The Medieval Academy Blog

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.

The 2016-17 year was productive and eventful for the Medieval Institute at the University of Notre Dame. In addition to our slate of individual lectures and events (http://medieval.nd.edu/news-events/events/), we held our annual Conway lectures (http://medieval.nd.edu/news-events/events/conway-lectures/). Our speaker, William J. Courtenay (http://medieval.nd.edu/assets/205061/courtenay_bio.pdf), Professor Emeritus of History at University of Wisconsin-Madison, delivered a three-part series entitled “Religious Ritual and Prayers for the Dead in the Medieval University of Paris.” In April the year’s Mellon Fellow, Laura Veneskey (http://college.wfu.edu/art/veneskey/), Assistant Professor of Ancient, Medieval, and Byzantine Art at Wake Forest, presented her book manuscript in progress, Earthly Icons: Between Matter & Figuration in Early Byzantine Art. The Fellow invites three external respondents; joining this year were Charles Barber (Princeton), Holger Klein (Columbia), and Aden Kumler (Chicago). The Institute also hosted a number of distinguished research visitors (http://medieval.nd.edu/information-for-visitors/current-research-visitors/). In the coming year, we look forward to welcoming Susan Rankin (http://www.mus.cam.ac.uk/directory/susan-rankin), Professor of Medieval Music at the University of Cambridge, as our 2017-18 Conway speaker and Taylor Cowdery, Assistant Professor of English at UNC Chapel Hill, as our Mellon Fellow. We will also be welcoming a new Byzantine Postdoctoral Fellow.

The National University of Ireland, Galway’s MA & PhD programmes in Medieval Studies, and CAMPS (Centre for Antique, Medieval and Pre-Modern Studies), http://www.nuigalway.ie/camps/, have completed another stimulating academic year.  We organised 16 Research Labs led by research students, academic staff and invited speakers; launched new externally-funded ‘Small Grants’ awards to support participants’ research (including another successful IMBAS postgraduate conference); and learned that 2 more of our PhD students received Fellowships from the Irish Research Council.

Places are still available on our multi-disciplinary MA in Medieval Studies course, to begin in Sept 2017 (completion August 2018); see details at http://www.nuigalway.ie/medievalstudies/, or contact Dr Kimberly LoPrete (kim.loprete@nuigalway.ie)

The theme for our upcoming international postgraduate medievalists’ conference, IMBAS, to be held Friday 1st – Sunday 3rd December, 2017, is ‘Misconceptions of Late Antiquity and the “Dark-Ages” ‘.  Papers are welcome on any subject related to the theme, including:

• The Carolingian Renaissance.
• Medieval Science in the Islamic and Christian Worlds.
• Education and the Seven Liberal Arts.
• Theology and Philosophy.
• Historiography and the revision of older modern scholarship.
• Literature in Latin or Greek or any vernacular language, including Old Irish, Old Norse, Byzantine Greek, Classical Arabic, Hebrew, Old French, Anglo-Saxon and Old High German or any language relevant to the theme.

Interested postgraduates in all disciplines are invited to submit a title and abstract of 250-300 words, for a research paper of 20 minutes, to the IMBAS committee at imbasnuig@gmail.com by 17:00 on 31st October 2017 (details at http://www.nuigalway.ie/imbas/)

University of Missouri-Kansas City, Medieval and Early Modern Studies Program, 2016-2017

The Medieval and Early Modern Studies Program (MEMS) at the University of Missouri-Kansas City sponsored several events and participated in a number of regional programs in AY 2016-2017.  MEMS faculty had a very productive year in terms of major publications, but also taught a number of innovative courses and collaborated with colleagues at several near-by universities.

MEMS was able to welcome two speakers to campus this academic year.

First, in late September, Dr. Logan Whalen, Professor of French at the University of Oklahoma, presented a talk entitled: “Medieval Manuscripts

Enlightened: The Legacy of Marie de France in the 18th Century.”  The lecture brought the medieval and the early modern together in new and fascinating ways, even as it addressed student interests at UMKC by focusing particularly on the manuscripts involved in Dr. Whalen’s new research project.

In Spring 2017, MEMS once again took advantage of the richness of medieval scholarship in the plains to present a lecture by Dr. Anne D.

Hedeman, Judith Harris Murphy Distinguished Professor of Art History at the University of Kansas.  Keeping the manuscript focus from the previous semester, Dr. Hedeman offered a stimulating talk on “Visualizing the Past in the manuscripts of the Grandes Chroniques de France.”  The talk was followed by the opportunity for graduate students and faculty from both UMKC and KU to socialize and discuss medieval matters on a perfect spring evening in Kansas City.  MEMS at UMKC looks forward to many more fruitful collaborations with the new MEMS at KU!

Indeed, collaboration with regional partners is a focus of MEMS at UMKC, and we are extremely fortunate to count a number of significant programs in medieval and early modern/Renaissance studies among our neighboring institutions.  For example, in Summer 2017, Dr. Virginia Blanton, Professor of English at UMKC and Dr. Rabia Gregory, Associate Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Missouri-Columbia team taught an innovative, interdisciplinary intercampus course on “Monastic Worlds”

for students of both campuses.  Combining distance and experiential learning (a short-term immersion in monastic life at Mount Saint Scholastica and Conception Abbey), the course was the fruit of intense collaboration between numerous medieval faculty at UMKC and MU.  The course will be offered again in Summer 2018, and visiting students are very welcome.  More information is available at:

http://cas2.umkc.edu/mems/monastic-worlds.asp or interested students may contact Dr. Blanton (blantonv@umkc.edu) or Dr. Gregory (gregoryra@missouri.edu) directly.

In other regional activities, MEMS faculty members participated in the spring MARS (Medieval and Renaissance Studies) symposium at the Univ. of Missouri-Columbia (always a wonderfully stimulating day of intellectual discussion). Earlier in the fall, MEMS was a strong presence at the Mid-American Medieval Association’s annual conference; graduate students, undergraduate students, and faculty all “came to MAMA” on September 17th, at Emporia State University to help celebrate her 40th anniversary.  MAMA XL was a great success, and we warmly thank the organizer, Professor Mel Storm, for all his efforts.  MAMA 41 will be held on September 16, 2017 at UMKC with the theme “Networks”; the president (and conference organizer) is MEMS director Dr. Kathy Krause, and the plenary speaker will be Dr. Cynthia Brown, Professor of French at UC-Santa Barbara.  The deadline for proposals is June 2, 2017, to Dr. Krause at krausek@umkc.edu.

More locally, MEMS faculty, Professors William Everett, Virginia Blanton, Kathy Krause, and Massimiliano Vitiello reached out beyond the campus and offered a panel discussion on aspects of medieval history and culture before a Friends of Chamber Music performance by Benjamin Bagby and Sequentia entitled “Monks singing Pagans”.

Finally, individual faculty members in MEMS published articles, monographs, and book chapters, edited special volumes of journals and collections of essays, gave conference presentations, organized panels, gave public lectures, and, in general, continued their excellent record of research and scholarship.  A few highlights include monographs published by two History Department faculty: Linda Mitchell, Voices of Medieval England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales (ABC-Clio/Greenwood

Press) and Lynda Payne, The Best Surgeon in England: Percivall Pott,

1713-88 (Peter Lang), as well as two books imminently forthcoming:

Massimiliano Vitiello, Amalasuintha: The transformation of queenship in the Post-Roman world (University of Pennsylvania Press) and Virginia Blanton, Veronica O’Mara, and Patricia Stoop, Nuns’ Literacies in Medieval Europe: The Antwerp Dialogue 2017 (Brepols).  In addition, both Kathy Krause and Linda Mitchell edited special issues of journals in

2016 (Medieval Feminist Forum 51.2 Beyond Women and Power and Historical Reflections/Réflexions Historiques 43.1on Women, Gender, and Law in honor of Shona Kelly Wray, respectively).

The Harvard University Committee on Medieval Studies is an interdisciplinary community of faculty drawn from departments and schools across the university, including the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, the Law School, the Divinity School, and the Graduate School of Design. In addition to offering a number of courses of its own, the Committee regularly cross-lists and promotes classes dealing with the Middle Ages in Europe and beyond. It also maintains a robust, wide-ranging, and growing program of talks, workshops, and conferences. Among the highlights of the 2016-2017 year:

In October, we co-hosted (with Boston College and the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum) the 2016 Harvard Triennial Conference in Medieval Studies, a three-day symposium on illuminated manuscripts and their contexts held in conjunction with the groundbreaking exhibition (at BC’s Gardner Museum, the ISG, and Harvard’s Houghton Library) “Beyond Words: Illuminated Manuscripts in Boston-Area Collections” <beyondwords2016.org>

The Medieval Studies Program’s Medieval Studies Seminar (sponsored by Harvard’s Mahindra Humanities Center) hosted talks by Pernille Hermann (Aarhus), Bernhard Jussen (Frankfurt), Elena Boeck (DePaul), and Lisa Fagin Davis (MAA), as well as panel discussions in September (Looking for Law in All the Wrong Places: Medieval Legal History and the Problem of Sources, with Piotr Gorecki (UC Riverside), Elizabeth Kamali (Harvard Law School), Intisar Rabb (Harvard Law School/History), and Dan Smail (History)) and January (Blurred Boundaries: Defining ‘The East’ in Medieval Studies, with Charles Stang (Harvard Divinity School), John Zaleski (Harvard), Michael Penn (Mt. Holyoke College), and Anne Broadbridge (University of Massachusetts)).

In September, Susan Einbinder (University of Connecticut) delivered the inaugural Center for Jewish Studies-Medieval Studies Joint Lecture in Medieval Jewish Culture and Society, “Bone, Stone and Text: Commemoration of the Black Death Among Iberian Jews”

In October, Jessica Streit (College of Charleston) delivered “The Nature of Almohad Architectural Ornament”, the annual Aga Khan-Medieval Studies Joint Lecture in Medieval Islamic Architectural History.

In conjunction with the Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture, Medieval Studies hosted lectures in Byzantine Studies by Asa Eger of UNC Greensboro (“The Islamic-Byzantine Frontier: Interaction and Exchange Among Muslim and Christian Communities”) and Alicia Walker of Bryn Mawr College (“Christian Bodies, Pagan Images: Women, Beauty, and Morality in Byzantium”).

In March, Julian Weiss (King’s College London) delivered the annual Houghton-Medieval Studies lecture and workshops on Early Book History: “In the Tracks of Josephus: Reading Jewish History and Belief in the Early Modern Hispanic and Lusophone Worlds” (lecture) and “Creating Vernacular ‘Literature‘ in Renaissance Spain” (workshops).

Also in March, Medieval Studies and the Harvard Art Museums hosted the annual Medieval Material Culture lecture and workshops, Breaking the Mold: Metal as Material, Medium, and Message in the Middle Ages, featuring a lecture by Ittai Weinryb of Bard Graduate Center (“Casting Monuments: Bronze, Ecology, and Colonialism”) and workshops on medieval metalworking with Prof. Weinryb and HAM’s Francesca Bewer and Katherine Eremin.

In the coming months, Medieval Studies is excited to be hosting two conferences—”The Invention of Byzantine Studies in Early Modern Europe” (26-27 October 2017) and “Christian Africa/Medieval Africa, 300-1600 CE” (2-3 November 2017)—and to be co-sponsoring the 2017 New England Medieval Conference, “Ghosts of Charlemagne”, which will take place on 7 October at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. More information on these events, and on Harvard’s many other upcoming medieval events, courses, and programs, can be found at our website, http://medieval.fas.harvard.edu.