Oxford Medieval Studies: Week 9, Hilary Term 2021

Dear all,

You haven’t seen the last of me yet! Every time I sign off on a Week 8 email, a slew of exciting opportunities and events immediately comes to my attention, and so I must bring these delights to your attention as well.

First and foremost: The Oxford Medieval Studies Trinity Term Seminar, long awaited, often imitated but never duplicated, will be on Tuesday of Week 1 (27 April) at 5 pm, live-streamed on the OMS YouTube channel! The speaker will be our very own Jim Harris, Teaching Curator at the Ashmolean Museum, taking us through some of the Ashmolean’s fascinating medieval holdings. Mark your calendars now!

Looking for your vacation Byzantine fix? Look no further than the latest event from the New Critical Approaches to the Byzantine World Network, presenting ‘Our Daily Byzantium: Medieval Heritage, Nation-Building, and Politics in Serbia’, bringing together an international group of historians, art historians, and cultural theorists to discuss cultural heritage and nationalism in Serbia and the wider Balkans. The seminar will be held on 25 March, 4-6 pm, on Zoom. Full details, further reading, and registration here.

Calling all graduate students of Old Norse: the annual Norse in the North Conference, hosted online this year by Durham University on 12 June, has opened its call for papers. The theme is ‘Transformation and Preservation in Old Norse Studies’, with keynote speaker Ármann Jakobsson (Háskoli Íslands). 300-word abstract submissions from postgraduates at any level and discipline are welcome by Friday 16 April. For further details, see their website here.

And another graduate opportunity: Oklahoma State University is hosting a Graduate Workshop on Diversity in the Medieval Middle East. This workshop invites early graduate students (considering their options for research topics) to discuss the place of various forms of diversity in the region and consider topics which cross the communal and linguistic boundaries imposed on premodern history by most graduate education today. The workshop will take place May 17-21, 2021 via Zoom. Masters or early PhD students interested in any part of the Middle East (from Cairo to Samarqand and the Black Sea to Yemen) between the seventh and fifteenth centuries CE are welcome to apply by March 26. Inquiries and applications should be sent to thomas.a.carlson@okstate.edu, and must include a cover letter explaining the applicant’s interest in medieval Middle Eastern diversity and current state of thinking about future research projects (two double-spaced pages maximum), a CV mentioning language skills (two pages maximum) and a current graduate transcript (official or unofficial).

A conference to register for at Fordham University: ‘Medieval French Without Borders’, the 40th Annual Conference of the Center for Medieval Studies, 20-21 March. This digital conference addresses the multilingual contact zones and social, cultural and literary contexts of exchange in which French featured between the ninth and the sixteenth centuries. For the full program and registration, check out the conference website.

And another: the launch of a new project and the inaugural event of the Medieval World Seminar at Johns Hopkins University, ‘Crusading Things and the Material Outremer: The Account-Inventory of Eudes of Nevers, 1266’, on 26 March, 5:30-7 pm GMT. Project website here, and registration link here.

Closer to home, the Anglo-Norman Reading Group is have an extra session this Friday, the 19th, at their usual time of 5-6:30 pm.

And finally, if you’ve been missing last term’s troubadour content, the Voices from Oxford documentary has been selected for Luchon’s International Film Festival! Read more here.

Until next time!