Four weeks have passed: four weeks remain. In the words of Elton John: ‘I guess that’s why they call it the blues’. To cheer our ailing souls, this week’s Medieval Matters is brimming with upcoming events and a particular concentration of new opportunities. As always, a PDF version of the booklet can be found here.
EVENTS THIS WEEK
Monday
- French Palaeography Manuscript Reading Group – 10.30am in the Weston Library. Those interested should email Laure Miolo.
- Medieval History Seminar – 5pm at All Souls College. Gregory Lippiatt (University of Exeter) will be speaking on ‘Bogomils or Bogeymen?: Heresy between East and West in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries’. NB. this week, the talk takes place in the Hovendon Room (All Souls).
Tuesday
- Medieval English Research Seminar – 12.15pm at Lecture Theatre 2 of the St Cross Building. Jenyth Evans (Oxford) will be speaking on ‘”Enucleator venio, non pugnator”: The Uneven Authority of Pseudohistories in Gerald of Wales’.
- The Latin Palaeography Reading Group meets 2-3.30pm. Please email Laure Miolo for more information.
- Old Norse Research Seminar – 5pm in Seminar Room L, English Faculty. Alison Finlay (Birkbeck) will be speaking on ‘From Iceland to the World: Translating Flateyjarbók’: all welcome, drinks to follow.
- Medieval Church and Culture – 5.15pm (coffee from 5pm) in the Wellbeloved Room, Harris Machester College. Eunice Yu (Wolfson) will be speaking on ‘Harmonising Paradox in Early Modern Venice: Collecting and Constructing National Identity in Print’.
- The Centre for Manuscript and Text Cultures: ‘Work in Progress’ Colloquium – 5.15pm in the Memorial Room, Queen’s College. Julia Lorenz (Merton College, Oxford) will be speaking on ‘Konrad of Würzburg’s “Herzmaere”: An Instruction on How (Not) to Love’, and Dr Alan Darmawan (SOAS, London) will be speaking on ‘Mapping Sumatra’s Manuscript Cultures’.
- Medieval French Research Seminar – 5.15pm at the Maison Française d’Oxford. The theme this week is ‘Researchers at Work: Serendipity and Surprise’
Wednesday
- Reading Jews in Late Antiquity – 10am in Room 207 of The Clarendon Institute. The theme for this week is – The Emperor and the Jews
- Medieval German Seminar: Konrad von Megenberg ‘Buch der Natur’ – 11.15am at Somerville College. To be added to the Teams group for updates, please email Almut Suerbaum.
- Book at Lunchtime, 1-2pm: Henrike Lähnemann in conversation with Lyndal Roper and Nancy Thebaut will present ‘The Life of Nuns’ as part of the TORCH series. You can join the waiting list for the live event at the Radcliffe Humanities Building or watch it live streamed. Register here.
- Medieval Manuscripts at the Bodleian Libraries: An Introduction to Collections and Catalogues – 2pm in the Horton Room, Weston Library. An introduction to the medieval European manuscript collections at the Bodleian Library and the print and online catalogues in which they have been described from the 17th century onwards.
- Medieval Latin Document Reading Group – 4pm online. To join, please email Michael Stansfield.
- Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar – 5pm in the Ioannou Centre. Max Lau (Oxford) will be speaking on ‘The Rebirth of Byzantine Anatolia in the Twelfth Century’.
Thursday
- Medieval Hebrew Reading Group – 10am in the Clarendon Institute. For more information, please email Joseph O’Hara.
- Greek and Latin Reading Group – 3pm in the Stapledon Room, Exeter Collge. The text this week is Claudius (Tacitus, Annals 13.3).
- Medieval Women’s Writing Research Group – 1pm online. Aafreen Rashid (South Asian University, New Dehli) will be speaking on ‘Framing Feminist Strategic Discourse: Begum Jahanara and the Exchange of Letters During the War of Succession in Mughal India (1657-59)’. Sign up here.
- Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies seminar – 5.15pm at Jesus College and online. Elisa Cozzi (Oxford) will be speaking on ‘From Dánta Grá to Dante: Irish–Italian genealogies, 1350–1850’.
Friday
- Medievalists Coffee Morning – 10.30am at the Weston Library. All welcome.
- Exploring Medieval Oxford through Lincoln & Magdalen Archives – 2pm in the EPA Centre (Museum Road) Seminar room 1. Please contact Laure Miolo for more information.
- Middle English Reading Group – 3pm in the Beckington Room, Lincoln College.
- Anglo-Norman Reading Group – 5pm in the Farmington Institute in Harris Manchester College. For more information, please contact Jane Bliss (jane.bliss@lmh.oxon.org).
UPCOMING
- To register for the ‘Crafting the Book’ one-day workshop, held on 22 November at the Bodleian Bibliographical Press, please follow this link.
- The LGBTQ+ History Hackathon is happening on November 29th 2-5.30pm at the History Faculty. Register here.
OPPORTUNITIES (new items highlighted)
- CfP for a thematic session at NAPS 2025 titled ‘Scripture and the Arts in Clement of Alexandria‘. Deadline for abstract submissions is November 18th: use this form.
- 4-year funded Collaborative Doctoral Award (CDA), co-supervised between the University of Nottingham and the Bodleian Libraries in Oxford: ‘Digital Approaches to Medieval Chant and Local Religious Heritage’. Deadline 13 January 2025: more information here.
- The Cambridge Colloquium in Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic 2025 is now open to abstract submissions from current postgraduates or those who have recently completed postgraduate study. The theme is ‘Sickness and Health’. More information here.
- The Medieval Academy of America’s Graduate Student Committee seeks new committee members for the 2025-2027 term. Submit self-nomination forms here.
- Oxford Medieval Graduate Conference 2025 CfP – seeking 20 minute papers from graduate students on the theme of ‘Rituals and Ceremonies’, for a conference held 24th and 25th of April, 2025. More info here.
- The University of Nebraska-Lincoln are seeking an assistant professor specializing in visual or material cultures between c. 700 and 1750 CE. More Info here.
- A fully-funded AHRC doctoral studentship at Oxford in partnership with The National Archives is seeking applicants to work on Chaucer’s life and poetry – https://oocdtp.web.ox.ac.uk/ox-cda-turner-nationalarchives.
- The Central European University are advertising a number of funded PhDs and Masters – see the blog post here.
- University College Dublin are advertising a funded PhD in Early medieval political and/or intellectual culture (c.500-c.1000 CE) which will be supervised by Dr Megan Welton. See the blog post here.
- An opportunity has arisen to translate Alice in Wonderland into Old Norse – The translator would own the copyright and receive a royalty for copies sold. Those interested should email Sarah Foot.
- OxMedSoc are looking for a secretary and publicity officer. Please email oxfordmedievalsociety@gmail.com.
- PRAGESTT German Studies Student Conference will take place on the 21st and 22nd March 2025 at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of Charles University (Prague, Czech Republic) – please see https://pragestt.ff.cuni.cz/en/home/
- The Oxford University Byzantine Society has issued a Call for Papers for their 27th International Graduate Conference, held on the 1st-2nd March 2025, in Oxford and Online. More information can be found here.
- The Society for the Study of Medieval Languages and Literatures invites graduate students from across the globe to submit to the annual Medium Ævum Essay Prize. Deadline 2 December. More information can be found here.
- Check out this handy guide to how to blog – including a call for authors for the OMS blog – by Miles Pattenden.
- Addenda and corrigenda to Oxford Medieval Studies by Monday 5pm, please.
TKA
Medievalists in their natural habitat. Bayeux Tapestry, Panel 3 (Available online Discover the Bayeux Tapestry online/).