Black Sea Migrations in the Long Thirteenth Century: Bodies, Things, Ideas
2023-09-22 - 2023-09-24 | 211 Dicksinson Hall and Zoom
For more information, visit: https://medievalblackseaproject.princeton.edu/conference-2023-4/
Sponsored by: Center for Collaborative History | Department of Art & Archaeology | Department of Religion | Humanities Council | Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies | Program in Medieval Studies | Program in Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies | The Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies | University Center for Human Values
Organized by: Lillian Datchev | Earnestine Qiu | Teresa Shawcross | Center for Collaborative History

Race Before Modernity Book Club: The Blacks of Premodern China
2023-09-27 16:30 UTC | 209 Scheide Caldwell, 209 Scheide Caldwell, Princeton, NJ, 08544, United States
The Race Before Modernity Book Club invites you to participate in our first meeting of the 2023-2024 academic year! We will meet on Wednesday, September 27 at 4:30 pm in 209 Scheide Caldwell.
The first reading will be The Blacks of Premodern China by Don J. Wyatt.
Registration is required. Please register here by Wednesday, Sep 13.
These meetings are for graduate students only.

Medieval Song and the Sounding of World, Body, and Imagination
2023-09-28 16:30 - 18:00 UTC | Taplin Auditorium, Taplin Auditorium, 08544
LUDUS and the Program in Medieval Studies present “Medieval Song and the Sounding of World, Body, and Imagination:” a lecture-performance by Sarah Kay and Concordian Dawn.
“Almost everything we might wish to know about the sound of medieval music is lost to us,” warns Daniel Leech-Wilkinson. Through the double medium of discursive speculation and live performance, Sarah Kay and Concordian Dawn set out in this lecture-performance not to know medieval song – we agree that is not possible – but to relive some of its affective realities, which we locate not in the objective worlds of time, place, or historical circumstance, but in dynamic interactions between body and world inflected by imagination. The sounds of this song are conjured not just by birds and fountains, but by celestial beasts and alluring sirens. Some of these sung texts represent the singing subject captivated by beauty, others struggling between life and death, others at the limits of a dream world, or ecstatic with joy.
LUDUS is a Collaborative Humanities Project from the Humanities Council.
Please RSVP here. Reception to follow event.
Sarah Kay bio:
Currently Professor Emerita at New York University and a Life Fellow of Girton College Cambridge, Sarah Kay has taught French and Medieval Occitan at the universities of Liverpool, Cambridge, and Princeton, as well as at NYU. Her many publications range widely over medieval literature in French, Occitan, and Latin, especially in relation to medieval and modern thought. Her most recent book, Medieval Song from Aristotle to Opera, was published by Cornell in 2022 together with a companion website that hosts experimental performances by Christopher Preston Thompson and Concordian Dawn of many of the songs discussed in her book.
Concordian Dawn bio:
Concordian Dawn specializes in twelfth- through fourteenth-century vocal repertoire, drawing on primary source material and focusing on socio-philosophical similarities between texts from centuries ago and the mindset of modern society. In so doing, Concordian Dawn produces a musical experience accessible to contemporary audiences, relating the human condition of the past to the familiar experiences of the present. The ensemble’s “mesmerizing” (Early Music America) debut album, Fortuna Antiqua et Ultra (MSR Classics), was released in December of 2021 to critical acclaim, and in July of 2022, Cornell University Press published a collaborative book-recording project between the ensemble and medieval studies scholar, Sarah Kay, entitled Medieval Song from Aristotle to Opera. Since its inaugural concert in 2012, Concordian Dawn has performed regularly on the east coast and annually with Gotham Early Music Scene, NYC. The ensemble has given performances and led workshops and lectures for Princeton University, New York University, the University of Pennsylvania, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, the Universities of California-Berkeley and Davis, Bard College, The Graduate Center of the City University of New York, the Santa Cruz Baroque Festival, and the Medieval Academy of America, among others.
Details of Concordian Dawn:
Concordian Dawn, Ensemble for Medieval Music
Amber Evans, soprano
Clifton Massey, countertenor
David Dickey, recorder and countertenor
Thomas McCargar, baritone
Niccolo Seligmann, vielle
Christopher Preston Thompson, artistic director, tenor and medieval harp

Medieval Studies Book Club: Thou Art the Man: The Masculinity of David in the Christian and Jewish Middle Ages
2023-10-09 18:00 UTC | 209 Scheide Caldwell, 209 Scheide Caldwell, Princeton, NJ, 08544, United States
Please join us for our first session of the Medieval Studies Book Club! Our book club is a friendly environment to discuss recent works in the field and connect with fellow travelers across the university, all while enjoying dinner. All graduate students with an interest in the material are invited, no expertise required!
For our first session, we will be reading Ruth Mazo Karras’s Thou Art the Man: The Masculinity of David in the Christian and Jewish Middle Ages (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021).
Everyone who registers for our meeting will receive a copy of the book with the expectation that they join our meeting ready to discuss. If you are interested, please email Albert Kohn at ak0429@princeton.edu by September 8. You are invited as well to suggest books you would like to discuss at future meetings.
This meeting is for graduate students only.

About Thou Art the Man:
“How do we approach the study of masculinity in the past?” Ruth Mazo Karras asks. Medieval documents that have come down to us tell a great deal about the things that men did, but not enough about what they did specifically as men, or what these practices meant to them in terms of masculinity. Yet no less than in our own time, masculinity was a complicated construct in the Middle Ages.
In Thou Art the Man, Karras focuses on one figure, King David, who was important in both Christian and Jewish medieval cultures, to show how he epitomized many and sometimes contradictory aspects of masculine identity. In Jewish and Christian traditions he was warrior, lover, and friend, founder of a dynasty and a sacred poet. But how could an exemplar of virtue also be a murderer and adulterer? How could a physical weakling be a great warrior? How could someone whose claim to the throne was not dynastic be a key symbol of the importance of dynasty? And how could someone who dances with slaves be noble?
Exploring the different configurations of David in biblical and Talmudic commentaries, in Latin, Hebrew, and vernacular literatures across Europe, in liturgy, and in the visual arts, Thou Art the Man offers a rich case study of how ideas and ideals of masculinity could bend to support a variety of purposes within and across medieval cultures.

LAMB Workshop: 'Lapidatores, Percussores Urbisque Depopulatores': Urban Violence in the Chronicle of Marcellinus Comes
2023-10-26 18:00 UTC | 209 Scheide Caldwell, 209 Scheide Caldwell, Princeton, NJ, 08544, United States
Please join us on October 26 for our first LAMB workshop of the semester in 209 Scheide Caldwell. We will read and discuss Radka Pallová’s paper entitled ‘Lapidatores, Percussores Urbisque Depopulatores’: Urban Violence in the Chronicle of Marcellinus Comes.
This workshop is for Graduate Students only. Please Please RSVP Here and download the paper on the LAMB website.
About LAMB:
The Late Antique, Medieval, and Byzantine Graduate Workshop at Princeton (LAMB) provides interdisciplinary forums for presenting research, fostering community, and training in professional development.
Contact Amel Bensalim (ab7941@princeton.edu) or Anna D’Elia (anna.delia@princeton.edu) with any questions.
LAMB is sponsored by the Program in Medieval Studies, the Center for Collaborative History, and the Departments of Art & Archaeology, English, Religion, and Classics.

Medieval Faculty Colloquium: "How Japan Became Known as the Land of the Rising Sun: The Enduring Influence of the Seventeen Commandments of 604"
2023-10-31 12:00 - 13:20 UTC | 209 Scheide Caldwell, 209 Scheide Caldwell, Princeton, NJ, 08544, United States
The Program in Medieval Studies is pleased to offer the Faculty Colloquium series for Fall 2023.
The Seventeen Commandments of Prince Shōtoku (574-622) enthroned Buddhism as the basis for the monarchy, distanced Japan from the Chinese model of history, and ultimately caused Japan to be identified as the “Land of the Rising Sun.” That notion, long thought to be a simple statement of Japan’s geography, served as a declaration of political independence as well. Join us on October 31 to hear Professor Thomas Conlan (East Asian Studies and History) present the lunchtime talk, How Japan Became Known as the Land of the Rising Sun: The Enduring Influence of the Seventeen Commandments of 604.
Please RSVP Here. Lunch will be provided.

PPLAB - "Wanted: Skeptical Eyes to Test The Cologne, Dombibliothek Cod. 13"
2023-11-03 12:00 - 13:20 UTC | 161 East Pyne
Are you curious about manuscripts? Do you want to see how they are studied but don’t know where to start? Join the Princeton Paleography Lab (PPLab) for the first talk of the semester! Come for good food and conversation on a new manuscript theory presented by Prof. Beatrice Kitzinger (Art & Archaeology). No paleography experience needed!
Please RSVP by October 31st using the link below:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSe4-WpsHL7d7ArlewK8VH3aqW7lNxGPW14r-qZ6ytQ8BobxlQ/viewform?vc=0&c=0&w=1&flr=0
We look forward to seeing you there!

Princeton Paleography Lab is co-sponsored by the Department of Classics, Program in Medieval Studies, and by MARBAS (Manuscript, Rare Book & Archive Studies).

EHL Seminar: "The Long Shadow of the 536 CE Event"
2023-11-09 16:30 - 18:30 UTC | 209 Scheide Caldwell, 209 Scheide Caldwell, Princeton, NJ, 08544, United States
Speaker: Lee Mordechai, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Shelby Cullom Davis Center Fellow 2023-24)
*Light refreshments will be served starting at 4:00 pm.*
Registration is required for virtual attendance only. Zoom registration link.
Find more information on the EHL website.

This seminar is organized by The Environmental History Lab (EHL), an interdisciplinary program affiliated with the Program in Medieval Studies and funded by a David A. Gardner ’69 Magic Grant from the Humanities Council.

LAMB Workshop: "Food Fight: Economic and Political Relations Between Sicily and Ifriqiya in the 11th Century"
2023-11-14 12:00 UTC | 203 Scheide Caldwell House
Please join us on November 14 for the next LAMB workshop in 203 Scheide Caldwell. We will read and discuss Ksenia Ryzhova’s paper entitled “Food Fight: Economic and Political Relations Between Sicily and Ifriqiya in the 11th Century.”
This workshop is for Graduate Students only. Please Please RSVP and download the paper on the LAMB Website.
About LAMB:
The Late Antique, Medieval, and Byzantine Graduate Workshop at Princeton (LAMB) provides interdisciplinary forums for presenting research, fostering community, and training in professional development.
Contact Amel Bensalim (ab7941@princeton.edu) or Anna D’Elia (anna.delia@princeton.edu) with any questions.
LAMB is sponsored by the Program in Medieval Studies, the Center for Collaborative History, and the Departments of Art & Archaeology, English, Religion, and Classics.

Medieval Studies Book Club: The Emperor and the Elephant
2023-11-14 12:00 - 13:20 UTC | 209 Scheide Caldwell, 209 Scheide Caldwell, Princeton, NJ, 08544, United States
For the next iteration of book club, we will be reading the brand new book The Emperor and the Elephant (Princeton, 2023) by Samuel Ottewill-Soulsby. This work is said to provide a “new history of Christian-Muslim relations in the Carolingian period . . . by drawing on Arabic as well as western sources.” Medieval studies book club is an informal and friendly environment to discuss recent works in the field and connect with fellow travelers across the university. Anyone with an interest in the material is invited.
We will discuss the book over lunch on Tuesday, November 14th at 12pm in 209 Scheide Caldwell. If you would like to join, please send an email to Albert Kohn at ak0429@princeton.edu.
All those who commit to joining our conversation will be offered a copy of the book at no cost. Please RSVP to Albert by Tuesday, October 17th and indicate whether you would like a copy of the book and whether you have any dietary restrictions.
This meeting is for graduate students only.

Comparative Diplomatics: “How can Jesuits be mistaken for Buddhist monks? Ōuchi Yoshinaga’s 1552 commendation and its Portuguese and Latin Afterlives”
2023-11-14 16:30 - 18:30 UTC | Jones 202, Jones Hall, Princeton, NJ, 08544, United States
Thomas Conlan (East Asian Studies) will be presenting on “How can Jesuits be mistaken for Buddhist monks? Ōuchi Yoshinaga’s 1552 commendation and its Portuguese and Latin Afterlives.”
All are welcome. Refreshments will be served!
Conveners: Thomas Conlan (East Asian Studies/History), Helmut Reimitz (History), Marina Rustow (Near Eastern Studies/History)
Coordinators: Stephanie Luescher (Near Eastern Studies) and Lucia Waldschuetz (History)
To receive the edition, translation and image of the document discussed during each session, sign up here.

Comparative Diplomatics is sponsored by the Center for Collaborative History with support from the Program in Medieval Studies.

Race Before Modernity Book Club: Medieval Art and Race: A Conversation with Pamela Patton
2023-11-15 16:30 - 18:00 UTC | 203 Scheide Caldwell House
The Race Before Modernity Book Club (RBMBC) welcomes you to our next event featuring Pamela Patton, Director of The Index of Medieval Art. We will read three of her most recent articles, which will be distributed upon registration.
We will meet on Wednesday, Nov. 15, 2023 at 4:30pm in Scheide Caldwell House 203.
To register, please visit: https://forms.gle/8kpjnzJ6QT2hJP9f9
Registration is required.
These meetings are for graduate students only.

Medieval Faculty Colloquium: “El Greco - Architect?”
2023-11-28 12:00 - 13:20 UTC | 209 Scheide Caldwell, 209 Scheide Caldwell, Princeton, NJ, 08544, United States
The Program in Medieval Studies is pleased to offer the Faculty Colloquium series for Fall 2023. Charlie Barber, Donald Drew Egbert Professor of Art and Archaeology, will present this lunchtime talk on Tuesday, November 28.
Today, Domēnïkos Theotokópoulos (El Greco), ca. 1540-1614, is primarily known today for his extraordinary and distinctive paintings. In the seventeenth century, attention was also drawn to his relationship with architecture. Over the past century, the nature of this architectural identity has generated a regular, slight, but unresolved conversation. In this paper, Professor Barber would like to return to this topic, and consider what it was that Theotokópoulos wanted from architecture and why it was possible for his near contemporaries to describe him as an architect.
Please RSVP Here. Lunch will be provided.

HOS Colloquia: Listening to Albert the Great on the Art of Becoming a Natural Scientist
2023-11-29 16:30 - 18:00 (America/New_York) | 211 Dickinson Hall
Katja Krause is a historian of science and medicine, and a philosopher specializing in medieval thought and beyond. She received her PhD in 2014 from King’s College London for her dissertation entitled “Aquinas’ Philosophy of the Beatific Vision: A Textual Analysis of his Commentary on the Sentences in Light of Its Greek, Arabic, and Latin Sources.” After her doctorate, Krause was awarded a two-year postdoctoral fellowship at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, where she worked on a series of articles examining the empirical turn of the thirteenth century that emerged from the appropriation of Averroes’ commentaries on the corpus Aristotelicum. In 2016/17 she served as Assistant Professor in Medieval Thought at Durham University, UK, and in 2017/18 was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Divinity School, supported by the Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina – Nationale Akademie der Wissenschaften. Krause is currently Leader of the Max Planck Research Group “Experience in the Premodern Sciences of Soul & Body, ca. 800–1650,” jointly with a professorship at the Technische Universität Berlin.
Katja Krause has recently completed the edited volume Premodern Experience of the Natural World in Translation (edited with Maria Auxent and Dror Weil, Routledge 2023); the volume Contextualizing Premodern Philosophy: Explorations of the Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, and Latin Traditions (edited with Luis Xavier López-Farjeat and Nicholas Oschman) is in press. Her translation of Thomas Aquinas’s Commentary on Peter Lombard’s Sentences IV.49.2, with introductions and notes, appeared in autumn 2020 with Marquette University Press.

This event is sponsored by the Program in the History of Science and the Program in Medieval Studies

LAMB Workshop: "And To Our Master, The Illustrious Caliph, Belongs The Lofty Resolution Regarding This, If God Wills"
2023-11-30 12:00 UTC | 209 Scheide Caldwell, 209 Scheide Caldwell, Princeton, NJ, 08544, United States
Please join us on November 14 for the next LAMB workshop in 209 Scheide Caldwell. We will read and discuss Yusuf Umrethwala’s paper entitled “And To Our Master, The Illustrious Caliph, Belongs The Lofty Resolution Regarding This, If God Wills”: Written Petitions And The Administration of Justice in Fatimid Egypt.
This workshop is for Graduate Students only. Please Please RSVP and download the paper on the LAMB Website. You will receive the password to download the paper when registering.
About LAMB:
The Late Antique, Medieval, and Byzantine Graduate Workshop at Princeton (LAMB) provides interdisciplinary forums for presenting research, fostering community, and training in professional development.
Contact Amel Bensalim (ab7941@princeton.edu) or Anna D’Elia (anna.delia@princeton.edu) with any questions.
LAMB is sponsored by the Program in Medieval Studies, the Center for Collaborative History, and the Departments of Art & Archaeology, English, Religion, and Classics.

The Ovide moralisé: The Divine Comedy of Medieval France?
2023-11-30 16:30 - 18:00 UTC | Robertson Hall, Room 002
Speakers:
Matthieu Boyd (’03), Professor of Literature and Chair of the School of the Humanities, Fairleigh Dickinson University
Sarah-Jane Murray (*03), Associate Professor of Great Texts & Creative Writing, Honors College, Baylor University
The anonymous fourteenth-century Ovide moralisé (“Moralized Ovid”) is a translation into French of Ovid’s Metamorphoses and much of the accumulated mythographical commentary in Latin. It gathers many sources and adds to them, forming a massive and coherent, if not seamless, whole that invites comparison with Dante’s masterwork in various ways: its scope (the OM is actually five time longer), its use of the vernacular, its creative relationship to the Classics (the OM is guided by Ovid as Dante is by Virgil), and its Christian mission. Beyond that, without necessarily claiming that the OM matches Dante in poetic elegance, the comparison provokes us to reassess the OM’s place in French and medieval literary history, which has not been properly appreciated since the text could not be read by almost any modern audiences – until now. This presentation is associated with the first-ever modern translation of the Ovide moralisé (Boydell & Brewer, 2023), the result of a collaboration that had its genesis at Princeton. We include discussion of the manuscripts, some of which have now been fully digitized and permit extended study of text-image relations, and the OM’s strategies of translation and interpretation.

This event is sponsored by the Department of French & Italian and the Program in Medieval Studies.

Medieval Faculty Colloquium: “Engaging the Sensoria in Premodern Qur’an Commentary"
2023-12-06 12:00 - 13:20 UTC | 209 Scheide Caldwell, 209 Scheide Caldwell, Princeton, NJ, 08544, United States
The Program in Medieval Studies is pleased to offer the Faculty Colloquium series for Fall 2023. Tehseen Thaver (Religion) will present this lunchtime talk on Wednesday, December 6.
What is the relationship between Qur’an exegesis, ritual practice, and the formations of religious identities and communities? This is the central question this presentation will address by focusing on the first complete and extant Persian Qur’an commentary to have been composed by a Twelver Shi‘i scholar, Shaykh Abu al-Futuh Razi (d. 1157), titled The Cool Breeze of Paradise and Breath for the Soul. Through a close reading of Razi’s exegesis I show the interaction of Qur’an exegesis, Shi’i rituals of remembrance and the cultivation of distinct sensorial reactions and capacities – an important medium for the narration, transmission, and indeed determination of religious identities. I argue that Razi’s commentary served the dual role of “explanatory written text” and “oral ritual telling,” while establishing its authority in each of these contexts.
Please RSVP Here. Lunch will be provided.

EHL Seminar: "EHL and ART478 Present… A Viking Funeral!"
2023-12-07 16:30 - 18:00 UTC | Chancellor Green Rotunda, Princeton, NJ, 08544, United States
The students from ART478 “The Vikings: History and Archaeology” will present their final research projects as a collaborative scripted performance of a Viking funeral. The event is open to the public, and will be held in the Chancellor Green Rotunda from 4:30-6:00pm on Thursday December 7. Come learn how the medieval Norse buried their dead, as well as how modern scholars can use archaeological evidence to recover individual life stories and experiences.
*In-person only, no hybrid option. Light refreshments will be served starting at 4 pm.*

The Environmental History Lab is supported by a David A. Gardner ‘69 Magic Grant from the Humanities Council and the Program in Medieval Studies. This event is co-sponsored by the Department of Art & Archaeology.

Medieval Studies Book Club: Wickham's Donkey and the Boat
2023-12-14 18:00 - 19:30 UTC | 209 Scheide Caldwell, 209 Scheide Caldwell, Princeton, NJ, 08544, United States
Join us for the final book club meeting of the semester on December 14th @ 6pm. We will discuss the new and much anticipated book by Chris Whickham, The Donkey and the Boat: Reinterpreting the Mediterranean Economy, 950-1180.
The Medieval Studies book club is an opportunity to connect with graduate students from around the university who are interested in the medieval world. Anyone with an interest in the material and a commitment to participating in our informal discussion are invited to join!
Please email Albert Kohn at ak0429@princeton.edu by Monday, November 20th to RSVP. In your email, let Albert know if you would like a hard copy of the book (a digital copy is available in the library) and if you have any dietary restrictions.
About The Donkey and the Boat: “A new account of the Mediterranean economy in the 10th to 12th centuries, forcing readers to entirely rethink the underlying logic to medieval economic systems. Chris Wickham re-examines documentary and archaeological sources to give a detailed account of both individual economies, and their relationships with each other.”
This meeting is for graduate students only.

LAMB Workshop: "Widowhood in Syriac Mesopotamia, 6th-7th c. CE"
2024-02-01 12:00 - 13:20 UTC | 209 Scheide Caldwell, 209 Scheide Caldwell, Princeton, NJ, 08544, United States
Join us for the next Late Antique, Medieval, and Byzantine workshop on Thursday, February 1, at 12 pm in 209 Scheide Caldwell. We will discuss Emily Chesley’s (History) paper “Widowhood in Syriac Mesopotamia, 6th-7th c. CE,” with comments by Rachel Richman (NES).
Lunch will be provided!
RSVP and download the paper from our website. After you RSVP, you will receive an email with the password to download the paper.
Grad students and faculty welcome!
About LAMB:
The Late Antique, Medieval, and Byzantine Graduate Workshop at Princeton (LAMB) provides interdisciplinary forums for presenting research, fostering community, and training in professional development.
Contact Amel Bensalim (ab7941@princeton.edu) or Anna D’Elia (anna.delia@princeton.edu) with any questions.
LAMB is sponsored by the Program in Medieval Studies, the Center for Collaborative History, and the Departments of Art & Archaeology, English, Religion, and Classics.

Medieval Studies Book Club: The King’s Road: Diplomacy and the Remaking of the Silk Road
2024-02-15 18:00 - 19:30 UTC | 209 Scheide Caldwell, 209 Scheide Caldwell, Princeton, NJ, 08544, United States
Join us for the first book club meeting of the spring semester on February 15th at 6pm. We will be reading The King’s Road: Diplomacy and the Remaking of the Silk Road (2023) by Princeton’s very own Xin Wen. The book sheds new light on trans-Eurasian diplomatic networks on the Silk Road using the vast resource of documents from the Dunhuang ‘library cave’. Xin Wen is Assistant Professor of East Asian Studies and History.
Registration is now closed. Please email Medieval Studies Program Manager, Anna D’Elia at anna.delia@princeton.edu, with any questions.
The Medieval Studies book club is an opportunity to connect with graduate students from around the university who are interested in the medieval world. Anyone with an interest in the material and a commitment to participating in our informal discussion are invited to join!
This meeting is for graduate students only.

LAMB Workshop: "De Diversis Artibus: A Technological Investigation of Medieval Craft"
2024-02-20 18:00 - 19:20 UTC | 209 Scheide Caldwell, 209 Scheide Caldwell, Princeton, NJ, 08544, United States
Join us for the next Late Antique, Medieval, and Byzantine workshop on Tuesday, February 20, at 6 pm in 209 Scheide Caldwell. We will discuss Chandler Allen’s (History of Science) paper “De Diversis Artibus: A Technological Investigation of Medieval Craft,” with comments by Silvia Gianolio (Art & Archaeology).
Dinner and drinks will be provided!
RSVP and download the paper from our website. After you RSVP, you will receive an email with the password to download the paper.
Grad students and faculty welcome!
About LAMB:
The Late Antique, Medieval, and Byzantine Graduate Workshop at Princeton (LAMB) provides interdisciplinary forums for presenting research, fostering community, and training in professional development.
Contact Amel Bensalim (ab7941@princeton.edu) or Anna D’Elia (anna.delia@princeton.edu) with any questions.
LAMB is sponsored by the Program in Medieval Studies, the Center for Collaborative History, and the Departments of Art & Archaeology, English, Religion, and Classics.

Upcoming Workshops
Monday, March 25 at 12 pm: Daniel Berardino (History, UC-Berkeley) presenting “An Oath of Fidelity in Cyprus: The 1191 Conquest and Mediterranean Idioms of Lordship”
Thursday, April 11 at 6 pm: Mo Van Wege (History) presenting “A Case of Female Infidelity: Litigation in the Burgundian Liber Constitutionum 52”
Thursday, April 25 at 6 pm: Amel Bensalim (History) presenting “A Notaries’ Notebook?: Assessing the Legal, Notarial, and Archival Practices of Medieval Egyptian Notaries”

Ethiopia and the Art of Cross-Cultural Exchange
2024-02-21 16:30 - 18:00 UTC | 010 East Pyne
Join us for a lecture with Christine Sciacca on February 21 at 4:30pm.
A reception will follow the lecture.
This event is free and open to the public. Please RSVP HERE.
Ethiopia sits at the juncture of Africa, Asia, and Europe, and historically it had access to the Mediterranean Sea, the Nile River, the Red Sea, and the Indian Ocean. Its situation at the nexus of travel and trade routes resulted in cultural cross-currents between Ethiopia and its surrounding cultures. In this lecture, Christine Sciacca, Curator of European Art, 300-1400 CE at the Walters Art Museum, will discuss the current exhibit, Ethiopia at the Crossroads, which celebrates the exchanges that took place and the impact of Ethiopian artistic traditions from their origins to the present day.
Christine Sciacca is Curator of European Art, 300-1400 CE at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore. She received her Ph.D., M.Phil., and M.A. in Art History from Columbia University, and a B.A. in Art History from Cornell University. Christine was a curator of illuminated manuscripts at the J. Paul Getty Museum for ten years, and she has worked at The Met Cloisters and The British Library. Her research concentrates on Italian, German, and Ethiopian medieval art, with a focus on liturgy, devotional practice, and patronage. Christine’s book publications include Building the Medieval World, Illuminating Women in the Medieval World, and Florence at the Dawn of the Renaissance: Painting and Illumination, 1300-1350. Her exhibition, Ethiopia at the Crossroads, is currently on view at the Walters Art Museum until March 3, and will travel to the Peabody Essex Museum, and the Toledo Museum of Art.

Race Before Modernity Book Club: Unpacking Historical Perspectives of Race and Ethnicity
2024-02-28 16:30 - 18:00 UTC | 105 Chancellor Green
The Race Before Modernity Book Club (RBMBC), in collaboration with Princeton’s Program in Medieval Studies, invites you to our upcoming event featuring Suzanne Conklin Akbari (Institute for Advanced Study) and Helmut Reimitz (History).
Join us for an engaging discussion on the exploration of race and ethnicity in the premodern era!
We will meet on Wednesday, February 28, 2024 at 4:30pm in Chancellor Green 105.
To register, please visit here.
The registration will be open until February 19, 2024.
This event is open to the public

Medieval Studies Faculty Colloquium: “Burial Archaeology and the Justinianic Plague”
2024-03-05 12:00 - 13:20 (America/New_York) | 209 Scheide Caldwell, 209 Scheide Caldwell, Princeton, NJ, 08544, United States
The Program in Medieval Studies is pleased to offer the Faculty Colloquium series for Spring 2024.
Janet Kay (Art & Archaeology) will present the lunchtime talk, “Burial Archaeology and the Justinianic Plague.” The Justinianic Plague (541-544 CE), as the beginning of the sixth- to eighth-century First Plague Pandemic of Yersinia pestis, has recently been at the center of a small but fervent debate among scholars with different methodological approaches. Kay will present models of how future research on the Justinianic Plague can more effectively use evidence from burial archaeology to understand its biological and social impact–whether that research is led by archaeologists or within interdisciplinary teams that include archaeologists in their project design.
Please RSVP Here.

Next Medieval Faculty Colloquium for Spring 2024
Tues, April 9 at 12:00 pm: Stephen Teiser (Religion)

Medieval Faculty Colloquium: "How Tang Literature Became 'Ancient': Evolving Models of Tang Dynasty Literary History in the Northern Song"
2024-03-19 12:00 - 13:20 UTC | 209 Scheide Caldwell, 209 Scheide Caldwell, Princeton, NJ, 08544, United States
Please note that this event was rescheduled from February 20 to March 19. Please email Anna D’Elia with any questions.
The Program in Medieval Studies is pleased to offer the Faculty Colloquium series for Spring 2024. Anna Shields, Professor of East Asian Studies and Chair of Department of East Asian Studies, will present this lunchtime talk on Tuesday, March 19.
This talk explores a thread in the reception history of Tang dynasty (618-907) literature in the Northern Song (960-1127), focusing on emerging models of Tang literary development proposed by Song scholars. The new significance of “antiquity” as a value in Northern Song intellectual culture has been well-studied–as a catalyst for a revival of classical studies, the development of Neo-Confucian thought, and the flourishing of historical writing, among other things. But the impact of these trends on Song scholars’ views of literature and its historical development is less well understood. Certain Tang writers claimed to have achieved a timeless “antiquity” in their literary writing–how did those claims shape Song scholars’ attempts to map the trajectory of Tang literature? More broadly, to what extent could literary writing (wenzhang 文章) be conceptualized as a product of historical change? Song scholars’ answers to these questions reveal their new concern about the correct relationship of literary writing to historical circumstance, as well as competition over a still-emerging Tang literary canon.
Please RSVP HERE. Lunch will be provided.

Upcoming Medieval Faculty Colloquia for Spring 2024
Tues, April 9 at 12:00 pm: Stephen Teiser (Religion)

Medieval Studies Book Club: Roma in the Medieval Islamic World: Literacy, Culture, and Migration
2024-03-19 18:00 - 19:30 UTC | 209 Scheide Caldwell, 209 Scheide Caldwell, Princeton, NJ, 08544, United States
Join us for the next book club meeting on March 19th at 6pm. We will be reading Kristina Richardson’s Roma in the Medieval Islamic World: Literacy, Culture, and Migration (2021). This book draws on a wide array of sources to investigate the lived experiences of the Banu Sasan (later named Ghuraba or ‘Strangers’ from which the prerogative ‘Gypsies’ derives), in the Medieval Islamic World.
Registration for this meeting is now closed. Please email Medieval Studies Program Manager, Anna D’Elia at anna.delia@princeton.edu, with any questions.
The Medieval Studies book club is an opportunity to connect with graduate students from around the university who are interested in the medieval world. Anyone with an interest in the material and a commitment to participating in our informal discussion are invited to join!
This meeting is for graduate students only.

LAMB Workshop: "An Oath of Fidelity in Cyprus: The 1191 Conquest and Mediterranean Idioms of Lordship"
2024-03-25 12:00 - 13:20 UTC | 209 Scheide Caldwell, 209 Scheide Caldwell, Princeton, NJ, 08544, United States
Join us for this Late Antique, Medieval, and Byzantine workshop on Monday, March 25 at 12 pm in 209 Scheide Caldwell. We will discuss Daniel Berardino’s (History, UC Berkeley) paper “An Oath of Fidelity in Cyprus: The 1191 Conquest and Mediterranean Idioms of Lordship” with comments by Jake Ransohoff (Seeger Center PostDoc).
Lunch will be provided.
RSVP and download the paper from our website. After you RSVP, you will receive an email with the password to download the paper.
This session is open to faculty.
About LAMB:
The Late Antique, Medieval, and Byzantine Graduate Workshop at Princeton (LAMB) provides interdisciplinary forums for presenting research, fostering community, and training in professional development.
Contact Amel Bensalim (ab7941@princeton.edu) or Anna D’Elia (anna.delia@princeton.edu) with any questions.
LAMB is sponsored by the Program in Medieval Studies, the Center for Collaborative History, and the Departments of Art & Archaeology, English, Religion, and Classics.

Upcoming Workshops:

Thursday, April 10 at 6 pm: Mo Van Wege (History) presenting “A Case of Female Infidelity: Litigation in the Burgundian Liber Constitutionum 52”
Thursday, April 25 at 6 pm: Amel Bensalim (History) presenting “A Notaries’ Notebook?: Assessing the Legal, Notarial, and Archival Practices of Medieval Egyptian Notaries”

Comparative Diplomatics: “The growth of the mestizo sangley in early 17th century Manila as seen in two 1630s documents”
2024-03-26 16:30 - 18:30 UTC | Jones 202, Jones Hall, Princeton, NJ, 08544, United States
This paper seeks to contribute to the growing number of studies on early modern period intercultural relations, focusing on Chinese-Filipino-Spanish interactions in the early 1600s and the resulting rise of the mestizo sangley, children of Filipino and Chinese unions. The paper is based on two 1630s documents in the Archivo de la Universidad de Santo Tomás (AUST) in Manila.

Comparative Diplomatics is an exploratory workshop on documents in late antiquity and the middle ages with occasional forays into the modern era, as distinct from narrative and normative long-form texts. Its goal is twofold: to stimulate the production of new translations of late antique and medieval documentary sources that can be used in the classroom, and/or harvest some of the translations already being made; and to bring languages, subfields and approaches into contact in order to clarify methodological questions.
Each presenter will translate an unpublished document or retranslate a previously published document that needs fresh examination, and roughly one week ahead of time, provide the group with an edition, a translation and an image of the original.
To receive the image(s), edition(s), and translation(s) of the document(s) to be discussed, sign up here.
Conveners: Thomas Conlan (East Asian Studies/History), Helmut Reimitz (History), Marina Rustow (Near Eastern Studies/History)
Coordinators: Stephanie Luescher (Near Eastern Studies) and Lucia Waldschuetz (History)

Comparative Diplomatics is sponsored by the Center for Collaborative History with support from the Program in Medieval Studies.

"The Greater Sea": The Black Sea and Medieval Eurasia
2024-03-27 16:30 - 18:00 UTC | 010 East Pyne
Join us for the annual Medieval Studies Faber Lecture with David Abulafia (University of Cambridge) on March 27 at 4:30 pm.
A reception will follow the lecture.
This event is free and open to the public. Please RSVP HERE.
The role of the Black Sea in medieval trade is often seen from the perspective of its links to the so-called Silk Roads stretching all the way to China, particularly in the wake of the Mongol conquests, or from the perspective of its links across the Mediterranean to the Italian cities whose merchants established trading colonies on its shores. This lecture attempts to shift the emphasis towards what was going on within the Black Sea itself, with its massive supplies of grain, wax, slaves – and caviar.
David Abulafia is Professor Emeritus of Mediterranean History at Cambridge University, where he is also a Fellow of Gonville and Caius College. His book The Great Sea: a Human History of the Mediterranean (2011) won the British Academy Medal and The Boundless Sea: a Human History of the Oceans won the Wolfson History Prize. Within the Mediterranean, he has written extensively about southern Italy in the Middle Ages and about the Catalan world. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and was created Commander of the Order of the British Empire by King Charles III in 2023.

This event is supported by the Eberhard L. Faber 1915 Memorial Fund in the Humanities Council, and co-sponsored by the Medieval Black Sea Project, Center for Collaborative History.
