Category: News

Dear all,

Week 5 already, if you can believe it! Informal straw polls of medievalists suggest time is doing that ‘middle of term thing’ again, where it seems to be moving both very fast and very slowly. Fill up your week and stave off the fifth week blues with our delectable selection of seminars and reading groups. The days are getting longer and lighter, vaccines are proceeding apace, and Scito te ipsum still demands to be read.

A few announcements:

• The second History of Domestic Violence Seminar will be held on Monday 22 February at 2 pm on Zoom. Once again there will be exciting speakers covering the medieval period, from England to France to Flanders. You can register here, and email Anu Lahtinen (anu.z.lahtinen@helsinki.fi) or Julie Dresvina (juliana.dresvina@history.ox.ac.uk) for further details.
• For those of you who speak French, the Université Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne is hosting a seminar this Thursday, 18 February from 8:30-10:30 am and 12 pm to 5 pm GMT on ‘Lieux monastiques dans le haut Moyen Âge’. Register for the morning here and the afternoon here. 
• Our own Simon Gilson (Oxford) will be speaking at University College Cork’s Dante in Ireland Seminar today at 7 pm, on ‘Ingegno in Dante: Ingenuity and Creativity in the Commedia’. Email daragh.oconnell@ucc.ie for the link.
• Looking for some Shrove Tuesday excitement? Check out the Gregorian Chant Workshop ‘Singing Together, Apart’ tomorrow, Tuesday 16 February, at 5:30 pm, rescheduled from 2 February. Book your tickets here. Deadline for registration is 2 pm today!

‘What is better than wisdom? A good [seminar]. And what is better than a good [seminar]? Nothing.’ – Geoffrey Chaucer, allegedly

MONDAY 15 FEBRUARY

• The Oxford Byzantine Graduate Seminar meets at 12:30 pm; to join and for information, contact james.cogbill@worc.ox.ac.uk. This week’s speaker is Rachael Helen Banes (University of Birmingham), ‘The Sociology of Graffiti in Late Antiquity’. 
• At 1 pm we have the Medieval Latin Reading Group on Teams. They’re beginning Peter Abelard’s Scito te ipsum this week. Submit your email address here to receive notices.
• The Seminar in Palaeography and Manuscript Studies meets at 2:15 pm on Zoom. Registration required; email bookcentre@bodleian.ox.ac.uk. Today’s speaker is Adam Whittaker (Birmingham City University), ‘Medieval Music Theory in Bodleian Manuscripts’.
• GLARE (Greek, Latin, and Reception) meets at 5 pm on Teams. For info, email john.colley@ell.ox.ac.uk and jenyth.evans@ell.ox.ac.uk. This week’s reading is Xenophon’s Anabasis, Book III.
• The Medieval History Seminar is at 5 pm on Teams (code rmppucs). This week’s speaker is Yusen Yu (Corpus Christi, Oxford), ‘Gold on the Move in Medieval Afro-Eurasia’.
• The Old Norse Reading Group meets at 5:30 pm on Teams to continue with Hervarar saga; email bond.west@lincoln.ox.ac.uk for details.

TUESDAY 16 FEBRUARY

• The Late Medieval Seminar meets at 2 pm on Zoom (Meeting ID: 962 7053 8553, passcode: 078931). This week’s speaker is Katherine Wilson (University of Chester), ‘The Fabric of Social Relations: Burgundian Tapestry’. 
• At 3:30 pm on Google Meet we have the Medieval Book Club (for more information, email oxfordmedievalbookclub@gmail.com). This week’s theme is ‘Fasting and Fame’, and to find out which exciting texts will be discussed, you’ll have to attend!
• The Early Slavonic Seminar meets at 5 pm on Zoom (register here). This week’s speaker is Milena Repajić (University of Belgrade), ‘Overcoming the Nation(s): Ways of Approaching the Medieval Balkans’. 
• The Medieval French Research Seminar meets at 5 pm on Teams, papers commencing 5:15 pm. This week’s speaker is Sarah Bridge, ‘“…et cetera transtulit in anglicum”: Middle English Translations of Nicole Bozon’s Anglo-Norman Lyrics’.
• The Oxford University Numismatic Society also meets at 5 pm on Teams (email daniel.etches@new.ox.ac.uk for further information). This week’s speaker is Prof. François de Callataÿ (Royal Library of Belgium / École Pratique des Hautes Études), ‘Fontes Inedites Numismaticae Antiquae (FINA): A Website with Already 4,000 Letters Written before 1800 and Dealing with Greek and Roman Coinages’.
• The Oxford Pre-Modern Middle Eastern History Seminar is at 5:30 pm on Zoom (register here). This week’s speaker is David Zakarian (Oxford), ‘Redeeming Books: Christian-Muslim Relations through the Colophons of Medieval Armenian Manuscripts’, with respondent Heghnar Watenpaugh (UC Davis). 

WEDNESDAY 18 FEBRUARY

• The Medieval German Seminar, continuing with Arnold von Harff, meets at 11:15 am, with the Graduate Reading Group meeting at 11, on Teams (link here).
• The Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar convenes at 5 pm on Google Meet (link here). This week’s speaker is Dirk Krausmüller (Vienna), ‘Fasting in Eleventh-Century Byzantium: A Crisis of Authority’. 
• The Medieval English Research Seminar meets at 5:15 pm on Teams. This week’s speaker is Francis Leneghan (Oxford), ‘Everything’s Ending Here: Reading The Death of Edward in its Manuscript Context’.
• The Hebrew Bible in Medieval Manuscripts Reading Group meets at 7 pm on Zoom. Email judith.schlanger@orinst.ox.ac.uk for further information.

THURSDAY 18 FEBRUARY

• The Aquinas Seminar Series ‘De Magistro: Aquinas and the Education of the Whole Person’, meets at 4:30 pm (register here). This week’s speaker is Rev Dr David Goodill, OP (Blackfriars, Oxford), ‘Wittgenstein, Training, and Habits’.
• The Seminar in Medieval and Renaissance Music meets at 5 pm on Zoom (register here). This week’s speaker is Charles M. Atkinson (Ohio State University / Universität Würzburg), ‘On Modulation in Eastern and Western Chant: Techniques, Texts, and Rhetoric’. 
• The Old English Reading Group continues with Bede on Teams at 5:30 pm. Email tom.revell@balliol.ox.ac.uk or eugenia.vorobeva@jesus.ox.ac.uk for details.
• The OCHJS David Patterson lectures continue at 6 pm on Zoom (register here), with this week’s speaker Danielle Drori (OCHJS), ‘Benjamin Disraeli in the Hebrew Imagination (1880s-1920s)’.

FRIDAY 5 FEBRUARY

• The Seminar in the History of the Book meets at 2:15 pm. To register, email bookcentre@bodleian.ox.ac.uk. This week’s speaker is Alessandro Bianchi (Bodleian Libraries, Oxford), ‘Hidden in Plain Sight: Printed Books from the Japanese Mission Press in the Bodleian Collections’.
• The Anglo-Norman Reading Group continues with the Life of Godric at 5 pm on Zoom. Contact stephanie.hathaway@mod-langs.ox.ac.uk for details.

Onwards and upwards! Wishing you all many pancakes this week, if you are pancake-inclined. (I for oen am always pancake-inclined; it’s just nice to have a holiday to validate it.)

Dear all,

Another Monday, nearly halfway through term! Feast your eyes upon our offerings. You can see the whole booklet here.

• The Centre for Manuscript and Text Cultures is having a lunchtime colloquium tomorrow, Tuesday 9 February, at 12:30 pm. The speakers will be Chloé Agar (St Anne’s) and Daniel Gallaher (Balliol) on ‘Clues from Miracles and Visions in Coptic Hagiography: What Can They Tell Us About the Cult of Saints in Egypt?’ and ‘A Journey of the Magi: Intercultural Communication in Medieval Armenia’, respectively. Join the Teams meeting here.
• The London Society for Medieval Studies, based at the London IHR, is recruiting new members to join its steering committee for the 2021/22 academic year. The LSMS is one of the longest running seminar series at the IHR, organized by postgraduates and early career academics, and they welcome expressions of interest from postgrads and ECRs in any area of medieval studies in any part of the world. They prefer people who can commit to attending fortnightly events in London once we can meet in person again. If you’re interested, send a short biography (~150 words), including details of your previous and current eduction/position and academic interests, to londonsocformedievalstudies@gmail.com. You’re encouraged to get in touch ASAP, and before 30 March.

‘For even he who is most greedy for knowledge can achieve no greater perfection than to be thoroughly aware of his own ignorance in his particular field. The more be known, the more aware he will be of his ignorance [and therefore must attend and enjoy many Oxford seminars].’ – Nicholas of Cusa, who just needed a little help finishing his sentence

MONDAY 8 FEBRUARY

• The Oxford Byzantine Graduate Seminar meets at 12:30 pm on Teams. To join and for information, please contact the organiser at james.cogbill@worc.ox.ac.uk. This week’s speaker is Flavia Vanni (University of Birmingham), ‘Byzantine Stucco Decoration, 850–1453’.
• The Medieval Latin Reading Group meets at 1 pm on Teams. Submit your email address here to receive notices.
• The reading group GLARE (Greek, Latin, and Reception) meets at 5 pm on Teams. Email john.colley@ell.ox.ac.uk and jenyth.evans@ell.ox.ac.uk to be added to the mailing list. This week continues with Cicero’s In Catilinam. 
• The Medieval History Seminar meets on Teams at 5 pm (search for the seminar in Teams with code rmppucs and then click ‘join’). This week’s speaker is Alex Vukovich, ‘Euphrosyne of Polotsk: Princess of Rus, Traveller to the Holy Land, and the National Saint of Belarus’.

TUESDAY 9 FEBRUARY

• The Late Medieval Seminar meets at 2 pm on Zoom (Meeting ID: 962 7053 8553, passcode: 078931). This week’s speaker is Giogrio Riello (University of Warwick), ‘The Material Regulation of Fashion: Sumptuary Laws in the Medieval and Early Modern World’.
• At 3:30 pm on Google Meet  we have the Medieval Book Club (for more information, get in touch at oxfordmedievalbookclub@gmail.com). This week’s theme is Food and Farming, reading Robert Grosseteste, Rules of the Household and Estate Management.
• The Oxford University Numismatic Society meets at 5 pm on Teams. This week’s speaker is Prof. François de Callatäy (Royal Library of Belguim/École Pratique des Hautes Études), ‘Fontes Inedites Numismaticae Antiquae (FINA): A Website with Already 4,000 Letters Written Before 1800 and Dealing with Greek and Roman Coinages’. Email daniel.etches@new.ox.ac.uk to sign up to the mailing list and receive links.
• The Oxford Pre-Modern Middle Eastern History Seminar meets at 5:30 pm on Zoom (you can register here). This week’s speaker is Dominic Brookshaw (Oxford) on ‘Beyond the Mystical: How Hafiz’s Poetry Can Help Historians Read Post-Mongol Iran’, with respondent Paul Losensky (Indiana).

WEDNESDAY 10 FEBRUARY

• The Medieval German Seminar meets at 11:15 am on Teams, with the graduate reading group meeting at 11, reading Arnold von Harff. Email henrike.laehnemann@mod-langs.ox.ac.uk for details.
• The Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar meets at 5 pm on Google Meet (link here). This week’s speaker is Paweł Nowakowski (Warsaw), ‘Why “Galata”? New Epigraphic Evidence on the Toponomastics of a Suburb of Constantinople’.
• The Medieval English Research Seminar meets at 5:15 pm on Teams. This week’s speaker is Eleni Ponirakis (University of Nottingham), ‘Deor: A Dark Satanic Scop’.
• The Hebrew Bible in Medieval Manuscripts reading group will meet at 7 pm on Zoom; email judith.schlanger@orinst.ox.ac.uk for further information. 

THURSDAY 11 FEBRUARY

• The Aquinas Seminar Series meets at 4:30 pm on Zoom, on the theme ‘De Magistro: Aquinas and the Education of the Whole Person’. This week’s speaker is Andrea Aldo Robiglio (K U Leuven), ‘Learning Failures and Scholarly Vices’. You can register here.
• The Celtic Seminar meets at 5:15 pm on Teams. Contact david.willis@ling-phil.ox.ac.uk for a link. This week’s speaker is Michaela Jacques (University of Toronto), ‘Grammatical Pedagogy in Late Medieval Wales’.
• The OCHJS David Patterson lectures commence at 6 pm on Zoom (register here). This week’s speaker is Blanca Villuendas Sabate (OCHJS), ‘The Cairo Genizah Fragments as Pieces in Intellectual History Jigsaws: The Case of Dream Interpretation.
• The Medieval Trade Reading Group meets at 7 pm. To be added to the team and have access to the materials and meetings, email Annabel Hancock at annabel.hancock@history.ox.ac.uk.

FRIDAY 12 FEBRUARY

• The work in progress workshop Pre-Modern Conversations meets at 11 am on Teams. Email lena.vosding@mod-langs.ox.ac.uk for further information. 

Go forth, enjoy the snow, and remember, if you want to celebrate Valentine’s Day properly, you should find a third century Roman emperor to try to convert.

All best wishes,

Caroline

Dear all,

January feels like it lasted forever, but we’re already in Week 3 of term, if you can believe it! Two announcements to kick off your medieval week:

• Tomorrow, Tuesday 2 February, from 3-5:30 pm, we have the latest in the ‘Anthropocene Histories’ seminar at UCL’s Institute of Historical Research. The speaker is Sylvain Piron (EHESS), speaking on ‘Original Sin and the Anthropocene’. You can register here.
• On 5 and 6 February, we have the Medieval and Modern Languages Graduate Network Conference, with several exciting medieval speakers! The conference begins at 1:15 pm both days and lasts until 7:10 pm. The flyer, with link to register, is attached to this email.

‘Do there exist many [seminars], or is there but a single [seminar]? This is one of the most noble and exalted questions in the study of Nature.’ – Albertus Magnus, mostly

MONDAY 1 FEBRUARY

• The Oxford Byzantine Graduate Seminar meets at 12:30 pm; to join and for information, contact james.cogbill@worc.ox.ac.uk. This week’s speaker is Alberto Ravani (Exeter College), ‘John Tzetzes’ Allegories of the Iliad’.
• At 1 pm we have the Medieval Latin Reading Group on Teams. They’re currently reading the Life of St Frideswide, and we at OMS support all Frideswide content. Submit your email address here to receive notices.
• The Seminar in Palaeography and Manuscript Studies meets at 2:15 pm on Zoom. Registration required; email bookcentre@bodleian.ox.ac.uk. Today you’ll hear from the Bodleian and John Rylands curators on ‘Newly Acquired Medieval Book Coffers at the Bodleian and John Rylands Libraries’. 
• GLARE (Greek, Latin, and Reception) meets at 5 pm on Teams. For info, email john.colley@ell.ox.ac.uk and jenyth.evans@ell.ox.ac.uk. This week’s reading is Euripides, Iphigenia at Aulis.
• The Medieval History Seminar is at 5 pm on Teams (code rmppucs). This week’s speaker is Ruth Mostern (University of Pittsburgh), ‘Settler Colonialism, Shatterzones of State Power, and the Exploitation of Cheap Nature in Song Era China (960–1276 CE)’.
• Old Norse Reading Group meets at 5:30 pm on Teams to press on with Hervarar saga; email bond.west@lincoln.ox.ac.uk for details.

TUESDAY 2 FEBRUARY

Remember to sign up for Old Irish and Middle Welsh!

• The Late Medieval Seminar meets at 2 pm on Zoom (Meeting ID: 962 7053 8553, passcode: 078931). In keeping with this term’s textiles theme, this week’s speaker is Nick Amor (University of East Anglia), ‘The Worsted Cloth Industry in Late Medieval Norfolk’.
• At 3:30 pm on Google Meet (note the new online location) we have the Medieval Book Club (for more information, email oxfordmedievalbookclub@gmail.com). This week’s theme is ‘Heart Eating’, reading the Ninth Tale of the Fourth Day of Boccaccio’s Decameron.
• The Early Slavonic Seminar meets at 5 pm on Zoom (register here). This week’s speaker is Guzel’ Valeeva-Suleymanova (Tatarstan Academy of Sciences), on ‘The Art of the Khanate of Kazan and Its Influence on Russian Court Culture, 16th-17th Century’.
• The Medieval French Research Seminar meets at 5 pm on Teams, papers commencing 5:15 pm. This week’s speaker is Dr Liam Lewis, ‘Dogs to the Rescue: The Hue and Cry Soundscapes of Marie de France’s Fables’.
• The Oxford Pre-Modern Middle Eastern History Seminar is at 5:30 pm on Zoom (register here). This week’s speaker is Ahab Bdaiwi (Leiden/Cambridge), on ‘Explorations into the Origins of Islam: Religious and Philosophical Worldviews of the Quranic Mushrikūn’, with respondent Nicola Sinai (Oxford). 

WEDNESDAY 3 FEBRUARY

• The Medieval German Seminar, continuing with Arnold von Harff, meets at 11:15 am, with the Graduate Reading Group meeting at 11, on Teams (link here). 
• The Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar convenes at 5 pm on Google Meet (link here). This week’s speaker is Jonathan Shea (Dumbarton Oaks), ‘Changing Times and Shifting Priorities: Reconstructing Byzantium’s Government in the Late Tenth and Eleventh Centuries’.
• The Medieval English Research Seminar meets at 5:15 pm on Teams. This week’s speaker is Tristan Major (Qatar University), ‘Frithegod and Form’.
• The Hebrew Bible in Medieval Manuscripts Reading Group meets at 7 pm on Zoom. Email judith.schlanger@orinst.ox.ac.uk for further information.

THURSDAY 4 FEBRUARY

• This term’s Aquinas Seminar Series ‘De Magistro: Aquinas and the Education of the Whole Person’, convenes at 4:30 pm (register here). This week’s speaker is Zena Hitz (St John’s College, Annapolis), ‘The Spontaneity of the Mind and the Desire to Learn’.
• The Old English Reading Group forges ahead with Bede on Teams at 5:30 pm. Email tom.revell@balliol.ox.ac.uk or eugenia.vorobeva@jesus.ox.ac.uk for details.
• The OCHJS David Patterson lectures continue at 6 pm on Zoom (register here), with this week’s speaker Javier del Barco (Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Madrid) on ‘Narcissus Marsh’s Hebrew Books from the Oxford Period at Marsh’s Library in Dublin’. On a side note, Narcissus Marsh: what a name, no?

FRIDAY 5 FEBRUARY

• The Seminar in the History of the Book meets at 2:15 pm, back to its normal time; to register, email bookcentre@bodleian.ox.ac.uk. This week’s speaker is Francesco Guidi-Bruscoli (University of Florence), ‘The Borromei’s Trade Unveiled: Digging for Information in Fifteenth-Century Account Books’.
• The Anglo-Norman Reading Group continues with the Life of Godric at 5 pm on Zoom. Contact stephanie.hathaway@mod-langs.ox.ac.uk for details.

February: the shortest month, though it never feels that way. Keep hanging in there, everyone, and may these seminars be bright spots in your week!

All best wishes,

Caroline

Dear all,

Term is officially in full swing! Before you peruse our bountiful buffet of seminar options, be sure to get the following announcements in your calendars:

• Tomorrow, 26 January, we have a hugely exciting book presentation, hosted by Wadham at 6:30 pm on Zoom. Come learn more about Karl Kügle’s new edited volume Sounding the Past: Music as History and Memory from Karl himself and fellow speakers Antonio Chemotti, Manon Louviot and Adam Mathias. The open-access volume can be downloaded here, and you can register for the Zoom event here.
• This Thursday and Friday (28-29 January, 4-7:30 pm), Oxford’s Iberian History research cluster will be hosting an online postgraduate and ECR conference, ‘Polyphonic Communities: Ways of Belonging in the Medieval and Early Modern Iberian World’. See full details here, and register for the conference here.
• This year’s Aquinas Lecture will be held on Thursday 28 January at 5 pm on Zoom (register here). Prof. Mark Wynn (Nolloth Professor of the Christian Religion, University of Oxford) will be speaking on ‘Christian Narratives and the Well-Lived Life: Thomistic Reflections’.

‘Nothing is sweeter than a seminar, nothing higher, nothing stronger, nothing larger, nothing more joyful, nothing fuller, and nothing better in heaven or on earth’ – Thomas à Kempis, nearly

MONDAY 25 JANUARY

• The Oxford Byzantine Graduate Seminar meets at 12:30 pm on Teams. To join and for information, please contact the organiser at james.cogbill@worc.ox.ac.uk. This week’s speaker is Chloé Agar (St Cross College), ‘Analysing Visions Experienced by Saints and Supplicants in Coptic Sources: What, How, and Why?’.
• The Medieval Latin Reading Group meets at 1 pm on Teams. Submit your email address here to receive notices.
• The reading group GLARE (Greek, Latin, and Reception) meets at 5 pm on Teams. Email john.colley@ell.ox.ac.uk and jenyth.evans@ell.ox.ac.uk to be added to the mailing list. This week’s text is Cicero’s In Catilinam.
• Also on Teams at 5 pm is the Medieval History Seminar (search for the seminar in Teams with code rmppucs and then click ‘join’). This week’s speaker is Sara McDougall (City University of New York), ‘Judging Sex in Late Medieval France’.

TUESDAY 26 JANUARY

• Remember to register for Old Irish and Middle Welsh classes! They meet at 10:15 and 11:20 respectively, on Teams.
• The Late Medieval Seminar meets at 2 pm on Zoom (Meeting ID: 962 7053 8553, passcode: 078931). This week’s speaker is Eiren Shea (Grinnell), ‘Hammered, Gilt, and Spun: Innovations in Gold Thread Technology During the Yuan Dynasty’.
• At 3:30 pm on Teams we have the Medieval Book Club (for more information, get in touch at oxfordmedievalbookclub@gmail.com). This week’s theme is ‘Healthy Eating’, reading the Vita Karoli Magni. Charlemagne: the secret to clean living?
• The Early Slavonic Seminar meets at 5 pm on Zoom (link here). This week’s speaker is Emir O. Filipović (University of Sarajevo), speaking on ‘Hersekzade Ahmed Pasha (1459-1517): From Bosnian Prince to Ottoman Vizier’.
• Also at 5 pm, but on Teams, is the meeting of the Oxford University Numismatic Society. This week’s speaker is Rebecca Darley (Birkbeck), ‘Numismatic Perspectives on the Western Indian Ocean in Late Antiquity’. Email daniel.etches@new.ox.ac.uk to receive meeting links.
• The Oxford Pre-Modern Middle Eastern History Seminar meets at 5:30 pm on Zoom (you can register here). This week’s speaker is Christopher Melchert (Oxford), ‘Before Sufism: Early Islamic Renunciant Piety’, with respondent Michael Cooperson (UCLA).

WEDNESDAY 27 JANUARY

• The Medieval German Seminar meets at 11:15 am on Teams, with the graduate reading group meeting at 11, reading Arnold von Harff. Email henrike.laehnemann@mod-langs.ox.ac.uk for details.
• The Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar meets at 5 pm on Google Meet (link here). This week’s speaker is Nadine Viermann (Heidelberg), ‘Imperial Piety, Warfare, and Eschatology in the age of Heraclius’.
• The Medieval English Research Seminar meets at 5:15 pm on Teams. This week’s speaker is Michael Fox (University of Western Ontario), ‘Where’s the Point? Beowulf, Analogues, and Örvar-Oddr’. 
• The Hebrew Bible in Medieval Manuscripts reading group will meet at 7 pm on Zoom; email judith.schlanger@orinst.ox.ac.uk for further information.

THURSDAY 28 JANUARY

• The Seminar in Medieval and Renaissance Music will meet at 5 pm on Zoom (register here). This week’s speaker is Grantley McDonald (Oxford), ‘Emperor Frederick III as Patron of Music’, with discussants Reinhard Strohm (Oxford), Andreas Zajic (Vienna) and Catherine Saucier (Arizona State). 
• The Celtic Seminar meets at 5:15 pm on Teams. Contact david.willis@ling-phil.ox.ac.uk for a link. This week’s speaker is Kate Leach (Harvard), ‘Vernacularity in Premodern Welsh Healing Charms’.
• The OCHJS David Patterson lectures commence at 6 pm on Zoom (register here). This week’s speakers are Alison Salvesen (OCHJS), Sarah Pearce (Southampton) and Miriam Frankel (Hebrew University), on ‘Israel in Egypt: The Land of Egypt as Concept and Reality for Jews in Antiquity and the Early Medieval Period’.
• The Medieval Trade Reading Group meets at 7 pm. To be added to the team and have access to the materials and meetings, email Annabel Hancock at annabel.hancock@history.ox.ac.uk.

FRIDAY 29 JANUARY

• The work in progress workshop Pre-Modern Conversations meets at 11 am on Teams. Email lena.vosding@mod-langs.ox.ac.uk for further information.
• The Seminar in the History of the Book will have a special session at 5 pm today (note the time change), featuring speakers Henrike Lähnemann (Oxford), Kathryn James (Beinecke Library, Yale), Matthew Shaw (Oxford), and Sarah Wheale (Bodleian Libraries, Oxford), discussing ‘Goostly Psalmes in Oxford and New Haven: The Queen’s College Sammelband with Myles Coverdale’s Goostly Psalmes’, with a showing (a shewing, even?) of the Queen’s College copy and the Bodleian and Beinecke fragments. Email bookcentre@bodleian.ox.ac.uk for the link.

Enjoy the bounty!

All best wishes,

Caroline

Dear all,

Welcome (back?) to Hilary Term! We have a cornucopia of medieval delights for you over the next eight weeks, to brighten the winter dark and take the sting out of lockdown.

First, however, a hugely important and exciting announcement! The annual, interdisciplinary Hilary Term Oxford Medieval Studies Lecture is THIS WEEK! On Thursday 21 January at 5 pm, the OMS YouTube channel will be livestreaming Prof. William Chester Jordan (Princeton), giving a paper entitled ‘A Thirteenth Century Polymath Considers the Jews’. Watch it at this link. Questions will be moderated through the comments. This is an unmissable event and an opportunity to hear a brilliant scholar; we look forward to seeing you there.

Want to be an internet sensation? Pitch a blog post for OMS! Check out our latest posts here, and email caroline.batten@ell.ox.ac.uk and henrike.laehnemann@mod-langs.ox.ac.uk with your ideas.  

And now, the moment you’ve all been waiting for: the seminars.

‘When the words come, they are merely empty shells without [Oxford seminars]. They live as they are [presented at Oxford seminars], for the words are the body and the [seminars] the spirit.’ – Hildegard von Bingen, mostly

MONDAY 18 JANUARY

• The Medieval Latin Reading Group meets at 1 pm today on Teams. Submit your email address here to receive updates and invitations. 
• The Seminar in Palaography and Manuscript Studies meets at 2:15 pm on Zoom. Email bookcentre@bodleian.ox.ac.uk for the link, and for this term you’ll need to email by noon on the Friday before the seminar. Mark your calendars! This week’s speaker is Julian Luxford (St Andrews), ‘The Tewkesbury Benefactors’ Book’
• The Medieval History Seminar meets on Teams at 5 pm. This week’s speaker is Patrick Geary (Emeritus, Princeton), ‘The Challenges and Dangers of Integrating Genomic Data into Early Medieval History’.
• Also at 5 pm on Teams is a new reading group, GLARE (Greek, Latin, and Reception). Email both john.colley@ell.ox.ac.uk and jenyth.evans@ell.ox.ac.uk to join in and read Greek and Latin texts with an eye towards their use in medieval and later literature. This week’s text is Euripides, Iphigenia at Aulis.
• The Old Norse Reading Group meets at 5:30 pm on Teams, continuing with Hervarar saga ok Heiðreks. Email bond.west@lincoln.ox.ac.uk to join.

TUESDAY 19 JANUARY

• The Late Medieval Seminar is back, and this term’s theme is ‘Textiles in the Later Middle Ages’. The seminar meets at 2 pm on Zoom (link here, meeting ID: 962 7053 8553, passcode: 078931). This week’s speaker is Amanda Phillips (University of Virginia), ‘Ottoman Textiles between the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean’.
• The Medieval Book Club meets at 3:30 on Teams. This term’s theme is Food (glorious food), and this week’s theme is ‘Feasting: Arthurian Tales’. Email oxfordmedievalbookclub@gmail.com for more details and to join.
• The Oxford Pre-Modern Middle Eastern History Seminar meets at 5:30 pm on Zoom (link here). This week’s speaker is Lena Salaymeh (Oxford), ‘The Beginnings of Islam’, with respondent Khaled Abou el Fadl (UCLA).

WEDNESDAY 20 JANUARY

• The Medieval German Seminar meets at 11:15 am on Teams, with a small reading group beginning at 11. This term’s focus is Arnold von Harff’s travel accounts.
• The Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar meets at 5 pm on Google Meet (link here). This week’s speaker is Marek Jankowiak, ‘P.Lond I 113.10, the Tribute of Cyrus, and the Muslim Conquest of Egypt’.
• The Medieval English Research Seminar meets at 5:15 pm on Teams. This week’s speaker is Samantha Zacher (Cornell), ‘Looking beyond the Lyrical “I”: the Wife’s Lament, Psalm Intertexts and Affective Technologies’.

THURSDAY 21 JANUARY

• The Old English Reading Group meets at 5:30 pm on Teams, continuing on with Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica. Email tom.revell@balliol.ox.ac.uk or eugenia.vorobeva@jesus.ox.ac.uk for details.

FRIDAY 22 JANUARY

• The Seminar in the History of the Book meets at 2:15 pm on Zoom. Register to receive a link for each meeting by emailing bookcentre@bodleian.ox.ac.uk. This week’s speaker is Matthew Payne (Keeper of the Muniments, Westminster Abbey), ‘Follow the Money: Wynkyn de Worde, Jacques Ferrebouc and the Bardi’.
• The Anglo-Norman Reading Group is continuing with the Life of Godric this term, at 5 pm on odd week Fridays. Please contact Stephanie Hathaway (stephanie.hathaway@mod-langs.ox.ac.uk) for details.

We’ve made it through the Kalends of January! All of term spreads before us, with EVEN MORE seminars starting up next week. Keep your heads up, medieval team: we’ll get through the winter yet.

All best wishes,

Caroline