Events & Conferences
Vagantes 2012: The Annual Traveling Graduate Conference of the Medieval Academy of America
March 29-31, 2012
35 student presenters, representing 22 institutions across the U.S., Canada, and Europe, will come together to share ideas, make connections, and enjoy all Bloomington has to offer, including tours of the Lilly Library and the IU Art Museum, and a concert by the Early Music Institute. Participants will be invited to attend the annual Reader’s Circle, an evening of camaraderie, conviviality and recitation in medieval tongues. Our keynote speakers will be Shannon Gayk, Associate Professor of English at Indiana University, and Jordan L. Zweck, Assistant Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
For more information, see the conference website here, and the full program here.
The whole conference is free and open to the public, but registration by March 5, 2012, is required.
Lecture by Professor Michelangelo Zaccarello: “The World Upside Down: Carnival and the Carnivalesque in Italian Medieval and Renaissance Literature”
Tuesday, January 17, 4.30-5.30, Hoagy Carmichael Room, Morrison Hall
Anthropological readings of Carnival, especially after Bakhtin’s study on Rabelais, have stressed the importance of the inversion, or subversion, of social patterns during Carnival. Late Medieval and Renaissance Italian courts, on the other hand, often encouraged such celebrations, turning public performances and mass gatherings into a powerful instrument of political propaganda (as was the case in Lorenzo de’ Medici’s Florence). However, some social space and a broader audience were thus regained for popular or popularizing forms of literature that were previously relegated to a context of orality and folklore. This talk assesses developments in Late Medieval and Renaissance Italian literature, especially in texts associated with performance (the use of dialects in stage literature, the surfacing of folkloric texts in print, the linguistic and cultural opposition between the city and the countryside), and how such changes were affected by the contexts and rituals of Carnival celebrations.
Professor Michelangelo Zaccarello is Associate Professor of Italian Philology at the University of Verona and is currently a Fulbright Fellow in residence at Indiana University. In addition to his 2000 edition and 2004 commentary of Burchiello’s lyric poetry and his forthcoming edition of Pulci’s sonnets, he has published widely on early Italian authors, such as Dante, Boccaccio, Alberti, and Della Casa, and on theories and practice of textual editing. While in Bloomington, Prof. Zaccarello is completing his edition of Franco Sacchetti’s Trecentonovelle.
This event is co-sponsored by Renaissance Studies.
See the event flyer here.
Lecture by Dr. Don Skemer: “Sir Robert Tresilian at Tyburn Gallows, 1388: Text, Rumor, and Magic in Ricardian England”
Thursday, December 1, 4-6pm, Slocum Room, Lilly Library
The case of Sir Robert Tresilian, the Lord Chief Justice of England who was executed for treason in 1388, offers a fascinating opportunity to explore the power of words – legal or magical, religious or political, written or oral. Dr. Skemer’s paper evaluates contemporary references to Tresilian’s possible involvement in necromancy or more conventional magical practices and discusses how text and rumor spread variant versions of political news.
Don C. Skemer has been Curator of Manuscripts in the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library, since 1991. He is the author of Binding Words: Textual Amulets in the Middle Ages, Magic in History (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006) and many articles in scholarly journals, including English Manuscript Studies, Historical Research, Journal of the Society of Archivists, Bibliofilía, Gazette du livre médiéval, Gutenberg Jahrbuch, Revue belge de philologie et d’histoire, Scriptorium, Scrittura e civiltà, Traditio, and Viator. He is the principal compiler of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the Princeton University Library, a two-volume illustrated catalogue scheduled for publication in spring 2013; as well as a contributor to Greek Manuscripts at Princeton, Sixth-Nineteenth Century: A Descriptive Catalogue (2010). All three volumes are being distributed by Princeton University Press. His research interests include history of the medieval book, magic, and law, and in recent years has been working on English chronicle rolls in the 13th and 14th centuries.
See the event flyer here.
Out of Cordoba: Averroes and Maimonides in Their Time and Ours
Thursday, November 17, IU Cinema
Lecture by Filmmaker Jacob Bender: 3pm
Film Screening: 6.30pm
Out of Cordoba is a feature documentary about Jews, Muslims, and Christians struggling for coexistence and against the hijacking of their respective religions by extremists. The film profiles several contemporary people of faith, who, inspired by two “wise men” from the city of Cordoba in medieval Spain — Averroes the Muslim, and Rabbi Moses Maimonides the Jew — are challenging the propositions that there is an inevitable “clash of civilizations” between the West and the Muslim world, an incompatibility between Islam and democracy, and an unsolvable conflict between Muslims and Jews.
Out of Cordoba is also the story of the film’s director, Jacob Bender, an American Jew and peace activist, as he undertakes a journey around the Mediterranean world after the attacks of 9/11 — in Spain, Morocco, France, Egypt, Palestine, and Israel — following in the footsteps of these two “wise men of Cordoba” in search of Muslims, Jews, and Christians committed to utilizing their religious traditions as sources of tolerance, democracy, and human rights. Among the extraordinary people encountered by the director is a Muslim leader in Spain who declares a “fatwa” against Osama bin Laden after the Al-Qaeda attacks at the Madrid train station; the foreign minister of Spain, who finds inspiration for his diplomacy in the legacy of Averroes and Maimonides; a Jewish physician in Morocco, one of the last Jewish doctors in the Arab world; Egyptian human rights activists, inspired by Averroes, who are attempting to democratize their country; a rabbi in Israel who defends Palestinian homes against demolition by the Israeli army; and an art historian decoding the secrets of one of the most enigmatic of Renaissance paintings.
The story of these courageous people in Out of Cordoba offer hope that religion need not be only a justification of hatred, but can also be a source of tolerance, justice, and peace.
See the event flyer here.
Mediævalia at the Lilly: How mediæval manuscripts were written and illuminated
November 3-4, Slocum Room, Lilly Library
British scribe and illuminator Patricia Lovett will be visiting the Lilly Library to talk about mediæval manuscripts, and will use and show the tools and materials of the craft.
Thursday 3rd November 11am–12·30pm
Looking at Manuscripts – a scribe and illuminator’s view of a selection of mediæval manuscripts from the Lilly Library.
Thursday 3rd November 2·30 –5pm
How Manuscripts Were Made – a demonstration and explanation of quills, vellum, parchment, miniature painting, gold and pigments.
Friday 4th November 5 –6·15pm
Gold on Parchment – a talk using examples of mediæval manuscripts to show the craft of manuscript production.
This will be followed by a reception.
Patricia Lovett is an author of a number of books on calligraphy, illumination and heraldry, is an Honoured Fellow of the Calligraphy and Lettering Arts Society and has taught, lectured and had artworks exhibited in the UK and many other countries.
Mediævalia at the Lilly is sponsored by the Medieval Studies Institute, the Lilly Library, and the Department of Germanic Studies.
To register for Thursday's events, contact the Lilly Library: 812 855 2452
For other questions, call: 812 855 3187
All events are free and open to the public.
See the event flyer here.
Undergraduate Open House
Wednesday, October 19, Ballantine 004, 4-6 pm
Come see what Medieval Studies has to offer! Rosemarie McGerr, the Institute's director, will be there to discuss the program, the MEST staff will be there to answer questions about our minor and certificate, and several of our professors and instructors, from disciplines as varied as Classics, French and Italian, Germanic Studies, Art History, English, Comparative Literature, and Religious Studies, will be in attendance to talk about their classes and their departments' course offerings.
See our event flyer here.
Lecture by David Brakke, "The Rediscovery of Shenoute the Great (347-465): Christianization and Social Conflict in Late Ancient Egypt"
Tuesday, October 18, Slocum Room, Lilly Library, 4-6 pm
For eighty years Shenoute led the White Monastery near Atripe, one of the largest and most influential monastic communities in late ancient Egypt. A prolific author and spellbinding orator, he left the most important body of work ever written in the Coptic language. And yet Shenoute remains little known to scholars of late antiquity, Byzantium, and the history of Christianity. This presentation will explain why this is so and describe the work of an international team of scholars to recover his life and work. It will focus particularly on the light that Shenoute's literary works and the monastery's archaeological remains can shed on the social conflicts that accompanied the rise of Christianity in Roman Egypt and the authority that Shenoute attempted to establish in his region.
A reception will follow the lecture.
See our event flyer here.
David Brakke is Professor of Religous Studies at Indiana University.
Medieval Studies Fall Reception
Sunday, September 25, Faculty Club (University Club upstairs), Indiana Memorial Union, 5-7 pm
Please join us for food, drink, and friendly faces!
War and Peace in Medieval European Lyric Poems: A Panel Discussion for the Bloomington Early Music Festival
Co-sponsored by the Indiana University Medieval Studies Institute
Wednesday, September 7, Oak Room, Indiana Memorial Union, 4-6 pm
This panel will address the discourses of making war and making peace that permeate the lyric poems of medieval Europe. In some cases, the references to making war are literal. Some poems describe the heroic acts of battle, while others lament the results of battle or reflect on reasons for the Crusades. We also have poems that express the desire for peace between warring factions. In other cases, references to making war and making peace are metaphors for negotiating the complex relationships between individuals in love or in competition. One important issue is the use of different “voices” in the words and music of lyric poems to suggest ways in which contrast and dialogue might lead to new perspectives, as well as creative artistry. The depictions of making war and making peace in medieval lyric poems reveal much about the ways in which people constructed the reasons for making war or peace in medieval Europe.
Bridget Balint, Associate Professor of Classical Studies
Hildegard Keller, Professor of Germanic Studies
H. Wayne Storey, Professor of Italian
Rosemarie McGerr, Professor of Comparative Literature, Moderator
A reception will follow the panel discussion.
For more on the Bloomington Early Music Festival...
(Certificates for half-price parking at the IMU lots are available to attendees.)
Recent Critical Trends in Boccaccio Studies
April 27, 10am-2:30pm
College Arts & Humanities Institute(1211 E. Atwater Avenue)
This workshop will feature presentations by Michael Sherberg (Washington University), Marco Veglia (University of Bologna) and Michelangelo Zaccarello (University of Verona) on recent scholarship and issues of methodology in Boccaccio studies as well as round-table discussions intended to involve graduate students and those interested in Boccaccio as a copyist, editor, scholar, author or cultural entrepreneur. All are encouraged to be active participants in the discussions. While this event is free and open to the public, seating is limited. Please indicate your desire to participate by writing to Wayne Storey (hstorey@indiana.edu) by April 25.
This event has been made possible thanks to the generous support of a grant from the College Arts & Humanities Institute, as well as generous funding from the Mary-Margaret Barr Koon Fund of the Department of French & Italian and from the Medieval Studies Institute.
Paul and Dante: Pilgrims to the Infinite
A lecture by Dr. Bernard McGinn, Divinity School, University of Chicago
Saturday, April 2, 2011 11:00 a.m. Woodburn Hall 101
Keynote address for Indiana University's 23rd Annual Medieval Studies Symposium
Knights, Pilgrims, Scholars and Dreamers: Wandering in the Middle Ages
Friday, April 1 and Saturday, April 2, 2011
Please check our symposium website for symposium program
Memory, Training, and the Medieval Singer of Tales
A lecture by Professor Karl Reichl
Carl Schurz Memorial Professor, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Spring 2011, Professor Emeritus, University of Bonn.
Tuesday, February 22, 2011 4:00 p.m. Slocum Room, Lilly Library
While there is some information on the performance and repertoire of the medieval ‘singer of tales’ (scop, minstrel, jongleur, spilman etc.), there is little evidence on how he acquired his skills. Did he study with a master-singer or simply memorize a written text? As the medieval sources are not only scanty but also ambiguous, the question arises in how far evidence from contemporary oral traditions may help to further our understanding of medieval oral/ oral-derived epic poetry.
In this paper, the making of the medieval singer of tales will be discussed with reference to material collected in the area of Turkic oral epic poetry.
Karl Reichl is Carl Schurz Memorial Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison for the Spring 2011semester and Professor Emeritus of the University of Bonn. As a medievalist he has been teaching in the English Department of the University of Bonn but as visiting professor also in departments of Comparative Literature and Oriental/ Near-Eastern Studies. His main research interests lie in medieval oral literature and in contemporary (or near-contemporary) oral epic poetry in Turkey and in the Turkic-speaking areas of Central Asia. His publications include: Turkic Oral Epic Poetry: Traditions, Forms, Poetic Structure, New York, ( 1992); Singing the Past: Turkic and Medieval Heroic Poetry, Ithaca, NY, (2000); Edige: A Karakalpak Oral Epic as Performed by Jumabay Bazarov, FF Communications 293, Helsinki, (2007). Forthcoming is a handbook in the ‘de Gruyter Lexikon’ series: Medieval Oral Literature, ed. K. Reichl, Berlin, New York: de Gruyte (October 2011).
Directions to the Lilly Library
Also of Interest
Mediaevalia at the Lilly
Medieval Studies Symposia
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