The Medieval Academy Blog

To see what’s going on at the University of Florida Center for Medieval and Early Modern Studies, including the commemoration of UFL professor Florin Curta’s twenty-fifth Kalamazoo, click here:http://mems.center.ufl.edu

The Institute for Medieval Studies at the University of New Mexico held its annual Spring Lecture Series on April 24-27. This week-long series of six lectures and a concert attracts several hundred members of the Albuquerque community to hear lectures by eminent scholars from around the country, and sometimes around the globe. This year’s lectures were:

• Monday, April 24, 7:15 p.m. “Charlemagne’s Elephant” Paul Cobb, University of Pennsylvania
• Tuesday, April 25, 5:15 p.m. “Animals and Sex in the Middle Ages” Jan Ziolkowski, Harvard University and Dumbarton Oaks Research Library & Collection
• Tuesday, April 25, 7:15 p.m. “The Medieval Menagerie: Animals in the Art of the Middle Ages” Janetta Rebold Benton, Pace University
• Wednesday, April 26, 5:15 p.m. “Animals on Crusade” Paul Cobb
• Wednesday, April 26, 7:15 p.m. “The Case of the Animals versus Humans: An Islamic Ethics from Medieval Iraq” Richard McGregor, Vanderbilt University
• Thursday, April 27, 5:15 p.m. “Birds and Beasties in Medieval Music” Concert by the UNM Early Music Ensemble directed by Colleen Sheinberg
• Thursday, April 27, 7:15 p.m. “Lions, Tigers, and Dragons—Oh My! Real and Imaginary Animals in the Middle Ages” Elizabeth Morrison, The J. Paul Getty Museum

Additionally, each spring the IMS welcomes a prominent scholar as the visiting “Viking Scholar” to teach the “Viking Mythology” course. This spring, Vésteinn Ólason, recently retired Director of The Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies and Chairman of the Board of Landsbókasafn–Háskólabókasafn, joined the UNM medievalist community for the semester.

The Center for Medieval & Byzantine Studies at The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. is a vibrant community of over thirty scholars and an energetic group of graduate students from various Schools and Departments across campus. It administers both graduate and undergraduate programs in Medieval and Byzantine Studies with an interdisciplinary focus. In 2016-17, the Center co-organized two symposia to celebrate the career of two retiring colleagues, both outstanding medievalists: In November 2016 a symposium was held on Law and Society in Medieval and Early Modern Europe in honor of Prof. Kenneth J. Pennington, followed by a second symposium in April 2017 on Medieval Latin and Paleography in honor of Prof. Frank A.C. Mantello. In April 2017, the Center also sponsored a successful public lecture on “The Significance of the Bayeux Tapestry” delivered by Prof. Gale R. Owen-Crocker (Univ. of Manchester, UK), to commemorate (with a few months’ delay) the 950^th anniversary of the Battle of Hasting in 1066. Further, our students and faculty had the opportunity to attend a number of workshops and seminars on a variety of topics, from medieval gilding techniques (by artist Kay Jackson) and sea monsters on medieval maps (by Chet Van Duzer, NEH-Mellon Fellow of the Library of Congress) to writing the biography of a medieval saint (by Fr. Augustine Thompson, O.P., S.T.M., Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology) and challenges and best practices of cataloguing manuscripts (by Ilya Dines of the Library of Congress). In November 2016, our graduate students gave an illustrated report on our summer archaeology field school program in Vetricella, Tuscany (co-organized with the American University in Rome and the University of Siena), a program we are continuing in the summer of 2018 (please watch for announcements on our website at mbs.cua.edu). As always, the academic year ended with a public celebration of all things medieval: our annual Medieval Day, featuring sword-fighting, crafts, drama, music, story-telling, and, of course, a working trebuchet. In administrative terms, the Center has been preparing for a transition from Center to Institute, with new, creative projects and research initiatives in 2017-18.

Submitted by Lilla Kopár, Director of MBS

Over the 2016-2017 academic year, the Stanford Center for Medieval and Early Modern Studies (CMEMS) sponsored a variety of activities to support our growing community of medieval and early modern scholars.

Throughout the year, we continued our longstanding series of weekly lunchtime workshops, engaging in fruitful and lively conversations with a variety of speakers from other institutions, as well as many from our own community.

In November, we hosted our third annual Primary Source Symposium, which aims to advance the study of medieval and early modern culture with a special emphasis on primary sources. This year’s theme was “Reformations” in honor of the 500th anniversary of the so-called Protestant Reformation. The keynote speakers were Brad Gregory (University of Notre Dame) and Susan Schreiner (Divinity School, University of Chicago).

Many other faculty-led workshops, research groups, and collaborative projects provided opportunities for further in-depth and sustained scholarly exploration. Among these was “Icons of Sound”, a collaboration led by Bissera Pentcheva (Art and Art History) and Jonathan Abel (Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics). Pentcheva and Abel worked with Cappella Romana to create “Hagia Sophia Reimagined,” a performance using digital technology to produce a virtual acoustic and aesthetic journey to Constantinople’s Great Church.  Marisa Galvez (French) organized a workshop entitled “Crusade: New Directions in Research and Teaching,” which brought together an interdisciplinary group of colleagues to discuss the state of crusades studies, recent research, and pedagogical approaches among the disciplines. Continuing these discussions, next year CMEMS will host a collaborative conference with the Centre d’Etudes Supérieures de Civilisation Médiévale (University of Poitiers) on “Southern France and the Latin East in the Thirteenth Century: Crusade, Networks, and Exchanges.” Kathryn Starkey (German Studies) and Fiona Griffiths (History) hosted a workshop on the medieval senses to continue the collaboration sparked by sessions they organized for the 2016 International Medieval Congress in Kalamazoo: “Sensory Reflections: Traces of Experience in Medieval Artifacts”.

We continue to offer an undergraduate Minor in Medieval Studies, as well as many undergraduate- and graduate-level courses on medieval and early modern topics. This year’s highlights included an interdisciplinary course taught by Kathryn Starkey and Fiona Griffiths on “Medieval Sensory Experience” in conjunction with their workshop. Students collaborated in developing the course syllabus and participated in the workshop discussions, while also learning about the process of editing a book and publishing it.  The class culminated in a trip to the Walter’s Art Museum to see the exhibition, “A Feast for the Senses: Art and Experience in Medieval Europe.” Finally, in a new hands-on course on medieval feasting, entitled, “Food, Text, Music: A Multidisciplinary Lab on the Art of Feasting,” students of Jesse Rodin (Music) and Marisa Galvez heard each week from various guest lecturers on diverse aspects of medieval and modern feasting and food cultures, and cooked dishes ranging from apple omelets to spiced turnips, all taken from medieval recipe collections. Each class finished with feast involving lively discussion of the historical and symbolic significance of the day’s delicacies.

We look forward to another year rich in Medieval and Early Modern offerings in 2017-2018!

Fiona Griffiths and Marisa Galvez

Co-Directors, Center for Medieval and Early Modern Studies, Stanford University
https://cmems.stanford.edu
https://cmems.stanford.edu/news/newsletter
http://iconsofsound.stanford.edu
http://news.stanford.edu/2017/03/17/students-recreate-medieval-feasts-new-course/

The Medieval Studies Institute (MEST) at Indiana University, an interdisciplinary program offering minors and certificates on the graduate and undergraduate levels, saw a productive 2016-2017 academic year.  Professor Rosemarie McGerr (Professor of Comparative Literature) completed six years of service as the Director of the Institute in the summer of 2016, and Shannon Gayk (Associate Professor of English) was elected as the new director.

The Institute’s 2016-2017 event schedule was focused on the local and the global Middle Ages. Our fall events highlighted the Institute’s local resources and encouraged cross-disciplinary conversations among IU faculty and students and those at regional institutions. Over the course of the semester we held monthly coffee hour conversations in which a faculty member and a graduate student offered informal presentations about their current research. Our annual alumni lecture featured Dr. Jelena Todorović (University of Wisconsin-Madison), who presented on “Dante’s Vita Nova and Its Editors.”  The fall also included a two-day symposium on “Affairs of the Heart: Medieval Cardiologies,” organized and run by Dr. Lucas Wood (Department of French & Italian), which brought faculty from around the Midwest to discuss representations of the heart in medieval manuscripts, literature, and art. And finally, in December, Renée Trilling (University of Illinois) led a stimulating workshop on Ælfric’s De Temporibus Anni and its reception.

In the spring of 2017, the Institute sought to highlight the global dimensions of our program.  To this end, we opened the semester with a roundtable discussion focused on the question “Can we speak of a Global Middle Ages?” that showcased faculty from six departments at IU. In February, Dr. Thomas Burman (Director of the Medieval Institute, University of Notre Dame) delivered a lecture, titled “Arguing—and Not Arguing—about the Trinity in Southern Europe: Judaism, Islam, and Scholastic Thought.” Also in February, Medievalia, MEST’s annual workshop on medieval manuscripts at the Lilly Library, brought Dr. Soren Edgren (Princeton University) to speak about Buddhist illuminated manuscripts in China and East Asia.

This spring also marked the twenty-ninth annual MEST symposium. This year’s two-day conference on “Uses of the Past: Cultural Memory in and of the Middle Ages” brought approximately twenty speakers from around the world to IU. Our keynote speaker, Dr. Wendy Swartz (Rutgers University), delivered a talk titled “A Nourishing Past: Literary Taste and Writing Habits in Early Medieval China.”  Enjoyed by visiting scholars, graduate students, and faculty alike, the banquet of our symposium included a Readers’ Circle, during which Indiana University faculty and students read aloud original language excerpts that relate to the theme of our symposium. Languages read this year included: Old Persian, Old Arabic, Old Irish, Old Irish, Old Norse, Old English, Middle Dutch, Middle Welsh, and Middle English. The symposium concluded with a performance of medieval pilgrimage music by one of IU’s early music ensembles.

In addition to these lectures and symposia, the Institute co-sponsored several events, including a fascinating roundtable on premodern ideas of utopia with our Renaissance Studies Program as well as a two-day symposium, organized by Dr. Patricia Ingham, on medieval curiosity.  We also continued the tradition of regular reading groups in medieval languages, including groups for Middle English, Late and Medieval Greek, Medieval Latin, Old English, Old Norse and Old French. MEST hosted several workshops for students throughout the year, including a “Transcribathon” and a workshop on “Raiders of the Lost Archive: How to Prepare for Your Archival Research Trip,” which provided information about working with and in archives. Finally, MEST sponsored three sessions at this year’s International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo: one session on “The Idea of the Garden in Medieval Literature,” and two sessions on “Female Friendship in Medieval Literature.”

For more information about the Institute, see our Spring 2017 newsletter at http://www.indiana.edu/~medieval/ .

The Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies (CMRS) at Saint Louis University is one of the largest of its kind in America, with more than sixty full-time faculty affiliates across numerous undergraduate and doctoral programs.

In 2016-2017 the CMRS inaugurated the university’s first B.A. in Medieval Studies.  To support the initiative, CMRS space was expanded to an additional building with a new office for the incoming Associate Director, Steven Schoenig, S.J., an additional seminar room, and other multi-purpose facilities.

As always, the CMRS hosted dozens of lectures, seminars, and conferences this past year.  A (reasonably) complete list can be found on our website: http://cmrs.slu.edu.  Speakers included:

• Eugenio Menegon (Boston University), “The Habit that Hides the Monk: Fashion Strategies at the Imperial Court in Early Modern China.”
• Rachel Fulton Brown (University of Chicago), “Mary and the Art of Prayer: The Hours of the Virgin in Medieval Christian Life and Thought.”
• Chloe Starr (Yale University), “Chinese Theology with Jesuit Characteristics: From Xu Guangqi to Xu Zongze.”
• Bianca Kuehnel (Hebrew University of Jerusalem), “The Crusader Decoration of the Nativity Church of Bethlehem.”
• Anne Lester (University of Colorado, Boulder), “Sacred Histories and Holy Things: Liturgy, Narrative, and Ritual in the Aftermath of the Fourth Crusade.”

The Fifth Annual Symposium on Medieval and Renaissance Studies was held on campus on June 19-21, 2017, attracting more than 300 participants taking part in a variety of sessions, roundtables, seminars, and mini-conferences.

Plenary lectures at this year’s Symposium were delivered by

Bruce M. S. Campbell (Queen’s University, Belfast),

Christopher Baswell (Barnard College/Columbia University),

David Nirenberg (University of Chicago),

Damian J. Smith (Saint Louis University), and

Elizabeth Archibald (Durham University) (Annual Loomis Lecture).

Next year’s Annual Symposium will be held June 18-20, 2018 and will feature plenary lectures by

Geoffrey Parker (The Ohio State University) and

Carole Hillenbrand (University of St Andrews / University of Edinburgh).  Beginning next year, the four-decade-old

Saint Louis Conference on Manuscript Studies (the “Manuscripta Conference”) will move permanently to the Annual Symposium.  Hosting mini-conferences and learned societies has become a major strength of the Annual Symposium, helping to drive its continued growth.  If you have not attended, check it out!  It is really something new.

Also beginning in 2017-2018, the popular newsletter, Manuscripts on My Mind, produced by Susan L’Engle, will move from the Vatican Film Library to the CMRS.  Dr. Engle will pen the newsletter and organize the manuscript conference from her new office in the CMRS.

We remind MAA members that the CMRS offers generous NEH Research Fellowships providing a stipend, travel expenses, and a furnished two-bedroom apartment for those who can make use of the university’s extensive collections related to medieval studies.  Application information is available on our website.

The University of Ottawa offers a collaborative Masters in Medieval and Renaissance studies, in which students, in addition to courses in their main discipline, take two interdisciplinary courses and develop a research project based on original sources. The program may be of particular interest to students who already have some French or some English and want to strengthen either language in a supportive bilingual environment.

The collaborative Masters is also contributing to a number of research projects. James Nelson Novoa, in collaboration with colleagues in Spain, Portugal, and Israel, is gathering material for a database on the Iberian Jewish diaspora. Kouky Fianu and Andrew Taylor are working with a team of students to contribute information on the medieval book trade to the French project ALPAGE (AnaLyse diachronique de l’espace urbain PArisien: approche GEomatique). Kathryn Prince is engaged in an interdisciplinary consideration of emotions  in early modern England, onstage and off, a project, developed during two fellowships at the Centre for the History of Emotions in Australia.