teams with your .ox.ac.uk account and joining the group “Medieval History Research Seminar” (team code rmppucs). Alternatively, it can be accessed via this link. If you have any difficulties please email: medhistsem@history.ox.ac.uk.
• The Old Norse Reading Group meets at 5.30-7pm. We’ll be translating a range of exciting Old Norse texts! To join the mailing list, email Ashley Castelino.

Tuesday 14th November:

• The Medieval English Research Seminar will meet at 12.15 in Lecture Theatre 2. Today’s speaker will be Helen Fulton (University of Bristol), ‘Urban Humanism and Chaucer’s House of Fame’’. There will be a sandwich lunch provided afterwards. All welcome!

Wednesday 15th November:

• The Medieval German Seminar meets at 11.15, at Somerville College. In Michaelmas Term, we are going to discuss the forthcoming study edition by Christine Putzo of Konrad Fleck’s ‘Flore und Blancheflur’. This week Patrick Leuenberger will talk on christians and heathens. Further information and reading recommendations via the teams channel; if you want to be added to that: please email Henrike Lähnemann.
• The Medieval Latin Document Reading Group meets at 4-5pm on Teams. A document is sent out in advance but homework is not expected. Please contact Michael Stansfield for further details and the Teams link.
• The Invisible East Group meets at 4-6pm in Basement Teaching Room 1, Asian and Middle Eastern Studies Faculty, for a talk by Dr Rocco Rante (Louvre Museum, Paris): The Dynamics of Human Occupation during the First Millennium CE in Khorasan.
• The Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar meets at 5pm at The Ioannou Centre for Classical and Byzantine Studies 66 St Giles and online via Microsoft Teams by clicking here. This week’s speaker will be Mike Humphries (Oxford University), ‘Punitive Mutilation in Byzantine Law: The case of nose amputation in Byzantium and beyond’.
• The Medieval Church and Culture Seminar meets at 5.30pm at The Bodleian Library Printing Press. This week is a special session on the printint press, and numbers are limited to a maximum of 12; please email Sumner Braund (sumner.braund@hsm.ox.ac.uk) to take part.
• Dante Reading Group meets at 5.30-7pm in St Anne’s College, Seminar Room 11. The group is open to those with or without a knowledge of Italian, the reading being sent out in the original and in translation. Refreshments, both alcoholic and otherwise, will be provided! To register or ask any any questions, please email charles.west@regents.ox.ac.uk 

Thursday 16th November:

• The Medieval Hebrew Reading Group meets at 10-11am in Catherine Lewis Lecture Theatre, Clarendon Institute, and online via Zoom. In order to attend this reading group via Zoom, please register here. This reading group is an opportunity to practice reading directly from images of medieval Hebrew manuscripts in an informal setting. All skill levels are welcome! There will be coffee, tea and cake afterwards in the Common Room of the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies for those attending in person. For further information, please email Joseph Ohara.
• The Environmental History Working Group meets at 12.30-2pm, in the History Faculty, Gerry Marton Room. This week’s speaker will be Jennifer Oliver, “Mineral Matters: Materials, Making, and Early Modern French Literature”. For further information, please contact Ryan Mealiffe.
• The Centre for Gender, Identity, and Subjectivity (CGIS) meets at 1pm in the Merze Tate room of the History Faculty. Professor Hannah Skoda (St John’s) will be speaking on ‘Gendering nostalgia: fourteenth-century longing for the good old days‘. (Please note that this is different from the term card which states that Hannah is speaking on 23rd).
• The Digital Editions Community of Practice Group meets at 1-2pm in the Taylor Institution Library Room 2. Each session will include a brief talk, followed by an opportunity for discussion. Hot water, tea, coffee, milk and biscuits will be provided. Please feel free to bring your own lunch (and a mug for the hot drinks!). This week’s speaker will be T.J. Reed, Thomas Mann.
• The Medieval Women’s Writing Reading Group meets at 3-4pm in Lincoln College Lower Lecture Room. This week’s reading will be The Epistole of Catherine of Siena. Please email Katherine Smith to be added to the mailing list and get texts in advance, or to find out more.
• The Medieval Visual Culture Seminar meets at 5pm in St Catherine’s College, Arumugam Building. This week’s speaker will be Liz James (University of Sussex), ‘The Remembrance of God’: Theologising Wall Mosaics’. For queries, contact Elena Lichmanova (elena.lichmanova@merton.ox.ac.uk).
• The Eastern Christianity in Interfaith Contexts reading group will meet at 5-6pm, online via Zoom This week will be led by Dr Lisa Agaiby, Academic Dean at St Athanasius College, and Senior Lecturer in Coptic Studies at the University of Divinity, Australia. Dr Agaiby will be speaking on ‘The Manuscript Project at the Coptic Monastery of St Paul the Hermit at the Red Sea, Egypt‘. To register, please click here.
• The Celtic Seminar meets at 5.15pm, online via Teams. Please contact david.willis@ling-phil.ox.ac.uk if you need a link to join online. This week’s speaker will be Myriah Williams (Berkeley), ‘Beginnings and endings: Moli Duw yn Nechrau a Diwedd and Cyntefin Ceinaf Amser’.
• The WOOPIE (Oxford Old English Work in Progress) Seminar will meeet at 5.30pm in the Ian Skipper Room, St Cross College. This term’s speaker will be Simon Heller (University of Oxford), ‘Reclaiming Beowulf in the United States, from Nixon to Reagan’. All welcome! If you would like to attend, please contact francis.leneghan@ell.ox.ac.uk.

Friday 17th November:

• The Medieval Coffee Morning meets as usual 10:30am in the Visiting Scholars Centre of the Weston Library (instructions how to find it) with presentation of items from the special collections, coffee and the chance to see the view from the 5th floor terrace.
• The Byzantine Text Seminar meets at Ioannou Centre, Outreach Room, 10:00 – 11:30 a.m. We are reading passages from Medieval Greek historians. Intermediate knowledge of Greek is required.
• The Lectures in Byzantine Literature take place in the Ioannou Centre, Seminar Room, 12:15 – 1:15 p.m. We are speaking about Byzantine education. No knowledge of Greek is required.
• Exploring Medieval Oxford through Lincoln Archives meets at 2-3pm, Seminar Room 2, EPA Centre, Museum Road, OX1 3PX. Anyone interested in analyzing primary sources and conducting a comprehensive examination of the documents are welcome to attend. As well as collaborating on unpublished sources, attendees will gain experience in digitisation of sources and publish their analysis online. Students will prepare their item for exhibition, and a one-day workshop on these sources will be held in Trinity Term. Those who are interested can contact via email: Lindsay McCormack and Laure Miolo

OPPORTUNITIES:

• Job advert: Departmental Lecturer in Medieval History: This is an opportunity to join our thriving History community and gain valuable teaching experience at the undergraduate and graduate levels. Although this is primarily a teaching role, you will also engage in advanced study and conduct independent research and play an active role in the interdisciplinary College community. The post is intended to fill a gap in our teaching coverage while Dr Benjamin Thompson is on leave following secondment as Associate Head of the Humanities Division. You will be based between the Faculty of History, George St, and Somerville College, Woodstock Road, Oxford. The deadline for applications is 12.00 noon on Monday 27th November 2023. Only applications submitted online through the University e-recruitment system and received before noon Monday 27th November 2023 can be considered. Committed to equality and valuing diversity. For full details, please click here.
• Postdoc or PhD Opportunity: Historian (postdoc or Ph.D. candidate) or Latinist wanted in DISSINET (https://dissinet.cz/), an ERC-funded digital project on medieval inquisition and dissidence based in Brno, Czech Republic. Specific knowledge of the field or digital methods not needed, we only need Latin and a computer-friendly mindset. Deadline for applications: 4 December 2023. Expected start: 1 February 2024 (negotiable). Expected duration: 31 August 2026 Find out more: https://www.muni.cz/en/about-us/careers/vacancies/76846
• Call for Applications for 2024-2025 Predoctoral Research Residencies at the Center for the Art and Architectural History of Port Cities “La Capraia”: a collaboration between the Edith O’Donnell Institute of Art History, the Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte, the Amici di Capodimonte, and Franklin University Switzerland. We would be grateful if you would share the Call with colleagues and potentially interested PhD students in the earlier stages of the dissertation. We welcome applications from doctoral students in art and architectural history (as well as archaeology, history, musicology, cultural heritage, the digital humanities, and related fields) who work on periods from antiquity to the present and who will make meaningful use of research materials in Naples and southern Italy. full details.

Finally, here is some wisdom from the Epistolae project to remind us all that struggling to meet deadlines was a medieval problem too:

peccatis meis indulgere habes, quia propter instantes labores et itinera continua adhuc perfecte conscriptum, quod rogasti, non habeam
[you must excuse my remissness, for I have been prevented by pressure of work and by my continual travels from completing the book you ask for.]
A letter (before 738) from Boniface to Bugga

For everyone struggling to meet deadlines, or trying to carve out some research time in the middle of a busy teaching term: I wish you a week of productive and successful research!

This week is, of course, the dreaded fifth week: the most notorious week of the Oxford term. The days are getting darker, workloads are building, and at this point in term many people may be feeling a little frazzled! If you feel in need of some cheering up, we have a stellar roundup of delights to offer you this week, starting with this week’s blogpost, by Ryan Mealiffe, on pigs and piggy banks. Have you ever wondered “who made the first piggy banks?”, or “how global is the piggy bank?”. For answers to these questions and many, many more, accompanied by an abundance of delightful images of rotund, puffy-cheeked pigs and piggy banks (many of which are held at Oxford’s own Ashmolean museum), check out Ryan’s blog post here. It’s sure to both raise a smile and give you new insight into global environmental history!

All of this is to say that despite this being Oxford’s most infamous week of the term, there is plenty of joy within our community to smile about! In the words of Clare of Assisi, from the Epistolae project:

Quis ergo de tantis mirandis gaudiis dicat me non gaudere?
[Who, then, would tell me not to rejoice about such great and marvellous joys?]
A letter (1238) from Clare of Assisi to Agnes of Prague

For a full list of this week’s great and marvellous joys, please see below:

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

• David Wiles (Emeritus Professor of Drama, University of Exeter)  is looking for participants in a production of the pseudo-Senecan Octavia put together for the annual conference of the Classical Association in Warwick on March 24^th. You may have seen his previous productions in the garden of St Edmund Hall – last year, Mary Magdalene Play from the Carmina Burana. He will be exploring the exuberant rhetorical language of the 1561 translation. Rehearsing in Oxford on Monday evenings in the Hilary term. If interested, please contact d.wiles@exeter.ac.uk.
• Medieval Archaeology Seminar: Change of Line-up The talk originally planned for the 27^th Nov. has been moved forward to 20^th November, and a new talk slotted in on the 27th. The new schedule is as follows: Wk 7 (20 Nov.) Elisabeth Lorans, University of Tours, Transformation of Roman capital cities in Gaul between the 4th and 10th centuries; Wk 8 (27 Nov). Sarah Semple, Durham University, People and place in the early medieval kingdom of Northumbria. New fieldwork.

EVENTS THIS WEEK:

Monday 6th November:

• The Medieval Latin Manuscript Reading Group meets at 1-2pm on Teams. A friendly venue to practice your Latin and palaeography on a range of texts and scripts over the year. Sign up to the mailing list to receive weekly updates and Teams invites.
• Queer and Trans Medievalisms: A Reading and Research Group meets at 3pm at Univ. All extremely welcome! This week’s discussion will centre Queer anachronisms (Robert Glück’s Margery Kempe (1994) with The Book of Margery Kempe (early 15^th c)). To join the mailing list and get texts in advance, or if you have any questions, email rowan.wilson@univ.ox.ac.uk.
• The Medieval History Seminar meets at 5pm in the Wharton Room, All Souls College. This week’s speaker will be Alison Ray (St Peter’s College and Bodleian Library) ‘The Pecia System and the Medieval Oxford Book Trade‘. The seminar will also be available via Teams: the Teams session can be accessed by logging in to Teams with your .ox.ac.uk account and joining the group “Medieval History Research Seminar” (team code rmppucs). Alternatively, it can be accessed via this link. If you have any difficulties please email: medhistsem@history.ox.ac.uk.

Tuesday 7th November:

• The Medieval English Research Seminar will meet at 12.15 in Lecture Theatre 2. Today’s speakers will be Sigrid Koerner (Jesus College), Christ’s Burial on the Late Medieval Stage and Shelley Williams (Jesus College), “Hevenysh Revoluciouns”: The Complaint of Mars in motion. There will be a sandwich lunch provided afterwards. All welcome!
• The Centre for Manuscript and Text Cultures: Work in Progress Seminar meets at 3.30pm in the Memorial Room, The Queen’s College. This term’s speakers will be Anthony Ellis (University of Bern): ‘Greek’ in the Medieval Latin manuscripts of Josephus:  reconstructing the philological workings of a late antique translator, and Sara de Martin (Oxford): Reassessing the transmission of Strato com. fr. 1 K. A.
• The Medieval Church and Culture Seminar meets at Wellbeloved Room, Harris Manchester College. Tea & coffee from 5pm; papers begin at 5.15pm. This week’s speaker is Andrew Honey (Bodleian Library Conservation) ‘Binding, if remarkable’: approaches to cataloguing medieval bookbindings at the Bodleian Library‘. Everyone is welcome at this informal and friendly graduate seminar!
• The Medieval French Research Seminar will meet at the Maison Francaise d’Oxford on Norham Road. Drinks will be available from 5pm; presentations start at 5.15pm. This week’s speaker will be Luke Sunderland (Durham) ‘They travel together like knights”: Social Animals in Medieval French Encyclopaedias’. All are welcome! For more information or to be added to the seminar maillist, please contact helen.swift@st-hildas.ox.ac.uk

Wednesday 8th November:

• The Medieval German Seminar meets at 11.15, at Somerville College. In Michaelmas Term, we are going to discuss the forthcoming study edition by Christine Putzo of Konrad Fleck’s ‘Flore und Blancheflur’. Further information and reading recommendations via the teams channel; if you want to be added to that: please email Henrike Lähnemann.
• The Medieval Latin Document Reading Group meets at 4-5pm on Teams. A document is sent out in advance but homework is not expected. Please contact Michael Stansfield (michael.stansfield@new.ox.ac.uk) for further details and the Teams link.
• The Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar meets at 5pm at The Ioannou Centre for Classical and Byzantine Studies 66 St Giles and online via Microsoft Teams by clicking here. This week’s speakers will be Georgi Parpulov (Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities), and Dimitris Skrekas (University of London/Oxford University), Positions of Considerable Emolument: Cataloguing Greek Manuscripts in Oxford.
• Columbia University Seminar on Religion & Writing will take place on zoom on 5-7pm GMT. Our own Andrew Dunning, R.W. Hunt Curator of Western Manuscripts at the Bodleian, will discuss the origins of the twelfth-century cult of St. Frideswide. Please register by filling out this form TODAY. If you have any questions, please write to Heidi Hansen.  
• Dante Reading Group meets at 5.30-7pm in St Anne’s College, Seminar Room 11. The group is open to those with or without a knowledge of Italian, the reading being sent out in the original and in translation. Refreshments, both alcoholic and otherwise, will be provided! To register or ask any any questions, please email charles.west@regents.ox.ac.uk 

Thursday 9th November:

• The Medieval Hebrew Reading Group meets at 10-11am in Catherine Lewis Lecture Theatre, Clarendon Institute, and online via Zoom. In order to attend this reading group via Zoom, please register here. This reading group is an opportunity to practice reading directly from images of medieval Hebrew manuscripts in an informal setting. All skill levels are welcome! There will be coffee, tea and cake afterwards in the Common Room of the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies for those attending in person. For further information, please email joseph.ohara@ames.ox.ac.uk.
• The Germanic Reading Group meets at 4pm, online via Zoom. Please contact Howard Jones Howard.Jones@sbs.ox.ac.uk to request the handouts and to be added to the list. This week’s reading will be The Old English Riming Poem (Morgan leading).
• The Medieval Women’s Writing Research Seminar meets at 5-6.30pm at Lincoln College, Lower Lecture Room. This week’s speaker is Mary Hitchman, Wolfson College, Tracing Women’s Correspondence in Late Antiquity. Please email katherine.smith@lincoln.ox.ac.uk to be added to the mailing list or to find out more.
• The Celtic Seminar meets at 5pm, online via Zoom. Please contact a.elias@wales.ac.uk for the link. This week CAWCS and the National Library of Wales present an evening of talks, readings and performances to mark the tercentenary of Richard Price, Llangeinor – one of Wales’s most radical and influential thinkers.
• The Old Occitan Literature Workshop meets at 5-6pm at St Hugh’s College, 74 Woodstock Road, Office A4. The topic of this week’s meeting will be Sad! Songs for Disappointed Men (Raimbaut D’Aurenga (1147-173), Vida, “Ar resplan la flors enversa”; Peirol (1188-1222) — Vida, “Per dan que d’amor mi veigna”). To sign up, or for any other queries, email Kate Travers. 
• ‘No Jew Shall Have a Freehold’: The Prohibition on Landholding in the Statutum de Judeis of King Henry III (1271): As part of the David Patterson lecture series at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies (OCHJS), Emily Rose will be speaking about English legislation from the time of King Henry III at 6pm in the Lecture Theatre, Clarendon Institute, Walton Street and online. Zoom link to register: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZUodO-sqjguHd2NE68XBpwenTwyfBQ2O7dg.

Friday 10th November:

• The Medieval Coffee Morning meets as usual 10:30am in the Visiting Scholars Centre of the Weston Library (instructions how to find it) with presentation of items from the special collections, coffee and the chance to see the view from the 5th floor terrace.
• The Byzantine Text Seminar meets at Ioannou Centre, Outreach Room, 10:00 – 11:30 a.m. We are reading passages from Medieval Greek historians. Intermediate knowledge of Greek is required.
• The Lectures in Byzantine Literature take place in the Ioannou Centre, Seminar Room, 12:15 – 1:15 p.m. We are speaking about Byzantine education. No knowledge of Greek is required.
• Exploring Medieval Oxford through Lincoln Archives meets at 2-3pm, Seminar Room 2, EPA Centre, Museum Road, OX1 3PX. Anyone interested in analyzing primary sources and conducting a comprehensive examination of the documents are welcome to attend. As well as collaborating on unpublished sources, attendees will gain experience in digitisation of sources and publish their analysis online. Students will prepare their item for exhibition, and a one-day workshop on these sources will be held in Trinity Term. Those who are interested can contact Lindsay McCormack and Laure Miolo via email: lindsay.mccormack@lincoln.ox.ac.uk and laure.miolo@history.ox.ac.uk
• The Anglo-Norman Reading Group meets at 5-6.30pm, in the Julia Mann Room, St Hilda’s College, and Zoom. Please let us know if you would like to attend, either in person or on Zoom; reminders including the Zoom link will be sent to those who have expressed interest. To register interest, or for more information, please contact Jane Bliss jane.bliss@lmh.oxon.org and/or Stephanie stephanie.hathaway@gmail.com.

OPPORTUNITIES:

• CFP: Oxford Medieval Graduate Conference 2024: ‘Signs and Scripts.’ The conference will be held in person on the 8^th and 9^th of April, 2024. We invite proposals relating to all aspects of the broad topic ‘Signs and Scripts’ in the medieval world. Submissions are welcome from all disciplinary perspectives, whether historical, literary, archaeological, linguistic, or interdisciplinary. Please send abstracts of 250 words to oxgradconf@gmail.com by 17th December, 2023. For full details, please see the Call for Papers. 
• Call for SSD EDI Associates 2023/24: We are seeking individuals from across the Division with a passionate commitment to advancing equality, diversity and inclusion, to join us as EDI Associates this year. We are seeking members of academic, research, or professional services staff, and DPhil students – each EDI Associate will receive a grant of up to £1,000 to be used towards their own research, training and development. Each EDI Associate would need to be able to commit approximately 35-40 hours over Hilary and Trinity terms, with the approval of their line manager/supervisor – but precise timings will be flexible, and can fit around EDI Associates’ other commitments. Please complete an Expression of Interest form by 24th November 2023. For further details, and EOI form, see: 2023/24 Call for EDI Associates | Social Sciences Division (ox.ac.uk)
• Funded PhD Opportunity: The University of Cambridge and British Library are inviting applicants to propose a topic within the broader field of ‘Reading and Writing in Medieval Women’s Religious Communities’. The start date would be early October 2024, and the application deadline is 4 January 2024. This would be a wonderful chance for a student to work intensively with the BL’s collections—so if you know any prospective students who might be interested, please do pass this notice along! Here’s the full notice, with both intellectual and practical details: https://www.oocdtp.ac.uk/reading-and-writing-medieval-womens-religious-communities

Finally, here is some wisdom from the Epistolae project for this most notorious of Oxford weeks:

Tristitiae quippe nebulis quibus obvolvebar expulsis, verborum vestrorum me rivulus, tamquam novae lucis radius, perlustravit
[after the clouds of sadness in which I was wrapped were driven away, the stream of your words broke through to me like a ray of new light]
A letter (1104) from Matilda of Scotland, queen of the English to Anselm

I hope that the words of medievalist colleagues and the stream of seminars and reading group activity break through any clouds of sadness which you may be feeling this week!