UBC Early Romance Studies Research Cluster

4:00 p.m.
** IN WOODWARD IRC, Lecture Hall 3.**
(Woodward Instructional Resources Centre, 2194 Health Sciences Mall: see further down for directions)

TWO LECTURE-RECITALS ON MEDIEVAL MUSIC:

❊ PAT UNRUH (member of Duo Laude, Anima Medieval Music Duo, Vancouver Viols),
“A ‘viella’ is best of all” – the medieval bowed vielle, and its repertoire (c. 1200 – c. 1400)

❊ CHANTAL PHAN (Dept of French, Hispanic and Italian Studies; formerly of Ensemble Marcabru de Montréal),
“Los motz e.l so”: What can we know about the pronunciation and performance of troubadour song (c. 1100- c. 1300)?

–oOo–

Directions from Buchanan Tower: Walk South along East Mall; two blocks past the Bookstore turn left and walk along the path. Woodward IRC will be on your right, a large building with bright red doors.  Woodward 3 is on the main floor, see the huge green numbers on the walls and go for the green 3!   Walking time: 10 min.

**DIRECTIONS FROM BUCHANAN TOWER:

1. Walk South along East Mall;
2. two blocks past the Bookstore turn left and take the footpath.
3. Woodward IRC will be on your right, a large building with bright red doors.
4. Woodward 3 is on the main floor, see the huge green numbers on the walls and go for the green 3!

Walking distance: 10 minutes.

*DIRECTIONS FROM THE TROLLEY BUS LOOP:

1. Walk across University Boulevard.
2. Keep going straight ahead and follow the footpath for about 1 block.
3. Woodward IRC will be ahead of you, a large building with bright red doors.
4. Woodward 3 is on the main floor, see the huge green numbers on the walls and go for the green 3!

Walking distance: about 5 minutes.

MAPS

• Local area map c/o UBC Wayfinding
• “Footprint” map c/o UBC Wayfinding

Free admission.
All are welcome!

2:00 p.m.
Buchanan Tower 799 (FHIS Lounge)

Mauricio Drelichman (Vancouver School of Economics)

“Rent and Housing in Golden Age Spain: Evidence from the Archive of the Cathedral of Toledo”
(Joint work with David González Agudo, Universidad Complutense de Madrid)

A treasure trove of archival documents brings to life the fascinating world of sixteenth-century urban Toledo. This paper expores the real estate holdings of the Cathedral; the people who managed them;  and those who rented, worked, and lived in them.

Mauricio Drelichman is an economic historian (in the department of economics) whose work revolves mostly around sixteenth century Spain. His current projects include a recently completed manuscript on sovereign debt in the time of Philip II, and a study of rental markets in early modern Toledo.

Poster (PDF)

MEDIEVAL AND EARLY MODERN ROMANCE LANGUAGES AND LITERATURES, AT UBC AND IN THE VANCOUVER AREA, SEPTEMBER-DECEMBER 2012

SEPTEMBER

• 13 September
Laura Ashe (Worcester College, Oxford)
‘The ‘Cniht’ and Chivalry: The Formation of Knighthood in English Culture’
5.15 pm. Buchanan, B 313
(UBC Department of English)

• 15 September
Deadline for submissions for the 41st UBC Medieval Workshop
(UBC Medieval Studies Committee / Gernot Wieland, Department of English)

• 20 September
First meeting (for planning etc.) of the ERS Research Cluster this year
(UBC Early Romance Studies)

• Friday 21 September
First lunchtime informal anti-session
(UBC Early Romance Studies)

• Friday 28 September
Lunchtime informal anti-session
(UBC Early Romance Studies)

OCTOBER

• Wednesday 3 October
Chantal Phan (FHIS, UBC)
“La légende du cœur mangé”
(UBC FHIS Séminaire de recherche en études françaises et francophones, special “microlectures” series)

• Friday 5 October
Lunchtime informal anti-session
(UBC Early Romance Studies)

• Thursday 11 October
Daniel Helbert (English, UBC)
“Playing Near the Edge: ‘Breuddwyd Rhonabwy’, ‘Fouke le Fitz Waryn’ and the Anglo-Welsh Border”
6 p.m., Buchanan Tower 826
(UBC Early Romance Studies)

• Friday 12 October
Lunchtime informal anti-session
(UBC Early Romance Studies)

• Friday 19 October
Lunchtime informal anti-session
(UBC Early Romance Studies)

• Friday 26 October
Lunchtime informal anti-session
(UBC Early Romance Studies)

NOVEMBER

• Friday 2 November
Lunchtime informal anti-session
(UBC Early Romance Studies)

• Monday 5 November
Louisa Mackenzie (University of Washington)
Research talk on landscape poetry of the Renaissance
5.00 p.m., Buchanan Tower 799
(UBC Early Romance Studies)

• Friday 9 November
Lunchtime informal anti-session
(UBC Early Romance Studies)

• Friday 16 November
Lunchtime informal anti-session
(UBC Early Romance Studies)

• Friday 23 November
Marvin Cohodas (Art History, Visual Art, and Theory; UBC)
”The Dance of the Conquest of Guatemala”
12.00 noon, Buchanan Tower 826
(UBC Early Romance Studies)

• Friday 30 November
Lunchtime informal anti-session
(UBC Early Romance Studies)

DECEMBER

• end of term celebratory fun sociable event, further details t.b.a.

Image sources: Wikimedia Commons

12.00 noon – 1.30 p.m.
Buchanan Tower 826
Given the time of this meeting, feel free to bring a sandwich. Cookies and juice provided.

MARVIN COHODAS
(Art History, Visual Art and Theory; UBC)
”The Dance of the Conquest of Guatemala (16th c. to the present)”

Professor Cohodas’s interests encompass ancient American visual representation (i.e. ‘Pre-Hispanic Art’), contemporary ritual and weaving arts of Maya peoples in Southern Mexico and Guatemala, and Native American basket weaving in California and Nevada.

His current research project concerns the “Dance of the Conquest” (http://conquista.arts.ubc.ca/) in Guatemala, a ritual proselytizing dance-drama with masks and costumes that may be nearly 500 years old, set to a text written by a Spanish Franciscan friar some time between 1570 and 1620, and in some communities is presented annually for the festival of the patron saint. Prof. Cohodas is interested in: the history of the dance, its theatrical, musical, dramatic and visual aspects; its use as a ritual offering; and its potential for expression of resistance towards the dominant non-Maya majority in Guatemala.

oOo

HAIJO WESTRA
(Emeritus Professor of Greek and Roman Studies, University of Calgary)

“Vergil and New France: The Fate of the Trojans as Paradigm for the Jesuits in Quebec ca. 1650”

While the paper on which this talk is based is in French, there will be an English summary of it, and discussion in French and/or English. Full reference for the paper concerned: “Références classiques implicites et explicites dans les écrits des Jésuites sur la Nouvelle-France,” Tangence 92 (winter 2010): 27-37.

5.00 – 6.00 p.m.
FHIS Lounge (room 799)
Buchanan Tower

LOUISA MACKENZIE (University of Washington)

“Men Who Stare at Cats: Renaissance (Post)Humanism and Animal Inscrutability.”

Early modern humanism puts animals at the centre of many of its most profoundly ethical questions, and anticipates much of what is currently being done in Critical Animal Studies and the posthumanities. Long before Derrida’s cat stared back at him, 16th-century philosophers and poets were marvelling at the ways in which cats (and other animals) returned their gazes, throwing into question the basis of any epistemological certainty.

Louisa Mackenzie grew up in Scotland and did her graduate work in Berkeley, California before moving to the UW in 2002. Her research focus is primarily on early modern French culture which she reads through various contemporary critical lenses including ecocriticism and, more recently, queer ecology and Animal Studies. Her book The Poetry of Place: Lyric, Landscape and Ideology in Renaissance France (University of Toronto Press, 2010) is an interdisciplinary study of how a subjective and affective sense of place was produced by poetry in dialogue with cartography, land use history and other knowledge spheres. Other research and teaching interests include women’s writing from all periods, travel writing, science fiction and utopic/dystopic literature, queer theory and historiography. She is currently starting a book-length project on animals as “queer bodies of knowledge” in 16th-century France. Community activities include volunteering with the GSBA scholarship fund, providing academic scholarships to LGBT-identified students. She has also served as a College Board Commissioner for AP French.

— as a follow-up to this lecture, a general discussion meeting on nature themes in Early Romance texts has been suggested for some time next term.

2.00 – 3.45 p.m.
FHIS Lounge (room 799)
Buchanan Tower

Two research talks in French, with English hand-outs, and discussion in French and/or English.

MARGHERITA ROMENGO (UBC-FHIS),
”Une Perle au Royaume de Fémynie. Contribution à l’histoire de la réception de Marguerite de Navarre.”

NANCY FRELICK (UBC-FHIS),
”Lire les emblèmes de la ‘Délie’ de Maurice Scève”

6:00 p.m.
Buchanan Tower 826

The next meeting of the UBC Early Romance Studies Research Cluster will take place on Thursday, October 11 at 6 pm in BuTo 826. Daniel Helbert will give a presentation entitled “Playing Near the Edge: ‘Breuddwyd Rhonabwy’, ‘Fouke le Fitz Waryn’ and the Anglo-Welsh Border”.

This study examines literary conceptualizations of the Anglo-Welsh border in the 13th century Anglo-Norman romance ‘Fouke le Fitz Warin’ and the 13th-century Middle Welsh dream vision ‘Breuddwyd Rhonabwy’. As can be seen in recurring symbols throughout the texts, and especially in the central image of the board game, these authors complicate the contemporary and modern definitions of the borderland in which they are set.

(As this meeting will be held at 6:00 P.M., please feel free to bring food, for yourself or to share, if you wish to do so.)

All are welcome to attend.

[IN FRENCH]
4:00 p.m.
Buchanan Tower 826

“La légende du cœur mangé”

Références des exemples:

• Lai Guiron: Manuscrit de Cambridge, D.D. 15.12, édition en ligne ABU Textes.
• La vida de Guilhem de Cabestanh: Manuscrits FbIK, éd. J. Boutière et I.M. Cluzel, Biographies des troubadours, Paris, Nizet, 1964, p.530-531.
• Le Roman du Chastelain de Coucy: L’Histoire du châtelain de Coucy et de la dame de Fayel, publié par l’imprimeur G. A. Crapelet, 1829 (Google Books).

Traductions des exemples: Chantal Phan

Autre version française (en prose, 15e s.):

• Le livre des amours du Chastellain de Coucy et de la Dame de Fayel, éd. A. Petit et F. Suard, Presses universitaires de Lille, 1994.

Pour en savoir un peu plus:

• Mariella Di Maio, Le coeur mangé, Histoire d’un thème littéraire du Moyen Age au XIXe siècle, Paris, Presses de l’Université de Paris-Sorbonne, 2005.
• Jean-Jacques Vincensini, « Figure de l’imaginaire et figure du discours. Le motif du ‘coeur mangé’ dans la narration médiévale », in: Le ‘Cuer’ au Moyen Age, Eds. du C.U.E.R.M.A. (Senefiance no. 30), 1991, p.439-459.
• Caroline Walker-Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1988.

UBC Department of FHIS, French Research Seminar / Séminaire de recherche en études françaises et francophones: special 2012 “microlectures” series

Une nouveauté cette année : nous avons décidé de nous doter d’une thématique qui nous servira de fil conducteur pour aborder certaines questions fondamentales de méthodologie et pour interroger la relation critique entre le lecteur et le texte. À partir du thème « Les écrivains passent à table », quelques professeurs du département viendront tour à tour présenter une « microlecture » d’un court extrait tiré d’une œuvre littéraire de leur choix (toutes époques et tous genres confondus). Cette lecture sera elle-même le point de départ d’une discussion à laquelle tous seront invités à prendre part. Scène de repas ou d’indigestion, de privations ou d’excès, recette réelle ou fantaisiste inséré dans un récit, poème faisant l’éloge ou la critique de tel ou tel aliment, réflexion alimentaire employée comme métaphore pour parler d’autre chose, éloge du bon goût en littérature et en gastronomie, etc. Tout est a priori matière à analyse. Le thème servira avant tout de prétexte à une lecture qui, suivant l’intention (et l’humeur ?) de chacun, sera tantôt classique ou provoquante, démonstrative ou interrogative. Il s’agira avant tout de montrer comment, à partir d’un même objet, et en suivant différentes approches et différentes méthodes, il est possible d’articuler des discours critiques contrastés, complémentaires ou encore inconciliables.

Further to the first planning meeting earlier today, we are working on a schedule for this term and indeed for the academic year; information will appear here as and when it is confirmed. Although the year is booking up fast, there may still be spaces available for twenty-minute papers and for shorter (five- to ten-minute) work in progress pieces.

This year will also feature weekly informal non-meetings, where there will be no papers: every Friday from 12.00 noon to a little before 1.00 p.m., at least two members of the ERS research cluster will be lunching in the FHIS departmental lounge (Buchanan Tower, 7th floor) and conversing, in a leisurely fashion in between mouthfuls, on Early Romance matters. You are welcome to bring along your lunch and join us. Chronologically-appropriate brown waxed woven cloth bags optional. We can provide water, the services of a kettle, and an assortment of fine teas (c/o O’Brien).

While the idea of eating and conversing sociable company is hardly new, it is hoped that combining congeniality with collegiality and adding in 2012 UBC’s emphases on multi-tasking and outreach may prove fruitful as well as enjoyable and perhaps even therapeutic. It should be stressed that this is a parallel strand to the ERS’s main official scholarly events: a series of “anti-sessions” …

A rough draft of notes from the meeting is here (EverNote shared file). With apologies for the use of Franglais.

You are cordially invited to the ERS cluster’s first meeting of the new academic year:

Thursday the 20th of September
from 6:00 to 7:00 p.m.
[location T.B.A.: it will be at the UBC Vancouver campus, around about 10 minutes’ walk from the Buchanan / Arts buildings]

Based at the department of French, Hispanic and Italian Studies of UBC, we are a research cluster in pre-1800–Medieval, Renaissance, and Early Modern–Romance languages and literatures (and associated cultures). The cluster is now in its fourth year; it meets approximately every three to four weeks, and also organized last year’s UBC Medieval Workshop.

This will be a short meeting–around an hour long–in which we’ll discuss plans and projects for the year, schedule talks, arrange future meeting times, and generally meet and greet all interested parties. All are welcome: from the FHIS department, other UBC departments and programmes, and all colleagues from neighbouring institutions. It would be wonderful to hear from any scholars whose work touches on the post-Classical pre-Modern period, the geographical areas concerned (including Québec, Acadie, and all of Latin America), and/or the Romance vernaculars (including, for example, French in medieval England). As the ERS cluster is also actively interested in its own name, we also consider the matter of periodization; and its limits, limitations, and questioning. We would be particularly keen to encourage graduate student participation, and to foster dialogue between and amongst academic fields; be that cross- , multi- , or inter-disciplinary.

If you are interested in giving a presentation this academic year or in participating in the ERS cluster in any way, but are unable to attend the meeting due to timetabling conflicts (which are understandable and understood, at this time of year) or because you will be unable to be at UBC that day or, indeed, are nowhere near Vancouver that day! We would of course still like to hear from you; please do contact the cluster convenors (Chantal Phan  or Juliet O’Brien) or indeed any of the other cluster members by email.

See also: post-meeting update.