Complete Listing of Past Medieval Lunch Series Events
2022-2023
September 13
Meet & Greet
September 27
Áine Palmer (Music) – “Human Voices, Animal Eyes, Divine Ears: Understanding the Experience of Medieval Devotion through a Thirteenth-Century Lyric”
October 11
Stephan Sveshnikov (History) – “Heresy, Fantasy, and Black Humor in the Old Russian ‘Dracula’ Tale”
October 18
Hannah Lloyd (History) – “The Influence of Prestige and Dietetics in Medieval Recipes for Lamprey”
November 8
Kimberly Lifton - ‘The Clumber Park Chartier: A Potential Patron’
November 15
Camila Marcone - ‘Natural Resource Management in Medieval Castile: The Case of Piedrahíta, Ávila (1454-1473)
January 24
Marcia Colish – Anselm’s Boethius: the View from De concordia 1
February 7
Alexander D’Alisera – ‘Deer and Death in a Cumbrian Cave: Seeking Early Medieval Ritual Practice at Dog Hole’
February 14
Ahuva Liberles – Can we talk about diversity in the Middle Ages?
February 21
visit from Volker Drecoll (Universität Tübingen)
February 28
visit from Bruce Holsinger (UVa)
April 11
Kevin Kiernan - A Preview of the Fifth Edition of Electronic Beowulf
April 25
Megan Perry – Tangles with Gnomes in the OE Pastoral Care
2021–2022
October 5
Nicholas Aubin (University of Warwick) – “Medieval Arabic Medical Summaries and their Role in the Transmission of Medical Knowledge”
October 19
Howard Bloch (French) – “John the Baptist Heads to Amiens”
November 2
Kristen Herdman (Medieval Studies) – “Wisdom in Warp and Weft: the Sages of the Past Tapestry at the Metropolitan Museum of Art”
November 9
Carla Neuss (Institute for Sacred Music) – “Theorizing the ‘Mystery’: Transnational Medievalist Performance in the 20th Century and Beyond”
November 16
Carson Koepke (Medieval Studies) – “E-ustace: Using GIS mapping and network analysis to study the Latin manuscript tradition of St. Eustace”
November 30
Noel Lenski (Classics and History) – “Slavery and Violence in Visigothic Society, c. 500-700 CE”
December 7
Frank Griffel (Religious Studies) – “’…true according to philosophy but not true according to the Catholic faith.’ A New Explanation of the Double Truth Theory and Its Roots in Arabic-Islamic Philosophy”
December 14
Ahuva Liberles (Judaic Studies) – “Jewish Adolescents and their Religious Choices in Late Medieval Christian Europe”
February 15
Marie-Ange Rakotoniaina (Institute for Sacred Music) – “The Geopolitics of Liturgy: The Baptism of Clovis and the Genesis of French Royalty”
March 1
Kristen Herdman (Medieval Studies) – “Sisters Stitching Stories: Narrative and Exegesis in the Embroideries of the Lüneburg Heath”
March 8
Camila Marcone (Medieval Studies) – “Open Season: local knowledge and recreational hunting in Alfonso XI’s Libro de la monteria“
March 15
Jacqueline Jung (History of Art) – “The HU: Mongols, Medievalism, and Metal Music”
April 5
Ephraim Shoham-Steiner (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev) – “Jewish Life in Medieval Cologne: A Fresh Look”
April 12
Sophia Schmitt (Center for Jewish Studies, Harvard University) – “Fire and Brimstone: Navigating Disasters in Late Medieval Germany”
April 26
Megan Perry (Medieval Studies) – “Whose Hierdeboc? Building a Politics of Consent in the Old English Pastoral Care”
May 3
Tamar Rotman (Classics, Columbia University) – “Contextualizing the Martyrologium Hieronymianum”
2020–2021
October 6
“Johannes Vetulus de Anangia’s Celestia Hierarchy of Music”
October 20
“Before barcodes there were…bookworms! Reconstructing a manuscript codex from the collection of Thommaso Spinelli”
November 3
“Image, Text, & Control: Articulating Tensions in Medingen Prayer Books”
November 10
“Riccoldo of Montecroce and the Construction of Islamic Temporalities in Medieval Latin Christendom”
November 17
“The Hohenburg Liturgical Fan as a Ritual Object in Parchment”
December 1
“Reading Seneca with Walahfrid, Abbot of Reichenau”
December 8
“Social Identity and Emotional Community in Ephrem the Syrian’s Necrosima”
February 23
“Making Things, Making Up For Things, Making Things Up: Female Creativity in a Middle English Romance”
March 16
Kristen Herdman (Medieval Studies) – “Medieval Embroidery Mini-Workshop”
March 23
Phoenix Gonzalex (Yale Divinity School) – “Yett Wee Wyll Drinke Atyte”: Queering Time and Order with Chester’s Uxor Noe”
March 30
Larissa Tsukamoto (Medieval Studies) – “Heimdallr: Not the Whitest of the Gods”
April 6
Burt Westermeier (History) – “The Anti-Episcopal Uprising at Toledo and its Aftermath, 1313-4”
April 13
Jacqueline Jung (History of Art) – “All the Single Ladies: The Pleasures and Perils of Female Autonomy in Konrad’s Büchlein von der geistlichen Gemahelschaft”
April 20
Sebastian Rider-Bezerra (History and Medieval Studies) – “To Pay the Price of His Tongue: Judicial Appeals and Audience in Medieval Welsh Law”
May 4
Travis Zadeh (Religious Studies) – “The Best of All Divisions: Cartographies of Race and Monstrosity in Islamic Natural Philosophy”
May 11
Trisha Gupta (NYU) – “An Excess of the Repressed: Medieval Monsters as Expressions of Excess Human Sensation in the Beowulf Manuscript”
2019–2020
September 10
Phoenix Gonzales (Yale Divinity School) – “Thoughts on the ecology and cosmos of the Chester and Wakefield Noah plays”
September 17
Sophie Quander (University of Bonn) – “Language and Power Dynamics in the Reformatio Sigismundi, 1439 (Marston MS 273)”
September 24
Claire Bowern (Linguistics) – “Linguistic Structure in the Voynich Manuscript”
October 1
Amelia Kennedy (English) – “ ‘Do Not Relinquish Your Offspring’: Abbatial Retirement in Twelfth-Century Europe”
2018–2019
September 11
Lunch and lecture with medievalists
September 18
Lunch and lecture with medievalists
September 25
Lunch and lecture with medievalists
2017–2018
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 Peña (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 University) – “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”
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”
2016–2017
September 13
Welcome back and Introductions
September 20
Shu-Han Luo (Medieval Studies MPhil, and English PhD) – “Tears for Abraham”
October 4
Marcia Colish (History and Medieval Studies) – “John Cassian’s ‘Semi-Pelagianism’ Reconsidered”
October 11
Alexander D’Alisera (Yale 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 (History) – “Revisiting Lay Piety in the Late Middle Ages”
January 24
Sara Torres (Medieval 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 University) – “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 and Authority in Late Medieval England”
April 25
“How a Demon’s Son Became a Saint”
2015–2016
September 15
Welcome back and Introductions
September 22
Marcia Colish (History) – “End Time at Hand: Innocent III as Apocalyptic Joachite?”
October 6
Ray Clemens (Beinecke Library) – “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) – “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
Jonathan Morton (French, 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 (Classics) – “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
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!)”
2013–2014
September 10
Liza Anderson (Religious Studies) – “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 (History and Medieval Studies) – “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 (Medieval Studies) – “The Long Shadow of the Gelasian Decretum: St. Anne in the West”
December 3
Clare Monagle, (History, 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 (Medieval Studies) – “Re-Writing Religion: Superstition, Indulgences, and the ‘Arma Christi’ Poem”
February 18
Stacie Vos (Yale Divinity School) – “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 (Germanic Languages and Lit, Harvard) – “Heroes and Humour”
April 29
Alexander C. Loney (Classics, American Council of Learned Societies New Faculty Fellow) – “Blood Vengeance from Hesiod’s Ouranos to Shakespeares’s Lady Macbeth”
2012–2013
September 11
Marita von Weissenberg (History) – “What man are you?” ‘Artisan and nobleman’
September 18
Ray Clemens (Beinecke Library) – “Manuscripts for Fun and Profit”
October 2
Greg Roberts (History) – “Policing and the public interest in communal Bologna”
October 9
Madeleine Saraceni (English) – “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 (Italian) – “When Wayland’s Work is Worn Away. Technology and Transcendence”
November 13
Jonathan Cayer (French) – “My Dad’s Your Mom”
December 4
Sarah Ifft (History) – “Women Lending to Women? An Aspect of Medieval Credit”
January 22
Cherie Woodworth (History) – ”What is Wood Worth?”
January 29
Arvind Thomas (English) – “ ‘Of Whom has Thou Thy Cunning?’ - The Practice of Canon Law in the Book of Margery Kempe”
February 5
Elizabeth L. Anderson (Religious Studies) – “Repentant Demons, Contrite Cannibals, and Vengeful Crocodiles: Sin and Salvation in Medieval Arabic Christian Narratives”
February 19
Junius Johnson (Yale Divinity School) – “The Theology of the Eucharist in Bonaventure’s Sentence Commentary“
February 26
Madeleine Saraceni (English) – “Excluding the Female Audience: Boccaccio’s Corbaccio and the Poetics of Exclusion”
March 5
Mike Widener (Yale Law School Law Library) – ”Marketing and Medieval Manuscripts”
March 26
Lauren Mancia (History) – “Reading John of Fécamp in an Eleventh-Century Monastery”
April 2
Ana del Campo (History) – “Physician and Priest at the Bedside”
April 9
Shannon Beddingfield (English) – ”Parhomoeon in Ælfric’s Prose”
April 16
Harald Buchinger (Institute of Sacred Music) – “Easter in the Middle Ages: Historical Phases and Hermeneutical Layers”
April 23
Hadi Jorati (Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations) – “Penny Politics and Presumed Piety”
2021–2022
October 5
Nicholas Aubin (University of Warwick) – “Medieval Arabic Medical Summaries and their Role in the Transmission of Medical Knowledge”
October 19
Howard Bloch (French) – “John the Baptist Heads to Amiens”
November 2
Kristen Herdman (Medieval Studies) – “Wisdom in Warp and Weft: the Sages of the Past Tapestry at the Metropolitan Museum of Art”
November 9
Carla Neuss (Institute for Sacred Music) – “Theorizing the ‘Mystery’: Transnational Medievalist Performance in the 20th Century and Beyond”
November 16
Carson Koepke (Medieval Studies) – “E-ustace: Using GIS mapping and network analysis to study the Latin manuscript tradition of St. Eustace”
November 30
Noel Lenski (Classics and History) – “Slavery and Violence in Visigothic Society, c. 500-700 CE”
December 7
Frank Griffel (Religious Studies) – “’…true according to philosophy but not true according to the Catholic faith.’ A New Explanation of the Double Truth Theory and Its Roots in Arabic-Islamic Philosophy”
December 14
Ahuva Liberles (Judaic Studies) – “Jewish Adolescents and their Religious Choices in Late Medieval Christian Europe”
February 15
Marie-Ange Rakotoniaina (Institute for Sacred Music) – “The Geopolitics of Liturgy: The Baptism of Clovis and the Genesis of French Royalty”
March 1
Kristen Herdman (Medieval Studies) – “Sisters Stitching Stories: Narrative and Exegesis in the Embroideries of the Lüneburg Heath”
March 8
Camila Marcone (Medieval Studies) – “Open Season: local knowledge and recreational hunting in Alfonso XI’s Libro de la monteria“
March 15
Jacqueline Jung (History of Art) – “The HU: Mongols, Medievalism, and Metal Music”
April 5
Ephraim Shoham-Steiner (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev) – “Jewish Life in Medieval Cologne: A Fresh Look”
April 12
Sophia Schmitt (Center for Jewish Studies, Harvard University) – “Fire and Brimstone: Navigating Disasters in Late Medieval Germany”
April 26
Megan Perry (Medieval Studies) – “Whose Hierdeboc? Building a Politics of Consent in the Old English Pastoral Care”
May 3
Tamar Rotman (Classics, Columbia University) – “Contextualizing the Martyrologium Hieronymianum”
2020–2021
October 6
“Johannes Vetulus de Anangia’s Celestia Hierarchy of Music”
October 20
“Before barcodes there were…bookworms! Reconstructing a manuscript codex from the collection of Thommaso Spinelli”
November 3
“Image, Text, & Control: Articulating Tensions in Medingen Prayer Books”
November 10
“Riccoldo of Montecroce and the Construction of Islamic Temporalities in Medieval Latin Christendom”
November 17
“The Hohenburg Liturgical Fan as a Ritual Object in Parchment”
December 1
“Reading Seneca with Walahfrid, Abbot of Reichenau”
December 8
“Social Identity and Emotional Community in Ephrem the Syrian’s Necrosima”
February 23
“Making Things, Making Up For Things, Making Things Up: Female Creativity in a Middle English Romance”
March 16
Kristen Herdman (Medieval Studies) – “Medieval Embroidery Mini-Workshop”
March 23
Phoenix Gonzalex (Yale Divinity School) – “Yett Wee Wyll Drinke Atyte”: Queering Time and Order with Chester’s Uxor Noe”
March 30
Larissa Tsukamoto (Medieval Studies) – “Heimdallr: Not the Whitest of the Gods”
April 6
Burt Westermeier (History) – “The Anti-Episcopal Uprising at Toledo and its Aftermath, 1313-4”
April 13
Jacqueline Jung (History of Art) – “All the Single Ladies: The Pleasures and Perils of Female Autonomy in Konrad’s Büchlein von der geistlichen Gemahelschaft”
April 20
Sebastian Rider-Bezerra (History and Medieval Studies) – “To Pay the Price of His Tongue: Judicial Appeals and Audience in Medieval Welsh Law”
May 4
Travis Zadeh (Religious Studies) – “The Best of All Divisions: Cartographies of Race and Monstrosity in Islamic Natural Philosophy”
May 11
Trisha Gupta (NYU) – “An Excess of the Repressed: Medieval Monsters as Expressions of Excess Human Sensation in the Beowulf Manuscript”
2019–2020
2018–2019
September 11
Lunch and lecture with medievalists
September 18
Lunch and lecture with medievalists
September 25
Lunch and lecture with medievalists
2017–2018
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 Peña (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 University) – “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”
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”
2016–2017
September 13
Welcome back and Introductions
September 20
Shu-Han Luo (Medieval Studies MPhil, and English PhD) – “Tears for Abraham”
October 4
Marcia Colish (History and Medieval Studies) – “John Cassian’s ‘Semi-Pelagianism’ Reconsidered”
October 11
Alexander D’Alisera (Yale 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 (History) – “Revisiting Lay Piety in the Late Middle Ages”
January 24
Sara Torres (Medieval 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 University) – “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 and Authority in Late Medieval England”
April 25
“How a Demon’s Son Became a Saint”
2015–2016
September 15
Welcome back and Introductions
September 22
Marcia Colish (History) – “End Time at Hand: Innocent III as Apocalyptic Joachite?”
October 6
Ray Clemens (Beinecke Library) – “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) – “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
Jonathan Morton (French, 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 (Classics) – “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
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!)”
2013–2014
September 10
Liza Anderson (Religious Studies) – “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 (History and Medieval Studies) – “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 (Medieval Studies) – “The Long Shadow of the Gelasian Decretum: St. Anne in the West”
December 3
Clare Monagle, (History, 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 (Medieval Studies) – “Re-Writing Religion: Superstition, Indulgences, and the ‘Arma Christi’ Poem”
February 18
Stacie Vos (Yale Divinity School) – “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 (Germanic Languages and Lit, Harvard) – “Heroes and Humour”
April 29
Alexander C. Loney (Classics, American Council of Learned Societies New Faculty Fellow) – “Blood Vengeance from Hesiod’s Ouranos to Shakespeares’s Lady Macbeth”
2012–2013
September 11
Marita von Weissenberg (History) – “What man are you?” ‘Artisan and nobleman’
September 18
Ray Clemens (Beinecke Library) – “Manuscripts for Fun and Profit”
October 2
Greg Roberts (History) – “Policing and the public interest in communal Bologna”
October 9
Madeleine Saraceni (English) – “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 (Italian) – “When Wayland’s Work is Worn Away. Technology and Transcendence”
November 13
Jonathan Cayer (French) – “My Dad’s Your Mom”
December 4
Sarah Ifft (History) – “Women Lending to Women? An Aspect of Medieval Credit”
January 22
Cherie Woodworth (History) – ”What is Wood Worth?”
January 29
Arvind Thomas (English) – “ ‘Of Whom has Thou Thy Cunning?’ - The Practice of Canon Law in the Book of Margery Kempe”
February 5
Elizabeth L. Anderson (Religious Studies) – “Repentant Demons, Contrite Cannibals, and Vengeful Crocodiles: Sin and Salvation in Medieval Arabic Christian Narratives”
February 19
Junius Johnson (Yale Divinity School) – “The Theology of the Eucharist in Bonaventure’s Sentence Commentary“
February 26
Madeleine Saraceni (English) – “Excluding the Female Audience: Boccaccio’s Corbaccio and the Poetics of Exclusion”
March 5
Mike Widener (Yale Law School Law Library) – ”Marketing and Medieval Manuscripts”
March 26
Lauren Mancia (History) – “Reading John of Fécamp in an Eleventh-Century Monastery”
April 2
Ana del Campo (History) – “Physician and Priest at the Bedside”
April 9
Shannon Beddingfield (English) – ”Parhomoeon in Ælfric’s Prose”
April 16
Harald Buchinger (Institute of Sacred Music) – “Easter in the Middle Ages: Historical Phases and Hermeneutical Layers”
April 23
Hadi Jorati (Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations) – “Penny Politics and Presumed Piety”
2011-2012
September 13, 2011
Kristina Hosoe, History.
“Benedict of Aniane, Benedict of Nursia, Martin of Tours, Wandregisil of Fontenelle: Which of These Saints Is Not Like the Others?”
September 20, 2011
Kevin Pool, Associate Professor, Spanish and Portuguese
“Of Pilgrim Professors and Missing Manuscripts”
September 27, 2011
Greg Bryda, graduate student, History of Art, and Medieval Studies
“Nada Dada: the pseudo-Dionysius and Hugo Ball”
October 4, 2011
Beatrice Gruendler, Professor, Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations
“Book Culture before Print: An Arabic Case Study”
October 11, 2011
Lauren Mancia, graduate student, History
“Battle Ducale: Monks and the Dukes Who Loved Them (Until They Didn’t)”
October 18, 2011
Paul Evans, Yale Ph.D.
“A few Days Spent on a Beinecke Manuscript of Carolingian Capitularies”
October 25, 2011
Marita von Weissenberg, graduate student, History
“From classroom assignment to conference paper: Lessons from the Yale Law Library Rare Books Collection”
November 1, 2011
Robert Nelson, Professor, History of Art
“The first Canonical Icon”
November 8, 2011
Anita Savo, graduate Student, Spanish & Portuguese
“Another Don Juan’s Twice-Told Tale”
November 15, 2011
Junius Johnson, Divinity School
“Seraphic Grace: St. Bonaventure’s Christian Platonism”
November 29, 2011
Ben Yousey-Hindes, Program Manager, Yale Development
“Bishops inter inimicos fidei in the thirteenth century”
January 10, 2012
Marcia Colish, Visiting Fellow, History
“Henry of Livonia: Cultural Anthropologist malgre’ lui”
January 17, 2012
Walter Goffart, Senior Research Scientist, History
“Bede as a Deliberate Historian”
January 24, 2012
Abbey Agresta, graduate Student, History
“The Doctor and the Notary: A Jewish Latinate Will from Fourteenth-century Catalonia”
January 31, 2012
Cherie Woodworth, independent scholar at the Center for Comparative Research, Yale
“Abduction from the Seraglio”
February 7, 2012
Ana Del Campo, Fulbright Fellow
“My Heart is Raging, it Cannot Find Solace: A catalogue of Mourning Gestures through some Literary Iberian Sources”
February 14, 2012
Andrew Kraebel, graduate student English and Medieval Studies
“The Manuscript Tradition of Richard Ullerston’s Expositio canticorum Scripturae’ ”
February 28, 2012
Joseph Stadolnik, graduate student, English and Medieval Studies
“Placing the Miracle Plays of Beinecke MS 841”
March 20, 2012
Elizabeth Hebbard, graduate student, French and Medieval Studies
“Rhyme and Reason: The Invocation of Saints in the Old French Fabliaux”
April 17, 2012
Mary Katherine Hurley, Visiting English
“Dangerous Knowledge: Magicians and Monsters in the Old English Wonders of the East”
April 24, 2012
Hadi Jorati, graduate student, Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations and Medieval studies
“A tale of two Narratives and (at least) four Authors”
2010-2011
September 21, 2010
Eric Weiskott, graduate student, English
“Chaucer the Forester: the Friar’s Tale, forest history, and officialdom”
September 28, 2010
Cherie Woodworth, independent scholar at the Center for Comparative Research, Yale
“Counterfeits and Contrary Evidence. Dynastic Legitimacy in 15th c. Moscow”
October 5, 2010
Laura Miles, graduate student, English
“The Gospel According to Margery”
October 12, 2010
Kevin Poole, Assistant Professor of Spanish and Portuguese
“Using and Abusing Medieval Studies in Franco’s Spain”
October 19, 2010
Ed Peters, Emeritus Professor of History, University of Pennsylvania
“A Talk About a Paper”
October 26, 2010
Jacqueline Jung, Assistant Professor, History of Art
“The Roasted Chicken of Chartres Cathedral: How to Reach the Masses with Gothic Architecture”
November 2, 2010
Carol Chiodo, graduate student, Italian
“Tutti i frutti. The Frozen Fruit of Inferno 33”
November 9, 2010
Paul Freedman, Chester D Tripp Professor of History
“Mastic from Chios: A Unique Product?”
November 16, 2010
Samantha Katz, graduate student, Medieval Studies
“‘A Mother to Me and a Daughter to You’: The Spiritual Direction of Elizabeth Barton, OSB”
November 30, 2010
Nienke Venderbosch, graduate student, English
“Beowulf’s Grendel in the Nineteenth Century”
January 18, 2011
Elizabeth Walgenbach, graduate student, Medieval Studies
“Outlaws, Excommunicants, Rejects”
January 25, 2011
Ben Yousey-Hindes, PhD in medieval legal history
“Facebook for Priests”
February 1, 2011
Mark Anderson, graduate student, History
“Late Ancient Hospitals from the 4th to the 7th c. CE”
February 8, 2011
Lauren Mancia, graduate student, History
“John of Fécamp and Devotion at his Monastery”
February 15, 2011
Abigail Agresta, graduate student, History
“Meaning and Social Use of an Urban Garden: The Wedding Feast of Lorenzo de’ Medici”
February 22, 2011
Maria Clara Iglesias, graduate student, Italian
“Flesh and Spirit: Vices of Food and Language in Domenico Cavalca’s Pungilingua”
March 1, 2011
Unn Falkeid, Fulbright Visiting Scholar, Italian
“Thorn in the Flesh. Pain and Poetry in Petrarch’s Secretum”
March 22, 2011
Micha Perry, Jacob & Hilda Blaustein Post-Doctoral Fellow, Judaic Studies
“Popular Images of Bilingual Documents in Medieval England”
March 29, 2011
Ephraim Shoham, Senior Lecturer in Jewish History, Ben Gurion University of the Negev
“A Renegade Cleric, Two Thieves and Some Jews: Evidence of Jewish Involvement in Crime from the Eleventh Century Rhineland”
April 5, 2011
Walter Goffart, Senior Research Scientist, History
“An Experimental Introduction to Christianity for Today’s Students of Medieval History”
April 12, 2011
Christopher Platts, graduate student, History of Art
“Theodore Metochites, St. Michael the Archangel, and the Fate of a Soul: Reconsidering Art and Eschatology in a Late Byzantine Funerary Chapel in Istanbul”
April 19, 2011
Sarah Novacich, graduate student, English
“The Inward Map”
April 26, 2011
Hadi Jorati, graduate student, Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations
“Did the Mathematician Kill the King? A Medieval Murder Mystery”
2009-2010
Marcia Colish, Visiting Fellow in the History Dept., coordinator
April 20, 2010
Andrew Kraebel, graduate student, English and Medieval Studies
“The Wycliffite Bible Prologue and the Translation of Academic Discourse”
April 13, 2010
“To Speak of Silence: Clemence of Barking’s ‘Life of St. Catherine’ and Her Vision of Female Wisdom”
April 6, 2010
Francesca Trivellato, Associate Professor, History
“A Forgotten Legend about Medieval Jews and the Origins of Financial Capitalism”
March 30, 2010
Michael Sargent, Professor, English, Queens College, CUNY
“The Function of Textual Criticism at the Present Time”
March 23, 2010
Walter Goffart, Senior Research Scholar, History
“The Many Faces of Burgundy”
March 2, 2010
Azélina Jaboulet-Vercherre, graduate student, History
“Is Drinking Proper to Man?”
February 23, 2010
Howard Bloch, Professor, French
“Viollet le Duc and the Culture Wars of the 19th Century”
February 16, 2010
Kevin Poole, Associate Professor, Spanish & Portuguese
“Of Dogs, Frogs, and Pimps: Defining the Antichrist in Eighth-Century Spain”
February 9, 2010
Cherie Woodworth, independent scholar at the Center for Comparative Research, Yale
“Black Sea, White Sea, Red Sea, Blue Sea: Color and Toponyms in the Medieval World”
February 2, 2010
Elizabeth Archibald, English
“What Is ‘Educated’? Questions and Answers from Carolingian Classrooms”
January 26, 2010
Micha Perry, Jacob & Hilda Blaustein Post-Doctoral Fellow, Judaic Studies
“Textual Transmission and the Transformation of Culture: The Medieval Jewish Case”
December 8, 2009
Cherie Woodworth, independent scholar at the Center for Comparative Research, Yale
“Ashkenazi Jews of Kiev: Urban Networks on the Medieval Slavic Frontier”
December 1, 2009
Colleen Farrell, graduate student, History
“Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, Something Blue: The Creation of the Cult of St. Anne at Chartres”
November 17, 2009
Kathryn James, Assistant Curator for Early Modern Books and Manuscripts, Beinecke Library
“Finding Manuscripts in the Beinecke Library Collection”
November 10, 2009
Philip Slavin, postdoctoral affiliate, Economic Growth Center
“How Great Was the Great Famine? Between Ecology and Institutions”
November 3, 2009
Sara McDougall, postdoctoral fellow, NYU Law School
“Abandoned Wives and the Law in Medieval Champagne”
October 27, 2009
E-Ching Ng, graduate student, Linguistics and Medieval Studies
“Swinging the Top: A Crux in the Old English Apollonius of Tyre”
October 20, 2009
Roberta Frank, Professor, English
“The Weirdest Poetry Ever Written: A New Edition with English Translation”
October 13, 2009
Jonathan Cayer, graduate student, French
“‘By God I’ll Kill Them All’: Raoul de Cambrai, God, and the Longinus Legend”
October 6, 2009
Beatrice Greundler, Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations
“The Apostille (Tawqi’): Royal Brevity in the Pre-Modern Appeals Court”
September 30, 2009
Marcia Colish, Visiting Fellow, History
“The Play’s the Thing: Fact and Fiction in Medieval Staged Baptism”
September 22, 2009
Dimitri Gutas, Professor of Arabic, Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations
“Medieval Translations, Modern Politics”
2008-2009
Jackie Jung, Assisstant Professor in Art History and Marcia Colish, Visiting Fellow in History, coordinators
April 15, 2009
Adam Franklin Lyons, graduate student, History
“Economic Models of the Crisis of the Fourteenth Century”
April 1, 2009
Christopher Baswell, Professor, English, Barnard College and Columbia University
“Medieval Crippling and the Ethnic Uncanny”
March 25, 2009
“Chevax le Roi Artu: The Horses of Yale 229”
March 4, 2009
Andrew Kraebel, graduate student, English and Medieval Studies
“The Education of Anselm of Laon: Some Evidence from the Psalms Commentaries”
February 25, 2009
Paul Bushkovitch, Professor, History
“Orthodoxy and Islam in Medieval Russia”
February 18, 2009
Daniel Stein Kokin, Postdoctoral Fellow, Judaic Studies
“The Alphabetic Cross: Judaism and Hebrew in the Church Dedication Rite”
February 11, 2009
“Old Wine in New Bottles: The Digital Middle Ages”
January 28, 2009
Cherie Woodworth, independent scholar at the Center for Comparative Research, Yale
“Racism, Slavery, and Xenophobia before the Modern Era: Curious Examples from Russia, 13th-16th Century”
November 18, 2008
Cherie Woodworth, independent scholar at the Center for Comparative Research, Yale
“Princely Saints and Dynastic Legitimacy in Russia: Not What You Thought”
November 11, 2008
Youval Rotman, Associate Professor, History
“What’s a child’s will? Child’s agency and child labour in the Middle Ages and in the twenty-first century”
November 4, 2008
Philip Slavin, Postdoctoral fellow in Economic History
“A Case Study of England in Late-Medieval Crisis”
October 21, 2008
James Rodriguez, graduate student, History of Art
“Virgin Martyr, Warrior, Iconoclast: The Changing Image of St. Marina of Antioch”
October 14, 2008
Annemarie Weyl Carr, Emeritus Faculty University Distinguished Professor of Art History, Southern Methodist University
“The Holy Sepulchre of St. John Lampadistes, Cyprus”
October 7, 2008
Mitchell Merback, Professor, Art History, Johns Hopkins University
“Relics and Immanence in German Pilgrimage Culture”
September 30, 2008
Jackie Jung, Assistant Professor, Art History
“The Baby Jesus and the Play of Art in a Medieval Convent (or, How the Nuns of Katharinenthal Got Their Own Knives)”
September 16, 2008
Alastair Minnis, Professor, English
“Wyclif’s Eden: Sex, Death and Dominion in Paradise”