Category: events

1 Comment on Conference and Exhibition on Medieval to Early Modern Anglo-Dutch Relations

22/11/2021

11:06

Registration required

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CONFERENCE: The Literature and History of Anglo-Dutch Relations, Medieval to Early Modern

6 January 2022, 1.00 PM – 8 January 2022, 6.00 PM
Bodleian Library, University of Oxford

Contacts between English and Dutch speakers had a profound impact on the literary landscape and book culture of England and the Low Countries. This conference crosses conventional chronological, linguistic, geographical and disciplinary boundaries to explore the cultural history of relations between English and Dutch speakers, from the Norman Conquest through to the Reformation. Bringing together literary scholars and historians, it aims to join up evidence of literary exchange with new insights into the experiences of migration, conflict, political alliances, and trade that made this literary exchange possible. The conference will reinvigorate traditional approaches to literary influence by contextualising it in the historical conditions that brought speakers of Dutch and English into contact with each other and by taking into account the range of languages (Dutch, English, French, and Latin) in which their communications and literary production in manuscript and early print took shape over this period.

In-person attendance: £35.00

Online attendance: £0.00

Full event information

EXHIBITION: North Sea Crossings: Anglo-Dutch Books and the Adventures of Reynard the Fox

3 December 2021–18 April 2022
The Weston Library, Bodleian Libraries, Oxford

North Sea Crossings, a new exhibition at the Bodleian Libraries, will trace the long history of Anglo-Dutch relations. Focusing on the period from the Norman Conquest in 1066 to the Glorious Revolution of 1688, items from the Bodleian Libraries’ collections will illustrate the ways in which these exchanges have shaped literature, book production and institutions such as the Bodleian itself, on either side of the North Sea, inviting visitors to reflect on the way this cultural exchange still impacts British and Dutch societies today.

Free admission, no booking required.

The book accompanying the exhibition, by Sjoerd Levelt and Ad Putter, is now available.

A modern retelling of Reynard the Foxby Anne Louise Avery, based on William Caxton’s 1481 English translation of the Middle Dutch, is also available.

EXHIBITION OPENING EVENT: North Sea Crossings virtual panel

2 December 2021, 5-6.30PM
Online

Join us for a livestream panel discussion to mark the opening of our winter exhibition North Sea Crossings: Anglo-Dutch Books and the Adventures of Reynard the Fox. The exhibition tells the story of Anglo-Dutch exchanges through beautiful medieval manuscripts, early prints, maps, animal stories and other treasures from the Bodleian’s collections.

Join our panel discussion which celebrates a special relationship which has lasted over 900 years. Watch our expert panel explore the historical as well as the broader context of Anglo-Dutch relations in politics, art, literature, and modern life.

The discussion will be streamed on this page and on our YouTube channel.

Call for Papers: New Visions of Julian of Norwich

4 Comments on Call for Papers: New Visions of Julian of Norwich

15/11/2021

10:48

Around Oxford, events, opportunities

call for papers, cfp, conference

Somerville College, Oxford, 15^th and 16^th July 2022
Organisers: Antje Chan (Lincoln College, Oxford), Dr Godelinde Gertrude Perk (Somerville, Oxford), Raphaela Rohrhofer (Somerville, Oxford), Alicia Smith (English Faculty, Oxford).

In May 1373, Julian of Norwich (c.1343‒ after 1416) received a series of visions that engage with the mysteries of the divine-human relationship, inspiring the composition of A Vision Showed to a Devout Woman and, decades later, its revision, A Revelation of Love, now recognised as one of the most important texts in the medieval contemplative tradition and Middle English literature. Both have attracted numerous interpretations as visionary as Julian’s work itself, focusing on the significance of anchoritic enclosure, the radical originality of her vernacular theology, the historical and codicological context, as well as potential textual influences. Recent scholarship has explored Julian’s role in the global Middle Ages, her treatment of health, and her ecological poetics. Her texts have also sparked investigations of the role of materiality and provocative encounters between Julian and queer and trans theory.

This international hybrid conference will be the first academic event to focus solely on Julian’s writing, life, contexts, and influence long after her death. It seeks to consider the plurality of approaches towards her work’s interpretation and forge novel pathways of discussing the anchoress both in her own context and in the many scholarly and popular guises of her cultural afterlife. Aimed at established and early-career researchers alike, this interdisciplinary conference will bring together scholars from various disciplines to map out new and emerging dimensions in Julian scholarship. It will interrogate received assumptions and re-evaluate traditional disciplinary methodologies.

In addition to academic work on Julian’s writing, this conference also seeks to reach out of academe in responding to pastoral and contemplative engagement with her texts, particularly in the light of the pandemic. Two roundtables will bring lived religious practices and critical responses into dialogue. Creative explorations will also help invigorate Julian studies. We look forward to hosting Cindy Oswin’s one-woman play “Cell” about the anchorite as an older woman, and to showing a recording of the 2021 Oxford reconstruction of the medieval rite of enclosure held at St. Mary the Virgin, Iffley.

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 invite papers from any or multiple disciplines and deploying a wide range of methodologies, focusing on all aspects of Julian’s writing, life, contexts, or afterlife. We especially encourage proposals from graduate students and early-career researchers.

Possible themes include but are not limited to:

Emerging approaches to Julian’s texts
Illness, health, and disability
Visual and material culture
Queer, genderqueer, and trans theory approaches
Julian’s wider intellectual and cultural contexts; e.g., Revelation and Vision in the movements of church reform across Europe during and after the western schism, or against the backdrop of continental vernacular literature
Interdisciplinary approaches to Julian
Julian and apocalypse
Vision and Revelation as literary landmarks in medieval and post-medieval literature
Conversations with well and lesser-known vernacular visionaries and theologians in the British Isles, on the Continent, and beyond
The history of emotions
Life-writing
Creative engagement with Vision and Revelation: poetic, dramatic, visual arts
Ecological concerns and themes
Issues of materiality, space, and embodiment in Vision and Revelation

We also welcome proposals for contributions to the two roundtables. Potential topics include:

Retrieving Julian’s writings to renew contemplative and spiritual practices
Vision and Revelation and the pandemic moment
Julian as a voice for the voiceless
Julian beyond the academy: contemplative practices, popular imagery, political uses

Please submit abstracts (up to 300 words) for a 15-minute paper or 10-minute round table contribution, accompanied by a short biography, to julianofnorwichconference@gmail.com by 1 February 2022.

In light of the pandemic, this conference will be a hybrid event combining in-person and online papers. We plan to stream the in-person papers live where possible for online attendees.

Reduced registration will be offered for postgraduate students and unwaged delegates. In addition, some travel bursaries for postgrads and unwaged delegates may be available.

This conference is part of “Women Making Memories: Liturgy and the Remembering Female Body in Medieval Holy Women’s Texts”, Dr Perk’s MSCA-IF project at the Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages at the University of Oxford. This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 842443.

Online Conference: British Archaeological Association Postgraduate Conference, 24–25 November 2021

1 Comment on Online Conference: British Archaeological Association Postgraduate Conference, 24–25 November 2021

09/11/2021

17:57

conference, events, michaelmas 21, postgraduate

The British Archaeological Association are excited to present a diverse conference which includes postgraduates and early career researchers in the fields of medieval history of art, architecture, and archaeology. This postgraduate conference offers an opportunity for research students at all levels from universities across the UK and abroad to present their research and exchange ideas.
Register for the conference here: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZMtd-2urzMtGtII4nZmnWgWYGx7g9uBG886

Conference programme

Wednesday 24th November 2021

1:00–1:10 pm (GMT) — Welcome

Space, Place, and Language in Medieval Architecture

1:10–2:30 pm (GMT)

Paro Tomar (Jawaharlal Nehru University)

Mosque Building By Artisanal Communities in Western India – Thirteenth to Seventeenth Centuries C.E

Alfie Robinson (University of York)

‘Like, or Better’: Building Contracts and Late-Medieval Perceptions of Quality in Architecture

Michele Guida Conte (Independent Scholar)

Liturgical spaces in Vicentine churches between the 13th and the 15th centuries

2:30–2:45 pm (GMT) — Break

Marginalised Communities

2:45–3.45 pm (GMT)

Aitor Boada-Benito (Complutense University, Madrid)

Natural landscape and Christian communities in the Sasanian Empire: How martyrs and environment developed a religious identity

Sophie Johnson (University of Bristol)

Marginalised in medieval Europe: the underrepresentation of women artists in the history of medieval art

3:45–4:00 pm (GMT) — Break

Materiality and Devotion

4:00–5:20 pm (GMT)

Emily Fu (University of Edinburgh)

Real Presences: Late Medieval Wood Sculpted Crucifixions

Soyoung Joo (Courtauld Institute of Art)

Flaying and Identity c.1500: Skin as Text, Surface, and Clothing

Andy Earnshaw (Oxford University)

Her Final Gift: Revealing Cultural Memory and Emotion in a 12th Century Jet Cross from St John’s Priory, Pontefract

5:20 pm (GMT) — End

Thursday 25th November 2021

1:00–1:10 pm (GMT) — Welcome back

Materiality, Memory, and Identity

1:10–2:10 pm (GMT)

Dr Ellora Bennett (Independent Scholar)

One will die young’: Juvenile weapon burials and processing loss in early medieval England

Dr Julia Faiers (University of St Andrews)

Bishop Louis d’Amboise and the invisible tomb: constructing piety in Albi cathedral

2:10–2:20 pm (GMT) — Break

Iconography and Devotion

2:20–3.20 pm (GMT)

Wiktoria Muryn (University of Glasgow)

Holy (Mis)conceptions: Late Medieval Depictions of the Visitation Featuring the Occupied Womb and their Female Monastic Audience

Daria Melnikov (Queen’s University)

The Guthlac Roll: Artwork and Model Book, circa 1200–1300

3:20–3:30 pm (GMT) — Break

The Building and the City

3:30–4:30 pm (GMT)

Francesca Rognoni & Filippo Gemelli (IUAV – University of Venice and Università degli studi di Pavia)

The Use of Westbau in Medieval Architecture in Central Italy: new data for the façade of Ascoli Cathedral

Dr Rafia Khan (Nirma University, Ahmedabad)

Monument and Monumentality in the Medieval Islamic City: Perspectives from the City and Province of Chanderi

4:30pm (GMT) — Closing remarks

Find out more here.

Centre for Manuscript and Text Cultures at Queen’s: “Christian Ethiopian and Eritrean manuscript culture”

1 Comment on Centre for Manuscript and Text Cultures at Queen’s: “Christian Ethiopian and Eritrean manuscript culture”

09/11/2021

12:13

events, lecture, michaelmas 21, seminar

Please join us for an online talk hosted by the Centre for Manuscript and Text Cultures at The Queen’s College in the University of Oxford. Our centre promotes inter-disciplinary discussion among scholars and students interested in manuscripts and material culture in the premodern world. So your participation is most welcome regardless of your field of specialty.

We are meeting on Zoom on Wednesday 17th November at 5,00-7,00pm (UK time).

Alessandro Bausi (African/Ethiopian Studies, University of Hamburg)

“Christian Ethiopian and Eritrean manuscript culture”

This paper aims at providing non-Ethiopianists with an overview of the development of textual studies in Christian Ethiopian and Eritrean manuscript culture thanks to some new research trends from the last few years. These trends—based on the new manuscript evidence that has been collected and analysed by digitisation and cataloguing projects over several decades—have now started impacting mainstream studies, particularly on late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, and have contributed to reconfiguring the civilisation of Aksum and of its later mediaeval incarnations within a much wider context. Ultimately, these findings provide a deeper understanding of the dynamics of preservation, recovery, and loss in the later Ethiopian and Eritrean tradition.

Here is a link to the sign-up form. Attendance is free of charge but sign-up is mandatory. We will send a Zoom link to all participants on Monday next week (15th November). If you cannot access Google Forms please sign up by sending an email to gabriele.rota@queens.ox.ac.uk.

Environmental History Working Group

1 Comment on Environmental History Working Group

08/11/2021

11:33

michaelmas 21, working group

We are organising a couple of informal meetings this term for those interested in studying the past in ways that recognise the interactions and interconnectedness of animals, plants, humans, other beings, and the environment. This will be a space to talk about exciting developments in our field, interdisciplinary conversations, and new ideas and approaches. Discussion will be informal, and we encourage anyone at all interested in these kinds of approaches to come along, regardless of research specialism or presumed existing knowledge. Undergraduates are also welcome, particularly if they are considering a dissertation or further study in this area.

The first meeting will take place at 12.30-2.00pm on 11^th November at St Catherine’s College, in Seminar Room 2.2. If you are interested in getting involved, please get in touch with susannah.bain@history.ox.ac.uk and huw.jones@history.ox.ac.uk.

Workshop: Body, Gender, Purity, and Sexual Pleasure: Biblical and Medieval Models

1 Comment on Workshop: Body, Gender, Purity, and Sexual Pleasure: Biblical and Medieval Models

03/11/2021

19:55

1 Comment on (11 Nov 2021) Syon’s Abbesses, women’s leadership and book networks in fifteenth-centurry England

events, michaelmas 21, workshop

Friday November 19th 13.00-14.30

Location: St John’s College, New Seminar Room

In medieval Europe, Jews and Christians put some of the same cultural resources (the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament) to different uses. Stereotypes abound here: Judaism is seen to be preoccupied with ritual pollution, Christianity with moral purity; Judaism is anxious about food, but celebrates marital sex. Christianity has fewer food laws, but many more anxieties about sexual activity—and about the body as a potential source of sin. All of these dichotomic assumptions invite renewed critical scrutiny—especially in a comparative framework—and a re-consideration of the biblical directives both cultures were grappling with.

This workshop brings together expertise from the early, central, and late Middle Ages (respectively, Conrad Leyser, Neta Bodner, and Alice Raw), in conversation with Laura Quick’s expertise in the Hebrew Bible. Participants are invited to read with us to question how the body was treated, even used, as a vehicle for “correct” piety in ways that both differ and intersect across the Middle Ages.

Spaces are limited to 30 participants; please sign up here: https://forms.gle/n6nvcCC4Us9C7R398

(11 Nov 2021) Syon’s Abbesses, women’s leadership and book networks in fifteenth-centurry England

by Eva Neufeind

03/11/2021

19:50

When? – Thursday, 11 November 2021 at 5:15 pm (BTS)

Where? – T.S. Eliot Theatre, Merton College

This event will also be streamed via ZOOM; for the link please contact sarah.cusk@lincoln.ox.ac.uk

Syon Abbey is well known for its extensive libraries and its close relationships with London printers and late-medieval nobility. Julia King argues that the Syon Abbesses played a much more active role in the development of Syon’s social and bibliographical networks than has been previously allowed, telling a story of women’s agency and leadership at England’s only Birgittine monastery.

CFP: Adapting Violence in/from Classic Texts

26/10/2021

10:58

Comments Off on CFP: Adapting Violence in/from Classic Texts

events, opportunities

cfp, conference, Hilary 21, workshop

A 2-day online workshop to be held 24–25 March 2022, organised by Amy Brown (University of Bern) and Lucy Fleming (University of Oxford). This interdisciplinary event brings together specialists in literature, retelling, and feminist practice to consider how adaptations address various forms of violence in and from their canonical source-texts. Sources and adaptations examined may be in any language, though the workshop will be conducted primarily in English. Please submit proposals for 20-minute conference papers and/or text workshops online or via adaptingviolence@gmail.com. The deadline for submissions is 15 December 2021; we welcome papers from faculty members as well as postgraduates and early-career researchers. The workshop is supported by the University of Bern Fund for Promotion of Young Researchers. Attendance is free.

Plenary Sessions:

Urvashi Chakravarty (University of Toronto), Keynote Speaker
Maria Sachiko Cecire (Bard College), Plenary Respondent
Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni (University of Houston), Author Talk
Round Table on violence in adaptations (TBA)

Proposal Portal:

Due by 15 Dec 2021. For proposals we ask for a title, a 200 word abstract, and for ‘Text explorations’ an excerpt or description of the media you’ll share. Please submit online through our proposal portal – but if you have any problems, email us ( adaptingviolence@gmail.com ). Do note that the responses cannot be saved to return to later – you’ll want to draft your abstract somewhere else and paste it in.

Rationale:

Jyotika Virdi (2006) described the feminist creator seeking to represent rape in film as caught between a ‘rock and a hard place’’—that is, between the ethical call to represent oppressive reality, and the risk that representing violence may perpetuate harm. Similar concerns underlie the representation—in film, literary retellings, and other forms of adaptation—of racial violence, homophobia and transpohbia, and graphic physical violence, all of which are common in works held in high esteem for their literary and/or cultural value. Violence in these ‘classic’ works thus becomes a flashpoint for social, political, and creative tensions. In response, adaptations may reify violence in these texts, or critique it; they may represent violence in the name of fidelity, or seek to reclaim the text. Both adaptors and scholars must grapple with difficult questions: When is violence in adaptation important or useful? When is it negligent or even harmful? What uses does violence serve when adapting culturally prestigious texts, and how is these texts’ very prestige linked to the violence they contain?

This two-day, online workshop will bring together specialists in the contemporary adaptation of ‘classic texts’ and adaptation as a premodern cultural practice to consider what concerns shape the reception and re-visioning of violence. We will explore the stakes involved in adaptation, and the uses and abuses of violence in adapting texts of high cultural value.

We define ‘violence’ broadly, including both physical violence and social oppressions, and are interested in considering adaptation strategies across and in reaction to different axes of power, including but not limited to race, gender, and sexuality. In this workshop we seek to bring together scholars working on adaptations (any period) of ‘high status cultural texts’, where the source texts predate 1865. Those texts religious, mythological, artistic and historical source-texts as well as literary forms, and adaptations may be in widely varying media. These source-texts need not derive from any particular language, region, or literary tradition; rather, we aim to feature studies from a wide range of cultural contexts and time periods, to approach our central questions from many varied perspectives. In asking what it means to (re-)write violence, potential papers could address:

Case studies grappling with the ethics of rewritten violence;
Applying a lens of feminist theory, queer studies, violence studies, trauma studies or other interdisciplinary modes to ‘classic’ texts;
Retellings or adaptations that challenge contemporary/contemporaneous ideas of violence;
Retellings for particular or unusual audiences or readerships;
The canonization of works containing violence;
How adaptations and retellings relate to ‘real-world’ violence;
The act of adaptation as a form of violence;
Rewritings of violence that are radical, liberating, and even empowering acts.

Workshop Format:

This workshop will be entirely online, with both synchronous and asynchronous participation options possible. Given the nature of global online conferences we anticipate that many participants will alternate between synchronous and asynchronous participation depending on their location, work and/or family commitments, accessibility needs, and other considerations. Some material will be uploaded and professionally captioned in advance; plenary sessions will be recorded, professionally captioned, and uploaded after the fact. Still other sessions will be unrecorded.

Further Information:

For full details, please visit the workshop website.

Symposium: English Perceptions of the Material Text 1300-1600

1 Comment on Symposium: English Perceptions of the Material Text 1300-1600

24/10/2021

16:29

https://forms.gle/VZFr1qRuw1Xem7z47

conference, events, michaelmas 21, oxford, symposium

A free, three day online symposium organised by Dr J.R. Mattison and Eleanor Baker, 9th-11th December 2021.

To register, please follow this link and fill in your details:

If you have any questions, please contact

medieval.text.perceptions@gmail.com

PROGRAMME:

Thursday 9th December:

Making Material Texts

8:00am (PCT)/ 10.00am (CDT)/ 4:00pm (GMT)/ 5.00pm (CET)

Making Manuscripts in the Twenty-First Century: Filling the Gaps in Medieval Recipes

Sara Charles (Institute of English Studies, University of London)

Imagining Medieval Colours: Blue Colour Terms in Cambridge, Trinity College, MS O.9.3

Maryann Pierse (Independent Scholar)

Sheepskins and the Law in Early Modern London

Lily Freeman-Jones (Queen Mary, University of London)

Devotion and Material Texts

9:15am (PCT)/ 11:15am (CDT)/ 5:15pm (GMT)/ 6:15pm (CET)

Lomen to tilde wið þe heorte’: Utility and the Idea of the Book in Ancrene Wisse

Nia Moseley-Roberts (Jesus College, University of Oxford)

‘The fourtenth lefe of thys register’: Channelling Devotional Power at Syon Abbey

Julia King (University of Bergen)

William Caxton and the Creation of Fifteenth-Century English Devotional Canon

Elizabeth Perry (Texas A&M University)

Authors and Material Texts

10:30am (PCT)/ 12:30pm (CDT)/ 6:30pm (GMT)/ 7:30pm (CET)

Ovid’s ‘Best Line’: Medieval Responses to the Heroides

Rebecca Menmuir (Queen Mary, University of London)

Passing the Buke in Late Medieval Dream Poetry: The Case of Gavin Douglas’s Palice of Honour

Laurie Atkinson (Durham University)

The Imagery of Writing in the First Plantagenet Court

Joyce Coleman (University of Oklahoma)

Friday 10th December:

Buying, Selling, and Owning Material Texts

8:00am (PCT)/ 10.00am (CDT)/ 4:00pm (GMT)/ 5.00pm (CET)

Second-hand Books

Hannah Ryley (Balliol College, University of Oxford)

Shifting Perceptions of the Library in Late Medieval Durham

J.D. Sargan (Durham University)

Buying and Selling Books Around St Paul’s Cathedral: ‘Be Dishonest, and tell Lies’

Benjamin King-Cox (Independent Scholar)

Displaying Material Texts

9:15am (PCT)/ 11:15am (CDT)/ 5:15pm (GMT)/ 6:15pm (CET)

“I labour upon a Cobwebbe”: Writing on Display in Early Modern England

Grace Murray (University of York)

Taking Stock: William Caxton’s Manuscripts and the Idea of English Readership

Lindsey Jones (Texas A&M University)

The Material Forms of Lydgate’s Testament

Niall Summers (Trinity College, University of Oxford)

Saturday 11th December:

Material Texts in Flux

8:00am (PCT)/ 10.00am (CDT)/ 4:00pm (GMT)/ 5.00pm (CET)

‘Bind this to her’: The Use of Material Texts in English Childbirth, 1400-1540

Róisín Donohoe (University of Cambridge)

‘And som all ther eynke sched,/And som ther bokes rent’: Ripping, Tearing, and Splitting in the Comic Tale Jack and his Stepdame

Hannah Bower (University of Cambridge)

Chaos Under Control: Introduction to the Problematics of the Expression of Chaos in Medieval Manuscripts from England

Adrienn Orosz (Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest)

Imagining Material Texts

9:15am (PCT)/ 11:15am (CDT)/ 5:15pm (GMT)/ 6:15pm (CET)

The Unequal Powers of Speech and Text: English Charms, 1350-1500

Katherine Storm Hindley (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore)

Material Evidence, Immaterial Intentions

Daniel Wakelin (University of Oxford)

Imagining the Forbidden Reader

Alexandra Da Costa (University of Cambridge)

MedievalWiki: Training Workshop and Social Editing Session

1 Comment on MedievalWiki: Training Workshop and Social Editing Session

24/10/2021

11:38