Marriages, Unmarriages, and Subjectivities: A Roundtable Discussion with Sara McDougall and Hannah Skoda

The Oxford Medieval Society is pleased to announce our first event of Trinity Term 2022, a Roundtable Discussion with Professors Sara McDougall and Hannah Skoda

We invite all interested parties to attend the event on Thursday 26th May at 13:00-14.30, in the New Seminar Room in St. John’s College. Participants will be able to ask questions and engage in discussion with Professor McDougall and Professor Skoda on a shared area of their research, Marriages, Unmarriages, and Subjectivities

Professor Sara McDougall is Associate Professor of History at John Jay College of Criminal Justice (City University of New York) and coordinator of the Medieval Studies Certificate Program at the CUNY Graduate Center. Specialising in legal history, her research focuses primarily on women and crime in medieval France and explores topics such as gender, marriage, religion and illegitimacy. Her publications include Royal Bastards: The Birth of Illegitimacy, 800-1230 (Oxford University Press, 2017) and Bigamy and Christian Identity in Late Medieval Champagne (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012). Professor McDougall is in Oxford this term as an Astor Visiting Lecturer.  

Professor Hannah Skoda is Fellow and Tutor in Medieval History at St. John’s College, Oxford, and specialises in the cultural and social history of the later Middle Ages. She has particular interests in education, conflict, ownership, slavery and constructions of deviance in late medieval Europe. Her monograph Medieval Violence: Physical Brutality in Northern France, 1270-1330 (Oxford University Press, 2013) won the Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship’s 2014 Best First Book Prize, in which year she was also awarded a Philip Leverhulme Prize to explore nostalgia in the fourteenth century. 

Please do not hesitate to get in touch with any questions at oxfordmedievalsociety@gmail.com

We look forward to seeing you there!

Public Lecture – Christine de Pizan

The Oxford Medieval Society is pleased to announce a public lecture by Dr Charlotte Cooper-Davis on Thursday 9th June 2022.

Dr Cooper-Davis will speak on the topic of “Christine de Pizan: Guilty Feminist?”.

The lecture will take place in the New Seminar Room in St. John’s College, 13:00-14.30.

About the speaker: Dr Charlotte Cooper-Davis is an Honorary Research Fellow of the Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages at the University of Oxford, and the author of Christine de Pizan: Life, Works, Legacy (Reaktion Press, 2021). Her DPhil thesis explored text-image relations in de Pizan’s works, and a resulting monograph is currently under contract with ARC Humanities Press.

Please direct any queries to oxfordmedievalsociety@gmail.com.

Image credit: British Library MS Harley 4431, f.259v (courtesy of Wikimedia Commons).

Medicine and Healing: The 18th Oxford Medieval Graduate Conference

The 2022 Oxford Medieval Graduate Conference organising committee is pleased to announce the programme for Medicine and Healing.

Medicine and Healing: The 18th Oxford Medieval Graduate Conference

21st-22nd April, online and in-person at Ertegun House, St Giles, Oxford, OX1 3LD.

Sponsored by the Ertegun Graduate Scholarship Programme in the Humanities, Oxford Medieval Studies, the Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities (TORCH) and the Society for the Study of Medieval Languages and Literature.

Organising Committee: Katherine Beard, Ashley Castelino, Corinne Clark, James Cogbill, Nia Moseley-Roberts, Diana Myers, Grace O’Duffy, Caleb Prus and Eugenia Vorobeva.

To register for online or in-person attendance, please visit our website.

Programme

THURSDAY 21st APRIL

9:30-9:55 Registration (in-person)

9:55-10:00 Opening Remarks

10:00-11:30 Session 1: Charmed (chair: Katherine Beard)

  • Grace Pyles, ‘The Medicinal Unicorn Horn in the European Middle Ages’
  • Emer Kavanagh, ‘Shape and Form: The Use of Sympathetic Magic in Irish Charming Tradition’
  • Radka Pallová, ‘Humane Treatment? Animal Bodies in Alexander of Tralles’

11:30-12:00 Break with refreshments

12:00-13:30 Session 2: Call the Midwife (chair: Diana Myers)

  • Ailie Westbrook, ‘‘Mulieribus non est dicendum’: Mediated Knowledge in Women’s Health in Medieval Denmark’
  • Shir Blum, ‘Appositusque Iuvat Mulierem Parturientem: the Material Variety of Amulets as Obstetrical Aides’
  • Rachel Chenault, ‘Experiencing Childbirth: The Search for Female Voices, 1000-1200 C.E.’

13:30-14:30 Lunch

14:30-15:30 Session 3: The Seventh Seal (chair: James Cogbill)

  • Ben Hatchett, ‘‘A suitable medicine against all crimes’: John of Rupescissa’s Purgative Plague’
  • Stephen Pow, ‘Was Bubonic Plague behind the Epidemic that Affected the Mongol Army in China in 1259?’

15:30-16:00 Break with refreshments

16:00-17:00 Keynote Address 1

  • Dr Hannah Bower, ‘Locating Authority in Medieval Medical Writing: Playing with Presence and Absence’

17:00 Drinks Reception

19:00 Conference Dinner (optional)

FRIDAY 22nd APRIL

9:30-10:15 Medicine & Healing at Oxford: Manuscript & Social Session (with refreshments)

10:15-11:15 Session 4: Being Human (chair: Caleb Prus)

  • Melanie Socrates, ‘Impatient Medicine: Agency and Urgency in Middle English Medical Works’
  • S. Doğan Karakelle, ‘Knowing Horses and Thyself: Spiritual Healing and Rulership Practices in Ottoman-Turkish Veterinary Manuals 1400-1600’

11:15-11:45 Break with refreshments

11:45-13:15 Session 5: Inside Out (chair: Corinne Clark)

  • Ruth Rimmer, ‘Healing Through Lists in Lacnunga
  • Colette Sarjano Utama McDonald, ‘A Stitch Through Time: the Besloten Hofjes at Mechelen, Alberto Burri, and Judith Scott’
  • Madeleine Killacky, ‘Challenging the Monopoly of 16th-Century Anatomical Knowledge through Pop-up Paper Figures’

13:15-14:15 Lunch

14:15-15:45 Session 6: Sister Act (chair: Eugenia Vorobeva)

  • Magdalena Buszka, ‘Saint Barbara of Medieval French Mystery Plays – Healer of Bodies and Souls’
  • Hólmfríður Sveinsdóttir, ‘The Use of Lead Tablets and Anatomical Votives in Medieval Healing Practices: Case studies from the Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo’

15:45-16:15 Break with refreshments

16:15-17:15 Keynote Address 2

  • Professor Emilie Savage-Smith, ‘Modern Myths and Medieval Medicine’

17:15-17:20 Closing Remarks

Image: Medieval dentistry, from the fourteenth-century Omne Bonum of James le Palmer (courtesy of Wikimedia Commons).

Hesychasm in Context: Theology and Society in the Fourteenth Century

The Oxford Centre for Byzantine Research, the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science and the Maison française d’Oxford invite you to attend the hybrid conference Hesychasm in Context: Theology and Society in the Fourteenth Century, Thursday 17th – Friday 18th March 2022. All of the papers will be livestreamed.

To register for the in-person event (including lunches), please email Dr Rei Hakamada (rei.hakamada@theology.ox.ac.uk) as soon as possible, as numbers are limited.

Registration to participate online is via the following link:
https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZArc-2trj4iGdfuVWLi81Wc0ybeFo43Xx-i.

PROGRAMME

Thursday 17th March
Lecture Room, Ioannou Centre for Classical and Byzantine Studies, 66 St. Giles’, Oxford, OX1 3LU

9.00: Welcome

9.15: Rei Hakamada (Okayama University / University of Oxford), Lay Hesychasts? Isidore and Palamas among Lay People

10.00: Mihail Mitrea (Babeș Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca / Institute for South-East European Studies, Bucharest), Hesychasm and Hagiography in Fourteenth-Century Byzantium [online]

10.45: Coffee

11.15: Ralph Greis (St Joseph’s Benedictine Abbey, Gerleve), The Connection Between Liturgical Theology and Hesychastic Spirituality in the Homilies of St. Gregory Palamas

12.00: Christiaan Kappes (Ss Cyril and Methodius Byzantine Catholic Seminary), Gregory Palamas’s Theotokos in Light of Latin Contacts and his Reception of Latin Literature in Byzantium

12.45: Lunch

13.45: Marie-Hélène Blanchet (CNRS, UMR 8167 Orient et Méditerranée, Paris), John VI Cantacuzene, the Hesychast Crisis and the Latin World: An Ambiguous Strategy

14.30: Judith Ryder (University of Oxford), When To Speak and When To Hold Your Peace: The Conflict between Demetrios Kydones and Philotheos Kokkinos

15.15: Coffee

15.45: Monica White (University of Nottingham), Hesychasm in Rus?

16.30: Norman Russell (St Stephen’s House, Oxford), Engaging with Islam in Late Byzantium: Strategies of Resistance and Accommodation

17.15: Drinks – The Maison française d’Oxford is delighted to offer participants a glass of champagne


Friday 18th March
Miles Room, St Peter’s College, New Inn Hall Street, Oxford, OX1 2DL

10.30: Eiji Hisamatsu (Ryukoku University), The Jesus Prayer and Yoga: The Early Literature of Hesychasm and the Svetasvatara Upanishad [online]

11.15: Vassa Kontouma (École Pratique des Hautes Études, PSL, Paris), The Re-enchanted Universe of Iakovos of Nea Skete (19th c.). A Hesychast Response to the Copernican Revolution?

12.15: Final remarks

12.30: Lunch

Image: St. Gregory Palamas, Monastery of Vatopedi, Mount Athos (Creative Commons CCO 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication)

Oxford Medieval Society – Plagues Panel

On Wednesday 2nd March 2022, the Oxford Medieval Society will hold a panel on medieval plagues.

Professor Mark Bailey (University of East Anglia) will give a talk entitled What did the Black Death do for us? Some answers from England, 1350 to 1400, and Professor Samuel Cohn (University of Glasgow) will speak on Plagues of the Central Middle Ages: The dog that didn’t bark.

The panel will start at 5pm and be held in the North Lecture Room of St. John’s College.

All are very welcome to attend what promises to be a fascinating panel.

Image credit: “The Triumph of Death”, Galleria Regionale della Sicilia, Palermo, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.