Medieval Studies at UCSB

this year's events | colloquia | graduate student conference

Medieval Studies Events

Seminar: Stephen Humphreys of the Department of History.

“Christian Communities and Muslim Rule in Early Islamic Syria and Mesopotamia (634-1070).”

Friday, 30 October 2009 between 12:00-1:00 PM in HSSB 4020.

Colloquium:

Tentative Program: Medieval Studies Colloquium: Women, Art and Culture in Medieval and Renaissance Europe

26-27 February 2010

Friday, February 26, 2010 : Mosher Alumni House (Alumni Hall, 2nd floor)

2:00-2:10: Welcome

Edward English, Executive Director, Medieval Studies, UCSB

2:10-2:30: Introductory Remarks

Yann Perreau, Deputy Cultural Attaché, Los Angeles

2:30-4:00 First Session:

Moderator, Carol Lansing, Department of History, UCSB

2:30-3:00 Noa Turel, Department of Art History, UCSB: “Staging the Court: Aliénor de Poitiers and the 1478 Mise en Scène of a Princely Nativity.”

3:00-3:30 Abigail Dowling, Department of History, UCSB: “`Les gardins de ma dame'": Mahaut d'Artois and the Park at Hesdin.”

3:30-3:40 Commentary: Erika Rappaport , Department of History, UCSB

3:40-4:00: Discussion

4:00-6:00 Reception, Mosher Alumni House Library (2nd Floor)

Saturday, February 27, 2010: McCune Room, Interdisciplinary Humanities Center

9:00-9:30 am Coffee and pastries

9:30-11:00 Second Session:

Moderator, Brigit Ferguson, Art History

9:30-10:00 Nicole Archambeau, Department of History, UCSB: "Remembering Delphine's Books: Reading and Book-Ownership as a Means to Shape a Holy Woman's Sanctity."

10:00-10:30 Olga Karaskova, Histoire de l'Art, Université de Lille-3 & Curator, The Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg: Saint Bavo at the Service of Princely Propaganda, or the Case of Philip the Handsome and Mary of Burgundy.”

10:30-10:40 Commentary: Peter Bloom, Department of Film Studies, UCSB

10:40-11:00: Discussion

11:00-11:15: Coffee Break

11:15-12:15: Keynote Address

Moderator, Cynthia Brown, Chair, Advisory Committee, Medieval Studies, Professor, French and Italian, UCSB

Professor Anne-Marie Legaré, Histoire de l'Art, Université de Lille-3:

“Constructing the Ideal and Universal Princess: The Entry of Joanna of Castile into the City of Brussels on December 9, 1496.”

12:15-12:25: Commentary:

Thomas Kren, Curator of Manuscripts, Getty Museum

12:25- 12:45: Discussion

12:45-2:30: Buffet Lunch

2:30-4:00 Third Session:

Moderator: Shannon Meyer, English Department, UCSB

2:30-3:00 Anne Jenny-Clark, Histoire de l'Art, Université de Lille-3:

“Books in the Noble Women's Chapter of Sainte-Waudru's Collegiate in Mons (Hainaut): Hermine de Hairefontaine's Lectionary ( London , B.L., Ms Eg. 2569).”

3:00-3:30 Jessica Weiss , Department of History, UCSB:

“To Better Impress Upon the Mind: Manuscript II 232 , a Renaissance Textbook for Women?”

3:30-3:40 Commentary: Laury Oaks, Department of Women's Studies, UCSB

3:40-4:00 Discussion

4:00-4:30 Open Discussion and Concluding Remarks

Medieval Studies Events, 2008-2009

Brian P. Copenhaver, Director, Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, UCLA
“A Medieval Source for Renaissance Philosophy: Valla’s Metaphysics and the Logic of Peter of Spain.”

Lodi Nauta, Professor in Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy
University of Groningen
“The Transition from Medieval to Renaissance Philosophy: Lorenzo Valla.”

Friday, 21 November 2008, 2:00-5:00 PM, HSSB 4020

Colloquium: "Pre-Modern Perspectives on Torture"

Alison Frazier. University of Texas .“Machiavelli, Trauma, and the Scandal of the Prince.”

Kenneth Pennington. The Catholic University of America ."Women on the Rack: Three Trials.”

Lisa Hajjar. UCSB, Comment.

Friday, 23 January 2009, 3:00-6:00 PM

Marine Sciences Institute Auditorium (Room 1302)

Lecture: "The History of the Mediterranean Diet from the Present to the Middle Ages"

Monday, 23 February 2009, 4:00 McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB, IHC

Allen Grieco, Harvard University, Villa I Tatti, Università delle Scienze Gastronomiche ( Italy ), University of Tours

An event in “Food Matters”, the theme for 2008-2009 of the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center , UCSB

Colloquium: "Medieval Perspectives on Environmental History"

Paolo Squatriti. University of Michigan .

“Storms Floods and Climate Change in the Dark Ages: An Italian Case.”

D. Fairchild Ruggles. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

"Islamic Gardens in the Mediterranean (7th-15th Centuries): Environmental Perspectives on Water and Landscape.”

David Cleveland. UCSB Environmental Studies Program, Comment.

Friday, 3 April 2009, 3:00-6:00 PM

Marine Sciences Institute Auditorium (Room 1302)

Graduate Student Conference, Saturday, 2 May 2009

Marine Sciences Institute Auditorium (Room 1302)

10:00 Coffee, pastry

10:15 Opening remarks

10:30 Panel 1: Identity and Religious Exchange

Karen Frank, History: "From the Inside or the Outside: The Cultural Marking of Jewish women in late medieval Perugia ."

Cat Zusky, English: “ Staging Christ's Pain in Late-Medieval Drama.”

Nikki Goodrick, History: "Sheep Among Wolves: Muslim Pilgrims on Christian Ships in the Age of the Crusades”

12:00 Keynote: Patricia Ingham, English, Indiana University : "Little Nothings: The Squire's Tale and the Ambition of Gadgets."

1:15 Lunch

2:15 Panel 2: Gendered Identities

Lydia Balian, English, “ Men, Monsters, and Melee: A Comparative Analysis of Hand-to-Hand Combat in Beowulf and La3amon's Brut ”

Corinne Wieben, History: “The Discourse of Dispute: Marriage in Fourteenth-Century Lucca ."

3:30 Theater Performance

Anonymous “Monkey See, Monkey Do or The Joyous Farce of Master Mimin”

Translated by: Jody Enders

This is an anonymous fifteenth-century French farce about the trials and tribulations of the poor student, Master Mimin. The performance is directed by Andrew Henkes, a graduate student in Theater, who brought us last year's extraordinary production of the Farce of the Fart.

4:15 Concluding Remarks

The Medieval Studies Program is sponsoring a lunch-time seminar on research by our faculty: Heather Blurton, Department of English on Monday, 18 May 2009 in HSSB 4020 at 12:00

“The Evidence of Things Not Seen: Narratives of Ritual Crucifixion in 12th Century England?”

In the second half of the twelfth century, in England , there suddenly appear three unconnected narratives of accusations against English Jews that they had kidnapped and ritually crucified Christian children. This project attempts to account for the strange appearance of these narratives of ritual crucifixion in Anglo-Norman England by situating them in the first instance in the literary context of changes in the practice of insular hagiography after the Norman Conquest, and in broader terms in the epistemological shifts of the twelfth century.

Film and Discusssion: 21 May 2009 at 4:00-6:00 in the McCune Conference Room of the IHC, HSSB 6020: Allan Langdale, “The Stones of Famagusta: The Story of a Forgotten City.”

The Mediterranean Research Focus Group of the IHC and the Medieval Studies Program are sponsoring a film presentation and a discussion by Allan Langdale of UC Santa Cruz on Thursday, 21 May 2009 at 4:00-6:00 in HSSB 4020: “The Stones of Famagusta: The Story of a Forgotten City.” Art historian and filmmaker Dr. Allan Langdale takes you on a bicycle tour of the once famous medieval city of Famagusta, Cyprus . Once considered the world's richest city, Famagusta is now largely forgotten by the West. Explore the wonders of the gothic churches and monasteries, the ruins of Venetian palaces, the fabulous two-mile long walls and moat, Byzantine churches, Ottoman baths, and some of Famagusta's unique and mysterious underground churches.

Lecture: "The Minster and the Privy."

Kathy Lavezzo, University of Iowa. Tuesday, 26 May 2009, 4:00 McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB, IHC. This talk offers a new vantage point on the politics of identity in Chaucer's Prioress's Tale by examining how its built environments--namely the abject privy into which the murdered schoolboy is thrust and the conventual church where his corpse finally rests--at once make and unmake notions of Christian selfhood and Jewish alterity. Through a cultural geographic and historicist analysis of the minster and the privy as spaces whose production is mutually constitutive with the making of identities, Lavezzo decelerates our analysis of the dynamic of Christian purity and Jewish danger at work in the tale. Ultimately, by reading the minster and the privy not as fixed entities but as contingent, fluid spaces joined through the infrastructure of the tale, she identifies in Chaucer's anti-Semitic text an early materialist critique of any effort to conceive of a purely religious space. I have attached a flyer for the event.

A lecture by Jeffrey Hamburger, Harvard University. “Inscribing the Word -- Illuminating the Sequence: Epithets in Honor of John the Evangelist in the Graduals from Paradies bei Soest." Thursday, 4 October 2008, 4:00 PM, Flying A Studios Room, University Center, UCSB.
A workshop "Emergence of 'the West': Shifting Hegemonies in the Medieval Mediterranean." Brian A. Catlos, History Department, University of California , Santa Cruz will present “ Is Mediterranean Studies Nothing More than an Excuse for Goat Cheese and Olives? (or Power, Institutions, Identities in the Medieval Mediterranean )” and Sharon A. Kinoshita, University of California , Santa Cruz , will present "What is Medieval Mediterranean Literature?" Friday, 26 October 2007, 3-5 PM, Room HSSB 4041, UCSB.They are currently directing a residential research group during the Fall of 2007 at the UCHRI at UC Irvine. http://www.uchri.org/main.php?nav=sub&page_id=1232
The Readings for the Mediterranean Workshop:
Brian Catlos: Reader
Sharon Kinoshita: "Silk & French Feudal Imagination," "Deprovincializing the Middle Ages," and "Ports of Call: Boccaccio Mediterranean."

Medieval Studies Events, 2006-2007:

A lecture by Judith Bennett, University of Southern California. "Phillipa Russell and the Wills of London's Late Medieval Single Women." Monday, 23 October 2006, 4:00 PM, McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB, UCSB.
A seminar on her research by Mary Lampe, a PhD candidate in History. "Survival and Profit: Notarial Witnesses in Medieval Palermo." Tuesday, 14 November 2006, 12:15 PM, HSSB 4020, UCSB.
Faculty Seminar on Current Research, 4:00PM, Friday, 8 December 2006 ,HSSB 4020, University of California , Santa Barbara, Sharon Farmer, History Department, UCSB “The Empire Comes Back: Mediterranean Immigrants in Paris and Northern France in the Age of the Crusades” .
A lecture by Monica H. Green of Arizona State University. "The Trial of Floreta d'Ays (1403): Jews, Christians, and Obstetrics in Later Medieval Marseilles." Friday, 26 January 2007, 4:00 PM in the McCune Conference Hall in the IHC.
A lecture by Christopher C. Baswell, English Department, UCLA, "The Medieval Virgil Meets the Italian Humanists: MS Cambridge, Jesus College 33." Thursday, 15 February 2007, 5:00 PM, South Hall 1415, UCSB.
A lecture by Lester K. Little, Smith College. " Medieval Pandemics: The Plague of Justinian and the Black Death.." Wednesday, 28 February 2007, 4:00 PM, in the McCune Conference Hall in the IHC.
A lecture by Jane Geddes, University of Aberdeen . “Christina of Markyate and the St Albans Psalter.” Thursday, 5 April 2007, 4:00 2635 South Hall, UCSB.
A lecture by Maura B. Nolan, Department of English, University of California, Berkeley. “The Fortunes of Piers Plowman and Its Readers.” Thursday, 26 April 2007, 4:00-6:00 South Hall 1415, UCSB.
A lecture by William Tronzo of the Stanford Humanities Center. "Zisa and Cuba: Gardens and the Image-Performative in Twelfth-Century Palermo." Tentatively set for Thursday, 24 May 2007, , 4:00 PM, Lobero Room, UCen, UCSB.
A lecture by Deborah McGrady of Tulane University. "Medieval Reading Lessons: What Machaut Can Teach Us About Reception." 20 February 2007, 1:30 PM Note Location Change: Delattre Library, Phelps 5309 (Co-sponsorship with the Department of French and Italian).
Annual Conference: "Conversion and Apostasy in the Medieval World." Friday and Saturday, 2-3 February 2007, McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB, UCSB.
Sixth Annual UCSB Medieval Studies Graduate Student Conference. “Civic Culture: Cities and Towns in the Middle Ages.” Centennial House, Saturday, 19 May 2007, 9:30-5:00. This year's plenary speaker was be Edward Muir, Northwestern University Professor and Clarence L. Ver Steeg Professor in the Arts and Sciences. This interdisciplinary conference features original research by graduate students at UCSB and other UC campuses and will present a composite picture of urban life in the Middle Ages by examining aspects of life within and around cities and towns. Speakers will examine court cases, sieges, intercultural interaction, art and literary production and distribution, and plays as performed as part of civic identity.
A lecture by Bernard McGinn of the University of Chicago Divinity School and JE and Lillian Byrne Tipton Distinguished Visiting Lecturer Religious Studies, UCSB for 2007. "Divine and Human Love in Two Twelfth-Century Letter Collections" Friday, 1 June 2007, 4:00 PM, 4020 HSSB.

Events for 2005-2006 included:

2006 Colloquium - Death and the Hereafter

2006 Graduate Student Colloquium (8 April 2006)

Lectures by David Abulafia, Robert Swanson, and Pamela Long; faculty and graduate student seminars: Carol Lansing, Mark O'Tool, Karen Frank, and James Maiello.

Events for 2004-2005 included:

Events for 2003-2004 included: