Faculty and Staff - Medieval Institute, University of Notre Dame

715 Hesburgh Library, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN 46556-5629, Telephone: (574) 631-6603, Facsimile: (574) 631-8644, Email: medinst@nd.edu

News and Announcements

This page lists the Institute's activities in the weeks and months ahead. Visit here often to keep abreast of Medieval Institute programs and to find key deadlines relating to the Institute's activities.

Current News

A. W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Medieval Studies

We are pleased to announce Cristina Maria Cervone as our A.W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Medieval Studies for the 2007-2008 academic year.

Dr. Cervone comes to us from Villanova University where she is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English.

Her research centers on language and form in late medieval English writing, particularly the interplay of concrete-made-abstract and abstract-made-concrete that drives our ability to model concepts in and through language. During her fellowship year, she will be working on a book-length project derived from her dissertation, "Love's Leap: Incarnational Poetics in Late Medieval England," focusing on the intersection between Incarnation theology and figurative language in 14th-century English writing. A more complete description of her research is available at: http://www.nd.edu/~medinst/lectures/cervone.html.

A former Charlotte W. Newcombe Fellow, Dr. Cervone received her undergraduate degree from Williams College and has an M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Virginia, where she was a student of A. C. Spearing.

On April 26, 2008, she will hold a seminar presenting her work-in-progress along with critical responses from three senior scholars: Gary Macy, John Nobili, S.J. Professor of Theology, Santa Clara University; Alastair Minnis, Professor of English, Yale University; and Andrew Galloway, Professor of English and Medieval Studies, Cornell University.

Office: 614B Hesburgh Library; phone: (574) 631- 3795; e-mail: ccervone@nd.edu.

The Conway Lectures

In 2002, the Medieval Institute inaugurated a lecture series in honor of Robert M. Conway, a 1966 graduate of Notre Dame, trustee of the University, and long-time friend and supporter of the Medieval Institute. The annual lectures brings senior scholars of international distinction to Notre Dame each fall to speak on topics across a variety of disciplines. The lectures are then published by the University of Notre Dame Press. Past speakers included Fr. Ulrich Horst (2002), Paul Strohm (2003), Rosamond McKitterick (2004), Calvin Bower (2005), and Beat Brenk (2006). The 2007 Conway Lectures were given by A. C. Spearing. Jonathan Riley-Smith has been invited to lecture in 2008 (September 18, 23, and 25), followed by John Marenbon in 2009 and Roberta Frank in 2010.

A. C. Spearing is Kenan Professor of English at the University of Virginia. A graduate of Cambridge University, Prof. Spearing was chairman of the Cambridge Faculty of English and Reader in Medieval English Literature, and remains a fellow of Queens' College. He has written a series of books in which medieval literature is brought into critical relation with modern theory, including Criticism and Medieval Poetry (1964), Medieval to Renaissance in English Poetry (1985), and Textual Subjectivity (2005). Spearing's Conway Lectures topic, "Medieval Autographies," is a sequel to Textual Subjectivity, exploring a new kind of writing, in and of the first person, that emerged in the later Middle Ages.

The 2007 Conway Lectures were held on October 11, 16, and 18.

For more details on the 2007 Conway lectures, see the list of upcoming lectures.

2006-07 Visiting Scholars at the Medieval Institute

Each year, the Medieval Institute hosts scholars from around the world who wish to use the resources of its library collection and participate in the activities of its academic community. We welcome these individuals to participate in the life of the Institute and make every effort to connect them with local scholars who share their interests.

In academic year 2006-07, we hosted a number of research visitors, visiting scholars, visiting professors, and postdoctoral fellows. Some held appointments within the Institute and others found us through colleagues in other institutes and departments. We seek opportunities to encourage research in the field of medieval studies by facilitating the work of visiting students and faculty.

The Medieval Institute welcomed the following visitors in 2006-07:

Magdalena Bieniak, University of Padua, Research Visitor
Francesco Borri, University of Venice, Visiting Scholar
Aaron Canty, Saint Xavier University, Visiting Scholar
Cullen Chandler, Lycoming College, Visiting Scholar
Giselle de Nie, University of Utrecht, Visiting Scholar
Antonio Donato, Oxford University, Visiting Scholar
Julian Hendrix, Cambridge University, Research Visitor
Daniel Hobbins, Ohio State University, Visiting Scholar
Warren Lewis, Martin University, Visiting Scholar
June Mecham, Mellon Fellow, University of Nebraska, Omaha, Visiting Scholar
Robert Meyer-Lee, Goshen College, Visiting Scholar
James Mixson, University of Alabama, Visiting Scholar
Isabelle Moulin, University of Paris-Sorbonne, Visiting Scholar
Owen Phelan, Mt. Saint Mary’s University and Seminary, Visiting Scholar
Andrea Robiglio, SIEPM Fellow, Visiting Scholar
Mathilde van Dijk, University of Groningen, Visiting Scholar

Summary of the 2006-07 Academic Year

During the academic year 2006-07, the Medieval Institute concentrated on continued expansion of and quality within its undergraduate program. In Spring 2005, the Institute graduated 5 minors and 2 supplementary majors. At the conclusion of Spring 2007 the Institute has 3 honors majors, 13 first majors, 3 supplementary majors, and 28 minors declared in its medieval studies program. The new introductory course for majors and minors, "The World of the Middle Ages," was fully subscribed in both the fall and spring semesters. Social/academic functions offered for undergraduates ranged from declamations of Old English poetry to displays of Medieval Institute facsimiles and manuscripts--accompanied by refreshments.

The graduate student body remains stable with about 25 individuals in any given year. Our students were active in presenting conference papers and either published, or had accepted for publication, 5 articles in a variety of venues including 2 top-line journals. Several of our students also won external prizes and fellowship awards to assist their research. Five of our graduate students completed foreign research this year and about 25% of our undergraduates studied abroad or will do so this year. Both of the year's Ph.D. graduates found tenure track positions.

The Institute hosted a major conference on the twelfth century in Fall 2006 and brought together 20 eminent scholars from around the world for 3 days of papers and discussion. The proceedings are to be published by the University of Notre Dame Press. Other lectures and seminars during the year were delivered by an internationally diverse group of visiting researchers. Most of these visitors conducted follow-up seminars for our graduate students and we encouraged participation in these events from student medievalists in other departments.

Faculty made good use of our new seminar room for their classes and visiting scholars found the newly established research area with its computers, scanner, and microfilm reader a welcome addition to the library and Institute resources available to them.

The Milton Anastos Collection in Byzantine Studies was moved to the seventh floor of the library and now shares close proximity to our holdings on the Latin West and the reference materials in the reading room. The entire seventh floor collection of medieval studies materials has been successfully pruned of duplicates and outdated editions and physically resituated to allow for growth in the coming years.

Summary of the 2005-06 Academic Year

In 2005-06, the Medieval Institute hosted three symposia. The first was held July 22-23, 2005 on “Umayyad Legacies” and organized by Prof. Paul Cobb as the American counterpart to a topical dialogue begun by an interdisciplinary group of international scholars in Damascus. On February 3-4, 2006, Prof. Charles Barber and Dr. David Jenkins of the University Libraries presented the Second Biennial Workshop in Byzantine Intellectual History on the topic: “The Medieval Greek Commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics,” and attracted scholars from Greece, Germany, Denmark, England, and the U.S. On April 29, 2006, the Medieval Institute hosted a symposium organized by this year’s Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow Susanne Hafner, Assistant Professor for Germanic Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. The symposium discussed Prof. Hafner’s research on “Vergilian Masculinities: Medieval Readings of the Aeneid.” The three invited panelists were senior scholars from various subdisciplines in medieval studies: Prof. Ingrid Bennewitz from the University of Bamberg, Germany; Prof. Simon Gaunt from King’s College, London, and UCLA Prof. Christopher Baswell.

On September 26, 29 and October 3 Prof. Calvin Bower delivered the 2005 Conway Lectures. The topic was “Grasping the Wind: Words for Melodies in South-German Liturgical Music, 800-1200.” As part of our on-going lecture series, in the Fall semester, we invited Prof. Nicholas Howe (University of California, Berkeley) and Fr. Gilles Mongeau, SJ (Regis College, Canada) as speakers. In the Spring Dr. Isabelle Moulin (Paris-Chicago), Fr. Gilles Emery, OP (Fribourg University, Switzerland), and Prof. em. Otto-Hermann Pesch (University of Hamburg-München) presented their research. Each of these scholars gave a lecture and most met for a seminar with our graduate students.

The strength of the graduate program at the Medieval Institute was evidenced by the success of our doctoral students. James Kriesel won a Fulbright Fellowship and an Albert Ravino Italian Studies Travel Scholarship, which will allow him to study for one year in Italy. Andrew Irving won an Exchange Fellowship from the Newberry Library in Chicago, cooperating with the École des Chartes in Paris; he was also awarded an Albert Ravino Italian Studies Travel Scholarship and a Mellon Fellowship from the Vatican Film Library at St. Louis. Courtney Luckhardt earned the Outstanding Teacher Award from the Kaneb Center. Miranda Wilcox won a Sorin Teaching Fellowship from Notre Dame for 2006-2007. She has also accepted a tenure track position at Brigham Young University, which will start in the Fall of 2007.

Our newly appointed Director of Undergraduate Studies, Linda Major, oversaw the revamping of our undergraduate curriculum and the addition of an honors track. New marketing materials were created and distributed through one-on-one contacts and new outreach channels used to make students aware of our program. The size of the undergraduate population interested in medieval studies is growing and the number of majors is increasing as well. A new course, “The World of the Middle Ages,” will be offered in Fall 2006 as an introduction to medieval studies and an incentive for further study in the area.

A critical shortage of shelf space for the Institute's library collection was resolved by redistributing general works not specific to the Middle Ages to more appropriate locations. This restructuring will make it possible to house the Miltos Anastos Collection in Byzantine Studies on the 7th floor of the library, along with the rest of the MI collection.

Thanks to a generous bequest from Canon Astrik Gabriel, former director of the Medieval Institute, who passed away on May 16, 2005, the Institute will be able to offer a postdoctoral fellowship devoted to the study of medieval education and university life. With help from the Canon's estate and from the Graduate School, Prof. Gabriel's former office suite has been converted into a new seminar room, while the old seminar room has been converted into a study area for researchers using the various micro-format resources of the Medieval Institute and the scholarly “Nachlass” (personal papers) of the Canon. The new research room will allow scholars to work in close proximity to the reference materials kept in the paleography room and the main reading room of the Medieval Institute Library, as well as within easy reach of the Ambrosiana manuscript and photo archive.

Summary of the 2004-05 Academic Year

On the weekend of September 16-19, 2004, twenty-five scholars from the U.S., U.K., Europe, and Israel gathered for a conference on "Early Medieval Christianity, 600-1000." The papers will be published by the Cambridge University Press in 2006 as Vol. 3 of the Cambridge History of Christianity. Institute Director Thomas Noble is coeditor of the volume, along with Julia M.H. Smith of the University of St. Andrews.

The fall semester continued with another distinguished visitor, Rosamond McKitterick of Cambridge University. "Perceptions of the Past in the Early Middle Ages" was the theme for her 2004 Conway Lectures on September 21, 23, and 28.

The year's regular lecture-seminars brought us Andy Orchard (Old English, Toronto), Brian Shanley, O.P. (Philosophy, Catholic University), Ruth Karras (History, Minnesota), Danuta Shanzer (Classics, Illinois), and Paul Saenger (Manuscript Studies, Newberry Library).

On March 3-5, 2005 more than sixty graduate students in medieval studies gathered at Notre Dame for the annual Vagantes conference. This is a prestigious and highly selective graduate student conference, originally begun through a collaboration among students at Cornell, Harvard, Toronto, and Yale. In 2003, Notre Dame's students joined their peers in this organization and hosted the conference for the first time in 2005 with great success.

Three distinguished senior scholars, Caroline Bruzelius, Barbara Newman, and Martha Newman, joined Notre Dame's fourth Mellon Fellow Anne Lester (Assistant Professor of History at the University of Colorado and a Princeton Ph.D. graduate) for a discussion of women's religious communities in high medieval France.

The Medieval Institute hosted its second Skaggs Fellow in Medieval Architectural History. Caroline Goodson, a recent Columbia Ph.D., worked on the Ambrosiana drawing project and taught a course in the Department of Art, Art History, and Design. In collaboration with three European centers, the Institute created a one-semester postdoctoral fellowship through the Société internationale des études de philosophie médiévale and welcomed the first recipient of this honor, Alessandro Palazzo. During the year, the intellectual life of the Institute was much enriched by the presence of a bevy of young international scholars representing the University of Amsterdam, the University of Siena, Central European University, and the University of Gröningen.

Three of our graduate students won prestigious awards: a D.A.A.D. Fellowship for dissertation research in Germany, the Leonard Boyle Dissertation Prize offered by the Canadian Society of Medievalists, and the Phyllis Dain Library History Dissertation Award of the American Library Association.

Together with generous support from the Graduate School, the Department of History, the University Library, and Professor Sabine MacCormack, the Medieval Institute purchased ten facsimiles of the spectacular illuminated manuscripts of the Apocalypse Commentary of Beatus of Liebaña. We believe this to be the largest collection of Beatus materials in the world.

Thanks to the generosity of Trustee and long-time supporter of the Institute, Robert Conway, Notre Dame will send three faculty medievalists to Oxford each summer for the next three years for an all-expense-paid research visit of one week's duration.

The strength of the Medieval Institute's program was acknowledged in the external review conducted in October. Plans for increasing the visibility and presence of our undergraduate program have been encouraged by the College of Arts and Letters in the practical form of a staff appointment as half-time director of undergraduate studies, which will begin in Fall 2005.

Summary of the 2003-04 Academic Year

The year 2003-04 began with the Conway Lectures delivered by Professor Paul Strohm of Columbia University. The book arising from those lectures is now in press. The year continued with the lecture-graduate seminar series, which brought to campus Drew Jones, Maureen Miller, Margaret Mullett, Michael Allen, David Luscombe, and James Hankins. The second biennial Byzantine Intellectual History Seminar brought togther scholars who discussed the writings of Michael Psellus.

The MI's Mellon Symposium addressed gift-exchange in the early Middle Ages. The 2003-04 Mellon Fellow Florin Curta (University of Florida) shared his work on the subject with panelists Gerd Althoff, Richard Hodges, and Piotr Gorecki, who offered detailed responses and consultation on the manuscript.

The Institute's first Skaggs Fellow in Medieval Architecture, Paolo Sanvito, spent his year-in-residence working on the catalogue of drawings that form a significant portion of the Ambrosiana Collection held by Notre Dame. The Skaggs Fellowship, supplemented by the Department of Art History, covered a research/teaching appointment for the academic year. Eleven scholars visited the Institute on Ambrosiana Stipends to work in the microfilm collections.

The Institute's 2004 summer program in Latin and paleography brought two CARA scholarship students to Notre Dame. The revived "Publications in Medieval Studies" series sent two books, by David Foote and Felice Lifshitz, to press.

Internally, the MI completed a review and revision of its graduate curriculum. The administrative functions of the office were revamped with the creation of the new position of assistant director, in order to support the increase in visiting scholars, special events, and overall academic activities of the Institute.

Not least among its achievements, the Institute placed five students in tenure-track jobs (at Ohio State, St. Thomas-New Brunswick, Texas-Arlington, Louisiana-Monroe, and Hillsdale College) and two students in post-doctoral fellowships (at Trinity College-Dublin and the University of British Columbia). One of the Institute's students published an article in Speculum and another in the American Historical Review. Another student won a Liebmann Fellowship to support three years of dissertation work.

Summary of the 2002-03 Academic Year

The Institute inaugurated the Conway Lectures in 2002-03 with three lectures by Rev. Prof. Dr. Ulrich Horst, O.P. in September 2002. As usual, the Institute welcomed a distinguished roster of guest lecturers, among them: Anthony Spearing, Roy Liuzza, Brigitte Bedos-Rezak, Bernard McGinn, Lawrence Nees, C. Stephen Jaeger, Richard Pfaff, Pere Pierre-Marie Gy, Wout van Bekkum, and John Williams.

The Bulletin de Philosophie Médiévale moved to the University of Notre Dame under the Institute's sponsorship and with assistance from the College of Arts and Letters.

The Institute co-hosted a conference on "Manuscripts and Libraries in the Carolingian World" at the Villa Barberini in Rome and convened its second Mellon Symposium in May 2003, highlighting the work of its Mellon Fellow, Professor Deborah McGrady of Tulane University.

The Dutch Exchange Program allowed scholars from the University of Groningen to visit Notre Dame, use the Medieval Institute's library collection and confer with faculty here on collaborative projects. Likewise, one of our doctoral candidates travelled to Utrecht to examine manuscripts and consult with scholars in Holland.

The visit of Msgr. Cesare Pasini, Vice-Prefect of the Ambrosiana Library, Milan, furthered the planning process for a cataloguing project that will involve ND students and faculty as well as faculty from the Sacro Cuore University in Milan. As part of its ongoing Ambrosiana fellowship program, the Institute provided one-time stipends to five scholars who came to South Bend in order to consult our Ambrosiana microfilm collection of manuscripts.

Graduate students received university-wide teaching (two Kaneb Outstanding TA Awards) and research awards (Best Dissertation in History and an article prize from the ND history department) and had articles accepted for publication in major journals (Speculum and Anglo-Saxon England). Seven students delivered a total of ten papers at four different conferences. Another was awarded a Dissertation Fellowship by the Medieval Academy of America. Recent graduates received tenure-track positions at Xavier University and the University of Alabama.

Six new doctoral students were accepted into the program, bringing the total to twenty-five. The Institute graduated 2 Ph.D., 7 M.M.S., and 3 B.A. students.

Summary of the 2001-2 Academic Year

The Institute's affiliated faculty continued their tradition of award-winning teaching and research. The Institute's director, Thomas Noble, was elected to the Board of S.I.S.M.E.L (theSocieta Internazionale per lo Studio del Medioevo Latino) in Italy. Maureen Boulton, Professor of French, shared with Ruth J. Dean the Prix Chavée, awarded by the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres of France, for their recent bookAnglo-Norman Literature: A Guide to the Texts and Manuscripts (Anglo-Norman Texts Society, 1999). Calvin Bower, Professor of Music and Medieval Studies, a specialist in medieval musicology, has been elected to the Bavarian Academy of Sciences. John Van Engen of the History department was appointed a visiting professor of history at Harvard University for Fall, 2002, while Paul Cobb and Kathleen Biddick, also of the History department, each won major grants: Cobb an NEH grant and a Fulbright fellowship in support of a project entitled "The Lords of Shayzar: An Arab Family in the Age of Crusades," Biddick a Fulbright to Ireland for a project entitled "Thinking About History in a Digital World."

Our graduate students and recent Ph.D.s also continued to play their customary role in the Institute's success. Four Institute students defended dissertations in the 2001-02 academic year under the direction of Institute faculty, and among the Institute's recent graduates are now the winners of postdoctoral scholarships and tenure-track faculty positions at major universities, as well as the winner of Notre Dame's Shaheen award for excellence in teaching and research, the winner of the Medieval Academy of America's Van Courtlandt Elliott Prize, and the winner of an ACLS fellowship. The current graduate students can also point to a similar record of success -- among their number are the winner of an ACLS dissertation fellowship and the winner of both a Fulbright and a D.A.A.D scholarship. For more information, see the Graduate Students and Alumni/ae page.

The Institute also hosted a large family of visitors from the U.S. and around the world who pursued their research interests across a wide range of disciplines. Alice J. Sheppard (BA, Oxford; MA, Oxford; MA, Cornell; PhD, Cornell), joined us from Pennsylvania State University, where she is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English, as our Mellon Visiting Fellow in Medieval Studies. During her fellowship year, Dr. Sheppard completed a book-length study of the Anglo Saxon Chronicle,Families of the King: Authority and Power in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Other visitors included Sister Francis J. Legrand, a member of the Augustinian Canonesses of the Congregation of Windesheim in Belgium, who pursued her research on late medieval devotional texts and led an extracurricular seminar for graduate students in the literature of theDevotio Moderna; Michael Bailey, a recent Ph.D. from Northwestern University who completed the manuscript ofBattling Demons: Witchcraft Heresy, and Reform in the Later Middle Ages(forthcoming from Penn State Press), and David S. Bachrach, a Notre Dame Ph.D. who worked at the Institute on revising for publication his dissertation, "Priests at War and Soldiers at Prayer: A History of Military Religion from theConcilium Germanicum(742) to the Fourth Lateran Council (1215)," now under contract from Boydell Press.

This community of faculty, students and guests of the Institute enjoyed a year of lively participation in our lectures and conferences. In November, the late Donald Bullough of the University of St. Andrews gave us his reflections of "Twenty Five Years of Alcuin," while Robert Rodes of the Notre Dame Law School lectured on "Medieval English Legal Materials." Fall conferences sponsored by the Institute included a discussion of "Medieval Manuscripts at Notre Dame," a symposium on medieval Arabic historiography, and a conference on "The Law of Nature." Notre Dame also hosted in November the 27th annual Byzantine Studies Conference. In February, the Institute graduate students brought to us David Nirenberg, Charlotte Bloomberg Professor of the Humanities in the Department of History at Johns Hopkins University. Professor Nirenberg gave a series of seminars and a lecture entitled "From Mass Conversion to Inquisition in Medieval Spain." In April, the Institute co-sponsored with Romance Languages a lecture by Michel Zink, Chair in the Literatures of Medieval France at the Collège de France, entitled "Le Poète et le prophète dans la littérature médiévale." In the Spring Notre Dame also hosted the annual conference of the Celtic Studies association of North America, and co-sponsored a conference on "Eriugena, Berkeley and the Idealist Tradition" at the Keough-University of Notre Dame center in Dublin, Ireland.