Center for Medieval and Early Modern Studies

On Friday, May 13, three sessions will be sponsored by the UF Center for Medieval and Early Modern Studies. Florin Curta organized all three.

Session 201: Cyril and Methodius: New Research on the Cyrillo-Methodian Mission and Its Aftermath
Session 255: The Archaeology of Early Medieval Europe: Hoarding
Session 313: The Medieval Transformation: A Roundtable Discussion with Jan Klápste

Session 328, Papers by Undergraduates II, includes presentations by recent UF graduates Mead Bowen and Emerson Richards.

Undergraduate Conference in Knoxville, April 8 2011

The Marco Institute for Medieval and Renaissance Studies is excited to announce its first undergraduate conference in Medieval and Renaissance Studies. The conference will be held on the campus of the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, Tennessee, on Friday, April 8, 2011. The theme for the conference is “Mysticism, Heresy, and Witchcraft,” but papers addressing any topic within the areas of Medieval and Renaissance Studies are gladly welcomed. The conference is open to undergraduate students throughout North America. Five $100 travel grants will be awarded to non-UT students on a competitive basis. A $15 registration fee will be collected on the day of the conference.

"Cosmic Time and the Dialogue Between Faith and History," Mon 4/4

Euan Cameron is arguably North America’s foremost authority on religion in the late medieval and early modern world. He is the Henry Luce III Professor of Reformation History at Union Seminary with a concurrent appointment in the religion department of Columbia University. He will be giving a public lecture on Monday, April 4 at 7:30 pm in Library West, Room 212—to the right of the circulation desk.
For an abstract of his talk see the posting on the Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere below
http://www.humanities.ufl.edu/calendar/20110404-Cameron.html

The Beast and the Book: Cervantes Symposium at UF, April 9

On Saturday April 9 UF will be hosting the Fifth Annual Florida Cervantes Symposium. In addition to the schedule of sessions listed on the program, I call your attention to the Keynote Address which will be given by Dr. Adrienne Martín, Vice President of the Cervantes Society of America and Professor of Spanish at UC Davis. Author of An Erotic Philology of Golden Age Spain (2008), Dr. Martín will be speaking on “Cervantes and Animal Studies”. At the reception following her address, the Alachua Consort will perform selections of early Iberian music, including the first movement of Sephardic female composer, Leonor Duarte’s Sinfonía. Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere: Florida Cervantes Symposium

"Motive in Music and Motivation in Scholarship": A lecture by Jennifer Thomas

In 1964, Lewis Lockwood tantalizingly closed his seminal article on Renaissance parody technique thus: “a sense of motivic organization . . . would eventually grow, under very different means of harmonic extension and control, into one of the permanently significant modes of Western musical thinking.”
My study of motivic organization has led me to consider Lockwood’s unpublished papers, theories of rhetoric, techniques of musical borrowing, formation of genre in art and music, and the nature of intellectual traditions, both musical and scholarly. My talk will touch lightly upon many of these broader topics and will conclude with a case study in motivic organization.

Princes and Religion: Daoism and Elite Patronage from the Ming Princely Institution

4 February, 12:00 pm, Walker 201D (Center for Jewish Studies Conference Room)
Richard Wang, Professor of Chinese Language & Literature, Department of Languages, Literatures & Cultures
In this presentation, Prof. Wang will examine the patronage of Daoism by the princes in the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) China. In addition to personal belief and self-cultivation, a prince had other reasons to patronize Daoism. As the regional overlords, the Ming princes (like other local elites) saw financing and organizing temple affairs and rituals, patronizing Daoist priests, or collecting and producing Daoist books as a chance to maintain their influence and show off their power. The prosperity of Daoist institutions, which attracted many worshippers, also demonstrated the princes’ political success. Moreover, under the state’s “restrictions towards princes” and with its rich economic resources, the Ming princes had the leisure time to pursue Daoist self-cultivation, as well as the privileges and resources to patronize Daoism. This presentation provides an overview of the Ming princely institution. It also explores the origins of Daoist patronage among the Ming princes in a cultural context.

Lecture by Will Hasty on 3/17: On Gottfried Leibniz's Attempted Christianization of China with Binary Arithmetic

Thursday, March 17., 5:10 pm, Pugh Hall, Room 120: An Early Modern Case of Globalization: On Gottfried Leibniz's Attempted Christianization of China with Binary Arithmetic, presented by Professor Will Hasty. Part of the Spring 2011 LLC Colloquia. For more information contact Dr. Galina Rylkova at grylkova@ufl.edu.

EMRG lecture

The Early Modern Reading Group hosted a lecture by Prof. R. Allen Shoaf entitled "Affinity Natural and Unnatural in Lucretius and Shakespeare" next Wednesday (January 12) at 4 p.m. in Pugh 210. All interested graduate students, professors, undergraduates, and friends are invited!

Late 2010

Japanese Traditional Music and Tales, December 1, 2010, 5:30 pm. Pugh 170

Yoko Hiraoka returns to UF to play her Japanese biwa, a type of lute. Music written for the biwa often commemorated events such as large- scale battles and the instrument is used in narative singing.

Medieval economics lecture, 4 PM, 8/4/10, 025 Keene-Flint Hall

"A Fresh Look at the De Roover Thesis: From Damn Lies to Statistics. " Dr A. Mark Smith, Curator’s Professor of History, Professor of Medieval History & History of Science, University of Missouri

Spring 2010

Medieval Congress at Kalamazoo

Professor Florin Curta (History/MEMS) organized four sessions at the 2010 International Congress on Medieval Studies under the sponsorship of the Center for Medieval and Early Modern Studies:

Friday, May 14:
Session 280: The Archaeology of Early Medieval Europe I: Ironworking in the Middle Ages
Session 346: The Archaeology of Early Medieval Europe II: Early Medieval Hillforts in Central Europe: Strongholds or Central Places?

Saturday, May 15:
Session 477: On the Fringes of Medieval Europe I: Medieval Transylvania
Session 522: On the fringes of Medieval Europe II: Albania in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages

Also of note are the two sessions on Theories of Medieval Literature sponsored by Exemplaria: A Journal of Theory in Medieval and Modern Studies, in honor of Al and Judy Shoaf of MEMS. Friday May 14, Sessions 265 and 332 .

17th biennial New College Conference on Medieval and Renaissance Studies, March 11-13, 2010

Vagantes conference, Albuquerque, March 11-13, 2010

In 2010, the University of New Mexico will host the annual graduate student medieval conference, Vagantes.

UF New College Presentations, March 3 & 5, Flint Library

Several of our grad. students will be presenting papers at the biennial New College Conference on Medieval and Renaissance Studies at the end of next week. At least three of them would like to do a dry-run of their presentations for the conference and would very much appreciate and benefit from your feedback. Each paper will be 20 minutes followed by a short time for questions.

Fri., March 5, 3:00-4:00
Jews as the Other “Race” in Fifth-Century Northern Italy
Robert McEachnie

Redeeming the Memory of an “Arian” Past: Representation of Mission in the Fifth Century
Anna Lankina-Web

Convergences and Conversions: The Merchant of Venice into the 21st Century, March 1-2, Ustler Hall Atrium

Monday March 1, 7:30 pm: Scenes from The Merchant of Venice, directed by Sidney Homan. Reception following.

Tuesday, March 2, 10-noon: Discussion of Sarah Kofman's essay "Conversions. The Merchant of Venice Under the Sign of Saturn" http://web.jst.ufl.edu/pdf/ConversionsEnglish001.pdf. Introduction by Mary Beth Mader (University of Memphis), followed by a public discussion with the Posen Seminar in Secular Judaism, chaired by Mary Beth Mader and Nina Caputo (History)

Tuesday, March 2, 1:30-3:00 Panel moderated by Mary Watt (Languages, Literatures, and Cultures)
R. Allen Shoaf (English): "The Meaning Has a Meaning: The Difference between Barabas and Shylock"
Maureen Turim (English, Film and Media Studies): "Framing Shylock in William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice (2004)."
Judith W. Page (English, Center for Women's Studies): "Jane Austen and the Allure of Shakespeare's Shylock"

Tuesday, March 2, 3:30-5:30 Roundtable discussion of Janet Adelman's Blood Relations: Christian and Jew in The Merchant of Venice (2008): Shifra Armon (Spanish and Portuguese); Nina Caputo (History); Lyrissa Lidsky (Law); Peter Rudnytsky (English); R. Allen Shoaf (English); chaired by Mitchell Hart (History)

Cervantes lecture, Thurs. Feb. 25, 9:30 a.m.

Prague Meets Madrid in Toledo: Sexual Violence and Political Unconscious in Cervantes’s “La fuerza de la sangre” by Professor Shifra Armon
Thursday, February 25, 2010, 9:30 a.m. – 11:00 a.m., Reitz Union 363
Keynote Address (in English) of the 5th Interdisciplinary Colloquium on Spanish and Latin American Literatures, Linguistics, and Cultures

New UF library resource: Artstor

ARTstor, a digital library of more than one million images in the arts, architecture, humanities, and social sciences with a suite of software tools to view, present, and manage images for research and pedagogical purposes, is now available for use at UF. For a more detailed overview, please click here http://bit.ly/4RuSmF.

UF's subscription will provide a rich resource for medieval and early modern studies.

4th Annual Sacred Leaves Graduate Symposium, University of South Florida Libraries, Tampa, Feb. 18-19, 2010

Encountering the “Other” in the Medieval World: Textual Examinations of Resistance and Reconciliation across the Traditions, 500-1500

This year’s keynote speaker and senior scholar is Dr. David Nirenberg, the Deborah R. and Edgar D. Jannotta Professor - John U. Nef Committee on Social Thought, Department of History, and in the College - The University of Chicago.
For more information about the symposium please visit: http://medievalstudies.lib.usf.edu/

Faithful Narratives: The Challenge of Religion in History

A colloquium consisting of four lectures in Fall 2008, four in Spring 2009, and four in Fall 2009.

Graduate students can sign up for a 1-credit course, HIS 6905: Religious History Colloquium, whose main material will be the four lectures each term. Contact Andrea Sterk & Nina Caputo or sign up with Kathleen in the History Department office.

Spring 2009

Congratulations to Emerson Richards & Benjamin Weissman!

(April 2009) Emerson S. Richards (MEMS) and Benjamin Weissman (History) have been named to the the University Scholars Program. Their proposals were selected for funding by the University Honors Program.

Emerson Richards’s topic is “Cultural Diffusion of Arthurian Legend from 6th- 15th century Using the Character Mordred as Vehicle and Social Marker.”

Benjamin Weissman proposes "Political Alliances and Gift Giving Between Anglian England and Scandinavia", with an archaelogical focus.

Third Annual Sacred Leaves Graduate Symposium

February 19-20, 2009
University of South Florida, Tampa Library, Tampa, FL
Website

University of South Florida/Tampa Library announces its Third Annual Sacred Leaves Graduate Symposium entitled: "Comparative Mysticism of the Middle Ages, 1000-1600" Keynote Address: Michael Sells, John Henry Barrows Professor, University of Chicago
"Mysticism, Longing and the Erotic in the Writings of 13th-Century Sufi Master Ibn al-Arabi"

Vagantes 2009 at FSU

The medievalists of Florida State University have the honor of hosting the eighth annual Vagantes Medieval Graduate Student Conference on March 5-7, 2009. For more information, see www.vagantesconference.org

Florida MedievaLists

The next meeting will be April 17-18, 2009. Dr. Frances Andrews, from the University of St Andrews, will present a talk entitled "Religion and Public Life in Late Medieval Italy."

The UF Motet Choir will perform a concert of Renaissance sacred music in the beautiful Baughman Center at Lake Alice Tuesday evening, March 31, at 7:30 p.m. The program is "Early Music from Paris and the Loire Valley" and includes works that were very well known and appreciated during their own time, but little known today. The music dates from the 12th, 13th, and 16th centuries. The concert is free and open to the public. The Baughman Center has a small parking lot adjacent. The space is not suitable for young children, as there is no ante-room of any kind.

Medieval Music Concert, Dec.16

Musica Vera is performing on December 16th at 7:30 pm in the University Auditorium. This concert will be free of charge.

MEMS Graduate Student Travel Stipend Awards

Andrei Gandila, History
Delivering a paper titled "The Early Byzantine Coin Circulation in the Eastern Provinces. A Statistical Approach" at the International Medieval Congress at Kalamazoo, Michigan (May 7-10, 2009).

Robert McEachnie, History
Delivering a paper titled "Ritual Construction as Christianization: Infant Baptism in Fourth and Fifth Century Italy at the American Society of Church History at Montreal (April 16-20, 2009)

Katalin F. Rac, History
Delivering a paper titled "From social marginality to cultural centrality: Dance and the Jewish master of Italy" at the Vagantes Graduate Student Conference in Tallahassee (March 6-8, 2009)

Randi Marie Smith, English
Delivering a paper titled "'Like Will to Like': Interior Likeness and Relationships in Fulwell and Shakespeare" at the 2009 South Central Renaissance Conference (SCRC).

Matthew J. Snyder, English
Delivering paper titled "Torn Limb from Limen: Grendel at the Space Between" at the International Medieval Congress at Kalamazoo, Michigan (May 7-10, 2009).

Fall 2008

Ruff Life: Brown Bag Lecture 9/12

"Ruff Life: Masculine Court Community in Imperial Spain (1500-1700)"
Shifra Armon, Spanish and Portuguese Languages and Literatures
Friday, September 12 11:30-12:30 pm
Ustler Hall, 3rd Floor Library Area

This is part of the Gender Conversations series of the UF Center for Women's Studies & Gender Research: An Open Forum for Research Discussion

Paul Victor leaves UF Libraries

MEMS is sad to report that this August Paul Victor, Jr., left UF to take over as Head of Instructional & Research Support Services for the Eastern Washington University Library. This is a great move for Paul but we will miss him. Matthew Loving will be taking over the 1-credit Methods course Paul has been teaching for us.

Spring 2008

47th Annual Meeting of the Florida Conference of Historians

The Florida Conference of Historians will meet on Feb. 28- March 1, 2008, hosted by Jacksonville Univ. on the beach at Jacksonville Beach, FL.

The 16th biennial New College Conference on Medieval and Renaissance Studies

will take place March 6-8 2008 in Sarasota, Florida. The program committee invites one-page abstracts of proposed twenty-minute papers on topics in European and Mediterranean history, literature, art, and religion from the fourth to the seventeenth centuries. Interdisciplinary work is particularly appropriate to the conference’s broad historical and disciplinary scope. Planned sessions are welcome.

Game Day! From Medieval Times to Modern Age

This year's Carnevale Symposium celebrates Game Day! Join us in late January and early February on campus and at the Thomas Center. First event: Wed. January 23, Medieval Times offers jousting on the Plaza of the Americas!
Online article.

Spring 2008 Honors in Paris: "Court and Capital, 1364-1715"

Honors in Paris, Spring 2008 is open to students from all majors, and you do not have to speak French to attend. Priority is given to students in the Honors Program, but all students with a minimum 3.0 GPA are encouraged to apply. A course of special interest to MEM students will be taught by Dr. Elizabeth Ross, elizross@ufl.edu).

Charlemagne Window at Chartres

September 19, 1:55 pm, Dauer Hall, Room 215
"Long Mantles and Short Coats: Charlemagne and Roland in the Window at Chartres." Dr. Mary Jane Schenck, University of Tampa

Studies of the Charlemagne window at Chartres have accepted that the iconography is based on three Latin texts that retell important episodes in the Emperor's life. Although The Song of Roland is not considered a textual source, Roland has been identified in so many panels in the window that he seems to eclipse Charlemagne. Only the intense modern interest in the epic explains the distortion, not iconographic evidence. This lecture will argue that the figure with the long red mantle in four
contested panels is Charlemagne, whereas Roland, who makes few appearances, is clothed in a short coat of mail. The identification of the Christian warrior in three of these panels has been debated, but the mounted single combat (#16), is so well known as Roland that it is an icon for his legend. The traditional wisdom is overturned through a careful comparison of costumes, color, and helmet style. The lecture will also introduce the idea that the vernacular, not Latin version of the Pseudo-Turpin Chronicle is a source. This new reading repositions Charlemagne as the focal point of the window and offers insights into individual panels, especially the famous rondel with Roland, Durendal, the oliphant, and a surprise enemy.

Spring 2007

Entre Nous: March 21st
Professor William Little will give a talk titled "Halq al Wadi: aTricultural Causa Belli and a Mise en Abyme in Don Quijote: real and virtual specular images."

Florida Medievalists Spring Meeting: University of South Florida (Tampa) on Saturday, March 3, 2007. ; Keynote Speaker: Miguel de Asua, Professor of History of Science and Medicine at the Universidad Nacional de San Martin, Buenos Aires. Check the program at http://www.lib.usf.edu/flmedlst/

Soldiers, Saints and Scaramouche: The Iconography of the Sword: An exhibit of medieval arms and armor, lent by collectors throughout the region, at the Thomas Center from January 13 to February 19.

Lectures,The East in the West? Muslims and Jews in Christian Europe. Of speical interest:
Olivia Remie Constable, University of Notre Dame : "Muslims, Christians, Jews, and Chess: Gaming and Courtly Culture in Medieval Spain"
Ben Ehlers (University of Georgia) and Pawe Kras (University of Lublin) : "Politics and Religious Identities in Pre-Modern Europe: Case Studies in Poland and Spain" ; Comment: "A Modern Perspective," Michelle Campos (University of Florida)

News and Events Archive

Spring 2011

International Medieval Congress, Kalamazoo, May 11-14, 2011