Jennifer Immich (Anthropology) has been awarded the Barry Prize by the American Society for Irish Medieval Studies (ASIMS). This is an annual prize awarded for the best conference paper on a subject of relevance to Irish Medieval Studies written by a graduate student. Jennifer's winning interdisciplinary paper is titled "Three Timber Castles: Modeling Landscape Siting with GIS." Please join us in congratulating Jennifer!
Congratulations to Barbara Weissberger, Professor Emerita in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese! Her article "'Es de Lope': Child Martyrdom in Cervantes's Baños de Argel", published in the journal Cervantes, 32.2, (Fall 2012), was awarded the Luis Andrés Murillo Prize for best article of the year in that journal.
Ann Zimo (History) has been awarded the Social Science Research Council's International Dissertation Research Fellowship and the Council of American Overseas Research Centers' Multi-Country Research Fellowship. These will allow her to spend next year abroad completing research for her dissertation on the experience of the Muslim communities under crusader rule.
Amanda Taylor (English) has received the Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship for European Studies, Summer 2013 (Italian) and the English's department's Marcella DeBourg Fellowship, awarded to students whose work gives "creative expression to women's lives."
Congratulations to Ann and Amanda!
The Center for Medieval Studies at the University of Minnesota is establishing an annual lecture in medieval communication technologies in memory of the renowned paleography and chemical engineering professor Rutherford "Gus" Aris. We are very excited to inaugurate this event with a lecture by Professor Elaine Treharne, a distinguished scholar of medieval manuscripts from Stanford University. Professor Treharne will deliver a lecture on Thursday, May 2 entitled "'True Vision': Modeling the Medieval Future of Digital Technology."
For full details about this event, visit the University events calendar.
Department of History professor and past CMS director Kay Reyerson has won the Robert L. Kindrick-CARA Award for Outstanding Service to Medieval Studies. A description of the award from the academy website:
"The Robert L. Kindrick-CARA Award for Outstanding Service to Medieval Studies recognizes Medieval Academy members who have provided leadership in developing, organizing, promoting, and sponsoring medieval studies through the extensive administrative work that is so crucial to the health of medieval studies but that often goes unrecognized by the profession at large."
Please join CMS in congratulating Kay for this well-deserved honor!
The 48th International Congress on Medieval Studies will be held May 9-12, 2013 in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Check out our list of sessions featuring Minnesota graduate students, professors, and alumni and let us know if we've missed anyone. If you would like to ride in the CMS van, please send an email to cmedst@umn.edu to let us know. The van will leave Minnesota on Wednesday, May 8 and leave Kalamazoo after lunch on Sunday, May 12. Cost will be determined based on participation.
Congratulations to Mary Franklin-Brown, Associate Professor in the Department of French and Italian! The American Comparative Literature Association has awarded the 2013 Harry Levin Prize to Professor Franklin-Brown for her book Reading the World: Encyclopedic Writing in the Scholastic Age (University of Chicago). The 2013 Levin prize distinguishes the best first book in comparative literature published in 2010-2012.
Name one plant used to produce a pigment which, mixed with egg yolk, was often substituted for gold in medieval painting.
Please send trivia responses by email to emsdgs@umn.edu with "Trivia" in the subject line. Local trivia winners can arrange to pick up a CMS mug by sending us an email or visiting our office in 1030 Heller Hall. Also feel free to send ideas for future trivia questions.
In what city is Saint Thomas Aquinas's heart preserved?
Please send trivia responses by email to emsdgs@umn.edu with "Trivia" in the subject line. Local trivia winners can arrange to pick up a CMS mug by sending us an email or visiting our office in 1030 Heller Hall. Also feel free to send ideas for future trivia questions.
On February 6, Vivian Ramalingam will be presenting a workshop titled "Lancelot and the Rabbis." The workshop is being held in 1210 Heller Hall and begins at 11:30 a.m. If you are interested in participating, please respond to cmedst@umn.edu and be sure to check out the handout Vivian has prepared. It includes a passage and some suggestions for how to prepare for the workshop. Handout for Lancelot-2_6_13.doc
Look for a new trivia question in the first week of spring semester. Until then, please send your suggestions for future trivia questions to cmedst@umn.edu.
January
Tuesday, January 29
Gabriel Hill, History, University of Minnesota
"Marginalizing Mary: Fifteenth-Century Revisions to John Mirk's Festial"
4:00 p.m., 1210 Heller Hall
February
Tuesday, February 5
Karen Marsalek, English, St. Olaf College
"Spirit/Body and Ghost/Corpse Pairings in Early English Drama"
Co-sponsored with the Center for Early Modern History
4:00 p.m., 1210 Heller Hall
Wednesday, February 6
Vivian Ramalingam, Independent Scholar
"Lancelot and the Rabbis"
Vivian has prepared a handout for the workshop, including suggestions for how participants can prepare. Handout for Lancelot-2_6_13.doc
N.B. This event is a lunchtime workshop.
11:30 a.m., 1210 Heller Hall
Tuesday, February 19
Heather Flowers, Anthropology, University of Minnesota
"Entangled Bodies, Ambiguous Beasts: Ideologies of Transformation in Early Medieval England"
4:00 p.m., 1210 Heller Hall
Tuesday, February 26
Claire Sponsler, English, University of Iowa
"Media Archaeology and Medieval Drama"
4:00 p.m., 1210 Heller Hall
March
Tuesday, March 12
Peter Wells, Anthropology, University of Minnesota
"Ornaments, Burials, and Change in Migration Period Europe"
4:00 p.m., 1210 Heller Hall
April
Tuesday, April 2
Reuven Amitai, History, Hebrew University, Jerusalem
"250 Years of 'Foreign' Control: The Impact of Mamluk Rule on the History of Palestine and Its Environs"
4:00 p.m., 1210 Heller Hall
Tuesday, April 9
Riccardo Pizzinato, Art History, University of Minnesota Morris
"Diptych Vision and Ruler Theology in the Codex Aureus of Saint Emmeram"
4:00 p.m., 1210 Heller Hall
Friday, April 12
IAS Mediterranean Collaborative Workshop on the Mediterranean South
Shamil Jeppie, Director of the Timbouctou Manuscripts Project, University of Cape Town
"A Timbuktu Book Collector between the Mediterranean and the Sahel"
5:30 p.m., 1210 Heller Hall
Saturday, April 13
IAS Mediterranean Collaborative Workshop on the Mediterranean South
Getatchew Haile, Ethiopian Study Center, Hill Museum and Manuscript Library
"The Case of Ethiopian Manuscripts"
Part of a larger panel titled "African Manuscripts and Their Influence on the Mediterranean World"
9:00 a.m., 1210 Heller Hall
Tuesday, April 16
Ramzi Rouighi, History, University of Southern California
"The Role of Islam in the Medieval Mediterranean"
4:00 p.m., 1210 Heller Hall
May
Thursday, May 2
The Inaugural Rutherford Aris Memorial Lecture
Elaine Treharne, English, Stanford University
"'True Vision': Modelling the Medieval Future of Digital Technology"
7:00 p.m., 120 Andersen Library
Tuesday, May 7
Kieran O'Conor, National University of Ireland - Galway
"Medieval Rural Settlement in Anglo-Norman Ireland"
3:30 p.m., Blegen 415
According to Isidore of Seville's Etymologiae, a certain creature is said to be especially hostile to oysters. This creature waits patiently for the oyster to open its shell, inserts a pebble that prevents the oyster from completely closing its shell, and then devours the oyster's flesh. Name this oyster-eating creature.
Please send trivia responses by email to cmedst@umn.edu with "Trivia" in the subject line. Local trivia winners can arrange to pick up a CMS mug by sending us an email or visiting our office in 1030 Heller Hall. Also feel free to send ideas for future trivia questions.
As Thanksgiving feasting approaches, remember to eat your leafy greens. Collards are a staple in kitchens of the American South. The name "collard" is a corruption of what older name for the primitive cultivated cabbage of the middle ages, commonly included in pottage and said to sharpen sight, ease gout, and heal ulcers?
Please send trivia responses to emsdgs@umn.edu with "Trivia" in the subject line. Local trivia winners can arrange to pick up a CMS mug by sending us an email or visiting the office in 1030 Heller Hall. Also feel free to send ideas for future trivia questions.
Professor Robert S. Nelson, Yale University: "'Lords of One Quarter and One Half Quarter of the Empire of Romania': Byzantine Art and State Authority in Venice"
Part of the James Ford Bell Library "Celebrating Venice!" series
"Once did she hold the gorgeous East in fee And was the safeguard of the West..." Wordsworth thus begins a sonnet, titled "On the Extinction of the Venetian Republic," written in 1802 after the city had fallen to Napoleon. The English poet had learned well an insistent theme of Venetian political propaganda. Although the historical reality was more complex, the message was essential to Venetian identity, and art and spoils of victory over Byzantium played an important role in maintaining this and other myths of the city. This lecture will examine the Venetians use and adaptation of Byzantine artifacts during and after the Middle Ages.
Robert Nelson is a professor of the History of Art at Yale University, where he studies and teaches medieval art, mainly in the Eastern Mediterranean, and the history and methods of art history. He was the co-curator of Holy Image, Hallowed Ground: Icons from Sinai at the J. Paul Getty Museum in 2006-2007. His book, Hagia Sophia, 1850-1950 (2004), asks how the cathedral of Constantinople, once ignored or despised, came to be regarded as one of the great monuments of world architecture. Current projects involve art and the ideology of war, the social lives of illuminated Greek manuscripts in Byzantium and their reception in Renaissance Italy, the artistic perception of light in the Middle Ages, and the collecting of Byzantine art in twentieth-century Europe and America.
Among Professor Nelson's many other publications are Later Byzantine Painting: Art, Agency, and Appreciation (2007) and, as co-editor, The Old Testament in Byzantium (with Paul Magdalino, 2010); San Marco, Byzantium and the Myths of Venice (with Henry Maguire, 2010); and Approaching the Holy Mountain: Art and Liturgy at St. Catherine's Monastery in the Sinai (with Sharon Gerstel, 2011).