Oxford Medieval Studies, Week 8, Hilary Term 2021

8 March 2021
Caroline Batten
oms red

Dear all,

Here we are in Week 8! The last official Monday email of Hilary Term 2021! We made it, mostly intact, to the finish line, and the joys of the Easter vac beckon. Before that, though, we have wonderful seminars for you to enjoy, to sustain you over the break.

A few announcements:

  • The TORCH OMS Small Grants are now accepting Trinity Term applications! Get grants in the region of £100-250 to support your conferences, workshops, and other forms of collaborative research activity that take place between April and October 2021! Use the grant application form and submit to lesley.smith@history.ox.ac.uk by Friday of Week 0 of Trinity.
  • Registration is now open for the Cambridge Colloquium in Anglo-Saxon, Norse, and Celtic (CCASNC) 2021, a great graduate conference on the languages, literature, history, and material culture of early medieval northern Europe. The conference takes place on 8 May 2021, and registration will be open here until 7 May.
  • A reminder that your applications for the SOAS University of London ‘Medieval Eastern Mediterranean Cities as Places of Artistic Interchange’ are due today by 5 pm. Research students at an advanced stage of their studies and early-career academic researchers and tutors working in historical research institutes (such as archaeology centres, museums, and government and non-governmental agencies dealing with history, art or archaeology) are invited to join a collaborative online learning programme comprising eight seminar discussions taking place between March and May 2021, with £2000 awarded to each participant to be used for research purposes. Full details here.

Wel bið þam þe him seminares seceð, / frofre to læreowes on Oxnaforda, þær us eal seo fæstnung stondeð [It will be well for him who seeks seminars, consolation from teachers in Oxford, where for us all true security stands]. – The Wanderer, undoubtedly

MONDAY 8 MARCH

  • The Oxford Byzantine Graduate Seminar meets at 12:30 pm on Teams. To join and for information, please contact james.cogbill@worc.ox.ac.uk. This week’s speaker is Paul Ulishney (Christ Church, Oxford), ‘The Hexaemeron Commentaries of Anastasius of Sinai and Jacob of Edessa’.
  • The Medieval Latin Reading Group meets at 1 pm on Teams, continuing with Abelard. Submit your email address here to receive notices.
  • The reading group GLARE (Greek, Latin, and Reception) meets at 5 pm on Teams. Email john.colley@ell.ox.ac.uk and jenyth.evans@ell.ox.ac.uk to be added to the mailing list. This week readers will return to Horace’s Ars poetica.
  • The Medieval History Seminar meets on Teams at 5 pm (search for the seminar in Teams with code rmppucs and then click ‘join’). This week’s speaker is Maryanne Kowaleski (Fordham University), ‘Seamen and the Realm: Were Medieval Mariners “Political”?’

TUESDAY 9 MARCH

  • The Late Medieval Seminar meets at 2 pm on Zoom (Meeting ID: 962 7053 8553, passcode: 078931). This week’s speaker is Neta Bodner (Open University of Israel), ‘“…And he changes into a white shirt and receives his new name”: Changing and Washing of Clothes in Jewish Medieval Religious Ceremonies’.
  • At 3:30 pm on Google Meet  we have the Medieval Book Club (for more information, get in touch at oxfordmedievalbookclub@gmail.com). This week’s theme is Recipes, exploring a variety of texts.
  • The Early Slavonic Seminar meets at 5 pm on Zoom (register here). This week’s speaker is Kirił Marinow (University of Łódź), ‘Turnovo: Capital of the Second Bulgarian Tsardom’.
  • The Oxford Numismatic Society Seminar will have its Graduate Circus at 5 pm on Teams. Email daniel.etches@new.ox.ac.uk for the link.
  • The Oxford Pre-Modern Middle Eastern History Seminar meets at 5:30 pm on Zoom (register here). This week’s speaker is AliAydın Karamustafa (Oxford), ‘Tribes, Bandits, and Minstrels: A Shared Popular Culture as a Response to Ottoman and Safavid Power’, with respondent Edmund Herzig (Oxford).

WEDNESDAY 10 MARCH

  • The Medieval German Seminar on Arnold von Harff is now finished but from 3-4 pm on Teams, there will be a joint special session with the History of the Book Seminar with a viewing of Oxford’s copy of the travelogue (crocodile and all!), Bodleian Library MS. Bodley 972. Join on teams. 
  • The Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar meets at 5 pm on Google Meet (link here). This week’s speakers are Kristoffel Demoen and Floris Bernard (Ghent), ‘Collected From All Kinds of Places: Building and Exploring a Corpus of Byzantine Book Epigrams’.
  • The Medieval English Research Seminar meets at 5:15 pm on Teams. This week’s speaker is Emily Thornbury (Yale), ‘The Old English Daniel’s Baroque Design’.
  • The Hebrew Bible in Medieval Manuscripts reading group will meet at 7 pm on Zoom; email judith.schlanger@orinst.ox.ac.uk for further information.

THURSDAY 11 MARCH

  • The Celtic Seminar meets at 5:15 pm on Teams. Contact david.willis@ling-phil.ox.ac.uk for a link. This week’s speaker is Wilson McLeod (University of Edinburgh), ‘The Influence of Wales on Gaelic Language Policy in Scotland’.
  • The OCHJS David Patterson lectures will be held at 6 pm on Zoom. This week’s speaker is Elena Lolli (OCHJS), ‘Scribal Habits and Codicological Features of the Oldest Hebrew Account Book in Italy’. Register here.
  • The Medieval Trade Reading Group meets at 7 pm. To be added to the team and have access to the materials and meetings, email Annabel Hancock at annabel.hancock@history.ox.ac.uk.

FRIDAY 12 MARCH

  • The work in progress workshop Pre-Modern Conversations meets at 11 am on Teams. Email lena.vosding@mod-langs.ox.ac.uk for further information.
  • The Seminar in the History of the Book meets at 2:15 pm. To register, email bookcentre@bodleian.ox.ac.uk. This week’s speaker is William Stoneman (Cambridge, MA) ‘Buying Incunabula at Gimbel Brothers Department Store: A Curious Chapter in the History of American Book Collecting’.

Have wonderful vacations, all. Get some R&R, as the Americans say; revel in the good weather; snag that day-after half-price Easter chocolate; and start looking forward to all of the thrilling seminar events that Trinity has to offer. As always, it’s my honour to fill up your inboxes on a Monday. Until 0th week!