The MEMS bi-weekly e-newsletter shares information about events, conferences, calls for papers, student and faculty work in the field, and digital resources that enrich our understanding of Medieval and Early Modern Studies. If you have any items you would like to share in the newsletter, please send them to Laurel Bassett at lburgg1@umbc.edu.
ON CAMPUS EVENTS
Wednesday March 24, 12:00 PM: MEMS Co-Director Prof. McDonough presents with Prof. Armstring-Partida: “Singlewomen in the Late Medieval Mediterranean”
MEMS students and faculty are invited to join the History Graduate Program’s Works in Progress Seminar series. In this installment, Drs. McDonough and Armstring-Partida will talk about how they have developed their topic and collaborated in the archives. Join this presentation on webex: https://umbc.webex.com/meet/gmusgr1
If you have any questions, please email Professor Amy Froide, froide@umbc.edu.
Mark Your Calendars!!!! MEMS Colloquium: April 7: 7 PM
The Medieval and Early Modern Studies minor of UMBC’s Department of History hosts Dr. Elizabeth Randell Upton, an Associate Professor of Musicology at the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music. Dr. Randell Upton’s primary research area is medieval music. Her recent work examines late fourteenth and early fifteenth century vocal music to discover evidence for the experiences of performers and listeners in the medieval past, recorded in surviving musical notation. Join us on Zoom for her lecture: “Listeners as Players, Music as Play.” For questions or further information, contact Laurel Bassett: lburgg1@umbc.edu.
Join Zoom Meeting
https://umbc-edu.zoom.us/j/87556785236?pwd=QlVQdEo2OXBIK3M2WG9DZ0MvajZZUT09
Meeting ID: 875 5678 5236
Passcode: 081181
One tap mobile
+13017158592,87556785236#,*081181# US (Washington DC)
Passcode: 081181
Friday, April 16, 2-4 PM UMBC’s History Department and the Folger Shakespeare Library Host a Virtual Escape Room: The Ghost of Blithfield Hall: A Special Paleographical Mystery
At Blithfield Hall, the ancestral seat of the Bagot family, the ghost of an ancestor roams the corridors. A cache of family letters has been discovered, which seems to hold the answer to the spirit’s unrest. The only problem? These missives were penned in the early 17th century, and other paranormal investigators have failed to make sense of them. It’s up to you to decipher the documents, solve the puzzles, and free the ghost.
Bring your paleographical knowledge and form teams to play, in this live virtual experience. (Small teams of three or four are ideal, but you are welcome to play with a partner or by yourself.)
Reservations are required for this event and can be made athttps://forms.gle/xbibi4j4FUYAKVa57
Want to brush up on early modern handwriting in the meantime? Check out this https://folgerpedia.folger.edu/List_of_online_resources_for_early_modern_English_paleography in the Folger Shakespeare Library’s Folgerpedia!
COMMUNITY EVENTS
March 17: The Walters Art Gallery Reopens
The reopening includes new in-person exhibitions and installments as online programming continues for events, lectures and guided virtual tours with docent educators. Level 3’s Islamic Gallery now approaches the permanent collection and display of Islamic art with a focus on the cultural diversity and chronological breadth under the umbrella of Islamic art. (See the video on our website from Walters Curator Ashley Dimmig’s fall presentation to MEMS students and faculty). For more information on the reopening, see https://thewalters.org/
The USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute presents Zoom Lectures
· Thursday, March 25, 10-11 AM (PDT) Early Modern Intellectual and Cultural History with Alan Mikhail
This presentation on “God’s Shadow: A Conversation about Writing Global Histories” will be given by Alan Mikhail, Yale University, Sarah Abrevaya Stein, University of California, Los Angeles, and Linda Colley, Princeton University. For more information and to register, see https://dornsife.usc.edu/events/site/73/36015549009511/emsi-early-modern-intellectual-and-cultural-history-with-alan-mi/
· Saturday, March 27, 10-12 PM (PDT) Early Modern British History with Chris Kyle
This paper explores the visual landscape of proclamations in early modern England. It examines how proclamations were distributed and hung in secular spaces, their intrusion into the sacred space of the Church, and how they formed part of a nascent (papered) administrative state that increasingly defined the centre/locality paradigm. For more information and to register, see https://dornsife.usc.edu/events/site/73/34609824879531/emsi-early-modern-british-history-with-chris-kyle/
PAPERS AND CONFERENCES
April 14-16, 2021 The International Association for Neo-Latin Studies Presents an Online Conference: Digital Humanities and Neo-Latin Studies
This conference, held on zoom, presents a wide variety of projects and perspectives on Digital Neo-Latin Studies. For more information on the presentations and to register, see https://dnls.hypotheses.org/
Call for Papers: 97th Annual Meeting Medieval Academy of America, March 9-13, 2022
The Program Committee invites proposals for papers on all topics and in all disciplines and periods of medieval studies and medievalism studies. We are particularly interested in receiving submissions from those working outside of traditional academic positions. The meeting will take place on the campus of the University of Virginia in Charlottesville and is committed to fostering conversation around the fifth-year anniversary of the Unite the Right rally in August 2017. Additional themes and threads of the meeting include: rethinking the global medieval, vulnerability and the ethics of care, queering the medieval, inter-religious coexistence and conflict, trade and cultural exchange and diplomacy and ambassadorial practices. Deadline for submissions is May 15, 2021. For more information, please consult:
https://www.medievalacademy.org/page/2022AnnualMeeting
DIGITAL RESOURCES
“Houston, we have a problem:” Erasing Black Scholars in Old English Literature.”
This article, posted at ACMRS Arizona, details experiences of Black students and professors as they work with premodern texts and grammars. The hyperlinks liberally splashed across this article all take the reader to powerful further research and commentary on the subject.
Check out the new digital critical edition of The Canterbury Tales:
https://www.canterburytalesproject.org/
For ongoing digital updates from the Medieval (academic) world, check out #medievaltwitter, #shakeRace, and #raceB4Race.
On our website!
Check out videos of curator Ashley Dimmig’s presentation: Exploring Islamic Manuscripts at the Walters Art Gallery and MEMS faculty Dr. James Magruder’s presentations on Instrumental to Intellectual: Italian Female Artists, 1600s and Resurrection, Metamorphosis, and the Art of Nature in the Dutch Golden Age. http://mems.umbc.edu.
For more information, please join the Medieval and Early Modern Studies Group: https://my3.my.umbc.edu/groups/mems and see our website: www.mems.umbc.edu