The Medieval Academy Blog

Program in Medieval Studies, University of California, Berkeley

In the Fall 2016 we were fortunate to have two distinguished visiting professors.  Latinist and paleographer Felix Heinzer, emeritus professor at the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, co-taught Medieval Studies 200 (Paleography and Codicology) with Professor Frank Bezner in the Bancroft Library.  He gave an inaugural lecture on Wednesday September 7, 2016 on “Ambiguous Mediality: Liturgical Books of the Latin Church and their Changing Status in the Medieval Tradition.”  Also in residence, through the UC Berkeley-Ludwig-Maximillians-Universität Munich exchange program, was Middle High German specialist Professor Beate Kellner.  She gave a lecture November 30, 2016 on “the Power of Imagination in Medieval Courtly Love Poems.”  She also very generously organized an interdisciplinary workshop on “The Poetics and Politics of Nature in the Middle Ages: Rethinking Alan of Lille and his Readers” (December 9-10, 2016) with graduate students and faculty from both institutions.

In the Spring 2017 semester we hosted to speakers in conjunction with our pro-seminar, Medieval Studies 200.  The pro-seminar’s theme was Migrations: People, Objects, Texts, and Ideas. On Monday 27 February, 2017 Elizabeth Tyler, Professor of English at the University of York, delivered a lecture on the movement of women among medieval courts (“England in Europe: Elite Social Mobility and the Literary Culture of 11th-century England”) and on Monday 13 March, 2017 Avinoam Shalem, Riggio Professor of the Arts of Islam at Columbia University,” treated migrating objects (between the Islamic and Christian worlds) in his lecture “Treasuring Histories: Writing Histories with Objects in Medieval Treasuries.” Both visitors also had lunch with students to discuss their current research and views on issues in the profession.  Professor Michelle Karnes (University of Notre Dame) also joined Program faculty for a special professionalization event for graduate students on “Being a Medievalist in 21st-Century Academic Institutions” (March 15, 2017).

Collaborating with UC Davis and UC Santa Barbara, the Program also won a UC Multi-campus Research Projects Initiative grant for The Middle Ages in the Wider World (project description at http://www.middleagesinthewiderworld.org). The project kick-off conference took place on March 4, 2017 at the Townsend Center for the Humanities.  It featured presentations by UC Berkeley faculty (Asad Ahmed, Geoff Koziol, Nicolas Tackett, Ignacio Navarrete) as well as invited guests (Riccardo Strobino, Tufts University; Joaneath Spicer, The Walters Art Museum) and concluded with an outstanding keynote address by Professor Carol Symes, founding editor of The Medieval Globe.  In May we awarded our first round of summer research grants to UC graduate students and faculty.

Maureen C Miller
Director, Program in Medieval Studies
University of California
3229 Dwinelle Hall
Berkeley, CA  94720-2550
mcmiller@berkeley.edu

Medieval Studies at Florida State University is a dynamic and growing area of teaching and research. Faculty in the Colleges of Fine Arts, Arts & Sciences, and Communications contribute to the promotion of interdisciplinary research into the Middle Ages (c. 400-1500), teaching a wide variety of courses at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels, and supervising masters’ and doctoral dissertations in all areas of the field. Subjects taught in the classroom and in the field include Archaeology, Art and Architectural History (Western, Byzantine, and medieval Islamic), Book History, History (social, economic, political, ecclesiastical, intellectual and gender), Language and Literature (including Old and Middle English, Old Norse, Medieval Welsh, Middle Dutch, Classical and Medieval Greek and Latin, Church Slavic/Old Russian, Spanish, Italian, Insular French and French), Manuscript Studies (including British and Continental illumination), and Musicology.

Webpage:  http://arthistory.fsu.edu/medieval-studies-fsu/

The School of English at the University of Nottingham runs a wide range of undergraduate courses in Old English, Middle English, Older Scots, Old Norse and Viking Studies, and Place-Names http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/english/. A number of students go on to join our MA and PhD programmes to develop their interests further. An indicator of the interest and enthusiasm of current students in the area is that we run regular, well attended, optional Old English (undergraduate and postgraduate) and Old Norse reading groups; another group for medievalists is the ‘Latin over lunch’ group—all informal groups aiming to develop reading proficiency in the target languages.

The MA in Viking and Anglo-Saxon Studies (MAVASS) http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/pgstudy/courses/english/viking-and-anglo-saxon-studies-ma.aspx has particular strengths in Old English and Old Norse language and literature, the Viking World, Runology and Place-Names. Our expertise-led teaching is supported by practical work on field trips.

Every year this MA recruits an outstanding international cohort of students, which builds a vibrant and engaged scholarly community. We also offer students the chance to present their knowledge in local schools, where we hope to encourage the next generations of medievalists among the children http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/research/groups/csva/public-engagement/vikings-for-schools.aspx.

PhD research and staff expertise:

Among ground-breaking research projects pursued by PhD students in the School are: work on metaphors of disease; manuscript runes and rune sticks; cognitive and literary linguistic approaches to Old English poetry and prose; place-names; sagas and material culture.

Staff are engaged in collaborative projects and exhibitions in the Institute for Name-Studies:

http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/research/groups/ins/index.aspx and the Centre for the Study of the Viking Age http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/research/groups/csva/. The international peer-reviewed journals, Nottingham Medieval Studies http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/research/groups/medieval/resources/nottingham-medieval-studies.aspx and Journal of the English Place-Name Society http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/research/groups/epns/journal.aspx are edited by Nottingham medievalists.

Late medieval research contributes significantly to the School’s strengths in text-editing and book history, including courses which contribute to MAVASS and other MA programmes. Older Scots is also a distinctive research strand, including two members of staff who are executive members of Council of the Scottish Text Society http://www.scottishtextsociety.org/. Further research interests include canonical writers such as Langland, Gower and Chaucer, and the reception and transmission of late medieval material in early modern literary circles.

We welcome enquiries concerning research and teaching in any of the areas mentioned above. Contact:

Prof Jesch Judith, Director of CSVA (runes, Old Norse):
judith.jesch@nottingham.ac.uk

Dr Jayne Carroll, Director of Institute for Name-Studies (names, Old English): jayne.carroll@nottingham.ac.uk

Dr Joanna Martin, Editor of Nottingham Medieval Studies (MIddle English, Older Scots): joanna.martin@nottingham.ac.uk

Dr Paul Cavill, Editor of Journal of the English Place-Name Society (Old English, names): paul.cavill@nottingham.ac.uk

Dr John Baker, Convenor of MAVASS (names):
john.baker@nottingham.ac.uk

Dr Christian Lee, Director of Internationalisation (Old Norse, Old English): christina.lee@nottingham.ac.uk

Dr Mike Rodman Jones, Director of Teaching (Middle and Early Modern English): mike.jones@nottingham.ac.uk

Dr Nicola Royan (MIddle English, Older Scots):
nicola.royan@nottingham.ac.uk

Dr Martin Findell (runes, historical linguistics):
martin.findell@nottingham.ac.uk

The Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Yale University is pleased to report a busy and rewarding 2016-17 academic year. On November 10, 2016, the Beinecke hosted “Otto F. Ege: A Symposium on His Manuscripts” to commemorate the Beinecke’s acquisition of Otto Ege’s private collection of medieval manuscripts and fragments. This symposium, organized by Elizabeth Hebbard, offered an overview of Ege’s manuscript modus operandi as well as a synthesis of current approaches to the study of manuscript fragments and possible new avenues forward, especially those involving digital tools.

Over the course of the academic year, Yale graduate students drew on Beinecke materials to host three successful digital editing workshops, a series in which our graduate students lead collaborative introductions to the particularities of working with and cataloguing non-codex medieval materials and offer instruction in TEI-conformant XML. By the end of this two-day workshop, participants are able to produce the code for a digital edition of a medieval documentary artifact. On November 18-19, 2016, the Beinecke hosted two strands of the digital editing

workshop: one on medieval manuscript rolls, run by Katherine Hindley, Gina Hurley, and Alexandra Reider, and one on medieval manuscript fragments, run by Anya Adair, Eric Ensley, Elizabeth Hebbard, Mireille Pardon, and Joe Stadolnik; and on April 28-29, 2017, the Beinecke hosted a digital editing workshop on medieval manuscript rolls, run by Kyle Conrau-Lewis, Elizabeth Hebbard, Katherine Hindley, Gina Hurley, and Burton Westermeier. These workshops have all drawn participants from across North America, and a pilot digital editing workshop at University College London on October 21-22, 2016, organized on the Yale side by Anya Adair, Katherine Hindley, and Joe Stadolnik with the help of Alexandra Reider, took the workshop abroad. Our Spring 2017 Beinecke Digital Humanities and Pedagogy Fellow, Gina Hurley, has been instrumental in bringing the workshop to Columbia University, the University of Toronto, and, for a second time, University College London, each of which has hosted their own iteration. The team for each of these workshops has comprised graduate students from the home institution and previous workshop instructors from Yale, and every team has adopted and adapted the workshop’s curriculum and hands-on approach to great success. We are proud to note that more than one hundred students have enrolled in one of these digital editing workshops, and we look forward to working with the next hundred. You can find more information at digitalrollsandfragments.com.

Turning to Fall 2017, the Beinecke will host the 20th Colloquium of the Comité international de paléographie latine on the theme “Scribes and the Presentation of Texts (from Antiquity to ca. 1550)” on September 6-8, 2017. This fall, the Beinecke will also hold an exhibition entitled “Making the English Book” that celebrates Professor Toshiyuki Takamiya’s monumental collection of western medieval manuscripts. Guided by an appreciation of the many ways in which a medieval book may be “English,”

this exhibition will showcase the Takamiya manuscripts in the context of the Beinecke’s medieval holdings. Co-curated by graduate students Eric Ensley, Gina Hurley, Alexandra Reider, and Emily Ulrich together with Beinecke staff, this exhibition marks the first time that Professor Takamiya’s collection will be on display in the United States, and the accompanying online Omeka exhibition will accommodate an even wider audience. An associated conference, also entitled “Making the English Book,” will take place on October 6-7, 2017, and it will feature keynotes by Professor Alexandra Gillespie of the University of Toronto and Professor Daniel Wakelin of the University of Oxford.

Beinecke-organized panels at the International Congress on Medieval Studies at Western Michigan University and the Early Book Society Conference at Durham University have offered additional opportunities to discuss the making, unmaking, and re-making of English books.

— Raymond Clemens, Curator of Early Books and Manuscripts at the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library

The Lone Medievalist was born at the 2015 International Congress on Medieval Studies. Our purpose, as stated on our web site (https://www.thelonemedievalist.com/), is: “The Lone Medievalist is a project designed to bring scholars together who are the only medievalist scholars within their campus or larger community. This community will create a way for scholars to connect with peers and help keep skills such as language fluency, translation, and research sharp, as well as answer questions that medievalist scholars may have. Discussion about any and all topics medieval in nature is also strongly encouraged and warmly welcomed.” We do define “Lone Medievalist” very broadly, and we are inclusive of a variety of ways medievalists can be “lone.” As of the writing of this article, we have attracted 750 likes on the Facebook page for The Lone Medievalist (https://www.facebook.com/thelonemedievalist/). Followers can also find us on Twitter: @LoneMedievalist (https://twitter.com/LoneMedievalist).

At the 2017 Congress, we again attended the CARA luncheon, particularly discussing advocacy with other attendees. In addition, we hosted another roundtable as well as our second business meeting, at which we handed out name badge stickers to allow Lone Medievalists to find each other more easily. Our roundtable this year was entitled “Greater Than the Sum of Our Arts: The Multitasking Life of the Lone Medievalist,” which focused on the “many hats” that medievalists wear, often simultaneously.

Several of the panelists as well as members of the audience discussed ways Lone Medievalists can maximize our teaching and service while being more efficient.

The highlight of our business meeting was the announcement of the forthcoming publication of our collection The Ballad of the Lone Medievalist from punctum press. Drs. John Sexton and Kisha Tracy, the founders of the Lone Medievalist and editors of the collection, are quite pleased with how it has turned out. It includes submissions from over thirty medievalists in seven countries and, within the U.S., nineteen states. These medievalists from a variety of disciplines are a combination of tenured, pre-tenured, early/middle/late career, visiting faculty, adjunct faculty, blended-career faculty, independent scholar, and students. With the forthcoming publication of Ballad, we are beginning to consider ideas for one or more additional volumes.

Potential ideas proposed at the meeting included topics related to the significance of studying the Middle Ages; the CFP will come out shortly.

We discussed strategies for expanding the activity of the Lone Medievalist into regional conferences, especially as a tool for bringing our members together at these events. Pursuant to this goal, we will establish a social media presence for the purpose of allowing Lone Medievalists attending regional conferences to coordinate social and professional contacts. We also will be looking into coordinating with conference organizers to establish ways to promote the Lone Medievalist and coordinate these contacts.

We also discussed the ways that the Lone Medievalist can expand its support of the scholarly work of isolated medievalists. Besides the support of regional conference attendance, we proposed promoting CFPs (especially those which seem friendly to Lone Medievalist interests) and possibly organizing a forum wherein members could ask for help tracking down scholarly materials unavailable to them. We will look into this and determine the best way to proceed.

In addition to the above, we will be hosting the Lone Medievalist Summer Book Exchange again this summer, and  the language study groups and writing groups suggested at the 2016 meeting are in development under the direction of Dr. Christine Axen, the newest member of the Lone Medievalist staff. For ICMS 2018, we will propose roundtables on the subjects of “Collaboration as a Key to Professional Productivity” and/or “Technology, Medieval Digital Humanities, and the Lone Medievalist.”

The Lone Medievalist team is quite excited about the continued development of this project. We welcome the help of others; please contact Kisha Tracy at ktracy3@fitchburgstate.edu if you are interested in volunteering.