Category: News

Spooky happenings to report this week – not only is it, terrifyingly, Week 3 already, but we are also approaching Allhallowtide, with Sunday being All Saints’ Eve / Halloween! For this scariest of weeks, some seasonal wisdom regarding hand-standing, head-walking witches from the Old English Durham Proverbs:

Ne swa þeah treowde þeah þu teala eode, cwæþ se þe geseah hægtessan æfter heafde geongan.
[“I wouldn’t trust you even if you walked properly!” said he who saw a witch walking on her head]

We have many wonderful events this week. In particular, may I draw your attention to the Church Monuments Society Lecture Series, which kicks off this Sunday 31st with a lecture by Dr Roger Bowdler, talking about charnel depictions on tombs. Spooky indeed! But don’t be afraid: we also have plenty of less scary medievalist treats to enjoy this week, all laid out below for your perusal.

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

• Dr J.R. Mattison and Eleanor Baker have organised a three-day free online symposium on 9th-11th of December, ‘English Perceptions of the Material Text: 1300-1600’. You can sign up here English Perceptions of the Material Text, 1300-1600 .
  
  
  

EVENTS THIS WEEK:

Monday 25th October:

• The Byzantine Graduate Seminar meets at 12.15-2pm on Teams. This week’s speaker is Sofia Simões Coelho (Oxford) ‘Holy Fools in Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century Rus’. To register, please contact the organiser at james.cogbill@worc.ox.ac.uk or visit the eventbrite page.
  
• The Medieval Latin Manuscript Reading Group meets at 1-2pm on Teams. Contact Matthew Holford, Andrew Dunning or Tuija Ainonen to be added to the Teams call.
  
• The Medieval History Seminar meets at 5pm on Teams and in the Wharton Room. Attendance at the Wharton Room is by advance booking only as the room has a strict Covid-19 capacity limit. Bookings can be made at https://medieval-history-seminar.reservio.com. This week’s speaker is Stephen Spencer (KCL) ‘Rewriting History: The Evolution and Impact of Ralph of Coggeshall’s Account of the Third Crusade‘
  
  

Tuesday 26th October:

• The Islamicate Manuscripts and Texts Reading Colloquium 2021 meets at 3pm on Zoom. This week’s speaker is Jamie O’Connell, Department of Near Eastern Studies, Princeton University, ‘Zoroastrian Calendar Controversies in the 17th and 18th centuries: Passages from the Persian Rivāyats and Related Texts’.
  
• The Medieval Book Club meets at 3.30pm in Magdalen College, Old Law Library. This week’s topic is ‘Ghosts and Revenants’.
  
• The Early Slavonic Webinar meets at 5pm on Zoom. This week’s speaker is Neven Isailović (The Institute of History Belgrade), ‘Identity and Identificationin Late Medieval Western Balkans‘.
  
• The Medieval Church and Culture Seminar meets at 5pm in Old Dining Hall, Harris Manchester College. This week’s speaker is Sumner Braund (Bodleian Library), ‘Martyred Princesses? Sanctity and monastic reform in 10thc. English nunneries‘

• The Medieval French Research Seminar meets at 5pm at Maison française d’Oxford. This week’s speaker is Dr Henry Ravenhall (University of Cambridge), ‘Feeling Medieval French Literature: Touch, Experience, Materiality’.
  
  

Wednesday 27th October:

• The Medieval German Seminar meets at 11.15-12.45 in New Powell Room, Somerville College. If you are interested to be added to the mailing list for the seminar, write to Linus Ubl.
  
• The Oxford Numismatic Society Seminar meets at 5pm in the Outreach Room at the Ioannou Centre for Classical and Byzantine Studies. This week’s speaker is Dr. Martin Allen (Fitzwilliam Museum / Wolfson College, University of Cambridge): ‘Finding the Past: EMC and Early Medieval Coin Finds‘.
  
• The Medieval English Research Seminar meets at 5.15pm in Lecture Theatre 2, Faculty of English. This week’s speaker will be Kathleen Kennedy (Bristol), ‘On Killdeer and Codicology: The Provenance of the Corpus Troilus’. For further information, contact daniel.wakelin@ell.ox.ac.uk.
  
• The Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar meets at 7pm at Corpus Christi College for drinks. (Please note that there is no speaker this week).
  
  

Thursday 28th October:

• The Archives de l’Athos reading group meets at 3-4pm at Corpus Christi College. All interested in Byzantine history, non-Latin diplomatics, Greek palaeography or diplomatic edition are welcome. Contact marek.jankowiak@history.ox.ac.uk or olivier.delouis@campion.ox.ac.uk to sign up and receive the texts in advance.
  
• The Greek and Latin Reading Group meets at 4pm in St Edmund Hall. Room TBC: contact John Colley or Jenyth Evans to be added to the mailing list. This week’s text will be Virgil, Eclogue 4.4-52, 60-4.
  
• The Seminar in Medieval and Renaissance Music meets at 4.30pm on Zoom, with the presentation beginning at 5pm. If you are planning to attend, please register using this form: https://forms.gle/rL36rACrSEmuH4UC6. Those who have registered will receive an email with the Zoom invitation, instructions for joining the call, and further materials for the seminar. This week’s speaker is Margot Fassler (Keough-Hesburgh Professor of Music and Liturgy, University of Notre Dame; Tangeman Professor of Music History Emerita, Yale University), ‘The Restoration of Anima in Hildegard of Bingen’s Sung Play the Ordo Virtutum‘, and the discussants are Alison Altstatt (University of Northern Iowa) and Barbara Newman (Northwestern University).
  
• The Celtic Seminar meets at 5.15pm in the History of the Book Room, English Faculty and on Teams. For Teams link, contact David Willis. This week’s speaker is Georgia Henley (Saint Anselm College), ‘Reading Geoffrey of Monmouth in south Wales and the Marches‘.
  
• The Old English Reading Group meets at 5.30-7pm. For more information and to be added to the mailing list please email Eugenia Vorobeva.
  
  

Friday 29th October:

• The MedievalWiki: Training Workshop and Social Editing Session takes place at 1.30-3.30pm on Zoom. This workshop is for brand new and experienced Wikipedia editors who are interested in improving Wikipedia according to the aims of MedievalWiki, which is specifically dedicated to making and editing articles with citations to medieval scholars whose work is indebted to or develops feminist, queer, and critical race studies methods and theories. The event is free, but booking is required: please sign up here.
  
• The Anglo-Norman Reading Group meets at 5pm on Zoom. For texts, joining instructions, and further information, please email Stephanie Hathaway or Jane Bliss.
  
• The Reformation Pamphlets Launch will take place at 5pm with a Presentation of the pamphlets at the Weston Library, Horton Room, followed, at 6:15pm, by Reformation Evensong in St Edmund Hall Chapel. Anybody welcome to without the need to book!
  
  

Sunday 31st October:

• The Church Monuments Society Lecture Series: Whose Dead in Vaulted Arches Lie kicks off at 5pm on Zoom with macabre tombs expert, Dr Roger Bowdler, talking about grisly depictions of charnel on tombs! This series of five lectures will cover macabre monuments, death depictions in churchyards, what lies in burial vaults, inside the world of gravedigging and curious cadaver effigies and macabre art…! Attendance is free, but places must be booked via Eventbrite.

OPPORTUNITIES:

• The Oxford Medieval Society is looking for people to join their committee! If you would like to get involved in organising medieval-centric events (from friendly community-building events to talks with high profile speakers) please register your interest with eleanor.baker@sjc.ox.ac.uk. No prior experience on committees is required.

• The Faculty of English Language and Literature at Oxford University, in association with Pembroke College, is seeking to appoint a fixed-term Lecturer in English Language. For full details, please see here. Applications, which should include a CV and supporting statement, should be made online via the link above by 12 noon on Monday 8 November 2021.

Finally, some more Halloween-themed Old English wisdom from the Durham Proverbs:

Ne sceal man to ær forht ne to ær fægen.
[One should not be too soon fearful nor too soon joyful]

In other words, do not rejoice too quickly at treats, nor be over-fearful of tricks! That said, I hope that your week contains more treats than tricks!

Week 2 is here, which means that term is officially in full swing! Thank you to everyone who came to the Medieval Roadshow – we loved seeing you all and hearing about your plans for the year.

This week I’d particularly like to draw your attention to the fact that OMS Small Grants are now taking applications for Michaelmas Term. The Small Grants are a great way for postgraduates and ECRs to fund conferences, workshops etc. Further details below.

I would also like to highlight that there has been a minor correction to the booklet: the Oxford Numismatic society talk by Dr. Martin Allen on ‘Finding the Past: EMC and Early Medieval Coin Finds’ will now take place on Wednesday 27th October.

Please find below a summary of the week’s news:

EVENTS THIS WEEK:

Monday 18th October:

• The Medieval Latin Manuscript Reading Group meets at 1-2pm on Teams. Contact Matthew Holford, Andrew Dunning or Tuija Ainonen to be added to the Teams call.
  
• The Medieval History Seminar meets at 5pm on Teams and in the Wharton Room. Attendance at the Wharton Room is by advance booking only as the room has a strict Covid-19 capacity limit. Bookings can be made at https://medieval-history-seminar.reservio.com. This week’s speaker is Lesley Smith (Harris Manchester) ‘The Weak, the Poor, and the Landed: reading the Sermons of William of Auvergne (d. 1249)’
  
• The fourth Lyell Lecture takes place at 5pm online and at the Lecture Theatre, Weston Library. Registration is essential for in-person attendance. This lecture will be ‘Fifteenth-century Latin Bible printing and distribution’.
  
• The Old Norse Reading Group meets at 5.15pm on Teams. Please email Olivia Smith (olivia.smith2@linacre.ox.ac.uk) to be added to the mailing list and Teams group.
  
  

Tuesday 19th October:

• The CMTC Work in Progress Colloquium meets at 12:30-2pm on Zoom. Attendance is free of charge, but sign-up is mandatory: you can sign-up here. The speakers this week will be Laura Banella (Mediaeval & Modern Languages, Wolfson College, Oxford), ‘The Materiality and Textuality of Medieval Italian Lyric Poetry’ and Zhan Zhang (Oriental Studies, St Antony’s College, Oxford), ‘Form, Format, and formulae. Scribal conventions in first-millennium central Asia’.
  
• The Islamicate Manuscripts and Texts Reading Colloquium 2021 meets at 3pm on Zoom. This week’s speaker is Marina Rustow, Khedouri A. Zilkha Professor of Jewish Civilization in the Near East, Department of Near Eastern Studies, Princeton University, ‘An Unpublished Letter from the Cairo Geniza Complaining aboutthe Hardships of Travel to India: Taylor-Schechter (T-S) 12.392’ 
  
• The RaceB4Race Coffee Talk takes place at 3-4pm via livestream. Today’s talk will be ‘Presenting on Race for Public Audiences’ with Ayanna Thompson. Places are limited: please register here.
  
• The Medieval Book Club meets at 3.30pm in Magdalen College, Old Law Library. This week’s topic is ‘Trials by Nature’.
  
• The Early Slavonic Webinar meets at 5pm on Zoom. This week’s speaker is Aleksander Paroń (Institute of Archaeology and Ethnology Polish Academy of Sciences) How to deal with Steppe Fauna? Remarks on the Byzantine perception of the nomads and on the Byzantinepolicy towards them (10th-12th centuries)
  
• The Medieval Church and Culture Seminar meets at 5pm in Old Dining Hall, Harris Manchester College. This week’s speaker is Alice Raw (St John’s), ‘The virtues of secrecy and sexual knowledge in a late medieval English dream vision‘
  
• Bibitura Dantis Oxoniensis meets at 5.30pm on Zoom. This week’s focus will be Purgatorio 1. For more information email Lachlan Hughes.
  
• The RaceB4Race Symposium takes place at 8-10pm via livestream. Today’s topic will be ‘Enmity at the Edge of Empire’. Places are limited: please register here.
  
  

Wednesday 20th October:

• The Medieval German Seminar meets at 11.15-12.45 in New Powell Room, Somerville College. If you are interested to be added to the mailing list for the seminar, write to Linus Ubl.
  
• The Medieval Trade Reading Group meets at 1-2pm in Mertze Tate Room, History Faculty, and Online. To be added to the mailing list and team please email Annabel Hancock. This week’s theme will be Merchant Identities.
  
• The RaceB4Race Coffee Talk takes place at 3-4pm via livestream. Today’s talk will be ‘Parenting while Researching and Teaching’ with Patricia Akhimie. Places are limited: please register here.
  
• The Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar meets at 5pm on Google Meet, followed by drinks at 7pm at Corpus Christi College. This week’s speaker is Georgi Parpulov (Birmingham), ‘Catena Manuscripts of the Greek New Testament‘.
  
• The fifth and final Lyell Lecture takes place at 5pm online and at the Lecture Theatre, Weston Library. Registration is essential for in-person attendance. This lecture will be ‘The Serpentine Text of the Gutenberg Bible’
  
• The Medieval English Research Seminar meets at 5.15pm in Lecture Theatre 2, Faculty of English. This week’s speaker will be Laura Saetveit Miles (Bergen), ‘Richard Methley’s “new Manner of Writing – to the Moment”: Narrative Time and Mystical Theology in Late Fifteenth-Century England’.
  
• The RaceB4Race Symposium takes place at 8-10pm via livestream. Today’s topic will be ‘Song and Silence’. Places are limited: please register here.
  
  

Thursday 21st October:

• The first Lyell Seminar takes place at 11am-12pm, in the Horton Room, Weston Library. The topic of the seminar will be ‘The Gutenberg Bible and earlier manuscript bibles’. To register, visit: https://forms.office.com/r/iHJ0WCuTCd  or email bookcentre@bodleian.ox.ac.uk.
  
• The second Lyell Seminar takes place at 2-3pm, in the Horton Room, Weston Library. The topic of the seminar will be ‘The Gutenberg Bible and later printed bibles’. To register, visit: https://forms.office.com/r/iHJ0WCuTCd  or email bookcentre@bodleian.ox.ac.uk
  
• The Early Text Cultures Seminar meets at 2.30-4pm at the Dickson Poon Building, China Centre, Oxford, and on Zoom. This week’s seminar will be led by Franco D. Rossi (John Hopkins) and Armin Selbitschka (LMU Munich), who will be speaking about scribal self-representation in Late Classical Period Maya culture and early China, and the combination of epigraphical and archaeological approaches. For Zoom links sign up in advance here.
  
• The RaceB4Race Coffee Talk takes place at 3-4pm via livestream. Today’s talk will be ‘Activism in Academia’ with Carol Mejia LaPerle. Places are limited: please register here.
  
• The Greek and Latin Reading Group meets at 4pm in St Edmund Hall. Room TBC: contact John Colley or Jenyth Evans to be added to the mailing list.
  
• The Celtic Seminar meets at 5pm on Zoom. For Zoom link, contact a.elias@wales.ac.uk. This week’s speaker is Ian Stewart (QMUL), ‘Celticism: An intellectual and cultural history’.
  
• The RaceB4Race Symposium takes place at 8-10pm via livestream. Today’s topic will be ‘Exceptions: Justice, Sovereignty, Slavery’. Places are limited: please register here.
  
  

Friday 22nd October:

• Pre-Modern Conversations meets at 11am-12pm on Teams. For more information and to be added the the PMC Teams Channel, email lena.vosding AT mod-langs.ox.ac.uk.
  
• The Anglo-Norman Reading Group meets at 5pm on Zoom. For texts, joining instructions, and further information, please email Stephanie Hathaway or Jane Bliss.
  
• The RaceB4Race Editor Rountable takes place at 3-4pm via livestream. Places are limited: please register here
  
• The RaceB4Race Symposium takes place at 8-10pm via livestream. Today’s topic will be ‘Contextual Migration’. Places are limited: please register here.
  

OPPORTUNITIES:

• The Medieval Mystery Cycle is still recruiting! If you’d like to get involved, taking charge of a play, directing, acting or making costumes and props, email us: henrike.laehnemann@seh.ox.ac.uk, lesley.smith@hmc.ox.ac.uk.
  
• OMS Small Grants Call. The TORCH Oxford Medieval Studies Programme invites applications for small grants to support conferences, workshops, and other forms of collaborative research activity organised by researchers at postgraduate (whether MSt or DPhil) or early-career level from across the Humanities Division at the University of Oxford. The activity should take place between November 2021 and April 2022. The closing date for applications is Friday of Week 4 of Michaelmas Term 2021. For full details, please see here or the flyer attached to this week’s email.
  

Finally, some medieval wisdom for those of us who teach. The Old English translation of the Disticha Catonis provides the following instruction:

Leorna a hwæthwugu æt ðam wisran, þæt þu mæge læran þone unwisran.
[Learn something from the wise, so that you might teach the ignorant]

How fortunate we are, to have so many seminars and reading groups in which to receive such wisdom!

Week 1 is finally here, which means that it is time for our first proper Medieval Matters of the year! Contained within you’ll find details of the week’s upcoming medieval events. There is also a list of opportunities which features CFPs, essay prizes, job opportunities, and an invitation to apply for the Medieval Mystery Cycle! Of course, the most important event in the calendar this week is the Medieval Roadshow, on Tuesday, 4pm at Harris Manchester. We look forward to seeing many of you there!

Without further ado, here are the events for the week. Like Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica V.24, this is intended to be a brief account of events ‘ob memoriam conservandam’ (‘so that they might be better kept in memory’): for full details, please refer to the Medieval Booklet, a pdf copy of which is attached to this week’s email.

EVENTS THIS WEEK:

Monday 11th October:

• Script vs print vs code: the information revolution in one afternoon take places at 1 – 3.30pm in Blackwell Hall (public foyer), Weston Library. Members of the Oxford Scribes and printers from the Bodleian Bibliographical Press race to produce a page of text. Settle the 500-year-old question – which is faster?’.
  
• The Medieval Latin Manuscript Reading Group meets at 1-2pm on Teams. Contact Matthew Holford, Andrew Dunning or Tuija Ainonen to be added to the Teams call.
  
• The Medieval History Seminar meets at 5pm on Teams and in the Wharton Room. Attendance at the Wharton Room is by advance booking only as the room has a strict Covid-19 capacity limit. Bookings can be made at https://medieval-history-seminar.reservio.com. This week’s speaker is Roy Flechner (UCD/All Souls) ‘From Bible to Law in the Early Middle Ages: Adaptations of the Old Testament from the Collectio Hibernensis to King Alfred’s Law-Book’.
  
• The first Lyell Lecture takes place at 5pm online and at the Lecture Theatre, Weston Library. Registration is essential for in-person attendance. This lecture will be ‘The Christian Latin Bible from its origins to the 13th-century Paris Bible’.
  
  

Tuesday 12th October:

• The Medieval Book Club meets at 3.30pm in Magdalen College, Old Law Library. This week’s topic is ‘Witches’.
  
• The Medieval Roadshow takes place at 4-5pm in Harris Manchester College,
  
• The Early Slavonic Webinar meets at 5pm on Zoom. This week’s speaker is Oleksiy Tolochko (National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine), ‘When were the relics of St. Clement brought to Kiev and who brought them?‘
  
• The Medieval Church and Culture Seminar meets at 5pm in Old Dining Hall, Harris Manchester College. This week’s speaker is Andrew Dunning (Bodleian Library), ‘Collecting Frideswide’s miracles at Oxford in the early 1180s:  Bodleian Library, MS. Digby 177‘
  
• The Islamicate Manuscripts and Texts Reading Colloquium 2021 meets at 5pm on Zoom. This week’s speaker is Adam Benkato, Department of Near Eastern Studies, UC Berkeley, ‘The Sogdian epistolary tradition in the early 8th century‘.
  
• The Music Faculty’s colloquia series meets at 5.15pm at the Faculty of Music and via live stream. This week’s speaker will be Barbara Eichner (Oxford Brookes), ‘Infirm singers and dyslexic Dominicans: disability, liturgy and music in late-medieval and early-modern nunneries and monasteries’
  
  

Wednesday 13th October:

• The Medieval German Seminar meets at 11.15-12.45 in New Powell Room, Somerville College. If you are interested to be added to the mailing list for the seminar, write to Linus Ubl.
  
• The Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar meets at 5pm on Google Meet, followed by drinks at 7pm at Corpus Christi College. This week’s speaker is Anne McCabe (Oxford) and Bryan Ward-Perkins (Oxford), ‘Cyril Mango and Constantinople: forthcoming works‘.
  
• The second Lyell Lecture takes place at 5pm online and at the Lecture Theatre, Weston Library. Registration is essential for in-person attendance. This year’s lectures will be given by Paul Needham (Princeton). This lecture will be ‘Latin Bible-writing in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries; the Gutenberg Bible workshop’
  
• The Medieval English Research Seminar meets at 5.15pm in Lecture Theatre 2, Faculty of English. This week’s speaker will be Sebastian Sobecki (Groningen), ‘Hoccleve’s Community of Practice: Clerks, Scripts, and London Literature’.
  
  

Thursday 14th October:

• The Greek and Latin Reading Group meets at 4pm in St Edmund Hall. Room TBC: contact John Colley or Jenyth Evans to be added to the mailing list.
  
• The Celtic Seminar meets at 5.15pm in the History of the Book Room, English Faculty and on Teams. For Teams link, contact David Willis. This week’s speaker is William Lamb (University of Edinburgh), ‘Nouns by numbers: New insights from a dialectometrical study of Gaelic nominal morphology’.
  
• The Old English Reading Groups meets at 5.30-7pm. For more information and to be added to the mailing list please email Eugenia Vorobeva.
  
  

Friday 15th October:

• The Anglo-Norman Reading Group meets at 5pm on Zoom. For texts, joining instructions, and further information, please email Stephanie Hathaway or Jane Bliss.
  
• The third Lyell Lecture takes place at 5pm online and at the Lecture Theatre, Weston Library. Registration is essential for in-person attendance. This year’s lectures will be given by Paul Needham (Princeton). This lecture will be ‘The Texts of the Gutenberg Bible; the case of 4 Ezra’
  

OPPORTUNITIES:

• CFP: Emotion and Exemplarity in Medieval Insular Texts, c.700-c.1400: Please send abstracts of approximately 200 words for a twenty-minute paper and a short bio to Dr Niamh Kehoe (Heinrich Heine Universität) (niamh.kehoe@hhu.de) by the 10th December 2021. If you have any queries, please email Niamh. While we currently anticipate that this will be an in-person event at Heinrich Heine University, we may decide to switch to an online event

• Post-doc vacancy for people with skills in classical Persian reading and translation into English, and Digital Humanities. Details can be found on the Invisible East website here (application deadline: 22 October 2021 at 12 noon UK time).
  
• 2022 Medium Ævum Essay prize: postgraduates and those recently graduated with a higher degree are invited to submit an essay on a topic that falls within the range of the interests of Medium Ævum in the medieval period (up to c. 1500). The winner of the Essay Prize will receive a cash prize of £500, together with £250 for any books available from Bennett & Kerr Booksellers (including any from the Society’s own catalogue) & £250 of funding towards conference attendance. The winning article will also be considered for publication in Medium Ævum, subject to the usual editorial procedures of the journal. The deadline for submissions is 1st December
  
• The Medieval Mystery Cycle is back, by popular demand! We’re once again producing a mini-cycle of medieval plays, each performed by a different group.  If you’d like to get involved, taking charge of a play, directing, acting or making costumes and props, email us: henrike.laehnemann@seh.ox.ac.uk, lesley.smith@hmc.ox.ac.uk. Please see the flyer attached to this week’s email for futher info!

I started this email with Bede’s HE V.24 so I’ll finish with it too for our weekly wisdom:

semper aut discere, aut docere, aut scribere dulce habui
[I have always taken delight to learn, or to teach, or to write]

May your week be filled with productive learning, teaching and writing!