Medieval Studies Graduate Student Conference

In April 2002, the UCSB Medieval Studies Program held its first annual graduate student conference, on the subject of “violence.” Graduate students presented papers at two different panels at this day-long event—giving them the opportunity to be involved in a conference. Listed below are the programs for current and previous conferences.

Current Conference:

Previous Conferences:

Annual UCSB Medieval Studies Spring Graduate Student Conference (2015)

The Annual UCSB Medieval Studies
Graduate Student Conference
Changes in Fashion in the Middle Ages
April 25, 2015

Welcome by Edward English, Director of the Medieval Studies Program, and Welcome by the Organizers.

Panel 1: “L’habit ne fait pas le moine”: Clothing’s Determination of the Body
Moderator: Jonathan Forbes, English

Jennifer De Vries, Department of History, Georgetown University, “Dressing the Part: Regulations on Clothing in Beguine Life Rules.”
Schuyler Eastin, Department of English, UC Riverside “Armé et desarmé asanblent”: Chainmail and Chivalric Assemblage in Chrétien de Troyes’ Le Chevalier de la Charrette.”

Panel 2: Material Fashionings: Building Public and Private Spaces
Moderator: Paul Megna, English.

Joe Figliulo-Rosswurm, Department of History, UC Santa Barbara, “Out of Vogue: Florentine Society, through the Lens of Historical Materialism”
Susan B. Schmidt, Department of History, UC Santa Barbara, “A Walk through the Talk of Medieval Public Space: Examining the Language Used for Public Space in Trecento Bologna”

Introductory Remarks by Carol Lansing:
Keynote: Maureen C. Miller, Department of History, UC Berkeley, “Clothing and Claims to Power: Fashioning Papal Authority, c. 1050-1300.”

Panel 3: “Of Monsters and Men”: Distorting the Human
Moderator: Lauren Horn Griffin, Religious Studies.

Deepti Menon, Department of Comparative Literature, UC Santa Barbara, “King of the Jungle: An Examination of the Lion in Marie de France’s Fables”
Thomas Franke, Department of History, UC Santa Barbara “Refashioning the Apocalypse: Abraham Cresques’s Subversive Eschatology in the Catalan Atlas (1375)”

Annual UCSB Medieval Studies Spring Graduate Student Conference (2014)

The Annual UCSB Medieval Studies
Graduate Student Conference
Movement and Mobility in the Middle Ages
May 31, 2014 | McCune Conference Room

Sponsored by the Department of Comparative Literature, Department of French and Italian, Department of History, Department of Religious Studies, Department of Spanish and Portuguese, Graduate Division, the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center, and the Medieval Studies Program.

9:00-9:10 – Morning Coffee
9:10-9:15 – Opening Remarks, Shay Hopkins, conference co-organizer (UCSB, Department of English)

9:15-10:15 – Culture: The Transformation of Images and Tropes
“Devils, Dames, and Dumb Dumbs: The Transalpine Movement of Dramatic Tropes during the Late Middle Ages,” Aria Dal Molin (UC Santa Barbara, Department of French and Italian)
“Unlicensed Liberties: The Liber Eliensis and the Appropriation of Scripture,” Philip Aijian (UC Irvine, Department of English)
Respondent: Rachel Levinson-Emley (UC Santa Barbara, Department of English)

10:15-10:30 – Coffee Break
10:30-12:00 – Identity: Exploring Confession, Status, and Disability
“Between Compulsion and Conversion: Itinerant Inquisitorial Activity in Germany, 1390-1400,” Eugene Smelyansky (UC Irvine, Department of History)
“Apprenticeship and Artisanal Upward Mobility in Castellò d’Empùries 1260-1310,” Elizabeth Comuzzi (UC Los Angeles, Department of History)
“Movement and Leprosy and the Leprosarium Movement: From Cure to Care in Medieval Liège,” Jay Stemmle (UC Santa Barbara, Department of History)
Respondent: Lauren Horn Griffin (UC Santa Barbara, Department of Religious Studies)

12:00-1:15 – Lunch
1:15-2:45 – Keynote Speaker: Professor William Tronzo (UC San Diego, Department of Art History), “Justinian’s Hagia Sophia, restlessness, angels, and oblivion”

2:45-3:00 – Coffee Break
3:00-4:30 – Power: The Politics of Movement
“The Permeable Sea: Berenguer d’Entenza and traversing the Crown of Aragon’s Mediterranean in the 13th and 14th Century,” Ryan Boghosian (UC Santa Barbara, Department of History)
“Where I Speak, There You Will Find Me: Use of Movement in the City Streets of Thirteenth Century Bologna,” Susan Schmidt (UC Santa Barbara, Department of History)
“Any goods to declare? A comparison of medieval Mediterranean port customs procedures,”
Munther Al-Sabbagh (UC Santa Barbara, Department of History)
Respondent: Sarah Hanson (UC Santa Barbara, Department of History)

4:30-4:40 – Closing Remarks, Jay Stemmle, conference co-organizer (UCSB, Department of History)

Annual UCSB Medieval Studies Spring Graduate Student Conference (2013)

The Annual UCSB Medieval Studies
Graduate Student Conference
“Says Who? Contested Spaces, Voices, and Texts”
May 17-18, 2013

FRIDAY, MAY 17, 2013:
12:30 – 12:45: Opening Remarks
12:45 – 2:15: Royal Spaces, Royal Identity
“‘Exigens obsides ab eis’: Hostages and Hostage-Taking during the Reign of King John of England,” Cristian Ispir (King’s College, London, Department of History)
“On Earth as It Is in Heaven: Musical Representations of Queenship in Medieval England,” Gillian Gower (UCLA, Department of Musicology)
“Crossing the Passage: Spaces of Constraint and Imagination in Charles of Orleans,” Ricardo Matthews (UC Irvine, Department of English)
Respondent: Shannon Meyer (UC Santa Barbara, Department of English)

2:15 – 2:30: Coffee Break
2:30 – 4:00: Translation and Authority
“The Found Manuscript Topos in Vernacular French Translators’ Prologues, 1493-1504,” Anneliese Pollock (UC Santa Barbara, Department of French and Italian)
“Translation: The Loophole to Plagiarism. Authority and Originality Established in Antonfrancesco Grazzini’s Prologues,” Aria Dal Molin (UC Santa Barbara, Department of French and Italian)
“‘Whan Tempest Doth the Shippes Swalowe’: A Deconstructive Reading of the Hermeneutic Crisis in The House of Fame,” Yun Ni (Harvard University, Department of Comparative Literature)
Respondents: Professor Suzanne Jill Levine (UC Santa Barbara, Department of Spanish and Portuguese) and Professor Christopher D. Johnson (UCLA, Visiting Professor of Spanish and Portuguese; Harvard, Department of Comparative Literature)

4:00 – 5:00: Wine and Cheese Reception
5:00 – 7:30: PERFORMANCE: FOUR MEDIEVAL FRENCH FARCES
Location: Theater & Dance West 1701
Introductory remarks, Aria Dal Molin (UC Santa Barbara, Department of French and Italian)
Performance by The Rude Mechanicals Medieval and Renaissance Players (Shepherd University), directed by Professor Betty Ellzey:

“Confession Lessons”
“Cooch E. Whippet”
“The Farce of the Fart”
“Monk-ey Business”

SATURDAY, MAY 18, 2013
8:45 – 9:00: Morning Coffee
9:00 – 9:15: Opening Remarks
9:15 – 10:45: Writing about Others
“Historiography and the Desecration of Zoroastrian Fire Temples in Early Islamic Iran,” Andrew D. Magnusson (UC Santa Barbara, Department of History)
“Strangers in Strange Lands: The Rhetoric of Proto-Ethnography in Medieval Travelogues,” Rebecca Hill (UCLA, Department of English)
“‘A Self-Styled Inquisitor’: Itinerant Inquisitors and Textual Authority, 1390-1400,” Eugene Smelyansky (UC Irvine, Department of History)
Respondent: Lauren Horn Griffin (UC Santa Barbara, Department of Religious Studies)

10:45 – 11:00: Coffee Break
11:00 – 12:30: Enclosed Spaces
“Inside the Walls: Toward an Understanding of Children’s Place in Eleventh-Century English Monastic Life,” Rebecca King Cerling (University of Southern California, Department of History)
“The Anchoritic Cell as Womb and Tomb: Spatial Metaphors and the Female Body in Ancrene Wisse,” Gillian Adler (UCLA, Department of English)
“The Contested Space of Guinevere’s Bed,” Rachel Levinson-Emley (UC Santa Barbara, Department of English)
Respondent: Susan Schmidt (UC Santa Barbara, Department of the History of Art and Architecture)

12:30 – 1:30: Lunch
1:30 – 2:30: Keynote Speaker: Professor Steven Justice (UC Berkeley, Department of English)
“‘Most Impudent’: Augustine, After Augustine, and Way After Augustine”

2:30 – 2:45: Coffee Break
2:45 – 4:15: Contested Politics in the Fourteenth Century
“Over the Hedge: Park Break as Protest during the Revolt of the Allies of Artois, 1314-1321,” Abigail P. Dowling (UC Santa Barbara, Department of History)
“The Hearth of the Matter–Women, Slavery, and Bread on the Island of Mallorca, ca. 1360-1390,” Kevin Mummey (University of Minnesota, Department of History)
“Fear, Memory, Auto-affection: Medieval England’s Cult(ure) of Dread,” Paul Megna (UC Santa Barbara, Department of English)
Respondent: Jonathan Forbes (UC Santa Barbara, Department of English)

This interdisciplinary event included speakers from King’s College, University of London, Harvard University, The University of Southern California, the University of Minnesota, UCLA, and UC Irvine. It also included a performance of French medieval farces by a student group from Shepherd University in West Virginia. I have attached the flyers for the colloquium, the performance and the program.

Annual UCSB Medieval Studies Spring Graduate Student Conference (2012)

The Annual UCSB Medieval Studies
Graduate Student Conference
Fear and Loathing
April 28, 2012

9:00-9:30 Coffee
9:30-9:40 Opening Comments

9:40 – 10:40 Panel I: “Fear and Diplomacy”
Colleen Ho, History, UCSB “Is There a Prester John Among the Mongols? Europe’s 13th Century Search for the Mythical Christian King.”
Nikki Malain, History, UCSB “Historicizing Fear: The Mosque of Genoa.”
Comment: Munther Al-Sabbagh, History, UCSB

10:40-11:00 Break
11:00-12:00 Panel II: “Fear and the State”
Joe Figliulo-Rosswurm, History, UCSB “`Let us kill this wretched dog’: The Emotional Structures of Class Conflict in Fourteenth-Century Florence.”
Paul Megna, English, UCSB “Timor Domini.”
Comment: Lauren Horn Griffin, Religious Studies, UCSB

12:00-1:15 Lunch
1:15-2:15 Keynote: Teofilo F. Ruiz (Distinguished Professor of History, UCLA) | “Enduring Fears in the Medieval West: Time, Power, and Salvation.”

2:15-2:30 Break
2:30- 3:30 Panel III: “Fear and Piety”
Anna Katharina Rudolph, History, UCR “Laughing in the Face of Fear: Differing Medieval Perceptions of the Presentation of the Torments of Hell.”
Jessica Marin Elliott, History, UCSB “`Jews Feigning Devotion’: Christian Fears about Converted Jews in France after the Expulsion of 1306.”
Comment: S. C. Kaplan, French, UCSB

Sponsored by UCSB Graduate Division, the IHC, the History Department, and the Medieval Studies Program.

Eighth Annual UCSB Medieval Studies Spring Graduate Student Conference (2009)

The Eighth Annual UCSB Medieval Studies
Graduate Student Conference
May 2, 2009

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.

Seventh Annual UCSB Medieval Studies Spring Graduate Student Conference (2008)

The Seventh Annual UCSB Medieval Studies
Graduate Student Conference
Emotion & the Environment
Saturday, 3 May 2008

Sixth Annual UCSB Medieval Studies Spring Graduate Student Conference (2007)

The Sixth Annual UCSB Medieval Studies
Graduate Student Conference
Saturday, 2 May 2007
Marine Sciences Institute Auditorium (Room 1302)

10:00a | Coffee, pastry
10:15a | Opening remarks
10:30a | 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”

12:00p | Keynote
Patricia Ingham, English, Indiana University: “Little Nothings: The Squire’s Tale and the Ambition of Gadgets.”

1:15p | Lunch
2:15p | 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 .”

3:30p | 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.

4:15p | Concluding Remarks

This event is sponsored by the Departments of History, Medieval Studies Program.

Fifth Annual UCSB Medieval Studies Spring Graduate Student Conference (2006)

The Fifth Annual UCSB Medieval Studies
Graduate Student Conference
Manuscript Culture in the Middle Ages: Production, Transmission, & Use
Saturday, April 8, 2006, 900 am – 5:30 pm
McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSSB

9:00 am – 9:15 am | Opening Remarks
9:15 am – 10:45 am | Session I
Nicole Archambeau – Department of History, UCSB | “Canonization Inquest Proctors: It’s Time to Pay Attention to the Man behind the Curtain¨
Ruthemma Ellison – Department of French & Francophone Studies, UCLA | “A Shady Mirror of Civilization: Medieval Images of the Forest”
Christine Thuau – Department of French & Francophone Studies, UCLA | “Specialization & Meditation: Private Reading and the Domestic Sphere in the Later Middle Ages”

10:45 am – 11:00 am | Break
11:00 am – 11:45 am | Session II
Jan Hawkley – Department of English, California State University, Chico | “The Journey of Everyman: Actualizing a Medieval Script for a Modern Aucience”
Owen Thomas – Department of Welsh, University of Wales, Lampeter | “The Poetry of Dafydd ap Gwilym and Dafydd Nanmor from the Perspective of MS. Peniarth 52”

11:45 am – 1:30 pm | Lunch Break
1:30 pm – 2:30 pm | Keynote Address
Thomas Forrest Kelly, Harvard College Professor & Morton B. Knafel Professor of Music Harvard University | “The Sound of Medieval Manuscripts”

2:30 pm – 2:45 pm | Break
2:45 pm – 3:30 pm | Session III
Kathryn Baillargeon – Department of Music, UCSB | “The Spider KIng & the Good Duke of Burgundy Possibilities for Missa Dum Sacrum Mysterium/L’homme armé”
Óscar Perea-Rodriguez – Department of Spanish & Portuguese, UC Berkeley | “Spanish Medieval Nobility and the Production of Poetry Manuscripts: The Cancioniero del Conde de Haro (Geneve, Foundation Martin Bodmer, MS. 45)”

3:30 pm – 3:45 pm | Break
3:45 pm – 4:30 pm | Informal Discussion & Closing Remarks

Sponsored By: The Medieval Studies Program; Graduate Division, The Interdisciplinary Humanities Center, Department of Drama & Dance, Department of English, Department of French & Italian, Department of History, Department of Music

Fourth Annual UCSB Medieval Studies Spring Graduate Student Conference (2005)

The Fourth Annual UCSB Medieval Studies
Graduate Student Conference
Identity Formation in the Middle Ages: Images, Literature, and Culture
Saturday, April 16, 2005, 9:30 am – 5:30 pm
McCune Conference Room, 6020 HSS

Morning Session:
9:30 am Coffee
10:00 am – Opening Remarks, Edward D. English, Medieval Studies, UCSB

Panel One:
10:15 am – James Vincent Maiello, Music, UCSB | “The L’homme armé Tradition in Naples: Issues of Identity and Attribution.”
11:00 am – Liberty Stanavage, English, UCSB | “Textuality, Performance Record, and Power: Competing Functions and the Struggle for Authority in the York Register.”

Afternoon Session:
12:oo pm Lunch
1:30 pm – Plenary Speaker, R. Howard Bloch, Augustus R. Street Professor of French, Yale University | “The Weaving of England: The Bayeux Tapestry and the Forging of Anglo-Norman Identity.”

Panel Two:
2:30 pm – Jeanne Provost, English, UCSB | “Fated Troth and the Right to Make Promises in Gower’s Take if Florent.”
3:15 pm – Jennifer Hammerschmidt, Art and Architecture, UCSB | “Viewing and Identity in Rogier van der Weyden’s Seven Sacraments Altarpiece.”

Closing Session:
4:00 pm – Closing Remarks, Jody Enders, French & Italian, Dramatic Arts, UCSB
4:30 pm Reception

Third Annual UCSB Medieval Studies Spring Graduate Student Conference (2004)

The Third Annual UCSB Medieval Studies
Graduate Student Conference
Self, Community, and Artifact in the Middle Ages
Saturday, April 17, 2004
Centennial House
Plenary Speaker: R. Allen Shoaf, University of Florida

Plenary Speaker:
R. Allen Shoaf, University of Florida
“Dante’s Comedy, Chaucer’s Troilus, Henryson’s Testament: A B and C — ‘a pregnant argument’”

Graduate Speakers:
Jessica Andruss, Department of Religious Studies
In his Kuzari or Argument and Proof in Defense of the Despised Faith, Judah Halevi (1075-1140) articulates the central tenets of classical Judaism through an imagined Socratic dialogue between a convert to Judaism and the rabbi who instructs him. Halevi’s treatise is based on the historical conversion of a Khazar king (ca. 861) as well as the retelling of this event by a later Khazar king in a famous letter to the Andalusi courtier-rabbi Hasdai ibn Shaprut (915-970). Yet the Kuzari reflects Halevi’s particular cultural milieu: the confluence of Aristotelian philosophy, Muslim theology, Sufi mysticism, rabbinical authority, and Karaism. Halevi seeks to preserve Judaism as a religion distinct from these traditions, but in doing so reveals his deep engagement in them. However, by the late medieval period and still today, the Kuzari is esteemed as a definitive presentation of rabbinical Judaism. How can a text so rooted in the inter-religious and intra-religious arguments of Islamic Spain come to be an acknowledged source of the essential principles of rabbinic Judaism? This paper argues that the Kuzari becomes a definitive treatment of Judaism only after Jews are expelled from Iberia and form communities in exile. In the ensuing centuries, crypto-Jews with no personal experience of their Jewish heritage leave Spain and seek to integrate into established Jewish communities. This situation, in which Jews must be taught how to participate in ritual and communal life, creates the need for a consistent account of Judaism and allows the Kuzari to emerge as such.

Karen Frank, Department of History
In the year 1460, the head of Saint Andrew, brother of Saint Peter, went on the European relic market. Throughout the Middle Ages, Andrew’s body had lain in the Italian city of Amalfi while his head rested on the Greek island of Patras. When the Turks invaded the Pelopennese seven years after the conquest of Constantinople, the deposed Greek emperor’s youngest brother, Thomas Palaeologus, Despot of Morea, fled his principality and sought refuge in Western Europe. He refused to do so empty-handed, stopping along his way in order to collect Andrew’s head. Pope Pius II, upon hearing that Thomas wished to sell the relic, immediately put in his bid. He warned Thomas that this “most precious head of the apostle” must not fall into the hands of just anybody. Indeed, he stated that Thomas would “incur the anger of the apostles”, and “be acting most impiously and cruelly if he surrendered it to anyone but the pope.” Thomas turned down other lucrative offers and agreed to trade the relic for the pope’s permanent hospitality in Rome. Pius himself recounts this story of how Andrew’s head came to Rome in his Commentaries. The acquisition of the head of Peter’s brother clearly meant much to the humanist pope, as the story of the acquisition-and the ceremonies that he devised and orchestrated to welcome Andrew-takes up almost half of Book VIII. Curiously, this episode, with very few exceptions, has either been ignored by modern historians of the Quattrocento, or else glossed over as so much ceremony. Those who do mention the incident tend to concentrate on its propagandistic purpose. Even the briefest of readings of the event makes it excruciatingly clear that Pius intended in this ceremony to arouse the indignation of secular princes over the Turkish conquest of previously Christian lands. The speech that the Greek cardinal Bessarion delivered the Tuesday of Holy Week, April 26th, 1462, on behalf of the physically present, but mute, Saint Andrew clearly associated Pius II with Saint Peter. Andrew, through his spokesman, Bessarion, implored his brother to dedicate himself to the destruction of the “barbarian” Turks. Since the materially present Peter, like Andrew, was mute and too needed a mortal spokesperson, it was left to his representative, Pius, to swear to uphold his brother’s cause, which Pius, of course, did. This part of the ceremony is no surprise considering the lukewarm response Pius received three years earlier in Mantua when he pleaded his cause-the defeat of the Turks and the subsequent protection of Christians in those lands appropriated by their foe-to secular dignitaries and princely ambassadors. Though Pius’s eloquence at the Congress of Mantua failed to arouse the intended response, Pius must have hoped that Saint Andrew’s forced flight from his home of 1400 years would make some impression on Christian secular leaders. This ceremonial opportunity must have been irresistible to Pius and his supporters within the curia. But the crusade that Pius longed for did not occur, despite the fact that, according to his Commentaries, not only all of Rome but many visitors from all over Europe enthusiastically received the apostle with both pomp and adoration. Though perhaps Pius failed in his endeavor to whip up popular sentiment for a crusade, he still considered the event of welcoming Andrew to Rome as one of the highlights of his papacy. He describes not only the dialogue between Andrew and the silent Peter (and his representative Pius) but also the adventures ceremony of Saint Andrew into Rome with exquisite attention to detail. The ceremony itself then, despite or in addition to its propagandistic intent, meant much to this humanist pope. My intent in this paper is to concentrate on what other historians have chosen to ignore—the centrality of the relic to this ceremony—and to examine how Pius viewed relics in the mid-fifteenth century. Close examination of Pius’s description of the ceremony and a reconstruction of the late medieval city of Rome that welcomed Andrew’s relic will reveal what the ceremony may have meant outside of Pius’s crusade-inspiring intent. For a financially strained papacy, ceremony for ceremony’s sake is an expensive past-time. It is difficult to believe that the “gorgeous ceremony” of the Renaissance Church was just that. Instead, the triple blows of the Avignon papacy, the Great Schism, and the Conciliar movement weakened the position that not only the papacy but also Rome itself possessed in the minds of the Church’s faithful, forcing the pope into a position of reasserting both himself and his see. Though this is not an entirely new argument, and while other historians have emphasized the connection of ceremonies and rituals to authoritative papal claims in the fifteenth century, none have to my knowledge either examined those ceremonies in detail or questioned the reliance on relics within these ceremonies. What I hope to suggest, then, is that relics-particularly of early martyrs and Apostles—were intrinsic to papal attempts to both reclaim authority and stress the importance of the pope as the head of the respublica christiania in Quattrocento Rome.

James Maiello, Department of Music
“Music, Ritual, & The Asperges”
In the Roman rite, holy water is used in many rites of purification or cleansing, often accompanied by the antiphon Asperges me (or Vidi aquam in Paschal Time). One of the most common uses of holy water came to be known simply as the Asperges- the sprinkling of the altar and the congregation immediately before Mass on Sundays. The rite developed from Byzantine and monastic roots and became part of the Mass ordinary during the medieval period. It remained remarkably consistent from its origins until the mid-twentieth century. In the relevant literature, however, rarely more than a paragraph is devoted to the ritual and its accompanying music. This is particularly surprising, since these antiphons were widely disseminated throughout Europe during the Middle Ages, and the ritual was an integral part of the liturgy. In addition, polyphonic settings of the antiphons began to appear as early as the 1430s, the beginning of a polyphonic tradition that reached well into the twentieth century. This paper aims to provide a detailed look at the Asperges and its accompanying music. It will focus on the history of the ritual, the text and music of the antiphons, and the development of a polyphonic repertory of music for the Asperges. I will also examine differences among insular, Continental, monastic, and secular Uses, as well as issues of performance practice.

Jessica Murphy, Department of English
“The Absent Victim(s) in ‘The Wife of Bath’s Tale’ and Chaucer’s Struggle”
The catalyst for the action of the Wife of Bath’s Tale is the rape of a young maiden, yet that maiden is absent from the tale after the three lines that describe the rape (WBT 886-8). Chaucer’s Wife may have intended to tell a story that illustrates the desire of women for sovereignty, but the Wife denies a voice to the woman whose plight begins the tale. The maiden disappears, sullied and unmarriageable, from the tale after the rape because the story and the rape are no longer about the maiden. The legal concept of rape in the Middle Ages is not entirely straightforward, but there is no question that the crime of rape was the crime of one man against another man, and the female victim was relegated to the status of property. If a rape is one man’s violation of another’s property, then there is another victim in The Wife of Bath’s Tale whose voice and concerns are absent-the maiden’s father (or male guardian). The maiden’s silence serves to highlight her violation and the unfair nature of its punishment, while the male victim’s silence points to complications in the representation of this violation. In this paper, I argue that Chaucer, who may have been accused of rape himself, struggles with the unfair nature of the treatment of the crime in The Wife of Bath’s Tale, and that it is this struggle that creates the multiple meanings in the tale that are overlooked by critics who posit a unified vision of Chaucer’s representation of rape.

Jennifer Stoy, Department of English
“Looking for Alice Perrers”
In this paper, I try to find a “real” medieval figure who has been all but obliterated from the records: Edward III’s powerful mistress, Alice Perrers. Basically, I’m trying to find Perrers’ self after the community has decided that she as an individual was too dangerous to be remembered. Looking at both historical records and William Langland’s Piers Plowman, this paper/presentation will be an investigation of how gender, legitimacy, and precarious power situations coincide to remove records of one of medieval England’s most interesting female figures. Topics discussed in this paper will include if it’s at all possible to find Alice Perrers, how women’s individuality is viewed with extreme distrust to outright hostility for several reasons, legal as well as social, and how the law’s objectiveness is used in the Perrers case against Perrers, and how history in the form of chronicle manuscripts and idle rumor presented as fact, finishes the job. In “looking for Alice Perrers,” she may be impossible to find, but a host of medieval issues about women, law, and power come to the fore.

Second Annual UCSB Medieval Studies Spring Graduate Student Conference (2003)

The Second Annual UCSB Medieval Studies
Graduate Student Conference
Passions in the Middle Ages
Saturday, 19 April 2003
Centennial House
Plenary Speaker: Barbara Rosenwein, Loyola University

Morning Panel:
Nicole Archambeau, Department of History
“‘Spiritual Consolation’: Seeking External Aid for Inner Passions”
Zia Isola, Department of English
“No Passion, Please: Desire and Restraint in Chretien’s Perceval”
Heidi Marx-Wolf, Department of History
“Disordered Passions: Records of Madness in Medieval Canonization Processes”

Plenary:
Barbara Rosenwein, Department of History, Loyola University, Chicago
“Passions at Court in Merovingian Gaul”

Afternoon Panel:
Corinne Wieben, Department of History
“Carissima Domina Mater: Verdiana da Castelfiorentino as Civic Saint”
Mitzi Kirkland Ives, Department of Art History
“Lijdens Christi and Flemish Medelijden— The Passion Narrative in Fifteenth-Century Visual Culture”
Bethanie Petersen, Department of History
“The Relics of the Passion and the Veronica in France at the Time of Louis IX”

This event has been generously co-sponsored by Graduate Division.

First Annual UCSB Medieval Studies Spring Graduate Student Conference (2002)

The First Annual UCSB Medieval Studies
Graduate Student Conference
Interpretations of Violence
Saturday, 20 April 2002
Centennial House
Plenary Speaker: David Nirenberg, University of Chicago

Panel One:
Comic or Strange? Deployments of Violent Measures
Presider: Carol Pasternack, Department of English

Andrew Miller
“Torturous Tonsuring: Violence, Communication & Anticlericalism? in the Reign of King Edward I”
Nancy McLoughlin
“Frightened Theologians are Dangerous: John Gerson’s Persecutions of Bridget of Sweden, John Hus, and John Petit as Responses to Internal Divisions Within the University of Paris”
Mark O’Tool
“Beatings, Songs, and a “Stick in the Ass”: the Performance of Begging in the Farce du Goguelu”

Plenary:
Introduction – Giorgio Perissinotto, Department of Spanish and Portuguese
David Nirenberg
“Massacre, Mass Conversion, and the Reconstruction of Religious Identities in Medieval Spain”

Panel Two:
Expressions of Violence On and Across Boundaries
Presider: Richard Hecht, Department of Religious Studies

Linda Jones
“Violence Re-imagined: Discourses of Force in the Sermons of Ibn Marzuq and St. Vincent Ferrer”
Tom Sizgorich
“‘No Blood Sweeter Than That of the Romans’: Monsters, Hybrids and the Imperial Gaze in Arab Conquest Narratives”
Jeanne Provost
“Laughing at the Borders: Violence, Comedy, and the Creation of Difference in Chaucer’s Miller’s Tale”

This event was generously co-sponsored by
Graduate Division and the Departments of History and Spanish and Portuguese.