The MEMS monthly e-newsletter shares information about events, conferences, calls for papers, student and faculty work in the field, and digital resources that enrich our understanding of Medieval and Early Modern Studies. If you have questions about the minor, get in touch with Co-Directors Professor Amy Froide (froide@umbc.edu) and Professor Susan McDonough. If you have any items you would like to share in the newsletter, please send them to Laurel Bassett at lburgg1@umbc.edu by the 13th of each month.
MEMS EVENTS
Wednesday, February 23, 12:15 PM, Online. Did You Know the Aeneid Has a Sequel? Renaissance Addendum! an installment of Mini-MEMS Lunch and Learns
Mini-MEMS Lunch and Learns are opportunities for professors working in Medieval and Early Modern Studies to informally share their work through brief presentations followed by Q and A sessions. Our December session will be led by Professor Timothy Phin in Ancient Studies.
Did You Know the Aeneid Has a Sequel? Renaissance Addendum!
Modern students of Latin have often felt that the 12th book of the Aeneid ends on an abrupt note. Maffeo Vegio, a poet of the 15th century, agreed. He penned an addendum to Vergil’s poem, “completing” the work, and securing for himself quite a bit of fame. This talk is an exploration of the Aeneid’s “future.” We will look at Vegio’s work, his life, and the fervor for Vergil in the Renaissance.
ID:
26215120917
Password: vdM3aMNDG94
*Did you miss our last Mini-MEMS: Law and Order in Ancient Rome and Beyond? Weep no more—you can now catch it on our website: www.mems.umbc.edu and a special thank you to Dr. Molly-Jones Lewis, Ancient Studies for such a great presentation.
Stay tuned for more on our next virtual Mini-MEMS Lunch and Learn in March.
ON CAMPUS EVENTS
February 27, 3-4:30 PM, Earl and Darielle Linehan Concert Hall, Performing Arts Building, The Candlelight Concert Society presents pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard
This program includes work by C.P.E. Bach, Beethoven, Benjamin, Mozart, Sweelinck and Volkonsky. Your musical imagination will stretch with an evening of fantasias, pieces rooted in improvisation and the abandonment of strict musical form. Ranging from anguished to jovial, the range of emotional and musical colors is a highlight of this program. Aimard has appeared at Carnegie Hall, New York’s Lincoln Center, Vienna’s Konzerthaus, Frankfurt’s Alte Oper, and the Lucerne Festival. In-person student tickets are $10. A livestream of the concert will also be available. The Candlelight Concert Society will also host a “Know Before You Go” Zoom talk on Tuesday February 22 at 7:30 PM. For more information on the Zoom session and the concert, see: https://candlelightconcerts.org/events/pierre-laurent-aimard-piano/
COMMUNITY EVENTS
Thursday, February 10, 6:00 PM (Stratford time—1:00 PM EST!), Online. The Globe Theatre presents: Anti-Racist Shakespeare Webinar: Hamlet
Free Anti-Racist Shakespeare webinars bring a range of perspectives from scholars and artists about Shakespeare’s plays and how they engage with the topics of race and identity. In this webinar, Globe scholars will be joined by theatre artists and scholars including Ian Smith and Naeem Hayatt to discuss race and social justice in Hamlet. You will need to register in advance to receive a link to attend the live Zoom webinar. The event is open to all. To register and for more information on the Globe’s webinars, consult: https://www.shakespearesglobe.com/whats-on/anti-racist-shakespeare-hamlet-2021/
February 11-February 12, 9-5 PM daily, Online. The Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies presents: Popular Culture and the Deep Past 2022-The Experimental Archaeology of Medieval and Renaissance Food
This event will feature a scholarly conference (with papers, round tables, and other academic events) nested within a Renaissance-faire-like carnival (featuring exhibits, gaming, contests, and activities of all kinds.) Presentations include everything from “Exploring the Popularity of Pasta and Spaghetti during the Renaissance”, to “Treason’s in a December-pie: Mince Pies in England, 1610-1660” to the Early Modern Recipes Online Collective which invites anyone interested to help transcribe recipes from the manuscript of a seventeenth-century English gentlewoman. For more information and to register, see: https://cmrs.osu.edu/events/popular-culture-and-deep-past-2022-experimental-archaeology-medieval-and-renaissance-food
Tuesday, February 15, 12:00 PM, Online. The Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture presents: Syriac Villages in the Tur Abdin: A Microhistory of the Medieval Middle East
Marica Cassis, University of Calvary, explores the significance of colonialism in the study of Tur Adbin, the importance of microhistory in understanding archaeological material, and the overall underdiscussed material present in the region. Advanced registration required. Register: https://eastofbyzantium.org/upcoming-events/
Friday, February 25, 12 PM Central, Online. The Center for Renaissance Studies Presents Medici Florence Today: A Roundtable
This interdisciplinary roundtable in honor of Professor Eric Cochrane’s seminal Florence in the Forgotten Centuries, 1527-1800: A History of Florence and the Florence and the Florentines in the Age of the Grand Dukes (1973) examines the state of research on the Medici Grand Duchy today, considering in particular how the lenses of gender, globalization, and race have revitalized the scholarship on Florence in the late Renaissance. Roundtable Speakers: Shelia Barker “Women Artists and the Medici Grand Dukes”, Brian Brege “Florence’s Forgotten Global Ambitions: Deprovincializing Early Modern Tuscany”, Emily Wilbourne “Race, Voice, and Slavery in Seventeenth-Century Florence.” This event is free and accessible through the following link: https://newberry.zoom.us/j/89415791745?pwd=Q2RzSzU3RFNSODcyOUxmNlBpdWYxQT09
Friday-Sunday, March 4-6, 2022. The Folger Consort, Live at St. Mark’s Church, Washington D.C., and On-Demand, presents The Viennese School: Music from the Court of Maximilian I
The Folger Consort traces the origins of Vienna’s history as an epicenter of musical activity with music from the earliest “Viennese School”—the assembly of composers at the court of Emperor Maximilian I around the year 1500. To listen to a playlist preview, and for more information on the in-person and on-demand versions of the concert, consult: https://www.folger.edu/events/the-viennese-school-music-from-the-court-of-maximilian-i Please note that attendees 12 years old and over are required to show proof of vaccination with a photo ID. All attendees are required to wear a mask.
PAPERS AND CONFERENCES
Call for Papers-Multilingual Dynamics of Medieval Literature in Western Europe, Utrecht University, September 21-23, 2022
The medieval world was by no means monolingual. Languages flourished and grew, circulated, and travelled across geo-political frontiers. This was true of vernacular languages and perhaps especially so for Latin, a cosmopolitan language par excellence. What were the stakes and consequences of multilingualism through cultural, social, artistic, or material lenses? We invite proposals for 20 minute papers addressing any aspect of medieval literature and literary culture. Possible topics of interest include but are not limited to court and urban communities and their languages, contact zones, genre and linguistic frontiers. We welcome proposals from scholars at all career stages—and from all disciplinary backgrounds. It is our intention to hold the conference in person in Utrecht and the working language will be English. Speakers may be invited after the conference to contribute to a book of essays, which we hope to publish in Open Access in early 2023. Proposals of no more than 250 words should be sent to the project team at multilingualdynamics@gmail.com by April 1, 2022. For further information, visit: https://multilingualdynamics.sites.uu.nl/.
Call for Proposals—Attending to Women, 1100-1800: Performance, Newberry Library, September 30-October 1, 2022
This conference asks how women’s performances of power, gender, and art before 1800 provide powerful paths towards understanding their lives and our own today. The conference will ask such questions as: how do medieval, early modern, and Indigenous women draw on various forms of power, from the racial to the religious, to perform different roles? How was the category of “woman” itself contested, reinforced, and complicated through the performance of gender? What did women choose to perform through music, dance, and visual art? Lastly, what responsibilities and possibilities do we have as scholars who teach and share our work with the public? The conference will use a workshop model for most of its sessions to promote dialogue, augmented by a keynote lecture and a plenary panel on each of the four conference topics: power, gender, art, and public humanities/pedagogy. We welcome proposals for workshop sessions. The submission deadline is Tuesday, March 15, 2022. For more information about submitting a workshop proposal, please visit the conference website: https://www.newberry.org/09302022-attending-women-1100-1800-performance?bblinkid=257641818&bbemailid=37687681&bbejrid=-2054659401
COURSES
Rare Book School Summer Course Applications Opening This Week!
Expand your understanding of book history during a Rare Book School course this summer. The five-day intensive courses on the history of manuscript, print, and digital materials will be offered online and in person at the University of Virginia and other partner institutions. Sample course offerings including:
Six Degrees of Phillis Wheatley, taught by Tara Bynum (University of Iowa)
African American Print Cultures in the Nineteenth-Century United States, taught by Derrick R. Spires (Cornell University)
Textual Mobilities: Works, Books & Reading Across Early Modern Europe, taught by Roger Chartier and John Pollack (University of Pennsylvania)
The Bible and Histories of Reading, taught by Peter Stallybrass (Professor Emeritus of the University of Pennsylvania).
To be considered in the first round of admissions decisions, course applications should be submitted no later than March 7th. Applications received after that date will be reviewed on a rolling basis. Visit our website at www.rarebookschool.org for course details, instructions for applying, and evaluations by past students.
DIGITAL RESOURCES
History, storytelling, and escape from slavery in 17th and 18th Century London. This digital anthology combines art and research to reimagine stories of London’s runaways, showing African and South Asian people to have been present in London in the early modern era, challenging their enslavers and running away into the City of London, eager to find better and freer lives. This anthology includes the historical research of Professor Simon Newman and Dr. Peggy Brunache, poets Abena Essah, Gboyega Odubanjo, Oluwaseun Olayiwola, Momtaza Mehri, Memoona Zahid and artists Tasia Graham and Olivia Twist.
“The Past, Present, and Future of Digital Medieval Studies-A Global Digital Medievalist Symposium” from the Medieval Academy of America. Recorded May 24, 2021, this presentation from a worldwide Digital Symposium focused on Digital Medieval Studies in the Americas, centers the importance of images and imaging for medievalists working on the western side of the Atlantic. https://www.medievalacademy.org/page/DigitalMedievalStudies
Hill Museum and Manuscript Library Creates New Database to Assist Scholars of Understudied Manuscript Traditions
Because of HMML’s focus on materials historically underrepresented in western scholarship, the scale of HMML’s collections, and its investment in preservation technology, HMML is uniquely positioned to build the scholarly infrastructure that currently does not exist for many traditions. This service-focused scholarship will in turn broaden the impact of digital preservation efforts around the world. Created as part of a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the https://haf.vhmml.org/ (HMML Authority File) is an open-access database that will support librarians and scholars around the world to recognize previously unknown contributors to manuscripts; differentiate authors and texts that had been treated homogeneously; reunited separated materials; and trace the migration of handwritten texts across religious traditions and geographic, political, and linguistic divides. For more information, consult: www.HMML.org.
HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY!
It’s not all flowers and chocolates—check out this History Stories entry from history.com. The web link says it all: https://www.history.com/news/historys-oldest-known-valentine-was-written-in-prison
For ongoing digital updates from the Medieval (academic) world, check out #medievaltwitter, #shakeRace, and #raceB4Race.
For more information, please join the Medieval and Early Modern Studies Group: https://my3.my.umbc.edu/groups/mems and see our website: www.mems.umbc.edu