Author: Luisa Ostacchini

Graduate Students: OMS is hiring!

by

26/09/2022

13:38

Comments Off on Graduate Students: OMS is hiring!

Around Oxford, News, opportunities

,

OMS is one of the largest forums in the world for interdisciplinary research on the Middle Ages, bringing together over 200 academics and a large body of graduate students. If you would like to be involved behind the scenes, we have three exciting (paid) opportunities to get involved! Though these are advertised as three separate posts, we welcome applications from students who would like to combine two or even all three posts:

1) OMS Social Media Officer: The Social Media Officer is in charge of connecting all of Oxford’s medievalists via the OMS Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram accounts and also occasionally posting on here, the OMS blog. You will be responsible for posting across these platforms to advertise OMS events, opportunities and news. You will work closely with the OMS directors (Profs Henrike Lähnemann and Lesley Smith), the Communications Officer (Dr Luisa Ostacchini) and the Events Coordinator. Familiarity with social media advertising is beneficial but not essential: this is an ideal way to gain technical know-how about social media, advertising and marketing that can be used in your academic career and beyond. The post usually comprises an hour or two a week. To read more about the post from the out-going postholder, Llewelyn Hopwood, including tips and tricks for social media success, see his blog post here.

2) OMS Events Coordinator: The Events Coordinator ensures that all of our in-person and online OMS events run smoothly. You will organise the google calendar, oversee the OMS Teams and YouTube Channels, respond to email queries about events, set up Zoom streaming events, assist in the real-time running of events (mostly hybrid and online, but also in-person), and serve as a point of liaison point between events organisers and the rest of the OMS Team. You will work closely with the OMS directors (Profs Henrike Lähnemann and Lesley Smith), the Communications Officer (Dr Luisa Ostacchini) and the Social Media Officer. Some familiarity with Teams and Zoom is necessary, but you by no means need to be an expert in these software packages as you can learn on the job. The post usually comprises an hour or two a week. To read more about the post from the out-going postholder, Tom Revell, including insight into the exciting range of events he helped to facilitate, see his blog post here.

3) Graduate Convenor for the Medieval Mystery Cycle 2023: the graduate convenor will take the mantle of the operation from Dr Eleanor Baker by organising the Medieval Mystery Cycle, which takes place on 22 April 2023. You will liase with the various Mystery Players and directors, help to coordinate workshops, and ensure that the plays run smoothly on the day. Experience in events organisation and a love of theatre are beneficial, but not essential. You will work closely with the OMS directors (Profs Henrike Lähnemann and Lesley Smith), the Communications team, and Mystery Players from across the university and beyond. To get a sense for the scope of the project, and to see the plays performed in previous years, see seh.ox.ac.uk/mystery-cycle.
Payment for all of these roles is at the standard rate for graduate students, and is billed by timesheet — up to a maximum of six hours per week per role, although actual hours will usually comprise one or two hours per week per role.

Please send expressions of interest to Co-Directors Henrike Lähnemann and Lesley Smith by 30 September 2022, 12noon, at medieval@torch.ox.ac.uk, including a one-page CV and a cover email explaining why you are interested in the job(s) and what experience you bring to it.

Header image: Matthew Paris Elephant from Parker MS 016II fol 152v (See the manuscript online via Parker Library on the Web)

Medieval Matters: sigelbeorhte dagas

by

08/07/2022

05:36

Comments Off on Medieval Matters: sigelbeorhte dagas

News

, , ,

Trinity Term has ended, and with it, the academic year! Since this is the final Medieval Matters of the year, on behalf of everyone at OMS I would like to take the opportunity to thank everyone who has enabled our many wonderful seminars, reading groups and events this year to happen. The Medievalist community at Oxford is incredibly fortunate to have such a diversity of scholarship and such a wealth of goings-on, and all of your contributions have made this year richer and more enjoyable! Here is some wisdom on doing good things, from Beowulf:

Lofdædum sceal
in mægþa gehwære man geþeon.
[By praiseworthy deeds one shall prosper among peoples everywhere.]

Wherever your summer is taking you, I am sure that your praiseworthy organisation, convening and paper-giving will lead you to prosper! Safe travels to those of you leaving Oxford and congratulations to our Masters students for finishing their studies. Please see below for the roundup of summer events, save the dates, and some important tasks to do:

Important To-Do:

  • For those leaving Oxford/changing college: if you would like to continue to receive Medieval Matters emails, please make sure to sign up with your new email address. You can do it yourself via http://medieval.seh.ox.ac.uk/about/ or contact me. Please also alert any medievalist visitor or new student to this! For postgraduate course convenors: when your incoming students have their Oxford email addresses, please register them for the mailing list or contact me with a list of addresses and I can do this for you.

Summer events:

  • Coffee Morning with Professor William Chester Jordan, 23rd June 10.30-12 noon. The Faculty of History and Oxford Medieval Studies are pleased to invite you to an informal meet and greet coffee morning with William Chester Jordan (Professor of Medieval History, Princeton University) on the occasion of his reception of an honorary degree of the University of Oxford, in the garden of Harris Manchester College (Mansfield Road), or in the Warrington Room in the case of rain. Coffee and croissants will be provided. For catering purposes, please register your attendance if possible: https://forms.gle/AkvPUsX2Ur1hbgTU7
  • Mandeville 700 Conference, 30 June 2022. In 1322, Sir John Mandeville left his native England to travel through Europe, to the pilgrim sites of Jerusalem, and beyond to the Far East, where he served as a mercenary in the Great Khan’s army before returning home 34 years later to write an immensely popular and influential account of his travels. Or not: historical research has been unable to find any John Mandeville who can be firmly identified either as traveller or author, and the book itself was largely adapted from other sources. To mark the 700th anniversary of his supposed departure, this conference will bring together scholars working on one of the most striking and enduring inventions of the late Middle Ages. For further information and to book, please click here.
  •  Medium Ævum Annual Lecture taking place on Saturday, 2 July (4:30-6pm BST): Dr Ryan Perry (University of Kent) will deliver the annual lecture on ‘Middle English Books of Devotion and Liturgical Privatisation in Fifteenth-century England’, as part of the ‘Pfaff at 50’ conference at the University of Nottingham marking 50 years since the publication of Richard W. Pfaff’s ground-breaking New Liturgical Feasts in Later Medieval England. Registration details for in-person and online attendance are available at the following link: https://pfaff50.wordpress.com/keynote/
  • The Oxford Festival of the Arts has a smorgasbord of exciting events of interest to medievalists:
    -The Art of Illumination: makers and users of medieval manuscripts (June 25, Lecture Theatre, Weston Library, 2pm – 4.30pm)
    -Illuminated Manuscript Workshop with Patricia Lovett MBE (June 26, Magdalen College School Studio, 10am – 5pm)
    -Professor Robert Bartlett: The Middle Ages and the Movies (June 27, Festival Marquee, 8pm)
    -Treasures from Around the World at New College Library (July 2, 11am-4pm, Lecture Room 4, New College)
    -British Society of Master Glass Painters Centenary Touring Exhibition (The Chapter House, Christ Church Cathedral (throughout the festival))
    -Dr Janina Ramirez in discussion with Peter Frankopan (July 5, 7.30pm, Festival Marquee, Magdalen College School, Oxford)
    -John Leighfield: Atlases and Maps (July 6, 5pm-7pm, Magdalen College School Studio)
    For full details of these events, and links for booking, please consult our blog here.

Save the Date:

  • Prof. Ardis Butterfield giving the Michaelmas Medieval Studies Lecture: ‘Do we mean lyric or song?’ We’re very pleased to announce that Prof. Ardis Butterfield (Yale) will give the Medieval Studies Lecture in Michaelmas Term, as part of her stay in Oxford as an Astor Visiting Lecturer. She will be here in week 4 of term (31 October to 4 November), taking part in a number of events and seminars and working with students in a number of medieval disciplines, in particular on medieval lyric and song. The lecture itself is planned for Monday 31 October, and its provisional title is ‘Do we mean lyric or song?’.
  • Medieval Mystery Cycle 2023. Following the successful Medieval Mystery Cycle 2.0, plans are underway for the third iteration of what has fast become an Oxford tradition. Please reserve the date of 22 April 2023 (Saturday before Trinity Term) and spread the word! 

Opportunities:

  • Oxford Medieval Commentary Network Second Conference, 29 September 2022: Call for Papers and Sign-up. Proposals are invited for the second conference organised by the Oxford Medieval Commentary Network, following the successful launch of the Network last year. The one-day conference will take place at Christ Church, Oxford, on 29 September 2022. For full details, please see our blog.
  • Graduate Convenor for the Medieval Mystery Cycle 2023: we are looking for a graduate convenor who will take on the mantle of Eleanor Baker in masterminding the operation. Have a look at seh.ox.ac.uk/mystery-cycle for getting a sense of the scope and watching the plays performed in 2019 and 2022. Please send expressions of interest for the Graduate Convenor by 30 June 2022 to Co-Directors Henrike Lähnemann and Lesley Smith under medieval@torch.ox.ac.uk.
  • CFP: Christian Political Cultures in Late Antiquity. We invite papers for a conference (and planned edited volume) on Christian Political Cultures in Late Antiquity. This conference is designed as a pre-publication workshop for a planned edited volume on Christian Political Cultures in Late Antiquity. The deadline for proposals is 30 June 2022. Please send a title and an abstract (no longer than 500 words) to robin.whelan@liverpool.ac.uk. If you have questions, do not hesitate to get in touch with one of the organisers. For full details, click here.
  • CFP: Early Book Society University of Limerick, 11th-15th July 2023: Meaning, Memory, and the Making of Culture: Manuscripts and Books, 1350–1550. The 18th biennial conference of the Early Book Society will be hosted by Carrie Griffin and Eleanor Giraud at the University of Limerick from 11th to 14th July 2023, with an excursion on 15th July. Confirmed keynote speakers include John Thompson, Emeritus Professor, Queen’s University Belfast, and Lisa Fagin Davis, Executive Director, Medieval Academy of America. Planned activities include an early music concert and hands-on use of the university’s printing press. Please mark your calendars.  We invite proposals for 20-minute papers, themed panels (three papers and a chair), roundtables, and 5-minute lightning papers (ideal for work-in-progress updates). Scholars at all levels, including graduate students and early career researchers, are cordially invited to participate. 

Finally: It has been an honour and a delight to be your guide to all things Medieval in Oxford this academic year. Here is my final piece of Old English wisdom for the academic year, taken from the Old English Maxims:

Ræd biþ nyttost,
yfel unnyttost.
Good advice is the most useful, bad the least useful.

I hope that some of this year’s Old English Wisdom has fallen into the former category! I am delighted to be remaining in my role as Comms Officer for 2022-23, so I will be back in your inboxes come September. Until then, I wish you all a productive and restful summer – may you enjoy these ‘sigelbeorhte dagas’ (sun-bright days)!

Medievalists leaving Oxford for the summer encounter some strange adventures…
Merton College, MS 249, f. 7r.
View image and text in the Taylor Edition by Sebastian Dow

Call for Papers: Early Book Society

by

22/06/2022

15:02

Comments Off on Call for Papers: Early Book Society

opportunities

Early Book Society
University of Limerick
11th-15th July 2023 

Meaning, Memory, and the Making of Culture: Manuscripts and Books, 1350–1550 


The 18th biennial conference of the Early Book Society will be hosted by Carrie Griffin and Eleanor Giraud at the University of Limerick from 11th to 14th July 2023, with an excursion on 15th July. Confirmed keynote speakers include John Thompson, Emeritus Professor, Queen’s University Belfast, and Lisa Fagin Davis, Executive Director, Medieval Academy of America. Planned activities include an early music concert and hands-on use of the university’s printing press. Please mark your calendars.  

We invite proposals for 20-minute papers, themed panels (three papers and a chair), roundtables, and 5-minute lightning papers (ideal for work-in-progress updates). Scholars at all levels, including graduate students and early career researchers, are cordially invited to participate. 

Papers can consider any of the following, with an emphasis on physical aspects of the manuscript or book: 

  • Manuscripts and books as memorial artifacts 
  • Manuscripts and books as shapers of literary or historical culture 
  • Study of a specific manuscript or book that memorializes a family (or promotes a dynasty) 
  • Women makers or owners  
  • Readers or networks of readers 
  • Makers of manuscripts and books  
  • Manuscripts and books commissioned as memorials for persons or events  
  • Sammelbände, collected volumes, and early libraries 

We are also particularly interested in hearing about Irish collections and books with Irish connections.  

Abstracts (up to 250 words for papers, 500 words for panels, or 100 words for lightning papers) should be sent to earlybooksociety2023@ul.ie by 1st December 2022.  

Any preliminary queries should be addressed to: earlybooksociety2023@ul.ie. Further information will be posted at www.earlybooksociety.com and www.ebslimerick2023.wordpress.com in due course.  

Call for Papers: Christian Political Cultures in Late Antiquity 

by

22/06/2022

14:57

Comments Off on Call for Papers: Christian Political Cultures in Late Antiquity 

opportunities

University of Liverpool

Wednesday 21st-Thursday 22nd June 2023

Deadline for Proposals: 30 June 2022, to robin.whelan@liverpool.ac.uk

We invite papers for a conference (and planned edited volume) on Christian Political Cultures in Late Antiquity. The remarkably homogeneous ways of thinking about Christian political authority across the Roman world in late antiquity (c. 250-700 CE)—so carefully reconstructed in classic mid-20th century accounts—mask the immense diversity of the social and institutional contexts in which those ideas mattered. The character of Christian governance could look very different to an official placed at the centre of power as against an ordinary Christian standing in the nave of an urban basilica, a civic grandee sitting in the plush seats of a provincial town council, or an ascetic keeping vigil in a remote monastic cell. In fact, widely divergent visions of what the divine sanctioning of earthly rule meant in practice are visible even across the many different (and sometimes competing) institutions of late ancient states.

This workshop and subsequent volume will build off an increasing tendency to investigate Christian political thought ‘in action’ and root it in the lived experience of governance in the late ancient world. Taking inspiration from recent work on the centrality of social relationships and identities to Roman political thought (esp. notions of gender, family and freedom/unfreedom), it will also seek to develop a more plural notion of Christian political discourse which moves beyond the narrowly constitutional analysis of the relationship between emperors and bishops (or ‘church’ and ‘state’). Above all, the volume will seek to consider the ways in which distinctive Christian political cultures shaped (and were shaped by) specific institutions, environments, and communities, and were made meaningful through concrete interactions between the late ancient people who inhabited them.

We particularly invite papers on:

1.     Distinctive forms of Christian thought or practice (and, indeed, thinking about the importance or otherwise of Christian thought and practice):

  1. within particular political institutions and configurations in specific times and places. (e.g. imperial or royal palaces, official bureaux, army units, governor’s residences, town councils, elite households, villages, estates and peasant communities etc)
  2. amongst the members of those political institutions (e.g. under/around particular empresses/queens, generals, or governors, or amongst chamberlains, soldiers, or office staffs)
  3. amongst non-Christians serving within, or subject to, those political institutions and configurations

2.     Distinctive forms of thought and practice regarding politics and governance within particular Christian communities, institutions and settings (e.g. church factions, episcopal sees, monasteries, ascetic communities)

3.     The interplay of these divergent institutional and communal assumptions as seen in particular events, episodes or moments of conflict (e.g. petitions to court, legal and doctrinal disputes, urban riots)

This conference is designed as a pre-publication workshop for a planned edited volume on Christian Political Cultures in Late Antiquity. Participants will be expected to submit their papers in advance for pre-circulation, read the other papers in advance of the workshop, and be willing to act as the designated respondent for another paper. Each paper will receive a dedicated session with a short presentation from the author, a response, and a general Q&A session/discussion. The deadline to submit draft essays for the edited volume will be 31 July 2024.

The primary format of this conference is in person at the University of Liverpool, but remote participation will be possible for those unable to make it to Liverpool for whatever reason. For those who can travel, we will fund accommodation and meals in Liverpool. We will also be able to pay for UK and international travel for those who need it, although, given the increased costs of travel since the original funding application, we may ask those with access to institutional research funding to pursue support from those sources to help to contribute to those costs.

The deadline for proposals is 30 June 2022. Please send a title and an abstract (no longer than 500 words) to robin.whelan@liverpool.ac.uk. If you have questions, do not hesitate to get in touch with one of the organisers.

Organisers

Dr Richard Flower (r.flower@exeter.ac.uk)

Dr Meaghan McEvoy (meaghan.mcevoy@mq.edu.au)

Dr Robin Whelan (robin.whelan@liverpool.ac.uk)

Medievalist Events at Oxford Festival of the Arts

by

22/06/2022

14:14

1 Comment on Medievalist Events at Oxford Festival of the Arts

Around Oxford, events

The Art of Illumination: makers and users of medieval manuscripts

Prof Michelle Brown, Patricia Lovett MBE, Dr Andrew Dunning

June 25, Lecture Theatre, Weston Library, 2pm – 4.30pm

“It is the brilliance of yellow gold set off by jewel colours that makes so many mediaeval manuscripts so eye-catching.”

Join us for fascinating insight with our festival triumvirate of experts on illuminated manuscripts. Fresh from her involvement in the British Library’s journey from East to West through the dazzling beauty of fifty spectacular manuscripts across cultures for their exhibition
‘Gold’, world-renowned scribe and illuminator, Patricia Lovett MBE will talk about the origin and use of pigments and the mediaeval craft processes that enabled these luminous manuscripts to ‘catch the light’. Professor Emerita of Medieval MS Studies (SAS, University of London) and former Curator of Illuminated Manuscripts at the British Library, Michelle Brown will discuss these wonders from an historical perspective, using the manuscripts as windows into the lives of those who made and used them, and into the age in which they were made. This evening of medieval wonder is made whole by the display on manuscripts curated by Dr Andrew Dunning, R.W. Hunt Curator of Medieval Manuscripts; Supernumerary Fellow in Book History (Jesus College), who will speak to the manuscripts.

This event was curated to coincide with Sensational Books – a Bodleian Libraries exhibition at ST Lee Gallery, Weston Library.

Details & Booking for THE ART OF ILLUMINATION.



Illuminated Manuscript Workshop with Patricia Lovett MBE

June 26, Magdalen College School Studio, 10am – 5pm

Patricia Lovett MBE is a world-renowned scribe and illuminator who has taught and lectured at many prestigious institutions in the UK and abroad.

This is your chance to join the Festival Glitterati! Spend a day illuminating with real gold leaf and painting an animal from a medieval bestiary (book of beasts). You will be able to choose your own animal to copy from a small selection and be shown how to prepare calfskin vellum for painting, how to apply gold leaf and the sequence of medieval painting for miniatures using a fine Kolinsky sable brush. You will go home with your illumination on vellum ready to frame.

Since this workshop is one which will have a focus on one-to-one instruction, it is restricted to 16 people. We suggest early booking. Anyone taking part in this workshop will need to be contacted by Patricia in advance of the session, so please be aware that email and/or other contact will be required.

Details & Booking for ILLUMINATED MANUSCRIPT WORKSHOP.


Professor Robert Bartlett: The Middle Ages and the Movies

June 27, Festival Marquee, 8pm

 ‘This book will entertain and intrigue historians and film buffs alike. In a wide-ranging critical study of the creative process that tackles head-on the exchange between historical fact and artistic licence, Robert Bartlett shows how twentieth-century cinema’s variously imagined Middle Ages speak as much to modern sensibilities as to any reconstructed past.’ – Professor Christopher Tyerman

How was Umberto Eco’s Name of the Rose translated from page to screen? Why is Monty Python and the Holy Grail funny? And how was Eisenstein’s Alexander Nevsky shaped by the Stalinist tyranny under which it was filmed?  These, and many more questions will be answered tonight by eminent historian Robert Bartlett, who takes a fresh, cogent look at how our view of medieval history has been shaped by eight significant films of the twentieth century: from the concoction of sex and nationalism in Mel Gibson’s Braveheart, to Fritz Lang’s silent masterpiece Siegfried; the art-house classic The Seventh Seal to Tarkovsky’s Andrei Rublev and the epic historical drama El Cid.

Robert Bartlett is Bishop Wardlaw Professor of Mediaeval History Emeritus at the University of St Andrews, Scotland. His many books include the Wolfson Prize-winning The Making of Europe: Conquest, Colonization and Cultural Change, 950–1350 (1994), and he has written and presented three television series for the BBC, Inside the Medieval Mind, The Normans and The Plantagenets.

Details & Booking for ROBERT BARTLETT.


Treasures from Around the World at New College Library

July 2, 11am-4pm, Lecture Room 4, New College

More manuscripts survive from the medieval library of New College than from that of any other Oxford or Cambridge college. Today, New College Library holds what is probably the finest collection of medieval manuscripts of any of the Oxford colleges, also holding more incunabula (15th-century European imprints) than any other undergraduate college at Oxford. The Library’s collections of rare and early printed books are likewise spectacular.

View some of the Library’s fabulous manuscript and rare book treasures from around the world. Our world tour starts from 13th-century Catte Street, Oxford with one of the world’s great illuminated manuscripts (now housed just a few hundred metres away from where it was first created), and it takes in gorgeous and resplendent manuscripts and printed books from China to Constantinople, by means of Arabic, Armenian, Belgian, Dutch, English, French, German, Greek, and Syrian treasures, which date from the 11th century onwards.

Details & Booking for TREASURES FROM NEW COLLEGE. Entrance is free


British Society of Master Glass Painters

Centenary Touring Exhibition

The Chapter House, Christ Church Cathedral (throughout the festival)

Coming to Oxford from the cathedrals of Ely, Winchester, Wells and Worcester, this touring exhibition of stained glass panels celebrates the centenary of the British Society of Master Glass Painters. Over 90 artists from across the UK and overseas contributed to the exhibition. The tour highlights 60 of these panels that celebrate the unique art of glass. The works have been created using both traditional and modern glass techniques, demonstrating the extraordinary range of stained glass currently practiced.

The artists explore a variety of subjects such as the environment and the beauty of nature. The exhibition portrays an understanding of the concerns of glass artists a hundred years after the society was established to help stained glass remain relevant today. Displayed in the Chapter House of Christ Church Cathedral, this exhibition will also give the visitor the chance to explore the Romanesque doorway and interior.

Founded in 1921, the British Society of Master Glass Painters is the UK’s leading organisation
devoted exclusively to the art and craft of stained glass. In collaboration with Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford.


Dr Janina Ramirez in discussion with Peter Frankopan

July 5, 7.30pm, Festival Marquee, Magdalen College School, Oxford

We look forward to a stimulating and lively conversation between two brilliant Oxford historians; Dr Janina Ramirez, cultural historian, broadcaster and author, whose passion for communicating ideas about the past is always conveyed with an infectious enthusiasm, as exemplified in her brand new book FEMINA: A New History of the Middle Ages Through the Women Written Out of It; and the acclaimed historian Peter Frankopan, Professor of Global History and Director of the Centre for Byzantine Research at Oxford University, who is particularly interested in ‘exchanges and connections between regions and peoples’. Peter’s seminal book The Silk Roads: A New History of the World, (Dazzling – The Guardian; Phenomenal – Die Welt) was an international bestseller, topping the non-fiction charts all around the world, followed by The New Silk Roads: The Present and Future of the World, a ‘masterly mapping out of a new world order’ (Evening Standard).

Join us tonight to see the medieval world with fresh eyes and discover why the remarkable women ‘rediscovered’ in Janina’s Femina were removed from our collective memories. This book is a ground-breaking reappraisal of medieval history revealing why women were struck from our historical narrative, and restoring them to their rightful positions as the power-players who shaped the world we live in today.

Details & Booking for DR JANINA RAMIREZ IN DISCUSSION WITH PETER FRANCOPAN.


John Leighfield: Atlases and Maps

July 6, 5pm-7pm, Magdalen College School Studio

Join John Leighfield CBE, for his highly illustrated talk about how the maps of Oxford have developed from the 16th century until the present. Highly respected for his knowledge of the maps of the county and city of Oxford, John has had a passion for maps since his schooldays and has built a marvellous collection, some of which will be on display after the talk.

Details & Booking for ATLASES AND MAPS.

Conference: ‘New Visions of Julian of Norwich’

by

22/06/2022

14:11

Comments Off on Conference: ‘New Visions of Julian of Norwich’

Around Oxford, events

15-16 July 2022, Somerville College & Online

in association with Oxford Medieval Studies, sponsored by The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities (TORCH)

Organisers: Antje Elisa Chan (Lincoln College, Oxford), Godelinde Gertrude Perk (Somerville, Oxford), Raphaela Rohrhofer (Somerville, Oxford), Alicia Smith (English Faculty, Oxford)

This international hybrid conference, held in Somerville College (Oxford) on 15th and 16th July, is the first academic event to focus solely on Julian’s writing, life, contexts, and influence long after her death. Offering thought-provoking panels and roundtables on a range of topics, from anchoritic transformations of the mundane to critical race studies, it maps out new and emerging dimensions in Julian scholarship.

The Somerville College choir will perform anthems based on Julian’s writing; a new play by writer-director Cindy Oswin, exploring the effect of age on the anchorite, will premiere at the conference. The opening lecture will be given by Professor Nicholas Watson (Harvard) with responses from Professor Laura Saetveit Miles (Bergen) and Professor Barry Windeatt (Cambridge). Professor Liz Herbert McAvoy (Swansea) will close the conference.

We particularly encourage graduate students and early-career researchers to attend; lower fees are offered for graduate students, unwaged and low-waged attendees.

To register: https://bit.ly/3vTAu5y 

More info: https://visionsofjulian.mml.ox.ac.uk/

Thursday 14th July

18:00-19:00 In-Person Welcoming Performance

New Music for a New Vision
by Dr. Alison Daniell (University of Southampton), Louise Stewart (Multitude of Voyces), and members of Somerville College Choir, dir. Will Dawes

Friday 15th July 

09:15 Opening session 

Keynote speaker – Nicholas Watson 

Julian of Norwich: Witness and Recension 

Respondents – Laura Saetveit Miles, Barry Windeatt 

11:30 Panel 1  

TRANSFIGURING THE MUNDANE 
Chair: Elizabeth Robertson 

Gillian Adler 
Julian of Norwich and Medieval Traversals of Time 

Raphaela Rohrhofer  
Julian of Norwich on Love and Nothingness  

Laura Kalas 
Producing Passioun: Reading Pain Generatively in the Revelations of Love
  

Jo Koster 
The Custom of Our Prayer: Establishing the Context of Julian’s Anchoritic Discourse 

14:00 Panel 2  

MATERIAL AND IMMATERIAL 
Chair: Annie Sutherland 

Fred Morgan 
“But I saw not synne” 

Anna-Nadine Pike 
“dereworthy blod”, Meditation and Performance in Julian of Norwich’s Revelations of Divine Love and British Library, MS Egerton 1821 

Melissa Tu 
“These words seyd our Lord”: Virtual Voices in Julian’s Text 
 

Victoria Yuskaitis 
Julian of Norwich’s Cell: The Role Archaeology Plays in Strengthening Authenticity and Impact 

16:00 Roundtable 1a  (at Pusey House)

CREATIVE ENGAGEMENTS WITH JULIAN 
Moderator: Antje E. Chan 

Max Brumberg-Kraus and Jennifer Awes-Freeman 
“Visions of Divine Love”: A Poetic and Visual Response to Julian’s Revelations 

Caroline Golum 
Creative Engagement with Revelations of Divine Love as Transcendental Cinema 

Laura Varnam 
Voices in Dialogue: Meeting Julian through Margery in Contemporary Creative Adaptations 

16:00 Roundtable 1b (at Pusey House)  

JULIAN IN THE COVID ERA 
Moderator: Hannah Lucas 

Gill Butterworth 
An Icon for Such a Time as This: A Pre-UK First Lockdown Anticipatory Consideration of Julian of Norwich and Pandemic Themes 

Margaret Healy-Varley 
Reading Julian for Resilience 

Richard Norton 
Julian of Norwich, The Church and Covid-19: A Scholarly and Pastoral Response  

17:30 Roundtable 2a   (at Pusey House)

PREMODERN CRITICAL RACE STUDIES AND JULIAN OF NORWICH 
Moderator: Mishtooni Bose  

A conversation between:  

Michelle M. Sauer 

Dorothy Kim 

Bailey Ludwig 

Kyle Moore 

17:30 Roundtable 2b (at Pusey House)

JULIAN AND MODERN CONTEMPLATIVE PRACTICES  
Moderator: Godelinde Gertrude Perk

Carla MacKinnon 
When a Woman Sits Alone: A Creative Project Inspired by Julian of Norwich 

Emma Pennington 
Doorway to Silence: An Analysis of the Use of Julian’s Text by Contemplative Prayer Groups Today 

Claire Foster-Gilbert 
Contemplating Cancer Cells: A Personal Account of Julian’s Companionship Enduring and Writing about Two and a Half Years of Treatment for Myeloma 

Saturday 16th July 

09:00 Panel 3 

MODERN RESPONSES TO JULIAN  
Chair: Alicia Smith 

Laura De Gaspari 
Divine Motherhood in Julian of Norwich and Spiritual Maternity in Edith Stein 

Heather Glover 
Beholding as Interpretive Strategy: Julian of Norwich’s Revelations of Divine Love and Christina Rossetti’s The Face of the Deep 

Simon Horobin 
“A dangerous book”: C.S. Lewis on the Revelations of Julian of Norwich 

Nancy Bradley Warren 
Julian of Norwich: New Visions of Her Lives and Afterlives 

11:00 Panel 4 

TEXTUAL INTERVENTIONS  
Chair: Laura Saetveit Miles 

Samira Lindstedt 
Towards a Grammar of Revelation: Editing and Translating Julian’s Revelations 

Fumiko Yoshikawa
What Do Scribal Corrections Show in Paris, BNF, Fonds Anglais MS 40? 

Brenna Duperron 
Editing Community in the Works of Julian of Norwich  

13:30 Panel 5 

BEYOND THE ANCHORHOLD 
Chair: Nicholas Watson 

Alexis Becker 
Behovely Work 

Laurence Bond 
“With alle the faith of haly kyrke”: Social Meaning and Dissent in the Writings of Julian of Norwich 

David Palko 
Moving Beyond Economics with Julian of Norwich 

Chase Padusniak 
Julian and the Politics of Norwich 

15:30 Panel 6 

WORKING ON / WITH JULIAN 
Chair: Ayoush Lazikani 

Juliana Dresvina  
Julian of Norwich’s Shewings: A Medieval Failure, An Early Modern Success 

Daniel Fishley 
The Weakness of A Revelation: Julian of Norwich, John Caputo, and the Questioning Event of Theology 

Hannah Lucas 
The Good Enough Mystic: Toward a Practical Theory of Julian Scholarship 

Melaney Poli 
How We got “Saint Julian”: A Short History in Images 

17:15 Respondent  

Liz Herbert McAvoy 

18:15-19:30 Play
A darkly humorous play written and performed by Cindy Oswin
‘Cell’ examines the enclosed life of Julian of Norwich into old age.

20:00-21:30 Closing Dinner

Medieval Matters: Week 8

by

13/06/2022

12:11

Comments Off on Medieval Matters: Week 8

News

, ,

Somehow we are now at the final week of the academic year! It seems to have flown by – it feels like only yesterday that I met many of you at the Michaelmas Term Medieval Roadshow. This year we’ve enjoyed the return of in-person seminars, covering topics from late Byzantine Arabic and Persian poetry to St Birgitta of Sweden; a whole range of OMS events ranging from special lectures by Caroline Danforth and Lucy Pick to the Medieval Mystery Plays; and a whole host of exciting events and conferences. A very short but very appropriate piece of wisdom today, taken from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle:

Wurðe ðe god se ende
[May the end be good]

To ensure that this term has a good end, here is the roundup of events that you can enjoy:

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

  • Release of Oxford Research in English Issue 13: Masks. The committee for Oxford Research in English (ORE), the journal of the Faculty of English Language and Literature at the University of Oxford, is pleased to announce the release of its latest issue! This issue has been slightly delayed from Autumn 2021, but we are happy to announce it is now fully published. Its theme was ‘Masks’, and the committee were excited to have so many submissions of such high quality. Please find a copy available for download or online reading at this link. 

EVENTS THIS WEEK:

Monday 13th June:

  • The Oxford Byzantine Graduate Seminar will take place on Zoom at 12.30-2pm. This week’s speaker is Stephanie Forrest (Cambridge), Byzantine-Armenian Doctrinal Discourse in the Period of the Early Islamic Conquests, c. 630-720. To register, please contact the organiser at james.cogbill@worc.ox.ac.uk. Please note that there is no need to register if you have previously subscribed to the seminar mailing list.
  • The Medieval Latin Manuscript Reading Group meets at 1-2pm on Teams. Sign up here for the mailing list to receive details of each week’s sessions: Contact Matthew Holford, Andrew Dunning or Tuija Ainonen for further details.
  • The Medieval History Seminar meets at 5pm at the Wharton Room, All Souls College and online on Teams. This week’s speaker is Alice Taylor (KCL), ‘The Problem of Politics in C12 Europe’. The Teams session can be accessed by logging in to Teams with your .ox.ac.uk account and joining the group “Medieval History Research Seminar” (team code rmppucs). If you have any difficulties please email: medhistsem@history.ox.ac.uk.
  • The Forgotten Christianities Seminar meets at 5pm online. Booking is essential so that you receive the link for the seminar: please click here. This week’s speakers are Dr Peter Miller (Iowa), ‘Learning Ascesis in Three Steps: Training Novices in the Reform Monastic Tradition of the Church of the East‘ and David Gyllenhaal (Princeton), ‘The Rebuke Homily: Collective Trauma and the Christianization of the Syriac Speaking Peasantry‘.

Tuesday 14th June:

  • The Oxford Numismatic Society meets at 5pm. This week is the McKenzie Lecture. For further information please contact the secretary: giorgia.capra@new.ox.ac.uk.
  • The Medieval Church and Culture Seminar meets at 5pm in Warrington Room, Harris Manchester College. This week’s speaker is Ian McDole (Keble), ‘Bruno of Toul or Leo IX? Progressing from bishop to pope‘.

Wednesday 15th June:

  • The Medieval German Seminar meets at 11.15-12.45 in St Edmund Hall in the Principal’s Drawing Room for a presentation by Linus Möllenbrink on his project of Reading Practices. For more information, please email henrike.laehnemann@seh.ox.ac.uk.
  • The Medieval Trade Reading Group meets at 1pm in the Mertze Tate room of the History Faculty and online. Anyone interested in any element of medieval trade and its study are very welcome to join, from any department. To be added to the mailing list and team please email Annabel Hancock at annabel.hancock@history.ox.ac.uk.
  • The Iberian History Seminar takes place at 4.30pm at Rector’s Drawing Room, Exeter College. Today’s speaker will be Rosa Vidal Doval – ‘Tracing the Medieval Genealogies of ‘Limpieza de Sangre’.
  • The Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar meets at 5pm at Ioannou Centre for Classical and Byzantine Studies, 66 St. Giles. This week’s speaker is Ugo Mondini (Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften) – ‘John Mauropous: verse, structure, and poetry book‘.
  • The LIPS: Manuscript Studies Lecture takes place at 5pm at The Senate Room, First Floor, Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU. The speaker will be Sonja Drimmer (University of Massachusetts, Amherst), on “Witness/Copy/Record: Towards an Expansive Manuscript Studies“.

Thursday 16th June:

  • Choral Eucharist for Corpus Christi takes place at 12pm at St Edmund Hall. This lunchtime service in the Crypt of St Peter’s-in-the-East celebrates the Feast of Corpus Christi, instituted in the late Middle Ages to give thanks for the gift of Holy Communion. A consort will sing John Taverner’s Mean Mass for five voices and William Byrd’s Ave Verum Corpus. The service will conclude with a procession from the Crypt to the Chapel and with final Benediction hymns there.
  • The After Rome and Further East Seminar takes place Online. This week’s speaker is Barbara Roggema (CERES), ‘The Abbasid translation movement on the move: Qusta ibn Luqa’s refutation of the inimitability of the Qur’an and his move to Armenia’. Zoom meeting link.

Friday 17th June:

  • The Medievalist Coffee Morning takes place at 10.30pm in the Visiting Scholars Centre in the Weston Library (access via the Readers Entrance on Museum Road: straight ahead and up two floors!). This week, Andrew Dunning and Henrike Lähnemann will present the Bavarian prayerbook manuscript left by Nigel Palmer to the Bodleian Library (which used to have the shelfmark Utopia Armarium codicum bibliophilorum Cod. 1!).

OPPORTUNITIES:

  • Call for papers: Thematic issue “Memory and truthfulness in narratives of conflicts: England and France in the Middle Ages” We invite submissions of articles, translations and reviews. For more information, reach us at fernando.p.santos@unesp.br or Academia.edu (https://unesp.academia.edu/FernandoSantos). Don’t forget to have a look at Brathair (Journal of Celtic and Germanic Studies) (ISSN: 1519-9053) website: https://ppg.revistas.uema.br/…/bra…/announcement/view/72. Call for papers postponed until July, 30th.
  • Job Opening: Editorial Assistant for Studies in Late Antiquity. Studies in Late Antiquity (SLA) is a journal that provides a forum for scholarly research on global Late Antiquity (150 – 750 CE). This field-leading, international journal is published quarterly by University of California Press and is currently operated at Princeton University. We seek an editorial assistant for SLA who will oversee editorial management of the day-to-day operations of the journal. To apply, click: <https://main-princeton.icims.com/jobs/14999/editorial-assistant/job> To learn more about the journal, click: <https://online.ucpress.edu/sla>.

Finally, some timely wisdom from Beowulf about endings:

Ure æghwylc sceal ende gebidan
worolde lifes; wyrce se þe mote
domes ær deaþe.
[Each of us must await the end of life in this world; let him who can achieve glory before death.]

I interpret this to mean that, though term will inevitably end on Friday, we can nonetheless achieve medievalist glory in the meantime by enjoying seminars and events and catching up with our colleagues before we all go our separate ways for the summer! I’ll be back briefly next week with some final announcements / exciting opportunities happening over the summer, but for now, I wish you an enjoyable and ‘glorious’ last week of term.

[A Medievalist shocked and horrified to discover they have reached the end of the term]
Merton College, MS 249, f. 5v.
View image and text in the Taylor Edition by Sebastian Dows-Miller
https://editions.mml.ox.ac.uk/editions/bestiary/#Mustele

Medieval Matters: Week 7

by

06/06/2022

12:15

Comments Off on Medieval Matters: Week 7

News

, ,

Although the weather wasn’t always sunny, this weekend saw much celebration in Oxford, bringing both the platinum jubilee and LGBTQIA+ Pride! In honour of these events I have, of course, been on the look out for some seasonal wisdom. There is plenty of Old English guidance on kingship, but the Instructions for Christians holds some particularly pertinent wisdom on the subject for us as academics:

[Leornunge] geeadmodað eghwylcne kyng,
swilce þone earman eac aræreð

[Learning humbles every king, and likewise raises up the poor]

Though some seminars have now wound down for the summer, we still have plenty of opportunities for leornunge this week which are sure to raise us all up, both in mind and in spirit. Please see below for the weekly schedule:

EVENTS THIS WEEK:

Monday 6th June:

  • The Oxford Byzantine Graduate Seminar will take place on Zoom at 12.30-2pm. This week’s speaker is Natacha Puglisi (KCL), ‘Sanctity in Late Antiquity‘ (exact title TBC). To register, please contact the organiser at james.cogbill@worc.ox.ac.uk. Please note that there is no need to register if you have previously subscribed to the seminar mailing list.
  • The Medieval Latin Manuscript Reading Group meets at 1-2pm on Teams. Sign up here for the mailing list to receive details of each week’s sessions: https://web.maillist.ox.ac.uk/ox/info/medieval-latin-ms-reading. Contact Matthew Holford, Andrew Dunning Tuiija Ainonen for further details.
  • The Medieval History Seminar meets at 5pm at The Wharton Room, All Souls College and online on Teams. This week’s speaker is David d’Avray (UCL), ‘How to do medieval papal (and perhaps most) history’. The Teams session can be accessed by logging in to Teams with your .ox.ac.uk account and joining the group “Medieval History Research Seminar” (team code rmppucs). If you have any difficulties please email: medhistsem@history.ox.ac.uk.

Tuesday 7th June:

  • The Medieval Book Club meets at 3.30-4.30pm at the Old Law Library in Magdalen College. We will be reading on Women Writers: Women’s Letters.
  • The Medieval Church and Culture Seminar meets at 5pm in Warrington Room, Harris Manchester College. This week’s speaker is Scott Moynihan (Pembroke), ‘God Wills It? Crusade and inter-religious diplomacy in the 13th century‘.
  • The Medieval French Research Seminar meets online only at 5.15pm. This week’s speaker will be Domenic Leo (independent researcher): ‘“Authorial Presence” in a Manuscript of Guillaume de Machaut’s Collected Works (Paris, BnF, ms. Fr.1584)’. Please email helen.swift@st-hildas.ox.ac.uk for video-conference link.

Wednesday 8th June:

  • The Medieval German Seminar meets at 11.15-12.45 in St Edmund Hall, Old Library. We are discussing Seuse’s ‘Büchlein der ewigen Weisheit’, this week Nia Moseley-Roberts on Citational Practice in German and Latin and Rebekka Gründel on Women as readers. For more information, please email henrike.laehnemann@seh.ox.ac.uk.
  • Dumbarton Oaks Ukraine Lecture Series: The Cathedral of St. Sophia, Kyiv takes place online at 12-1.30pm. The cathedral of St. Sophia in the historic center of Kyiv dates to ca. 1037 and is one of the most remarkable medieval monuments of Kyivan Rus. This roundtable brings together three scholars who will address the distinctive architectural and decorative features of this impressive monument, as well as its visual and symbolic transformations from the Middle Ages into the present. Speakers: Thomas Dale (University of Wisconsin-Madison), “‘In Heaven or on Earth’: Saint Sophia in Kyiv and the Reinvention of Byzantine Sacred and Palatine Architecture in the Kyivan Rus”; Ioli Kalavrezou (Harvard University), “The Original Mosaic Program of St. Sophia in Kyiv”; and Sofia Korol’ (National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine), “To the History of the Interwar Church Decorations in Galicia: Kyivan Rus’ Images and Motifs (P. Kholodny and M. Osinchuk)”. To register, please click here to visit the website.
  • The Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar meets at 5pm at Ioannou Centre for Classical and Byzantine Studies, 66 St. Giles. This week’s speaker is Arietta Papaconstantinou (University of Reading) – Greek letters from the Arab chancery: who wrote the governors’ missives in eight-century Fusṭāṭ.

Thursday 9th June:

  • The Middle High German Reading Group meets at 10am at Somerville College Productivity Room (Margery Fry). This term’s topic is ‘Maeren’. If you have any questions or want to participate, please send an e-mail to melina.schmidt@lincoln.ox.ac.uk.
  • Oxford Medieval Society Public Lecture: Christine de Pizan: Guilty Feminist? Dr Charlotte Cooper-Davis will give this lecture in the New Seminar Room in St. John’s College, 1-2.30pm. All are very welcome, and please do not hesitate to get in touch with any questions at oxfordmedievalsociety@gmail.com. We look forward to seeing many of you there!
  • The After Rome and Further East Seminar takes place at Trinity College (Levine Auditorium) at 5pm. This week’s speaker is Adrian Pirtea (Universität Wien), ‘Syriac Monastic Networks and the Transfer of Knowledge between the Eastern Mediterranean, Sasanian Iran and Central Asia’. Follow the link to the Zoom meeting.
  • The Old English Reading Group takes place at 5.30pm. For more information and to receive the text in advance email eugenia.vorobeva@jesus.ox.ac.uk.

Friday 10th June:

  • The Medievalist Coffee Morning takes place at 10.30pm in the Visiting Scholars Centre in the Weston Library (access via the Readers Entrance on Museum Road: straight ahead and up two floors!)
  • The Anglo-Norman Reading Group meets at 5pm in Taylorian Room 2 and on Zoom. This term, Luca Crisma (EPHE, Paris) will lead reading of the Anglo-Norman Letter of Prester John. For texts, joining instructions, and further information, please email Stephanie Hathaway or Jane Bliss.
  • Lecture at St Edmund Hall: Dag Nikolaus Hasse (Würzburg University) will speak on ‘What is European? Medieval, Colonial and Postcolonial Perspectives‘ at 5pm in St Edmund Hall Old Library and on Teams. If you would like to participate remotely, please contact Henrike Lähnemann to be added to the teams call.

Finally, in the spirit of Pride, some wisdom contained in a 12th Century lesbian love letter written by a nun, preserved in München Clm 19411:

Revera iuxta quendam sapientem magna miseria est hominis,
cum illo non esse
sine quo non potest esse

[Indeed, as a certain wise person says, it is a great misery for somebody not to be with the person without whom they cannot be.]

May your week be filled with all of the people and learning without whom you cannot be!

[A couple of Medievalists, having had a rather celebratory weekend, take a small break from being raised up by learning to enjoy just ‘being’]
Merton College, MS 249, f. 9v.
View image and text in the Taylor Edition by Sebastian Dows-Miller
https://editions.mml.ox.ac.uk/editions/bestiary/#Colum

Medieval Matters: Week 6

by

30/05/2022

10:40

Comments Off on Medieval Matters: Week 6

News

, ,

June seems to have snuck up on us: already we are fast approaching the end of the academic year! One very nice aspect of this is that the days are getting so much longer and lighter. The Old English Menologium or ‘Metrical Calendar’ tells us that the reason for this is that the sun wishes to spend longer regarding the earth:

Wyle syððan leng
grund behealdan and gangan lator
ofer foldan wang fægerust leohta,
woruldgesceafta.

[Then the fairest of lights and of things in this world wishes to behold the ground longer and go more slowly over the earth]

I interpret this to mean: no matter how busy and important a person might be, it is still important to take a moment to slow down and ponder! Take time this week to ‘behold’ some of the events that we have on offer:

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

  • Save the date: on Thursday 9th June 2022, Dr Charlotte Cooper-Davis will give a lecture entitled “Christine de Pizan: Guilty Feminist?”. The lecture will take place in the New Seminar Room in St. John’s College, 13:00-14.30. All are very welcome, and please do not hesitate to get in touch with any questions at oxfordmedievalsociety@gmail.com. We look forward to seeing many of you there!
  • New Seminar Series: ‘Forgotten Christianities‘ is a seminar series exploring critical theories of identity formation, communal memory, and intellectual exchange. Each session will bring together doctoral students and ERCs from various fields such as history, archaeology, theology, and the social sciences. Spanning Late Antiquity, the early Islamic era, and the Middle Ages, they will provide a diachronic and kaleidoscopic view of these historical communities and their self-representation. Seminars will be held on Zoom. For further details, and to sign up for events in advance, please click here or contact forgottenchristianities@gmail.com.

EVENTS THIS WEEK:

Monday 30th May:

  • The Oxford Byzantine Graduate Seminar will take place on Zoom at 12.30-2pm. This week’s speaker is Luca Farina (Tübingen), ‘Arabo-Greek Astrological Manuscripts: The Vind. Phil. Gr. 115 and Its Anonymous Chapters‘. To register, please contact the organiser at james.cogbill@worc.ox.ac.uk. Please note that there is no need to register if you have previously subscribed to the seminar mailing list.
  • The Medieval Latin Manuscript Reading Group meets at 1-2pm on Teams. Sign up here for the mailing list to receive details of each week’s sessions: Contact Matthew Holford, Andrew Dunning or Tuija Ainonen for further details.
  • The Oxford Medieval Commentary Network meets at 4pm at Lecture Theatre 2, Christ Church. This week’s speaker is Audrey Southgate, ‘Experiments in Openness: Reading the Wycliffite Interpretations of the Psalms’. For further information, email cosima.gillhammer@chch.ox.ac.uk.
  • The Medieval History Seminar meets at 5pm online on Teams. Please note that there is no in-person seminar this week. This week’s speaker is Fanny Bessard (Trinity), ‘Riches and Respect. Baghdad’s robber barons (892-945)’. The Teams session can be accessed by logging in to Teams with your .ox.ac.uk account and joining the group “Medieval History Research Seminar” (team code rmppucs). If you have any difficulties please email: medhistsem@history.ox.ac.uk.

Tuesday 31st May:

  • The Oxford Numismatic Society meets at 5pm. This week’s speaker is Dr. Elena Baldi – works on Ostrogothic coinage, title TBC. For further information please contact the secretary: giorgia.capra@new.ox.ac.uk.
  • The Medieval Church and Culture Seminar meets at 5pm in Warrington Room, Harris Manchester College. This week’s speakers are Diana Myers (St Benet’s Hall), ‘Gendered authority in the Barking Abbey Ordinal (Oxford, Univ. Coll. MS 169)‘ and Barbara Pinto De Almeida Lima (Wolfson), ‘Sexual Agency and Violence: the construction of female sexuality in the 13thc pastourelle‘.

Wednesday 1st June:

  • There is no meeting of the Medieval German Seminar.
  • The Medieval Trade Reading Group meets at 1pm in the Mertze Tate room of the History Faculty and online. Anyone interested in any element of medieval trade and its study are very welcome to join, from any department. To be added to the mailing list and team please email Annabel Hancock at annabel.hancock@history.ox.ac.uk.
  • The Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar meets at 5pm at Ioannou Centre for Classical and Byzantine Studies, 66 St. Giles. This week’s speaker is Ine Jacobs (University of Oxford), ‘The Byzantine Dark Ages at Aphrodisias‘.
  • The Medieval English Research Seminar meets at 5.15pm in Lecture Theatre 2, Faculty of English. This week’s speaker will be Vincent Gillespie (University of Oxford), ‘Preaching to the choir: a sceptical look at English Carthusian transmission of vernacular spiritual writings’ (chaired by Laura Ashe). For further information, contact daniel.wakelin@ell.ox.ac.uk.

Thursday 2nd June:

  • The Middle High German Reading Group meets at 10am at Somerville College Productivity Room (Margery Fry). This term’s topic is ‘Maeren’. If you have any questions or want to participate, please send an e-mail to melina.schmidt@lincoln.ox.ac.uk.
  • The Greek and Latin Reading Group meets at 4pm in Harold Wilson Room, Jesus College – meet at Jesus lodge. This week’s text is Lucian, The Dream (or, the Cock) 18-19. Contact John Colley or Jenyth Evans to be added to the mailing list.
  • The After Rome and Further East Seminar takes place at Trinity College (Levine Auditorium). This week’s speaker is Alberto Riggolio (Durham), ‘Towards a History of Syriac Rhetoric in Late Antiquity’. Zoom meeting link.

Friday 3rd June:

  • Because of the bank holiday, there will be no Medievalists Coffee Morning this week. But do return next week when Chris Fletcher has promised we will be shown one very recent  acquisition and one which had been ‘hiding in plain sight’ for almost 100 years and is effectively new! 

OPPORTUNITIES:

  • CFP: The Great Medieval Feast, c.1050-1500: We ask for paper submissions covering topics on European feasting cultures and practices between c.1050–c.1500. These include papers that cover works or portrayals of courts outside Europe, but have some basis in European literature, art, or practice. Please send abstracts of up to 250 words to thegreatmedievalfeast@gmail.com. Paper presentations should last 20-minutes. Papers can cover material from any language, but sources not in English should be presented with translations. Presenters can be at any stage in their career; we particularly welcome early career researchers. For full details please see the full CFP here.

Finally, for days when it isn’t as sunny, some wisdom on a more metaphorical kind of light:

Wisdom is leoht wera æghwilcum
to habbanne her on weoruldæ.
[Wisdom is a light for all to have here in this world]

Of course, I hope that you get to enjoy the light of wisdom and of the sun this week!

[A very busy Medievalist carves out a little time for themselves]
Merton College, MS 249, f. 8v.
View image and text in the Taylor Edition by Sebastian Dows-Miller
https://editions.mml.ox.ac.uk/editions/bestiary/#Fenix

Medieval Matters: Week 5

by

23/05/2022

11:38

Comments Off on Medieval Matters: Week 5

News

, ,

We are now half way through Trinity Term! Though it is one of the busiest times of year, we also get to enjoy how beautiful Oxford looks in the sunshine. The fact that everything just looks better in the summer is acknowledged in the Old English Seafarer:

Bearwas blostmum nimað, byrig fægriað,
wongas wlitigað

[The groves begin blossoming, the cities grow fair, the plains become beautiful]

Even if it’s not sunny outside, we can still enjoy some nature today: if you would like a break from work, New College Library has a one-day exhibition in lecture room 4 from 11-4pm, showing rare books and manuscripts from the library’s fabulous collections relating to Botany and Zoology, including a 13th-century manuscript of Pliny’s Historia naturalis! Though not all of our offerings this week are so nature-inspired, they will nonetheless bring plenty of joy, and make Oxford feel brighter, whether you’re frantically finishing your MSt dissertation or marking exams:

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

  • Registration open: Oxford conference on Julian of Norwich. “New Visions of Julian of Norwich” is a conference which will take place at Somerville College, Oxford, on Friday 15th-Saturday 16th July 2022, bringing together old and new voices on the work of the medieval visionary, theologian, and writer Julian of Norwich. The conference is organized by Antje E. Chan (Lincoln College, Oxford), Godelinde Gertrude Perk (Somerville, Oxford), Raphaela Rohrhofer (Somerville, Oxford), Alicia Smith (English Faculty, Oxford). To see the programme, please visit the conference website here. Click here to book: in-person bookings available till 29th June, online bookings open till 11th July.
  • The Faculty of History and Oxford Medieval Studies are pleased to invite you to an informal meet and greet coffee morning with William Chester Jordan (Professor of Medieval History, Princeton University) on the occasion of his reception of an honorary degree of the University of Oxford, on Thursday 23rd June, 10.30am-12 noon, at the garden of Harris Manchester College. For catering purposes, please register your attendance here by 14th June. NB: Bill Jordan’s lecture for OMS “A Thirteenth-Century Polymath Considers the Jews” from last year is available to watch online.
  • Small grants are open once again! Send in 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.
  • Postponed: Oxford Medieval Commentary Network Lecture Series. Due to speaker illness the convenors have had to postpone the next lecture, originally planned for 23 May. They will aim to reschedule this for another week later this term. The lecture series will continue on 30 May (Week 6), 4pm, with Audrey Southgate’s lecture on ‘Experiments in Openness: Reading the Wycliffite Interpretations of the Psalms’.

EVENTS THIS WEEK:

Monday 23rd May:

  • Botany and Zoology Treasures of New College Library: As part of New College Library’s series of subject-themed exhibitions, on Monday, 23 May we shall have on display for you rare books and manuscripts from the library’s fabulous collections relating to Botany and Zoology. From 11 am till 4 pm on Monday in New College’s Lecture Room 4, we shall be exhibiting for you—with explanatory captions—some of our Botany and Zoology treasures. Please do come along—and enjoy our exhibition.
  • The Oxford Byzantine Graduate Seminar will take place on Zoom at 12.30-2pm. This week’s speaker is Tiffany VanWinkoop (Wisconsin-Madison), ‘Blueprints of Power: Roman Statecraft and Politics in Konstantinos VII’s ‘Book of Ceremonies’. To register, please contact the organiser at james.cogbill@worc.ox.ac.uk. Please note that there is no need to register if you have previously subscribed to the seminar mailing list.
  • The Medieval Latin Manuscript Reading Group meets at 1-2pm on Teams. Sign up here for the mailing list to receive details of each week’s sessions: https://web.maillist.ox.ac.uk/ox/info/medieval-latin-ms-reading. Contact Matthew Holford, Andrew Dunning Tuiija Ainonen for further details.
  • The Medieval History Seminar meets at 5pm at The Wharton Room, All Souls College and online on Teams. This week’s speaker is Giles Gasper (Durham), ‘Comets, Elements, and Pastoral Care: Framing Medieval Science in Collaborative Working’. The Teams session can be accessed by logging in to Teams with your .ox.ac.uk account and joining the group “Medieval History Research Seminar” (team code rmppucs). If you have any difficulties please email: medhistsem@history.ox.ac.uk.

Tuesday 24th May:

  • The Medieval Book Club meets at 3.30-4.30pm at the Old Law Library in Magdalen College. We will be reading on Women Writers: Medical and Scientific.
  • The Medieval Church and Culture Seminar meets at 5pm in Warrington Room, Harris Manchester College. This week’s speakers are Catriona Dowden (Oriel), ‘The Mappa Mundi and Medieval Visions of Pilgrimage‘, Kelli Anderson (Somerville), ‘The Gate to Heaven: the use of spiralling strigillations as a framing technique in early medieval art & architecture‘, and Gabrielle Samra (St John’s), ‘Anthropophagous Predation: An Examination of the Middle English Richard Coer de Lyon in the Framework of Medieval Anti-Jewish Blood Libels‘. Please note that the line-up has slightly changed due to speaker illness last week.

Wednesday 25th May:

  • The Medieval German Seminar meets at 11.15-12.45 in St Edmund Hall, Old Library. We are going to discuss Seuse’s ‘Büchlein der ewigen Weisheit’, this week Anna Wilmore will introduce Suso as mystical troubadour. For more information, please email henrike.laehnemann@seh.ox.ac.uk.
  • The Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar meets at 5pm at Ioannou Centre for Classical and Byzantine Studies, 66 St. Giles. This week’s speaker is Priscilla Ralli (French school of Archaeology, Athens) – ‘Architecture and Sculpture in the Early Byzantine Peloponnese: Defining a Regional Context’.
  • The Medieval English Research Seminar meets at 5.15pm in Lecture Theatre 2, Faculty of English. This week’s speaker will be Helen Barr, Cosima Gillhammer, Vincent Gillespie, Elizabeth Solopova and Annie Sutherland, ‘On the work of the late Anne Hudson (1938-2021)’ (chaired by Kantik Ghosh). For further information, contact daniel.wakelin@ell.ox.ac.uk.

Thursday 26th May:

  • The Middle High German Reading Group meets at 10am at Somerville College Productivity Room (Margery Fry). This term’s topic is ‘Maeren’. If you have any questions or want to participate, please send an e-mail to melina.schmidt@lincoln.ox.ac.uk.
  • Marriages, Unmarriages, and Subjectivities: A Roundtable Discussion with Professors Sara McDougall and Hannah Skoda. The Oxford Medieval Society invites all interested parties to attend the event on Thursday 26th May at 1-2.30, 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.
  • The Greek and Latin Reading Group meets at 4pm in Harold Wilson Room, Jesus College – meet at Jesus lodge. This week’s text is Ovid, Heroides 10.1-59. Contact John Colley or Jenyth Evans to be added to the mailing list.
  • The After Rome and Further East Seminar takes place at Trinity College (Levine Room 5) at 5pm. This week’s speaker is Lucy Parker (Oxford) ‘Holy Men and the End of Antiquity’. Follow the link to the Zoom meeting.
  • The Old English Reading Group takes place at 5.30pm. For more information and to receive the text in advance email eugenia.vorobeva@jesus.ox.ac.uk.

Friday 27th May:

  • The Medievalist Coffee Morning takes place at 10.30pm in the Visiting Scholars Centre in the Weston Library (access via the Readers Entrance on Museum Road: straight ahead and up two floors!)
  • The Anglo-Norman Reading Group meets at 5pm in Taylorian Room 2 and on Zoom. This term, Luca Crisma (EPHE, Paris) will lead reading of the Anglo-Norman Letter of Prester John. For texts, joining instructions, and further information, please email Stephanie Hathaway or Jane Bliss.

OPPORTUNITIES:

  • The Society for Medieval Archaeology Annual Conference is taking place next month in Oxford AND online. From June 24-26, the Society for Medieval Archaeology annual conference will bring together an international group of scholars at Rewley House, Oxford to talk about early medieval migrations, present new DNA data and discuss how such data should be interpreted in terms of the wider cultural implications of migration and mobility. Please visit the following page for more details.
  • PGR/ECR Scholarships to attend the Harlaxton Medieval Symposium: Applications for the Dobson Scholarships are welcome until Tuesday 31st May. These cover conference fees for two PGRs or ECRs working on any aspect of medieval death and dying, and are an excellent opportunity for emerging historians to meet academics and experts and to share their research. Even if you are not eligible for the scholarships, please do pass on the information to anyone you think might be interested: for full information, click here.
  • This year’s conference organised by the Society for the Study of the Crusades and the Latin East (SSCLE) will be held at Royal Holloway, University of London, from 27 June to 1 July 2022. It will feature a large number of exciting papers detailing the latest research being carried out by scholars of crusading and the Latin East, with several plenary presentations by international historians, as well as a trip to medieval sites and plenty of opportunities to meet other scholars. You can attend the conference in person (in Egham, UK) or online. Find out more about this event by visiting sscleconference.com and click here to register.
  • Two Associate Lectureships in Art History pre-1800 at the University of St Andrews for semester one (1 September to 15 January). The deadline is 27 May (next Friday) and the details are here: https://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/CPM132/associate-lecturer-in-art-history-pre-1800-aoac1807rxnb.

Finally, some further wisdom on good weather from Maxims I:

Seoc se biþ þe to seldan ieteð þeah hine mon on sunnan læde,
ne mæg he be þy wedre wesan

[The one who eats too seldom will be sick; although someone should lead him into the sun, he cannot exist on the weather]

I take this to mean: we must enjoy the good weather, but not be too tempted to sit in the parks all day long and forget to do any work! I hope that your week is filled with sun and intellectual nourishment.

[A Medievalist enjoying the sun in uni parks]
Merton College, MS 249, f. 7v.
View image and text in the Taylor Edition by Sebastian Dows-Miller
https://editions.mml.ox.ac.uk/editions/bestiary/#Onager