Posted by Edward Mills
23 September 2024Ah, September … the days are drawing in, the Virtual Learning Environment is a blur of updates and seminar schedules, and campus — much like a new arrival who’s just discovered Camper Coffee in the Queen’s Building — is well and truly buzzing.
Perhaps more relevant to this blog, though, is the fact that the start of term also means the return of the Centre’s seminars and reading groups. These are a longstanding fixture of the Centre, and a glance at the programme — available on the Centre’s website, or here as a downloadable PDF — shows just how much is happening across the Centre over the coming weeks.
As ever, the first session of the year (on 25th September) will be an informal one, giving members of the Centre a chance to reconnect after the summer and to meet new arrivals. After that, though, the events come thick and fast, with workshops and roundtables on medieval scribal practice and editing techniques sitting alongside talks from colleagues in both the University and archives sectors. In this area, we’re very excited to welcome Paul Dryburgh (from the National Archives) and Kathleen Kennedy (University of Bristol), who will be speaking on commemorations of the Norman Conquest in the 20th century and Exeter’s own Syon Abbey manuscript collection, respectively. Our annual Simon Barton Memorial Lecture this year will be given by Antonella Luizzo Scorpo, whose title alone — ‘”Frenemies”: women, conflict and rebellion in medieval Iberia’ — suggests that we’re in for quite the journey.
There’s an emphasis on skills development this term, through a dedicated workshop from Ben Pohl and our editing roundtable (which features three experienced Exonian editors), as well as Kathleen Kennedy’s pre-talk session for postgraduates. This term, we’re working to expand the purview of the seminar into realms beyond the traditionally historical, a move that reflects many of the changes that are taking effect this year in our flagship Master’s programme (the MA in Medieval Studies). We’re looking forward to welcoming our new MA students to the Centre at our first seminar on Wednesday.
The Centre’s reading groups are also returning this term, with our weekly explorations of medieval Latin and medieval French both taking place on Wednesdays. Much like our seminar series, the reading groups are open to all comers, and we’d be delighted to see you there, whether you’re new to Medieval Studies at Exeter or are a seasoned attendee. All the details are now live on the Centre website.
Finally, the new term also heralds the start of a series of weekly blog posts! We’re looking forward to sharing them with you, as we look back on a decade of this blog (seriously!) and look ahead to discovering what members of the Centre are working on. If you’d like to contribute to the blog, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with Edward Mills.
From all of us here at the Centre for Medieval Studies, best wishes for the start of term, and we hope to see you at one of our events soon!
Featured image: John of Salisbury teaching, from Paris, Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève, MS 1145 (fol. 3r). The editors of the blog make no claims as to whether or not this image is an accurate depiction of what occurs in Centre seminars.