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Events & Conferences

Mediaevalia at the Lilly Library

Lectures and Workshops given by Falk Eisermann, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin

Monday, April 26, 2010 at 9:30 A.M. & 2:30 P.M.
Tuesday, April 27, 2010 at 5:00 P.M.
The Lilly Library (1200 East 7th Street)

The speaker for this year's Mediaevalia at the Lilly (April 26–27) will be Dr. Fulk Eisermann, director of the Union Catalogue of Incunabula (Gesamtkatalog der Wiegendrucke) at the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin.

On Monday, April 26th, Dr. Eisermann will conduct two mini-workshops on how to describe incunables in the Internet Age and on how to work with scholarly research facilities for 15th-century printing available on the internet. The workshops also will present opportunities to work with both original source materials as well as electronic resources. The workshops will be in held in English from 9:30 A.M. to 12:30 P.M., and in German from 2:30 P.M. to 5:30 P.M. The number of participants is limited. Enroll by sending an e-mail to the organizers: Cherry Williams and Hildegard E. Keller.

On Tuesday, April 27th at 5:00 P.M., Dr. Eisermann will give a public lecture, to be held at the Lilly Library. His topic will be: "Secrets of Success: Printers, Patrons, and Audiences in 15th Century Leipzig." A reception will follow the lecture.

The series Mediaevalia at the Lilly Library (directed by Cherry Williams, curator of manuscripts at the Lilly, and Professor Hildegard E. Keller, Department for Germanic Studies) aims to both better exploit and publicize the collection by bringing in established scholars and experts for a lecture and a workshop with hands-on-approach for students and faculty. The series is sponsored by the Medieval Studies Institute and the Lilly Library. In seeking to combine lectures with workshops, our goal is to make abstract ideas, as presented in the classroom, concrete by confronting students with the intractable nature of sources and giving them some sense of just how much can be gleaned from handwriting, type, parchment, paper, watermarks, title pages, musical notation, format, decoration, in short, all material aspects of the book over the course of the period stretching from Late Antiquity to the Reformation, i.e., comprehending at the outset the transition from roll to codex and, at the end, the shift from manuscript to print.

Flyer for the Event

Directions to the Lilly Library

 

Urban Allegories: Walter Benjamin and Medieval Temporalities

A lecture by Ethan Knapp, Associate Professor of English at the Ohio State University

Friday, January 29, 2010 at 4:30 P.M.
State Room East, Indiana Memorial Union (900 East 7th Street)

This talk revisits the often disembodied history of medieval allegory by returning to Walter Benjamin's famous analysis of the particular modernity of Baudelaire's urban lyricism. Rather than privileging Benjamin's late essay, "On Some Motifs in Baudelaire," which presents a stark sense of the alterity of the modern, we might instead consider his earlier, and richer, treatment in the Arcades project, a treatment that draws on a persistent parallel between Baudelaire and Dante in order to construct a modernity that cannot be read as a simple chron- ological proposition. The talk will then turn to specific examples of late medieval English allegory in Hoccleve, Langland, and Gower.

Flyer for the Event

Directions to the Indiana Memorial Union

 

The Man with the Pale Face, the Relic, and Du Fay's Missa Se la face ay pale

A lecture by Anne Walters Robertson, Claire Dux Swift Distinguished Service Professor of Music and the Humanities, University of Chicago

Monday, October 19, 2009 at 4:15 P.M.
Ford-Crawford Hall (Simon Building, 200 S. Jordan Ave.)


Professor Anne Walters Robertson writes on subjects ranging from the plainchant of the early church to the Latin and vernacular polyphony of the late middle ages. In her work, liturgical and secular music, and often the interactions of the two, mirror theological and courtly ideas and shape the development of medieval spirituality and personal devotion, architecture, institutional identity, and politics. Her research on fourteenth-century polyphony points to the fundamental roles of local musical dialect in understanding Philippe de Vitry's life and music, and of mystical theology in illuminating the compositions of Guillaume de Machaut. More recently, she has studied the symbolic and folkloric aspects of the seminal masses and motets of the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries.

Flyer for the Event
Directions to Ford-Crawford Hall

 

Little Nothings: "The Squire's Tale" and the Ambition of Gadgets

A lecture by Prof. Patricia Clare Ingham, Indiana University

Monday, September 21, 2009 at 4:00 P.M.
Indiana Memorial Union, State Room West


Despite advancements in architecture, optics, philosophy, literature, music, and mechanics, the Middle Ages remains more often associated with conservation than it is with innovation. This paper, part of a larger book-length study of the meaning and reach of medieval accounts of novelty, analyzes one telling example of the altogether ambivalent discourse of the medieval "newfangled." Geoffrey Chaucer's "Squire's Tale," I argue, cross-cuts a fascination with novel technological gadgetry with the fascinations of impossible love, raising for us the promise and problem prompted by wonder in the new and unusual.

Flyer for the Event
Directions to the Indiana Memorial Union

 

21st Annual Medieval Studies Symposium

Making Manifest: Revelation and Illumination in the Middle Ages

Symposium Program and Schedule

March 27-28, 2009

The Book of Revelation captivated the medieval world, providing inspiration for scholarship, theology, art, music, and, of course, eschatological speculation. But the concept of revelation had an even broader impact. Literally and metaphorically the term encapsulates many of the developments and innovations of the Middle Ages, whether we’re speaking of divinity revealed to humans, ideas dawning upon men, or crimes exposed to public view. From the “eureka moment”, to its translation into representation (visual, musical, literary, or scientific) and its reception and influence in the wider world, revelation seeks investigation and interpretation.

 

Baba Brinkman to perform "the Rap Canterbury Tales"

April 1, 2009
Frangipani Room, Indiana Memorial Union

Baba Brinkman, a Canadian rapper and Chaucer scholar, will perform The Rap Canterbury Tales on Wednesday, April 1, at 7:30 p.m. in the Frangipani Room of the Indiana Memorial Union. The concert is free and open to the public. A reception will follow in the Hutton Honors College, located at 811 E. Seventh Street.

Brinkman began writing his own rap lyrics and competing in freestyle competitions at the age of 19. He earned both a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree in Medieval and Renaissance English Literature, and his master’s thesis discussed the similarities between the narrative structures of rap music and poetry. His research inspired him to write The Rap Canterbury Tales, which re-narrates Chaucer’s classic tales of the Miller, the Pardoner, and the Wife of Bath using the modern medium of rap. The Rap Canterbury Tales made its debut tour in 2004 and has since been recorded as an audio CD and published as an illustrated book.

Brinkman has toured The Rap Canterbury Tales extensively, taking the show to Prague, Montreal, Edinburgh, Melbourne, New York, San Francisco, London, and other major cities around the world. The initial success of The Rap Canterbury Tales prompted Cambridge University to sponsor a performance tour of The Rap Canterbury Tales to over 30 British high schools in 2005. Brinkman is currently in the midst of an American performance tour of The Rap Canterbury Tales.

Since 2004 Brinkman has released eight CDs of his original music. He began his own company (Babasword Productions) in 2004 and his own indie record label (Lit Fuse Records) in 2007. Brinkman has been featured on CBC, NPR, ABC, and BBC Radio. When he is not touring, he lives in Vancouver, Canada.

Brinkman’s Indiana University performance is cosponsored by the Department of English, the Hutton Honors College, the Medieval Studies Institute, and the Renaissance Studies Program.

Directions to the Indiana Memorial Union
Flyer for the Event