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Society for Medieval Archaeology Annual Student Colloquium, University of Exeter, 27th-29th November
This year’s annual student colloquium for the Society for Medieval Archaeology is being organised by a group of our CMS PGRs and will be held here at the University of Exeter, 27th-29th November. The conference is interdisciplinary – medievalists of all interests all are welcome!
The deadline for submission of abstracts has been extended to Friday 11th October 2019.
This event aims to provide students and early career researchers with an opportunity to share and discuss their research in a friendly and supportive environment.
We welcome papers from across the medieval period (5th-16th centuries) and from all geographical areas. Papers from subjects outside archaeology but with a broader medieval significance will also be considered. We are particularly keen to encourage those adopting an interdisciplinary approach.
Abstracts of 150-250 words should be emailed to:
Please include ‘Student Colloquium Abstract’ in the subject line and add up to 5 keywords alongside the abstract. Papers will be 15 mins in length with additional time for questions.
We have 4x £50 travel bursaries to award students presenting at the conference, sponsored by Prof. James Clark, Associate Dean for Research for the College of Humanities at the University of Exeter, and prizes kindly donated by our sponsors will be awarded for the best student presentations!
Programme: There will be two days of student presentations plus:
- A keynote presentation delivered by Dr Duncan Wright (BGU) entitled: ‘Crafters of Kingship: Smiths, elite power, and gender in early medieval Europe’
- A ‘Getting Published’ workshop and Q&A panel delivered by current SMA journal editor Dr Aleks McClain (University of York) and previous editor Prof. Oliver Creighton (University of Exeter)
- An optional conference dinner at ASK Italian (£14.95 for 2 courses or £17.95 for 3 courses)
- And a free tour of medieval Exeter on the third and final day, delivered by John Allan, Exeter Cathedral Archaeologist.
Registration: Registration is FREE for all members of the Society and £20 for all non-members. Membership of the Society is the same as the cost of registration – so you could always just join instead! For further information, please see the Society webpages.
Registration is now open: click here to register
Members of the Society will require a code to secure their free ticket. This will be emailed to all members of the society but if there are any issues please do not hesitate to get in touch by emailing:
Please note, registration for the conference will close on 13th November 2019.
Travel to the conference: If you are travelling to the conference by train we have secured you a great discount on your travel with our partners at Great Western Rail when you purchase your tickets through this link.
FAQ’s
- The outbound leg of the journey is fixed and is non changeable
- The return leg is fully flexible
- The ticket is not refundable outside of normal conditions of carriage
- The delegate must present proof of conference attendance. A delegate may be asked to provide this proof by the train manager and failure to do so may result in having to pay the difference on a full price anytime ticket. Proof can be in the form of acceptance letter or email to the relevant email.
- If the fare is not available check the station you are departing from. It must be a GWR station on the GWR network. Certain station near to the venue station may not applicable to receive the Conference fare.
Ellie March, Phd Student in Archaeology and History
Movement and Mobility in the Medieval Mediterranean (6th-15th centuries): Society for the Medieval Mediterranean 6th Biennial Conference in Memory of Simon Barton
Alun Williams reports on the Society for the Medieval Mediterranean conference, held in the Institut d’Estudis Catalans (IEC), Barcelona.
The 2019 Conference of the Society for the Medieval Mediterranean took place in the historic centre of Barcelona between 8 and 11 July in the beautiful and (mostly) neo-classical surroundings of the Casa de Convalescència, a seventeenth-century building close to the Rambla. Our friend and colleague Simon Barton had been an early enthusiast for this venue, and we were all excited that the conference would be held, for the first time, on the shores of the Mediterranean itself. Following Simon’s sad and untimely death in December 2017, the executive committee of the SMM resolved to dedicate the conference to his memory and legacy. Simon had served as society president from 2013 until his death and had been an innovative and inclusive choice, initiating society book and article prizes and student bursaries; there was, therefore, a great determination to make the event a fitting and warm celebration as well as one that reflected the debt to Simon and his work for the society.
Thirty-two panels presented papers over four days, each with the overall focus chosen by the Scientific and Organising Committee. Because the society has always welcomed contributions from History, Archaeology, Religious Studies, Art, Literature and other disciplines that comprise Medieval Studies, conference papers reflected the complexity and diversity that has characterised the medieval Mediterranean. Furthermore, many papers discussed areas where earlier ideas had received comparatively recent attention: the mobility of Muslim minorities in Iberia and Jessica Tearney-Pearce’s fascinating paper entitled “Turning the Sea into a Church: Maritime Devotion in the Medieval Mediterranean”. Despite this inevitable range in scope and discipline, the conference was coherent and stimulating. It attracted scholars from Europe, the U.S. and the Middle East, with numbers from southern and south-eastern Europe up sharply on previous conferences.
Two excellent keynote addresses were delivered by Petra Sijpesteijn (Leiden) and Amy Remensynder (Brown University). Petra has long served as a member of the editorial board on al-Masāq – the society’s house journal – and her paper was entitled “Global Networks: Mobility and Exchange in the Mediterranean (600-1000)”. This set the tone for the conference, concentrating as it did on the period following the founding and early centuries of Muslim dominance in the Mediterranean. It was chiefly concerned with the ways in which trade, the movement of people, and cultural exchange proved to be more enduring and determining influences on mobility and intellectual integration than political or religious divergence and conflict. Amy Remensynder, who knew Simon well and has an established link with Exeter, gave the second keynote speech on “The Restless Mediterranean, a Sea in Motion”. In places, it was a lyrical, almost poetic presentation, the restless sea itself and its relentless motion providing a kind of metaphor for human movement, travel and mobility in the Mediterranean Basin and its hinterland. The sea was, furthermore, part of that mobility, providing not just a backdrop but a powerful, pervasive and determining element within it.
Perhaps the most poignant moment in the conference came at the end when a special session in honour of Simon Barton, chaired by his former student Antonella Liuzzo Scorpo (Lincoln), was convened specifically to remind delegates of Simon’s work – as well as to highlight further areas of research. The session, “New Directions in Medieval Iberian Studies: Simon Barton’s Scholastic Legacy” comprised papers from a former colleague, Therese Martin (IH-CCHS, CSIC-Madrid) and two of Simon’s PhD students, Teresa Witcombe and Teresa Tinsley. Therese Martin spoke on “Once and Future Queen: Urraca Redux (1109/2019)”; Teresa Witcombe’s subject was “’Reconquista’ and Crusade in Thirteenth-Century Burgos”; and Teresa Tinsley’s paper was entitled “Reframing the ‘Reconquista’: Hernando de Baeza’s Slant on the Conquest of Granada.” As well as presenting papers of exceptional insight and originality, each speaker acknowledged, sometimes with considerable emotion, her debt to Simon’s careful, diligent and inspirational guidance. The session prompted a wide range of questions from the audience and was, certainly from the perspective of those of us who knew Simon, the highlight of the conference and a fitting denouement.
I have now retired as society secretary after twelve years in post and was awarded with an honorary fellowship at the conference. This was a wholly unexpected honour for which I record my deep gratitude. We now look forward to the society’s 2021 conference, also to be held in the Mediterranean, at Rethymno on the island of Crete – and at which I hope to play a full part.
Alun Williams
Exploring Late Medieval Links Across the Seas at Exeter
This week we have a guest post from Sheila Sweetinburgh at Canterbury Christ Church University, who is reporting on the Fifteenth Century conference, held in Exeter last week, with a good showing of Centre staff and PhD students. The post first appeared on Canterbury Christ Church University’s Centre for Kent History and Heritage blog here and is reproduced in full here with permission and many thanks. Please consider following their blog!
Catherine Rider
This week is more of a brief note in that Professor Louise Wilkinson has been very busy writing the report on History’s impact work over the last few years, including the activities of the Centre, as well as getting matters organised for the new undergraduates, while Dr Diane Heath has also been busy working on her ‘Medieval Animals’ application. She has also been getting ready for the Canterbury Education Day where the Centre is one of the places involved. The initiative is organised by The Canterbury Tales, and St Augustine’s Abbey is another of the venues where activities take place.
In contrast to these Canterbury-based activities, I have been away from Kent having been at ‘The Fifteenth Century’ conference in Exeter. Among the plenary speakers was Professor Caroline Barron, whom some of you may remember will be coming to Canterbury in April 2020 to speak at the Medieval Canterbury Weekend. Next April she will be talking about Thomas Becket as a Londoner and his legacy within his native city, for the influence of St Thomas permeated city life in medieval London until Henry VIII ordered the destruction of his shrine and the removal of his name from all liturgical books. However, for the Exeter conference, Professor Barron chose to investigate the chronicle accounts of The English Rising (Peasants’ Revolt) of 1381. She was especially keen to compare Jean Froissart’s Chronicle, which is often quoted by historians but not seen as accurate regarding the Rising, to that of the Anonimalle Chronicle, whose author is thought to have been an eyewitness of events in June 1381, regarding their descriptions of who was in the Tower of London on the night of Wednesday 12 June and who was also with the young Richard II at Mile End on the following Friday. For as she said, there is considerable correlation between the two accounts and where they differ is very informative and may include the names of those Froissart consulted for his work.
West front of Exeter Cathedral
After outlining the ways Froissart’s Chronicle has come down to us, she gave a short account of his career. In particular, she noted how he moved in aristocratic circles in Flanders and France and how he seems to have sort out information on events, especially from the various heralds, as a means to gain eyewitness accounts, albeit he is envisaged as viewing matters through a chivalric lens. Her candidates for his informants about the situation in the Tower that night are two among the four Flemish nobles that Froissart mentions as being there.
As well as proposing that Froissart’s Chronicle should be seen as more reliable than it has been given credit for in the past, Professor Barron was keen to highlight the importance for Froissart of the urban dimension, especially the role of the Londoners, but equally that he appears to have had a deep concern about the problems of serfdom in England. Thus, in terms of the theme of the conference – the British Isles and their mainland European neighbours – Froissart may be offering a more European perspective on events in 1381, as mediated in the first place through the eyes of these Flemish noblemen.
Bishop Oldham founder of Manchester Grammar School, funeral monument in Exeter Cathedral
The two other plenary lectures by Dr John Goodall (English Heritage) on Europe and the Perpendicular Style and Dr Malcolm Vale (St John’s College, Oxford) on ‘political nostalgia’ in terms of England and its continental neighbours between 1450 and 1520 were similarly fascinating. Nevertheless, I’m going to leave them aside and instead just give you a taster of one of the other sessions entitled ‘Alien Communities in England’. This was chaired by Susan Maddock (UEA) who had previously given us a great paper on the two-way relationship respecting merchants from Lynn in Danzig and vice versa. Among these exchanges, in addition to goods passing backwards and forwards between the Baltic and the North Sea, were the merchants themselves, certain apprentices and various types of craftsmen. Interestingly, there seemed to be more official structures to support the aliens in place at Danzig compared to Lynn, including a court held fortnightly. Nonetheless, those from Danzig apparently generally faced little if any hostility in Lynn, apart from the actions of a very few individuals, but in this case the town authorities were keen to stop such matters in favour of the foreigners.
This idea of how far and in what ways these aliens had a sense of belonging was important for all three papers in the session Susan chaired. Indeed, it might be said to be central to Joshua Ravenhill’s presentation. Joshua is a doctoral student at the University of York who is working on aliens in 15th-century London, and in the first part of his paper he explored why he thinks words such as integration and assimilation aren’t helpful when we are thinking about immigrant experiences. For not only was/is the situation not a binary between ‘foreigners’ and ‘natives’ but in many ways such concepts fail to take account of the ways immigrants become/wish to remain part of some ‘communities’ and not others. Such ideas may be seen in the works of social anthropologists such as Anthony Cohen and they offer a useful perspective, and one that Joshua sought to illustrate using wills made by aliens in London.
Great hall – St Nicholas’ Priory, Exeter
Paul Williams, another doctoral student and this time from the University of Exeter, gave us ideas about the alien community in Exeter in the late 15th and early 16th centuries. Using various national subsidies and Exeter corporation shop fines for his analysis, among the criteria Paul investigated were the types of occupation these people engaged in, whereabouts in Exeter they seemed to congregate, whether they only took service in their countrymen’s households and were they able to become freeman and hold civic and/or parish office. In many ways the picture Paul provided was one where it would seem such markers of belonging were taken up by at least a proportion of these aliens, and issues such as office holding would have been out of reach of many Exeter men anyway. Paul felt that this generally positive scenario was predicated on Exeter’s buoyant economy during this period, and that this was certainly a significant factor.
To take us to another provincial city, I took the audience to 15th-century Canterbury. Like Paul I deployed national and local records to explore even if only tentatively the lives of those below many of Joshua’s and some of Paul’s respective (merchant) aliens. To keep this brief, I just want to give a resume of a single individual to highlight the value of bring together these records, as well as the problems of identification.
Powderham Castle – built by Sir Philip Courtenay (d. 1406)
The man in question is Gylkyn Goodknight who, even if he wasn’t operating as an independent craftsman making caps until 1472, still may have been in Canterbury during the previous decade. The most tentative identification is from the 1463 alien list because in that year the royal clerk recorded the presence of Gilderkyn Ducheman, who was ‘Dutch’, suggesting he was from somewhere in the Low Countries. Two years later the clerk noted a Gilderkyn Goodknyght among the Canterbury aliens and he was again listed in 1466, although interestingly not in 1467 or 68. Provided this in the same man who then became an intrant (independent, licenced producer/trader), he worked as a capper for six years, residing in Newingate ward. His business appears to have been on a relatively small scale in that the Canterbury chamberlains never expected more than 10d annually, the fee having started at 6d. Whether he had married in Canterbury or the couple had come to the city together is unknown but in 1478 it was Katherine his widow who paid the licence fee of 6d, although she was unable to continue making caps after that, unless, of course, she remarried, but either way she disappears from the civic records.
Yet even these examples can only offer a partial sense of their time in Canterbury, by looking at a range of these immigrant ‘biographies’ and bringing them together, I think this approach provides a means to explore notions of longevity, a sense of belonging, social mobility, the presence/absence of ethnic/craft enclaves, as well as any evidence of hostility or opposition and their sense of place within the complex networks of ties to be found in late medieval Canterbury society.
As I hope you can tell, it was a very enjoyable and thought-provoking conference, so many thanks to the organisers and everyone who took part, and it probably resonated even more due to events that were unfolding concurrently at Westminster and beyond.
Sheila Sweetinburgh, Canterbury Christ Church University
Fifteenth Century Conference 2019: Calling Academics and PhD Students with 15th-Century Interests
Exeter will be hosting the Fifteenth Century Conference this September, an annual conference for anyone with interests in the Fifteenth Century. This has come about mainly because of the hard work of PhD student Des Atkinson, assisted by me, James Clark, Eddie Jones and our Hon Research Fellow Jonathan Hughes. The theme will be ‘England and Mainland Europe in the Fifteenth Century’, which we’re interpreting very broadly to include a range of topics and disciplines. I’ve posted the call for papers below. If you have fifteenth-century interest please consider sending in an abstract, and please also draw other people’s attention to it.
Catherine Rider, Director, Centre for Medieval Studies
Call For Papers: Fifteenth Century Conference, University of Exeter, 5th-7th September, 2019
England and mainland Europe in the fifteenth century
Poggio Bracciolini, the Tuscan Papal Secretary, after meeting Henry Beaufort at the Council of Constance, followed the bishop of Winchester to England to serve as his Latin secretary between 1419 and February 1423. Poggio was critical of the English climate and the preoccupation of English bishops with politics at the expense of learning, and during this period he offered the following assessment of this country in a letter to the Florentine humanist Niccolo de Niccoli:
‘I began travelling with my lord; but there was no great pleasure in the travelling, since I could find no books. Monasteries here are very rich but of new foundation; they have been built no more than four hundred years ago. If older ones survive they have no secular books, but are full of the most recent works of the doctors of the church and especially the ecclesiastics. I also saw carefully compiled inventories in which there was nothing of worth of humanist studies. And nothing interesting indeed.’
Poggio Bracciolini, Lettere, vol. I, ed. H. Harth (Firenze, Olschki, 1984), translated in A. Petrina, Cultural Politics in Fifteenth-Century England: The Case of Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester (2004), p. 62.
Poggio’s dismissal of English intellectual culture points to a wide range of interactions between fifteenth-century England and its neighbours in continental Europe, and it raises many questions that have interested scholars in recent years. What was the nature of interaction between England and continental Europe? What kinds of exchange (political, economic, cultural) took place, when, and how? What was the role of courts, cities, and the Church, as well as individuals, in this process? How was England perceived elsewhere in Europe, and how did the English perceive Europe and the wider world in their turn? How did cultural and intellectual exchange with continental Europe interact with the growing body of vernacular writing, in many genres, being produced in England, and with local and national senses of identity?
At a time when this country’s relationship with Europe is once again uncertain it seems appropriate to use Poggio’s comments to host a conference that considers this same question during another period of doubt and transition. This conference aims to address, however broadly, the different ways in which the late medieval kingdom of England could be considered in religious, political, social, economic and cultural terms as either a part of Europe, or apart from Europe – a nation with a separate identity.
This year’s Fifteenth Century Conference will be hosted by the University of Exeter, which is home to a community of late medievalists across several disciplines. We welcome papers from scholars at all career stages from PhD students to established academics, on any theme connected to this subject, from any discipline working on the fifteenth century. This may include, but is not limited to, papers on local, national and European identities and myths; cultural exchange; the transmission of knowledge (including vernacular culture); political, social and intellectual networks; trade; the Church; heresy; social unrest; travel and perceptions of the wider world.
Please submit abstracts of up to 200 words, and a short biography, to Professor Catherine Rider (Director, Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Exeter) at c.r.rider@exeter.ac.uk by 28th February 2019.
More Leeds Sessions – Fertility and Infertility
Inspired by Levi’s call for Leeds and Kalamazoo papers on the blog a few weeks ago I thought I’d post one of my own for Leeds 2019…
I’m currently in the process of putting together a session (or two, if there’s a lot of interest) on Fertility and Infertility for next year’s International Medieval Congress at Leeds. I’ve been working on a long-term project on medieval attitudes to infertility for some time, and have written about it on the blog before. Infertility and childlessness crop up in a wide range of medieval texts and my sense, from discussing the subject informally with other medievalists over several years, is that quite a few people are now working on this and related topics from a variety of angles, building on what is now a large and sophisticated body of work from historians of medicine in particular. It would be nice to bring some of these scholars together and think about future directions for the field.
So, if you’re working on medieval fertility/infertility/reproduction related topics and would be interested in giving a paper, please get in touch with me by 15th September – c.r.rider@exeter.ac.uk. Papers that approach the subject from any angle or source base are welcome, and could include people working on history of medicine, literature, demography, marriage, etc. And if you are more organized than me and have already made your Leeds plans but would be willing to chair a session, please also get in touch.
Catherine Rider, Associate Professor in Medieval History
Research Postcard: Talking about Gender and Healthcare in Cologne
At the end of January I went to a workshop at the University of Cologne, run by a.r.t.e.s. Graduate School for the Humanities and expertly organized by Eva-Maria Cersovsky and Ursula Giessmann. It focused on ‘Gender(ed) Histories of Health, Healing and the Body, 1250-1550’.
I’ve long been interested in this area, which is important for my own research on medieval infertility, although thanks to other commitments in the last few years I am not as up to date on the scholarship as I would like to be. The workshop brought together a small group of scholars from the USA, Canada, the UK and Hungary as well as Germany, and it was good to hear about the work being done in these countries, as well as to gain feedback on some of my own work in progress on infertility, gender and old age in the Middle Ages.
The papers covered such diverse topics as hospitals, royal and aristocratic courts, saints’ cults, contraception, medicine, and pharmacology. One particular strand of discussion running through a number of the papers, which perhaps takes its cue from similar work on the early modern period, focused on how scholars can get at medieval women’s medical knowledge and the ways in which they provided healthcare. As the American historian Monica Green showed back in the 1980s, very few medieval women are formally designated as medical practitioners in our sources, using terms such as ‘medica’, surgeon, or even midwife. However, the majority of medieval healthcare happened in the home, and it seems likely that much of this work was done by women. By the end of the period we can see elite women who clearly had some expertise in medicine. Thus the keynote lecture, by Sharon Strocchia, described the medical knowledge of women at the sixteenth-century Medici court, and showed that these elite women were concerned with a variety of medical issues in their households and were clearly well informed in their dealings with court physicians. This kind of information is harder to come by for earlier centuries but papers on a range of source materials including miracle narratives, medical recipes, images of miraculous healings and hospital records suggested some possibilities.
I still need to think about how to work all of this into my own research but the conference got me thinking much harder about the role of gender in my sources: in particular, who knew what about reproductive disorders in the Middle Ages, and who offered what kinds of medical and healthcare advice relating to fertility?
Catherine Rider, Senior Lecturer in History
Conference Report: the Ecclesiastical History Society Conference 2017
Last week I went to the annual summer conference of the Ecclesiastical History Society, which was held here in Exeter. This year’s theme was Churches and Education, and it attracted a large turnout from scholars working on all periods, from the early church to the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The president of the EHS this year is Exeter’s own Morwenna Ludlow from the department of Theology and Religion, and Morwenna gave a plenary lecture relating to her own area of specialism. This lecture, given jointly with Sophie Lunn-Rockliffe (Cambridge) focused on what early Christian writers in the Latin and Greek traditions said about the pleasures of Bible study – a fitting opening to an academic conference.
Three other Exeter medievalists also gave papers: history PhD student Des Atkinson, talking about the education of the fifteenth-century archbishop of Canterbury John Morton and his contemporaries; theology research fellow Hajnalka Tamas, talking about a fourth-century theological controversy relating to the teaching of a layman, Heraclianus; and me, talking about the medieval church and education relating to pregnancy. As ever, the EHS offered an interested, sympathetic and knowledgeable audience. It is a good place for PhD students and early career scholars, in particular, to offer papers. The audiences offer helpful feedback and the proceedings, published as Studies in Church History, offer an early publication opportunity for many scholars; indeed, one of my first papers was published there, back in 2006.
Overall there were fewer papers on late antiquity and the Middle Ages than at some of the other EHS conferences I’ve attended. Perhaps for some reason (despite the attractive medieval image on the call for papers) the theme appealed particularly to specialists on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It is also possible that the Leeds conference, held two weeks before, is providing ever more competition for medievalists’ time, as well as their conference budgets. Nevertheless there were a number of interesting papers on medieval subjects: on Bede, on hagiography, on Pope Gregory VII, and on twelfth-century pastoral care, among other topics. There were also papers on other periods which dealt with questions and topics relevant to medievalists: I particularly enjoyed a plenary lecture on the role of (early modern) convents in educating girls.
Next year’s conference is on the Church and Law, and will be held in Cambridge, so I’d recommend medievalists take a look!
Catherine Rider, Senior Lecturer in History
Leeds Report 2017
The annual International Medieval Congress hosted by the University of Leeds in July (and known affectionately as the ‘IMC’ or ‘Leeds’) is the highlight of the European medieval calendar – and this year saw a particularly large number of Exonian intellectual pilgrims make the journey north.
The theme of the 2017 congress was ‘Otherness’, which meant that what tends to be a rather historical gathering took on a more literary tone (be that good or bad, depending on your perspective). Medievalists certainly took the theme to heart – the word ‘other’ could be found on session or paper titles on almost every page of the programme. However, while inspiring a wide variety of takes on the topic, it proved less conducive for amusing paper titles (and meant my slightly risqué effort got more attention than expected).
Fortunately, other members of Exeter’s Centre for Medieval Studies made their mark in less frivolous ways. The elusive James Clark helped to kick off proceedings with a paper in the very first session, while his PhD student, Henry Marsh, was among those presenting towards the end of the conference on Thursday. Other speakers from our extended PhD community included Lorena Fierro-Diaz, Edward Mills, Eddie Proctor, Lenneke van Raaij, Teresa Witcombe, Tabitha Stanmore, and Ryan Kemp. Among the staff, Richard Flower, John Wilkins and Sharon Marshall carried the banner for Late Antiquity and Classics, while I represented History and the High Middle Ages. In addition, Philip Schwyzer and Naomi Howell hosted two sessions drawn from their new HERA project, ‘Deploying the Dead: Artefacts and Human Bodies in Socio-Cultural Transformations‘.
Stealth participants (attendees not listed on the programme) included PhD student Imogene Dudley, Sarah Hamilton, and our man of the moment, Levi Roach, who received a number of hearty congratulations for receiving the Longman/History Today book prize last week. Both staff members also took the opportunity to hold supervisions in person with PhD students who are usually absent from Exeter due either to their status as DTP-award holders or employment through international research projects. Alongside current members of the Centre, a number of former Exonians were also present: Prof. Julia Crick, Drs Daniel Roach and Matt Mesley, and Kieran Ball, an undergraduate at Exeter and now a DPhil student in Oxford.
Meeting up with old colleagues and friends, as well as networking with other scholars, is the lifeblood of Leeds – and while the latter normally takes place during scheduled sessions and roundtable discussions, it also frequently occurs in the coffee breaks and wine receptions that break up the action.
This year, networking even made its way on to the dancefloor when, after several hours of enthusiastic dancing at the annual disco, I was propositioned by Aberystwyth PhD student Nathan Greasley about possible sessions for 2018. Nathan had attended my paper on Monday and it was this, rather than my dance-moves (always a triumph of stamina over style), which prompted the request. It may have been after 2am, but, evidently, keen medievalists never rest…
With the conclusion of yet another Leeds (and with my ears still reeling from what had been a frighteningly loud disco), my thoughts turn to the value of this event. It is hard overstate the importance of the IMC to the European medievalist community. Despite the wide time period and different disciplines covered by Medieval Studies, medievalists have managed to forge a strong and cohesive sense of identity – and, on this side of the Atlantic, Leeds has played a significant role in this. It provides a venue for European medievalists to meet regularly en masse and to present and discuss the latest research in their fields. The to-and-fro of scholarly exchange and the general bustle of the congress helps to re-energise tired teachers and to reassure PhD students of the wider value of their work. And, as the relationship between the UK and Europe fractures, it seems even more important to attend the congress and maintain long-forged links between scholarly communities on opposite sides of the Channel. But Leeds is also, simply, an opportunity to celebrate the arcane pursuit of Medieval Studies and the joy of working with medieval sources.
Having said this, attendance at Leeds remains an expensive affair and means that younger scholars, especially those without external funding, don’t always find it easy to join in the fun. The cost of registration and accommodation is pretty high and unlikely to decrease, especially as the financial effects of Brexit hit the UK economy. The bursaries offered by the IMC organising committee go a small way towards mitigating this cost. Yet, despite the barriers to attendance, I believe it is important for PhD students to experience this event at least once. It offers an opportunity – unrivalled in Europe – to share ideas and network with a wide variety of junior and senior scholars. This can lead to future collaboration and can help to establish reputations in a very competitive job market. The best way to participate in Leeds is, firstly, by presenting a paper and, secondly, by doing so in a pre-organised session rather than submitting an individual paper for consideration by the organising committee. Being part of a pre-organised session helps to ensure the coherence of your panel, which, in turn, will help to attract a larger audience. So, if you know others working on similar research themes, be pro-active in organising a session and don’t be afraid to invite more senior scholars to join you – even if it is just in the role of session moderator. The theme of next year’s congress is ‘Memory’ (which looks set to reassert history’s dominance at Leeds), but sessions and papers can be proposed on any topic – the theme is there to prompt rather than define content. The deadlines for submitting proposals are 31 August for individual papers and 30 September for sessions. These dates aren’t that far in the future so it might be best to follow Nathan Greasley’s example and start your preparations now… See you there next year!
Helen Birkett, Lecturer in Medieval History
2017: A Year of Reformation
As any veteran of the funding process knows, the next best thing to the elusive gold dust of ‘reveIance’ is the calendar-bound quality of ‘timeliness’. And nothing demonstrates timeliness or engages the public more effectively than a significant anniversary. Anniversaries are potent application fodder for a variety of topics, but have been particularly important for those wishing to raise the profile of the Middle Ages in recent years. So if 2015 was the year of Magna Carta and 2016 can be remembered for the great re-enactment of Hastings, what medieval commemorative delights can we look forward to in 2017? Well, this year’s historical headlines look set to be dominated by one man and the movement in which he was prominent: Martin Luther and the Reformation.
2017 marks 500 years since Luther posted his Ninety-Five Theses to the door of Wittenberger church in an act widely recognised as the start of the Protestant Reformation. This heralded decades of religious conflict, violence and destruction, and reconfigured the cultural and political face of Europe. Whatever your feelings about the Reformation, it must be recognised as a major milestone in European history and the posting of the Ninety-Five Theses an event worthy of commemoration. Unsurprisingly, Germany is the focus of this year’s celebrations. The Luther 2017 project has been gearing up for the anniversary for several years and a full list of commemorative, largely non-academic, events can be found on its website. For those with a more scholarly interest in the topic, a list of the various Luther- and Reformation-themed conferences taking place across Europe and the US this year is provided by the Reformation Research Consortium. Many of the events listed concentrate on the significance of the Reformation for the early modern and modern world and look forward rather than back. However, there is also much to engage those interested in later medieval religion – and several such conferences are occurring within the UK.
The University of Huddersfield and Murray Edwards College, Cambridge, both use the anniversary as a prompt to bring medievalists and early modernists into further dialogue. In Huddersfield in April, scholars will investigate the impact of the Reformation on material and visual culture between 1400 and 1600, while September’s conference in Cambridge will explore how people chose both to remember and to forget aspects of the Reformation. In contrast, in June, scholars in Oxford will use the anniversary as the end-date for the ‘After Chichele’ conference, which focuses on the intellectual and religious character of the later medieval English Church.
Characterising 2017 as a year of Reformation also offers food for thought in terms of contemporary politics. It is undeniable that 2016 saw seismic political shifts in Europe and the US, the effects of which have yet to make themselves fully known. Although there are relatively few truly useful parallels to be drawn between now and the early sixteenth century, those relating to new media and social division carry at least some resonance. As in 1517, new communications technologies have already had a major impact on events and look set to influence things yet further – be that through attempts to regulate the fake news circulating on Facebook or the inauguration of a president who threatens to govern via Tweet. Likewise, we must feel a similar sense of unease to our sixteenth-century counterparts as we witness the unexpected overturning of a status quo and see our communities fractured by fear and mutual misunderstanding. We live in uncertain times – and, if 1517 is anything to go by, then this will only set the pattern for many years to come.
Helen Birkett, Lecturer in Medieval History
Gender, Emotion, and a prize-winning Conference
Having recently passed the viva for my thesis ‘Painful Transformations: A Medical Approach to Experience, Life Cycle and Text in British Library, Additional MS 61823, The Book of Margery Kempe’, it seems like a timely moment to reflect on the past few months and years of my postgraduate study at Exeter. I am grateful to Professor Vincent Gillespie (Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford) for being my external examiner, Elliot Kendall for being my internal examiner, Eddie Jones for being an ever-patient and supportive supervisor, Catherine Rider as my other, wonderful second supervisor, and James Clark for his encouragement and advice on all things postdoctoral. The Centre for Medieval Studies at Exeter is such an exciting and dynamic environment and I am excited about all of the events that lie ahead.
It might also be an apt moment for me to remind colleagues about the Gender and Medieval Studies Group, which holds an annual, peripatetic conference. The steering committee, made up of medievalists including Liz Herbert McAvoy (Swansea) and Diane Watt (Surrey), ensures the continuation of this important, multidisciplinary event each year. The group, which has gathered each year since the 1980s and which seeks to further the study of gender in medieval culture, was organised this year by Daisy Black at the University of Hull, on the theme of Gender and Emotion.
The history of emotions is a topic of growing interest in the field of Medieval Studies, with projects such as Hearing the Voice at Durham University, the Queen Mary Centre for the History of the Emotions and the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions accelerating the prominence of such enquiry. The Royal Historical Society Postgraduate Speaker Series Conference, ‘Emotion and Evidence in the Late-Medieval and Early-Modern World’ (Cardiff, May 2016), at which I was fortunate to be presenting, also offered the opportunity for early career researchers and established scholars to exchange ideas, with a plenary from Professor Miri Rubin (Queen Mary).
Questions of gender, and the interplay with the history of emotions, made for a stimulating conference programme at the 2016 GMS. Notable papers included Amy L Morgan (Surrey), ‘“reueyd out of hir witt”: Extreme Emotion and Queer Responses in Sir Orfeo, and Jonah Coman (St Andrews), on ‘Grimestone’s book, Grimestone’s body: Freudian melancholy and creation of identity in the Advocates MS 18.7.21’. Linda E. Mitchell (Missouri), in considering the person as political in her paper, ‘“Give Me Back My Son!”: Eleanor of Aquitaine and the Political Use of Emotion’, prompted fruitful discussion on the idea of queens as suffering mothers. The keynote lecture from Katharine Goodland (City University of New York), ‘Ghostly Presences: Mariological Mourning and the Search for Justice in Thomas Kyd’s The Spanish Tragedy’, took reference from several medieval mystery plays in considering the ghostly presence of the Virgin Mary and Kyd’s allusions to medieval depictions of Christ’s Passion.
As well as presenting my own paper on questions of emotion and melancholic woundedness in The Book of Margery Kempe, I was also honoured to be awarded with the annual GMS Graduate Student Essay Prize – an internationally-open competition. The prize was awarded for my essay ‘“Slayn for Godys Lofe”: Melancholia and Mourning in The Book of Margery Kempe’, and includes two years’ free GMS conference attendance. The article is now published in the peer-reviewed journal Medieval Feminist Forum. As I was applauded and congratulated, I felt some heartfelt emotion of my own, proud to be the recipient of the award.
I am now co-editing a volume arising from the conference: Gender and Emotion in Medieval Culture: Uses, Representations, Audiences, with Daisy Black and Amy L. Morgan (under consideration by Boydell and Brewer).
The GMS conference is a great opportunity to share research and make networking connections with other scholars who are interested in all questions of gender in the Middle Ages. It is hugely inclusive, and welcomes diverse approaches and cross-disciplinary papers from both postgraduates and established scholars. The graduate student essay prize is an excellent opportunity, and I encourage Exeter PGRs to enter a piece for the next round. I highly recommend becoming involved – perhaps at the next conference in beautiful Canterbury, in January 2017 – when Anthony Bale (Birkbeck) and Leonie Hicks (Canterbury Christ Church) will be giving keynotes. There is also a mailing list that you can join via the website to keep up to date on events.
This year’s conference closed with a riveting performance of ‘Bawdy Tales’ with Debs Newbold, a one-woman storyteller. Based on Boccacio’s Decameron, the tales were bawdy and comedic indeed, with plenty of audience participation and foolery, providing pathos and hilarity in equal measure. The show was a fitting emotional rollercoaster for what had been a conference of intellectual rigour and medieval felyng par excellence, and certainly one from which I returned with an unusually big smile on my face.
Researcher in medieval literature and medicine and Associate Tutor (English department, University of Exeter)
Twitter: @LauraKalasW
https://exeter.academia.edu/LauraWilliams
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