Where? Exeter College Chapel
When? 27 February 2025, 7pm
A musical interpretation of the Tale of Beren and Lúthien.
Stuart Lee, Readings.
Owen Chan, Organ
Free Admission
Tolkien and the Organ
Category: events
CfP: SELIM 35
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:
| Panel | Panel coordinator | Contact |
| Old English Literature and Culture | Francisco Rozano-García | frozg@unileon.es |
| Old English Language and Linguistics | Esaúl Ruiz Narbona | ernarbona@us.es |
| Middle English Literature and Culture | Andoni Cossio Garrido | andoni.cossio@ehu.eus |
| Middle English Language and Linguistics | Marta Pacheco Franco | martapacheco@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
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
- 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 open for applications – deadline Friday of 4th Week
Medieval Matters HT25, Week 2
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
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:
- The History of Art Slade Lecture Series by medievalist Beate Fricke on ‘Gaps’
- Centre for Early Medieval Britain and Ireland launch event and British Museum visit
- CfP for ‘Sorrowful Virgin’: Medieval and Early Modern Devotion workshop
- The Centre for Manuscript and Text Cultures term card
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
- 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
The Sorrowful Virgin: Medieval and Early Modern Devotion
In association with Oxford Medieval Studies, sponsored by The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities (TORCH), and the Centre for Early Modern Studies, convened by Anna Wilmore, Taro Kobayashi, and Katerina Levinson on 24 March 2025 in St Hugh’s College
9:15-10:15am – Panel 1: Textual and Visual Devotion
- Susanne de Jong (Leiden): Praying with Compassion: The Devotion of Mary’s Sorrows in Middle Dutch Books of Hours
- Fiammetta Campagnoli (Sorbonne): A “Devotional Mirror”: Following Mary’s Footsteps through Her Sorrow and Meditations
10:35-11:35am – Panel 2: Sacred and Secular
- Joana Balsa de Pinho (Lisbon): Piety and welfare: the Sorrowful Virgin in the context of the Portuguese Confraternities of Mercy
- Serena Cuomo (Santiago de Compostela): Mother of all mothers – Affective Piety and Maternal Grief in the Roman de Troie
11:35am-12:35pm – Panel 3: Emotion and Trauma
- Costas Gavriel (Oxford): ‘You know my pain’: Trauma, Self-Narrative and Marian Devotion in the Memorias of Leonor López de Córdoba
- Ana Vitoria Lopes (Sao Paulo): Crying Women in Devotional Panels: A Study through the Lens of the History of Emotions
2-3pm – Manuscript workshop at the Weston Library. Handout.
Presented by Anna Wilmore and Susanne de Jong, with manuscripts being shown by Bodleian curator Matthew Holford
- Private Devotions:
– MS Douce 264: early 16th century book of private prayers and devotions (Latin and French) printed for a member of the family of Scepeaux
– MS Lat Liturg .e .36: Italian collection of prayers written for a nun, 14th /15th century - Latin and Vernacular:
– MS Douce 1: A tiny prayer book c. 1460 England, containing prayers in Latin and Middle English - Speculum humanae salvationis:
– MS Lyell 67: late 14th century, Bohemia. f. 46r and 87v (Crucifixion), 90v (Virgin pierced by sword) and 91v (Virgin surrounded by arma Christi)
– Arch. G d. 56, digitised, a hybrid Dutch incunable/blockbook c. 1470, see the description of the John Rylands copy and the CERL entry - Middle Dutch Books of Hours – MS Douce 243: Dutch; 3rd quarter 15th Century
– MS Buchanan f. 1: These are both Dutch Books of Hours using the translation of Geert Grote.
3:45-5pm – Montgomery Powell (Oxford): Myn kynt unde ok myn god: Sorrowful Participation in the Bordesholmer Marienklage, followed by performance and discussion of Marian laments. Handout
5pm-6pm – Keynote by Prof. Lesley Twomey (Northumbria): The Sorrows of the Virgin Mary at the Foot of the Cross in vernacular Vitae Christi in Medieval France, England and Spain.
Old Frisian Summer School 2025
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, on Panopto or below as part of the Paper IV youtube series
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
Call for Papers: ‘Outsiders – Insiders’ (University of Reading)
Postgraduate Research Forum (hybrid), 2nd April 2025
This forum seeks to provide a supportive environment in which postgraduates can share ideas and get helpful feedback. Proposals are welcomed for 20-minute papers that explore the nuanced relationships between ‘Outsiders’ and ‘Insiders’ during the medieval period, which may include, but are not limited to:
Defining Boundaries:
- How were boundaries—geographical, social, and cultural constructed in medieval societies?
- Who were considered ‘insiders’ and who were relegated to the status of ‘outsiders’?
- What role did religion, ethnicity, and class play in shaping these distinctions?
Power and Exclusion:
- How did medieval institutions (such as the Church, feudal lords, and guilds) wield power over both insiders and outsiders?
- What mechanisms were used to exclude certain groups from participation in economic, political, or religious life?
- Were there instances of resistance or subversion by those on the margins?
Cultural Exchange and Hybridity:
- How did interactions between insiders and outsiders lead to cultural exchange, adaptation, and hybrid identities?
- What can we learn from the cross-cultural encounters between medieval Europeans, Byzantines, Arabs, and other groups?
- Did artistic, literary, or architectural expressions reflect these interactions?
Narratives of Otherness:
- How were outsiders portrayed in medieval chronicles, literature, and art?
- Were there attempts to challenge or subvert prevailing stereotypes?
- What can we glean from these narratives about societal attitudes towards difference?
Marginalized Voices:
- Who were the marginalized groups in medieval society (e.g., Jews, lepers, heretics, women)?
- How did they navigate their position as outsiders?
- Can we recover their voices and experiences from historical sources?
Please submit an abstract of up to 150 words and a short biography by 31st January 2025 to readinggcms25@googlegroups.com. Please also provide your name, affiliation, contact information, and if you intend to present your paper either in-person or remotely.
French in Medieval Britain: The James Ford Lectures 2025
Jocelyn Wogan-Browne on Cultural Politics and Social History, c. 1100-c. 1500
Thursdays at 5pm, Weeks 1-6 Hilary, Examination Schools
French played a major, though not the only role, in the pervasive multilingualism of British history and culture. As Britain’s only medieval ‘global’ vernacular, it was also important to a wide range of people for their participation in external theatres of empire, trade, culture, conflict, and crusade. Displacing the long shadow of nineteenth-century nationalizing conceptions of language and their entrenchment in modern university disciplinary divisions, emerging histories of French in England and increasingly of French in Ireland, Wales, and Scotland offer new ways of understanding language and identity. These lectures trace francophone medieval Britain in a chronological sequence across its four main centuries, interpolating two thematic lectures on areas especially needing integration into our histories, medieval women and French in Britain, and French Bible translation in medieval England.
About the Lecture Series: The Ford Lectures in British History were founded by a bequest from James Ford, and inaugurated by S.R.Gardiner in 1896-7. Since then, an annual series has been delivered over six weeks in Hilary term. They have long been established as the most prestigious series in Oxford and an important annual event in the University’s calendar.
About the speaker: Professor Jocelyn Wogan-Browne is Professor emerita of both the University of York, where she held the Chair of Medieval Literature from 2005 to 2010, and Fordham University in New York, where she was the Thomas F.X. and Theresa Mullarkey Chair in Literature from 2010 to 2019.
Her wide-ranging scholarship has most recently focused on the reconceptualization of English medieval literary culture as a multilingual community. She has created a fundamentally new understanding of the importance attached to knowing, speaking, reading and/or writing French in later medieval England: work on the culture of late medieval England is now unthinkable without taking her insights into account. The approach was spearheaded in her Vernacular Literary Theory from the French of Medieval England: Texts and Translation (with Thelma Fenster and Delbert Russell) (Cambridge, D. S. Brewer, 2016), which built on the earlier The Idea of the Vernacular: Middle English Literary Theory c. 1280-1520, with Nicholas Watson, Andrew Taylor, and Ruth Evans. A book of essays, The French of Medieval England: Essays in Honour of Jocelyn Wogan-Browne (2017), speaks to the extensive influence of her work and the esteem in which she is held by the scholarly community.
Jocelyn came to Oxford from Australia to study for the BPhil in Medieval Language and Literature at St Hilda’s College under the supervision of Elspeth Kennedy, one of Oxford’s most inspirational teachers. Her fellow countryman, Bruce Mitchell, another medievalist, became her mentor, and she became established in Oxford at the events he hosted for students from the southern hemisphere. Jocelyn started a DPhil in Old Norse and Old French, but accepted a lectureship in Early Middle English and Anglo-Norman at Liverpool, later receiving a doctorate on the strength of her numerous publications. Liverpool was followed by positions at York and Fordham, where her dedication to students and teaching won her a basket of teaching awards, in addition to her distinguished research profile.
Now living in Oxford and a member of St Edmund Hall, Jocelyn Wogan-Browne remains a dynamo of multi-disciplinary research. Her Ford Lectures will undoubtedly turn our concept of ‘English History’ on its head.
Lecture Schedule
30th Jan: Langue des reines: The Importance of Women to French and French to Women.
Thursdays at 5pm, Weeks 1-6 Hilary, Examination Schools
More information can be found here: https://www.history.ox.ac.uk/james-ford-lectures-british-history
Epiros: The Other Western Rome, Workshop 8th-9th November 2024
On Friday 8th and Saturday 9th November, the online workshop Epiros: The Other Western Rome was held, platforming twenty-one papers from sixteen universities. As the second phase of a new international project, the workshop investigated the Byzantine successor-state of Epiros (1204–1444). Formed from the Fourth Crusade, this Balkan state existed as an alternative narrative and third Byzantine-Roman context, encompassing a vast variety of peoples of the former empire.
Originally envisioned as a one-day workshop, the programme was expanded to two days to accommodate so many excellent submissions. As a result, we were able to offer panels on, The ‘Post-Komnenian System’, ‘Epiros and Bulgaria’, ‘Epiros and its other Neighbours’, ‘Network Analysis,’ ‘Hybrid Material Culture,’ and more. The workshop’s convenors are hugely grateful for the participation of speakers and attendees, as well as the support of both The Oxford Centre Research Centre in the Humanities (TORCH) and the Oxford Centre for Byzantine Research (OCBR).
An edited volume of papers is planned, and a selection of images below.
