Hello Oxford Medievalists.
I’m Miles Pattenden and I’d like to introduce myself as a new member of the OMS Steering Group who is taking responsibility as a commissioning editor for this website over the coming year. Those of you who have been around in Oxford for a while may know me from a previous life as an historian of the early modern papacy and Catholic Church. However, my work has also always taken a particular interest in the uses of the medieval Christian past during and since the Counter-Reformation.
Increasingly I now study ‘Medievalisms’ amongst contemporary groups and individuals: popes who fantasise about following the footsteps of medieval missionaries, the Far Right, and LGBTQ+ activists. A piece of the ‘cult of gay relics’ in AIDS-era Sydney and San Francisco is forthcoming in Past & Present (2025). It explains how gay men repurposed ideas encountered in Catholic schools and seminaries to sacralise public sex and build community in the face of police oppression (click here for a taster).
Beyond these publications, I’m also Programme Director at The Europaeum (a network of leading universities run from Oxford), the editor of The Journal of Religious History, and a member of Transactions of the Royal Historical Society’s Editorial Board.
I look forward to meeting as many of you as possible at the various events we promote here, and which Tristan advertises via the termly booklet and weekly newsletter.
We’re always looking for new content for Oxford Medieval Studies: opportunities, publications, exhibitions, performances, conferences, workshops, etc. Blogposts about these can be informational or critically reflective, in advance or in retrospect.
Best wishes for the 2024–25 Academic Year – and do get in touch with me when you have ideas that merit wider publicity or visibility within our vibrant community of medieval scholars!
Header image: Mother ‘Cum Dancing’ (Colin Peat) decorates a shrine on wheels for the Sydney Mardi Gras, © Australian Queer Archives, Papers of Fabian Lo Schiavo.