Welcome Back!

We are delighted to send you our annual newsletter, sharing updates on recent program developments and future projects, plans, and events. We have been through some difficult times, but with the support of many people—staff, students and faculty alike—we not only continued our work but also introduced a range of new initiatives.


The Program in Medieval Studies begins the new academic year 2022-2023 with rising numbers of courses and projects, which are bringing together ever larger numbers of undergraduates, graduates, and faculty members.

The generosity and eagerness of the members of the late antique and medieval community has been key to developing fresh collaborations and synergies, pushing our program’s horizons in new directions. Indeed, it is an intellectually stimulating experience simply to read the names and research areas of our faculty and students and see the enormous range—in terms of subject, geography, and discipline—that members of the community study and teach. From Japan to Iceland (even Newfoundland!), from Scandinavia to Central and Southern Africa, our colleagues cover the history of late antique and medieval worlds in various fields, programs, and departments.


As a reminder, upcoming events are listed on the Medieval Studies website and updated regularly. We look forward to seeing you this year!

Thanks, and Welcome Aboard

For continuing the vision and expansion of the program over the past year, we thank Beatrice Kitzinger (Art and Archaeology), who served the program as Acting Director with enormous care, energy, and success.


We also owe particular thanks to the hard work of the Humanities Council staff, at a time of multiplying administrative work, hybrid events, and reduced personnel. In particular, Barbara Leavey stepped in to manage the program for several months, in a heroic juggling of many academic programs and initiatives. We thank her for her outstanding engagement.

Looking forward, we are delighted to welcome our wonderful new Program Manager, Anna D’Elia. Anna started work at the beginning of the summer, and it has been amazing to see how quickly she navigated and organized the diverse agendas of the program. It is already a great pleasure to work as her Director. We look forward—well prepared and ready—to a busy Medieval Studies year. Please join us in welcoming Anna to the Medieval community!

Faculty Colloquia

To help interconnect the wide range of fields, subjects, departments, and programs that make up Princeton Medieval Studies, in the fall of 2019 we started the Medieval Studies Colloquia, at which members of the late antique and medieval faculty presented their ongoing work over lunch time every month during the teaching term. Last year, we had six exciting colloquia. Upcoming events include:


Wednesday, October 5, Marina Brownlee (Spanish and Portuguese)

"Beginnings and Anomalies. The Example of Medieval Iberia"


Wednesday, November 2, Janet Kay (Art & Archaeology)

"Burial Archaeology and the Justinianic Plague"


Tuesday, November 29, Daniel Sheffield (Near Eastern Studies)

"The Return of the Magus: Theurgy in Safavid Iran"

MORE INFORMATION

Book Exhibit


We will resume the joint venture with Princeton University Library and Alain St. Pierre, in which the program organizes a monthly Book Exhibit on the days of the colloquia. For one day, new medieval books, journals, and editions recently acquired by the library in all subject areas will be put on display in the History Reading Room. Stay tuned for events with Marquand Art Library as well!

Medieval Laboratories

We have also established laboratories to support the study of the Middle Ages across disciplinary boundaries.

Environmental History Lab

 

The Environmental History Lab (EHL), explores the intersection of the Humanities and Sciences. Organized by Janet Kay (Art & Archaeology), EHL is funded by a Humanities Council David A. Gardner '69 Magic Grant for Innovation.

 

Check out the recording from EHL's Iron Smelting Workshop and explore upcoming events on their new website.

LUDUS (Play)


LUDUS (Play) is a Collaborative Humanities project founded by Beatrice Kitzinger (Art & Archaeology) and Jamie Reuland (Music) to explore the active, performed, creative and re-creative study of pre-modern culture.


Join us on Saturday, Nov. 5 to hear the vocal ensemble ModernMedieval perform their acclaimed program of chant by Hildegard of Bingen, Words of Love and Wisdompreceded by an afternoon workshop with vocalists. 

Graduate Academy

LAMB


Since 2019, the Late Antique, Medieval and Byzantine Workshop (LAMB) has been reorganized under the umbrella of Medieval Studies as a forum for all late antique and medieval graduate students across every department.

The seminars and workshops bring together an ever larger and more diverse community of more than 60 graduates on a regular basis. We would like to thank coordinating directors, Abigail Sargent (History) and now Lucia Waldschütz (History) for their engagement, enthusiasm and persistence during a time when it was certainly difficult to motivate oneself and others to continue.

Graduate Book Clubs


Led by Courtney Barter-Colcord, Albert Kohn, and Alice Morandy (History), graduate students continued the Medieval Book Club with seminars on recent late antique and medieval publications. Additionally, the Race Before Modernity book group seeks to foster an open dialogue within Medieval Studies at Princeton about the history of racial biases. Erica Passoni (Art and Archaeology), and Aaron Stamper (History), have volunteered to coordinate this project. 

Graduate Conference


Save the Date for the Princeton Medieval and Early Modern Studies Graduate Conference: “How did they learn? How did they teach?: Exploring Knowledge Transmission from Late Antiquity to the Early Modern” on Saturday, December 3, 2022.


This conference is a joint venture with our early modern colleagues, and CREMS. Organized by Sharifa Lookman, Mathilde Sauquet, and John White (Art & Archaeology).

Senior Academy

Juan José Lopéz-Haddad '22, and Acting Director Beatrice Kitzinger at the Medieval Studies Class Day 2022.

A particular joy of the job as Director of Princeton’s Medieval Studies Program is the opportunity to work closely with our undergraduates. The quality of the papers and projects is outstanding, and, as in the past, we hope that some will be published in the next issue of The Princeton Journal of Late Antique and Medieval Studies (edited by our undergraduates themselves, see below). 


You can listen to recent graduate Lucy Ellen Dever '22 talk about her senior thesis, “Cryptologus: Symbolism in Monster Media from Medieval Bestiaries to Contemporary Cryptid Culture,” on a recent episode of "If Everybody Knew," a podcast from the Humanities Council.  

Senior Academy


  • In AY21-22, nine undergraduates received a Certificate in Medieval Studies: Noah Jay Emanuel Altshuler; Edward Richard Cornell Bless; Noelia Denisse Carbajal; Ilia Calogero Curto Pelle; Lucy Ellen Dever; Madeleine Emma Gaynor; Juan José López-Haddad; Charlotte Atwood Root; and Philip James Sobocinski.


  • We proudly present our certificate students who will graduate in Spring 2023: Shaun Cason; William Hillman; Adam Hoffman; Henry (Harry) Ingham; Mary Alice Jouve; Andrew (AJ) Lonski; Andrew Matos; Micah Newberger; and Julia Wojtenko.

Joseph R. Strayer Prize in Medieval Studies

Endowed in the History Department, but open to undergraduate seniors in any department or program, the Joseph R. Strayer Prize in Medieval Studies is given annually to a graduating senior who, in the judgment of the faculty, has done outstanding work in some area of medieval studies. We are pleased to share that the prize was awarded to Juan José López-Haddad.

We congratulate all of our Medieval Studies Certificate graduates who won prizes in other departments:


  • Asher Hinds Prize in European Cultural Studies, Juan José López-Haddad
  • Class of 1859 Prize (English), Noah Altshuler 
  • Distinguished Military Graduate Award, Philip J. Sobocinski
  • Hellenic Studies Senior Thesis PrizeIlia Curto Pelle
  • Frederick Barnard White Prize in Archaeology, Charlotte A. Root

Junior Academy

Junior Academy


Alongside the Senior Academy, we have established a Junior Academy of the Program in Medieval Studies for students interested in joining and working in the Program before their senior year.


In regular meetings, the students get to know other ‘medievalists’ on campus in different departments – undergraduates, graduates, and faculty members. We will have coffee hours, discussion groups, film-evenings. Everyone is welcome, you don’t have to be or plan to become a certificate student. Just being curious is enough.


For more information, write to Helmut Reimitz and Anna D'Elia

The Princeton Journal of Late Antique and Medieval Studies (SCIVIAS)


We are delighted and proud that our undergraduates have started to work on the fourth volume of The Princeton Journal of Late Antique and Medieval Studies, a journal that was founded several years ago by a group of undergraduates studying the late antique and medieval periods at Princeton. We have, from the outset, been consistently and deeply impressed by the enthusiasm and industry of the students who have worked on issues of SCIVIAS. They have found time to collect high-quality essays, edit them, and then shepherd them towards publication—all in the midst of the myriad challenges that accompany one’s senior year at Princeton.

 

For the latest edition, volume 3, email

Andrew Matos

Introductory Course - MED 227: The Worlds of the Middle Ages


With generous support from the Humanities Council, we re-booted the introductory course of Medieval Studies (MED 227) as a co-taught class by Helmut Reimitz and Jack TannousThe first edition aimed to emphasize the wide chronological and geographical horizons medieval studies covers today, and respond to the increasing hunger for more pre-modern “big” lecture courses on campus. It worked. We launched in fall 2020 with an enrollment of 46 and very encouraging evaluations, and we now have more than 70 students enrolled in the fall 2022 course.


And while this is the gateway course of Medieval Studies, it is only one of a wide range of courses taught on late antique and medieval history throughout the various departments at Princeton.

VIEW ALL COURSES

News Across Campus

Juan José Lopéz-Haddad, Jeremy Stitts, Jonathan Henry, Laura Morreale and Justin Willson introducing MAFE to students and faculty at Princeton.

MAFE


Together with the Committee for the Study of Late Antiquity, chaired by Jack Tannous, we have supported the launch and maintenance of a website to connect Medieval Studies at Princeton to a wider world of late antique and medieval studies: MAFE – Middle Ages for Educators.

MAFE is aimed at university and secondary students, educators, and, more broadly, anyone who is interested in studying, teaching, or learning more about late antiquity and the middle ages. The new website was launched at the beginning of December 2020, and the immediate (international) response was enormously encouraging. We anticipate that the new, expanded site will reach an even wider audience and hope that it will be useful to specialists and non-specialists alike.

 

Under the leadership of Princeton-coordinator Jonathan Henry, several graduate students have received media training and opportunities for part-time employment through the Center for Culture, Society and Religion (CCSR). A particular focus of this sub project is to teach graduates how our humanities training can lean into the public appeal of academic materials. With undergraduates, we continued to raise awareness of MAFE and increase its usage. Undergraduates expressed enthusiasm, and we hope that in a next step we may motivate them to create articles under the tutelage of their professors and grad mentors.


Read our feature from the president of the Medieval Academy of America.

MARBAS


The Program in Medieval Studies and its Directors, Beatrice Kitzinger and Helmut Reimitz, have been part of a larger and interdepartmental working group (Dimitri Gondecas, Tony Grafton, Barbara Graziosi, Martin Kern, AnneMarie Luijendijk, Will Noel, Marina Rustow, Jack Tannous) to create a formalized structure for promoting the study of manuscripts, rare books, and archives at Princeton.

An enormous amount of teaching and research on manuscripts, rare books, and archives takes place at Princeton and the university has incredibly rich collections in these areas. The hope is both to recognize and coordinate the work currently underway, and eventually create a center devoted to researching these materials.


In collaboration with the Princeton University Library, we’ve launched a biweekly series of events exploring Princeton’s vast holdings of rare books, manuscripts, and archives. Princeton-based experts offer hands-on, interactive presentations on objects in Firestone Library’s Rare Books and Special Collections followed by informal Q&A. Presentations in Fall 2022 include Greek papyri, Zoroastrian and Judaeo-Arabic manuscripts and Chinese documents.


Keep an eye on the MARBAS website for details, as well as projects, workshops, trainings and resources, and sign up for announcements by emailing marbas@princeton.edu.

Byzantium, Heraclius, 610-641, gold solidus struck in Constantinople, 632-641, depicting the emperor Heraclius and his two sons. (Obverse)

The Numismatic Collection 

Alan Stahl 


The Princeton University Numismatic Collection has recently acquired two large and carefully selected collections of Byzantine coinage, totaling 18,000 new pieces. Together with the existing collections of Firestone Library, the Princeton University Art Museum, the Department of Near Eastern Studies, and the Byzantine coins from Princeton's Antioch Excavations of the 1930s, we now hold the largest and most comprehensive collection of Byzantine coinage in the world -- a fitting complement to our strong academic commitment to Byzantine studies. 

The new acquisitions, like many over the past two decades, were done with the support of the Stanley J Seeger Hellenic Fund, which has also supported the hiring of Dr. Elena Baldi, a specialist in Byzantine coinage, to catalogue the collection in our online database and develop a shared-open-data platform for all public collections of Byzantine coinage. 

Gold reliquary pendant/ medical amulet (?), 10th–11th c, reverse. British Museum, London, inv. no. AF.354. © Trustees of the British Museum.

The Index of Medieval Art 

Pamela Patton


The Index of Medieval Art happily welcomes researchers to our temporary reading room in Green Hall 2-C-10, where they can take advantage of both the Index files and the books in the Index library. Among the enhancements is a major accessibility upgrade to our online database, aligning with the university’s commitment to making digital resources accessible to a wide range of people. Index staff have also prioritized backfiles cataloging, with the goal of uploading and then archiving the print photos for at least four of the Index’s original “Medium” groupings before the next office move in 2024.This effort has yielded some dramatic finds, including 1930s photographs and little-known provenance for works of art that were lost or damaged in World War II and the Spanish Civil War, the records for which have been regularly coming online for researchers.

Volume 43 of Studies in Iconography appeared both in print and online, and May 2022 saw the publication of the Iconography Beyond the Crossroads: Image, Method, and Meaning in Medieval Art, edited by Pamela A. Patton and Catherine A. Fernandez, and co-published with Penn State University Press. Index conferences have also continued, and we look forward to hosting the next in the series, “Looking at Language,” on November 12, 2022. Most recently, the Index has undertaken a project that responds to the risk posed to both medieval works of art and medievalist scholarship by the Russian invasion of Ukraine. With the support of a Flash Grant from the Princeton University Humanities Council, in Fall 2022 Prof Julia Matveyeva of the O. M. Beketov National University of Urban Economy in Kharkiv will collaborate remotely with the Index to add print-only records of Ukraine’s medieval cultural heritage to the online database. 

The Library 

Eric White


Princeton University Library’s Special Collections has acquired a unique resource for the study of fifteenth-century European books: a rare set of 21 printing types (cast metal sorts), manufactured and presumably used at Lyons, ca. 1473-1500.

Almost all fifteenth-century printing materials have disappeared. A rare exception resulted from the survival of several hundred early types that were discovered in 1868 in the mud of the left bank of the Saône by scavengers who were searching for precious metals discarded by goldsmiths’ shops that formerly lined the riverside. Analysis of the various fonts represented by the types pointed to a single printing shop, that of Guillaume de Roy, active in Lyons from ca. 1473 forward.     

 

Most of the recovered types came into the possession of the Paris book scholar and avid collector Seymour De Ricci. At his death in 1942 De Ricci bequeathed his collections, including most of the precious Lyons types, to the Bibliothèque Nationale; others went to the Musée de l’imprimerie in Lyons. A single “p” was presented by De Ricci to the Scheide family in the 1930s, and it has long been at the Scheide Library.    

 

A smaller group of 21 of Guillaume de Roy’s types, from the same excavation, was owned by Gabriel Brassart of Montbrison; these later went to the typographic scholar Maurice Audin of Lyons, who published them in Gutenberg-Jahrbuch in 1954. In October 2021 this group came up for auction as a single lot offered by the DeBaecque firm in Lyons. Princeton University Library was the successful bidder, and remains the only known owner of fifteenth-century printing types in America.  

Medieval Studies Events

Chalice of St. John. Hans Memling. National gallery of Art.(reverse). 1470-1475

Coming up!


Poison and politics: toward a (pre-modern?) theory of community and communication


David Nirenberg, Institute for Advanced Study


Sept. 20 | 4:30 pm | 219 Aaron Burr Hall

Reception to follow


Register for this event here. 

Looking Ahead



SEE ALL EVENTS 

For more information about Medieval Studies events this semester, visit: https://medievalstudies.princeton.edu/events/