Interview with Lauren Randall

 Tell us a little about yourself, where are you from?

I grew up in Hereford, which has influenced my love of walking, either out on the hills or along the river. I have also always loved old churches, and there are some particularly good ones in Herefordshire (see Kilpeck, for instance), and I think wondering about the beliefs expressed though the carvings and symbols of some of the older churches in particular has fuelled a lot of my research, which tends to centre on how people have developed and expressed their beliefs at different points in history. 

What brought you to your current university?

I came to Durham for a PhD studentship in the Theology department, researching the paratext of Codex Amiatinus. Durham feels like the ideal setting for this project, as it has so many links to much of the wider heritage that led to the production of Amiatinus, as well as having a half-size facsimile of the codex. 

What is your favorite aspect pertaining to the medieval/early modern period?

I really like being able to trace people’s hopes and aspirations in their books and letters, then seeing how they go about achieving them. Or when they have a setback, and their work shows how they have overcome it. It’s amazing to be able to see something so real, so human, being preserved after all this time, but still totally relatable today. 

What is your research focus?

My research is centred on Codex Amiatinus, one of the three great Bible pandects commissioned by Abbot Ceolfrith in the joint monastery that is mainly famous for being the home of the Venerable Bede. I’m focussing on the paratext, that is, everything in the manuscript around the main text itself, and how it expresses the political aims and theological views of the scriptorium that produced it. 

In brief, what will you be discussing in your seminar talk?

The use of Mary Magdalene as a character in Amiatinus’ Song of Songs, voicing a portion of text that long predates her. The text is set out like a script, and in this tradition she is the only individual, other than Christ, who is given a portion of the text. This presentation of the erotic poetry of Song of Songs from the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament helps to show how the text was used and understood by the monks of Wearmouth-Jarrow, as well as how they understood the significance of Mary Magdalene for the Church.

What is your favorite piece of art/text from the medieval/early modern eras?

One of the Medieval texts I keep coming back to is Bald’s Leechbook. It’s a fascinating collection of healing charms, potions, and medical (and veterinary) guidance. It combines advice for dealing with elves, with ways to use written lines of scripture to add potency to remedies. 

If you could choose any one figure from medieval/early modern history to spend a weekend vacation with, who would it be, why would you choose them, and where would you go?

This is a difficult questions! But I think I would like to meet Ceolfrith, on his return from a trip to Italy acquiring goods for the Wearmouth-Jarrow monastery. I would mainly like to see firsthand the art and manuscripts he had chosen, and ask him about his choices.

Interview with Ashley Castelino

 Tell us a little about yourself, where are you from?

Born and raised in India, I started my academic journey at Durham with a BA in English and History. I then moved to Cambridge for an MPhil in Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic, to Madrid to teach for a year, and finally to Oxford for my current DPhil in Old Norse-Icelandic literature.

What brought you to your current university?

I came to Oxford for its large and vibrant Old Norse community within an even larger medieval community – though, when it came down to making a choice, the funding certainly didn’t hurt! I’m very grateful for the AHRC OOC-DTP and Lincoln College Kingsgate allowing me to do what I do here.

What is your favorite aspect pertaining to the medieval/early modern period?

 I specialise in Old Norse-Icelandic literature and what I love the most about its texts is how utterly ridiculous they can get, no matter the genre. Even when literarily, philosophically, or theologically deeply sophisticated, these texts still manage to produce some of the most entertaining nonsense out there. This makes them such a great entry point into literature in general! 

What is your research focus?

I work on dogs in Old Norse-Icelandic literature, focusing on their narrative functions in different genres of texts.

In brief, what will you be discussing in your seminar talk?

In my seminar talk, I will be giving a broad introduction to the wide range of practical functions dogs may have performed in medieval Iceland and Scandinavia, from guards and hunters to entertainers and companions, by looking at a range of literary, historical, and archaeological sources.

What is your favorite piece of art/text from the medieval/early modern eras?

A combination of art and text, the illuminated Getty Tondal manuscript (Les visions du chevalier Tondal) has an absolutely fantastic collection of miniatures by Simon Marmion, including a particularly delightful Lucifer on fol. 30v with a wonderful backstory…

If you could choose any one figure from medieval/early modern history to spend a weekend vacation with, who would it be, why would you choose them, and where would you go?

I would choose the dog-king Saurr from one of the Old Norse kings’ sagas (let’s just choose to believe that these sagas are all totally historically accurate). Saurr was magically given the ability to speak one human word in between three barks. I’d maybe take him on some kind of beach holiday, giving him a break from his royal duties, and hopefully try to pick his brain on both historical matters and canine ones.

Interview with Nicole Vancooten

 Tell us a little about yourself, where are you from?

I’m from a small town in the province of Ontario, Canada called Cookstown about an hour North of Toronto. Outside of my academic work I like reading, hiking and camping. Two summers ago I started working as a tree planter in Northern Ontario where my life consisted of living in a tent, lots of bug bites and meeting lots of incredible people. Seeing the consequences of commercial logging and commercial forestry firsthand inspired my current research on forest history and lots of my own personal growth as well! 

What brought you to your current university?

I chose to do my Master’s at the University of Waterloo because of the opportunities my supervisor Dr. Steven Bednarski provided me in the field of environmental history with the Environments of Change project and the DRAGEN (Digital Research in Arts and Graphical Environmental Networks) Laboratory. I think interdisciplinary research is so crucial, especially in our current time of environmental crisis around the globe, and the University of Waterloo is certainly a leader in showcasing its potential. 

What is your favorite aspect pertaining to the medieval/early modern period?

My favourite aspect of studying the medieval and early modern periods is the ability to trace the evolution of certain social, economic and cultural influences that remain in modern life, like forest management for example. I love picking out certain events or movements that transformed historical experiences of everyday people that affect the way I live my life now! As a Canadian as well, much of the history I’m exposed to is fairly recent so the medieval and early modern periods are so fascinating. 

What is your research focus?

I am particularly interested in using environmental history as a tool for developing sustainable practices and analyzing historical attitudes toward the environment to better understand natural resource management. My MA thesis aims to analyze the ways in which modern Canadian forestry practices must adapt for a more sustainable and economic future using influences from its diverse pre-modern legacies. These legacies include complex traditions of forest governance, and historical attitudes about the natural world, resource management, and sustainability, beginning with the Domesday record in 1086 by William the Conqueror. 

In brief, what will you be discussing in your seminar talk?

My seminar talk will be outlining the methodology and theories I’m using from environmental history perspectives in my research and discussing the progress I’ve made so far in Part One of my thesis “Medieval Forest Management and Exploitation.” Additionally I’ll be highlighting the ideas I’m working towards in the later parts of my thesis research and how it all connects to Canada and my own experiences through the long durée. 

What is your favorite piece of art/text from the medieval/early modern eras?

Perhaps not my favourite, but the most impactful I would say is “Judith Slaying Holofernes” by Artemisia Gentileschi in 1613 introduced to me by Dr. Greta Kroeker. Early modern gender studies are so interesting to me and the story behind Artemisia’s life and experience with sexual violence really comes out in this painting. 

If you could choose any one figure from medieval/early modern history to spend a weekend vacation with, who would it be, why would you choose them, and where would you go?

  I would choose Anne Boleyn because I would love to hear more about her life in her own words 

and I also believe she was much more influential in the separation of the English church from 

Rome behind the scenes. One of my early undergraduate papers attempted to look deeper into her 

influence through politics and patronage! My family is from the Netherlands and she lived there 

for a while so I would take us there for the weekend to see the tulip blooms.

Interview with Laura Bitterli

 Tell us a little about yourself, where are you from?

I was born and raised by the lake Zurich – a beautiful region framed by the foothills of the alps. When I looked into the context of a charter with mass manumissions of serfs in my first seminar, I was drawn into the history of the city of Zurich and its dominion. And it has stayed with me for the past 8 years.

What brought you to your current university?

In Switzerland, it is quite common to study at your closest university. So, I did my Bachelor’s and Master’s in Zurich and received an offer for a PhD position as well. I still wanted to see other universities and academic cultures, which is why I applied for a mobility grant. This year, I get the opportunity to stay half a year in Durham and half a year in Vienna – which is perfect for looking into international research on my core topics, as well as for meeting fellow early career scholars.

What is your favorite aspect pertaining to the medieval/early modern period?

I am often stunned at how close the concerns, aims, interests, or petty fights of people in my sources are to what we experience today. Of course, there are major differences to our daily life, but there are still common themes. Someone who is annoyed by their neighbor’s tree that is shading their garden. Or a foreign man buying a nice property for his retirement – only to realise that there are local regulations that prohibit him from using it as he had planned. And of course, friendship, love, loyalty, … Maybe it’s these common themes that connect humans through time. But it certainly makes my ‘objects of study’ more tangible.

What is your research focus?

My research examines the accumulation of former noble dominial rights (mostly Habsburg fiefdoms and pledges) in the hands of the town of Zurich in the late Middle Ages. Burghers of Zurich play a big part in this, both as individuals who pursue their own or their family’s investment policies or as office holders in the emerging city state of Zurich. And some of them even had ties to the Habsburg court directly – again as fiefs or pledge holders or in offices in the court system. I argue that the growth of Zurich’s dominion should be viewed from three different perspectives. (1) The roles of citizenship and combourgeoisie (Burgrecht), which often determined whether individuals could obtain seigneurial rights, or to whom they were allowed to sell. (2) Investments into those rights that were used to expand both economic and social capital or to transform economical into social (noble) capital. (3) The service relations in which individuals stood to either Habsburg or Zurich – or often both. Thus, the project shifts the traditional (often teleological) narrative of territorialisation towards the individual actors. So, I find myself at a merging point between political, social, and economic history, with a focus on urban history, history of nobility, elite families, and social mobility.

In brief, what will you be discussing in your seminar talk?

In the first two years of my project, I struggled to find a structure in my very diverse and scattered sources and different case studies. I have this mind map in my head, but I needed to bring this network of interrelated thoughts into a thesis with a common thread. Over the past few months, I’ve been working on finding chapter themes and ways to connect the seemingly separate cases into a coherent narrative. And I’d love to hear your thoughts on my ideas.

What is your favorite piece of art/text from the medieval/early modern eras?

I like old manuscripts and scripts in general. However, my favourite books are the ones with great illustrations in them – very original, I know! The Codex Manesse, a famous and comprehensive source of Middle High German Minnesang poetry, was written and illustrated in the beginning of the 14^th C and I’m absolutely stunned by the illustrations, especially by the painted body language. The codex was produced in Zurich, by the way. And I also love the illustrations in the so-called “Schweizer Bilderchroniken”, illustrated chronicles that were created in the Old Swiss Confederacy in the 15th and 16th centuries. I especially recommend looking at the ‘Tschachtlanchronik’, the oldest of the still existing ones. You can find it online if you search ‘Berner Chronik’ on the platform e-manuscripta (https://www.e-manuscripta.ch/zuz/content/thumbview/2402275).

If you could choose any one figure from medieval/early modern history to spend a weekend vacation with, who would it be, why would you choose them, and where would you go?

For my dissertation’s sake I’d probably choose one of the people I’m currently looking into. There is sooo much that is not written in the few documents on or by them that have survived. I would probably make sure to talk to them either before or well after the Black Death has visited Zurich. I wouldn’t want to get accidentally infected. On the other hand, I’d love to just hang out with one of the really important men or women during that period. A Habsburg duke, a German emperor, or maybe an heiress of some renown. I’m wondering: can you still be down to earth when God has created the human hierarchy, and you were placed near the top?

Interview with Rebecca Drake

 Tell us a little about yourself, where are you from?

I grew up in Cheshire, in a town called Sandbach which is famous in medievalist circles for its Saxon crosses. I wasn’t much interested in Sandbach’s medieval historical past when I lived there, but I was always interested in Tolkien’s writing and I came to medievalism through his literature. This is important because I think it’s why I’ve gone on to study both Norse legendary sagas and English romance – I have always been interested in stories of monsters and heroes.

What brought you to your current university?

I came to the University of York when I was eighteen, drawn by the high number of geese to humans. I have stayed here because of the excellent Centre for Medieval Studies and, in recent years, York’s exciting creative writing community which I am actively involved in.

What is your favorite aspect pertaining to the medieval/early modern period?

I love that reading literature, especially romance in late-medieval Europe, was a group activity.

What is your research focus?

My research interects the disciplines of literature and creative writing, working across Norse medieval romance, late-medieval English romance, and contemporary eco-poetry and poetics to ask how we live and have lived with watery environments, in particular the sea. It combines medieval environmental history, Blue Humanities thinking, and ecopoetics to explore literary texts that represent historical and present water crises and cultural archetypes of water. How do we encounter water everyday in our time of ongoing water crisis? How does exploring past (medieval) encounters with water flow into fresh and complex understanding of our presemt relationship with water? How is medieval literature relevant to understanding natural environments today?

In brief, what will you be discussing in your seminar talk?

I will be talking about hybrid encounters between humans and sea creatures in Sir Amadace and Gríms saga Loðinkinna (The Saga of Grímr Hairy-Cheek)

What is your favorite piece of art/text from the medieval/early modern eras?

One thing I can’t get enough of is medieval cartography. I’m fascinated by the way late-medieval/early-modern map-makers in particular perceived the world. Two of my favourite maps are Gerald of Wales’s mappa of the British Isles and Iceland in his Topographia Hibernica, for the way it represents an archipelagic view of Europe connecting England with Iceland that is perhaps different to our contemporary understanding of the same geography. The other is Abraham Ortelius’s Islandia, because of its excellent sea monsters.

If you could choose any one figure from medieval/early modern history to spend a weekend vacation with, who would it be, why would you choose them, and where would you go?

I would choose King Alexander (on the assumption he really did have a submarine), and we would go deep sea diving in a bit of sea marked by a sea monster on the map!

Interview with Bridget Cox

 Tell us a little about yourself, where are you from?

I grew up on the west coast of Scotland, and am currently a third-year PhD researcher in medieval history with a love of all things archival.

What brought you to your current university?

I originally came to Durham in 2017 with the intention of studying history in order to train as an archivist after I had finished my BA. But volunteering with the archives in Durham, especially the cathedral archive, got me into the history of archives which led to my MA and then PhD.

What is your favorite aspect pertaining to the medieval/early modern period?

Perhaps there’s a theme emerging here, but it really is the archives. Written records were an increasingly prevalent part of people’s lives through the medieval and early modern periods so they contain evidence of everything from the mundane to the monumental. But, at the same time, the documents that survive are a just fraction of all those that once existed. So they come with the challenge of/opportunity for reading between their lines and into their silences to find people and perspectives that are otherwise hidden.

What is your research focus?

My thesis researches developments in documentary, scribal, and archival culture in late medieval Durham through the archive of Durham Cathedral Priory.

In brief, what will you be discussing in your seminar talk?

My talk will be looking at the ‘Miscellaneous Charter’ series in Durham Cathedral Archive, particularly a collection of family documents that entered the cathedral in the late fifteenth century. Their survival in the cathedral archive makes them an excellent source for the history of this family and the society in which they lived, but I hope to additionally demonstrate the historical and historiographical importance of understanding their record-keeping practices.

What is your favorite piece of art/text from the medieval/early modern eras?

It’s hard to pick, but I think the Lewis Chessmen. By contrast to the very formal and legally formulaic nature of the documents that I study, they convey so much emotion and are always a fun reminder of the immense creativity of the period.

If you could choose any one figure from medieval/early modern history to spend a weekend vacation with, who would it be, why would you choose them, and where would you go?

I’d love to spend some time with Aldred, the 10th century scribe who added the Old English gloss to the Lindisfarne Gospels, Durham Collectar, and other early manuscripts in the possession of the community of St Cuthbert during their time at Chester-le-Street. I hope I wouldn’t personally end up writing in any books, but I’d be fascinated to find out more about the thought process behind these linguistically important but very visually altering additions. Maybe I’d even to get see the Lindisfarne Gospels with their original binding and before they got their gloss!

Interview with Jackson Foster

 Tell us a little about yourself, where are you from?

I am an MSc student in criminology and criminal justice at Exeter College, Oxford, originally from south Florida (a sunnier clime than England, no doubt).

What brought you to your current university?

I reached Oxford by way of a BA (Hons.) in history and religion at the University of Alabama, as well as an MA (with distinction) in medieval and early modern studies at Durham. Whilst I enjoy Oxford, I admit partiality towards Durham—it is my favorite school in the country and the source of some of my fondest memories.

What is your favorite aspect pertaining to the medieval/early modern period?

I am most interested in the practices, beliefs, institutions, and discourses that structured daily life in the period. I lack the salvific vigour of EP Thompson—who once wished to ‘rescue the poor stockinger, the Luddite cropper, [and] the “obsolete” hand-loom weaver … from the enormous condescension of posterity’—but I do believe that the richness of the medieval and early modern world has been partially obscured by time.

What is your research focus?

I examine how contemporary social, economic, and political conditions shape the definitions—and manifestations—of crime. I therefore specialise in early modern criminal law, its constituent courts (e.g., the assizes, Quarter Sessions, &c.), differential patterns in convictions and sentencing (incl. the death penalty), and the state’s monopoly on force.

In brief, what will you be discussing in your seminar talk?

Murder: its formation as a distinct species of homicide in the common law, its presence in (and re-definition via) popular, ‘true crime’ print, and its application by juries.

What is your favorite piece of art/text from the medieval/early modern eras?

I adore most any work related to law and governance, like William Lambarde’s Eirenarcha (1581), Michael Dalton’s Country Justice (1618), and Thomas Smith’s de Republica Anglorum (1583). These texts are historically-reflective, simultaneously practical and theoretical, at times clear and at others confused—much like the law they centre on.

If you could choose any one figure from medieval/early modern history to spend a weekend vacation with, who would it be, why would you choose them, and where would you go?

Early modern lawyers, court clerks, and judges are not necessarily the first figures you would associate with a pleasant holiday. Nevertheless, I would choose Francis Bacon—who was notoriously quick-witted, polymathic, and, fortunately, in the event we quarrel, opposed to duelling. And I would let him handle the itinerary, as he proved an inspirational predecessor to the European grand tourists of the 17th-19th centuries. 

MEMSA Conference Call for Papers 2024

18th Annual Conference | 15th-16th July 2023

Fear and Loathing in the Medieval and Early Modern World

Call for Papers

‘No explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world.’ – Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1971).
The strong emotive responses of fear and loathing occur repeatedly in sources from the medieval and early modern period; from the depiction of the Other as monstrous or troll-like in the likes of Beowulf and the Norse sagas, to the feverish paranoia engendered in the witch trials of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, fear and hatred frequently underscore the most vivid and defining features of the medieval and early modern era. This two-day conference provides an opportunity for scholars to discuss the role of these strong emotions in any aspect of medieval and early modern culture.

Topics may include, but are by no means limited to:

– Religious and cultural intolerances
− Magic, witchcraft, and the occult
− Monsters and the supernatural
− Fear of death and damnation
− Gendered fear and loathing
− Fears of climate and the natural world
− History of emotions
− Heretical beliefs and practices
− Artistic and literary expressions of fear and loathing
− Physiology, medicine, and other bodily fears
− Social, political and dynastic anxieties

MEMSA’s 18th annual conference takes place at the Pemberton Rooms on the UNESCO World Heritage
Site of Palace Green in Durham. We welcome applications from postgraduate and early career researchers from all disciplines of medieval and early modern studies. Selected papers will be published in the MEMSA Journal. To apply, please submit a short abstract of no more than 250 words, along with a brief biographical statement, to memsa.conference@durham.ac.uk.

Deadline: Friday, 5th April 2024 Website: http://www.durhammemsa.wordpress.com

Twitter: @DurhamMEMSA

Interview with Alastair Forbes

 Tell us a little about yourself, where are you from?

My name is Alastair Forbes; a final-year PhD researcher with a love for all things medieval! I am originally from Yorkshire but have completed all of my higher education to this point at Durham, where I’ve been since 2014!

What brought you to your current university?

You just need to take one look around Durham to know that it is an ideal place to study the medieval. One open day visit was all it took to get me hooked. Combine that with Durham’s excellent reputation and my own pathological fear of Oxbridge and here I am.

What is your favorite aspect pertaining to the medieval/early modern period?

My favourite aspect of the medieval and early modern period is probably the stories that it fosters. To delve back into the past and learn these stories, to unpick and play with them and get to know people many centuries old is a delight and a privilege. There has always been for me something slightly magical about stepping back in time to almost another world and imagining it through their eyes.

What is your research focus?

My research focuses on what I call the ‘monastic textual universe’ of the period 1050-1150 – the version of that world pushed through the monastic lens and interpreted by monastic writers to survive in their works. My thesis particularly concentrates on their depiction of ‘knighthood’, the ordo militiae, and how they projected their own sense of order and society onto it within their textual universe.

In brief, what will you be discussing in your seminar talk?

My seminar talk focuses on a very small aspect of this projection of the monastic onto the secular, that is the ‘good’ deathbed. There was a fairly well-defined procedure for monastic deathbeds in this period. This talk examines the ways in which certain royal figures of the period, for whom extended monastic accounts of their deathbeds survive, are presented as having fulfilled this monastic ideal.

What is your favorite piece of art/text from the medieval/early modern eras?

There are so many to choose from! My favourite text always has to be the Ecclesiastical History written by the Anglo-Norman monk Orderic Vitalis from c. 1114-1141; it is a huge, ranging chronicle oftentimes interspersed with Orderic’s own personal vendettas and ideals. Although it was not very popular in his own time, it remains one of the best sources for England and France in the eleventh and early-twelfth centuries.

If you could choose any one figure from medieval/early modern history to spend a weekend vacation with, who would it be, why would you choose them, and where would you go?

Regrettably, most of my monks would turn up their nose at a weekend vacation, and a lot of the knights come across as too boorish to be truly excellent travel companions. In the end I would probably choose Emma of Normandy – queen of England and wife to first AEthelred the Unready and then Canute the Great, regent to Harthacanute (her son by Canute) and mother to Edward the Confessor (by AEthelred). A truly remarkable woman to have not only survived the death of one husband and the transfer of authority in England, but even thriving under it and maintaining her position of power. Who wouldn’t want to be friends with her! I think we would go somewhere nice and calm, drink tea and chat. I would love to know all about her tremendous ability to persevere within a particularly volatile courtly world, as well as to give her some well-deserved time off!

Interview with Callum Bowler

 Tell us a little about yourself, where are you from?

I am proudly from the experimental realm of Milton Keynes, once described by former Durham University Chancellor Bill Bryson as ‘anything but English’.

What brought you to your current university?

I first arrived in Durham in 2016 to begin my undergraduate studies in English, and I consider myself very fortunate to have had so many years to spend in this remarkable city.

What is your favorite aspect pertaining to the medieval/early modern period?

Pamphlet wars and their accompanying insults. People like to compare the rise of 17th-century pamphleteering to that of modern social media, and as with any analogy you can find links or poke holes in it as you please. However, one aspect that I think persists identifiably well is our collective ability to be offensive to each other in public, whether through high artifice or base crudity; certainly, a lot of pamphlet writers seem to enjoy both.

What is your research focus?

My doctoral thesis considers the connection between the life and work of John Milton and the material of medieval Britain, attempting to draw a long line across historical chronicle, literary romance and the various religious and constitutional controversies Milton liked to occupy himself with.

In brief, what will you be discussing in your seminar talk?

This talk originates from my attempts to uncover what the ‘medieval’, or ‘the middle age’, might have meant to someone writing in the seventeenth century. As I’ll discuss, while the idea of ‘the Middle Ages’ has manifested in English at this point, it’s far from stabilizing into the institute-defining titan that it is now.

What is your favorite piece of art/text from the medieval/early modern eras?

I have probably spent more time with Milton’s History of Britain than any other work – it’s such a fascinatingly troubled attempt to reconcile the aesthetic and the verifiable qualities of history, written at such a foundationally turbulent time for Britain.  

If you could choose any one figure from medieval/early modern history to spend a weekend vacation with, who would it be, why would you choose them, and where would you go?

Not Milton! I suspect the later Milton might prefer to be known through his works – he memorably speaks of books as being as lifelike and ‘as active as that soul was whose progeny they are’. Instead I’d go and see Milton’s schoolfriend, Charles Diodati. We’d go touring Italy and I’d ask him about what students really got up to in the 1620s.