ACMRS Newsletter Fall 2002

MEDIEVAL & RENAISSANCE
STUDIES NEWSLETTER
Fall 2002, Vol. 9, No. 1

ACMRS Fall Reception

The annual fall reception for ACMRS friends and affiliates will be Saturday, October 12, 7:00 p.m., at the home of Robert and Mary Bjork. Please RSVP for you and a guest to the Center no later than October 8. Directions to the Bjork bungalow are also available from the ACMRS office.

Distinguished Lecturer in Medieval Studies

Nicholas Orme, Professor of History at the University of Exeter, England, is the ACMRS Distinguished Lecturer in Medieval Studies for Fall 2002. Professor Orme specializes in medieval and Renaissance studies, focusing on social history, education, literature, culture, and the history of the English church. Active in several learned societies, he is a Fellow of both the Royal Historical Society and the Society of Antiquaries. He is Vice President, former Chair of Council, and Honorary Editor of the Cornwall Record Society, as well as the former President of the Somerset Archaeological and Natural History Society. He is currently President-elect of the Bristol and Gloucestershire Archaeological Society.

Professor Orme has published several books on education and childhood, cultural and social history, and religious history. His publications on education and childhood include: English Schools in the Middle Ages (1973), Education in the West of England, 1066-1548 (1976), From Childhood to Chivalry. The Education of the English Kings and Aristocracy, 1066-1530 (1984), John Lydgate, Table Manners for Children (1990), Education in Early Tudor England: Magdalen College Oxford and its School, 1480-1540 (1998), and Medieval Children (2001).

Professor Orme’s Distinguished Lecture titled “In a Medieval Schoolroom” will take place on Tuesday, October 22, at 7:30 p.m. The lecture will be held in Armstrong Hall, Room 105, College of Law (enter through southwest doors across from the Law Library). The lecture is free, open to the public, and will be immediately followed by a reception. Please RSVP for the reception to the ACMRS office by Thursday, October 17. Visitor parking is available in lots 42 and 44. Professor Orme’s visit is supported by the Departments of Languages and Literatures, English, Sociology, Family and Human Development, and the Education Policies Studies Program.

ACMRS Annual Interdisciplinary Conference

The theme for the 2003 ACMRS Conference, to be held February 13-15, will be multi-cultural Europe and cultural exchange. Possible topics addressed may be the way different national and religious groups such as Christians, Muslims, Jews, gypsies, and pagans interacted in both positive and negative ways, and how they were depicted in both positive and negative ways in literature, history, and art. The keynote address will by given by Mary Campbell of Brandeis.

The conference will also host The Medieval Book: A Workshop in Codi-cological Practice. This pre-conference workshop led by Richard Clement, University of Kansas Spencer Library, will focus on the making of the medieval codex. Participants will discuss the production of parchment, paper, pens, and ink, and then will make several quires in preparation for writing. Note: This workshop does not cover scripts and is not calligraphic. Separate registration is required for the workshop and will be limited to twenty people.

The setting of the conference will be the ASU Memorial Union, located at the heart of ASU’s main campus. Accommodations will be available at Tempe’s Twin Palms Hotel, just across the street from campus and about a five-minute walk to the MU. The conference registration fee is $65 ($35 for students) and includes welcoming and concluding receptions, two days of concurrent sessions, and keynote address. For more information check the ACMRS website or call (480) 965-5900. If you would like to submit a paper for the ACMRS Interdisciplinary Conference, please do so by October 1, 2002, via the website http://eir.library.utoronto.ca/acmrs/conference.

International Society of Anglo Saxonists Conference

Conversion and colonization is the theme of the 2003 International Society of Anglo Saxonists (ISAS) Conference, which ACMRS will host August 4-9. If you would like to submit a paper for the ISAS Conference, please do so by October 15, 2002 via the website http://eir.library.utoronto.ca/isas/conference. The conference will be at the Chaparral Suites Resort in Scottsdale, and the conference rate for a two-room suite will be $79 per night for single/double occupancy, $89 for triple occupancy, and $99 for quadruple occupancy. For a virtual tour and information about the resort, log onto www.chaparralsuites.com.

During the conference there will be several opportunities to see sights around Arizona. On Tuesday evening join us for a reception at the Arizona State University Art Museum, and you will have the opportunity to explore the campus and downtown Tempe before or after you dine at one of the many local restaurants. On Wednesday, you may take an excursion to see some of the beautiful scenery and interesting sights Arizona has to offer. You could go to the Grand Canyon, or you might choose to visit Sedona (nestled in the red rocks of Oak Creek Canyon), Montezuma Castle (an Indian ruin cliff dwelling), and Jerome (a onetime mining community, later a ghost town, and an artist colony). If you would prefer to stay closer to Scottsdale, you may tour the Heard Museum and Phoenix Art Museum. On Friday night, get ready to “go west” for a banquet at Rawhide Western Town. Enjoy the excellent food and the Old West atmosphere, including gunfights. You can shop, ride the train, and even take a stagecoach! After the conference, there are a variety of options for a river rafting trip through the Grand Canyon or a boat trip on Lake Powell. Watch the ACMRS website for updates.

ACMRS Public Symposium

“J. R. R. Tolkien: The Man Behind The Lord of the Rings” is the title of this year’s public symposium to be held Saturday, November 2, at the Memorial Union on the ASU main campus. Tolkien authority Thomas Shippey of St. Louis University will be the keynote speaker. (If you are a fan of the current movie trilogy, his name should ring a bell as the man who taught the cast how to pronounce Elvish.) Shippey will be joined by Randel Helms of the ASU English Department and Ron Newcomer of the ASU Theatre Department. Helms, who has published a number of books and articles about Tolkien, will talk about Tolkien’s collection of poems entitled The Adventures of Tom Bombadil. Newcomer, an accomplished producer and director, teaches screenwriting, cinema history, and film production at ASU and Maricopa Community Colleges. He will discuss the challenges of turning Tolkien’s prose into visual language, as well as the advances in technology that allowed the film trilogy to be made more successfully than it could have been even five years ago. A movie or other video presentation will round out the event.

The Symposium is free and open to the public, but registration is required. Call (480) 965-5900 to reserve your seat.

Beowulf and the Critics

The most important essay in the history of Beowulf scholarship, J. R. R. Tolkien’s “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics” has been much studied and discussed. But many scholars of both Beowulf and Tolkien have to this point been unaware that Tolkien’s essay was a redaction of a much longer and more substantial work, Beowulf and the Critics, which Tolkien wrote in the 1930s and probably delivered as a series of Oxford lectures.

In Michael Drout’s critical edition of Beowulf and the Critics, forthcoming from ACMRS, he presents both unpublished versions (‘A’ and ‘B’) of Tolkien’s lecture, each substantially different from the other and from the final, published essay. Drout’s edition also includes a description of the manuscript, complete textual and explanatory notes, and a detailed critical introduction that explains the place of Tolkien’s Anglo-Saxon scholarship both in the history of Beowulf scholarship and in literary history.

The many layers of writing and revision that are documented in Drout’s textual notes provide a window into Tolkien’s method of composition, which includes many intriguing false starts and changes of direction. Drout’s explanatory notes collect together all the sources Tolkien used for his work and detail the influences that shaped his critical understanding. Beowulf and the Critics is therefore valuable not only in its intrinsic sense as part of literary history, but also as an illustration of the development of the thought of one of the most influential authors and scholars of the twentieth century.

Norman F. Cantor and a New ACMRS Series

Norman F. Cantor is one of the leading American medieval historians of his generation, and in terms of the size of the readership of his books among the educated public, he is America’s premier medievalist. In his newest book, Inventing Norman Cantor: Confessions of a Medievalist, forthcoming from ACMRS, Cantor tells the story of medieval studies from 1948 to 2001 through the prism of his own experience and career. With unusual courage and exemplary frankness, he provides an intimate view of his private and professional life, not flinching from acknowledging mistakes he has made. The book constitutes a rare illumination of academia and an almost unprecedented revelation of the making of a prominent scholar, teacher, and writer. The distinguished American artist Fritz Scholder has contributed a portrait of Norman Cantor for the cover of the book. Inventing Norman Cantor will be available for approximately $35.00 from our North American distributor, Cornell University Press Services, P.O. Box 6525, Ithaca, New York 14851.

Cantor’s book is also inaugurating a new series entitled “ACMRS Occasional Publications.” The series will include works that are not necessarily scholarly in nature but have relevance to the teaching and study of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, such as memoirs, collections of personal essays, and historical fiction.

Geese Book

The Samuel Kress Foundation has awarded $100,000 for the study of an early sixteenth-century manuscript, The Geese Book, a multi-media, interdisciplinary project directed by Professor Corine Schleif, ASU School of Art. These funds, administrered by ACMRS, will go toward the production of an interactive CD-ROM version of the manuscript and facsimile on the Internet.

The Geese Book is a large, lavishly illuminated, two-volume gradual made for the church of St. Lorenz in Nuremberg between 1504 and 1510, today conserved in the J. Pierpont Morgan Library in New York (M. 905). It derives its name from a bas-de-page illustration showing a choir of geese directed by a wolf. The goal of the project is to make this manuscript accessible to wide audiences, re-integrating its verbal, visual, and musical components using modern multi-media technology. Plans are underway to produce an electronic facsimile and to make it available on the Internet through ITER. Additionally an interactive CD-ROM with sound recordings, explanatory material, documents, and essays will be prepared.

Other facets of the project include a seminar, a concert, a radio documentary, and an audio compact disc. Major additional support has also been pledged from several international institutions. The Institute for Media Design and Media Technology of the Fachhoch-schule Mainz, Bavarian Radio Corporation in Nuremberg, the University of Toronto, the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in Budapest, and the Schola Hungarica of Budapest are collaborating with ACMRS on the project. Faculty or graduate students interested in participating in this undertaking should contact the project directors: Corine Schleif at CorineSchleif@compuserve.com and Volker Schier at Volker.Schier@fen-net.de.

Van Courtland Elliot Prize

Congratulations go out to our colleague Rachel Koopmans, winner of the Van Courtland Elliot Prize from the Medieval Academy of America for her article “The Conclusion of Christina of Markyate’s Vita” in the Journal of Ecclesiastical History. The prize is given for an outstanding first article and was awarded to Professor Koopmans at the Academy’s meeting this past April.

New ACMRS Website

You will soon see the new and greatly improved ACMRS website, which is easier to navigate and has more useful information than the old one. Most notably the MRTS pages have both an author’s index and a title index to help you find what you are looking for. The website will be updated as needed to continue bringing you the latest news and information about ACMRS. If you come across any links or other items needing attention, or simply wish to comment on the website, please send an e-mail to acmrs@asu.edu. The web address for the new site is the same as before: www.asu.edu/clas/acmrs.

Bequests to ACMRS

ACMRS is touched and honored to have received two generous bequests from supporters. Professor Joseph Tuso (1933-2001), a noted Anglo-Saxonist who retired to the Tempe area, left over 200 books from his library to the Center. These books are predominantly texts and studies of Old and Middle English literature as well as the history of the English language and are now in a specially designated bookshelf at ACMRS for use by affiliates and friends. Another enthusiastic supporter of ACMRS, who wishes to remain anonymous, has named the Center as the sole beneficiary of her estate, currently valued at more than $500,000. Accordingly, the Center has established “The Nan Fund” in honor of the donor’s beloved aunt, and the monies in that fund will go to support all of ACMRS’s programs as needed. If you would like to make a bequest or other donation to ACMRS, please see the form included with this newsletter.

ACMRS Undergraduate Book Award

Jocelyn Lear (English, ASU) has received the seventh annual ACMRS book award for the breadth of her academic achievements in Medieval studies, her dedication to learning, and her willingness to volunteer for activities such as the Framing the Family symposium. The book award is in honor of ACMRS founding director Jean Brink and recognizes undergraduate students who have excelled academically in the study of the Middle Ages and/or Renaissance and who expect to continue study at the graduate level. As the recipient of the award, Ms. Lear received a $250.00 check for the purchase of books.

Cambridge 2003

July 7 to August 7 are the class dates for next summer’s ACMRS Cambridge Study Abroad Program. New courses and faculty will be announced on the ACMRS website and via program brochures in early November. The Cambridge program continues to be extremely successful, drawing a diverse group of students from various institutions in Arizona and throughout the United States. For undergraduates, Cambridge’s thirty-plus colleges provide a magnificent historic and architectural backdrop to the study of medieval and Renaissance culture. Graduate students, no less awed by the historic setting, find it an excellent opportunity to peruse manuscripts and conduct research at different libraries. And all students agree that the excursions-this past summer to the site of the battle of Hastings at Battle, Inns of Courts and Middle Temple, the Old Bailey, the Globe to see Twelfth Night, Stratford to see A Winter’s Tale, the British Museum, the British Library, Ely, and Norwich-enhance the material they learn in class. ACMRS thanks our affiliates who continue to share information about the Cambridge Study Abroad Program with their students.

ACMRS Reading Groups

ACMRS is again hosting three informal language study groups. The Medieval Latin group meets on Wednesdays, 1:00 to 2:00 p.m., and is reading the Gesta Danorum by Saxo Grammaticus. On Wednesdays, 8:00 to 8:30 a.m., the Old Norse group meets and is reading the prologue and Gylfaginning from Snorri’s Edda. And on Fridays, 10:00 to 11:00 a.m., the Old English group meets and is reading selections from Ælfric’s Lives of the Saints.

ACMRS Welcomes Back Distinguished Visiting Professor

ACMRS is pleased to announce the return of Chauncey Wood (PhD, Prince-ton University) for the Spring 2003 semester. Professor Wood will teach two courses in the English department, an undergraduate/graduate level “Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde” and a graduate-level course focusing on George Herbert and 17th-century English literature.

Two New Faces at ACMRS

ACMRS welcomes two Research Assistants to the Center. Stephanie Volf, a PhD student in the English Department, earned her BA in Medieval and Renaissance Studies at Michigan, Ann Arbor. Her dissertation topic explores feminine forms of faith-based healing in 14th- and 15th-century literature. Stephanie continues to participate in the Old English Reading Group and has also completed all course work for the ACMRS Certificate in Medieval Studies.

Heather Hoyt is also a PhD literature student in the English Department. Heather’s MA focused on American literature, and her current research interests are connections between Medieval and Victorian literature, with an emphasis on Old English texts and influences. Like Stephanie, Heather is also a participant in the Old English Reading Group. Stephanie and Heather have both worked for the Center in past years, and we are pleased to have them back to work on the Oxford Dictionary of the Middle Ages, the revision of the Klaeber Beowulf edition, and other ACMRS projects.

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