OUT NOW: Wounds in the Middle Ages, ed. Anne Kirkham and Cordelia Warr (Ashgate, 2014)

A new collection of essays on wounds and wound treatment in the Middle Ages, co-edited by our president, Cordelia Warr, and including an essay by our treasurer, Hannah Priest.

Wounds were a potent signifier reaching across all aspects of life in Europe in the middle ages, and their representation, perception and treatment is the focus of this volume. Following a survey of the history of medical wound treatment in the middle ages, paired chapters explore key themes situating wounds within the context of religious belief, writing on medicine, status and identity, and surgical practice. The final chapter reviews the history of medieval wounding through the modern imagination.

Adopting an innovative approach to the subject, this book will appeal to all those interested in how past societies regarded health, disease and healing and will improve knowledge of not only the practice of medicine in the past, but also of the ethical, religious and cultural dimensions structuring that practice.

Contents:

Part I: Medical Overview

1. The Management of Military Wounds in the Middle Ages
Jon Clasper

Part II: Miraculous Wounds and Miraculous Healing

2. Changing Stigmata
Cordelia Warr

3. Miracle and Medicine: Conceptions of Medical Knowledge and Practice in Thirteenth-Century Miracle Accounts
Louise Elizabeth Wilson

Part III: The Broken Body and the Broken Soul

4. The Solution of Continuous Things: Wounds in Late Medieval Medicine and Surgery
Karine van 't Land

5. Medicine for the Wounded Soul
M.K.K. Yearl

Part IV: Wounds as Signifiers for Romance Man and Civil Man

6. Christ's Wounds and the Birth of Romance
Hannah Priest

7. Wounding in the High Middle Ages: Law and Practice
Jenny Benham

Part V: Wound Surgery in the Fourteenth Century

8. Medicines for Surgical Practice in Fourteenth-Century England: The Judgement Against John le Spicer
Ian Naylor

9. The Medical Crossbow from Jan Yperman to Isaak Koedijck
Maria Patijn

Part VI: The Modern Imagination

10. The Bright Side of the Knife: Dismemberment in Medieval Europe and the Modern Imagination
Lila Yawn

About the Editor: Dr Anne Kirkham is a research associate at the University of Manchester. She obtained her PhD in 2007 and has published an article on St Francis of Assisi in Revival and Resurgence in Christian History (Studies in Church History, vol. 44, 2008). Since 2008, she has taught in the department of Art History and Visual Studies and researched, with Cordelia Warr, medieval wounds and has also co-supervised medical students researching dissertations in the history of medieval medicine.

Dr Cordelia Warr is senior lecturer in Art History and Visual Studies at the University of Manchester. She has published on Dressing for Heaven (2010), has co-edited two books on art in Naples with Janis Elliot (The Church of Santa Maria Donna Regina, 2004, and Art and Architecture in Naples, 1266-1714, 2010), and is currently working on the representation of stigmata between the thirteenth and seventeenth centuries.

For more information about the book, please visit the publishers' website.

Dress and Textile Discussion Group

Details for the last Dress and Textile Discussion Group meeting at the University of Manchester for this academic year:

Dr Elizabeth Coatsworth will be speaking about Grace Christie one of the pioneers of medieval embroidery research. Her paper is entitled, 'Mrs. Christie and English Medieval Embroidery'.

The meeting will take place on Thursday 1st May at 5 pm.

We will be meeting in Seminar Room 1 of the Graduate Suite in the Ellen Wilkinson Building.

For more information, please contact Alexandra Lester-Makin.

The Brook Lecture in Middle English

Prof. Andrew James Johnston (Freie Universität, Berlin)

Chaucer’s Postcolonial Renaissance

Thursday, 1 May, 5.30pm
John Rylands Library, Christie Seminar Room, Deansgate, Manchester

The Brook Lecture, part of the English and American Studies seminar series, honours the memory of G.L. Brook, Professor of English Language and Medieval English Literature at Manchester University, 1945–77. We are pleased to welcome as this year’s speaker Andrew James Johnston. Professor Johnston is the author of Robin Hood: Geschichte einer Legende (2013), Performing the Middle Ages from Beowulf to Othello (2008) and Clerks and Courtiers: Chaucer, Late Middle English Literature and the State Formation Process (2001), as well as of many articles and two novels.

Enquiries: Contact David Matthews

In Memoriam

At our AGM on 20th February, the committee asked members to remember colleagues that have passed away this year.

Gale Owen-Crocker spoke of economic historian Richard Britnell of Durham, who was one of our speakers last year. She also paid tribute to Helen Maclean of the English department here in Manchester, who was a long-time supporter of the Medieval Society. Dorothy Clayton remembered Professor Fanni Bogdanow of the French department, whose particular interest was the Arthurian cycle; she especially remembered Professor Bogdanow’s elderly mother, a Holocaust survivor who spoke no English, sitting in on her daughter’s lectures at the University.

The committee asks that our colleagues be remembered for their commitment to the study and teaching of medieval literature, history and culture, and for the valuable contributions they made to their respective fields.

CFP: 'To Die Would be an Awfully Big Adventure': The Glory and the Gore of Death and Horror Through the Ages

Bangor University, UK
Friday 6 June 2014

Abstracts are now being invited for the 10th annual Medievalism Transformed conference at Bangor University, a one-day interdisciplinary event sponsored by the School of English Literature. We will be convening to explore the medieval world and its sustained impact on subsequent culture and thought.

Papers are welcome from all disciplines related to medieval studies as well as modern expressions of medievalism. All topics within the general scope of the conference will be considered, including:

• Preparing for death
• Dying well
• Limbo / Purgatory
• Underworld
• Disease / Black Death / Medicine
• Ghosts
• The Occult / Cults
• The grotesque
• Apocalypse
• Saints / Martyrdom
• Theme of horror in medieval literature

Your proposal for a 20-minute paper should be no longer than 300 words. Please make submissions electronically to the conference convenors by 18 April. Proposals should be accompanied by your name, institutional affiliation, email address, and contact information. Please also specify any audio / visual requirements.

Letters of acceptance will be sent via email unless a hard copy is requested.

CFP: Fons Luminis: Using and Creating Digital Medievalia

Fons Luminis, a peer-reviewed interdisciplinary journal edited and produced annually by graduate students at the Centre for Medieval Studies in the University of Toronto, provides a forum in which to address, challenge, and explore the content and methodologies of our various home disciplines. We invite current graduate students to submit papers relating in some way to the 2015 journal theme, “Using and Creating Digital Medievalia.”

Since the mid-twentieth century, computing has been and continues to be a major factor in the medievalist’s research. From Father Busa’s creation of the Index Thomasticus in the 1940’s to current library and archival digitization projects, computational methods are essential aspects of the medievalist’s occupation. Papers are encouraged to address: medievalist use of digitally stored information; social scientists and librarians as creators and/or curators of knowledge about the Middle Ages; future directions of digital humanities; the importance of digital humanities to work in paleography, codicology, diplomatics, and text editing.

Articles may also focus on topics including (but not limited to) mapping and space, the impact of digitization on concepts of the archive, and digital tools in teaching.

Contributions may take the form of a scholarly essay or focus on the study of a particular manuscript. Articles must be written in English, follow the 16th edition (2010) of The Chicago Manual of Style, and be at least 4,000 words in length, including footnotes. Quotations in the main text in languages other than English should appear along with their English translation.

As usual, we continue to accept other submissions on any aspect of medieval studies and welcome longer review articles (approximately 1,500 words) on recent or seminal works in medieval studies.

Submissions must be received by July 1, 2014 in order to be considered for publication.

Inquiries and submissions (as a Word document attachment) should be sent to the editors.

Events at the University of Manchester

Some upcoming events at the University of Manchester that may be of interest to medievalists...

Wednesday 26th February 2014
5.15pm, 4.05 Mansfield Cooper

Art History Visual Studies Seminar Series 2013/4
Pilkington Visiting Lecturer

Horst Bredekamp, Professor of Art History (Humboldt University, Berlin): Charlemagne and the Image Politics of the Body

Monday 3rd March 2014
6pm, Historic Reading Room, John Rylands Library Deansgate

The Toller Lecture
Professor John Hines (University of Cardiff): A New Chronology and New Agenda: The Problematic Sixth Century

Followed by a free wine reception, and then dinner (at own expense). If you wish to attend the post-lecture dinner, please book by Monday 24th February with Gale Owen-Crocker.

Tuesday 15th - Thursday 17th April 2014
Hulme Hall

Registrations are now being taken for the MANCASS Easter Conference 2014 on Womanhood in Anglo-Saxon England. Programme and enrolment information is available from Brian Schneider.