The Yale Medieval Lunch Series is an interdisciplinary colloquium that meets regularly throughout the academic year. It is the program’s primary forum for exchanging ideas, sharing research findings, and presenting work-in-progress within Yale’s broad and diverse Medieval Studies community.
The colloquium draws on the skills and expertise of departmental faculty members, graduate students, research scholars, postdoctoral fellows, librarians, curators, and occasional visitors from outside Yale. In the past two years alone, presentations have included new research from the fields of English, linguistics, history of art, religious studies, history, Judaic studies, numismatics, legal studies, economic history, paleography and manuscript studies, textual criticism, Italian, Spanish, French, Slavic and Near Eastern languages.
Medieval Lunch takes place on Tuesdays at noon in the Thompson Room in Timothy Dwight College (on Temple St., between Wall Street and Grove Street). To get to the Thompson Room, enter the gate on Temple Street (traffic in and out of the College makes this possible), walk straight to the dining hall, make a right upon entering the double doors, and continue through the common room until the Thompson Room, where a sign will be posted for Medieval Lunch. Sign in at the main desk in the dining hall (faculty should bursar bill their lunches).
Spring 2018
January 23
Carson Koepke (Medieval Studies) - “The Legacy of Vergil’s Dido in the Waltharius”
January 30
Chihiro Tsukamoto (Medieval Studies) - “Reconstructing Norse music of the Viking Age”
February 6
Will Watson (Music) - “Toward New Histories of Fifteenth-Century Polyphonic Song”
February 13
sigridur.sigurdardottir@yale.edu">Sigridur Sirry Sigurdardottir (Linguistics) - “Some notes on weather expression in Old and Modern Icelandic”
February 20
Kristen Herdman (Medieval Studies) - “Reordering the Psalms: Beinecke MS 1171”
February 27
Sara McDougall (CUNY) - “Illegitimacy and Infanticide in Late Medieval France”
April 2
Kyle Conrau-Lewis (Classics) - “The Muses and Redacted Antiquity: Rodulfus Totarius’ Versification of Valerius Maximus”
April 9
“Death by Gospel”
Fall 2017
September 19
Welcome back and Introductions
September 26
Ardis Butterfield (English, French, Music) - “Passion, exegesis and song in John Grimestone’s notebook”
October 3
Chris Forney (History) - “Imaginary Jewish Kingdoms in the Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela.”
October 10
Alexander Pena (Medieval Studies) - “Fortune-tellers, Deviant Abbots, and Mutinous Monks: the Carta Caritatis Prior and Early Cistercian Normativity”
October 17
Gina Hurley (Medieval Studies) - ” ‘Over thine eyes pull they hood’: The Case of the Innocent Penitent and the False Confessor”
October 24
Meredith Ringel-Ensley (Southern Connecticut State) - “John of Plano Carpini Learns Sign Language at the Court of Güyük Khan”
October 31
Howard Bloch (French) - “The Miracle of Theophilus”
November 7
John Burden (History) - “A Bishop and His Law Book”
November 14
Annie Killian (English) - “Preacher, Poet, Venerabilis Vir”
November 28
Rebecca Hill (UCLA) - “ ‘Don’t be fooled by the rocks that I got’: Appraising the art of embedded gemology in vernacular poetry”
December 5
David Murray (University of Oxford) - “Looking and Listening through the Virgin and Child in Central Europe circa 1400”
2016-2017
September 13
Welcome back; Introductions
September 20
Shu-Han Luo, Medieval Studies MPhil, and English Phd, “Tears for Abraham”
October 4
Marcia Colish. “John Cassian’s ‘Semi-Pelagianism’ Reconsidered”
October 11
Alexander D’Alisera, Divinity School, “An Ethical Breaking of the Ranks:Thomas Aquinas’ Fraternal Correction and the Soldier’s Doctrine of Disobedience”
October 18
Mireille Pardon, History, “Fear and Fascination: the Perception of Criminal Organizations in Late Medieval Flanders”
October 25
John Burden, History, “Penitential or Canon Law Code?”
November 1
Sebastian Bezerra, History, “Gascon Monasteries and Medieval Metadata”
November 8
Sarah Ifft Decker, History, “Credit and Crisis after the Black Death”
November 15
Katherine Hindley, English, “How to Win Friends and Influence People Using Only the Alphabet”
December 6
Kevin Lord, Hstory, ‘Revisiting Lay Piety in the Late Middle Ages’
January 24
Sara Torres, Med Academy, “Swords of Peace: Hoccleve, Lydgate, and Sovereign Desire in Lancastrian Verse”
January 31
Constantin Cless, History, “The Poore- Treasurers, Dynastic Policy of a 12th and 13th century Family of English Clerics”
February 7
Jackie Jung, Art History, The Work of Gothic Sculpture in the Age of its Photographic Reproduction
February 14
Brianne Dolce, Music, Realizing Repetition in the Later Cambridge Songs: Song Structure and Layout in a Twelfth-Century British Songbook
February 21
Clara Wild, Medieval Studies, ”Bryngyth to hym a chalys with an host þerin:” N-Town’s Agony in the Garden
February 28
Darcy Kern, Southern Connecticut State, Jean Gerson’s Conciliarism and Fifteenth-Century Spain
April 4
Anna Marra, Italian, The River and the Bread. Boccaccio’s Notes on Meditation
April 11
Maria Doerfler, Religious Studies, Children and the Sword: The Holy Innocents and the Death of Children in Late Antiquity
April 18
Handling Knowledge: Drama ant Authority in Late Medieval England
April 25
How a Demon’s Son Became a Saint
2015-2016
September 15
Welcome back, Introductions
September 22
Marcia Colish, History, End Time at Hand: Innocent III as Apocalyptic Joachite?
October 6
Ray Clemens, New collections, new directions
October 13
Anna Zayaruznaya, Music, A bossy tenor
October 20
Sara McDougall, History, John Jay College. Bastards and their mothers in medieval Europe
October 27
Eleonora Buonocore, Italian, “The Paradox of Paradise: Dante’s Memory Loss in Paradiso I“
November 17
Sarah Ifft Decker, History, Men’s Dowries: Flexibility in the Dotal Regime
December 1
Howard Bloch, French, Legal Proceedings in the Old French Fabliaux
December 8
Giuseppe Mazzotta, Italian, Emperor Frederick II’s Castle in Castel del Monte
December 15
Harvey Goldblatt, Slavic S&L, Imitating the Two fold Nature of Scripture: On the Expositional and Compositional Use of Biblical Elements as Literary Strategies in Old Rus ́(XI-XIII centuries)
January 26
Anya Adair, English, The Trouble with Technology; or, What Puts William Caxton Out of Sorts?
February 2
Liran Yadgar, Judaic Studies, A Fourteenth-Century Polemic against non-Muslim Physicians from Mamluk Egypt
February 9
Justin Park, English, Vercelli VII and Making Room for Disgust at the Daily Feast
February 23
Paul Freedman, History, The Royal Academy of Belles-Lettres of Barcelona and the Catalan Middle Ages
March 8
Annie Killian, English, The Riddle and the Refrain
March 29
Carol Chiodo, Italian, Yale Ph.D., The Italian Lesson
April 5
Alex Reider, English, Charles d’Orleans and his English books
April 12
Sarah Ifft Decker, History, Over Land and Sea: Gender in Commenda Contract
April 19
Eleonora Buonocore, Italian, The Poet’s Forgotten Dream: Dante’s Oblivious Memory in Paradiso XXIII
April 26
Taylor Cowdery, English, Harvard University, Critical Terms in Middle English Poetic Theory
2014-2015
September 9
Jackie Jung, Art History
“ ‘The Boots of Saint Hedwig’ or ‘the Fascinating Presence of Absences in Medieval Art’ ”
September 23
Emily Ulrich, Medieval Studies
“A Scribal Scop: The Textual Trappings of Beowulf”
October 7
Alexandra Reider, English
“The Beauty of Medicine: Takamiya MS 33”
October 14
Dr. Jonathan Morton, Visiting Assistant Professor in French at Columbia University; Juliana Cuyler Matthews Junior Research Fellow in Modern Languages, New College, Oxford
“The Fiction of Genius in the High Middle Ages”
October 21
Scott Davis, Religious Studies
“The Buddha: Canoni. “Historiography and Political Culture in Early Fourteenth-Century England”
November 4
Barbara Shailor, Yale University
“Shedding Light on Medieval Manuscripts”
November 11
Henry Parkes, Institute of Sacred Music
“Musical Portraits of St. Guthlac”
December 2
Eleonora Buonocore, Italian
“The Ethics and Politics of Time in Dante’s Ante-Purgatory”
February 3
Dr. Daniel McCann, Leverhulme Fellow at Oxford
“Words of Fire and Fruit: Grammar and Affect in the Cloud of Unknowing”
February 10
Anders Winroth, History
“Is Global Medieval History Possible?”
February 17
Thomas Schmidt, Religious Studies
“Medieval Sources as a Window to the Ancient Past: Agapius and Michael the Syrian on the Life of Jesus”
February 24
Clio Doyle, Renaissance Studies
“Names and Naming in 15th -Century Commentaries on Virgil”
March 3
Kevin Poole, Spanish and Portugese
“Seeking Wisdom, Seeking Sin in the Libro de buen amor”
March 31
Joseph Stadolnik, English
“Who’s That ‘Philosofre’?”
April 7
Sarah Spence, Medieval Academy, editor Speculum
“Poetic Negotiation: Sicily and the Myths of Empire from Cicero to Dante”
April 14
Eleonora Buonocore, Italian
“From the Solidity of Memory to the Fluidity of Forgetting: The New Liquidity of Consciousness in Dante’s Earthly Paradise”
April 21
Elizabeth Hebberd, French
“A New French Romance of Alexander…Sort of.”
April 28
Brianne Dolce and William Watson, Music
“Ten Things Your Didn’t Know About Medieval Music Writing (Number 4 Will Shock You!)”
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2013-2014
September 10
Liza Anderson
“The Saint, the Heretic and the Naked Prostitute: Re-imagining the Nestorian Controversy in a Medieval Syriac Narrative”
September 17
Anya Adair, English
“Shedding Light on William Darker: A Solution to the Problem of Otiose Strokes in 15th Century “
October 1
Marcia Colish
“Self-Baptism in the Middle Ages?”
October 8
Caroline Hughes, Art History
“Another Murderous Foundress: The Medieval Figure of Albina as a Classical Heroine”
October 15
Jackie Jung, Art History
“Painted Churches in South Tyrol”
October 29
Eleonora Buonocuore, Italian
“The Trap of Infernal Memory: The Dangers of Remembrance in Inferno XIII”
November 5
Kevin Poole, Spanish and Portugese
“Aristotle Made Me Do It: Looking for Love in the 14th Century”
November 12
Colleen Farrell
“The Long Shadow of the Gelasian Decretum: St. Anne in the West”
December 3
Dr. Clare Monagle, (History Dept at Monash University, Melbourne)
“Poor Maternity: Clare of Assisi’s Letters to Agnes of Prague”
January 28
Ann Killian, English
“What is a Wycliffe Book?”
February 4
Katherine Hindley
“Re-Writing Religion: Superstition, Indulgences, and the ‘Arma Christi’ Poem”
February 18
Stacie Vos
“Miraculous Milk: Bodies of Women in Medieval and Early Modern Exempla”
February 25
Carol Chiodo, Italian
“Come da corda cocca - The Flotsam and Jetsam of Metaphor in Inferno 16”
March 4
Sarah Ifft, History
“Translating Divorce: Jews and Christian Notaries in Medieval Iberia”
April 1
Agnes Rec, History
“April Fool’s Gold”
April 15
Andrew Kraebel, History
“Wyclif ordinator”
April 22
Johanna Fridriksdottir, Fellow, Dept. of Germanic Languages and Lit, Harvard
“Heroes and Humour”
April 29
Alexander C. Loney, American Council of Learned Societies New Faculty Fellow, Dept. of Classics
“Blood Vengeance from Hesiod’s Ouranos to Shakespeares’s Lady Macbeth”
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2012-2013
September 11
Marita von Weissenberg
“What man are you?” ‘Artisan and nobleman’
September 18
Ray Clemens
“Manuscripts for Fun and Profit”
October 2
Greg Roberts
‘Policing and the public interest in communal Bologna’
October 9
Madeleine Saraceni
“The Poetics and Cultural Politics of Bocaccio’s On Famous Women”
October 23
Susan Gibbons, University Librarian
“What’s the Future of Data Curation in Medieval Studies?”
November 6
Carol Chiodo
“When Wayland’s Work is Worn Away. Technology and Transcendence”
November 13
Jonathan Cayer
“My Dad’s Your Mom”
December 4
Sarah Ifft
“Women Lending to Women? An Aspect of Medieval Credit”
January 22
Cherie Woodworth
“What is Wood Worth?”
January 29
Arvind Thomas
“ ‘Of Whom has Thou Thy Cunning?’ - The Practice of Canon Law in the Book of Margery Kempe”
February 5
Elizabeth L. Anderson
“Repentant Demons, Contrite Cannibals, and Vengeful Crocodiles: Sin and Salvation in Medieval Arabic Christian Narratives”
February 19
Junius Johnson
“The Theology of the Eucharist in Bonaventure’s Sentence Commentary“
February 26
Madeleine Saraceni
“Excluding the Female Audience: Boccaccio’s Corbaccio and the Poetics of Exclusion”
March 5
Mike Widener
“Marketing and Medieval Manuscripts”
March 26
Lauren Mancia
“Reading John of Fécamp in an Eleventh-Century Monastery”
April 2
Ana Del Campo
“Physician and Priest at the Bedside”
April 9
Shannon Beddingfield
“Parhomoeon in Ælfric’s Prose”
April 16
Harald Buchinger
“Easter in the Middle Ages: Historical Phases and Hermeneutical Layers”
April 23
Hadi Jorati
”Penny Politics and Presumed Piety”