We have made it to 8th week, and the sun has come out in celebration. The full booklet of weekly events, as always, can be found here. A few brief notes to begin:
- Please take a moment to fill in a short survey exploring the possibilities of turning the Bodleian’s TEI-encoded medieval manuscript catalogues into accessible tabular formats such as CSV. Posted by Seb Dows-Miller and Matthew Holford for a new DiSc-funded project within the Bodleian Libraries.
- The 2025 Oxford Medieval Graduate Conference programme has now been released, and can be found here. The OMGC2025 will be followed directly by the Medieval Mystery Cycle on 26 April! Join us on Thursday for a brainstorming session if you want to get involved.
Monday
- French Palaeography Manuscript Reading Group – 10.30am in the Weston Library. Those interested should email Laure Miolo.
- Seminar in Palaeography and Manuscript studies – 2.15 in the Horton Room. Lucio del Corso will be speaking on ‘Greek papyri in the Bodleian Library. A tale of lost texts and forgotten books’.
- Medieval History Seminar – 5pm at All Souls College. Daisy Livingston (Durham) will be speaking on ‘How to qualify as a notary in the early-16th century Mamluk Sultanate’.
- Old Norse Reading Group – 5.30, English Faculty Graduate Common Room. This term we will be reading Hrafnkels saga.
Tuesday
- Europe in the Later Middle Ages – 2pm in the Dolphin Seminar Room, St John’s College. Katy Beebe (North Texas) will be speaking on ‘Movement in the Mind: A Typology, Critique, and New Interpretative Model of Imagined Pilgrimage’.
- Latin Palaeography Manuscript Reading Group – 2pm, Weston Library.
- EMBI Lecture – 4pm in the Gillis Lecture Theatre, Balliol College. Sue Brunning (British Museum) will be speaking on ‘Silk Roads at the British Museum: A co-curatorial journey’.
- Medieval Church and Culture – 5.15pm (coffee from 5pm) in the Wellbeloved Room, Harris Manchester College. Maria Czepiel (University of Warwick) will be speaking on ‘Hebraist Erudition in Spanish Renaissance Biblical Poetry’.
Wednesday
- The Medieval German Graduate Seminar on ‘Geistliche Spiele’ – 11.15am in the Old Library of St Edmund Hall will conclude with a presentation by Irene Van Eldere on Middle Dutch texts: the Annunciation play which she is staging for the Medieval Mystery Cycle and on the prayerbook project in Leiden
- History and Materiality of the Book Seminar – 2pm in the Weston Library, Horton room. Matthew Holford and Laure Miolo will be speaking on ‘Text Identification’.
- Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar – 5pm in the Ioannou Centre. Michael Featherstone (Oxford) & Juan Signes Codoñer (Universidad Complutense de Madrid) will be speaking on ‘A Team of Palace Historians: the Final Redactions of Theophanes Continuatus and the De Cerimoniis’.
Thursday
- Medieval Hebrew Reading Group – 10am in the Clarendon Institute.
- Middle English Reading Group – 4pm, Beckington Room, Lincoln College. The text this term will be the ‘double sorwe’ of Troilus and Criseyde.
- Seminars in Medieval and Renaissance Music- 7pm online. Paul Kolb (University of Leuven) will be speaking on ‘Contextuality and Irregularity in Late-Medieval Mensural Notation’.
- Preparatory Meeting for the Medieval Mystery Cycle – 5pm at St Edmund Hall in the Principal’s Lodgings. Anybody welcome who would like a site-visit, meet other actors, directors, and survey the costume stock in Henrike Lähnemann’s office.
- Medieval Visual Culture Seminar – 5pm at St Catherine’s College. Eleanor Townsend (Oxford) will be speaking on ‘All the werkemanship and masonry crafte of a frounte’: The problem of the Jesse reredos in St Cuthbert’s, Wells’.
- The Khalili Research Centre For the Art and Material Culture of the Middle East: Research Seminar – 5.15pm in the in the Ioannou Centre/Faculty of Classics’ Lecture Theatre. Edward Zychowicz-Coghill (King’s College London) will be speaking: title TBC.
Friday
- Medievalists Coffee Morning – 10.30am at the Weston Library. All welcome, coffee and insight into special collections provided. A special treat to end the term: the German Blockbook Apocalypse will be out, combined with the performance of an extract from the Towneley Last Judgement Play.
- Exploring Medieval Oxford through Lincoln & Magdalen Archives – 2pm in the EPA Centre (Museum Road) Seminar room 1. Please contact Laure Miolo for more information.
- Deadline today for The Ashmolean’s Krasis Scheme: ‘a unique, museum-based, interdisciplinary teaching and learning programme’. You can find out more about this wonderful opportunity here.
Opportunities
- Eruditio Nummorum: Symposium on Coins in Honour of Hugh Pagan (29th March) – more info here.
- Postdoctoral fellowship opportunity at the university of Notre Dame (deadline 31 March) – more information here.
- The Oxford-Bloomsbury Fantasy Summer School (23–25 September 2025, Exeter College) is welcoming expressions of interest. More information can be found here.
- CfP for ‘lluminating Nature: Explorations of Science, Religion, and Magic’ (21-22 July 2025 at the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Durham Castle).
- Register for ‘History, Eugenics, and Human Enhancement: How the Past Can Inform Ethical Debates in the Present’ (24 March 2025, 9am – 5.30pm).
- Register now for the workshop on 21st March From Jean le Bon to Good Duke Humphrey to celebrate the arrival of the French New Testament which was recently recognised to have been owned by Humfrey, duke of Gloucester. The event is free (including tea and coffee).
- CfP for the 35th International Conference of the Spanish Society for Medieval English Language and Literature (University of Málaga, 24th-26th September 2025). More info here.
- The Sorrowful Virgin workshop takes place at St Hughs, 24 March 2025
- CfP for ‘Outsiders – Insiders’ (University of Reading), 2nd April 2025
- The next deadline for OMS Small Grants applications is Friday of 4th Week.
Until next term,
Tristan