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At the Medieval Congress in Kalamazoo, how is the sponsoring “Societas Fontibus Historiae Medii Aevi Inveniendis, vulgo dicta” more colloquially referred to (bonus points for knowing what they do as well)?
Please send trivia responses in email with the subject line “trivia” directly to gabriel gryffyn (ggryffyn.cms@gmail.com).
We have a very impressive presence at the Medieval Congress at Kalamazoo this year. Please join us in supporting and congratulating such an impressive range of research by UMN professors and students.
The following sessions are sponsored by the Center for Medieval Studies:
--Session 428, “Globalizing the Middle Ages I: What Have We Done So Far and Where Should We Go Next?” (A roundtable).
--Session 485, “Globalizing the Middle Ages II: Mapping the Medieval World,” includes a paper by Maggie Ragnow from the James Ford Bell Library on “Mapping Asia: Perspectives from East and West.”
--Sesson 542, “Globalizing the Middle Ages III: Ghazni, Tabriz, and Samarkand: Sounds and Images from Western and Central Asia,” includes papers by Iraj Bashiri on “Divine and Personal Will in the Thought of Nasir-I Khusrau” and Gabriela Currie on “Imagining Sound in Ilkhanid and Timurid Miniatures.”
Other UMN students and faculty present:
--Session 155, “Law and Life in Occitania: Considering the Costuma d’Agen in Its Contexts” (A roundtable) features Professor Ron Akehurst.
--Session 318, features Professor Akehurst’s paper “Before the South of France Was the pays de Droit Ecrit.”
--Session 344, Diane Anderson will present "Walahfrid Strabo and Hellen Waddell: Re-editing a Queer Icon."
--Session 522, Professor Bernard Bachrach’s “Some Observations on the Merovingian Economy.”
--Session 29, Steve Bivans will present “Viking Warfare in the Ninth Century: The Contributions of the Annales Xantenses and Annales Vedastini.”
--Session 612, Mary Frances Brown’s “The Lyric Encyclopedia: Courtly Song and Fromal Innovation in Matfre Ermengaud’s Breviari d’Amor.”
--Session 264, Erik Carlson will read “Drinking, Speaking, and Acting in Beowulf.”
--Session 291, Ashley Deering "Saving Faith in Languedoc: The Dominican Practice of Medieval "Doctors of Souls."
--Session 282, Philip Grace presents “Motive, Means, and Opportunity: Fathers in Late Medieval Didactic Treatises.”
--Session 391, Elissa Hansen and Lindsay Craig will present, respectively “The ‘Pilgrim Way’: Travel, Ecclesiastical Authority, and Regional Identity in Two Eighth-Century Hagiographies” and “By the Saints and by the Book: Invocations, Implications, and Transmission in Roman de la Rose.”
--Session 457, Jeff Hartman, “Depending on the Utlands: Food and Famine in Fourteenth-Century Iceland.”
--Session 379, Professor Ruth Karras presents “Servanthood and Age at Marriage in England and France.”
--Session 157, Mollie Madden reads “Army Finance: The Accounts of John Henxteworth for 1355-1356.”
--Session 244, Professor Stephen Martin participates in "The Place of Digital Work in Medieval Studies: Where are we Now, Where are We Going?" (a panel discussion)
--Session 291, Professor Stephen Martin reads "Imagining Love and the Middle Ages in Modern Editions of _Aucassin et Nicolete_."
--Session 31, Adam Oberlin presents “’Translating’ Tristan: Hakon Hakonarson’s Norway and the Possibilities of Translatio.”
--Session 344. Stephanie Van D'Elden reads "Deception as Translation: Examples from the Tristan Romance."
--Session 533, Tiffany Vann Sprecher, “’You will be called priest of the Lord’” A Model Sermon by Jacques de Vitry.”
This is not even to mention those who are organizing or presiding over sessions, or the vast number of UMN alumni who have moved on to other places who are presenting this year. We have good reason to be proud.
History graduate student David Crane will be studying Arabic at UCLA this summer, with the support of a FLAS grant.
Congratulations, David!
Basit Qureshi has received a Critical Language Scholarship (CLS) from the US Department of State. The scholarship fully funds a number of individuals to travel overseas during the summer in order to study what have been deemed critical need languages. From June 11th to August 9th, he will be studying intensive Arabic at the American Research Center in Egypt (ARCE), which is located in Cairo.
Ann Zimo, graduate student in the Department of History has received both a summer-term and year-long FLAS fellowship to study Arabic.
She plans to do her summer study in Chicago before returning to us in the Fall. Congratulations, Ann!
History Professor and CMS Director Ruth Karras was recently made a Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America.
MAA Fellows are scholars who have made notable contributions to the Academy's goals to "support research, publication and teaching in medieval art, archaeology, history, law, literature, music, philosophy, religion, science, social and economic institutions and all other aspects of the Middle Ages." There are only a maximum of 125 Fellows at any given time.
More kudos are in order for History Department graduate students Gabriel Hill and Tiffany vann Sprecher.
They've each been awarded a Graduate Research Partnership Program (GRPP) grant. This CLA program encourages graduate students to partner with a faculty advisor on projects of shared interest. It provides Fellows with a summer stipend.
Please join us in congratulating Don Swanbeck, from English and Rachel Gibson, from French and Italian on their reciept of FLAS Fellowships.
The FLAS supports a graduate language studies, with preference given to students who would like to study less-commonly taught languages and advanced work in more common languages.
Don applied to study Arabic, and won both the summer FLAS (to study a specific language only) and the school-year version (which comes with a full tuition waiver and stipend for the year). He hopes to apply the skills he learns to working with medieval Arabic romances.
Rachel won the summer FLAS, for advanced study in Italian and will be headed all the way to Rome to do so.
In the attached photograph, it’s fairly obvious who’s rising out of the book. However, who is trapped under it and what sort of book is it that has crushed him?
Please send trivia answers directly to gabriel gryffyn (ggryffyn.cms@gmail.com) with the subject line "trivia."
Answer: The picture is from folio 85r of the 13th century German law code Sachsenspiegel. http://www.sachsenspiegel-online.de/cms/ It is believed to have been compiled and translated from Latin by the Saxon administrator Eike von Repgow. Here, Repgow is being crushed by his own book, while two wrong-doers kick him in the head.
Who is widely credited as having invented the form of musical notation that we still use today?
Please send trivia responses in email with the subject line “trivia” directly to gabriel gryffyn (ggryffyn.cms@gmail.com) by noon on Wednesday 8 April.
Answer: Guido of Arezzo
Which Canterbury Tale has a possible reference to the tradition of April Fool’s Day?
Please send trivia responses in email with the subject line “trivia” directly to gabriel gryffyn (ggryffyn.cms@gmail.com) by noon on Wednesday 8 April.
Answer: The Nun's Priest's Tale, which makes reference to "March 32nd."