Date: Tuesday 21 January, 13.00-14.00, with lunch provided from 12.30
Location: Colin Matthews Room, Radcliffe Humanities (and online via MS Teams)
As part of the preparations for annual ‘Cultural Seasons’ in the new Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities, this is an invitation to brainstorm ideas for a Cultural Programme Season on Medieval Afterlives. From Oxford Medieval Studies, Prof. Marion Turner (English), Prof. Henrike Lähnemann (MML), Prof. Nancy Thebaut (History), and Prof. Elizabeth Eva Leach (Music) are already collaborating with the Cultural Programme on possible opportunities for the season and John Fulljames, Director of Oxford University’s Humanities Cultural Programme, is keen now to extend an invitation to others to join the conversation to explore and test the potential for the season and bring together researchers who could be involved in shaping and delivering it.
The focus of the season will be on contemporary creativity, while also centring Oxford’s extraordinary medieval resources where appropriate – our manuscripts, instruments, objects, architecture, and spaces. This season might engage with novelists, poets, musicians, graphic artists, puppeteers, playwrights, actors, composers, designers, children’s book writers, textile workers, cartoonists, computer game programmers, AI technology, and more.
We would like the season to be ambitious and international while also engaging grass-roots, local communities, especially schools and young people. It will be wide-ranging, inclusive, accessible, innovative, and fun. We also want to be open about the dark side of medieval appropriations in recent years, especially by the far right (see the previous TORCH OMS workshop on Medieval Studies and the Far Right), and to examine and counter these narratives. While we want to bring in high-profile writers and artists, we also want to celebrate the creativity of everyone, including students. The season would be likely to take place circa 2028.
One overarching question might be whether this kind of contemporary creativity is an end in itself, or a gateway to the medieval past. Please come along to this initial group meeting for all interested parties, which will be structured around the question: What has medieval research to do with contemporary creativity?
If you have something you would like to share or discuss in advance, please feel free to reach out to the researchers who are already involved or the Cultural Programme via Justine Shaw. Please RSVP to: Cultural Programmes with ‘Medieval Afterlives Workshop’ (culturalprogramme@humanities.ox.ac.uk) in the subject line by 7 January 2025.
Image: ‘Serenade to Chaucer’, a pop-up version of Chaucer’s ‘Miller’s Tale’ by Paul Johnson, runner-up of the Redesigning the Medieval Book competition by the Bodleian Library.