Tag: trinity 20

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.

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.

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!

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!

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.

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

• The Old Norse Reading Group will meet today on OMS Teams at 5.30pm. Get in touch with william.brockbank@jesus.ox.ac.uk for more information.
• On Tuesday, The Medieval Book Club will meet at 3.30pm and continue on the theme of Travel. This week, they focus on ‘Exploration’ and Ibn Battuta’s Travels. You can email them at oxfordmedievalbookclub@gmail.com and join them in their OMS channel.
• For information on how to join the Germanic Reading Group, email nelson.goering@ling-phil.ox.ac.uk.

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.

Dear Medievalists,

Time seems to have lost all meaning, but I think this is week 3. So far, the online seminars have been a real success in letting people get their work out there and some great discussions taking place via video or Teams chat boxes. This week will be no different I’m sure.

Seminars

• Today (11th)  at 4pm, Marilina Cesario will be discussing ‘Natural Science in the Peterborough Chronicle’ at the Oxford Old English Work-in-Progress Group. This is held on the OMS Teams in their own channel, so you can join them there. It begins at 4pm.
• Then at 5pm today, The Medieval History Seminar continues from last week’s success, and Simon Yarrow will give a talk on ‘”Some Problems of the Peace’: Angelic Governance in Angevin England’. The Seminar has its own Teams , through which you can access Simon’s paper here. To join the seminar click here, then click ‘Accept’ and then ‘Add to Calendar’. Please read the paper before joining the discussion and the convenors would like to encourage people to use the chat function to engage silently with the conversation. It’s a little like whispering in class only less annoying and to be encouraged.
• Weeks 4, 5, and 6 of the Seminar will be given over to a Graduate colloquium. And so, the Seminar invites proposals from graduate students for online research panels in Weeks 5 and 6. The research panels, organised around a unifying theme, will involve 2-3 short papers (10 – 12 mins max.) followed by a moderated question period. In order to generate a good discussion, abstracts for each paper will be circulated to attendees in advance. Those interested should send short abstracts (200 words max.) either individually or in groups to Sumner Braund, sumner.braund@history.ox.ac.uk, by 12 May 2020.
• On Tuesday (12th) at 5pm, the Early Slavonic Webinar continues with Sean Griffin discussing ‘Medieval Memory Wars in Post-Socialist Russia and Ukraine’. The group meets via Zoom and you can link up with them by clicking here.
• On Wednesday (13th), the Graduate Seminar in Medieval German continues at 11.15am when they will be reading Meister Eckhart’s sermons in the topic of Freedom. If you would like to be added to the mailing list for the seminar please get in touch with henrike.laehnemann@mod-langs.ox.ac.uk.
• At 4pm on Wednesday, The Middle English Work in Progress Seminar will be joined by Hannah Lucas and Raphaela Rohrhofer who will be discussing their work on Julian of Norwich. The group meets via OMS Teams and you can listen into the seminar by clicking here.
• The Late Antique and Byzantine Archaeology and Art Seminar will host Pamela Armstrong who will be talking about ‘The Transmission of Art: Travelling Saints and Monastic Networks’ at 5pm on Wednesday. You can join their Teams here.

Reading Groups

• The Old Norse Reading Group meets today on OMS Teams at 5.30pm. This being an odd week it will act as a Graduate Forum. Contact william.brockbank@jesus.ox.ac.uk for more information. The channel can be found here.
• The Medieval Book Club meets again on Tuesday at 3.30pm to consider the theme of Travel. This week they will be reading Boccaccio, De Canaria and Jean de Bethencourt, ‘The Canarian’. If you’re interested email oxfordmedievalbookclub@gmail.com and join them on OMS Teams here.
• The Old English Reading Group, meeting odd weeks this term, will be continuing their reading of Ælfric’s Homilies on Thursday at 5.30pm. If you’d like to join them, get in touch with tom.revell@balliol.ox.ac.uk and join them on the OMS Teams here.
• On Friday, the Anglo-Norman Reading Group will further their reading of Marie de France’s Fables. If you would like to join them, send an email to andrew.lloyd@ling-phil.ox.ac.uk

Also, don’t forget that we have more and more blogs coming up and are always happy to receive ideas for new ones.

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.

Dear Medievalists,

Welcome to week 2 in our lockdown series of seminars and reading groups. Despite the strangeness of these days, there’s plenty happening to keep you in touch with each other.

Seminars

• Today (4th) we have the first Medieval History Seminar of the term. I sent an email on Friday about how to join up, so please check that for more information (i.e., click here) . John Arnold’s paper ‘Confraternities in Southern France: collective enthusiasm or sedition and politics?’ is already uploaded onto Teams, so you can read it and discuss it between 5-6pm.
• On OMS’ Teams, the Old English Work in Progress Seminar takes place at 4pm every Monday. Unfortunately, I don’t have information as to who is speaking today, but Francis Leneghan’s paper last week was excellent and I’m this week’s will be as well!
• On Tuesday (5th), the Early Slavonic Seminar will host Susana Torres Prieto who will give a paper questioning ‘Was Alexander really from Macedonia? The East Slavic genealogy of Alexander the Great’. This takes place at 5pm via Zoom and you can register here.
• On Wednesday (6th) Ashhan Akişik will speak at the Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar on the topic of ‘Mehmed II’s Patria, Byzas’ Palace, and Ottoman Hellenism in the Fifteenth Century’. This will be held via Teams and you register for it by clicking here.
• Also on Wednesday the Graduate Seminar in Medieval German takes place from 11.15am-1pm, where they will be discussing Meister Eckhart’s sermons. If you are interested in joining them, email henrike.laehnemann@mod-langs.ox.ac.uk.
• Finally on Wednesday, the Middle English Work in Progress Seminar will be meeting via the OMS’ Teams (for which I’ve already sent out instructions on how to join). The session starts at 4pm when Dan Wakelin and Eleanor Baker will discuss their work on materiality in late medieval literature and books.

Reading Groups

• The Old Norse Reading Group will be meeting today and every Monday of this term. For more information contact william.brockbank@jesus.ox.ac.uk. You can join them in OMS’ Teams from 5.30pm.
• If you are interested in reading short excerpts from medieval Germanic languages, get in touch with nelson.goering@ling-phil.ox.ac.uk
• The Medieval Book Club will meet on Tuesday and continue their theme of ‘Travel’. This week they will be reading Gerald of Wales.

Also, Audrey Southgate from the Medieval Book Club has kindly written a blogpost about the Club’s recent history and a report from how this term is going so far. You can read it here. It contains the wise words ‘Rarely do things come out according to our hopes. Often what is planned does not take place, and the unhoped for happens’. Thanks Audrey.

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.

As mentioned before, we would love to feature blog posts about medieval events, initiatives or resources, e.g. we have been promised a blog post about the project to read daily Dante sonnets (look for the hashtag #Covidcanzoniere on twitter). TORCH is doing its best to promote all online activities and we are happy to tweet out from https://twitter.com/OxMedStud.

Dear Medievalists,

Welcome to what is probably a very different Trinity Term to what we all expected, but here we are. There are many people trying to keep seminars and reading groups going online. OMS is going to try and keep you informed about what is happening to the best of our ability. So, while I’ve listed some things below, there will be more happening over the term and we will let you know in the Monday morning emails. So do keep an eye on them if you can. Also, as this is a group effort, please send information about any other events you know happening to OxMedStud@gmail.com.

Before going into what’s happening, there are a couple of notes. First, Tobias Capwell’s talk has been postponed, but not postponed like a Ryanair refund (i.e., cancelled); instead, Tobias will be giving his talk online (platform to be confirmed) on Monday 8th of June. Second, for a few of the events and reading groups you may need you to join the Oxford Medieval Studies Microsoft Teams, and you can do this by searching for its name or our ID which is: h8jk577.

Seminars

• The Monday evening Medieval History Seminar is keeping things going this term. While they are not meeting this week, I wanted to give everyone notice. Weeks 2, 3, 7, and 8 will be normal seminar papers, where the papers are made available in advance via Teams and the speakers will lead an online discussion starting at 5pm. The first talk will take place next Monday (4th May) when John Arnold will be speaking about ‘Confraternities in Southern France: collective enthusiasm or sedition and politics?’. More information about how to join the discussion will be distributed.
• In weeks 4, 5, and 6, instead of these seminars, there will be an online graduate research colloquium. To contribute to this please send an abstract (200 words max) either individually or in groups to sumner.braund@history.ox.ac.uk by 1st May.
• The Early Slavonic Seminar will be held at 5pm on Tuesday (28th) via Zoom. This week Vadym Aristov will be speaking about the ‘First Church of St Sophia in Kyiv’. You can register for the event here.
• This Thursday (30th) at 4pm, our very own Henrike Lähnemann will be taking part in a webinar organised by The Institution of Conservation (ICON) on the topic of ‘Recycled Parchment: Manuscript Fragments in Medieval Dresses’. This will take place via Zoom and you can register here.
• Instead of the English Research Seminar this term, there will be a series of Middle English Work in Progress sessions from weeks 1-4. This week, Marion Turner and Rebecca Menmuir will be discussing aspects of Chaucer. The sessions will take place via the OMS Teams and you can contact vincent.gillespie@ell.ox.ac.uk to be added or for more information.
• The Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar will host 5 talks this term, the first starting next week, when I will send more information.

Reading Groups

• From 1st week, the Anglo-Norman Reading Group will be meeting on Friday in odd weeks from 5pm until 6.30pm. This term they will be working through Marie de France’s Fables. If you’d like to join please send an e-mail to andrew.lloyd@ling-phil.ox.ac.uk.
• The Old English Reading Group will be meeting on Thursdays during odd weeks this term at 5.30pm. This term they will be looking at Ælfrics Homilies. For more information email tom.revell@balliol.ox.ac.uk or join the Chat Channel on the Oxford Medieval Studies Teams.
• The Medieval Book Club will be meeting on Tuesdays between 3.30-4.30pm and this term will focus on the theme of ‘Travel’. You can join the club by joining them in their Chat Channel on Oxford Medieval Studies Teams. For more information see oxfordmedievalbookclub@gmail.com
• The Old Norse Reading Group has combined with a Graduate Forum and will continue to meet this term via a Chat Chanel in Oxford Medieval Studies Teams. They will meet every Monday at 5.30pm starting today. Odd weeks will be the Graduate Forum and even weeks will be the reading group. For more information get in touch with william.brockbank@jesus.ox.ac.uk

Call for Papers

• The Society for the Study of Languages and Literatures will be holding their conference ‘Dark Archives: A Conference on the Medieval Unread & Unreadable’ online (via Zoom) from the 8th-10th September. Discussion will be live, but the talks will be pre-recorded. If you would like to propose a paper or practical workshop, please submit an abstract of no more than 500 words by 31st July to Dr Stephen Pink at ssmll@history.ox.ac.uk.
• The Medium Aevum Essay prize is still accepting submissions from postgraduates and those with a higher degree. Prizes include possible publication in Medium Aevum, £500, and books! For more information and to apply see here.

Unfortunately, the Medieval Mystery Cycle could not take place, but we did get a hint of what it would have been like in a filmed version of the Mary Magdalen play. You can find out more 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.

As mentioned before, we would love to feature blog posts about medieval events, initiatives or resources, e.g. we have been promised a blog post about the project to read daily Dante sonnets (look for the hashtag #Covidcanzoniere on twitter). TORCH is doing its best to promote all online activities and we are happy to tweet out from https://twitter.com/OxMedStud.

Click here to register for the Oxford Medieval Studies mailing list.