Online Resources for Medievalists

Normally on a Monday morning, I wake up and look at what medieval seminars are taking place in Oxford during the coming week. I make a note of any changes and then write an email to everyone on the Medieval Studies mailing list. This week I had intended to tell people what was happening over the Easter vacation. In light of recent events, that seemed pointless. Henrike Lähnemann suggested that I send an upbeat email with a couple of links for things people could do or listen to while stuck inside. I then sent a tweet looking for suggestions from people. The response was huge and overwhelmingly wonderful, filled with great ideas, things I’d never heard of, and links to some brilliant people doing brilliant things. I’ve collected them here in this blog so everyone can enjoy the fruit of so many people’s labour.

Podcasts

• You can check out Oxford-based podcasts here http://podcasts.ox.ac.uk/ (just search for ‘medieval’...or indeed anything you’d like, there are lots of interesting things there.)
• I can also recommend livinglibrariespodcast.co.uk to help you virtually explore Oxford’s libraries while you’re stuck indoors.
• On your Podcast app, search for ‘About Buildings + Cities’ by Luke Jones & George Gingell. They have a wonderful episode about John Ruskin to sate any medievalism you might have
• You can always go on to BBC Sounds (https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds) and listen to old episodes of In Our Time. Medieval themed episodes can be found here https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01hb3y1
• Yale do an Early Middle Ages series here https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/early-middle-ages/id515946405
• You can have your own walking tour of Paris with Christopher de Hamel while you put your feet up and drink some tea (https://www.lesenluminures.com/media_entries/video/7-podcast-walking-tour-of-the-medieval-book/)
• For French speakers, https://passionmedievistes.fr/ comes highly recommended.
• Learning something about the Met Cloister in New York from the comfort of your own home, https://cosmo.marlboro.edu/thehistorycafe/history-cafe-visits-the-met-1/
• There is also a chronological history of the History of Britain to listen to https://www.thebritishhistorypodcast.com/
• There are a list of other medieval podcasts here as well (https://www.medievalists.net/2012/10/ten-medieval-podcasts/)!
• Get some magic in your life with the Glitch Bottle podcast (search in your podcast app).

Videos and Blogs

• I quite enjoy the Medieval People of Color Project, you can have a look at some of their work here: https://medievalpoc.tumblr.com/
• There are some beautiful objects discussed here https://www.youtube.com/user/moleiroeditor. I just had a look through some videos and they’re fascinating!
• There’s a wonderful collection of material discussed by James Cameron, who is always brilliant when discussing medieval churches https://stainedglassattitudes.wordpress.com/
• The British Archaeological Association’s lectures are online here, with a wide variety of subjects available. https://thebaa.org/videos-of-baa-lectures/
• Or, how about a medieval church crawl. Relive last year’s wonderful event, http://oxfordstories.ox.ac.uk/medieval-churches-oxford#/trail/medieval-churches-oxford
• You can see some fun videos about a lot of different things here https://www.youtube.com/user/Alliterative

Websites

• The Polonsky German project has put up at the Bodleian Library website not only amazing manuscripts but also a wealth of blog posts, covering topics from how to photograph gold to how to handle manuscripts, https://hab.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/
• Browse through some early modern medieval journals if you find yourself with a free afternoon: casebooks.lib.cam.ac.uk
• There is a very wide selection of material to be read at https://thefreelancehistorywriter.com/about-2/
• The British Library has a few online resources that are fun to look through, https://www.bl.uk/discover-and-learn/online-exhibitions
• If you want to have a look around some Gothic monuments, you can always go to http://mappinggothic.org.
• Brush up on your Palaeography online: https://spotlight.vatlib.it/greek-paleography
• You can build your own astrolabe with some paper and ingenuity here: https://www.joh.cam.ac.uk/library/library_exhibitions/schoolresources/astrolabe/build But of course, you should start with reading Chaucer http://chirurgeon.org/treatise.html
• Why not browse some of the Vatican’s manuscripts while you wait everything out, digi.vatlib.it.
• You can learn everything you wanted to know about the Book of Kells if you feel like taking a step into the early Middle Ages, https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/book-of-kells
• Fancy some colouring in to pass the time? The New York Academy of Medicine has you covered http://library.nyam.org/colorourcollections/
• Browse through some of the V&A’s collection of medieval fabrics http://library.nyam.org/colorourcollections/
• For #nuntastic content plus the opportunity to train your palaeography, Latin and Middle Low German, look at the letters of the nuns of Lüne (with English abstracts), http://diglib.hab.de/edoc/ed000248/start.htm

Some other Interesting Things

• While you self-isolating and social distancing, perhaps you’d like to submit an application for the Society of Medieval Languages and Literature’s Essay Prize for postgraduates. I’ve attached details to this email.
• Another essay prize can be found at https://churchmonumentssociety.org/get-involved/competitions/essay-competition where you can get your piece published in Church Monuments.

In the meantime, I hope you are all keeping safe and found somewhere interesting to wait out this storm. I look forward to seeing you all afterwards.

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Karl Kinsella is Junior Research Fellow in Medieval Architecture at Lincoln College and Communications Officer for Oxford Medieval Studies.