Category: News

Last week we hosted the fabulous OMS Trinity Term Lecture by Alison Ray and Heather Barr: a careers talk with a twist! Many thanks to Alison and Heather for a wonderful evening, and thanks to everyone who came along. Here’s some careers-based wisdom from Alcuin, in honour of the occasion:

Unus quisque proprii laboris mercedem accipiet
[Each person will receive appropriate reward for their own work, Ep. 88]

If you missed the talk, don’t fear: you can catch up via our blog! You can view the Trinity Term Lecture, along with a handy list of resources for further information on working in archives, libraries and the wider heritage sector, kindly written by Alison, here: GLAMorous work: Medievalist Pathways in Archives and Libraries. Alison has also kindly written up the highlights of the Medieval Mystery Plays, so if you missed the festivities (or just want to relive them), please click here! We also have a wonderful Report by Elisabeth Dutton, Université de Fribourg, on the staging of the Comédie des Innocents, by Marguerite de Navarre: click here to read all about it! For the week’s offerings, please see below.

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

• Save the date! Dies Latinus et Graecus: ‘Quid antiqui de antiquis censuerint’: We are delighted to announce that the Oxford Ancient Languages Society, with the support of Oxford Latinitas, will be running a Dies Latinus et Graecus on Saturday 20 May, in the Ship Street Centre, Jesus College. Please save the date! The broad theme of the day will be what the ancients had to say about (even earlier) ancient figures, texts, and events, and in general exploring antiquity through its own critical resources. To register interest, please fill out this form. Any questions may be directed to nicholas.romanos@worc.ox.ac.uk or aron.szocs@st-hughs.ox.ac.uk.
• Registration for Literary, religious and manuscript cultures of the  German-speaking lands, the  symposium  in memory of Nigel F. Palmer (1946-2022)  which takes place on 19/20 May finished last week; please contact Henrike Lähnemann if you would still like to attend some sessions. There will be the opportunity for Oxford-based medievalists to see books related to Nigel Palmer both at the Friday coffee morning on 19 May and in the Old Library of St Edmund Hall on 20 May from 5pm.

EVENTS THIS WEEK:

Monday 8th May:

•  The Byzantine Graduate Seminar will meet at 12:30-14:00 via Zoom. This week’s speaker will be Valeria Annunziata (La Sapienza Università di Roma), Challenging Authorities: How and Why Byzantine Scholars Emended Classical and Authoritative Texts . 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 Teams from 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.
• Please note that the Medieval History Seminar will not take place this week.

Tuesday 9th May:

• The Medieval English Research Seminar will meet at 12:00 in Lecture Theatre 2, St Cross Building. This week’s speakers will be Jane Griffiths (Wadham College, Oxford) and Laura Varnam (University College, Oxford), ‘Her Wordhoard: Unlocking Creativity in Academic Practice‘.
• 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 Sara Lipton (Stony Brook, NY), ‘The Law Was Like a Book of Pictures’: a sermon by Philip the Chancellor on Jewish and Christian Ways of reading and perceiving‘. Everyone is welcome at this informal and friendly graduate seminar!
• The Medieval French Research Seminar will meet at 5pm for drinks, with the presentation starting at 5:15pm, at the Maison Francaise d’Oxford on Norham Road. This week’s speakers will be Ramani Chandramohan, Alice Hawkins, and Robert Ley – ‘Within and Beyond: Scribal, Textual and Narrative Voices in Medieval French Epic and Romance‘. For more information, to be added to the seminar maillist, or for the Teams link to join a seminar remotely, contact helen.swift@st-hildas.ox.ac.uk.

Wednesday 10th May:

• The Medieval German Seminar will meet at 11:15-12.45pm at St Edmund Hall Old Library. This week Luise Morawetz will offer a short presentation on her project editing the Old High German glosses in Bodleian Library, MS. Canon. Pat. Lat. 57 – have a look at her work-in-progress edition.
• 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 speaker will be Federico Montinaro (Universität Tübingen), ‘The edition of the Acts of the Council of Constantinople of 879-80: an interim report’. To join remotely via Teams, click here.
• The Centre for Manuscript and Text Cultures (CMTC) at The Queen’s College (Oxford) is hosting the Trinity Term Lecture at 5.15–6.45pm, in the Memorial Room, The Queen’s College and online via Zoom. The lecture will be by Jean-Luc Fournet (Collège de France, Paris), ‘The End of a Script and the Beginning of Myth. Hieroglyphs and the Greeks’. Please register here (whether you are planning to attend in person or online).

Thursday 11th May:

• The Discussion Group: Governability across the medieval globe meets at 12.30 in Seminar Room A in Jesus College. Everyone welcome: staff, students and researchers, of all historical periods. We encourage you to bring lunch along. This week’s topic is ‘Gender’.
• Laura Ashe is leading this week’s Piers Plowman in Context discussion group, which meets in the Butler Room at Univ (please note the change of college room) from 4.30-5.30. This week’s session will be on Passus VII of the B-text, which we’ll be discussing in relation to the short contextual passages in this PDF. All welcome! Email Jacob Ridley with any questions.
• The Oxford Interfaith Forum meets online via Zoom at 6pm. Professor Adele Berlin, Robert H. Smith Professor Emerita of Hebrew Bible at the University of Maryland, USA, will be leading this session on Exile and Restoration in the Psalms. To register, please click here.

Friday 12th May:

• 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 Germanic Reading Group meets at 4pm on Zoom. To mark the publication of his new book, Prosody in Medieval English and Norse, Nelson Goering will lead this session on Laȝamon’s Brut. To receive the materials and be added to the mailing list, please contact howard.jones@sbs.ox.ac.uk.
• The Anglo-Norman Reading Group meets at 5-6.30pm at the Julia Mann room, St Hilda’s College and online. This term we are reading extracts from Hue de Rotelands’s Protheselaus. Please contact Jane Bliss and/or Stephanie Hathaway to let us know if you can come in person (so we know whom to expect), also to obtain copies of the texts, and for the Zoom invitations.

I hope you are all enjoying your second bank holiday weekend! Though Alcuin thought it was important to work hard to receive your just rewards, he also acknowledged that taking a break was sometimes necessary:

Qui placido in puppi carpebat pectore somnum,
Exurgens uentis imperat et pelago
[With a quiet heart he snatched some sleep in the ship’s stern; waking, he commanded the wind and sea. Oratio in Nocte.]

I take this to mean: snatch some sleep on this bank holiday so that you can accomplish great things the rest of the week! Wishing you all a week of good work, good rest, and the rewards that you deserve!

Happy May Morning! The May Morning celebrations in Oxford traditionally mark the official arrival of Spring. If you were up early celebrating at Magdalen Bridge, I hope that you had a wonderful time. Here is some wisdom from Alcuin regarding mornings, whether literal or more metaphorical:

Mane, florentibus per aetatem studiis, seminavi in Brittania
[In the morning of my life, with my spirit flowering during that time, I sowed the seeds of learning in Britain. Ep. 8]

May your May Morning be filled with the seeds of learning! To help you along the way, here are some wonderful events happening this week:

EVENTS THIS WEEK:

Monday 1st May:

• The Byzantine Graduate Seminar will meet at 12:30-14:00 via Zoom. This week’s speaker will be Paul Ulishney (University of Oxford), The Crisis of the Chalcedonian Episcopate in Egypt, c. 652-c. 710. 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 Teams from 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 Creaturely lais: Marie de France, Bisclavret and Yonec. 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 Tom Johnson (York) ‘Reckoning and Economic Life in Late-Medieval England‘. The seminar will also be available remotely 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). If you have any difficulties please email: medhistsem@history.ox.ac.uk.

Tuesday 2nd May:

• The Medieval English Research Seminar will meet at 12:00 in Lecture Theatre 2, St Cross Building. This week’s speaker will be Jeremy Smith (University of Glasgow), Reinventing medieval English liturgy: the lives and afterlives of The Lay Folks’ Mass Book.
• 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 Virginia Bainbridge (freelance researcher), ‘Taking advantage? Syon Abbey and regime change in the Wars of the Roses’. Everyone is welcome at this informal and friendly graduate seminar!

Wednesday 3rd May:

• 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 will meet in person in the Old Library of St Edmund Hall. This week we will be discussing the prologue. 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). 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 speaker will be Nikolas Vryzidis (Aristoteleio Panepistimio, Thessaloniki), ‘Transitional threads: Textiles in the late medieval Balkans, 14th-16th centuries’.

Thursday 4th May:

• The Environmental History Group meets at 12-2pm in the Rees Davies Room, History Faculty. This week’s speaker will be Jake Hatton, “‘Land for Improvement’: extraction and ecosystem in mid-18th century Nova Scotia”. We try to keep discussions informal, and we encourage anyone at all interested in these kinds of approaches to join our meetings, regardless of research specialism or presumed existing knowledge. For those interested in joining the group, you can join our mailing list by getting in touch with us at environmentalhistoryworkinggroup-owner@maillist.ox.ac.uk.
• The Searobend Masterclass and Focus Group for Linked Metadata for English Language Texts, 1000-1300 will take place at 2-5pm at the Weston Library. This event will showcase the project’s sources and methods, including a masterclass on Bodley 340+342, and an introduction to linked open data, knowledge graphs, and metadata structure. It aims to gather feedback from undergraduates, postgraduates, and early career researchers, which will influence the size, structure and scope of the project’s final website interface, scheduled to launch in July 2024. Tea and coffee break will be provided. Participants will need to bring a laptop. To register, sign up on EventBrite: https://tinyurl.com/56b8z8e6 For more information, please contact Matthew Holford (matthew.holford@bodleian.ox.ac.uk), Colleen Curran (ccurran2@tcd.ie), or Mark Faulkner (mark.faulkner@tcd.ie).
• The Medieval Women’s Writing Reading Group meets at 3-4pm at Lincoln College: meet at the lodge. This week’s theme will be Female foremothers: imitating and building on the authority of past 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.
• Simon Horobin is leading this week’s Piers Plowman in Context discussion group, which meets in the Butler Room at Univ (please note the change of college room) from 4:30-5:30pm. This week’s session will be on Passus V of the B-text, which we’ll be discussing in relation to the following short contexts: the section on ‘Sloth’ from the Book of Vices and Virtues; sermon 11A from Lollard Sermons; and the section ‘De Invidia’ from Chaucer’s Parson’s Tale; all available through this link: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1ecmqwQpuxmxbEn7e9Pu0uFCMVONSCdRC?usp=share_link All welcome! Email jacob.ridley@univ.ox.ac.uk with any questions.
• The Medieval Visual Culture Seminar meets at 5.15-6.45pm at St Catherine’s College, Arumugam Building. This week’s speaker will be Richard Gameson (Durham University), British Medieval Illuminators’ Blues. For further information, contact Elena Lichmanova (elena.lichmanova@merton.ox.ac.uk).
• The Oxford Medieval Studies Trinity Term Lecture will take place at 5:30-6:30pm in St Edmund Hall, Old Library. Alison Ray (Archivist at St Peter’s) and Heather Barr (Library Trainee at St Edmund Hall) will be speaking on “GLAMorous work: Medievalist Pathways in Archives and Libraries”. Join us for a careers talk with a twist and with coffee and cake PLUS the chance to see an exhibition in the Old Library and handle some of the special collections!

Friday 5th May:

• 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.

Of course, whilst being up at 5am to welcome in the seeds of learning is all very well and good, there’s also a lot to be said for enjoying a bank-holiday lie-in! Alcuin, of course, also has some wisdom for those less inclined towards early mornings:

pia compassione fessum concedat requiescere
[With compassionate sympathy, let the tired rest, Ep. 198]

Wishing you all a week of rest and learning in equal measure!

Welcome back to Oxford, and to the Oxford Medieval Studies Trinity Term programme! We have so many exciting things in store for you this term, and I’m really looking forward to once again being your guide for all of Oxford’s Medieval Matters. In the words of Alcuin:

nos semper suspensi de reditu tuo
[I will be continually in suspense until your return, Ep. 64]

To kick the term off to a triumphant start, we have two very special events. Firstly, the Oxford Medieval Graduate Conference: Names and Naming, takes place on April 20th and 21st, both Online & In-Person at Ertegun House, Oxford. Secondly, this Saturday, April 22nd, join us for the annual Medieval Mystery Plays at St Edmund Hall! This is sure to be a day of merriment and festivity, and a chance to celebrate the diverse languages, departments and medievalists of our community. For the short programme, see the pdf attached to this week’s email, and please see the event listings below for further details.

The full OMGC and Mystery Play programmes can be found here, along with a sneak-peek at some of the offerings in the draft of this term’s Medieval Booklet. If you have not sent in your booklet submissions yet, please do so ASAP to ensure inclusion in time for the full release on Monday.

The full newsletter will begin again on Monday, but for now, a sample of the delights in store upon our return to term time:

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

• SAVE THE DATE: 26 APRIL (Wednesday week 1 of Trinity Term), 5pm UK time: In celebration of the release of vol. 2 of the Journal of Manuscript and Text Cultures (MTC) by the Centre for Manuscript and Text Cultures (CMTC), which takes an explicitly experimental approach of involving digital tools for the presentation of research in manuscript cultures, CMTC are holding a round table 26 APRIL (Wednesday week 1 of Trinity Term), 5pm UK time at the Memorial Room of The Queen’s College, Oxford. The topic of the round table will be digital publishing and future research in manuscript studies. The round table will be chaired by Richard Ovenden, OBE, Professorial Fellow and Bodley’s Librarian. More information to follow.

EVENTS THIS WEEK:

Thursday 20th April:

• The Oxford Medieval Graduate Conference 2023: Names & Naming takes place at 9-6pm, both online and at Ertegun House. Attendance is free, but you must register in advance. To register to attend, either online or in person, please visit the conference website here.
• A Special Lecture for the Churches Conservation Trust will take place at 1pm, online via Facebook Live. Shelley M. Williams will be presenting at this lecture, which will consider how the twelve signs of the zodiac were incorporated into ecclesiastical architecture between c. 1100-1250 CE. To attend, please click this link.

Friday 21st April:

• The Oxford Medieval Graduate Conference 2023: Names & Naming takes place at 1-6pm, both online and at Ertegun House. Attendance is free, but you must register in advance. To register to attend, either online or in person, please visit the conference website here.

Saturday 22nd April:

• The Medieval Mystery Plays take place at 12-3:30pm at St Edmund Hall. Join us on this merry multilingual journey featuring plays dating from between the 12th and the 16th century! This highlight of the Oxford medieval calendar offers a variety of plays in different medieval and modern languages, staged at several stations in the beautiful grounds of St Edmund Hall. Cycles of plays retelling stories from the Bible were a popular form of entertainment in the Middle Ages, which we are only too happy to revive for modern audiences. Admission is free and you are welcome to turn up at any time. For more details about the programme, please see our blog post here.

OPPORTUNITIES:

• “Noblesse Oblige? Barons and the Public Good” Network: Last Call for Associate Membership! Though there might be another call next year, if you wish to take part in this year’s conference and associated events, please email max.lau@worc.ox.ac.uk with your CV and a brief cover letter. Full details can be found at http://medieval.seh.ox.ac.uk/2023/03/05/new-ahrcnetwork-noblesse-oblige/ and https://noblesseoblige.exeter.ac.uk/.”
• Three-year Senior Researcher Position at the University of Oslo, Deadline May 14th: A three-year Senior Researcher position in medieval studies has been just announced at the University of Oslo with the application deadline on May 14th. The job will be available  from the fall of 2023. The position is funded by the ERC Advanced Grant project 101018645 MINiTEXTS “Minuscule Texts: Marginalized Voices in Early Medieval Latin Culture (c. 700–c.1000),”. A more detailed description of this position and the application requirements are provided at the job announcement at https://www.jobbnorge.no/en/available-jobs/job/242179/senior-researcher-in-medieval-studies.
• 10 funded PhDs opportunities within the Marie Skłodowska-Curie doctoral network “From Antiquity to Community: Rethinking Classical Heritage through Citizen Humanities” (AntCom): Interested applicants will find information on the training program, on each fellowship as well as details on specific requirements and the application process on the consortium’s website: https://antcom.eu/call-for-applications/. For further questions you are welcome to contact the project’s PI Aglae Pizzone (pizzone@sdu.dk).
• The Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies is excited to hire a new postdoctoral research scholar in premodern critical race studies. This position is open to PhDs in language, history, religion, philosophy, classics, or related humanistic fields. The postdoctoral research scholar will join our ongoing Mellon Foundation-funded RaceB4Race initiative for a two-year appointment starting Fall 2023 at a stipend salary of $75,000/fiscal year. More information and how to apply can be found at our website.

I will return to your inboxes on Monday with the Medieval Booklet and the Week 1 events. In the meantime, we hope to see many of you on Saturday for the mystery plays. For those of you contributing to the plays, some words of wisdom from Alcuin:

modo vero viriliter fac et fortiter!
[Play your part powerfully and bravely! Ep. 72]

Wishing you all a week of power and bravery in all of your medieval endeavours!