Professor of Medieval German Literature and Linguistics at the Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages, Fellow at St Edmund Hall, and Co-Director of Oxford Medieval Studies.
A performance of a medieval mystery play cycle, with a reconstruction of the no longer extant wedding at Cana episode. Directed by Philipp Quinn and Elliott Clark.
When: Saturday, 25 January 2025, 2pm Where: Pusey House, Oxford
Philipp writes: We at Pusey House welcome all and sundry to join us as we continue our Epiphanytide celebrations with carefully selected mystery plays. The event is not ticketed. The runtime should be roughly an hour. We very much look forward to seeing you there!
Pusey House put on mystery plays for the first time in 2023. In that first performance, we sought to portray the Bible’s broad “narrative,” with the Creation, the Fall, the Passion, and the Final Judgement as our highlights. This time, in connection with the Epiphany Season, we’ve chosen to emphasize the Magi, Jesus’ baptism, and the Wedding at Cana. In prioritizing that theme, we’ve had to be more eclectic in our sources this year. Whereas our first performance was based largely on the York cycle, our current plays are drawn from both the Chester and York cycles. Our plays also an original, the Wedding at Cana, since the Wedding is not found in the Chester cycle and has not survived (apart from a line-and-a-half fragment) in the York cycle.
The TORCH Oxford Medieval Studies Programme invites applications for small grants to support conferences, workshops, and other forms of collaborative research activity organised by researchers at postgraduate (whether MSt or DPhil) or early-career level from across the Humanities Division at the University of Oxford.
The scheme has a rolling deadline. Closing date for applications: Friday of Week 4 each term for activities taking place during that or the following term. An additional deadline for summer activities and Michaelmas Term is last Friday of July.
Grants are normally in the region of £100–250 and can either be for expenses or for administrative and organisational support such as publicity, filming or zoom hosting. They can also be used to support staging a play for the Medieval Mystery Cycle, e.g. for buying props or material for costumes. Recipients will be required to supply a report after the event for the Oxford Medieval Studies blog and will be invited to present on their award at an OMS event.
Applicants will be responsible for all administrative aspects of the activity, including formulating the theme and intellectual rationale, devising the format, and, depending on the type of event, inviting speakers and/or issuing a Call for Papers, organising the schedule, and managing the budget, promotion and advertising.
Date: Tuesday 21 January, 13.00-14.00, with lunch provided from 12.30 Location: Colin Matthews Room, Radcliffe Humanities (and online via MS Teams)
As part of the preparations for annual ‘Cultural Seasons’ in the new Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities, this is an invitation to brainstorm ideas for a Cultural Programme Season on Medieval Afterlives. From Oxford Medieval Studies, Prof. Marion Turner (English), Prof. Henrike Lähnemann (MML), Prof. Nancy Thebaut (History), and Prof. Elizabeth Eva Leach (Music) are already collaborating with the Cultural Programme on possible opportunities for the season and John Fulljames, Director of Oxford University’s Humanities Cultural Programme, is keen now to extend an invitation to others to join the conversation to explore and test the potential for the season and bring together researchers who could be involved in shaping and delivering it. The focus of the season will be on contemporary creativity, while also centring Oxford’s extraordinary medieval resources where appropriate – our manuscripts, instruments, objects, architecture, and spaces. This season might engage with novelists, poets, musicians, graphic artists, puppeteers, playwrights, actors, composers, designers, children’s book writers, textile workers, cartoonists, computer game programmers, AI technology, and more. We would like the season to be ambitious and international while also engaging grass-roots, local communities, especially schools and young people. It will be wide-ranging, inclusive, accessible, innovative, and fun. We also want to be open about the dark side of medieval appropriations in recent years, especially by the far right (see the previous TORCH OMS workshop on Medieval Studies and the Far Right), and to examine and counter these narratives. While we want to bring in high-profile writers and artists, we also want to celebrate the creativity of everyone, including students. The season would be likely to take place circa 2028. One overarching question might be whether this kind of contemporary creativity is an end in itself, or a gateway to the medieval past. Please come along to this initial group meeting for all interested parties, which will be structured around the question: What has medieval research to do with contemporary creativity?
If you have something you would like to share or discuss in advance, please feel free to reach out to the researchers who are already involved or the Cultural Programme via Justine Shaw. Please RSVPto: Cultural Programmes with ‘Medieval Afterlives Workshop’ (culturalprogramme@humanities.ox.ac.uk) in the subject line by 7 January 2025.
Image: ‘Serenade to Chaucer’, a pop-up version of Chaucer’s ‘Miller’s Tale’ by Paul Johnson, runner-up of the Redesigning the Medieval Book competition by the Bodleian Library.
We are advertising for a Head of Performance and announcing a speed dating / workshop meeting!
1. Medieval Mystery Plays Meeting of the Minds Workshop
Friday 29 November 2024 (Week 7), 5–6.30pm, at St Edmund Hall, Doctorow Hall
Join this speed dating workshop for matching up actors, directors, musicians, texts, and props for the upcoming Medieval Mystery Cycle on 26 April 2025! Whether you are interested but still unsure how to put together a play, which play to choose, or how to act, all are welcome! The focus of the workshop will be on how to produce a medieval play script in an accessible version (of up to 20 minutes), but there will also be an opportunity to match actors and directors and to discuss any other practical questions you might have on site at St Edmund Hall – and to enjoy tea and cake!
Meanwhile, we’re still looking for groups to join the Medieval Mystery Cycle: have a look at the original blog post!
Let us know if you’re interested in joining by emailing Henrike Lähnemann and Lesley Smith, the Co-Directors. Also contact us if you are a graduate student or postdoc interested in this opportunity:
2. Head of Performance sought for Medieval Mystery Plays
Are you interested in pulling the strings for a successful run of the 2025 performance of the Medieval Mystery Plays? We are looking for an enthusiastic, creative and, above all, well-organised graduate student or postdoc to
liaise with the directors, volunteers, and groups taking part
plan the logistics of the performance
run the operations on the actual performance date
coordinate the publicity
write and / or edit the programme
facilitate the documentation
head the stewarding team
There will be a reward of £300 plus the opportunity of networking closely across the medievalist and performance people of Oxford and beyond. Please apply by Monday, 25 November 2025, with a short statement of interest and your CV by emailing Henrike Lähnemann and Lesley Smith, the Co-Directors.
Reading this remarkable volume left me with the distinct impression that medieval monasticism was far earthier, and less subject to the kind of dualistic tensions we tend to associate with asceticism, perhaps because the life of nuns was at that time a social norm, something wholly reflective of its period, rather than a counter-cultural choice or radical defiance of other orthodoxies. These tough yet pious women, while silenced by time and neglected by research, undoubtedly had and were aware of their status and influence within the broader human and divine scheme of things (Catherine Coldstream, author of Cloistered: My Years as a Nun)
Love, Politics, and Religion in Medieval German Convents
It all started with a mistake: ‘Der Spiegel’, a widely read news magazine in Germany, ran a double-spread article on the big research project which Eva Schlotheuber and I direct, the edition of 1.200 letters from the Benedictine convent Lüne in North Germany. In the interview for it, we had talked about how important education by the nuns was for the ‘Lehrkinder’, children educated at the convent. The girls would come into the community, aged 7 to 9, and then get a thorough grounding in a wide range of discipline such as music, as pictured in the scene from a text book from Kloster Ebstorf.
Teaching Music in the Convents (Ebstorf, Klosterarchiv V 3, 15th century, fols 200v–201r)
Der Spiegel’ turned our phrase of ‘Lehrkinder’ into ‘die Kinder der Nonnen’ (the children of the nuns) – hinting at sex and scandal behind convent walls (in 2/2020 ‘So colourful was the life of nuns in the Middle Ages’).
This sparked further media interest and the Ullstein publishing house approached us because it had piqued their interest. When we explained that the attention-grabbing headline about “the nuns had children” was based on a misunderstanding, they were slightly disappointed – but then offered us the opportunity to set the record straight. And, arguably, what we could offer was much more exciting: the colourful and detailed accounts of lively, intellectual, strategic, argumentative, powerful women, shaping religion and politics of their times, looking after the girls (despite or even because they were their spiritual and not biological daughters!), negotiating business deals, writing, painting, composing and influencing the way we live today through their books, songs, and art.
‘The Life of Nuns’ tries to capture the richness of the life of these medieval nuns by incorporating as much primary source material as possible. Each of the big topics – such as Education, Music, and yes: Love and Friendship – starts with an account taken from the diary of a nun who lived at the end of the 15th century in the convent St Crucis in Braunschweig. The anonymous author covers the high feasts – celebrating the entry of new nuns, welcoming illustrious visitors – and the everyday mundane events – lice, Lebkuchen (gingerbread), laundry. And we end every of our chapters with the presentation of a significant art work from the convents: the impressive wall paintings done in the 14th century by “three nuns all called Gertrud” in Wienhausen, the largest medieval world map in Ebstorf (30 goatskins sewn together), tapestries, statues, stained glass, the oldest spectacles in the world (fallen through the floorboard cracks in the nuns’ choir) – an embarrassment of riches from a world that few people even know existed. That is particularly true for an Anglophone audience since so much of the evidence is lost due mainly to the dissolution of the monasteries but also a repurposing of surviving architecture and treasures. Compare Kloster Wienhausen and Godstow Abbey: in Wienhausen we have got the full set of monastic buildings, cloisters, huge grain stores, cells, corridors, imposing Gothic nuns choir and more – and everything that furnished it: stained glass, wall paintings, sculptures, down to the different set of dresses for the statues.
The Cistercian Convent of Wienhausen from the South: Magazine (left) and Nuns’ Choir. Photograph: Henrike Lähnemann
Filming at the ruins of one Godstow Abbey near Oxford
In Godstow, on the other hand, we can sense the dimensions of its former power by looking at the impressively long surrounding wall of enclosure and glimpse some of its stylish beauty from the ruined chapel at the back – the rest is only possible to reconstruct from scant archival evidence. Looking at the German counterparts, who shapeshifted through the Reformation, transforming into Protestant female communities who still look after the rich tapestry of medieval life, offers the chance to rectify this in part – and encounter the Life of Nuns at their fullest, mystical, worldly, polyphonous and very much relevant still today.
The Oxford Medieval Manuscripts Group (OMMG) is a collective of eight postgraduate students and early-career researchers who bonded in Oxford over their passion for medieval manuscripts. We host a seminar series through which we hope to gather a community of emerging scholars, from the University of Oxford and beyond, around the study of medieval books and the art of illumination.
Starting in Hilary Term 2024, OMMG seminars will take place twice monthly on Friday afternoons. We will discuss the most exciting recent research; share our own projects and ideas in a supportive environment; learn from lectures and tutorials given by experienced colleagues; and examine medieval manuscripts together during library visits.
By promoting exchange between scholars with diverse specialisms and different levels of experience, OMMG aims to turn the study of medieval books and illuminations into a more collaborative pursuit. We know that working with manuscripts is often a solitary business, where knowledge is acquired over silent and cautious one-on-one meetings with a delicate object. We want to share the wonder we experience before the material, visual and textual complexity of illuminated codices, as well as the interrogations or frustrations we have as we encounter obstacles in our research. The OMMG seminar series will provide manuscript enthusiasts with a stimulating platform for learning practical and analytical skills from peers as well as experts. We would love you to join us!
To subscribe to our mailing list, participate in library visits, propose a presentation of your research for work-in-progress meetings, or submit any queries, please write to: Elena Lichmanova.
Programme for MT 2024 (Fridays, 5pm, Merton College)
Week 1 (18 Oct, 3pm, Weston Library) Andrew Honey | Bodleian Library: Cataloguing Medieval Bookbindings at the Bodleian: Manuscripts from Reading Abbey as a case study. Limited places, write to the email below by 16/10/2024
Week 3 Work in Progress Meeting Hawkins Room 1 November We are still accepting applications. If you would like to present your work in progress and receive our feedback, write to the email above by 28/10/2024
Week 4 Reading Group: Audience and the Senses 8 November K. Rudy, ‘Introduction’, Touching Parchment: How Medieval ONLINE Users Rubbed, Handled, and Kissed Their Manuscripts (vol. 2, 2024) Write to the email E. Duffy, ‘Ch. 1. A Book for Lay People’, Marking the Hours: above to joinEnglish People and Their Prayers, 1240-1570 (2008)
Week 5 The New College Library Visit 15 November Study and Discussion of Illuminated Manuscripts Limited places, write to the email above by 8/11/2024
Week 7 Eleanor Jackson | British Library 29 November Medieval Women in Their Own Words: Mure Room Curating the British Library Exhibition
Week 9 Bonus: Casual trip to see the ‘Medieval Women in Their 14 December Own Words’ exhibition at the British Library together Saturday noon Write to the email above to join
About Us
Irina Boeru is a third-year DPhil student with a background in Medieval and Modern Languages and Medieval Studies. Her research analyses travel narratives in French and Latin illuminated manuscripts, specifically chronicles of the fifteenth-century conquest of the Canary Islands.
Fergus Bovill graduated with a BA in History of Art from the University of York. He is currently pursuing an MSt in Medieval Studies, with a dissertation on the assemblage of medieval manuscript cuttings into albums by nineteenth-century bibliophiles and connoisseurs.
Charly Driscoll completed an MSc in Book History and Material Culture at the University of Edinburgh and is now studying for a DPhil in Medieval English. Her project investigates how the material features of medieval manuscripts reveal their individual histories.
Elena Lichmanova is a third-year DPhil student with a background in History of Art and Medieval Studies. Her research examines the origins and early history of marginalia in medieval manuscripts, focusing on illuminated English Psalters of the thirteenth century.
Mathilde Mioche completed an MSt in History of Art and Visual Culture with a dissertation on illuminated Insular Gospels. She is currently preparing a doctoral project on the formal and medial mutations of the Dance of Death since its emergence in the fifteenth century.
Ana de Oliveira Dias is a historian of early medieval visual and intellectual culture with a specialisation in manuscript studies. She received a PhD in Medieval History from Durham University in 2019 and is now a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the project Crafting Documents, c. 500—c. 800 CE at the University of Oxford.
Celeste Pan is a third-year DPhil student with a background in English and Medieval Studies. Her research considers the production of illuminated Hebrew manuscripts in medieval northern Europe, specifically a group of liturgical Bibles from the Rheno-Mosan region.
Klara Zhao is a first-year MPhil student in Egyptology preparing a dissertation inspired by Umberto Eco’s Infinity of Lists. She developed a special interest in medieval French poetry during her BA in French and Linguistics, which she continues to nurture.
The Multicultural Middle Ages Podcast Series (see the website here // Twitter: @Podcast_MMA_MAA) welcomes proposals for single episodes to be featured in its fourth season. After three successful seasons, The Multicultural Middle Ages (MMA) will return for its fourth in 2025. Sponsored by the Medieval Academy of America, MMA is an anthology-style podcast that welcomes the global turn in Medieval Studies. This podcast series is a platform from which to continue ongoing conversations and generate new and exciting avenues of inquiry related to the Middle Ages that emphasize its diversity. We seek to highlight thoughtful reflections on culturally responsible approaches to the study of the Middle Ages. This is a space from which to speak to fellow medievalists and, more importantly, the wider public to inform our audience about the multicultural reality of the medieval period and the plurality of voices that comprise the fields of medieval studies. We invite proposals from individuals and collaborators of all ranks and disciplines, including graduate students, for single podcast episodes aimed at fellow medievalists and the wider public.
Possible topics include, but are not limited to, the following:
Innovative methodological and disciplinary approaches to the Middle Ages
The future of Medieval Studies
Research on the multicultural, multiracial, and multiethnic Middle Ages
Discussions of recent scholarship
Archival discoveries
Academic activism and responses to misappropriations of the Middle Ages
Pedagogical approaches
Medievalisms
Medieval culture in contemporary political discourse
Cultural heritage and approaches to curating exhibitions of the Middle Ages
Possible formats may include narrative expositions, interviews, textual analysis, visual analysis, oral performances, and panel discussions. No previous experience with podcasting is required. The Graduate Student Committee of the MAA has hosted several podcasting workshops, which are now available on the MAA YouTube channel. If accepted, an MMA team member will support you through the episode development process and post-production. If you would like our technical assistance to realize your episode, such as facilitating an interview, helping record the episode, or taking care of the audio editing, please make a note of it in your proposal. Your application should include a brief description (500 words) of your proposed episode, noting the following: the chosen topic and its relevance; the plan for adapting the topic to a podcast medium (we encourage 40-50 min. episodes, but also welcome proposals for shorter or longer episodes); and the episode format (interview, narrative, etc.) with an overview of its structure a description of the support you’ll need (if any) from the MMA production team. This information is not binding but will help the committee assess the potential of the project. Please include the name and CV of each author. Submit your proposals and any questions to mmapodcast1@gmail.com and to Loren Lee (lel7qsf@virginia.edu) by October 11, 2024.
The Multicultural Middle Ages Podcast Series Production Team, Will Beattie | wbeattie@nd.edu, Jonathan Correa Reyes | jonatcr@clemson.edu, Loren Lee | lel7qsf@virginia.edu, Reed O’Mara | rao44@case.edu, Logan Quigley | quigleylogan@gmail.com, Website: https://multiculturalmiddleages.com/, X: @Podcast_MMA_MAA, Instagram: @MulticulturalMiddleAgesPod
From Domesday Book to the Leveson Enquiry, our historical records offer students a myriad of untapped research opportunities across a wide range of time periods and disciplines. With so many options, however, getting started in the archives can be a daunting prospect. Many students have questions which they are too afraid to ask. How will I know where to go? What do I need to bring with me? How do I find records for my research? How do I order documents? Do I need to use gloves? How can I be sure I’m not wasting my time?
To demystify the research process The National Archives has developed a programme of Archival Skills Training, providing students with the key skills and knowledge needed to undertake academic research using the archives.
This introduction day will explain how to get started with archival research, the importance of knowing the history and structure of a collection to navigate the records, and how to make the most of your time on site.
We will be running this one-day on-site training session on October 1 (BOOK HERE) and December 3 (BOOK HERE), with more sessions in the new year.
Thank you, and we look forward to welcoming you to The National Archives! All the best, Kath
Dr Kathryn MaudeTeam Leader, Medieval Specialists T: 02083925369 | W: nationalarchives.gov.uk Twitter: @krmaude @UkNatArchives |Pronouns: she/her The National Archives, Kew, Richmond, TW9 4DU
Tuesday, 24 Sept, 11am in the MBI El Jaber Auditorium, Corpus Christi College, Merton Street, Oxford
You are cordially invited to the 2nd Reza Hosseini Memorial Lecture Series delivered, in hybrid format, by William Dalrymple. Please register here to receive the Zoomlink for those joining online: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-barmakids-a-bridge-between-islamic-and-indic-worlds-tickets-1012691907757. The opening statements will be offered by Profs Matthew Weait, Director of Continuing Education, and Arezou Azad, Director of the Invisible East Programme.
There will also be a workshop on Friday, 27 Sept. Limited seating, reservation required
The Speaker
William Dalrymple, All Souls Visiting Fellow 2023-2024, is the author of the Wolfson Prize-winning “White Mughals”, “The Last Mughal”, which won the Duff Cooper Prize, and the Hemingway and Kapucinski Prize-winning “Return of a King”. “The Anarchy” was short listed for the Duke of Wellington medal, the Tata Book of the Year and the Historical Writers Association Award, was a Finalist for the Cundill Prize for History and won the 2020 Arthur Ross Medal from the US Council on Foreign Relations.
William Dalrymple is the author of the Wolfson Prize-winning White Mughals, The Last Mughal, which won the Duff Cooper Prize, and the Hemingway and Kapucinski Prize-winning “Return of a King”. “The Anarchy” was short listed for the Duke of Wellington medal, the Tata Book of the Year and the Historical Writers Association Award, was a Finalist for the Cundill Prize for History and won the 2020 Arthur Ross Medal from the US Council on Foreign Relations.
The Reza Hosseini Memorial Lecture Series
The series connects individual stories to larger questions on the history and contemporary issues of the Middle East. The series aims to recognise and promote, in particular, microhistories, oral and documentary history, and fieldwork analysis. The series honours the life and work of Reza Hosseini (1960-2003) who last served as Humanitarian Officer in Iraq. The series was launched on the 20th anniversary of the attack on the United Nations Headquarters in Baghdad on 19 August 2003 which killed Reza and 21 colleagues.
An invitation from the Bodleian Libraries team: How do we relax? A lot of us like collecting things and enjoying our collections. They might be books, they might be records, they might be photographs… they can be anything!
As a library, the Bodleian has enjoyed collecting for over 400 years and we want to foster that joy in others. Join us 6–8pm on Thursday 26 September in Blackwell Hall at the Weston Library to have a drink and celebrate collecting.
By all means just hang out with fellow collectors, but we encourage you to:
bring a treasured book, document, or vinyl record for an expert opinion
bring an old camera, or a photo or slide we may be able to scan
bring ephemera we might add to our collection (posters, flyers, event tickets… especially if they’re homemade).
You can also enjoy:
printing a memento on our historic press
having a go at making a mini zine
viewing some of the Bodleian’s special collections
meeting members of the student Bibliophile society and seeing what they collect
learning about how you can get more involved with the Bodleian.
