Fall 2023 Newsletter

Director's Message

Newcomers, welcome! Veterans, welcome back! This promises to be another action-packed year in Medieval Studies at IU. Below, you’ll find info on our early fall semester events: our annual Distinguished Alumni Lecture, delivered by Professor Anna Shields of Princeton University, and our welcome Garden Party (where you’ll have a chance to collect a free medieval studies book and enjoy pastries and other treats). Be sure to check your emails and the MEST calendar for the announcement of Spring semester events like our annual Mediaevalia at the Lilly lecture and workshop. This Spring, MEST will also be collaborating with our colleagues in Ancient Studies for a Spring Symposium. I will be writing soon with more information, but I encourage all graduate students and faculty interested in participating in the planning of the Symposium to contact me (jmschott@indiana.edu).

We also owe debts of gratitude to Profs. Morten Oxenboell and Joey McMullen, both of whom completed 2-year terms on the MEST Executive Committee. Thanks also to Profs. Deborah Deliyannnis and Heather Blair, who will each be serving the second years of their terms in 2023-2024. Service on the Executive Committee is crucial to the success of the Institute, and I will be writing soon to solicit nominations and self-nominations to stand for election for our two open Committee seats.

In addition, my term as MEST Director will end in June, 2024. We will be conducting an election for the Directorship in the Spring semester. If you might be interested in standing for election, and would like to know about what the position entails, feel free to contact me.

Sincerely,

Jeremy Schott

Meet the 2023 MEST Awardees!

MEST is proud to support interdisciplinary undergraduate and graduate research in the Global Middle Ages. Learn more about our awardees below.

The Andrea McRobbie Award: Joshua E. Harris

Joshua E. Harris received a B.A. in German at the University of Tulsa in 2016 and an MA in Germanic Studies at Indiana University in 2020. He is currently a Ph.D. student in Germanic Linguistics and Philology at IU. In the academic year 2017-18 he was a Medieval Studies fellow at Indiana University, and he has worked as an Assistant Instructor in German there since 2018. He has participated in the Basic, Advanced, and Master classes of the University of Iceland and University of Copenhagen’s Scandinavian Manuscripts Summer School. His research interests include Germanic philology, historical linguistics, etymology, Medieval manuscripts, textual criticism, and Norwegian language and culture.

The Andrea McRobbie Award provided critical support to my dissertation work by enabling me to visit the object of my research – the fifteenth-century Icelandic manuscript of kings' sagas GKS 1010 fol., nicknamed Hrokkinskinna ('wrinkly skin'). At the Royal Library of Denmark in Copenhagen, I was able to conduct a week's worth of of intensive research on the codex, which involved recording details of its use of color, its quality of preservation, the contents of its marginalia (with a view to their bearing on the manuscript's provenance), and the makeup of its parchment.

Despite the fact that most Medieval Icelandic manuscripts are made of sheepskin, I learned in collaboration with the Royal Library's Medieval conservator, Jiří Vnouček, that Hrokkinskinna is almost certainly a calf's skin manuscript. This implies that it was an especially precious object in its time, since sheep have constituted the most common type of Icelandic livestock throughout history.

My research visit to the Royal Library also allowed me to develop collaborative relationships with scholars and specialists there, which have already proven beneficial in the pursuit of additional research on Hrokkinskinna. For instance, Jiří will soon carry out peptide mass fingerprinting on the book's leaves to confirm the animal of origin. In addition, I am currently working with Maja Atterstig, Photographer at the Royal Library, to conduct multispectral imaging on key leaves which I suspect contain details relevant to the manuscript's provenance – namely a page from the end of the original binding littered with fragmentary inscriptions of ownership, and a patch of faded red text at the end of the final, later quire (from the 16th-century), which may be a colophon.

My primary research aim was to record codicological details in Hrokkinskinna in an in-person visit. The Andrea McRobbie award enabled me to both successfully carry out this critical research as well as to expand its scope and set the stage for more advanced research on this fascinating product of Medieval Icelandic textual culture.

Detail of what appears to be calf's hair, 68v.

The Clifford Flanigan Award: Zachary Engledow

I graduated from the University of Montevallo, a small liberal arts college in southern Alabama, with a B.A. in English Literature before coming to study at IU for my Ph.D. in English Language and Literature. My research focuses on the intersections between queer, trans, and medieval studies, specifically gender and sexuality's relationship to medieval romance. I also have a forthcoming article in Exemplaria, a journal of Medieval and Early Modern literature and literary theory, which offers a trans reading of a late medieval Body/Soul debate poem entitled "Disputing the Cisgender Body in A Disputacioun Betwyx þe Body and Wormes." The Clifford Flanigan Award allowed me to travel to St. Andrews, Scotland, and present at the V International Congress of the John Gower Society. My paper, titled "'I'll offer tears in the form of ink': Sex, Gender, and the Posthuman in John Gower's Cronica Tripertita," considered Gower's understudied Latin chronicle that recounts the deposition of the English king, Richard II, by Henry Bolingbroke, the future King Henry IV. I argued that the Cronica functioned as a nonhuman agent that mediated between the shifting, porous, and competing bodies of Gower, Richard, and other masculine bodies within the chronicle. By linking his bodily and affective responses to the material form of the poem, I examined how Gower utilized sensations and affective networks between bodies (animal, human, textual) to evaluate the importance of queer masculinity and eroticism in Gower's poetry. Because of the Clifford Flanigan Award, I presented my work in a supportive and rigorous academic environment, received insightful feedback, and made new professional connections with like-minded scholars while getting to spend the week at a medieval university!

Image: St. Andrew's Castle.

Shirley Cox Medieval Studies Travel Awards & Graduate Research and Professionalization Grants

Yilin La

MEST Professional Development Award enabled me to get tutored in Chaghatay, a Turkic literary language functioned alongside Persian from the 15^th century through the 1950s in Central Asia, and to examine an early 17^th century manuscript of the Persian poet Ahlī Shīrāzī’s (d.1535) collected poetry at the Firestone Library this summer. Both are for my dissertation research on munājāt, a literary genre of prayer.

Clara Miller-Broomfield

I am a PhD candidate in French linguistics (Dept. of French & Italian), and I received a Medieval Studies Graduate Research and Professionalization Grant. I am using this grant to help fund my travel to the XIVth Congress of the International Association for Occitan Studies, which will take place in Munich later this month. There, I will present my research with Dr. Barbara Vance on the effects of genre and information structure on object clitic placement in four Old Occitan texts.

Joshua Pontillo

Joshua Pontillo (he/him/his) is a fourth-year English PhD student studying the early medieval North Atlantic, particularly the languages and literatures of England, Ireland, and Iceland. His work engages with ecocriticism, especially regarding temporality and spatiality.

Thanks to his funding from MEST, comprised of the Shirley Cox Medieval Studies Travel Award and a Medieval Studies Graduate Research and Professionalization Grant, he was able to travel and present at several conferences this summer, as well as pursue research investigating the ways in which early Hiberno-Latin hagiographies influenced the ways in which St. Cuthbert interacts with the natural world in the Vita Sancti Cuthberti.

Ben Hoover

I am a second-year PhD student in the English department with degrees in English (MA), Classics (BA), and Art History (BA). My current research focuses on Middle English literature, particularly poetry and drama, through a perspective of how such texts treat subjects of gender, embodiment, and violence. Both the Shirley Cox Medieval Studies Travel Award and the Medieval Studies Graduate Research and Professionalization Grant enabled my presentation of research this past year at the Midwest Modern Language Association, the Southwest Popular and American Culture Association, and at the Symposium of the Illinois Medieval Association, as well as an upcoming presentation at the Australian Early Medieval Association Conference. Furthermore, the paper given at the Illinois Medieval Association is currently under review for publication in the proceedings journal Essays in Medieval Studies.

Lindsay Gill

Lindsay Gill is a fourth year doctoral student in the English department, where she is completing a minor in Medieval Studies. She is also completing an MLS in Rare Books and Manuscripts. This past summer, she received a travel award from MEST, which allowed her to attend the 2023 International Congress on Medieval Studies. While there, she presented her paper "Heorot and Hagiography" on the Haskins Society panel. This paper analyzed the way in which literary figures like Wealhtheow may have been influenced by contemporary abbess-queens and Marian hagiographical tropes.

Yishai Rubin

My research focuses on music in medieval monastic communities in Ghent, Belgium. Thanks to support from the Medieval Studies Institute, I could travel to Ghent and study medieval manuscripts kept in the Ghent University Library and the Saint-Bavo Cathedral, as well as visit various historical sites and experience the city's numerous medieval artworks. The MEST Professional Development Award then allowed me to present my findings at the 58th International Congress on Medieval Studies, held in May 2023 in Kalamazoo, MI. In my paper, I discussed the extraordinary nature of the worship of local saints in medieval Ghent.

Yishai with a 12th-century, Latin-language manuscript at the Ghent University Library.

Shirley Cox Undergraduate Medieval Studies Awardees

Lizzie Gaugel

Lizzie Gaugel graduated in May of 2023 with a BA in English and a minor in Medieval Studies. Her senior thesis was titled “Conquer the women, conquer the flesh’: The necessity of masculinization in Christian holy women in medieval England”. Her research synthesizes medieval studies and gender studies, and her work is primarily concerned with how gender expression and identity intertwine in medieval England. Other research interests of hers include courtly love, medieval English monasticism, and medieval Christian mysticism. Outside of research, Lizzie enjoys reading contemporary fiction, hiking, and growing her budding DVD collection. She is now employed by Writing Tutorial Services at IU Bloomington and looks forward to growing her knowledge of pedagogy.

Victoria Killion

I am a senior studying Spanish Education with a minor in Medieval Studies. My focus is medieval Spain and researching the three Abrahamic religions that coexisted and fought during the centuries of the Reconquista. I will be using the award to fund my study abroad in the spring semester of 2024 with the Global Gateways program through the School of Education. I plan to visit many medieval sites and discover more about Islam and Judaism in Spain, as they are often shrouded by the predominant Christian narrative. I hope to bring this research forward in my teaching to shed light on how history and beliefs have shaped the current world.

Matthew Nokes

I was graciously granted the Shirley Cox Award for my paper titled "Meat and Culture in Early Medieval Ireland: The Vision of Mac Conglinne." The project was an analysis of social class and meat-eating in the Medieval Irish vision poem, written for LAMP-L416: The Meat We Eat. The poem itself was very entertaining to read. Monks, crucifixions, and cheese curds—what more could you want from a medieval story? I spent many hours chuckling to myself in the stacks of the Wells Library while researching this satirical work of art. My love for the medieval period took shape during my time at IU, and was spurred by Professor Deliyannis, who served as my advisor for the senior honors paper in history. I also thoroughly enjoyed Professor Caner’s Byzantine History class as well as two different classes about King Arthur my freshman year! The money I was granted from this award greatly aided me during my post-graduation job hunt, and I am sincerely grateful for the Medieval Institute at IU. I am currently working and studying to apply to law school in the fall.

Upcoming Events

At our annual Distinguished Alumni Lecture, Dr. Anna M. Shields, Chair of the Department of East Asian Studies at Princeton University, will present her talk, "Collections of “Gold and Jade”: Transmissions of Tang Dynasty (618-907) Literature in Song Dynasty (960-1279) Compendia." Light refreshments will be served! Additionally, graduate students and faculty are invited to a meet-and-greet (featuring tea and pastries) with Dr. Shields on Wednesday, September 13th from 4:00-5:30 in GISB/HLS 2067.

Join MEST for a Garden Party in the Cook Center Courtyard. We will be serving cream teas, pastries, macarons, snacks, coffee, and more! Catering by Two Sticks and Crumble Bakeries. In the spirit of *Tolle Lege* ("Take up and read), we will be providing free medieval studies titles to all attendees!

Come out to the Tolkien Film Series! We’ll be screening nine films throughout the semester based on Tolkien’s legendarium, including all six Peter Jackson films and three animated pictures.

Old Occitan Reading Group

The Old Occitan Reading Group, led by Profs. Liz Hebbard (French & Italian) and Barbara Vance (French & Italian/Linguistics) will be meeting from 4-5 PM on Mondays this semester in GA (Global Studies) 3067. We plan to continue our reading of the 13^th century verse romance Flamenca but also incorporate other readings. No previous knowledge of Old Occitan is needed, but some background in a Romance language is helpful!

Our first meeting of the semester will take place in GA 3067 on Monday, September 11^th, and there will be a Zoom option. If you are interested but not yet on our Canvas site, please contact Liz or Barbara and we will add you so that you have access to all the materials. As always, we will start with a review of pronunciation and grammar for new and returning group members. Email Elizabeth Hebbard (ehebbard@iu.edu) and Barbara Vance (bvance@indiana.edu) for more information.

Past Events

A Evening of Medieval Performances

Thank you to Professors Shannon Gayk and Liz Hebbard for organizing a lovely evening at Clayshire Castle last spring!

Screenshot-2023-09-07-at-5.25.48-PM.png

Career Diversity Panel

Thank you to Trevor Verrot, Abby Ang, Chris Beck, Jess Leach, Natalie Levin, and William E. Smith III for their insightful comments! See the following link for a document with their notes, advice, and useful resources (especially for graduate students).

Contact Us!

Do you want to get more involved with MEST? Do you have news/events to advertise? Do you want to collaborate with us for an event? Do you want to minor or get a certificate in medieval studies? Reach out to mest@iu.edu for all questions and concerns.

The Medieval Studies Institute

Fall 2023 Newsletter

Director's Message

Meet the 2023 MEST Awardees!

The Andrea McRobbie Award: Joshua E. Harris

The Clifford Flanigan Award: Zachary Engledow