CFP: Freiburg-Toronto Graduate Student Colloquium 2012

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The Centre is soliciting one-page abstracts from CMS students for 30 minute papers to be delivered at next fall’s Freiburg-Toronto Graduate Student Colloquium (October 4-6), which will be held in Toronto. The theme, “Integrating Bodies of Knowledge”, reflects the essential point of the colloquium exchange, namely, a broad range of research explored across academic disciplines and international perspectives. Abstracts on any medieval topic will be given full consideration.

This colloquium is jointly sponsored by the Centre for Medieval Studies and the Mittelalterzentrum of the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg. Participants will present their work as part of a three-day-long exchange of ideas and techniques with scholars from Freiburg. Each paper will have a respondent, a specialist chosen from the faculty of the partner institution, to offer insight and direct discussion. Costs for lunch and dinner will be covered for CMS presenters. Six abstracts will be selected on a competitive basis.

Abstracts should be submitted by 16 May to Professor John Magee (email hidden; JavaScript is required).

Click here for a hardcopy of this Call for Papers.

DOE receives Mellon Challenge Grant

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In spring 2011 the Dictionary of Old English received a $500,000 Mellon
Challenge Grant which requires a 1:1 match to release funds to the
project. Your support is always welcome, but most especially at this time. Each donation, no matter how large or small, will have maximum impact, for it will double in value. Your gift will help to ensure that the DOE will reach completion and will serve scholars and lovers of the English language for generations to come.

Donations may be made online through credit card, and cheques may be mailed to the Dictionary. Tax receipts will be issued for all gifts.

If you are interested in making a donation to the Centre for Medieval Studies for another purpose (for instance, in support of graduate students or the George Rigg Visitorship in Medieval Latin) you are very welcome to contact the Centre’s email hidden; JavaScript is required or to visit the donations website.

Session in Honour of Ann Dooley at the 2012 Meeting of the Canadian Society of Medievalists

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A session in honour of Ann Dooley will be held at the upcoming meeting of the Canadian Society of Medievalists (Wilfried Laurier University, Waterloo, ON, May 27-29). The session on Monday, May 28, is organized by CMS alumnae Giselle Gos and Joanne Findon. For more details see the program of the meeting.

Current CMS students and alumni are well represented at this year’s CSM meeting, so don’t miss out on it!

Suzanne Akbari and Lawrin Armstrong win SSHRC Insight Grants

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We congratulate Suzanne Akbari and Lawrin Armstrong for each securing a SSHRC Insight Grants in support of their research. Well done! Suzanne Akbari’s project is entitled “Universal Histories and the Poetic Narration of the Past, 1100-1450″; Lawrin Armstrong will do research on “The Organic Intellectuals of Early Renaissance Florence”.

CMS faculty and staff honoured for service

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Congratulations to Grace Desa, Catherine Monahan, and David Townsend, on having passed the 25-year service threshold at the U of T, and to Rosemary Beattie, on having passed the 40-year threshold just before her retirement on April 30th.  The years of dedicated service are a crucial component of CMS’s success and were warmly acknowledged by President David Naylor at a ceremony held at the Faculty of Music on the 8th of May.  Congratulations also to Grace, on the birth of her first grandchild, Liliana, born at 4:05 on the morning of Saturday, May 12th, 7.27 lbs. (and growing).

CMS at the 47th International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo

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The Centre for Medieval Studies has seventeen speakers at the 47th International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo (May 10-13, 2012). The speakers are:

  • Alice Hutton: The Prelapsarian State in the Theology of the School of Laon
  • Adam S. Cohen: Edgar’s Thigh and Benedict’s Knees: The Reforming Body in Anglo-Saxon Art
  • Tristan Sharp: Perfect Virgins and Suicidal Maniacs: Monks in Early Thirteenth-Century Pastoralia
  • Stephen Pelle: The Otho Homilies: Extracts from a Lost Early Middle English Manuscript
  • Shaun Lalonde: Brunetto Latini as Theorist of Rhymes
  • Chris Piuma: De catervis ceteris
  • William Robins: Minstrel Solidarity in Florence
  • Christopher Berard: The Once and Future Arthurian: Edward III and the Feast of Saint George, 1358
  • Morris Tichenor: Panel Transition and Narrative Sequencing in Anticlaudianus, the Comic Book
  • Caroline Smith: Righteous Persecution No More? The Judicial Understanding of Inquisitorial Office in Nicolau Eimeric’s Directorium inquisitorum
  • Jayna Brett: Animal-Derived Medicines in Early Medieval Pharmacy
  • Michael D. Barbezat: In a Corporeal Flame: The Development of the Materiality of Hellfire before the Resurrection in Western Eschatology
  • Amanda Wetmore: Riddles and Charms: Performance and Sacramental Theology in The Pardoner’s Prologue and Tale
  • Claude Evans: Towards a Rewriting of the Beginnings of the Cistercian Order in Brittany
  • Susannah G. Brower: Ovidian Persona and the Specter of Social Control in the Poetry of Baudri of Bourgueil
  • Daniel Jamison: Lucca’s Gabella Maggiore: A Fortuitous Window into an Urban Economy
  • Jill Caskey: San Gennaro and Friends: Performing Relics and Patronage in Southern Italy during the Later Middle Ages
Other students and faculty are involved in workshops, round-table discussions, and as presiders: Andrew Dunning, Michael Gervers, Alexandra Johnston, Antonette diPaolo Healey, David Klausner, Jenny Kostoff-Kaard, Linda Safran, and Sean Winslow.
Don’t miss the CMS/UTP reception on Thursday evening (May 10)! CMS Director John Magee is looking forward to meeting you there.

Asteroid named after CMS alumnus Randall Rosenfeld

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CMS alumnus Randall Rosenfeld has received a special honour – no doubt a first for a CMS alumnus: he had an asteroid named after him. Information on asteroid (283990) Randallrosenfeld, first discovered in September 2004, is most easily found on the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s site. The asteroid is also announced on the website of the IAU’s Minor Planet Center at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (see the last page of this document).

Randall Rosenfeld is the national archivist of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada. He has created a first-class archive that provides an insight on the development of Canadian astronomy in the last century, and has brought old but valuable observing records to light.

Randall has also just won the 2012 Simon Newcomb Award of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada for excellence in astronomical writing. Congratulations!!

Canada Chaucer Seminar 2012

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The 4th Annual Canada Chaucer Seminar is pleased to present a special two-day gathering in honour of Richard Firth Green, taking place at the University of Toronto, April 27–28, 2012.

Truth and Tales: Medieval Popular Culture and the Written Word

Keynote speakers will be Richard Firth Green (Ohio State), Barbara Hanawalt (Ohio State), and Andrew Taylor (Ottawa).

Other speakers include Thomas Hahn (Rochester), Michael Johnston (Purdue), Kathleen Kennedy (Penn State Brandywine), Lisa Kiser (Ohio State), Rachel Koopmans (York), Robyn Malo (Purdue), Alastair Minnis (Yale), William Robins (Toronto), Fiona Somerset (Duke), M.J. Toswell (Western Ontario), Michael Van Dussen (McGill), Nicholas Watson (Harvard), Karen Winstead (Ohio State), and Stephen Yeager (Wayne St).

All sessions will take place at the Centre for Medieval Studies, 125 Queen’s Park, 3rd Floor.

For the full program, please visit http://groups.chass.utoronto.ca/chaucer/

For further information, contact email hidden; JavaScript is required.

CMS Welcomes Medieval Colloquium Attendees

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The CMS 33rd Medieval Colloquium is this Friday and Saturday March 2–3, and we are looking forward to having you all here with us in Toronto. Here are some important points of information in preparation for the event.
1. Registration and Conference Schedule: Here is the current conference schedule. Please note the registration and coffee/breakfast time of 8-9am, where you may pick up your conference packets. Registration will occur at the main conference location of Alumni Hall, in the Old Victoria College building.
2. Conference Locations: Here is a link to a Google-Map of local conference locations. Touch your cursor to the name of the location and the appropriate pin will be highlighted. We also have a printable walking map.
Registration, panels, and keynotes, together with various coffee breaks, will take place in Alumni Hall of Old Victoria College (not to be confused with Alumni Hall of Saint Michael’s College). “Old Vic” is the castle-shaped building in the middle of the Victoria University complex of buildings, and has a large main door. Alumni Hall is the room directly ahead of you upon entrance.
Lunches will be served in the Great Hall of the Centre for Medieval Studies, which is on the third floor of the Lillian Massey Building across from the ROM. There will be signs with arrows posted around, so you should be able to find it without difficulty.
Our Friday evening reception will be held in the Provost’s Lodge of Trinity College, which is accessed through the door to the right of the main entrance.
Any extracurricular drinking will probably occur in the Bedford Academy, which is a friendly local pub on Prince Arthur Street near Bedford Road. Members of the conference committee will be going for an informal drink there on Thursday March 1, beginning at around 7 if anyone wishes to join us. The reservation will be under the ‘CMS Medieval Conference’. The CMS Social Committee will also be having a pub night on Friday evening at 8:00 PM in the Bedford Academy (36 Prince Arthur Avenue).
Each of these locations is wheelchair-accessible. Please contact us if you have any special requirements.
3. Getting to downtown from the airports (for visitors to Toronto):

To transit downtown from Pearson International airport: from the Pearson Terminal, take the 192 Airport Express to Kipling Subway Station. Take the subway eastbound to St. George Station.

To transit downtown from Toronto Island Airport: a free shuttle bus runs from the ferry terminal at Toronto Island Airport to a hotel about a block from Union Subway Station. Take the ‘University-Spadina’ subway line northbound from Union and get off at either Museum (closest to the conference building) or St. George (closest to the hotel). Transit fares are $3 one-way.

If you do not wish to transit, you may take a taxi; fares to downtown should be ca. $35-40 from Pearson and ca. $15–20 from Toronto Island Airport.

4. Inquiries and Directions: various volunteers will be stationed around the conference areas full of helpful answers to all your questions.

CMS Students on Tour

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Here are some upcoming talks of current CMS students:

Peter Buchanan, “Caedmon and the Gift of Song in Black Mountain Poetics”, The Eighth Annual ASSC Graduate Student Conference – “Philology”, University of California, Berkeley, 24-25 February 2012.

Patrick Meusel, “Cynewulf at the Crossroads: the Stylistic Influence of Vernacular Homiletic Prose and Christian-Latin Verse in Christ B”, Cambridge Colloquium in Anglo-Saxon, Norse, and Celtic 2012: Junctions and Crossroads, Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse, and Celtic, University of Cambridge, 22-26 February 2012.

Jessica Lockhart, “He Will Rock You: Havelok’s Boulders and the Problem of Wonder in Havelok the Dane”, Romance in Medieval Britain Conference, St. Hugh’s College, Oxford, 24-26 March 2012.

Elizabeth Watkins, “An Incomplete Text: Le Roman de Waldef and Cod. Bodmer 168”, Romance in Medieval Britain Conference, St. Hugh’s College, Oxford, 24-26 March 2012.

Lecture and seminar with Mitchell Merback (Johns Hopkins University)

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The Centre is happy to announce two events with Prof. Mitchell Merback (Johns Hopkins University).

LECTURE: “From Icon to Mirror of the Soul: Therapeutic Exchanges with the Man of Sorrows in Medieval and Renaissance Art”
Thursday, 19 January 2012, 4:00 p.m. in Room 301 (Centre for Medieval Studies, 125 Queen’s Park)

SEMINAR: “Radical in the Making: Sources and Strategies of Sebald Beham’s Devotional Graphics, 1518-21″
Friday, 20 January 2012, 10:00 am – 12:00 noon (Centre for Medieval Studies, 125 Queen’s Park)
Readings for the seminar are available from email hidden; JavaScript is required.

Mitchell Merback is Associate Professor of the History of Art at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. Specializing in northern European art of the later Middle Ages and Renaissance, he is the  author of The Thief, the Cross and the Wheel: Pain and the Spectacle  of Punishment in Medieval and Renaissance Europe (1999); and editor of Beyond the Yellow Badge: Anti-Judaism and Antisemitism in Medieval and  Early Modern Visual Culture (2008). His new book, Pilgrimage and Pogrom: From Violence to Memory at the Host-Miracle Shrines of Germany and Austria, is forthcoming from the University of Chicago Press in Winter 2013.

Click here to download a poster for these events (includes an abstract).