Medieval Matters - Pre Term Newsletter

Dear all,

Is it just me, or has the vac flown by? Fortunately, it brings spring in its wake, along with open pubs — a felicitous combination. We’re also approaching a brilliant new term of medieval events!

To that end: please SEND ME YOUR SEMINARS AND EVENTS this week, preferably by *FRIDAY (16 April)*, though I will continue to take announcements sent to me on Saturday and Sunday if you let me know in advance that they’re coming. Thanks to those I have already received! Remember, if you don’t send me your events this week, they won’t be in the booklet when it’s first published on Monday!

Also, a few exciting pre-term announcements!

First: the Oxford Medieval Graduate Conference makes a triumphant virtual return in its seventeenth annual iteration! This year’s theme is ‘Memory’, and the full (and exceptional) programme can be found attached to this email. The conference will run Thursday-Friday 22-23 April, and you can register here.

Oxford will be hosting a brand-new Old Norse graduate conference this summer: Hyggnaþing! The virtual conference will take place on 11 August, and its theme is ‘Transition’. Submit your abstracts of up to 250 words to hyggnathing@gmail.com by 1 May. Topics include but are not limited to: religious conversion, orality and literacy, translation, artistic innovation, manuscript production, gender and queerness, political change, social mobility, and modern adaptation.

Looking for a home for your monograph or edited collection on any aspect of Old English literature and related contexts? Look no further than Brepols’ new series Studies in Old English Literature (SOEL), edited by Daniel Anlezark, Susan Irvine, and Francis Leneghan. Questions and potential submissions can be directed to francis.leneghan@ell.ox.ac.uk.

The Book and the Silk Roads Project has announced several virtual spring events: a two-morning workshop on ‘The Early Illustrated Apollonius of Tyre: Perspectives on the Palimpsest Fragment in Sinai, Arabic NF 8’ on 19-20 April; another two-day workshop on ‘Textiles in Manuscripts’ on 4-5 May; and an IAS webinar ‘Beyond Ethiopia: The Islamic Intellectual History of the Horn of Africa’ on 20 May. Learn more and register at the links above.

Lastly, but very importantly, the OMS Small Grants for Trinity Term 2021 are still accepting applications! Are you running a medieval activity between April and October 2021 that would benefit from £100-250 of support from OMS? You now have until Friday of Week 1 (30 April) to send your grant form to lesley.smith@history.ox.ac.uk. For an idea of the great things you can achieve with an OMS grant, previous winner Nick Pritchard used his grant to produce a new podcast, Medieval Roots, which you can listen to on Spotify! More episodes to follow this spring.

Get ready for a wonderful Trinity Term, and remember: SEND ME YOUR AMAZING EVENTS!