Tag: medieval matters

Medieval Matters: Week 2 HT21

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25/01/2021

10:58

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Dear all,

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

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

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

MONDAY 25 JANUARY

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

TUESDAY 26 JANUARY

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

WEDNESDAY 27 JANUARY

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

THURSDAY 28 JANUARY

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

FRIDAY 29 JANUARY

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

Enjoy the bounty!

All best wishes,

Caroline

Medieval Matters: Week 1 HT21

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17/01/2021

11:00

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Dear all,

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

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

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

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

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

MONDAY 18 JANUARY

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

TUESDAY 19 JANUARY

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

WEDNESDAY 20 JANUARY

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

THURSDAY 21 JANUARY

FRIDAY 22 JANUARY

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

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

All best wishes,

Caroline

Medieval Matters: Week 0 HT21

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12/01/2021

11:01

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Dear all,

Term time approaches! And at long last, the thing you’ve been waiting for all vac: get a sneak peek at all the exciting events, seminars, and reading groups you can attend in Hilary in the MEDIEVAL BOOKLET! Peruse it here! The OMS website and digital calendar will be fully updated by the end of the week.

In the meantime, a few things that merit your attention: 

*This Thursday, 14 January, at 2 pm GMT, Helsinki’s Anu Lahtinen and our own Juliana Dresvina are hosting a Zoom seminar on the History of Domestic Violence. There will be much medieval material: Hannah Skoda and Kristi DiClemente will both present on medieval France, while Kirsi Kanerva and Ilya Sverdlov will be speaking about the Icelandic family sagas, alongside other papers of general interest. For further information, contact Julie at juliana.dresvina@history.ox.ac.uk. You can join the Zoom meeting here.

*Next Monday, 18 January, 5:15 pm to 6:30 pm GMT, will be the Oxford Italian Sub-Faculty research Seminar. The speaker is Dr David Bowe (University College Cork) on ‘Meditation and/as Dialogue in Dante’. To register, contact italian.res-sem@mod-langs.ox.ac.uk to be added to the Teams channel.

*To get us all through Lockdown 3.0, Sebastian Dows-Miller has some excellent Twitter-tainment. The various beasts of Merton’s copy of Philip de Thaun’s Bestiary haved joined forces to provide you with regular updates, complete with manuscript illuminations. Follow @MertonBeasts on Twitter for some #LockdownBestiary antics!

Your regularly scheduled Medieval Matters emails will resume next week. Prepare yourselves!

All best wishes,

Caroline

Medieval Matters: Week 0 MT

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05/10/2020

11:04

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Dear all,

At long last, the moment you’ve all been waiting for! The much-anticipated, dearly awaited, mind-blowingly exciting MEDIEVAL BOOKLET has been released for this term. Updates will be made over the next week or so, but any changes will be minor. You can see the full booklet, and print it off should you want it in physical form, on our blog.

If you’ve submitted a seminar, event, or reading group to the medieval booklet, we would love you make a five-minute presentation about it at this term’s MEDIEVAL ROADSHOW, Tuesday 13 October at 5 pm on the OMS Teams Channel. Advertise your events to new medievalists! Show us the texts for your reading group! Offer all the exciting information that didn’t fit in your booklet submission! Please email caroline.batten@ell.ox.ac.uk to register your participation.

In the meantime, there are a few events this week and next to have on your radar:

  • For those of you new to Oxford, there will be a digital introduction to online sources for medievalists, on Wednesday of Week 1 (14 October) from 2-2.30 pm, hosted by Matthew Holford, Tolkien Curator of Medieval Manuscripts, and Isabel Holowaty, Bodleian History Librarian. More information to follow soon, but mark your calendars now.
  • The PERLEGO Network, dedicated to academic research at the interface of text and image, is holding a digital conference from 19-22 October, ‘Critical Perspectives on Image and Text’. There will be some brilliant medieval papers given, and to view the full program and register for the conference you can visit the PERLEGO website.
  • One of the perks of online seminars is that we can attend seminars at other institutions without having to travel! This term’s interdisciplinary Earlier Middle Ages Seminars at King’s College London are open to Oxford medievalists, meeting on select Wednesdays (7 October, 21 October, 18 November, and 2 December) at 5:30 pm. Registration links for each lecture can be found in the OMS Digital Calendar.

And for those of you in need of medieval entertainment to sustain you in these strange times, we recommend a new, free to download documentary film on local singing group ‘The Oxford Trobadors’, involving several twelfth century songs, lots of spoken Occitan, and fascinating discussions of the history of the troubadours. Keep an eye on the OMS blog next week for a longer list of podcasts, videos, and blogs to get your medieval fix while working from home!

With all best wishes for the start of term.

Medieval Matters: Week 9, TT20

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25/06/2020

11:08

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Dear Medievalists,

As the Summer comes rolling in, the OMS wanted to send you a quick email about what was happening for the next little while.

First, don’t forget that the Leeds International Medieval Congress is gone online and there are still plenty of panels happening. Registration is free (not limited to the first 1,500 people), so you’ll get a chance to see plenty of exciting research next month. You can register on the IMC’s website. It closes at 5pm on Friday (26th).

Oxford’s Henrike Laehnemann and Andrew Dunning will be running a fringe event on ‘Blogging with Manuscripts’ which will run on the Monday, Wednesday and Thursday of the Congress (6th, 8th, 8th July). You can find out more and register via the OMS website. Andrew will be uploading a blog with more details to the OMS website soon.

The Old English Work-in-Progress Seminar will be continuing over the summer after their huge online success this term. I have attached more information below, but you can keep up-to-date with them by joining them on their OMS channel.

Oxford Old English Work-in-Progress

Oxford Old English Work-in-Progress

The Medieval Book Club is thinking about continuing through the summer months, and is looking for reading suggestions. Send them on a postcard (oxfordmedievalbookclub@gmail.com) to Alex Peplow, Audrey Southgate and Henry Tann.

Our report from Tobias Capwell’s hugely successful online lecture will be uploaded soon, which Lestra Atlas has kindly written. Do keep checking back to OMS’s website for more blogs, and you can always keep up with what’s happening via Twitter (@OxMedStud).

Have a lovely and relaxing summer. You all deserve one.

Medieval Matters: Week 8 TT20

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15/06/2020

11:12

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Dear Medievalists,

What a strange term it has been. As we come to the final week of Trinity Term, I just wanted to thank everyone who worked so hard to make the seminars, reading groups, and lectures happen. You have all been kind, patient, and supportive. Hopefully next term, there will be some sense of normality and we can all be in the same room together with some tea and biscuits.

Seminars

  • First off today (15th), we have Helen Appleton speaking at the Old English Work-in-Progress Seminar. Unfortunately, I don’t have a title, but knowing Helen I have no doubt it’s going to be a fantastic paper. This takes place via their channel on OMS Teams.
  • Then at 5pm, Hannah Skodah will be speaking at the Medieval History Seminar and Hannah’s title is ‘“Things have changed a lot”: chivalric nostalgia in the later Middle Ages’. The talk will take place via the Seminar’s Teams. You can join the conversation by clicking on the link.
  • On Tuesday (16th) at 5pm, the Early Slavonic Seminar meets again when Robert Romanchuk tells us ‘How and Where the Old Slavonic Digenis Akritis was Made’. The seminar meets via Zoom and you can register here.
  • Also on Tuesday at 5pm, we have the final Medieval Church and Culture Seminar of the term, when three MSt students will discuss their work. Jenyth Evans’s talk is on ‘A Comparative Study of Lebor Gabála Érenn (The Book of the Takings of Ireland) and Geoffrey of Monmouth’s De Gestis Britonum (On the Deeds of the Britons)’. Lestra Atlas will discuss ‘Clerical Seduction and Construction of Sanctity in the Vita of Yvette of Huy’, and Evgenia Vorobeva will take us through ‘Of Purses and Noses: Proverb, Emotion and Power-Shifting in the Saga Narrative’. We will meet via OMS Teams.
  • The Graduate Seminar in Medieval German meet on Wednesday (17th) morning at 11.15am, where they conclude their discussion of Meister Eckhart’s sermons on Freedom. For more information, get in touch with Henrike.laehnamann@mod-langs.ox.ac.uk.

Reading Groups

  • The Old Norse Reading Group meets on Monday at 5.30pm, and you can join them via OMS Teams. For more information, get in touch with William.brockbank@jesus.ox.ac.uk.
  • The Medieval Book Club has their final meeting on the theme of Travel on Tuesday at 3.30pm. This week they focus on Diplomacy and the writing of Ruy Gonzalez de Clavijo and the Embassy to Tamerlane. Meet up with them via OMS Teams.
  • The Anglo-Norman reading group meet on Friday (19th), when they continue their exploration of Marie de France’s ‘Fables’. To join them, get in contact with Andrew.lloyd@ling-phil.ox.ac.uk.

To keep you busy during the vacation the people at Kent, along with some help from our own Henrike Laehnemann have put together a list of digital resources. You can find it at http://memslib.co.uk/. They’ve done a great job, so I hope you find it useful.

Also, do get in touch if you have any blog ideas you’d like to run past us!

In the meantime, have a lovely summer vacation, keep safe and I will see you on the other side.

Medieval Matters: Week 7 TT20

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08/06/2020

11:15

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Dear Medievalists,

We move into the peniultimate week of this strange Trinity Term. I hope exams, marking and research are interspersed with a chance to listen to the blackbirds.

Seminars

  • First this week, we have the Medieval History Seminar from 5pm today (8th). This week sees Rob Lutton give a paper on ‘Popular Devotion? The O bone Jesu Prayer in English Books of Hours in the Fifteenth Century’. You can join the conversation on the Seminar’s Teams channel.
  • On Tuesday (9th) at 5pm, the Early Slavonic Seminar meets with Justin Willson and Ashley Morse discussing ‘Belated Jerusalems: Maksim Grek against Translatio Hierosolymi’. As always, the seminar meets via Zoom and you can register here.
  • Also at 5pm on Tuesday, please join OMS for their Trinity Term Lecture given by Tobias Capwell, and entitled ‘Armour and the Knight in Life and Afterlife’. This promises to be an excellent and informative evening, so I hope you can be there. It will take place YouTube and you can watch it here. You can find an abstract and more information via the OMS site on TORCH.
  • On Wednesday (10th), the Medieval German Graduate Seminar continues with their study of Meister Eckhart’s sermons on Freedom. If you would like to join them, they meets at 11.15am and you can email Henrike.laehnemann@mod-langs.ox.ac.uk for more information.
  • The Old English Work-in-Progress Seminar meets on Wednesday at 4pm this week via their channel on OMS Teams. The speaker will be Caroline Batten who will discuss ‘Charms and Riddles: Moving beyond Sound and Sense’.
  • The Late Antique and Byzantine Archaeology and Art Seminar meets on Wednesday at 5pm. This week we have Andras Nemeth on ‘The Excerpta Constantiniana: Revisiting Constantine VII’s Cultural Enterprise’. The Seminar meets via their OMS on Teams, which you can reach by clicking here.
  • Medieval Church and Culture has moved to Wednesday to make room for the OMS lecture this week. So please join Sean Morris who will speak on ‘Politics and Lyric Poetry: Aristocratic song as constituting the etiquette of 13th-century French court culture’ and Lydia McCutcheon on ‘Familial Relationships in the Miracle Collections for St Thomas Becket and the “Miracle Windows” of Canterbury Cathedral’. We meet at 5pm via the MCC Channel on OMS Teams.

Reading Groups

  • The Old Norse Reading Group meets on Monday at 5.30pm, and since it is an odd week, it takes the form of a Graduate Fortum. They meet via their OMS Channel, and if you want more information, email William.brockbank@jesus.ox.ac.uk.
  • On Tuesday at 3.30pm, the Medieval Book Club continue with their theme of ‘Travel’ when they get to grips with Jean de Joinville’s, ‘Life of St. Louis’. You can join them via their OMS Channel and get more information by emailing oxfordmedievalbookclub@gmail.com.
  • The Old English Reading Group meets on Thursday at 5.30pm via the OMS Channel. This term they have been reading selections of Ælric’s Homilies. If you’re interested, get in touch with tom.revell@balliol.ox.ac.uk.
  • Then on Friday, the Anglo-Norman Reading Group continues with Marie de France’s Fables. They meet at 5pm and you can find out more information by emailing Andrew.lloyd@ling-phil.ox.ac.uk.

One final thing. For those interested in receiving small grants (£100-£250) for medieval projects (especially digital ones),  please get in touch with us (informal queries to francis.leneghan@ell.ox.ac.uk). For more information, check our website.

See you all on Tuesday at Tobias’s lecture!

Medieval Matters: Week 6 TT20

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01/06/2020

11:16

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Dear Medievalists,

We move into the peniultimate week of this strange Trinity Term. I hope exams, marking and research are interspersed with a chance to listen to the blackbirds.

Seminars

  • First this week, we have the Medieval History Seminar from 5pm today (8th). This week sees Rob Lutton give a paper on ‘Popular Devotion? The O bone Jesu Prayer in English Books of Hours in the Fifteenth Century’. You can join the conversation on the Seminar’s Teams channel.
  • On Tuesday (9th) at 5pm, the Early Slavonic Seminar meets with Justin Willson and Ashley Morse discussing ‘Belated Jerusalems: Maksim Grek against Translatio Hierosolymi’. As always, the seminar meets via Zoom and you can register here.
  • Also at 5pm on Tuesday, please join OMS for their Trinity Term Lecture given by Tobias Capwell, and entitled ‘Armour and the Knight in Life and Afterlife’. This promises to be an excellent and informative evening, so I hope you can be there. It will take place YouTube and you can watch it here. You can find an abstract and more information via the OMS site on TORCH.
  • On Wednesday (10th), the Medieval German Graduate Seminar continues with their study of Meister Eckhart’s sermons on Freedom. If you would like to join them, they meets at 11.15am and you can email Henrike.laehnemann@mod-langs.ox.ac.uk for more information.
  • The Old English Work-in-Progress Seminar meets on Wednesday at 4pm this week via their channel on OMS Teams. The speaker will be Caroline Batten who will discuss ‘Charms and Riddles: Moving beyond Sound and Sense’.
  • The Late Antique and Byzantine Archaeology and Art Seminar meets on Wednesday at 5pm. This week we have Andras Nemeth on ‘The Excerpta Constantiniana: Revisiting Constantine VII’s Cultural Enterprise’. The Seminar meets via their OMS on Teams, which you can reach by clicking here.
  • Medieval Church and Culture has moved to Wednesday to make room for the OMS lecture this week. So please join Sean Morris who will speak on ‘Politics and Lyric Poetry: Aristocratic song as constituting the etiquette of 13th-century French court culture’ and Lydia McCutcheon on ‘Familial Relationships in the Miracle Collections for St Thomas Becket and the “Miracle Windows” of Canterbury Cathedral’. We meet at 5pm via the MCC Channel on OMS Teams.

Reading Groups

  • The Old Norse Reading Group meets on Monday at 5.30pm, and since it is an odd week, it takes the form of a Graduate Fortum. They meet via their OMS Channel, and if you want more information, email William.brockbank@jesus.ox.ac.uk.
  • On Tuesday at 3.30pm, the Medieval Book Club continue with their theme of ‘Travel’ when they get to grips with Jean de Joinville’s, ‘Life of St. Louis’. You can join them via their OMS Channel and get more information by emailing oxfordmedievalbookclub@gmail.com.
  • The Old English Reading Group meets on Thursday at 5.30pm via the OMS Channel. This term they have been reading selections of Ælric’s Homilies. If you’re interested, get in touch with tom.revell@balliol.ox.ac.uk.
  • Then on Friday, the Anglo-Norman Reading Group continues with Marie de France’s Fables. They meet at 5pm and you can find out more information by emailing Andrew.lloyd@ling-phil.ox.ac.uk.

One final thing. For those interested in receiving small grants (£100-£250) for medieval projects (especially digital ones),  please get in touch with us (informal queries to francis.leneghan@ell.ox.ac.uk). For more information, check our website.

See you all on Tuesday at Tobias’s lecture!

Medieval Matters: Week 5 TT20

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24/05/2020

11:17

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Dear Medievalists,

As we step beyond the halfway point in term to week 5, we still have plenty of things happenings in Oxford’s medieval seminars and reading groups. So I hope you can join us.

Seminars

  • First, there is the Old English Work-in-Progress seminar, and today (25th) it hosts Mark Atherton who will be discussing ‘Ælfwine and the guild of thegns: another look at the second half of The Battle of Maldon’. Join the group on the OMS Teams at 4pm.
  • Then later today at the History Seminar, you can talk to Paul Hyams about his paper that asks ‘What was a “Privata Convencio” in the Twelfth Century and did it Matter? St. Edmund of Bury, the Cockfileds and the Suffolk Gentry’. I realise that the link last week didn’t take some people straight to the talk (only to the Seminar’s home page), hopefully it should work this week. You can read the paper here (and then clicking on ‘files’ at the top). Then you should be able to join the conversation at 5pm by clicking here.
  • The Early Slavonic Seminar meets on Tuesday (26th) from 5pm when Ines Garcia de la Puente will speak about ‘Tradition and Creation, or How did Rus’ian Chronicles Construct their World?’. You can join them on Zoom by clicking here.
  • Then on Wednesday (27th) at 11.15am the Graduate Seminar in Medieval German continues their discussion of Meister Eckhart’s sermons on Freedom. You can get in contact with the seminar by emailing henrike.laehnemann@mod-langs.ox.ac.uk.
  • Later on Wednesday (at 5pm) the Late Antique and Byzantine Archaeology and Art Seminar will meet when Yannis Stouraitis will discuss ‘Representations of Romanness in Byzantine Civil Wars’. The Teams channel can be joined by clicking here.

Reading Groups

  • The Old Norse Graduate Forum will meet today at 5.30pm on OMS Teams. For more information, email william.brockbank@jesus.ox.ac.uk.
  • Then on Tuesday, the wonderful Medieval Book Club will be reading the work of Friar Jordanus, and his ‘The Wonders of the East’ as part of their theme of travel this term. You can join them from 3.30pm via their channel on OMS Teams.
  • The Old English Reading Group will be meeting on Thursday (28th) at 5.30pm in the OMS Teams or to get added to the chat channel email francis.leneghan@ell.ox.ac.uk.
  • On Friday (29th), the Anglo-Norman reading group continue to work through Marie de France’s ‘Fables’.  They meet at 5pm and if you want more information, get in touch with andrew.lloyd@ling-phil.ox.ac.uk.

In good news, the Medieval Church and Culture Seminar will return next week until the end of term when the MSt Medieval Studies students will be discussing their research. I will send along more information in next week’s email.

The amazing people at the Bodleian (especially Classics and Theology colleagues) have secured access to the Sources Chrétiennes Online which you can access via SOLO.

In July and August Lydia Schumacher has organised an online conference on thirteenth-century English Franciscans, which is free for all to join. You can find out more information and register here.

The OMS Blogs continue this week, with Matthew Holford writing on being a curator of manuscripts while working remotely. We will have even more for you soon (including pictures of owls!) as well, but let us know if you want to send us something.

Medieval Matters: Week 4 TT20

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18/05/2020

11:19

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News

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Dear Medievalists,

We’ve made it to week 4 and so far our online offering of reading groups, seminars, and work-in-progress sessions have been a big success.

I wanted to draw your attention the OMS’s blogs. People have been in touch and offering to write about what they’re doing and the work still going on despite everything. In one of the latest entries here, Oliver Cox discusses a new TORCH initiative with the Churches Conservation Trust to find new ways for people to engage with their parish churches.

Seminars

  • First up, today (18th), we have the Old English Work-in-Progress session meeting at 4pm in OMS Teams. This week, Glenn Cahilly-Bretzin will speak about ‘The Case of the Missing Ducks: thematic reshaping in the transmission of the anonymous Martinmas homily’.
  • Then, at 5pm, the Medieval History Seminar takes a slightly different tack when it hosts graduate students to discuss their work. This week, Emilie Lavallée (St Cross), Amy Ebrey (SJC), and Alex Peplow (Merton) present short papers on ‘Counsel and Correction in 13th and 14th c. Theological Discourse’, moderated and chaired by Sumner Braund. You can gain access to their Teams and download the relevant files here. To find them look at the top bar and click on ‘files’. There are three downloads now available: one contains all three abstracts; there are handouts for Emilie Lavallée and Amy Ebrey’s papers.
  • On Tuesday (19th) the Early Slavonic Seminar will meet at 5pm, when Christian Raffensperger will discuss ‘The Kingdom of a Rus: a new theoretical model of rulership’. The seminar meets via zoom and you can gain entry by clicking here.
  • On Wednesday (20th) at 5pm, the Late Antique and Byzantine Archaeology and Art Seminar will host Alessandra Bucossi. There’s no title given as yet, but you can see what Bucossi works on here. You can join the Teams group by clicking here.
  • Earlier on Wednesday at 11.15am, the Graduate Seminar in Medieval German takes place where they will continue to discuss Meister Eckhart’s sermons on the subject of freedom. To join them, get in touch with henrike.laehnemann@mod-langs.ox.ac.uk.
  • The last Middle English Work-in-Progress Seminar takes place on Wednesday at 4pm on the OMS Teams. This has been a huge success this term and I wanted to congratulate everyone for it. This week Daniel Sawyer and Niall Summers will discuss fifteenth-century East Anglian poetry. Tune in!

Reading Groups

Other News

  • There is an opportunity for a PhD studentship in collaboration with Durham University and Peter Toth at the British Library on their project ‘Appropriating a Conqueror: the legend of Alexander the Great in late antique and medieval literary culture’. This would be a great chance for a masters student to continue their education. Details in PDF: Appropriating a Conqueror project description.pdf
  • There is wonderful online conference taking place this week (20th-22nd) on the topic of ‘The Rituals of the Heavenly and Earthly Kingdoms’, which was originally due to take place in Poland but has moved online. You can find out more details here.

The Medieval Booklet is a rather dynamic document at the moment, and will be updated, as will the calendar on TORCH, when we receive word about events. You can access both here.