The Medieval Academy Blog

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.