Oxford Medieval Studies Newsletter - Week 2 Trinity Term 2020

4 May 2020
Karl Kinsella
circular ancient map showing Europe

Dear Medievalists,

Welcome to week 2 in our lockdown series of seminars and reading groups. Despite the strangeness of these days, there’s plenty happening to keep you in touch with each other.

Seminars

  • Today (4th) we have the first Medieval History Seminar of the term. I sent an email on Friday about how to join up, so please check that for more information (i.e., click here) . John Arnold’s paper ‘Confraternities in Southern France: collective enthusiasm or sedition and politics?’ is already uploaded onto Teams, so you can read it and discuss it between 5-6pm.
  • On OMS’ Teams, the Old English Work in Progress Seminar takes place at 4pm every Monday. Unfortunately, I don’t have information as to who is speaking today, but Francis Leneghan’s paper last week was excellent and I’m this week’s will be as well!
  • On Tuesday (5th), the Early Slavonic Seminar will host Susana Torres Prieto who will give a paper questioning ‘Was Alexander really from Macedonia? The East Slavic genealogy of Alexander the Great’. This takes place at 5pm via Zoom and you can register here.
  • On Wednesday (6th) Ashhan Akişik will speak at the Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar on the topic of ‘Mehmed II’s Patria, Byzas’ Palace, and Ottoman Hellenism in the Fifteenth Century’. This will be held via Teams and you register for it by clicking here.
  • Also on Wednesday the Graduate Seminar in Medieval German takes place from 11.15am-1pm, where they will be discussing Meister Eckhart’s sermons. If you are interested in joining them, email henrike.laehnemann@mod-langs.ox.ac.uk.
  • Finally on Wednesday, the Middle English Work in Progress Seminar will be meeting via the OMS’ Teams (for which I’ve already sent out instructions on how to join). The session starts at 4pm when Dan Wakelin and Eleanor Baker will discuss their work on materiality in late medieval literature and books.

Reading Groups

  • The Old Norse Reading Group will be meeting today and every Monday of this term. For more information contact william.brockbank@jesus.ox.ac.uk. You can join them in OMS’ Teams from 5.30pm.
  • If you are interested in reading short excerpts from medieval Germanic languages, get in touch with nelson.goering@ling-phil.ox.ac.uk
  • The Medieval Book Club will meet on Tuesday and continue their theme of ‘Travel’. This week they will be reading Gerald of Wales.

Also, Audrey Southgate from the Medieval Book Club has kindly written a blogpost about the Club’s recent history and a report from how this term is going so far. You can read it here. It contains the wise words ‘Rarely do things come out according to our hopes. Often what is planned does not take place, and the unhoped for happens’. Thanks Audrey.

The Medieval Booklet is a rather dynamic document at the moment, and will be updated, as will the calendar on TORCH, when we receive word about events. You can access both here.

As mentioned before, we would love to feature blog posts about medieval events, initiatives or resources, e.g. we have been promised a blog post about the project to read daily Dante sonnets (look for the hashtag #Covidcanzoniere on twitter). TORCH is doing its best to promote all online activities and we are happy to tweet out from https://twitter.com/OxMedStud.