Hinksey Meadow is first on record in a grant by Henry I to Abingdon Abbey 1102 x 1110, and it’s still there, in West Oxford in walking distance of Oxford Railway Station, one of the rarest, most species-rich meadows in Britain. But it’s threatened with destruction – by the Environment Agency. The EA is insisting that it should build only the most destructive version of its Oxford Flood Alleviation Scheme, scooping out a 5 km channel through the Oxford green corridor from Botley to Sandford Lock, through Hinksey Meadow.
The UK has lost 97% of its meadows since World War II, including so many floodmeadows that the Thames Valley contains a quarter of those remaining. Hinksey Meadow is even rarer than that: it is a wildflower floodplain meadow with type MG43a grassland, of which only four square miles survive in the UK as a whole. It’s of much higher diversity than, for instance, Port Meadow.
Hinksey Meadow has survived for the best part of a thousand years because it’s part of a sustainable agricultural collaboration between humans and their environment: managed grazing fertilizes the meadow, and the meadow’s hay cut provides food for stock with no need for industrial fertilizer. Hinksey is also an invaluable seedbank for the future of regenerative farming.
Image1. Part of the scheme area, showing the direction floodwater takes and the location of the EA’s channel (up to 200 metres wide). Red arrow marks site of Hinksey Meadow
The channel requires
digging out c.400,000 cubic metres (700,000 tonnes) of soil and gravel
removing 3780 mature trees and 11 kms hedgerows
destroying habitat for many species of insects, birds and animals
destroying existing braided floodplain streams and wild life corridor
compulsory purchase of some 1000 parcels of land in and around the scheme area
release of sequestered carbon: grassland is second only to peat in its capacity
Hinksey Meadow cannot survive digging up and hydrological interference.
Landscape artist Elaine Kazimierczuk painted the Meadow for a charity auction to raise funds for its defence: see her at work and hear why, even on the grey windy English summer’s day the weather gave her, she feels so passionately about the Meadow
The EA’s channel offers
a small increase in alleviation to a few dozen houses and shops at massive financial and environmental cost
a big ticket scheme that will ultimately enable more development in and around the floodplain
And it is not needed:
up to 85-90% of the scheme’s protection is offered by much smaller localised flood defences such as bunds and earthworks
independent experts in hydrology and cost/benefits have shown that no channel works very nearly as well, without the enormous environmental destruction, and have also proposed several other alternative strategies.
Why does the EA insist on the channel?
It won’t say. In the absence of clear reasons, we can only speculate that it decided on the channel (its characteristic response in twentieth-century flood schemes) in advance and then worked backwards to try to find mitigations. Independent experts pointed out that the EA used the wrong DEFRA metric for the area’s biodiversity in its application. In its revised application the proper metric turned the EA’s claimed 10% increase in biodiversity into a biodiversity loss.
The EA now claims it will
translocate MG4a grassland. This cannot be done according to independent experts: such grassland takes hundreds of years to create.
create wetlands and plant saplings onsite and offsite (in unspecified locations somewhere in Oxfordshire)
secure environmental partners and get landowners to help with the costs of monitoring and maintenance
This leads to absolute loss of irreplaceable bio-diversity and interlocking mature eco-systems at least 30 years to wait before saplings become mature trees – if they are maintained. (For the effects of a riverine EA scheme in 2022 see this BBC Interview)
Some of the trees that will be lost within and beside the Oxford meadowsThe Willow Walk, the path by Hinksey MeadowThe EA’s proposed replacement for Willow Walk
What can be done? Objectors have secured a Public Enquiry into the scheme. The Enquiry opens 10 am on Tuesday 14 November 2023 for a month at The King’s Centre, Osney Mead, Oxford OX2 0ES (walkable from the railway station). FIND US | The King’s Centre (kingscentre.co.uk)
You can
1. Support the Public Enquiry by joining a peaceful demonstration 10am on 14th November outside the King’s Centre entrance. Feel free to bring your own signs and banners. Please do get in contact at the email below if you would like to come on the 14th.
3. Spread the word! And if you know people who might be able and willing to contribute to the defence of the meadow, direct them to the Go fund me page
References and more information
Chance, E., Colvin, C., Cooper, J., Day, C.J., Hassell, T.G., Jessup, M., Selwyn, N.,1979. A History of the County of Oxford London (Victoria County History: London, 1979)Volume 4, The City of Oxford, ‘Other Meadows’: https://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/oxon/vol4/pp265-283#h3-0021
Hanson, W.J. A Thousand Years : A Study of the Interaction between People and their Environment in the Cumnor, Wytham and North Hinksey Area of Oxfordshire, formerly Berkshire, vol. 2 (privately printed, 1996: copies held by Bodleian and Oxfordshire History Centre).
Any questions to Jocelyn Wogan-Browne, FMAA SCR Associate St Edmund Hall, University of Oxford Thomas F. X. and Theresa Mullarkey Chair in Literature (Emerita), Fordham University olim Professor of Medieval Literature, University of York
Term is now well and truly underway! We have already enjoyed so many excellent seminar papers, social opportunities, and special exhibitions and events. Such a lot of work goes into organising and taking part in these things, and so here is a quote from the Epistolae project that sums up our gratitude for your contributions to our medievalist community here at Oxford, from all at OMS:
Celsitudini vestrae gratias agere volo, sed condignas meritis eius scribere non valeo. [I wish to give thanks to your highness but I cannot find words to write worthy of your merit.] A letter (1104) from Anselm, archbishop of Canterbury to Matilda of Tuscany
I would like to extend a particularly huge thanks to all of the special collections staff around the university for all of the hard work you do. Our blog post for the week is from Sophie Bacchus-Waterman, special collections photographer at St John’s College. Sophie has most recently been responsible for photographing MS 61, the manuscript from which all of this year’s newsletter illustrations are taken. Her blog highlights the incredible strength of special collections work at Oxford, and the amount of wonderful manuscript holdings that are being made available to a wider audience.To peep behind the curtain of special collections and learn about the processes, difficulties, and joys of manuscript digitisation, please do read Sophie’s blog here!
For all of the weekly listings, please see below:
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
The WOOPIE (Oxford Old English Work in Progress) Seminar will meet on Thursday 16th November at 5.30pm in the Ian Skipper Room, St Cross College. This term’s speaker will be Simon Heller (University of Oxford), ‘Reclaiming Beowulf in the United States, from Nixon to Reagan’. All welcome! If you would like to attend, please contact francis.leneghan@ell.ox.ac.uk.
‘Messing about with Manuscripts’: R.A.B. Mynors and Balliol’s Medieval Library: This exhibition is inspired by the work of Balliol Fellow Roger Mynors, whose 1963 catalogue listing and describing the College’s celebrated manuscript collection has provided a gateway to the medieval world for generations of scholars. Most of Balliol’s medieval books have been together in the College, read and used by academics and thinkers at Balliol since the Middle Ages. This exhibition in the College’s St Cross Church brings together for the first time the history of the collection with the processes and the people involved in uncovering it, and in doing so, hopes to build upon Mynors’ work in opening up the collection to an even wider audience. Public openings will take place on Thursday 2 November, 11am-4pm, Monday 20 November, 11am-4pm, and Saturday 2 December, 11am-4pm. The library catalogue is available digitally here.
New Seminar Series: Exploring Medieval Oxford through Lincoln Archives: Fridays 2-3pm, Seminar Room 2, EPA Centre, Museum Road, OX1 3PX. Lincoln College, founded in 1427, holds an outstanding collection of archives. Anyone interested in analyzing primary sources and conducting a comprehensive examination of the documents are welcome to attend. Working in pairs on a self-selected source, the research will entail the examination of the record’s external characteristics (such as writing surface, layout, marks of use) as well as transcription, translation, and identification of locations and individuals mentioned in the records to establish a context. Special importance will be given to the seals attached to these documents. As well as collaborating on unpublished sources, attendees will gain experience in digitisation of sources and publish their analysis online. Students will prepare their item for exhibition, and a one-day workshop on these sources will be held in Trinity Term. Those who are interested can contact Lindsay McCormack and Laure Miolo via email: lindsay.mccormack@lincoln.ox.ac.uk and laure.miolo@history.ox.ac.uk
Early Medieval Britain and Ireland Network Fieldtrip to see the 40th Brixworth Lecture (Helen Gittos: Christianity before Conversion) at Brixworth Church, Northamptonshire. If you would like to join us to climb the tower of the grandest surviving Anglo-Saxon church and meet graduate students from Leicester and Cambridge, please send your name and phone number to Bobby Klapper: robert.klapper@spc.ox.ac.uk. Limited places owing to minibus space. First come, first served. Transport free. Tickets £8 from brixworthchurchfriends@brixworth.com [You may be able to reclaim this from your college]. For more details, click here.
EVENTS THIS WEEK:
Monday 23rd October:
The Medieval Latin Manuscript Reading Group meets at 1-2pm on Teams. A friendly venue to practice your Latin and palaeography on a range of texts and scripts over the year. Sign up to the mailing list to receive weekly updates and Teams invites.
The Medieval History Seminar meets at 5pm in the Wharton Room, All Souls College. This week’s speaker will be Matthew Kempshall (Wadham) on ‘Dante’s Political Theology‘. The seminar will also be available via Teams: the Teams session can be accessed by logging in to Teams with your .ox.ac.uk account and joining the group “Medieval History Research Seminar” (team code rmppucs). Alternatively, it can be accessed via this link. If you have any difficulties please email: medhistsem@history.ox.ac.uk.
Tuesday 24th October:
The Medieval English Research Seminar will meet at 12.15 in The Weston Library Lecture Theatre and S T Lee Gallery. Today’s speaker will be Nicholas Perkins, ‘Gifts and Books’ (talk and exhibition). All welcome!
The Gentlewoman from Reedham:Re-encountering Margaret Paston through her letters, in the 21st century: at 2pm-3.30pm in the Buttery at Wolfson College, OCLW Visiting Scholar Professor Diane Watt (University of Surrey) joins us to discuss her upcoming imaginative biography of Margaret Paston. Register here: https://oclw.web.ox.ac.uk/event/diane-watt
The Medieval Church and Culture Seminar meets at Wellbeloved Room, Harris Manchester College. Tea & coffee from 5pm; papers begin at 5.15pm. This week’s speaker is Elisabeth Lorans (Univ. de Tours and All Souls), ‘Marmoutier (Tours), a late Roman and early medieval monastery in the Loire valley (4th-11th centuries)’. Everyone is welcome at this informal and friendly graduate seminar!
Wednesday 25th October:
The Medieval German Seminar meets at 11.15, at Somerville College. In Michaelmas Term, we are going to discuss the forthcoming study edition by Christine Putzo of Konrad Fleck’s ‘Flore und Blancheflur’, led this week by Malena Ratzke; if you want to be added to the seminar’s teams chat please email Henrike Lähnemann.
The Medieval Latin Document Reading Group meets at 4-5pm on Teams. A document is sent out in advance but homework is not expected. Please contact Michael Stansfield (michael.stansfield@new.ox.ac.uk) for further details and the Teams link.
The Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar meets at 5pm at The Ioannou Centre for Classical and Byzantine Studies 66 St Giles and online via Microsoft Teams by clicking here. This week’s speakers will be Miranda Williams, Tim Penn and Ine Jacobs (Oxford University) ‘More than “the last monument of Byzantine rule in Cyrenaica”. Taucheira in Late Antiquity‘.
The Centre for Manuscript and Text Cultures: Michaelmas Term Lecture meets at 5.15pm in the Memorial Room, The Queen’s College. This term’s speakers will be Prof. Mary Carruthers (NYU and St Hilda’s, Oxford): Understanding Solid Figures in Early Medieval Manuscripts: how Rhetoric and Geometry interact.
Dante Reading Group meets at 5.30-7pm in St Anne’s College, Seminar Room 11. The group is open to those with or without a knowledge of Italian, the reading being sent out in the original and in translation. Refreshments, both alcoholic and otherwise, will be provided! To register or ask any any questions, please email charles.west@regents.ox.ac.uk
A service of Compline in the Norman crypt of St-Peter-in-the-East, the library of St Edmund Hall, at 9:30pm.
Thursday 26th October:
The Medieval Hebrew Reading Group meets at 10-11am in Catherine Lewis Lecture Theatre, Clarendon Institute, and online via Zoom. In order to attend this reading group via Zoom, please register here. This reading group is an opportunity to practice reading directly from images of medieval Hebrew manuscripts in an informal setting. All skill levels are welcome! There will be coffee, tea and cake afterwards in the Common Room of the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies for those attending in person. For further information, please email joseph.ohara@ames.ox.ac.uk.
The Germanic Reading Group meets at 4pm, online via Zoom. Please contact Howard Jones Howard.Jones@sbs.ox.ac.uk to request the handouts and to be added to the list. This week’s reading will be MHG Parzival extracts (Joshua Booth leading).
The Medieval Women’s Writing Research Seminar meets at 5-6.30pm at Lincoln College, Oakeshott Room. This week’s speaker is Dr Lena Vosding, Linacre College, The Lüne Letters: Late Medieval Female Correspondence. Please email katherine.smith@lincoln.ox.ac.uk to be added to the mailing list or to find out more.
The Celtic Seminar meets at 5pm, online via Zoom. Please contact a.elias@wales.ac.uk for the link. This week’s speaker will be Chantal Kobel (DIAS), ‘Secret writing and abstruse language in medieval Irish lawyers’ books’.
The Old Occitan Literature Workshop meets at 5-6pm at St Hugh’s College, 74 Woodstock Road, Office A4. The topic of this week’s meeting will be The Dawn Song: Just Five Minutes More (Giraut de Bornelh (1162-1199): Vida, “Reis glorios”, “Per solhatz revelhar”; Anon., “En un vergier sotz fuella d’albespi”). To sign up, or for any other queries, email Kate Travers: katherine.travers@st-hughs.ox.ac.uk.
Friday 27th October:
The Medieval Coffee Morning meets as usual 10:30am in the Visiting Scholars Centre of the Weston Library (instructions how to find it) with presentation of items from the special collections, coffee and the chance to see the view from the 5th floor terrace.
Exploring Medieval Oxford through Lincoln Archives meets at 2-3pm, Seminar Room 2, EPA Centre, Museum Road, OX1 3PX. Anyone interested in analyzing primary sources and conducting a comprehensive examination of the documents are welcome to attend. As well as collaborating on unpublished sources, attendees will gain experience in digitisation of sources and publish their analysis online. Students will prepare their item for exhibition, and a one-day workshop on these sources will be held in Trinity Term. Those who are interested can contact Lindsay McCormack and Laure Miolo via email: lindsay.mccormack@lincoln.ox.ac.uk and laure.miolo@history.ox.ac.uk
Note: The Taylor Editions Book Launch:Monk-Calf and Nuns on the Run originally planned for this day has been postponed to 1 December, 3-4pm.
The Anglo-Norman Reading Group meets at 5-6.30pm, in the Julia Mann Room, St Hilda’s College, and Zoom. Please let us know if you would like to attend, either in person or on Zoom; reminders including the Zoom link will be sent to those who have expressed interest. To register interest, or for more information, please contact Jane Bliss jane.bliss@lmh.oxon.org and/or Stephanie stephanie.hathaway@gmail.com.
Saturday 28th October:
The 40th Brixworth Lecture takes place at 5pm (with tea in the village hall from 3.30pm) at Brixworth Church, Northamptonshire. This year’s lecture is given by Helen Gittos (Oxford), ‘Christianity before Conversion‘. Tickets from brixworthchurchfriends@brixworth.com.
OPPORTUNITIES:
CFP: Conflicts, Connections and Communities in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles: 23 November 2023 [Australian Central Daylight Time] Online via Microsoft Teams. We invite scholars from various disciplines and different career stages to submit proposals for 20-minute papers (to be presented in English) relating in some way to themes of conflict, connection, and/or community in the ASC and their wider context. Please send paper proposals, including a title, 150–200-word abstract, and short biography, to Dr James Kane (james.kane@flinders.edu.au) and A/Prof. Erin Sebo (erin.sebo@flinders.edu.au). For full details, please see here.
Apponantur cum gratia et salute recentes hodie tibi deliciae [May fresh delights with greeting and gratitude be delivered to you today] A letter (1156-57) from Osbert of Clare to Adelidis of Barking
Of course, the great Oxford Medievalist dilemma is that there is such an abundance of delight to choose from, and this newsletter delivers to you today perhaps too many delights for a single medievalist to enjoy! I wish you luck in selecting which seminars and reading groups from our wonderful line-up, and wish you a week of fresh delight, greeting and gratitude!
[A Medievalist nervously eyes up the overabundance of possible seminars and tries to decide which to attend] St John’s College MS. 61, f. 21 r. By permission of the President and Fellows of St John’s College, Oxford Viewable in full at Digital Bodleian
I hope everyone is now settled back into the rhythm of term and is enjoying the start of the new academic year. Thank you to all who came to Meet the Medievalists last week: it was lovely to see so many of you in person. A letter from the Epistolae project highlights the difficulty of finding friends, and the joys that finally finding them can provoke:
Diu quaesivimus. Et confidimus, quia invenimus in te illum amicum, quem cupivimus et optavimus et speravimus. [Long have we sought, and now we believe that we have found in you the friend whom we have wished, prayed, and hoped for.] A letter (719-22) from Eangyth, abbess
If the past week has whetted your appetite for more medieval social events, or if you are still searching for the medievalist friend / colleague / collaborator you have been wishing and hoping for, you are in luck: this week features both the Oxford Medieval Society Welcome Drinks and Pub Quiz (Thursday) and the Medieval Coffee Morning (Friday). We hope to see many of you there!
This week’s blog post is written by Professor Elizabeth Eva Leach (Faculty of Music), on her new book, Medieval Sex Lives. The book is not only by an Oxford academic, but focuses on an Oxford manuscript, Bodleian Library MS Douce 308. To discover what the book is about, what inspired Prof. Leach to write it, and to find a discount code for 30% off, please view the blog post here. Prof. Leach also recently recorded a 1-hour programme on BBC R3 which aired on Guillaume de Machaut – it’s available on BBC sounds for the rest of October via https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001qvs4.
Please see below for the week’s announcements, events, and opportunities.
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
For the latest booklet updates, please consult the online copy here, which will be updated throughout the term. Please note in particular that the Medieval Archeology Seminar was omitted from the pdf copy of the booklet distributed last week. The seminar takes place on Mondays of even weeks at 3pm, Institute of Archaeology, Lecture Room. The Centre for Manuscript and Text Cultures is also hosting events, in weeks 3 and 5, that now appear in the booklet. And the link to sign up for the Seminars in Medieval and Renaissance Music has now been included.
Form and Function in Medieval Manuscripts: The Medieval Church and Culture seminar meets on Tuesday of 2nd week, 5pm, Bodleian Library, for a session with Dr Martin Kauffmann, Head of Early and Rare Collections. Numbers are limited, so we all get close to the manuscripts, but there are still a few places left. Email lesley.smith@history.ox.ac.uk.
New Dante Reading Group: Wednesdays, 17:30-19:00. Whether you are a dedicated Dante scholar or someone who has never gotten round to picking up the Comedy, the new Dante Reading Group is for you! Each week, we will be reading through and discussing a canto of the Divine Comedy in a relaxed and informal setting, delving into Dante’s language and imagination in manageable chunks. It is open to those with or without a knowledge of Italian, the reading being sent out in the original and in translation. Refreshments, both alcoholic and otherwise, will be provided! To register or ask any any questions, please email charles.west@regents.ox.ac.uk
Oxford Medieval Society invites you to an evening of Welcome Drinks and a Pub Quiz! Join us at 6pm on Thursday 19th October, at the Old Law Library, All Souls College. Entry is £5, which includes not only drinks and nibbles, but also membership of the Society. Come and meet fellow medievalists and test your medieval trivia!”
EVENTS THIS WEEK:
Monday 16th October:
The Medieval Latin Manuscript Reading Group meets at 1-2pm on Teams. A friendly venue to practice your Latin and palaeography on a range of texts and scripts over the year. Sign up to the mailing list to receive weekly updates and Teams invites.
Queer and Trans Medievalisms: A Reading and Research Group meets at 3pm at Univ. All extremely welcome! This week’s discussion will centre Transpoetics.(Jos Charles’ feeld (2018) and Julian Talamantez Brolaski’s Of Mongrelitude (2017) with medieval lyrics(13th-15th c)). To join the mailing list and get texts in advance, or if you have any questions, email rowan.wilson@univ.ox.ac.uk.
The Medieval Archeology Seminar meets at 3pm at the Institute of Archaeology, Lecture Room. This week’s speaker will be John Blair, ‘Powerful women, dangerous women: female ritual equipment in England and the Rhineland, 550-700‘.
The Medieval History Seminar meets at 5pm in the Wharton Room, All Souls College. This week’s speaker will be Sumner Braund (History of Science Museum, Oxford) ‘A Measure of Monastic Reform? New saints, ancient saints, and the re-forming of monastic communities in late 10th-century England‘. The seminar will also be available via Teams: the Teams session can be accessed by logging in to Teams with your .ox.ac.uk account and joining the group “Medieval History Research Seminar” (team code rmppucs). Alternatively, it can be accessed via this link. If you have any difficulties please email: medhistsem@history.ox.ac.uk.
The Old Norse Reading Group meets at 5.30-7pm. We’ll be translating a range of exciting Old Norse texts! To join the mailing list, email ashley.castelino@lincoln.ox.ac.uk.
Tuesday 17th October:
The Medieval English Research Seminar will meet at 12.15 in Lecture Theatre 2. This week’s speaker will be Victoria MacKenzie, ‘Imagining Margery and Julian: a reading and Q and A’. There will be a sandwich lunch provided afterwards. All welcome!
The Medieval Church and Culture Seminar meets at 5pm at The Weston Library. This week is a special Manuscript Showcase at the Weston Library. Please note that numbers are limited to a maximum of 20; please email Lesley Smith (lesley.smith@history.ox.ac.uk) to take part.
Wednesday 18th October:
The Medieval German Seminar meets at 11.15, at Somerville College. We are discussing Konrad Fleck’s ‘Flore und Blancheflur’, starting with an introduction to the prologue by Marlene Schilling and a presentation on the Trier Floyis fragment by Nikolaus Ruge. Further information via the teams channel; if you want to be added to that: please email Henrike Lähnemann.
The Medieval Latin Document Reading Group meets at 4-5pm on Teams. A document is sent out in advance but homework is not expected. Please contact Michael Stansfield for further details and the Teams link.
The Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar meets at 5pm at The Ioannou Centre for Classical and Byzantine Studies 66 St Giles and online via Microsoft Teams by clicking here. This week is a special OCBR lecture. This week’s speaker will be Adrian Jusupovic (The Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw), ‘Byzantine Princess Ruling Rus‘.
The Medieval Visual Culture Seminar meets at 5pm in St Catherine’s College, Arumugam Building. This week’s speaker will be Giosuè Fabiano (Courtauld Institute of Art), ”Illuminavit hunc diem’: Natural Lighting, Liturgical Time and Frescoes in late Medieval Italian Churches’. For queries, contact Elena Lichmanova (elena.lichmanova@merton.ox.ac.uk).
Dante Reading Group meets at 5.30-7pm in St Anne’s College, Seminar Room 11. The group is open to those with or without a knowledge of Italian, the reading being sent out in the original and in translation. Refreshments, both alcoholic and otherwise, will be provided! To register or ask any any questions, please email charles.west@regents.ox.ac.uk
Thursday 19th October:
The Medieval Hebrew Reading Group meets at 10-11am in Catherine Lewis Lecture Theatre, Clarendon Institute, and online via Zoom. In order to attend this reading group via Zoom, please register here. This reading group is an opportunity to practice reading directly from images of medieval Hebrew manuscripts in an informal setting. All skill levels are welcome! There will be coffee, tea and cake afterwards in the Common Room of the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies for those attending in person. For further information, please email joseph.ohara@ames.ox.ac.uk.
As part of the Oxford International Song Festival, Henrike Lähnemann will present a programme of singing from Bodleian medieval manuscripts at St Edmund Hall, including a visit to the Norman crypt under St-Peter-in-the-East, 10am and 11:15am; both slots are currently sold out but we hope to record it.
The Environmental History Working Group meets at 12.30-2pm, in the History Faculty, Gerry Marton Room. This week’s speaker will be Ryan Mealiffe, “Clay Accumulators (Pigs and Piggy Banks): Intersections of Material Culture, Environment, and Symbolism in Majapahit Java and the Early Medieval West”. For further information, please contact ryan.mealiffe@wolfson.ox.ac.uk.
The Digital Editions Community of Practice Group meets at 1-2pm in the Taylor Institution Library Room 2. Each session will include a brief talk, followed by an opportunity for discussion. Hot water, tea, coffee, milk and biscuits will be provided. Please feel free to bring your own lunch (and a mug for the hot drinks!). This week’s speaker will be Lucian Shepherd, The Digital Documentation Process initiative.
The Medieval Women’s Writing Reading Group meets at 3-4pm in Lincoln College Lower Lecture Room. This week’s reading will be Epistolary networks around Hildegard of Bingen. Please email katherine.smith@lincoln.ox.ac.uk to be added to the mailing list and get texts in advance, or to find out more.
The Seminar in Medieval and Renaissance Music meets at 5-7pm, online via Zoom. This week’s speaker will be Sam Barrett (University of Cambridge): ‘Newly Discovered Aquitanian Polyphony from c. 1100’. The discussants will be Andreas Haug (University of Würzburg) and Margot Fassler (University of Notre Dame). If you are planning to attend a seminar this term, please register using this form. For each seminar, those who have registered will receive an email with the Zoom invitation and any further materials a couple of days before the seminar. If you have questions, please just send an email to all.souls.music.seminars@gmail.com. Please note, this address will now be the main point of contact for these seminars.
The Celtic Seminar meets at 5.15pm, in the History of the Book Room, English Faculty, and online via Teams. Please contact david.willis@ling-phil.ox.ac.uk if you need a link to join online. This week’s speaker will be Chantal Kobel (DIAS), ‘Secret writing and abstruse language in medieval Irish lawyers’ books’.
Oxford Medieval Society Welcome Drinks and Pub Quiz take place at 6pm in the Old Law Library, All Souls. Entry is £5 on the door, which includes the cost of drinks.
Friday 20th October:
The Medieval Coffee Morning meets as usual 10:30am in the Visiting Scholars Centre of the Weston Library (instructions how to find it) with presentation of items from the special collections, coffee and the chance to see the view from the 5th floor terrace.
Saturday 21st October:
Gifts and Books Day at the Weston library. Come to a special day celebrating the Gifts and Books Exhibition! Entrance is free, just drop in between 10.30-3.30pm. Highlights include a tour of Gifts and Books with exhibition curator, Dr Nicholas Perkins, discover how books transform lives with charity Give a Book: Prison Reading Groups, and enjoy 10% discount on the Gifts and Books exhibition book on the day in the Bodleian shop.
OPPORTUNITIES:
Master Class: Digital Scholarly Editing (#mcdse2024) The master class takes place from 19th to 23rd February 2024 in Saarbrücken, at Saarland University. Participation is free of charge. The master class will provide you with theoretical and practical knowledge on digital scholarly editing und gives you the opportunity to discuss your own (digital) scholarly edition with peers and known experts. The language of instruction is English. Please check the school page (https://www.i-d-e.de/aktivitaeten/schools/masterclass-2024-saarbruecken/) for further details.
Assistant Professor of English (Medieval Literature): The Department of English at Middle Tennessee State University is seeking applicants for a full-time, tenure-track faculty position (#123400) in Medieval Literature (Old and Middle English) at the rank of assistant professor. The start date for this position is August 1, 2024.The successful candidate is expected to teach general education courses in composition and literature, undergraduate courses in medieval British Literature, and graduate courses in Old and Middle English and other medieval topics. Research specialization may be in either period. To see the full listing, go to: https://joblist.mla.org/job-details/8055/assistant-professor-of-english-medieval-literature-/?kw=middle+tennessee+state#top-pagination.
I hope you are enjoying the return of all of our seminars and reading groups. It has been such a joy to see so many old and new faces! Here is some appropriate wisdom from the Epistolae project on the joys of medievalist community:
ut dicitur: quid dulcius est, quam habeas illum, cum quo omnia possis loqui ut tecum? [As is said: “What is sweeter than to have some one with whom you can talk of everything as with yourself?”] A letter (719-22) from Eangyth, abbess With apologies to Eangyth, I can certainly think of something sweeter than having “some one”: namely, having a whole community “with whom you can talk of everything as with yourself”! It is easy to forget just how lucky we are at Oxford to have such a huge collection of medievalists. I wish you a week of community, shared talks, and collaborative joy!
[Medievalists suitably excited by their colleague’s latest research discovery: one of the many advantages of having medievalist friends!] St John’s College MS. 61, f. 37 v. By permission of the President and Fellows of St John’s College, Oxford Viewable in full at Digital Bodleian
Jewish languages are essential and incorporeal parts of Jewish history, creativity, culture and identity. Most of them are currently in danger of extinction while others are already dead, known only from early writing. Various research programmes stress the immense role of vernacular languages in Jewish life and culture as well as point to their fragility, yet universities offer very few learning opportunities for most of these rare Jewish languages.
Created in August 2021 by the Oxford Centre for Hebrew & Jewish Studies (OCHJS) in collaboration with the Institut des Langues Rares (ILARA) at Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes (EPHE), Paris, the Oxford School of Rare Jewish Languages (OSRJL) offers free, online teaching of rare Jewish languages and their cultural-historical contexts—along with a public lecture series, academic blog, Visiting Fellows programme, Jewish music classes (this year focusing on the history of Yiddish music!) and language Cafés—accessible at no cost to accepted students and members of the general public around the globe. By doing so, the OSRJL aims to preserve, spark interest in, enable access to and reflect on the nature and role of Jewish languages as rich linguistic facets of Jewish life and history. It is the first school of its kind globally.
You can read about the OSRJL’s second year, 2022–23, in our recently published Impact Report:
Already, 2023–24 is shaping up to be an exciting year for the OSRJL! We received 671 applications for language classes beginning in Michaelmas Term 2023 alone—more applications than we received in total across all 3 terms in 2021–22 and 2022–23. Clearly, interest in rare Jewish languages is on the rise, and we greatly look forward to facilitating access to and engagement with them in the coming year and beyond.
We are expanding our language offerings this year to include classes on 3 languages new to the programme—Haketia, Judeo-Hamadani and Kivruli. Doing so means we will be teaching a record 18 languages (listed below) alongside continuing our many other activities!
Languages to be taught through the OSRJL in 2023–24 include:
Haketia (Dr Carlos Yebra López, University College London)
Baghdadi Judeo-Arabic (Dr Assaf Bar Moshe, Freie Universität Berlin)
Judeo-Greek (Dr Julia G. Krivoruchko, University of Cambridge)
Judeo-Hamadani (Professor Dr Saloumeh Gholami, Goethe-Universität Frankfurt)
Judeo-Italian (Dr Marilena Colasuonno, University of Naples)
Judeo-Moroccan (Haviva Fenton)
Judeo-Neo-Aramaic (Dr Dorota Molin, University of Oxford, University of Cambridge)
Judeo-Persian (Dr Ofir Haim, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, & Maximilian Kinzler)
Judeo-Provençal (Dr Peter Nahon, Université de Neuchâtel)
Judeo-Tat (Professor Gilles Authier & Dr Murad Suleymanov, EPHE, Paris)
Judeo-Turkish (Professor Laurent Mignon, University of Oxford)
Karaim (Professor Henryk Jankowski, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań)
Kivruli (Dr Hélène Gérardin, Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales/EPHE)
Ladino (Dr Carlos Yebra López, University College London)
Old Yiddish (Dr Diana Matut)
Yiddish (Dr Beruriah Wiegand, OCHJS, University of Oxford)
Some of the languages we teach—such as Classical Judeo-Arabic, Judeo-French, Judeo-Provençal, Judeo-Persian and Judeo-Greek—are extinct, and our teaching is therefore based, at least in part, on medieval texts and manuscripts written in these languages.
While applications for classes beginning in Michaelmas Term 2023 are now closed, applications for language classes beginning in Hilary Term 2024—including Advanced Beginners Judeo-French, Beginners Judeo-Greek, Beginners Judeo-Tat and Advanced Judeo-Turkish—will open in November 2023. To receive notifications about these and future application opportunities, as well as other activities of the OSRJL, follow the Oxford Centre for Hebrew & Jewish Studies on social media (X: @OCHJSnews, Facebook: Oxford Centre for Hebrew & Jewish Studies, LinkedIn: Oxford Centre for Hebrew & Jewish Studies and Vimeo: OCHJS) and/or sign up to its Activities Email List by emailing academic.administrator@ochjs.ac.uk. To learn more about the OSRJL programme as a whole, please visit our website or email us at osrjl@ochjs.ac.uk.
We hope to see you in one of our classes and/or at one of our events soon!
Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Douce 308 preserves and re-copies the lyrics of over 500 songs, ranging from those written in the late twelfth century, to those composed only a few years before the manuscript was copied in the early fourteenth. Its lack of both musical notation and authorial attribution make it relatively unusual among Old French songbooks. Its arrangement by genre instead invites an investigation of the relationship between a long tradition of sung courtly lyric and the real lives of the people who enjoyed it, in particular their emotional, intimate, sexual lives, something for which little direct evidence exists.
Medieval Sex Lives
Using the other main inclusion in the original plan for Douce 308, Jacques Bretel’s poetic account of a tournament, TheTournament at Chauvency, Medieval Sex Lives argues that song offered musical practices which provided fertile means of propagating and enabling various sexual scripts.
With a focus on parts of Douce 308 not yet treated in detail elsewhere, Medieval Sex Lives offers an account of the manuscript’s contents, its importance, and likely social milieu, with ample musical and poetic analysis. In the process it offers new ways of understanding Marian songs and sottes chansons, as well as arguing for a broadening of our understanding of the medieval pastourelle, both as a genre and as an imaginative prop. Ultimately, Medieval Sex Lives presents a provocative speculative hypothesis about courtly song in the early fourteenth century as a social force, focusing on its ability to model, instill, inspire, and support sexual behaviours, real and imaginary.
Three ideas in the book
The idea that medieval people consumed cultural products (in this case, songs) that fed and moulded their sexual imaginations;
The idea that an unnotated songbook might be very noisy with the sounds of sex and tournaments;
The idea that minority sexual practices (queer sexualities and paraphilias of various kinds) were present in the distant past.
What inspired me to write the book?
This book arose from two different but related questions. First, I wondered why the sung lyric tradition of Western Europe that is generally called “courtly” love had such a long and successful history. Second, I wanted to know why the unnotated songbook, Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Douce had bothered to preserve and re-copy the lyrics of over 500 such songs, ranging from those written in the late twelfth century, to those composed only a few years before the manuscript was copied in the early fourteenth. The lack of musical notation, which was never planned for its songs, makes this manuscript unusual among Old French songbooks. Nonetheless, curating nearly 150 years of this long-lived tradition was clearly important to the patrons, compilers, owners, and users of this manuscript: but why?
How will this book make a difference in my field of study? In what way is my argument a controversial or one that will shake up preconceived ideas?
Overall, the book challenges the idea that medieval song has nothing (or little) to do with the real lives of its audiences. Ch2’s proposal of love songs as sexual scripts is a controversial use of sociological theory to treat medieval literature. In Ch3 it offers a new way of approaching the sotte chanson (‘silly song’) as something not merely humorous or satirical, but as a potentially serious erotic possibility. Ch4 treats The Tournament at Chauvency from the perspective of sound studies. And Ch5 offers a controversial reading of the medieval pastourelle that firstly expands the definition of the genre to include songs rarely considered as pastourelles (but collected by Douce 308 as such), and secondly makes a difficult argument about some of them as offering fantasies of sexual domination and rape that might have appealed (and been useful) to some audience members, specifically women and queer people.
On behalf of everyone here at OMS, I’d like to wish you a huge welcome (or welcome back) to Oxford Medieval Studies! Whether you are returning from your vac, or joining us for the first time, we are thrilled to have you here. This newsletter, and the medieval booklet (attached as a reduced-sized pdf to this week’s email, or viewable in full glory online here) will serve as your guide to all things medieval happening in and around Oxford.
In 2023/24, I will be taking the opportunity to feature extracts of letters from the Epistolae project, headed by Professor Joan Ferrante and based at Columbia University. Epistolae catalogues letters to and from medieval women. This open-access work was pioneering in digital humanities, feminist scholarship and open-access dissemination. In 2022, Epistolae was preserved as a static project and is now published by Columbia University Libraries. Featuring quotations from these letters is intended not only to link Oxford’s medievalists to an exciting resource outside of Oxford, but also to provide an inspirational and aspirational model for exciting interdisciplinary, boundary-pushing, open-access and digital humanities work. The values of the project align strongly with what OMS is trying to achieve as an international and interdisciplinary community invested in digital outreach, and I hope you enjoy reading the weekly quotations as much as I have enjoyed selecting them. To learn more about the Epistolae project, see this youtube video.
On the same note, but turning closer to home: in 2023/24 each email will be accompanied by an image from the extremely newly digitised St John’s College MS 61, which is now available thanks to hard work by Sophie Bacchus-Waterman (Special Collections Photographer) and the Bodleian Digital Library Systems and Service.
Over the past ten years, OMS has become one of the largest communities of medievalists worldwide. There is a phenomenal breadth and diversity of research taking place at Oxford, and a wide range of exciting creative practice and public engagement activities. This year at OMS, we are hoping to feature one blog post each week to highlight the range of work going on, and to draw attention to the range of work that goes on here. We have a range of exciting blog posts coming up for you in future weeks, but this week we are starting with a blog post on blogging itself! Have a look for lots of helpful tips on using blogging to share your medieval research with a broader audience.
Please see below for the week’s announcements, events, and opportunities:
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
Meet the Medievalists: Join us on Tuesday 10th October at 5pm at Wellbeloved Room, Harris Manchester College for a social start to the year! This will include an announcement for the
OMS Small Grants scheme MT23 which is now open! 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. For full details, see our blog post or meet us at Meet the Medievalists to see what small grant recipients did last year!
New Journal: We are pleased to announce the publication of a new journal, Manuscript and Text Cultures, from the Centre for Manuscript and Text Cultures, Oxford. The Centre is an academic hub for interdisciplinary activities related to the study of pre-modern manuscript and epigraphic traditions from around the world. Issues 1 & 2 of the journal are now available. Issue 2, Navigating the Text: Textual Articulation and Division in Pre-Modern Cultures can be read online at https://mtc-journal.org
New Book Publication: Jane Bliss is pleased to announce the publication of Douglas Gray’s last book From Fingal’s Cave to Camelot. Jane writes: ‘After Gray’s death, I was given access to his files and, since I knew what he was working on, produced two books. The first, Make We Merry More and Less, is available from Open Book Publishers in the normal way. This one was published by me privately.’ For the pdf, please contact (jane.bliss@lmh.oxon.org). Print copies are also available: Jane will send a copy on receipt of 17 pounds plus postage (to cover the printing costs).
EVENTS THIS WEEK:
Monday 9th October:
The Medieval Latin Manuscript Reading Group meets at 1-2pm on Teams. A friendly venue to practice your Latin and palaeography on a range of texts and scripts over the year. Sign up to the mailing list to receive weekly updates and Teams invites.
The Medieval History Seminar meets at 5pm in the Wharton Room, All Souls College. This week’s speaker will be Andrew Jotischky (RHUL) ‘Graze, Forage, Cook: authenticity and authority in medieval monastic reform‘. The seminar will also be available via Teams: the Teams session can be accessed by logging in to Teams with your .ox.ac.uk account and joining the group “Medieval History Research Seminar” (team code rmppucs). Alternatively, it can be accessed via this link. If you have any difficulties please email: medhistsem@history.ox.ac.uk.
Tuesday 10th October:
The Medieval English Research Seminar will meet at 12.15 in Lecture Theatre 2. This week’s speaker will be David Wallace (University of Pennsylvania), National Epics [nationalepics.com]: The Elusive Case of England. There will be a sandwich lunch provided afterwards. All welcome!
The Medieval Church and Culture Seminar meets at 5pm at Wellbeloved Room, Harris Manchester College. This week is ‘Meet the Medievalists’ – a special social event, with introduction to Oxford Medieval Studies (OMS). Come for a cuppa and hear what’s in store with OMS this term. All are welcome!
The Medieval French Research Seminar will meet at the Maison Francaise d’Oxford on Norham Road. Drinks will be available from 5pm; presentations start at 5.15pm. This week’s speaker will be Laura Endress (Zurich) ‘Missing links or contaminated witnesses? Exploring the manuscript tradition of the Suite-Vulgate du Merlin‘. All are welcome! For more information or to be added to the seminar maillist, please contact helen.swift@st-hildas.ox.ac.uk.
Wednesday 11th October:
All Souls Library Open Day for Oxford Students will be held at 10-12 and 1-5pm at All Souls, Catte Street Entrance. Come and see the Library and apply to be a Reader. No food and drink, but for today only, photography is allowed! No booking needed, but you will need to bring your University Card to get in through the entrance.
The Medieval German Seminar meets at 11.15am, at Somerville College. In Michaelmas Term, we are going to discuss the forthcoming study edition by Christine Putzo of Konrad Fleck’s ‘Flore und Blancheflur’. We will meet in Almut Suerbaum’s office in Somerville College. Further information and reading recommendations via the teams channel; if you want to be added to that: please email Henrike Lähnemann. This week we will have a shorter organisational meeting.
The Medieval Latin Document Reading Group meets at 4-5pm on Teams. A document is sent out in advance but homework is not expected. Please contact Michael Stansfield (michael.stansfield@new.ox.ac.uk) for further details and the Teams link.
The Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar meets at 5pm at The Ioannou Centre for Classical and Byzantine Studies 66 St Giles and online via Microsoft Teams by clicking here. This week’s speaker will be Stratis Papaioannou (National Hellenic Research Foundation, Athens), ‘Portraits of the Reader during the Middle Byzantine Period’.
Thursday 12th October:
The Medieval Hebrew Reading Group meets at 10-11am in Catherine Lewis Lecture Theatre, Clarendon Institute, and online via Zoom. In order to attend via Zoom, please register here. This reading group is an opportunity to practice reading directly from images of medieval Hebrew manuscripts in an informal setting. All skill levels are welcome! There will be coffee, tea and cake afterwards in the Common Room of the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies for those attending in person. For further information, please email joseph.ohara@ames.ox.ac.uk.
The Germanic Reading Group meets at 4pm, online via Zoom. Please contact Howard Jones Howard.Jones@sbs.ox.ac.uk to request the handouts and to be added to the list. This week’s reading will be OHG Otfrid extracts (Howard Jones leading).
The Celtic Seminar meets at 5pm, online via Zoom. Please contact a.elias@wales.ac.uk for the link. This week’s speaker will be Martin Crampin (CAWCS), ‘Emblems of the Past: saints, stained glass and early medieval antiquitie’.
The Oxford Bibliographical Society meets for a lecture at 5.15pm in the Weston Library lecture theatre. This week’s speaker will be William P. Stoneman (formerly Curator of Early Books and Manuscripts at Harvard University’s Houghton Library), ‘A Golden Collector of the Golden Age’: Charles Walker Clark (1871-1933) and his library of incunables’. The talk is hosted jointly with the Bodleian’s Centre for the Study of the Book. We will also be streaming the talk on Zoom; if you would like to get the link, do please get in touch with sarah.cusk@lincoln.ox.ac.uk.
The Old Occitan Literature Workshop meets at 5-6pm at St Hugh’s College, 74 Woodstock Road, Office A4. The topic of this week’s meeting will be ‘Is this… Fin’amor?’ (Jaufre Rudel (1125-48): Vida, “Lanquand li jorn son loc en mai”; Bernart de Ventadorn (1147-70): Vida, “Can vei la lauzeta mover”). To sign up, or for any other queries, email Kate Travers: katherine.travers@st-hughs.ox.ac.uk.
Friday 13th October:
The Medieval Coffee Morning meets as usual 10:30am in the Visiting Scholars Centre of the Weston Library (instructions how to find it) with presentation of items from the special collections, coffee and the chance to see the view from the 5th floor terrace.
The Anglo-Norman Reading Group meets at 5-6.30pm, in the Julia Mann Room, St Hilda’s College, and Zoom. Please let us know if you would like to attend, either in person or on Zoom; reminders including the Zoom link will be sent to those who have expressed interest. To register interest, or for more information, please contact Jane Bliss jane.bliss@lmh.oxon.org and/or Stephanie stephanie.hathaway@gmail.com.
OPPORTUNITIES:
Codicology Workshops: 25 October, 15 November and 29 November, 1:30-3pm, Horton Seminar Room, Weston Library. This series of workshops using the Bodleian Special Collections is aimed at Oxford University postgraduate students who wish to learn more about the history of the book, with a particular focus on its construction and materiality. Sessions will cover various aspects of medieval and early modern codicology, from ink to binding, from page to provenance. The originality of this series lies in the fact that the sessions are taught by Bodleian curators, researchers and conservators, bringing together their expertise and different approaches to the book. Sessions focus on inks and pigments, writing surfaces, bindings, decoration and provenance, and are offered in Medieval Studies, History and English. For more information and to register: bookcentre@bodleian.ox.ac.uk.
Teaching with manuscripts. Monday 4 Dec. (week 9), Horton Room, Weston Library, 2-3.30pm. This workshop is for anyone involved in small-group teaching who is considering incorporating medieval manuscript material in their classes. We will cover the practicalities of arranging classes and selecting material and explore what works and doesn’t work in the classroom. Contact matthew.holford@bodleian.ox.ac.uk or andrew.dunning@bodleian.ox.ac.uk to register.
Call for Social Media Contributions: Are you passionate about medieval studies and public engagement? Would you like to share your research with a wider audience? Oxford Medieval Studies is looking for volunteers at any and all career stages to share fun medieval facts and stories or the most interesting parts of their research in one-minute video clips that will be posted across all our social media channels. Get in touch with ashley.castelino@lincoln.ox.ac.uk for more details.
It is always such a joy to welcome everyone back to Oxford, but also see new faces. Whether you have been here many years or just a few days, here is some wisdom from the Epistolae project as we start the term (and year):
quamdiu vigilatis, aut lectione aut […] aliqua utili cogitatione sive intentione sit occupatum [as long as you are awake, keep your heart busy always and everywhere with reading or […] some useful reflection or intention] A letter (1094) from Anselm, archbishop of Canterbury to Matilda of Wilton
I wish you all a productive and reflective term, and look forward to appearing in your inboxes every week with the latest Medievalist happenings. May you have a week filled with reading and / or useful reflection, and may your heart be ‘busy always’ during this academic year!
[A busy Medievalist always keeps their copy of the Medieval Booklet close to hand] St John’s College MS. 61, f. 40 r. By permission of the President and Fellows of St John’s College, Oxford Viewable in full at Digital Bodleian
It is now 0th week, which means that the new academic year has officially begun! We have so much in store for you this year at OMS, but whilst we wait for full term to begin, this week will bring a look back over everything that happened in 2022/23. Our impact report for 2022/23 is now published! I hope this will whet your appetites for things to come, and start the year off right by celebrating the amazing strength of our interdisciplinary community!
When I first joined OMS as a new postdoc in 2021, I was immediately struck by the tremendous scope of Oxford’s medieval community. Two years have passed, and I am still continually delighted and surprised by the great range of offerings we have, and the great diversity of work going on at Oxford. In 2022/23, there were an astounding 39 different medieval seminars, societies and reading groups, ranging from the Celtic Seminar to the Invisible East Seminar to Queer and Trans Medievalisms. There were eleven different language-specific groups (from Anglo-Norman to Old Norse); work ranging from the post-classical (Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar) to the immediate present day (Medieval Misuse Reading Group); and an incredible disciplinary range including archaeology, heraldry, history, literatures and languages, manuscript studies, music, numismatics, theology, and visual culture. Every year, there are new contributions, and one of the greatest joys of this work has been seeing new reading groups and societies blossom into long-standing mainstays of the weekly newsletter.
But don’t just take my word for it: here are some statistics that highlight the astounding size and reach of our work. Over 850 people receive the Medieval Matters newsletter every week, and last year we had over 1,300 different visitors to the blog. Our reach extends far beyond Oxford itself: last year we had significant numbers of blog hits from the USA, Australia, Spain, Poland, Germany, China, France and Singapore. We have accounts on Twitter (currently at a strong 5823 followers), Facebook (914 followers), Instagram (654 followers), Mastodon (503 followers), YouTube (266 subscribers), TikTok (160 followers), and Threads (106 followers). Actual engagement is more difficult to judge and varies quite widely across platforms and their respective ever-changing algorithms but our most popular TikTok, which was Alison Ray talking about transferable skills in an archivist career, has 127 likes and 2001 views as of today, and our most viewed YouTube video appears to be James McGrath’s Bodleian Coffee Morning on Mandaean manuscripts, with 618 views.
All of this is to say: medieval studies is flourishing at Oxford. As Communications Officer, my primary job is to bring together this enormous, vibrant community to foster interdisciplinary communication and to spotlight the very many happenings across the university (and beyond!). I am also extremely lucky to be able to work alongside both Oxford’s most long-serving academics and its very youngest, newest researchers. My role is twinned with work for the Humanities Division mentoring the Interdisciplinary Medieval Studies MSt students, and it has been a consistent joy to see so many bright young medievalists bringing new and exciting interdisciplinary approaches to our community.
I hope you enjoy the impact report, which sums up the wealth of offerings and scholarship that happened at Oxford last year. It has been an honour to be at the helm of this, and I look forward to continuing to be your guide for 2023/24.
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
Medieval Booklet Michaelmas Term 2023. The first draft of the booklet is now available for viewing! To get a sneak peek at everything happening this term, please click here. If you have forgotten to send in your submission, please send it in before next Friday, when the final pdf version will be uploaded ready for distribution with Medieval Matters Week 1.
Medieval Blog Submissions. This year we are hoping to feature a greater range of blog posts to highlight Oxford’s vibrant medievalist community. We would like to have one blog post per week, and are currently looking for volunteers for MT. If you have a project / book release / manuscript that you would like to highlight, please do contact me. The OMS blog is seen by medievalists in and outside of Oxford and is a great place to showcase the achievements of our medieval community.
New Graduate Students / Staff Members. If you are the convenor of a medieval-focussed MSt/MPhil, have new DPhil students, know of new medieval staff members or are hosting visiting scholars, please send me a list of all of their email addresses so that I can sign them up for the mailing list. Alternatively, please distribute the following self-service link to allow them to sign up: https://web.maillist.ox.ac.uk/ox/subscribe/medieval-news.
SAVE THE DATE:
Tuesday 10th October:
Oxford Medieval Studies Social and Steering Group: We warmly invite you to join us for medievalist revelry to welcome in the new academic year, kindly hosted by the Medieval Church and Culture seminar. Further details to follow!
OPPORTUNITIES:
CFP: The Medieval Translator. Translation, Memory, and Politics in the Medieval World – To be hosted by the Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal, 17-21 June 2024. We invite submissions that address these themes and related topics in the context of the medieval world. Papers may be given in English, French or Portuguese, and should be twenty minutes long. Please send a 500-word abstract, an essential bibliography and a brief curriculum vitae by 15 October 2023 to: medtransl_lisbon2024@letras.ulisboa.pt . For full details, please see the blog post here.
Assistant/Associate Professor of Medieval Literature & Language (University of Tennessee, Knoxville): The English Department at the University of Tennessee invites applications for a tenure-track assistant or associate professor in medieval literature and language, capable of teaching courses in both the Old English and Middle English periods, with a research specialization in either field. We particularly welcome candidates with interest in one or more of the following areas: digital humanities, medical humanities, and the global Middle Ages. (Deadline: November 1, 2023)https://apply.interfolio.com/130790
Assistant Professor of Classics in Medieval Latin & Digital Manuscript Studies(University of Tennessee, Knoxville): The Department of Classics has been authorized to make an appointment in Latin language and literature at the rank of tenure-track Assistant Professor. The expertise sought is Medieval Latin with a special interest in digital manuscript studies. This faculty member will teach undergraduate students in our department as well as train graduate students in UT’s Marco Institute for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. The successful candidate will have strong promise of scholarly achievement, demonstrated excellence in teaching Latin, as well as the ability to teach Medieval and Classical Latin, paleography, and digital manuscript studies, and to contribute to our departmental curriculum of large and small courses in classical civilization, literature, or mythology. (Deadline: October 31, 2023) https://apply.interfolio.com/130669
Assistant Professor in Early Modern French Studies(University of Tennessee, Knoxville): The Department of World Languages and Cultures at the University of Tennessee flagship campus in Knoxville is seeking applications for a full-time, 9-month tenure-track position at the rank of Assistant Professor in early modern French studies, with a focus on the 18th century, to begin August 1, 2024. To broaden our programs, innovative and interdisciplinary approaches to the field, such as Transatlantic studies, diaspora studies, medical humanities, and/or environmental humanities, are especially welcome. Expertise in theater is also desirable. (Deadline: November 1, 2023)https://apply.interfolio.com/131961
Assistant Professor in the History of Gender and/or Sexuality(University of Tennessee, Knoxville): The History Department at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville invites applications for a tenure-track assistant professor appointment in history with a focus on gender and/or sexuality from any world region or chronological period. Scholars whose research and teaching will complement the department’s current areas of strength are urged to apply. The position has a 2/2 teaching load. The successful candidate will teach introductory-level survey courses as well as upper division and graduate courses in the candidate’s area of expertise. (Deadline: October 1, 2023) https://apply.interfolio.com/130760
Assistant Professor in the History of Early Modern or Modern East Asia(University of Tennessee, Knoxville): The Department of History at the University of Tennessee invites applications for a tenure-track assistant professorship in the History of Early Modern or Modern East Asia (since 1500) outside of China. The research specialty is open and may treat any country or region within that scope. Applicants working in borderlands, cross-cultural contact, environment, migration, or science and medicine are encouraged to apply. The successful candidate will teach an undergraduate world history survey (1500 CE-present) and offer upper division and graduate courses in the area of specialty to complement our current strengths. (Deadline: October 15, 2023) https://apply.interfolio.com/130738
Associate Professor or Professor of Old Norse(St John’s College / English Faculty, Oxford): St John’s College and the Faculty of English invite applications from suitably qualified candidates for a Tutorial Fellowship and Associate Professorship in Old Norse, to be appointed with effect from 1 September 2024 or as soon as possible thereafter. The successful candidate will be both an Official Fellow and Tutor in English at St John’s, and a member of the Faculty of English. For full details, please click here.
Official (Tutorial) Fellowship in English at The Queen’s College and Associate Professorship or Professorship of Literature in English: The Queen’s College and the Faculty of English are seeking to recruit an Official (Tutorial) Fellow in English and Associate Professor or Professor of Literature in English to start on 1st September 2024 or as soon as possible thereafter. Applications are invited from well-qualified candidates with research expertise in the field of literature in English in the period from 1450-1550. This may include specialisms in areas such as medieval and early Tudor drama, early Scottish literature, women’s writing, or Henrician court literature. We also encourage applicants with comparative and global interests. The Faculty and College are strongly committed to encouraging diverse and inclusive approaches to literary study. For full details, please click here.
Finally, some wisdom from the Epistolae project on my hopes for the year as the Communications Officer:
Epistolam non ficta, sed fideli caritate et firma tibi a me missam suscipere, legere, audire atque exaudire dignare. [Deign to receive, read, listen to and take notice of this letter which I am sending to you not with feigned but with faithful and strong charity] A letter (1102-03) from Matilda of Scotland, queen of the English to Anselm of Canterbury
I interpret this to mean: may all of your emails be received, read, listened to, and answered with charity! Wishing you a week of charitable email replies, and I look forward to sending you our first full Medieval Matters of the year next week.
[A Medievalist looks at once back on the successes of the year just passed, and forward to the exciting year to come!] St John’s College MS. 61, f. 47 v. By permission of the President and Fellows of St John’s College, Oxford Viewable in full at Digital Bodleian
In the last ten years, Oxford Medieval Studies has grown into a stunningly successful interdisciplinary Humanities community for research and teaching, with a reach that now goes far beyond Oxford. Time to take stock and to bring together the offerings of just the last academic year, 2022-2023 in form of a booklet. Enjoy the read below as pdf or download a printable version here.
Begun on the initiative of Prof. Chris Wickham, and transformed from a TORCH network into a permanent programme under the directorship of Prof. Sophie Marnette, Oxford Medieval Studies now encompasses the local – such as the interdisciplinary MSt. in Medieval Studies – to the global, with 1,300 visitors to our blog last year alone (http://medieval.seh.ox.ac.uk). The termly booklet of offerings around the University, Faculties and Colleges gives some idea of the breadth and variety available to (and from) Oxford’s medievalists: as the statistics on the next page show, we are finding an eager audience for the Middle Ages both inside and outside the city.
Our regular seminars, reading groups, one-off workshops and social events make for a rich and lively culture. We are the biggest and most diverse group studying the Middle Ages in any UK university, with links to the most important US and European institutions. Just as much as its reputation in science or medicine, the Middle Ages puts Oxford on the map.
As co-directors our job is made simple by the enthusiasm and expertise of our graduates and post-docs. Over the last two years Luisa Ostacchini has done a brilliant job of producing a weekly Monday morning newsletter of the week’s offerings, which comes with the wit and wisdom that only an expert in Old English and medieval Latin can claim. Her piece in the report below paints a vivid picture of what goes on each year – not forgetting the fun (anyone for haruspices?) that is a hallmark of so many medieval manuscripts, and of our gatherings today. We thank Luisa and all those who help make Oxford a wonderful place to be a medievalist, and we look forward to ten more successful years. This report is an experiment to bring the lively culture and documentation of the Oxford Medieval Studies blog http://medieval.seh.ox.ac.uk/ into a material form and gather together the rich offerings of seminars, reading groups, regular and one-off events in a booklet.
Here we are at the end of the academic year! It seems like just yesterday that I was sending the first email of Michaelmas. Thank you to everyone who has organised seminars and reading groups, given papers, hosted events and conferences, and contributed to our rich community at Oxford. It’s been the busiest OMS year on record, and it’s been so wonderful to see our medievalist community thriving. In the words of Alcuin:
Nihil laudabilisest in homine, quam sapientiae decus et caritatis affectus [Nothing is more praiseworthy in a person than the glory of wisdom and the goodwill of love, Ep. 290]
According to this, Oxford’s medievalists are very praiseworthy indeed! We would like to celebrate our community in an annual record publication, recounting the highlights of the year. All events included in the newsletters will be included as a matter of course, but if you have published a book, held a special event, or given a special paper, or would just like to send a paragraph about your seminar/reading group, we would love to hear from you! See our blog post for more information. All submissions must be received by August 20th.
We have a bumper list of events this week. For a list of all events taking place after the end of this week, please see the end of the events section:
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
Celebrating OMS 2022/23: Call for Submissions: The OMS Record will be completed in time for the new academic year, both online and in (limited) print format. We welcome all submissions detailing events or book releases from the academic year 2022/23. Please send submissions to luisa.ostacchini@ell.ox.ac.uk. All submissions must be received by August 20th 2023.
CAT – Conversations Across Time: What do horses, medievalists, black hole orbits, boardrooms, and quantum computers have in common? Inspired by the Medieval Mystery Plays, artist in residence at the Physics Department Pam Davis has developed an art-piece ‘Conversations Across Time’ which links medieval theatre, women in science, and Quantum future. Free tickets for the performances in the unique Beecroft Building (Physics) on June 15th, 17:30-18:30, June 16th, 17:30-18:30, June 17th, 14:30-15:30, and June 17th, 17:30-18:30 available via the website https://www.citizensai.com/.
EVENTS THIS WEEK:
Monday 12th June:
The Byzantine Graduate Seminar will meet at 12:30-14:00 via Zoom. This week’s speaker will be Jack Dooley (Royal Holloway, University of London), Between the self and the other: the case of the gasmouloi in Late Byzantium, and the respondent will be Dr Yannis Stouraitis. To register, please contact james.cogbill@worc.ox.ac.uk.
The Medieval Latin Manuscript Reading Group led by Matthew Holford and Andrew Dunning is meeting as usual via Teamsfrom 1-2pm. This term we will read some satirical poetry from a thirteenth-century manuscript, the so-called ‘Bekyngton anthology’ (Bodl. MS. Add. A. 44). Sign up for the mailing list to receive updates and the Teams invite, or contact matthew.holford@bodleian.ox.ac.uk or andrew.dunning@bodleian.ox.ac.uk for more information.
The Queer and Trans Medievalisms Reading and Research Group meets at 3pm at Univ College, 12 Merton St Room 2. This week’s theme is The medieval hyena: Emma Campbell, ‘Visualizing the Trans-Animal Body’. All extremely welcome! To join the mailing list and get texts in advance, or if you have any questions, email rowan.wilson@univ.ox.ac.uk.
The Medieval History Seminar meets at 5pm at the Wharton Room, All Souls College. This week’s speaker will be Emilia Jamroziak (Leeds), ‘Understanding the cult of saints in the late medieval Cistercian order‘. The seminar will also be available remotely viaTeams. The Teams session can be accessed by logging in to Teams with your .ox.ac.uk account and joining the group “Medieval History Research Seminar” (team code rmppucs). If you have any difficulties please email: medhistsem@history.ox.ac.uk.
The Oxford Interfaith Forum meets online via Zoom at 6pm. Professor Katherine Southwood, Senior Fellow of the Oxford Interfaith Forum, Associate Professor in Old Testament, Faculty of Theology and Religion, University of Oxford, and Tutorial Fellow in Theology and Religion at St John’s College, Oxford, will be leading a session on ‘Metaphor, Illness, and Identity: Psalms 88 and 102‘ as part of the Psalms in Interfaith Contexts Reading Group.To register, please click here.
Tuesday 13th June:
The Medieval Church and Culture Seminar meets at the Wellbeloved Room, Harris Manchester College, with tea & coffee from 5pm; papers begin at 5.15pm. This week’s speaker will be Peter Kidd (freelance researcher), ‘Tracing the Provenance of a Medieval Manuscript: from start to finish‘. Everyone is welcome at this informal and friendly graduate seminar! As an appetizer, have a look at the latest blog post RECEPTIO Redux.
Wednesday 14th June:
The Medieval German Seminar will meet at 11:15-12.45pm at St Edmund Hall Old Library. In Trinity Term, we are continuing to discuss Heinrich von Neustadt’s texts, focussing on ‘Von Gottes Zukunft’. We meet in person in the Old Library of St Edmund Hall, this week with the topic: Apocalypse! Further information and reading recommendations via the teams channel; if you want to be added to that: please email Henrike Lähnemann.
The Old High German Reading Group at 11-12 in 41 Wellington Square, 2nd floor (Henrike Lähnemann’s office). This week’s text will be Wessobrunner Gebet. It will be an opportunity to read and analyse some simpler OHG texts and give people the chance to read the oldest form of German if they’ve not been exposed to it before. It will be very informal, and all are welcome. Led by William Thurlwell william.thurlwell@wolfson.ox.ac.uk – contact him for updates.
The Medieval Latin Document Reading Group meets on Teams at 4-5pm. We are currently focusing on medieval documents from New College’s archive as part of the cataloguing work being carried out there, so there will be a variety of hands, dates and types. A document is sent out in advance but homework is not expected. Contact Michael Stansfield for further details and the Teams link.
The Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar meets at 5pm at Ioannou Centre for Classical and Byzantine Studies, 66 St. Giles. This week’s seminar will be a Special OCBR lecture by James Howard-Johnston (emeritus, Corpus Christi), ‘The Last Great War of Antiquity: Course and Consequences’. You can also join the seminar remotely via Teams, click here.
Thursday 15th June:
The Medieval Women’s Writing Reading Group meets at 3-4pm at Lincoln College: meet at the lodge. This week’s theme will be Hierarchies: ecclesiastical, non-ecclesiastical and “alternative” hierarchies of power used and created by medieval women. Please email katherine.smith@lincoln.ox.ac.uk to be added to the mailing list and get texts in advance, or to find out more.
The Piers Plowman in Context discussion group will be led by Kantik Ghosh in the Main Quad Boardroom at Univ from 4:30-5:30pm. For this last session we will be discussing Passus XX of the B-text, in relation to some texts by Bonaventura, Aquinas, and Pecock, available online through this link. All welcome! Email Jacob Ridley (jacob.ridley@univ.ox.ac.uk) with any questions.
The Invisible East Group is co-hosting a webinar with the Elahé Omidyar Mir-Djalali Institute of Iranian Studies online at 5pm. The speaker will be Prof Geoffrey Khan, University of Cambridge, ‘The Arabic documents from early Islamic Khurasan‘. Registration and more information at this link.
The Medieval Visual Culture Seminar meets at 5.15-6.45pm at St Catherine’s College, Arumugam Building. This week’s speaker will be Sara Lipton, Stony Brook University: ‘Blood Piety and Anti-Judaism in an Early Fourteenth-century Illuminated Prayer Book from Liège‘. For further information, contact Elena Lichmanova (elena.lichmanova@merton.ox.ac.uk).
WOOPIE (Oxford Old English Work in Progress Seminar) meets at 5.15-6.30pm in the Ferrar Room, Hertford College. This week’s speaker will be Mar Gutiérrez Ortiz (University of Seville), ‘Isidore’s Etymologies, A Source for Boniface’s Classification of Metrical Feet in the Caesurae uersuum‘.
The Oxford Interfaith Forum meets online via Zoom at 6pm. Professor Matthew Milliner, Senior Fellow of the Oxford Interfaith Forum, and Professor of Art History at Wheaton College, USA, will be leading a session on ‘The Tao of Mary: Images of the Virgin in the Church of the East‘ as part of the ART in Interfaith Contexts Reading Group. To register, please click here.
Friday 16th June:
The Medieval Coffee Morning meets as usual 10:30am in the Visiting Scholars Centre of the Weston Library (instructions how to find it) with presentation of items from the special collections, coffee and the chance to see the view from the 5th floor terrace.
Exhibition Launch: Early Modern Monsters At 5pm, History of the Book students from MML and the MSc Digital Scholarship are jointly launching the digital editions and a Monster Exhibition in the Taylor Institution Library, Main Hall (with the exhibition open in the Voltaire Room from now until 26 June). The focus will be on early modern monstruous birth pamphlet but there will also be medieval monsters and their modern successors to marvel at.
SUMMER EVENTS:
Monday 19th June:
Distance: Medieval and Modern Languages Conference will take place at 9am-6pm in the Taylor Institution Library. For the full programme, see our blog here.
The Byzantine Graduate Seminar will meet at 12:30-14:00 via Zoom. This week’s speaker will be Rachel Catherine Patt (Princeton University), From Pliny’s Potter to Proclus’ Vision: Tracing the Role of Pothos in Byzantine Visual Culture, and the respondent will be Dr Maria Lidova. To register, please contact james.cogbill@worc.ox.ac.uk.
The Oxford Interfaith Forum meets online via Zoom at 6pm. Ilana Tahan OBE, Lead Curator of Hebrew and Christian Orient Collections, The British Library, will be leading a session on ‘British Library Hebrew Treasures Reveal Interfaith Narratives: The Sana’a Pentateuch‘ as part of the International Interfaith Reading Group on Manuscripts in Interfaith Contexts. To register, please click here.
Wednesday 21st June/ Thursday 22nd June:
The Joint Oxford-Princeton Conference: State Documents from the Medieval Islamicate World takes place from 21st June 8.45am to 22nd June 5pm at Trinity College, Oxford. For full details, click here. To attend the colloquium, please register using the form at this link. Participation is free of charge, but advanced registration is requested.
Thursday 13th July:
WOOPIE (Oxford Old English Work in Progress Seminar) meets at 5.15-6.30pm in the Lange Room, St Cross College. This week’s speaker will be Rachel Burns (Oxford), ‘“I will open my mouth in parables”: A new biblical context for early medieval English riddles’.
For those of you moving on to new things outside Oxford, I’d like to wish you luck in your endeavours on behalf of all of us at OMS. If you would like to stay in contact via the mailing list, please let me know so that I can update your details. For everyone else, I look forward to returning to your inboxes in October – I am remaining in post as communications officer for 2023/24:
Sequenti vero anno certius aliquid de nobis audies vel videbis [You will see me next year, or hear more definite news of me,Ep. 17]
It has been an honour and a pleasure to be your guide to the year’s medieval happenings. At a time when humanities are in decline, it’s been such a joy to see our community flourishing and thriving. On behalf of everyone at OMS, I’d like to extend a huge thanks to everyone for making this such a wonderful year. Wishing you a restful and productive summer, and I will see you again in October!
[Medievalists sailing off on Summer adventures. Bon voyage, and see you next year!] Ashmole Bestiary, Bodleian Library MS. Ashmole 1511, f. 86 v. Viewable in full at Digital Bodleian
As we wrap up the year, we here at OMS have been reflecting on the amazing accomplishments of Oxford’s medievalists in the last year. 2022/23 saw even more seminars and reading groups than ever before, covering an extremely diverse range of languages, themes, and ideas. We have also seen a considerable number of publications, special lectures, and practice-as-research events, like the Medieval Crafternoon and Mystery Plays.
Beginning this year, we will be creating an annual record publication to sum up the year’s events and spotlight the wonderful achievements of Oxford’s Medievalist community. This will be a place to celebrate major publications, highlight new and ongoing seminars/reading groups, and remember the special events that were held in the academic year.
If you have something to celebrate, we would love to hear from you! Submissions on the following would be much appreciated:
Book publications (monographs or edited volumes) by Oxford Medievalists in 2022/23 with a short summary or abstract (no more than 250 words).
Write-ups of special lectures, conferences, or events hosted at Oxford. If you have pictures of your event in progress, these would be particularly gratefully received! (no more than 500 words).
A paragraph about your reading group / seminar series, and what you did in 2022/23. We are particularly keen to hear from those who started new reading groups/seminars in the academic year 2022/23 (no more than 250 words).
Please send submissions to luisa.ostacchini@ell.ox.ac.uk. All submissions must be received by August 20th 2023. The OMS Record will be completed in time for the new academic year, both online and in (limited) print format.
