Through the generous support of the Dean of Humanities at Rice University, and the Neil J. O’Brien Endowment funds, The Medieval and Early Modern Studies Program at Rice has organized another full year of events:
In the “O’Brien Medieval and Early Modern Studies Guest Lecture Series”:
Nov. 11, 2016: Dr. Jehangir Malengam, Assistant Professor of History, Duke University, presented “Violence, Exorcism, and the Politics of Discernment in Medieval Europe”
March 24, 2017: Dr. Susan Einbinder, Professor of Hebrew and Judaic Studies and Comparative Literature at the University of Connecticut, presented a workshop concerning her archeological studies on Jewish cemeteries in Spain, and gave a paper entitled “Stone, Bone and Text:
Anti-Jewish Violence in Tàrrega, 1348”
In the “O’Brien Medieval and Early Modern Studies Faculty Lecture Series”:
Nov. 30, 2016: Dr. Aysha Polnitz, Dept. of History, “Liberal Education and the Franciscans in New Spain: 1536–1600”
Feb. 15, 2017: Dr. Jeffrey Fleisher, Dept. of Anthropology, “An Archaeology of Ancestors on the Eastern African Swahili Coast,
AD1000-1500
And in the “O’Brien Medieval and Early Modern Studies Undergraduate Student Conference,” seven student papers in the fields of History, Religion, Art History, English, and Music History:
- Megan Wright, “Josquin des Prez’s Motet Qui velatus facie and the Canonization of St. Bonaventure in 1482”
- Elena Busch, “Icelandic Feud: The Centerpiece of Functional Anarchy”
- Rachel George, “Book Burning in the Medieval Mind An Examination of the Significance of Manuscript Destruction by Fire through the Lens of Medieval Crime and Punishment”
- Erika Schumacher, “Evading and Curtailing Agency: Floris’s Development into the Masculine, Christian Subject”
- Chelsea Wu, “Lancelot: Knight of the Cart and Lanval: The Narrative Function of Sexual Violence”
- Susannah Wright, “Boethius and the Classical Tradition”
- June Chen, “Joan of Arc and Charles VII”
Professor Brian Levack (John E. Green Regents Professor in History; Distinguished Teaching Professor, University of Texas Austin) was the respondent, and also gave a paper titled “Magna Carta and Anglo-American Constitutionalism.
The undergraduate conference has been an annual event at Rice now for several years, and it has been one of our most successful events. It is a day-long conference where undergraduate students who have written a paper in the past year for one of our Medieval and Early Modern Studies classes present their research for their peers and professors.
We are pleased to announce several new initiatives approved by the Council of the Medieval Academy of America at its recent meeting in Toronto:
The 93rd Annual Meeting of the Medieval Academy of America will be held at Emory University (Atlanta, Georgia), 1 – 3 March 2018. The Program Committee invites proposals for papers on all topics and in all disciplines and periods of medieval studies. Any member of the Medieval Academy may submit a paper proposal; others may submit proposals as well but must become members in order to present papers at the meeting. Special consideration will be given to individuals whose field would not normally involve membership in the Medieval Academy.
Like many of you, we’ve just returned from another splendid Congress in Kalamazoo. Sarah Spence and Lisa Fagin Davis very much enjoyed chatting with current and potential members at our table in the exhibit hall. We are particularly pleased to welcome the new members who benefited from our annual “Fifty Free” program, in which we give away fifty one-year introductory memberships at Kalamazoo.
