Fordham University Center for Medieval Studies 2016-2017
The Center for Medieval Studies at Fordham University was host to several events and recurring programs during the 2016-2017 academic year. These included our annual conference, several professional workshops and lectures by visiting scholars, as well as our ongoing fellows program.
Our 37th Annual Conference, The Generative Power of Tradition: A Celebration of Traditio, 75 Years took place on March 25, 2017. It featured two paper sessions, the first addressing “Mysticism” and the second, “Jews and Christians.” The two round-table sessions brought together experts on “Editing Manuscripts in the Digital Age,” and “Popular Religion.” Next year’s conference, entitled Inside Out: Dress and Identity in the Middle Ages is scheduled for March 17-18, 2018 at our Lincoln Center campus.
We welcomed several speakers to Fordham this year. We began in September with a lecture from former Poet Laureate Robert Pinski entitled, “Quickness and Form, Absence and Being: A Technical Approach to Inferno,” followed by the first lecture of our Fall 2016 series from Magda Teter (Fordham University) who spoke on “Simon of Trent (d. 1475):
A Liminal Figure in Jewish-Christian Relations.” In October, Scott Bruce (The University of Colorado, Boulder) joined us in our on-campus graveyard for a reading from The Book of the Undead, and our 2016-2017 Medieval Fellow John McCaskey shared his work on “Inductio: The Medieval Transmission and Humanist Solution to “The Scandal of Philosophy” in December to close out the fall. Finally, the Center co-hosted a lecture in April 2017 by Frank Coulson (Ohio State University) entitled “A Newly Discovered Fragment of Giovanni del Virgilio’s Expositio on the Metamorphoses in Walsh Library, Fordham University.”
The Center also took advantage of the richness of its New York surroundings by hosting events at institutions around the city. The Center’s second Biduum Latinum Fordhamense in early October was co-sponsored with the New York Botanical Garden, organized around the theme “Flora et Fauna.” The event included a lecture by Robin Fleming (Boston College), a Latin tour of the NYBG’s premises (iter botanicum), and an exhibit showcasing the NYBG’s rare books. Fordham medievalists Sarit Kattan Gribetz, Lisa Holsberg, and Emanual Fiano led an excursion to the Cloisters to hear a concert by the Schola Antiqua, and organized a visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to view the exhibit Jerusalem
1000–1400: Every People Under Heaven. Our autumn 2016 events continued with a day-long Workshop on Parchment Making taught by US-American master parchment-maker Jesse Meyer (Pergamena) in November.
We held a robust workshop series this year, including Digital Day in August to introduce platforms used in digital projects at the Center, followed by a series of three workshops on writing an academic CV, led by Center director Susanne Hafner. The year’s workshop series continued with an Introduction to FromThePage (Ben Brumfield, Brumfield Labs), a digital platform that allows users to import and transcribe manuscript images online. We hosted our fifth annual Compatible Careers for Medievalists panel, featuring Fordham medievalist alumni currently working outside of university teaching. Finally, two master’s classes were offered to our students this year, including one on manuscripts taught by Sara Kay (NYU) in November and another on paleography by Frank Coulson (Ohio State University) in April.
