Month: October 2013

New post on Oecologies

Today! J. Allan Mitchell, “Household Habitats and the Medieval Ecological Imaginary,” Oecologies Speaker Series at Green College

Please join us for the inaugural talk of the Oecologies Speaker Series at Green College at UBC!

Dr. J. Allan Mitchell
(English, University of Victoria)

“Household Habitats and the Medieval Ecological Imaginary”

5-6:30pm, Wed Oct 23, Coach House, Green College, UBC

Abstract: Medieval English household texts reveal the extent to which complicated ecologies underpin even the tidiest economies. Gestation and growth in particular expose the human to the vast universe, showing that persons become fleshed out in impersonal modes less anthropocentric than commonly assumed. Our sense that human creatures are entangled in dense material networks has been reinvigorated by recent theory. What is needed is a longer historical perspective. Recovering early notions of animacy, infancy, virtuality, and maturity, Mitchell traces the inheritance of modern speculative and scientific concepts too often considered in isolation from the past.

Speaker Info: J. Allan Mitchell is Associate Professor of English at the University of Victoria. He has written on medieval rhetoric, practical ethics, and human ecologies, and is the author of Becoming Human: An Essay on the Matter of the Child in the Later Middle Ages (forthcoming from the University of Minnesota Press in 2014). His other books are Ethics and Eventfulness in Middle English Literature (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009) and Ethics and Exemplary Narrative in Chaucer and Gower (D.S. Brewer, 2004).

Oecologies: Inhabiting Premodern Worlds is a new Speaker Series sponsored by Green College that gathers scholars from the humanities living and working along the North American Pacific coast to investigate the idea of “oecology,” an older spelling of the modern concept “ecology.” For event details, abstracts, and speaker information, please visit oecologies.com or view the event poster. Also follow us on Twitter (@Oecologies) and “Like” us on Facebook! Oecologies also holds a reading group in advance of each talk in the Speaker Series. If you are interested in attending future sessions, please contact Dr. Robert Rouse. If you have other questions about Oecologies, please do not hesitate to contact Dr. Vin Nardizzi or the project assistant, Carmel Ohman.

27 November 2013
12:00 noon, MEEKISON ARTS STUDENT SPACE (Buchanan D-140)
Student performances of Old French narrative
—ERS / Chantal Phan’s FREN 407A class

“ROLLANT and RENART”

A musical performance of Medieval French narratives (with English commentary and translation), featuring STUDENTS FROM  FRENCH 407 AND FROM THE SCHOOL OF MUSIC

Program:

1.  ‘Roland at Roncevaux’ (from the 11th-c. Song of Roland);

Two passages from the oldest epic in the French language, that tells the dark story of a battle during which pride and treason lead to disaster.

2. ‘The Crow and the Fox’ (from the Romance of Renart, 12th-13th c.)

In this excerpt from a humorous satire of human society, a sneaky fox fools a conceited crow, but then is caught at his own game.

Interpolated music:
Two polyphonic French motets (13th c.), a Gregorian lament, an instrumental estampie.

Singers/chanters/narrators:
Maegan Andolfatto, Kevin Dickie, John Inglis, Colin Jones (soloist), Line Lavoie, Maria Marion, Chantal Phan, Angelique Po, Jennine Punzalan, Chloe Sargent.

Instrumentalists:
Line Lavoie (percussion), Chantal Phan (organetto), Angelique Po (recorder), Pat Unruh (bowed vielle).

Conception and arrangements:
Chantal Phan, Pat Unruh

At the MEEKISON ARTS STUDENT SPACE (Buchanan Building, 1866 Main Mall,
room D-140),

NOVEMBER 27, 2013, from 12:00 noon to 12:50.

EVERYONE IS WELCOME!

Info: chantal.phan@ubc.ca

Poster in French (PDF)

Poster in English (PDF)

If you’re interested in this general area, do also take a look at:

• Performing Medieval Narrative Today: A Video Showcase
  (Evelyn Birge Vitz, Nancy Freeman Regalado, Marilyn Lawrence, NYU; 2004-present day; see also their about page)

41st Medieval Workshop – Programme

“Interpretive Conflations: Exegesis and the Arts in the Middle Ages”

(Unless otherwise noted, all other sessions will be held in the Coach House, Green College)

From the original Call for Papers:

• For further information about this year’s Workshop, please contact Professor Gernot Wieland: gernot(dot)wieland(at)ubc(dot)ca
• For further information about the UBC Medieval Workshops, see this description here.
• UPDATE (2013-11-01): Registration: please register by 3 November if possible. The registration form (.doc) is here.
• The programme that follows here below is also available in PDF.

Thursday, 7 November 2013

6 pm Plenary Lecture 1 (Harbour Centre)
Rita Copeland, “Classical Rhetoric and Medieval Scriptural Interpretation”

7 pm: Reception (Harbour Centre)

Friday, 8 November 2013

9:00 – 9:45 Richard Pollard presents a fourteenth-century manuscript containing Hugh Ripelin’s Compendium Theologicae Veritatis, which has recently been acquired by the University of British Columbia Library (Ike Barber Library, Seminar Room)

(Unless otherwise noted, all other sessions will be held in the Coach House, Green College)

10:00 – 11:30 am Session 1
Henry Ansgar Kelly, “Exegesis and the Arts and Sciences at Oxford and Beyond”
Frans van Liere, “ ’Omnia disce’: History, the Arts, and Victorine Exegesis”

12:00 – 1:00 Plenary Lecture 2 (Location tba)
Michael Herren, “The Interface between Secular and Biblical Exegesis in the Middle Ages”

1 – 2:00 lunch

2:00 – 3:00 Session 2
Joseph Grossi, “Barrow Exegesis: Quotation, Chorography, and Felix’s Life of St. Guthlac”
Tristan Major, “Alcuin’s Numerical Exegesis in his Letters and Poetry: The Number Seventy-Two”

3:00 – 3:30 coffee break

3:30 – 5:00 Session 3
Courtney M. Booker, “Hypocrisy, Scripture, and the Carolingian Pursuit of Truth”
David Ganz, “An Exegete as Artist: the De Laudibus Sancte Crucis”
Richard Pollard, “Josephus as Exegesis in Carolingian northern Italy”

5:00 Reception

7:00 Dinner

Saturday, 9 November 2013

9 – 10:00 Session 4
Katherine Smith, “Biblical Exegesis and the Art of History in the Twelfth Century: The Example of the Latin Chronicles of the First Crusade”
Niall Christie, “History Repeats Itself? The Biography of the Prophet and the Kitab al-Jihad of ‘Ali ibn Tahir al-Sulami (d. 1106)”

10 – 10:30 coffee break

10:30 – 12:00 Session 5
William Green, “ ‘Pro utilitate legentium’: Exegetical practice and temporal hermeneutics in the Gesta Regum Anglorum”
Barbara Crostini and Glenn Peers, “Illuminated Catenae and Psalms Engaged in Schism: MS Vat. gr. 752 in its Political Context”
Richard A. Nicholas, “Gothic Architecture’s Artistic Expression of Medieval Biblical Exegesis”

12:00 – 2:00 lunch

2:00 – 3:00 Session 6
Greti Dinkova-Bruun, “Poetry and Exegesis: A Hymn to Mary in the Margins of Peter Riga’s Aurora”
David Coley, “Exegesis without an Exegete: A Pearl without an Oyster”

3:00 – 3:30 coffee break

3:30 – 4:30 Session 7
David Rollo, “Christian Exegesis, Demonic Interpretation and Early Romance”
Patricia Badir, “Drama and Exegesis: St. Thomas in the York Cycle”