Category: events

Medieval Matters HT25, Week 5

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16/02/2025

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Call for Papers, events, Medieval Matters, News, opportunities

Week 5 rolls around – stave off the blues with an extensive course of medieval events. The full booklet, as always, can be found here.

Events

Monday

  • French Palaeography Manuscript Reading Group – 10.30am in the Weston Library. Those interested should email Laure Miolo.
  • Seminar in Palaeography and Manuscript studies – 2.15 in the Horton Room, Weston Library. Jo Edge will be speaking on ‘Working with divinatory texts and manuscripts’.
  • Medieval History Seminar – 5pm at All Souls College. Michael Eber (Oxford/Cologne) will be speaking on ‘Re- and mis-gendering St Marina*us in high medieval Italy’.

Tuesday

  • Europe in the Later Middle Ages – 2pm, Dolphin Seminar Room, St John’s College. Aleksander Parón (Warsaw) will be speaking on ‘Nomads or ‘Nomads’? Considerations on
  • the Mode of Life of Medieval Populations of the European Steppe’. This meeting is online, but will take place at the normal time in the Dolphin Room.
  • The Latin Palaeography Reading Group meets 2-3.30pm. Please email Laure Miolo for more information.
  • Medieval Church and Culture –  5pm in the Wellbeloved Room. Teresa Barucci (Magdalen) will be speaking on ‘European Vernaculars at the Medieval University of Paris’.
  • Medieval French Research Seminar – 5pm in the Maison française d’Oxford. Mary Franklin-Brown, (University of Cambridge) will be speaking on ‘Oath, Song, and the Making of Community in Medieval France’.
  • CMTC “Work in Progress” colloquium – 5:15pm in the Memorial Room, The Queen’s College.
  • Lectures of Medieval Poetry – time and place TBD (email organiser). Ramunė Markevičiūtė (Freie University of Berlin) will be speaking.

Wednesday

  • Medieval German Graduate Seminar on ‘Geistliche Spiele’ – 11.15am in the Old Library of St Edmund Hall. Contact Henrike Lähnemann if you would like to be added to the teams group.
  • History and Materiality of the Book – 2pm in the Visiting Scholars Centre. Matthew Holford will be speaking on ‘Manuscript Structures’.
  • Medieval Latin Document Reading Group – 4pm, online, please contact Michael Stansfield.
  • Oxford University Numismatics Society – 4pm in the Ioannou Centre/Faculty of Classics’ Lecture Theatre. Dr. Mike Shott (Oxford): “Cuneator ad Rex; Quid tibi vis hic..?”. Design features in the Long Cross issues of Henry III; a research project’.
  • Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar – 5pm in the Ioannou Centre. Olivia Ramble (Oxford) will be speaking on ‘Of Scripts and Scribes: Investigating Practices of Writing in Late Antique Iran’.
  • Slade Lecture Series – 5pm at St John’s College. ‘Gaps in Origins’. Check this page for recordings or to check whether places have become available.
  • Medieval English Research Seminar – 5.15pm, Lecture Theatre 2, St. Cross Building. Amy Faulkner (UCL) will be speaking on ‘Expecting the Worst: Beowulf and the End Times’.
  • Principal’s Research Seminar at St Hilda’s College – 5.30pm, the Pavilion, St Hilda’s College. Professor Wakelin’s title is ‘The everyday creatives’. For more information and to book click on link. All are welcome.

Thursday

  • Medieval Anglo-Jewish Texts and History – 9:30 am – 5.00 pm, Catherine Lewis Lecture Theatre (Clarendon Institute). This group convenes once a term to read together unpublished Hebrew and Latin documents from Medieval England as sources for the history of the Jews before the expulsion of 1290.
  • Medieval Hebrew Reading Group – 10am in the Clarendon Institute.
  • Magna Carta 1225: New Discoveries & Repercussions – 12pm in the Blackwell Hall, Weston Library. Dean Irwin will be speaking on ‘Magna Carta and Jewish communities’.
  • Middle English Reading Group – 4pm, Beckington Room, Lincoln College. The text this term will be the ‘double sorwe’ of Troilus and Criseyde.
  • Germanic Reading Group ‒ 4pm on Teams. Extracts from Chaucer showing switches between London and Northern dialects (Simon Horobin leading). Please contact Howard Jones to request the handout and to be added to the list.
  • Ford Lecture – 5pm in the Examination Schools. Jocelyn Wogan-Browne will be giving the fifh of her lectures, titled ‘“Lette Frenchmen in their Frenche endyten”(Thomas Usk, c.1384-87): French in the Multilingual Fourteenth Century;.
  • The Khalili Research Centre For the Art and Material Culture of the Middle East: Research Seminar – 5.15pm in the in the Ioannou Centre/Faculty of Classics’ Lecture Theatre. Umberto Bongianino (The Khalili Research Centre) will be speaking on ‘The Pink Qurʾān: a reverse biography’.

Friday

  • The Human Remains Digital Library (HRDL) Launch – 10am online. More information here.
  • Medievalists Coffee Morning – 10.30am at the Weston Library. All welcome, coffee and insight into special collections provided. This week, Alyssa Steiner (BL) will speak on the extensive Ship of Fools collection of Francis Douce.
  • Exploring Medieval Oxford through Lincoln & Magdalen Archives – 2pm in the EPA Centre (Museum Road) Seminar room 1. Please contact Laure Miolo for more information.
  • Medieval Manuscripts Support Group – 2pm in the Horton Room. Come along or contact Matthew Holford in beforehand if you have a manuscript to discuss!
  • Old Frisian Taster Session – 2pm in the Taylor Library, room 2. Johanneke Sytsema will be speaking on ‘Strong Verbs Across English, Frisian, Dutch, Low German, High German, an introduction to the crucial place of Frisian in the history of Germanic Languages’.
  • Oxford Medieval Manuscripts Group – 5pm. This week, the group will be visiting the The Queen’s College Library.
  • Anglo-Norman Reading Group – 5pm in the Farmington Institute in Harris Manchester College and online. For more information on the texts, email Jane Bliss.
  • “The Jewish Recipes in a 13th C Andalusian Cookbook” by Hélène Jawhara Piñer will be on Zoom at 5 pm Wednesday 19 February. Event details and the link to register is here.

Opportunities

  • CfP for ‘lluminating Nature: Explorations of Science, Religion, and Magic’ (21-22 July 2025 at the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Durham Castle).
  • Register for ‘History, Eugenics, and Human Enhancement: How the Past Can Inform Ethical Debates in the Present’ (24 March 2025, 9am – 5.30pm).
  • Register now for the workshop on 21st March From Jean le Bon to Good Duke Humphrey to celebrate the arrival of the French New Testament which was recently recognised to have been owned by Humfrey, duke of Gloucester. The event is free (including tea and coffee).
  • ‘Transcribing Old and Middle French (1300-1500)’ – a short online course from the University of London, 10th-11th March. More info here.
  • CfP for the 35th International Conference of the Spanish Society for Medieval English Language and Literature (University of Málaga, 24th-26th September 2025). More info here.
  • Registration for the conference Byzantium and its Environment – 27th International Graduate Conference of the Oxford University Byzantine Society on 1/2 March now open
  • For all Graduate Students (Master & DPhil): fully funded Wolfenbüttel Summer School on Late Medieval Manuscripts (in English). Apply by the end of February. Call for Papers the Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel
  • The Ashmolean is looking for a University Engagement Lead. This is a parttime fixed term role to research and possibly pilot opportunities for University Engagement. This is a good role for someone that knows the students in Oxford and is looking at a parttime role – and, obviously, loves museum collections! Full job description 
  • The CfP for the ‘Sorrowful Virgin’ is now closed; contact Anna Wilmore if you missed the deadline or simply would like to take place in the workshop at St Hughs, 24 March 2025
  • CfP for ‘Outsiders – Insiders’ (University of Reading), 2nd April 2025
  • OMS Small Grants are no lo open for applicationsnger – deadline was Friday of 4th Week. If you missed it, contact Lesley Smith.

CMTC presents — “Work in Progress” Colloquium

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13/02/2025

06:42

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Around Oxford, events

The Centre for Manuscript and Text Cultures’ Hilary Term ‘Work-in-Progress’ colloquium – Tuesday 18th February (5.15-6.45pm, the Memorial Room at Queen’s) 

The CMTC is delighted to be hosting the following speakers: 

Dr Riccardo Montalto (Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II): From manuscripts to history: The reconstruction of the Greek manuscript library of Achilles Statius (1524-1581)

Achilles Statius was a Portuguese humanist active in Rome in the second half of the sixteenth century. Committed to editorial and propaganda activities and, in particular, in the edition of the texts of the Fathers of the Greek Church, Statius set up one of the largest private libraries in Renaissance Rome, peculiar for its size and intellectual value. Starting from the material data detectable from the manuscripts, compared with the data available from different sources – primarily historical, archival and library science – the research aims to reconstruct a part of Achilles Statius’s library and to identify some methods and working practices of the late Renaissance humanists.

Holly Dempster-Edwards (University of Liverpool): Emotions, Gender and Crusading in Fifteenth-Century Burgundian Prose Epics and Chronicles

This paper will give an overview of my PhD thesis, which examines the social function of emotions at the fifteenth-century court of Duke Philip the Good of Burgundy (r. 1419-1467). My methodology is based on that of the historian Barbara Rosenwein, whose concept of ‘emotional communities’ has been highly influential within Medieval Studies. My study is based on emotion words in three Burgundian mises en prose Les Croniques et Conquestes de Charlemaine by David Aubert, La Belle Hélène de Constantinople by Jehan Wauquelin, and Mabrien (attrib. Aubert). I have built on Rosenwein’s framework by employing quantitative analysis of the gendered and ‘racial-religious’ distribution of emotions within each text, alongside qualitative textual analysis and examination of text-image relations. This paper demonstrates how emotions have a social function within this specific emotional community of Burgundian knights and would-be crusaders in response to the Fall of Constantinople in 1453, and how these texts function as literary propaganda which presents itself as didactic; in so doing they attempt to achieve their more subtle aim of maintaining emotion norms within the context of Burgundian chivalric masculinity, hoping to persuade Philip’s courtiers to go on crusade with him in response to the defeat of Constantinople by the Ottoman Turks.

From the archive

Tuesday the 13th of February 2024, 5.15–6.45pm UK time Centre for Manuscript and Text Cultures

Memorial Room, The Queen’s College    

1. A. D’Angelo (Rome ‘Sapienza’), ‘Catullan marginalia in the 16th century: the books of Piero Vettori’. 

The Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in Munich preserves three printed editions of Catullus’ Liber with marginal notes by Piero Vettori (1499-1585). This important scholar edited dozens of Classical authors, but never published anything on Catullus: thus, these books are the main extant evidence of his work on this poet. The notes contain variant readings, original conjectures and loci similes, and they offer new insights on Vettori’s philological method and his library. Through these marginalia, I will try to point out Vettori’s main interests in Catullus’ poetry and the sources he used for his Catullan studies.

2. Marlene Schilling (Oxford), ‘A special form of devotion – personifications of time in late medieval prayer books from Northern Germany’.  

Addressing liturgical holidays, for example welcoming Mr Easterday, is a particular characteristic of late medieval vernacular prayer-books from North German female convents. They highlight a distinct form of poetics, because describing and interacting with specific points in time – personifying them – allows an intercommunication with the divine that conveys a certain form of agency to the speaker. In this paper, we explore the particular type of prayer-books these personifications are found in, talk about their material indicators within the text, and think about the special role of the prayer-books from the Cistercian convent Medingen within this distinct manuscript landscape.

Medieval Matters HT25, Week 4

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09/02/2025

17:29

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Call for Papers, events, Medieval Matters, News, opportunities

Welcome to Week 4. Please find below the events and opportunities for this week: the full booklet, as always, can be found here. A reminder: the deadline for the OMS Small Grants scheme is this friday – don’t miss out!

Events

Monday

  • French Palaeography Manuscript Reading Group – 10.30am in the Weston Library. Those interested should email Laure Miolo.
  • Seminar in Palaeography and Manuscript studies – CANCELLED
  • Medieval Archaeology Seminar – Institute of Archaeology Lecture Room, 3pm. Wendy Scott will be speaking on ‘The Lenborough hoard’.
  • Medieval History Seminar – 5pm at All Souls College. Ian Haynes (Newcastle/All Souls) will be speaking on ‘Visualising the Lateran Patriarchium: Recent research by the Rome Transformed Project’
  • Centre for Reception History of the Bible Lecture – 5pm at Trinity College. Rachel Cresswell will be speaking on ‘Quoting Scripture with Anselm of Canterbury: Anselm’s Bible and Why it Matters’.
  • Old Norse Reading Group – 5.30, English Faculty Graduate Common Room. This term we will be reading Hrafnkels saga.

Tuesday

  • The Latin Palaeography Reading Group meets 2-3.30pm. Please email Laure Miolo for more information.
  • Europe in the Later Middle Ages – 2pm in the Dolphin Seminar Room, St John’s College. Caitlin John (UCL) will be speaking on ‘Moving Between the City and the Cemetery: Funerary Processions in Late Medieval Cairo and Paris’.
  • Medieval Church and Culture –  5.15pm (coffee from 5pm) in the Wellbeloved Room, Harris Machester College. Emily Guerry (St Peter’s) 11 will be speaking on ‘Gauthier Cornut and the Invention of the Cult of the Crown of Thorns in Paris’.

Wednesday

  • Medieval German Graduate Seminar on ‘Geistliche Spiele’ – 11.15am in the Old Library of St Edmund Hall, on the Mühlhauser St. Katharinenspiel and other topics. Contact Henrike Lähnemann if you would like to be added to the teams group
  • History and Materiality of the Book Seminar – 2pm in the Weston Library, Horton room. Martin Kauffmann will be speaking on ‘Decoration’.
  • Medieval Latin Document Reading Group – 4pm, online.
  • Brepols are running a short online webinar introducing their International Medieval Bibliography, on the 12th Feb at 4pm. This is a great chance to get to grips with this useful resource, and is especially recommended for MSt/ MPhil students.
  • Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar – 5pm in the Ioannou Centre. Jonathan Shepard (Oxford) will be speaking on ‘Soft Power, Old and New: Debating the Byzantine Commonwealth’.
  • Slade Lecture Series – 5pm at St John’s College. ‘Gaps in Space’. Book a place.
  • Medieval English Research Seminar – 5.15pm, Lecture Theatre 2, St. Cross Building. James Sargan (University of Georgia) will be speaking on ‘Reading Early Middle English Books’.

Thursday

  • Medieval Hebrew Reading Group – 10am in the Clarendon Institute.
  • Middle English Reading Group – 4pm, Beckington Room, Lincoln College. The text this term will be the ‘double sorwe’ of Troilus and Criseyde.
  • Ford Lecture – 5pm in the Examination Schools. Jocelyn Wogan-Browne will be giving the fourth of her lectures: ‘That each may in his own tongue … know his God’ (Grosseteste, in French, 1230s): Bible Translation in Medieval England’.
  • Medieval Visual Culture Seminar – 5pm at St Catherine’s College. Anne-Orange Poilpré (Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne) will be speaking on ‘Figuring the Body of Christ inside the Word of God: Carolingian Gospel Books and their Images’.
  • The Khalili Research Centre For the Art and Material Culture of the Middle East: Research Seminar – 5.15pm in the in the Ioannou Centre/Faculty of Classics’ Lecture Theatre. Anna McSweeney (Trinity College Dublin) will be speaking on ‘Making medieval Spain: carpentry practices in Nasrid Granada and the Alhambra.
  • Celtic Seminary – 5.15pm online. Iwan Edgar will be speaking on ‘Llysieulyfr Salesbury ac enwau planhigion cysylltiedig 1400–1700’.

Friday

  • Medievalists Coffee Morning – 10.30am at the Weston Library. All welcome, coffee and insight into special collections provided. As a Valentine’s Day special, Niko Kontovas will present queer love in poems from Persian and other Eastern manuscripts, not to be missed!
  • Exploring Medieval Oxford through Lincoln & Magdalen Archives – 2pm in the EPA Centre (Museum Road) Seminar room 1. Please contact Laure Miolo for more information.
  • Oxford Medieval Manuscript Group – 5pm online. Reading Group: Interpretation and Meaning.

For your Calendar

  • “The Jewish Recipes in a 13th C Andalusian Cookbook” by Hélène Jawhara Piñer will be on Zoom at 5 pm Wednesday 19 February. Event details and the link to register is here.

Opportunities

From Jean le Bon to Good Duke Humfrey: a new manuscript witness to Anglo-French cultural exchange

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09/02/2025

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Friday 21 March 2025 11am–5pm

The Bodleian Libraries have recently acquired a previously unknown manuscript from the library of Humfrey Duke of Gloucester. First written and illuminated in Paris towards the end of the 13th century, the manuscript is an early example of the translation of the New Testament into French. Owned by Jean le Bon, King of France, in the middle of the 14th century, by the early 15th it was in England and came into the hands of a series of Lancastrian royal princes. This symposium provides a first opportunity to explore this outstanding arrival and to point the way for future research. Coffee and tea will be provided. This symposium will be followed by a drinks reception in Blackwell Hall.

Speakers:

  • David Rundle, University of Kent
  • Emily Guerry, University of Oxford
  • Daron Burrows, University of Oxford
  • Laure Rioust, Bibliothèque nationale de France
  • Laure Miolo, University of Oxford
  • Jean-Patrice Boudet, Université d’Orléans

Book a place here

Title image: Bodleian Library, MS. Duke Humfrey c. 1, fols. 72v-73r.


CfP: SELIM 35

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09/02/2025

09:56

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Call for Papers, events

,

The 35th International Conference of the Spanish Society for Medieval English Language and Literature (SELIM 35) will be hosted by the Department of English at the University of Málaga, 24th-26th September 2025. There is a long-standing link of SELIM to Oxford since offer Bruce Mitchell Award for early-career scholars which honours the memory of Dr Bruce Michell (1920–2010), a distinguished scholar of Old English, his long-enduring contribution to the field of medieval English language and literature and active involvement with the Society’s activities and journal in their early decades.

As in previous SELIM conferences, SELIM 35 will have four thematic panels accepting proposals on any topic related to any aspect of linguistic and literary research on Old and Middle English:

PanelPanel coordinatorContact
Old English Literature and CultureFrancisco Rozano-Garcíafrozg@unileon.es
Old English Language and LinguisticsEsaúl Ruiz Narbonaernarbona@us.es
Middle English Literature and CultureAndoni Cossio Garridoandoni.cossio@ehu.eus 
Middle English Language and LinguisticsMarta Pacheco Francomartapacheco@uma.es

Scholars interested in offering 20-minute presentations (followed by a 10-minute discussion) must send a 300-word abstract (excluding references) in electronic format (please use this MSWord template) to the panel coordinator before 30 March 2025. Acceptance of proposals will be confirmed by 15 April 2025. References should comply with the latest APA format (7th edition). Should you have any doubts regarding panel adscription, please send your proposal to the Organising Committee at selim35@uma.es.

Important dates
Proposal submission: 30 March 2025
Notification of acceptance: 15 April 2025
Registration (early bird): 16 April – 15 June 2025
Registration (regular): 16 June – 12 September 2025
Conference dates: 24 – 26 September 2025

For further information please contact the organizing committee at selim35@uma.es.

Medieval Matters H25, Week 3

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02/02/2025

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events, Medieval Matters, News

, ,

The sun is out (for how long remains unclear), and third week is upon us. Please find below the events and opportunities for this week: the full booklet, as always, can be found here. Let me draw your particular attention to Brepols’ upcoming webinar introducing their International Medieval Bibliography (12th Feb at 4pm, see below). There is still time to sign up for the Medieval Mystery Plays on 26 April – just contact Antonia Anstatt and Sarah Ware who are finalising the list of plays this week!

Events

Monday

  • French Palaeography Manuscript Reading Group – 10.30am in the Weston Library. Those interested should email Laure Miolo.
  • Medieval History Seminar – 5pm at All Souls College. Alice Rio (KCL) will be speaking on ‘Twelve Migrant Women and the History of Early Medieval Europe’

Tuesday

  • Old Norse Seminar – 12.15 in the English Faculty’s History of the Book room. Ela Sefcikova (Berlin) will be speaking on ‘læ, lygð and slǿgð: Loki in Old Norse Literature’. The seminar will be followed by a sandwich lunch in the Graduate Common.
  • The Latin Palaeography Reading Group meets 2-3.30pm. Please email Laure Miolo for more information.
  • Medieval Church and Culture –  5pm in the Horton Room, Weston Library (NB. change of location! orginal manuscripts will be shown!) Lesley Smith (HMC) will be speaking on ‘The Repair Shop: How We Took Apart a Manuscript of Henry VIII and How We Put it Back Together’.
  • Medieval French Research Seminar – 5pm in the Maison française d’Oxford. Chimene Bateman, University of Oxford will be speaking on ‘Flight, Founding and Foreignness in the Roman d’Eneas’,

Wednesday

  • Medieval German Graduate Seminar on ‘Geistliche Spiele’ on the ‘Eisenacher Zehn-Jungfrauenspiel’ with Rebecca Schleuß – 11.15am in the Old Library of St Edmund Hall. Contact Henrike Lähnemann if you would like to be added to the teams group
  • History and Materiality of the Book Seminar – 2pm in the Weston Library, Horton room. Julia Bearman and Robert Minte will be speaking on ‘Inks and Pigments’.
  • Medieval Latin Document Reading Group – 4pm, online, please contact Michael Stansfield.
  • Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar – 5pm in the Ioannou Centre. Dan Gallaher (Oxford), ‘Beyond a Boundary: Armenia and Byzantium in the Ninth Century’
  • Slade Lecture Series – 5pm at St John’s College. ‘Gaps in Images’. Check this page for recordings or to check whether places have become available.
  • Medieval English Research Seminar – 5.15pm, Lecture Theatre 2, St. Cross Building. Marilina Cesario (Queen’s University, Belfast) will be speaking on ‘The windsele in Christ and Satan: Demonic Winds in Medieval Literature’.

Thursday

  • Medieval Hebrew Reading Group – 10am in the Clarendon Institute.
  • Middle English Reading Group – 4pm, Beckington Room, Lincoln College. The text this term will be the ‘double sorwe’ of Troilus and Criseyde.
  • Germanic Reading Group ‒ 4pm on Teams. Speaking names in Werner’s ‘Helmbrecht’ and Hugo von Trimberg’s ‘Der Renner’ with Bradley G. Weiss (Texas). Please contact Howard Jones to request the handout and to be added to the list.
  • Ford Lecture – 5pm in the Examination Schools. Jocelyn Wogan-Browne will be giving the third of her lectures, titled ‘Expansions: ‘Everyone knows that French is better understood and more widely used than Latin’: Matthew Paris (in French, 1253×59).
  • Seminars in Medieval and Renaissance Music – 5pm on Zoom. James Tomlinson (University of Oslo) will be speaking on ‘A Reassessment of Cambridge, Gonville and Caius College, MS 512/543 and its Implications for the Production and Transmission of Polyphony in Late Medieval England’.
  • The Khalili Research Centre For the Art and Material Culture of the Middle East: Research Seminar – 5.15pm in the in the Ioannou Centre/Faculty of Classics’ Lecture Theatre. Tuğrul Acar (Harvard University) will be speaking on ‘Enacting the Divine Love and Remembering the Dervish-Sultan Murad II: the Inscriptions of the Muradiye Mevlevi Lodge in Edirne (1435–36)’.

Friday

  • Medievalists Coffee Morning – 10.30am at the Weston Library. All welcome, coffee and insight into special collections provided. This week, Alyssa Steiner (BL) will speak on the extensive Ship of Fools collection of Francis Douce.
  • Exploring Medieval Oxford through Lincoln & Magdalen Archives – 2pm in the EPA Centre (Museum Road) Seminar room 1. Please contact Laure Miolo for more information.
  • Medieval Manuscripts Support Group – 2pm in the Horton Room. Come along or contact Matthew Holford in beforehand if you have a manuscript to discuss!
  • Oxford Medieval Manuscripts Group – 3pm. This week, the group will be visiting the The Queen’s College Library.
  • Anglo-Norman Reading Group – 5pm in the Farmington Institute in Harris Manchester College and online. For more information on the texts, email Jane Bliss.

Upcoming

  • Brepols are running a short online webinar introducing their International Medieval Bibliography, on the 12th Feb at 4pm. This is a great chance to get to grips with this useful resource, and is especially recommended for MSt/ MPhil students.
  • “The Jewish Recipes in a 13th C Andalusian Cookbook” by Hélène Jawhara Piñer will be on Zoom at 5 pm Wednesday 19 February. Event details and the link to register is here.

Opportunities

Medieval Matters HT25, Week 2

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26/01/2025

15:06

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events, Medieval Matters, News, opportunities

Welcome to Week 2. As always, we have an impressive set of medieval events for you to enjoy this week. A brief outline is provided below, but the full booklet can be found here. There is still time to sign up for the Medieval Mystery Plays on 26 April – just contact Antonia Anstatt and Sarah Ware.

Of particular note: the Centre for Early Medieval Britain and Ireland are running a trip to visit the British Museum’s Silk Road exhibition (Friday 21st February, 8pm). You can find a link to sign up for the trip here.

Events

Monday

  • French Palaeography Manuscript Reading Group – 10.30am in the Weston Library. Those interested should email Laure Miolo.
  • Seminar in Palaeography and Manuscript studies – Weston Library, Horton Room, 2.15-3.45pm. Julia King will be speaking on ‘Manuscripts In and Out of Syon Abbey’.
  • Medieval Archaeology Seminar – Institute of Archaeology Lecture Room, 3pm. John Dinges will be speaking on ‘Moulding Emotions: Later Medieval Badges in England and Wales’.
  • Medieval History Seminar – 5pm at All Souls College. Nora Berend (Cambridge) will be speaking on ‘Stephen I of Hungary: Medieval Myths and Modern Nationalism’.
  • Old Norse Reading Group – 5.30, English Faculty Graduate Common Room. This term we will be reading Hrafnkels saga.

Tuesday

  • The Latin Palaeography Reading Group meets 2-3.30pm. Please email Laure Miolo for more information.
  • Medieval Church and Culture –  5.15pm (coffee from 5pm) in the Wellbeloved Room, Harris Machester College. Bee Jones will be speaking on ‘Bernard’s Barbarians: Bernard of Clairvaux, Malachy of Armagh, and Discourses of Irish Barbarism’.
  • Early modern diplomacy, 1400-1800 seminar is CANCELLED.

Wednesday

  • Medieval German Graduate Seminar on ‘Geistliche Spiele’ – 11.15am in the Old Library of St Edmund Hall. Contact Henrike Lähnemann if you would like to be added to the teams group
  • History and Materiality of the Book Seminar – 2pm in the Weston Library, Horton room. Andrew Honey will be speaking on ‘Writing supports (parchment and paper) and Bindings’.
  • Medieval Latin Document Reading Group – 4pm, online.
  • Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar – 5pm in the Ioannou Centre. Phil Booth (Oxford) will be speaking on ‘John of Ephesus: Historian on the Edge’.
  • Slade Lecture Series – 5pm at St John’s College. ‘Gaps in Archives’. Book a place.
  • Medieval English Research Seminar – 5.15pm, Lecture Theatre 2, St. Cross Building. Tamara Atkin (Oxford) will be speaking on ‘On Fragments: The Material and Textual Value of Manuscript and Print Binding Waste’.

Thursday

  • Medieval Hebrew Reading Group – 10am in the Clarendon Institute.
  • EMBI Lunch and Launch – 12.30pm–2pm: Massey Room, Balliol College. Sign up here.
  • Greek and Latin Reading Group – 2.30pm in the Stapledon Room, Exeter College. The theme this week is Lucian’s A True History.
  • Middle English Reading Group – 4pm, Beckington Room, Lincoln College. The text this term will be the ‘double sorwe’ of Troilus and Criseyde.
  • Ford Lecture – 5pm in the Examination Schools. Jocelyn Wogan-Browne will be giving the second of her lectures: ‘Langue des reines: The Importance of Women to French and French to Women.’
  • The Khalili Research Centre For the Art and Material Culture of the Middle East: Research Seminar – 5.15pm in the in the Ioannou Centre/Faculty of Classics’ Lecture Theatre. Beatrice Spampinato (Kunsthistorisches Institut, Florence) will be speaking on ‘Anatolian Language Carved in Stone: Reading the Qalls of Ani across Christian and Islamic Visual Cultures’.
  • Celtic Seminary – 5.15pm online. Abdul-Azim Ahmed (Cardiff) will be speaking on ‘The story of Islam in Wales: Findings from the Islam in Wales History Project’.

Friday

  • Medievalists Coffee Morning – 10.30am at the Weston Library. All welcome, coffee and insight into special collections provided.
  • Magna Carta 1225: New Discoveries & Repercussions – 1pm, Blackwell Hall, Weston Library. Nicholas Vincent will be speaking on ‘Magna Carta: New Discoveries’.
  • Exploring Medieval Oxford through Lincoln & Magdalen Archives – 2pm in the EPA Centre (Museum Road) Seminar room 1. Please contact Laure Miolo for more information.

Opportunities

  • Sign up link for Dr Daisy Black’s medieval storytelling event in week 7: Yde and Olive (Wednesday 5th March, 7pm, the chapel at University College): all welcome.
  • CfP: ‘Always Here: Non-Binary Gender, Trans Identities, and Queerness in the Global Middle Ages (c. 250–1650’ – October 24 – 25. More information can be found here.
  • For all Graduate Students (Master & DPhil): fully funded Wolfenbüttel Summer School on Late Medieval Manuscripts (in English). Apply by the end of February. Call for Papers the Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel
  • The Ashmolean is looking for a University Engagement Lead. This is a parttime fixed term role to research and possibly pilot opportunities for University Engagement. This is a good role for someone that knows the students in Oxford and is looking at a parttime role – and, obviously, loves museum collections! Full job description 
  • CfP for the ‘Sorrowful Virgin’ workshop at St Hughs, 24 March 2025
  • CfP for ‘Outsiders – Insiders’ (University of Reading), 2nd April 2025
  • OMS Small Grants are open for applications – deadline Friday of 4th Week

Medieval Matters HT25, Wk1

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19/01/2025

14:17

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Call for Papers, events, Medieval Matters, News, opportunities, Uncategorized

Welcome back to a new term. I hope you’ve all had a chance to look through the OMS termly booklet, the most recent version in full colour glory can be found here. We’ve had a number of important updates since the booklet was last circulated, so do have a look back through. New additions include:

Of particular note this term are the Ford Lectures (Thursday, 5pm, Examination Schools). Jocelyn Wogan-Browne will be giving a lecture series titled French in Medieval Britain: Cultural Politics and Social History, c. 1100-c. 1500. I look forward to seeing many of you there.

Events

Monday

  • French Palaeography Manuscript Reading Group – 10.30am in the Weston Library. Those interested should email Laure Miolo.
  • Medieval History Seminar – 5pm at All Souls College. Christian Sahner (New Coll/AMES) will be speaking on ‘A History of Mountains in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages: North Africa, Syria, and Iran’.

Tuesday

  • Medieval Afterlives Season Workshop – 1pm – 4pm (lunch from 12.30) in the 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. RSVP to culturalprogramme@humanities.ox.ac.uk
  • The Latin Palaeography Reading Group meets 2-3.30pm. Please email Laure Miolo for more information.
  • Ancient and Medieval Seminar – 4.30pm, location tbc. Vladimir Olivero (Harvard) will be speaking on ‘From Jerusalem, through Alexandria, to the Caucasus: observations on the translation technique in the Armenian Psalter’.
  • Medieval Church and Culture –  5.15pm (coffee from 5pm) in the Wellbeloved Room, Harris Machester College. Mark Williams (SEH) will be speaking on ‘Magic and its Implications in some early 12th-century Welsh Prose Narratives’.

Wednesday

  • Medieval German Graduate Seminar on ‘Geistliche Spiele’ – 11.15am in the Old Library of St Edmund Hall. This week will be a short planning meeting. Contact Henrike Lähnemann if you would like to be added to the teams group
  • History and Materiality of the Book Seminar – 2pm in the Weston Library, Horton room. Matthew Holford will be talking about ‘Manuscript Structures’.
  • Medieval Latin Document Reading Group – 4pm, online.
  • Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar – 5pm in the Ioannou Centre. Kevin Blachford (King’s College London & Defence Academy) will be speaking on ‘World Order in Late Antiquity: The “Two Eyes” Rivalry of Byzantium and Sasanian Persia’.
  • Slade Lecture Series – 5pm at St John’s College. ‘Gaps in Writing’. Book a place.
  • Medieval English Research Seminar – 5.15pm, Lecture Theatre 2, St. Cross Building. Alice Jorgensen (TCD) will be speaking on ‘The Old English Apollonius of Tyre and the Name of the Father’.

Thursday

  • Medieval Hebrew Reading Group – 10am in the Clarendon Institute.
  • Greek and Latin Reading Group – 2.30pm in the Stapledon Room, Exeter College. The theme this week is Cicero’s Dream of Scipio (De Re Publica 6.9).
  • Middle English Reading Group – 4pm, Beckington Room, Lincoln College. The text this term will be the ‘double sorwe’ of Troilus and Criseyde.
  • Ford Lecture – 5pm in the Examination Schools. Jocelyn Wogan-Browne will be giving the first of her lectures: ‘“Alle mine thegenas … frencisce & englisce”: The Languages of 1066 – And All That’.
  • The Khalili Research Centre For the Art and Material Culture of the Middle East: Research Seminar – 5.15pm in the in the Ioannou Centre/Faculty of Classics’ Lecture Theatre. Michael Erdman (The British Library) will be speaking on ‘Reintegrating the Empire: taking an expansive view towards “Ottoman” collections’.

Friday

  • Medievalists Coffee Morning – 10.30am at the Weston Library. All welcome, coffee and insight into special collections provided.
  • Exploring Medieval Oxford through Lincoln & Magdalen Archives – 2pm in the EPA Centre (Museum Road) Seminar room 1. Please contact Laure Miolo for more information.
  • Oxford Medieval Manuscripts Group – 3pm. This week, the group will be visiting the Balliol Historical Collections Centre. Previous experience of handling medieval manuscripts is desirable. Limited places, write to Elena Lichmanova by 22/01/2025
  • Anglo-Norman Reading Group – 5pm in the Farmington Institute in Harris Manchester College and online. For more information on the texts, email Jane Bliss.

Opportunities

Old Frisian Summer School 2025

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13/01/2025

16:42

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events, opportunities

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The Oxford/Groningen 2025 Old Frisian Summer School (OFSS25) will take place in Groningen (Netherlands), 7th-11th July. This will be a fun way to learn Old Frisian in a week, to view original Old Frisian manuscripts and to see the world heritage landscape of old Frisian ‘terps’ or dwelling mounds.

OFSS25 : Old Frisian : A Gem within the OId Germanic Languages.

The OFSS25 should be of special interest to students (UG and PG) and Early Career Researchers of Old English, Old Norse, Old High German or Gothic who are interested in learning Old Frisian. You will be taught grammar and practice translation in hands-on workshops. Invited speakers will give lectures by on the Old Frisian text corpus and history to provide historical and cultural context. Library visits to view the manuscripts are on the programme and a tour around the ‘terps’ will be organised on 12th July.

Further info: https://www.rug.nl/education/summer-winter-schools/old-frisian/

Questions?? Attend as a taster session a lecture by Johanneke Sytsema (as part of Henrike Lähnemann’s lecture series ‘Topics in Historical Linguistics’) on Strong Verbs Across English, Frisian, Dutch, Low German, High German, an introduction to the crucial place of Frisian in the history of Germanic Languages. Watch the recording from the Taylor Library, room 2, Friday week 5 (21 Feb), 2–3pm

For more information, email Johanneke Sytsema on oldfrisian@ling-phil.ox.ac.uk

You can find more information on the blog post for the Old Frisian Summer School 2023

Introductory Lecture as part of the series Topics in German Historical Linguistics