Sunday, 6 November 2016
Michaelmas Term Meeting Approaches!
Our Michaelmas Term Meeting is in only a few days! On Thursday 10 November at 8 pm, our brilliant speakers Eleanor Barraclough and Aisling Byrne will discuss 'changing landscapes' in medieval literature. There will be maps, monsters, and other marvels – and, as always, rather a lot of free wine.
Dinner with the speakers for Society members will be at 6 pm before the meeting at Marco's New York Italian on the High Street! To sign up for dinner, email caroline.batten@new.ox.ac.uk; spaces are going fast, so book in quickly.
Wednesday, 15 June 2016
TRINITY TERM MEETING: GLOBAL HISTORY!
Our Trinity Term Meeting in association with the Byzantine Society sparked lots of discussion from medievalists and Byzantinists alike!
"Everyone else is going global, and we don't want to be left behind!" said Catherine Holmes, speaking about the Global Middle Ages project, a worldwide research collaboration to talk about the swath of time that makes up the 'Middle Ages' across the world, from Rome to Kerala. She spoke at length about "why a global Middle Ages makes sense" and what the project means.
Dr. Holmes explained that as scholars, we have a responsibility to find roots, parallels, and differences between medieval and modern phenomena; specialization is a recent development in academia rather than an inherent feature, and Europe wasn't always the centre of things. G-MAP uncovers different histories and moves away from traditional ideas about what the 'Middle Ages' included. Communities in the Middle Ages had porous boundaries: people, goods, and ideas moved back and forth more than we previously imagined, shedding new light on religious activity and state formation.
Dr. Holmes said that G-MAP focuses on things like plural burials: for example, a grave found on the Swedish island of Helgo containing a Buddha probably made in Kashmir, a North African ladle, and an Irish crozier.
The Helgo Buddha
She discussed a synagogue 'library' in old Cairo whose contents indicated the Jewish community was widespread and communicated with one another to some degree; the distribution of Chinese pottery across the Indian Ocean area and the Islamic world, particularly showing up on the Swahili coast in the 9th and 10th centuries, used to decorate houses. She did offer a caveat, however: we cannot claim intense interaction between all parts of the globe during all parts of the Middle Ages. The scholarly study of the 'Global Middle Ages' requires experimentation to decide which "tools and toys" are most productive, and whether our current periodization is accurate or too Western-centred.
Shards of Chinese pottery excavated on the Swahili coast, British Museum
She then offered a case study: six copper plates dated to 849 CE and discovered in Kerala, in southwestern India. One plate describes a set of trading privileges given to merchant associations; another sets up a grant for a church. They include four languages, five scripts, and five world faiths. The plates are proof of the significant scale of the vibrant early medieval Indian Ocean trade. What we don't know, and maybe can't know? Whether the plates reflect a world where people felt they were 'encountering' each other; whether those encounters were collective. Dr. Holmes warned us against applying our modern sense of the word 'global' onto these interactions. The presence of large empires operating at the time is missing from the Kerala plates - the focus is instead on the local chieftain, who is able to grant these rights.
Dr. Holmes talked more broadly about the need to collaborate with other scholars in other fields on global history projects: we may need new tools to deal with the period between 500 and 1500 CE. The use of Chinese pottery to decorate a Swahili house indicates that we may need to develop new ideas about the relationship between local and global forces, about change, rupture, and movement in medieval communities. Some of this global interaction may have lead to the intensifying of connections, but also foreclosed certain options – an increase in religious identity politics, for example. She concluded, in the question session, by acknowledging that 'medieval' is a Eurocentric word and possibly problematic – but it is used for convenience to designate a vast and varied time period.
One set of the Tharsipalli plates, Kerala, 849 CE
Dr. Conrad Leyser then spoke about the Middle Ages as an era of 'faith': faith in terms of religion, certainly, but also faith in terms of allegiance, to family or empire. Dr. Leyser explained how the idea of faith and allegiance changed in western Europe during the rise of Latin Christendom.
We were told that, in the ancient Mediterranean, the family was a legal and religious unit devoted to ancestor worship; adoptions were made when biology failed. By the thirteenth century, however, a distinction was made between nature and culture in the Latin west: family was defined by blood descent – while the Church was a group of celibate men whose genealogy was ritual and metaphorical, i.e. the priesthood. This split may be due to religious reforms in the eleventh century which officially prohibited priestly marriage and simony. Property was divided by blood or institution, but not both. The idea of the priesthood as men without blood families was unusual across Eurasia at that point in history – priests are essentially those who conduct sacrifice, as a remedy for being born of woman, for having a blood genealogy. Priests were imagined as family men well into the late Carolingian Empire; they were considered to be different from monks and nuns, and a rivalry existed between the two modes of religious commitment.
Charlemagne in a portrait by Albrecht Dürer
The religious reforms of the eleventh century were essentially answering in the affirmative the question of whether priests were going to make themselves invulnerable to the charge of having family interests, and become a purely sacrificial order. 'Faith' became a relationship to an institution, rather than an individual relationship with the divine –– unlike in medieval Islamic communities, Dr. Leyser pointed out, where faith rests on a personal bond with God without a sacrificial system, and the question of blood versus culture manifests instead in the struggle between Sunni and Shi'a over the caliphate, or in early medieval China, in the rivalry between Daoist priests and Buddhist monks. The rise of Confucianism moved China towards culture and away from blood as the defining principle of family, whereas the Latin West moved increasingly towards defining family purely by blood.
Confucius, 551-479 BCE
Dr. Leyser concluded by pointing out that there is great value in thinking comparatively, across cultures and across time spans. This is also not, he points out, a story of 'modernization', of how we came to the 'modern' way of viewing things, as the act of balancing blood ties with other kinds of social bonds is a question that we still address.
Our year concluded on an excellent note! Keep watching the blog this summer for updates on OMS activities next year, and our usual drinks party will take place in Week 1 of Michaelmas Term to kick everything off for the academic year 2016/17. If there are topics you would like to see addressed at an OMS Term Meeting, email your webmaster at caroline.batten@new.ox.ac.uk and your ideas will be brought before the committee!
"Everyone else is going global, and we don't want to be left behind!" said Catherine Holmes, speaking about the Global Middle Ages project, a worldwide research collaboration to talk about the swath of time that makes up the 'Middle Ages' across the world, from Rome to Kerala. She spoke at length about "why a global Middle Ages makes sense" and what the project means.
Dr. Holmes explained that as scholars, we have a responsibility to find roots, parallels, and differences between medieval and modern phenomena; specialization is a recent development in academia rather than an inherent feature, and Europe wasn't always the centre of things. G-MAP uncovers different histories and moves away from traditional ideas about what the 'Middle Ages' included. Communities in the Middle Ages had porous boundaries: people, goods, and ideas moved back and forth more than we previously imagined, shedding new light on religious activity and state formation.
Dr. Holmes said that G-MAP focuses on things like plural burials: for example, a grave found on the Swedish island of Helgo containing a Buddha probably made in Kashmir, a North African ladle, and an Irish crozier.
She discussed a synagogue 'library' in old Cairo whose contents indicated the Jewish community was widespread and communicated with one another to some degree; the distribution of Chinese pottery across the Indian Ocean area and the Islamic world, particularly showing up on the Swahili coast in the 9th and 10th centuries, used to decorate houses. She did offer a caveat, however: we cannot claim intense interaction between all parts of the globe during all parts of the Middle Ages. The scholarly study of the 'Global Middle Ages' requires experimentation to decide which "tools and toys" are most productive, and whether our current periodization is accurate or too Western-centred.
She then offered a case study: six copper plates dated to 849 CE and discovered in Kerala, in southwestern India. One plate describes a set of trading privileges given to merchant associations; another sets up a grant for a church. They include four languages, five scripts, and five world faiths. The plates are proof of the significant scale of the vibrant early medieval Indian Ocean trade. What we don't know, and maybe can't know? Whether the plates reflect a world where people felt they were 'encountering' each other; whether those encounters were collective. Dr. Holmes warned us against applying our modern sense of the word 'global' onto these interactions. The presence of large empires operating at the time is missing from the Kerala plates - the focus is instead on the local chieftain, who is able to grant these rights.
Dr. Holmes talked more broadly about the need to collaborate with other scholars in other fields on global history projects: we may need new tools to deal with the period between 500 and 1500 CE. The use of Chinese pottery to decorate a Swahili house indicates that we may need to develop new ideas about the relationship between local and global forces, about change, rupture, and movement in medieval communities. Some of this global interaction may have lead to the intensifying of connections, but also foreclosed certain options – an increase in religious identity politics, for example. She concluded, in the question session, by acknowledging that 'medieval' is a Eurocentric word and possibly problematic – but it is used for convenience to designate a vast and varied time period.
Dr. Conrad Leyser then spoke about the Middle Ages as an era of 'faith': faith in terms of religion, certainly, but also faith in terms of allegiance, to family or empire. Dr. Leyser explained how the idea of faith and allegiance changed in western Europe during the rise of Latin Christendom.
We were told that, in the ancient Mediterranean, the family was a legal and religious unit devoted to ancestor worship; adoptions were made when biology failed. By the thirteenth century, however, a distinction was made between nature and culture in the Latin west: family was defined by blood descent – while the Church was a group of celibate men whose genealogy was ritual and metaphorical, i.e. the priesthood. This split may be due to religious reforms in the eleventh century which officially prohibited priestly marriage and simony. Property was divided by blood or institution, but not both. The idea of the priesthood as men without blood families was unusual across Eurasia at that point in history – priests are essentially those who conduct sacrifice, as a remedy for being born of woman, for having a blood genealogy. Priests were imagined as family men well into the late Carolingian Empire; they were considered to be different from monks and nuns, and a rivalry existed between the two modes of religious commitment.
The religious reforms of the eleventh century were essentially answering in the affirmative the question of whether priests were going to make themselves invulnerable to the charge of having family interests, and become a purely sacrificial order. 'Faith' became a relationship to an institution, rather than an individual relationship with the divine –– unlike in medieval Islamic communities, Dr. Leyser pointed out, where faith rests on a personal bond with God without a sacrificial system, and the question of blood versus culture manifests instead in the struggle between Sunni and Shi'a over the caliphate, or in early medieval China, in the rivalry between Daoist priests and Buddhist monks. The rise of Confucianism moved China towards culture and away from blood as the defining principle of family, whereas the Latin West moved increasingly towards defining family purely by blood.
Dr. Leyser concluded by pointing out that there is great value in thinking comparatively, across cultures and across time spans. This is also not, he points out, a story of 'modernization', of how we came to the 'modern' way of viewing things, as the act of balancing blood ties with other kinds of social bonds is a question that we still address.
Our year concluded on an excellent note! Keep watching the blog this summer for updates on OMS activities next year, and our usual drinks party will take place in Week 1 of Michaelmas Term to kick everything off for the academic year 2016/17. If there are topics you would like to see addressed at an OMS Term Meeting, email your webmaster at caroline.batten@new.ox.ac.uk and your ideas will be brought before the committee!
Wednesday, 11 May 2016
Graduate Presentation Day FINAL PROGRAMME!
Looking forward to seeing you all tomorrow at ST JOHNS COLLEGE at 13:00!
Sunday, 24 April 2016
TRINITY TERM MEETING!
Look for our poster in the term booklet! And, as always, if you would like to join us for dinner at Marco's New York Italian on the High Street with the speakers beforehand, email your Communications Officer at caroline.batten@new.ox.ac.uk. This term we're talking trade, religion, and power in the global Middle Ages, in cooperation with the Byzantine Society!
Friday, 4 March 2016
Call for Papers: OMS Graduate Research Presentation Day!
All the excitement of a conference, all the helpful advice of a work-in-progress seminar. Come present your research –– all post-graduates working in the medieval period are welcome, especially first year students.
Sunday, 21 February 2016
Medievalism(s)
The OMS
gathered this past Thursday to beat the ubiquitous Fifth-Week blues with
a lively and fascinating discussion of medievalism –– the study of the
use of medieval narratives, characters, settings, and aesthetics in
post-medieval art, architecture, media, and culture. (That's a
mouthful.)
Dr. David Matthews, senior lecturer in Middle English at the University of Manchester, started the evening with a talk on "Industrious Medievalism" –– not only the medievalism of the Industrial Revolution, but also medievalism in structures and things that are functional, such as the Woodhead train tunnel pictured above. Dr. Matthews explained his interest in the ethics of medievalism –– whether it was liberating, revolutionary, conservative, nostalgic –– its promotion of certain values, and its ability to be of use to people.
Dr. Matthews reminded us to be aware of the anachronism inherent in a train tunnel designed to look like a medieval tower; the steam engine, which looks outdated to us, would have looked distinctly modern to a mid-19th century viewer, and probably very much at odds with the tunnel from which it's emerging. But the tunnel serves a purpose: it deflects attention from the modernity of the train running through it. The crenelated tower is part of a reassuring, nostalgic idiom; as Dr. Matthews pointed out, we tend to find more humanity in anything that came before a given, disliked trend (see: some Baby Boomers' dislike of Millenial use of technology to communicate and date). But medievalism has more to do with modern perceptions and values than with actual medieval cultural artifacts; the Derwent Dam, built in 1916, drowned two actual medieval villages, but imitates a medieval fortress in design:
Dr. Matthews then turned to the ethics of medievalism. Medievalism, with its hearkening back to monarchical and feudal forms of social organization, provides an alternative set of ethics to capitalism; it's bound up, too, with green ethics, supposedly gesturing towards a time when man lived in greater harmony with nature. Its nostalgic idealism, however, is essentially conservative. Such great names as Tolkien, Lewis, and Morris gestured toward such idealism in their works (for a good example of Tolkien's ideas about industry, check out the unsavory descriptions of Saruman's iron forges). But Dr. Matthews argued that medievalism doesn't always bear the kind of moral weight artists, authors, and politicians place on it; it has no inherent moral utility. Indeed, medievalism, by its nature, cannot resolve the questions and problems of progress –– technological and otherwise –– because it is essentially concerned with reiterating the past.
Dr. Carolyne Larrington, a Teaching Fellow of St. John's College here at Oxford, discussed a specific, and very successful, example of medievalism: the hugely popular TV series Game of Thrones, based on the book series A Song of Ice and Fire. Your friendly webmaster will, of course, write about this topic with complete objectivity, because she is in no way invested in the series and is certainly not awaiting April with bated breath, freaking out about whether Jon Snow is dead and eagerly anticipating Tyrion's next move.
Dr. Larrington argued that one of the great successes of George R. R. Martin's books lies in the author's structural understanding of how medieval societies work –– or don't, as the case may be. The strengths of the world of Game of Thrones lie in the cultures of Westeros: King's Landing is a portrait of a late medieval city, with a well-developed court culture, crafts industries, and public markets. "But where is the civil service in King's Landing?" Dr. Larrington asked. "Who's policing the streets? Where are the lawyers?
Winterfell, on the other hand, seems to mimic an Anglo-Saxon kingdom: highly militarized, lacking in the chivalric court culture of the Red Keep, and dependent upon the personal loyalty of retainers and bannermen to their lord. The Ironborn have been compared to the Vikings, but, as Dr. Larrington noted, bear more similarities to the popular image of Vikings than to actual Scandinavian peoples of the Middle Ages. The Dothraki are based on Mongol society under Genghis Khan, with a capital city (Vaes Dothrak in Essos, Karakorum in the Övörkhangai province of Mongolia) famed as a thriving cultural centre improbably placed in the middle of a desert. However, Dr. Larrington counts Essos as a failure in the Game of Thrones universe, due to the obvious Orientalism in its presentation.
Dr. Larrington pointed out the ways in which Game of Thrones is concerned with social organization, and the practicalities of medieval communities and proto-states: the Iron Bank of Braavos draws the viewer's attention to the economic underpinning of the the relationship between Westeros and Essos, and the monetary cost of kingship. The rise of the "Sparrows" in King's Landing addresses the balance of power between church and state, and the relationship of the monarch to religious institutions. Indeed, much of Game of Thrones is devoted to interrogating how kingship, good and bad, works; Aragorn, as Larrington wittily noted, wasn't required to have a tax policy. Religion, too, is questioned in the world of Game of Thrones: the miracles of R'hllor may be real, but his priests inspire terror.
Dr. Larrington pointed out the ways in which Game of Thrones is concerned, too, with power struggles –– noting that Petyr Baelish, one-time Master of Coin and the closest thing King's Landing has to a civil servant, is similar to a certain Geoffrey Chaucer in his initially quiet political rise, and that Martin addresses power imbalances in the world of gender, looking at the particular, and often highly dangerous, challenges of being a woman in the sorts of societies that populate Westeros. It also deals with the possibility of redemption, by refusing to engage in black and white morality. Game of Thrones may, however, ultimately be successful because the medieval world is what Dr. Larrington called a 'familiar other' to us: a culturally accepted backdrop for fantasy stories. We owe many of our institutions –– European statehood, universities, romantic love –– to the Middle Ages. The romantic, chivalric dream of late-medieval courts, knights and tourneys is certainly still alive in our culture; brutal warrior societies (complete with sidelined female characters) have recently been made popular by shows like Vikings and The Last Kingdom. Popular-culture medievalism certainly won't be disappearing any time soon.
Next up? A graduate student presentation day to kick off Trinity Term, followed by our Trinity Term Meeting on Global History, in partnership with the Byzantine Society! Keep an eye on our blog, Facebook group, and Twitter for updates.
Dr. David Matthews, senior lecturer in Middle English at the University of Manchester, started the evening with a talk on "Industrious Medievalism" –– not only the medievalism of the Industrial Revolution, but also medievalism in structures and things that are functional, such as the Woodhead train tunnel pictured above. Dr. Matthews explained his interest in the ethics of medievalism –– whether it was liberating, revolutionary, conservative, nostalgic –– its promotion of certain values, and its ability to be of use to people.
Dr. Matthews reminded us to be aware of the anachronism inherent in a train tunnel designed to look like a medieval tower; the steam engine, which looks outdated to us, would have looked distinctly modern to a mid-19th century viewer, and probably very much at odds with the tunnel from which it's emerging. But the tunnel serves a purpose: it deflects attention from the modernity of the train running through it. The crenelated tower is part of a reassuring, nostalgic idiom; as Dr. Matthews pointed out, we tend to find more humanity in anything that came before a given, disliked trend (see: some Baby Boomers' dislike of Millenial use of technology to communicate and date). But medievalism has more to do with modern perceptions and values than with actual medieval cultural artifacts; the Derwent Dam, built in 1916, drowned two actual medieval villages, but imitates a medieval fortress in design:
Dr. Matthews then turned to the ethics of medievalism. Medievalism, with its hearkening back to monarchical and feudal forms of social organization, provides an alternative set of ethics to capitalism; it's bound up, too, with green ethics, supposedly gesturing towards a time when man lived in greater harmony with nature. Its nostalgic idealism, however, is essentially conservative. Such great names as Tolkien, Lewis, and Morris gestured toward such idealism in their works (for a good example of Tolkien's ideas about industry, check out the unsavory descriptions of Saruman's iron forges). But Dr. Matthews argued that medievalism doesn't always bear the kind of moral weight artists, authors, and politicians place on it; it has no inherent moral utility. Indeed, medievalism, by its nature, cannot resolve the questions and problems of progress –– technological and otherwise –– because it is essentially concerned with reiterating the past.
Dr. Carolyne Larrington, a Teaching Fellow of St. John's College here at Oxford, discussed a specific, and very successful, example of medievalism: the hugely popular TV series Game of Thrones, based on the book series A Song of Ice and Fire. Your friendly webmaster will, of course, write about this topic with complete objectivity, because she is in no way invested in the series and is certainly not awaiting April with bated breath, freaking out about whether Jon Snow is dead and eagerly anticipating Tyrion's next move.
Dr. Larrington argued that one of the great successes of George R. R. Martin's books lies in the author's structural understanding of how medieval societies work –– or don't, as the case may be. The strengths of the world of Game of Thrones lie in the cultures of Westeros: King's Landing is a portrait of a late medieval city, with a well-developed court culture, crafts industries, and public markets. "But where is the civil service in King's Landing?" Dr. Larrington asked. "Who's policing the streets? Where are the lawyers?
Winterfell, on the other hand, seems to mimic an Anglo-Saxon kingdom: highly militarized, lacking in the chivalric court culture of the Red Keep, and dependent upon the personal loyalty of retainers and bannermen to their lord. The Ironborn have been compared to the Vikings, but, as Dr. Larrington noted, bear more similarities to the popular image of Vikings than to actual Scandinavian peoples of the Middle Ages. The Dothraki are based on Mongol society under Genghis Khan, with a capital city (Vaes Dothrak in Essos, Karakorum in the Övörkhangai province of Mongolia) famed as a thriving cultural centre improbably placed in the middle of a desert. However, Dr. Larrington counts Essos as a failure in the Game of Thrones universe, due to the obvious Orientalism in its presentation.
Dr. Larrington pointed out the ways in which Game of Thrones is concerned with social organization, and the practicalities of medieval communities and proto-states: the Iron Bank of Braavos draws the viewer's attention to the economic underpinning of the the relationship between Westeros and Essos, and the monetary cost of kingship. The rise of the "Sparrows" in King's Landing addresses the balance of power between church and state, and the relationship of the monarch to religious institutions. Indeed, much of Game of Thrones is devoted to interrogating how kingship, good and bad, works; Aragorn, as Larrington wittily noted, wasn't required to have a tax policy. Religion, too, is questioned in the world of Game of Thrones: the miracles of R'hllor may be real, but his priests inspire terror.
Dr. Larrington pointed out the ways in which Game of Thrones is concerned, too, with power struggles –– noting that Petyr Baelish, one-time Master of Coin and the closest thing King's Landing has to a civil servant, is similar to a certain Geoffrey Chaucer in his initially quiet political rise, and that Martin addresses power imbalances in the world of gender, looking at the particular, and often highly dangerous, challenges of being a woman in the sorts of societies that populate Westeros. It also deals with the possibility of redemption, by refusing to engage in black and white morality. Game of Thrones may, however, ultimately be successful because the medieval world is what Dr. Larrington called a 'familiar other' to us: a culturally accepted backdrop for fantasy stories. We owe many of our institutions –– European statehood, universities, romantic love –– to the Middle Ages. The romantic, chivalric dream of late-medieval courts, knights and tourneys is certainly still alive in our culture; brutal warrior societies (complete with sidelined female characters) have recently been made popular by shows like Vikings and The Last Kingdom. Popular-culture medievalism certainly won't be disappearing any time soon.
Next up? A graduate student presentation day to kick off Trinity Term, followed by our Trinity Term Meeting on Global History, in partnership with the Byzantine Society! Keep an eye on our blog, Facebook group, and Twitter for updates.
Monday, 15 February 2016
Friendly Reminder, Revised
Lovely medievalists and medieval aficionados,
Our pre-meeting dinner on Thursday is no longer at Quod - we're branching out! We'll be at Marco's New York Italian on the High Street. Take a look at the menu and, whether you're joining us for dinner or not, get excited for our wonderful speakers and, of course, all the free wine.
Our pre-meeting dinner on Thursday is no longer at Quod - we're branching out! We'll be at Marco's New York Italian on the High Street. Take a look at the menu and, whether you're joining us for dinner or not, get excited for our wonderful speakers and, of course, all the free wine.
Friday, 29 January 2016
Moste Charmynge Þynges fram þe Internette
Moste amusing þynges yposted upon Þe Toaste by þe ladye of Vertu ond Intelect, Mallory Ortberg:
Texts from the 'Pearl' Poet
Reasons I Would Make An Excellent Fisher King and You Should Consider Me for the Position
Yow sholde followe Medievalist BB8 on Twitter.
Þis is a þynge þat real People doth do: Medieval MMA. Heere is a Clippe, Ich presume.
And, on a more serious note, here are some articulate, kind, and timely reminders from respected voices in our field for female medievalists, feminist medievalists, queer medievalists, medievalists of color, and anyone in our community who has been made to feel dismissed or marginalized. Our field needs all of us.
Here, several prominent medievalists articulate a 2016-worthy manifesto for inclusiveness in the field of medieval studies.
And from Elaine Treharne on Twitter at Stanford, particularly to Old English scholars in the wake of recent events, but applying to everyone who studies the Middle Ages:
In the immortal words of Bill and Ted, keep being excellent to each other. And please email your friendly webmaster at caroline.batten@ell.ox.ac.uk to sign up for our Hilary Term dinner on Thursday 18 February! Places are limited.
Texts from the 'Pearl' Poet
Reasons I Would Make An Excellent Fisher King and You Should Consider Me for the Position
Yow sholde followe Medievalist BB8 on Twitter.
Þis is a þynge þat real People doth do: Medieval MMA. Heere is a Clippe, Ich presume.
And, on a more serious note, here are some articulate, kind, and timely reminders from respected voices in our field for female medievalists, feminist medievalists, queer medievalists, medievalists of color, and anyone in our community who has been made to feel dismissed or marginalized. Our field needs all of us.
Here, several prominent medievalists articulate a 2016-worthy manifesto for inclusiveness in the field of medieval studies.
And from Elaine Treharne on Twitter at Stanford, particularly to Old English scholars in the wake of recent events, but applying to everyone who studies the Middle Ages:
In the immortal words of Bill and Ted, keep being excellent to each other. And please email your friendly webmaster at caroline.batten@ell.ox.ac.uk to sign up for our Hilary Term dinner on Thursday 18 February! Places are limited.
Tuesday, 26 January 2016
Friendly Reminder!
Remember to sign up for our pre-meeting dinner this term! Come meet the speakers, ask them all your questions, and enjoy a sophisticated set menu at Quod on the High Street. Dinner is at 18:00 Thursday 18 February, and the meeting will follow at 20:00. We have very limited spaces, so email your friendly webmaster (caroline.batten@ell.ox.ac.uk) as fast as your hands can type.
It'll be even more thrilling than this meal pictured in the Luttrell Psalter (Lincolnshire, c. 1320-1340), which everyone is clearly very excited to be attending. Just look at the enthusiasm.
It'll be even more thrilling than this meal pictured in the Luttrell Psalter (Lincolnshire, c. 1320-1340), which everyone is clearly very excited to be attending. Just look at the enthusiasm.
Friday, 22 January 2016
HILARY TERM MEETING!
Look for our awesome poster for details. Can't wait to see you all there, and, of course, hear all your Game of Thrones conspiracy theories.
Manuscripts in the Digital Age
The OMS finished off our 2015 schedule with a bang this past November, hosting Dr. Julia Craig-McFeely and Professor Henrike Lähnemann to discuss the digitization of manuscripts and the future of the medieval codex in the digital age. The topic is timely, considering we're posting this update on a blog (even Geoffrey Chaucer hath one) and sharing it with you in the medievalist Twitter-sphere (Geoffrey Chaucer hath one of those, too).
'Old Hall' Manuscript (London, British Library Add. MS 57950)
Dr. Craig-McFeely is the Project Manager of the Digital Image Archive of Medieval Music (DIAMM), and she explained to the Society the inner workings and the founding story of one of the largest resources of digitized manuscripts in the world. She told stories of traveling around the country to photograph manuscripts, described the huge number of resources required to compile DIAMM's metadata, and passed around several of the project's published facsimiles. "This is the sexy part," she declared, as she began to talk about the power of digital restoration. She showed us 'before' and 'after' images of damaged musical manuscripts, some nearly illegible with age –– all restored to readable condition with a little computer work. She showed us how digital tools can find faded musical notes on the page and undo poor previous (read: Victorian) edits. She explained to us the difficult questions inherent in restoration: how much damage is part of the manuscript's history? What should be erased, and what should be left? She concluded by touching on an issue near, if not necessarily dear, to the hearts of all medieval scholars: funding. Digital projects, she pointed out, need constant funding because the formats of documents, photos, and other resources need to be constantly updated in order to keep up with changing technology, and not become obsolete. (One thinks of a lot of data stored on a lot of floppy disks.) If digitization is going to provide lasting resources, we need to be willing to reinvest in scholarship.
Easter sun rising over Medingen in one of Prof. Lähnemann's newly-digitized images.
"Let us understand Scripture! Not reading is evil!" Prof. Lähnemann translated from the medieval High German of one of the Medingen manuscripts. She continued on to detail her current scholarly endeavor: collecting, compiling, and digitizing the manuscripts of the Cistercian nuns of the convent of Medingen. She explained to us that in the convent itself, large numbers of manuscripts have been discovered, as well as something called "nun dust" –– the underneath-the-floorboards detritus of centuries of lives lived within the convent walls, things like lost spectacles and dropped needles. She showed us the carefully illuminated pages of the nuns' scribal work and offered insights into how these manuscripts tell us things about the nuns' lives, attitudes toward literature, and ability to circulate manuscripts. She pointed out moments of interaction between the nuns and the laypeople of the town of Medingen, and showed us how the nuns collaborated on manuscript work –– co-production, synchronized production, collective artwork –– as part of the spirit of Windesheim and Lutheran reform. The text production, she pointed out, was a communal and polyphonic process –– and editing and digitizing these manuscripts is also a communal and poylphonic process in our day and age.
Our next meeting will prove to be just as timely –– and probably have a lot more blood, guts, and sordid love affairs. Medievalism is the theme of the term, and Dr. Carolyne Larrington will be kicking us off with a look at her new (and highly anticipated by medievalists/nerds/the OMS committee members) book on medieval influence in Game of Thrones!
THIS NEVER HAPPENED, OKAY? IT NEVER HAPPENED. CAN SOMEONE PLEASE BUY ALL THE STARKS SOME BETTER ARMOR?!
Couldn't get tickets to her Waterstones event? The OMS has you covered, for free (if you're a member –– and membership is still only £5 for students)!
She'll be followed by Professor David Matthews of the University of Manchester, the author of Medievalism: A Critical History to explain how we even got to Game of Thrones in the first place. How do we conjure up the Middle Ages in our art and media? Why does it have such a hold on our imaginations? And what are we all getting wrong?
Thursday, February 18th at 8 pm, in the Goodhart Seminar Room at Univ. As always, there will be plenty of wine and an exciting assortment of crisps. Keep watching the blog for more details and, for Society members, an invitation to dinner!
'Old Hall' Manuscript (London, British Library Add. MS 57950)
Dr. Craig-McFeely is the Project Manager of the Digital Image Archive of Medieval Music (DIAMM), and she explained to the Society the inner workings and the founding story of one of the largest resources of digitized manuscripts in the world. She told stories of traveling around the country to photograph manuscripts, described the huge number of resources required to compile DIAMM's metadata, and passed around several of the project's published facsimiles. "This is the sexy part," she declared, as she began to talk about the power of digital restoration. She showed us 'before' and 'after' images of damaged musical manuscripts, some nearly illegible with age –– all restored to readable condition with a little computer work. She showed us how digital tools can find faded musical notes on the page and undo poor previous (read: Victorian) edits. She explained to us the difficult questions inherent in restoration: how much damage is part of the manuscript's history? What should be erased, and what should be left? She concluded by touching on an issue near, if not necessarily dear, to the hearts of all medieval scholars: funding. Digital projects, she pointed out, need constant funding because the formats of documents, photos, and other resources need to be constantly updated in order to keep up with changing technology, and not become obsolete. (One thinks of a lot of data stored on a lot of floppy disks.) If digitization is going to provide lasting resources, we need to be willing to reinvest in scholarship.
Easter sun rising over Medingen in one of Prof. Lähnemann's newly-digitized images.
"Let us understand Scripture! Not reading is evil!" Prof. Lähnemann translated from the medieval High German of one of the Medingen manuscripts. She continued on to detail her current scholarly endeavor: collecting, compiling, and digitizing the manuscripts of the Cistercian nuns of the convent of Medingen. She explained to us that in the convent itself, large numbers of manuscripts have been discovered, as well as something called "nun dust" –– the underneath-the-floorboards detritus of centuries of lives lived within the convent walls, things like lost spectacles and dropped needles. She showed us the carefully illuminated pages of the nuns' scribal work and offered insights into how these manuscripts tell us things about the nuns' lives, attitudes toward literature, and ability to circulate manuscripts. She pointed out moments of interaction between the nuns and the laypeople of the town of Medingen, and showed us how the nuns collaborated on manuscript work –– co-production, synchronized production, collective artwork –– as part of the spirit of Windesheim and Lutheran reform. The text production, she pointed out, was a communal and polyphonic process –– and editing and digitizing these manuscripts is also a communal and poylphonic process in our day and age.
Our next meeting will prove to be just as timely –– and probably have a lot more blood, guts, and sordid love affairs. Medievalism is the theme of the term, and Dr. Carolyne Larrington will be kicking us off with a look at her new (and highly anticipated by medievalists/nerds/the OMS committee members) book on medieval influence in Game of Thrones!
THIS NEVER HAPPENED, OKAY? IT NEVER HAPPENED. CAN SOMEONE PLEASE BUY ALL THE STARKS SOME BETTER ARMOR?!
Couldn't get tickets to her Waterstones event? The OMS has you covered, for free (if you're a member –– and membership is still only £5 for students)!
She'll be followed by Professor David Matthews of the University of Manchester, the author of Medievalism: A Critical History to explain how we even got to Game of Thrones in the first place. How do we conjure up the Middle Ages in our art and media? Why does it have such a hold on our imaginations? And what are we all getting wrong?
Thursday, February 18th at 8 pm, in the Goodhart Seminar Room at Univ. As always, there will be plenty of wine and an exciting assortment of crisps. Keep watching the blog for more details and, for Society members, an invitation to dinner!
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