Medievalists at Warwick Reports
Annual report for the Warwick Medieval Seminar Series, supported by the Humanities Research Centre
The Medieval Seminar Series at Warwick has had another busy year, supporting the research of medievalists and those interested in the Middle Ages across the faculties of English, Modern Languages, History, and the History of Art. Last year’s invited speakers included David D'Avray (UCL) in a joint seminar with STVDIO from the Centre for the Study of the Renaissance, Ros Brown-Grant (Leeds), Ardis Butterfield (Yale), Tamas Karath (Peter Pazmany Catholic University), and Michelle Bolduc (Wisconsin-Milwaukee), with internal papers given by Julian Gardner and Sarah Wood. The Series also supported a Medieval to Renaissance Lunch and the presentation of graduate research at the beginning of the year, in this case by Liam Lewis in French Studies.
Once again, with the generous financial support provided by the HRC, the MSS was able to provide an interdiscliplinary forum for scholars from Europe and the US to meet and exchange ideas on medieval cultural and literary studies. The Series also actively contributed to the organisation of two conferences held at Warwick over the course of the year: Reassessing Courtliness in Medieval Literature held by the British Branch of the International Courtly Literature Society, and a Research Day in Medieval English Studies, bringing together scholars and postgraduate researchers from the Universities of Padua, Lausanne, Peter Pazmany Catholic University, Budapest, Warwick, and with the University’s partner Queen Mary UL.
Not only has all of this taken place in the space of this academic year however; the MSS also held five sessions for the new Medieval Reading Group, which aims to bring students, researchers, and teachers together to provide new insight on materials that have included recent scholarship by Jill Mann, the Gawain poet’s perplexing masterpiece Cleanness, a medieval French Saints Life, and episodes from the Lancelot prose cycle. These have been supported by a revamped online presence for Medievalists at Warwick with the help of the Centre for the Study of the Renaissance, and through our new twitter feed @medievalwarwick.
The next year promises to be just as intense and exciting as the last with a full programme of visiting and internal scholars, and the MSS is hoping to revitalise links with other Universities in the UK to enrich our relationships with scholars in the field and to create a hub of activity in Medieval Studies here at Warwick.
Liam Lewis, 21 May 2015