• 2024-10-15 - This fall, we are thrilled to have added thirteen new faculty to the Program in Medieval Studies: scholars from the fields of Anthropology, Art History, Classics, English, History, Library and Information...
  • 2024-09-18 - Materia Medica and the Globalization of Knowledge in Early Medieval England Early Medieval England boasts the earliest collection of vernacular medical texts north of the Alps. Many are translations of classical materials; others are native Old English “folk” medicine, charms, prognostics, and prayers. This lecture explores the hybrid medical discourse produced by the juxtaposition of...
  • 2024-08-23 - The Mediterranean Seminar (www.mediterraneanseminar.org) is seeking proposals for its Spring 2025 Workshop, to be held at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign on February 28 and March 1. The topic is “...
  • 2024-08-15 - In January, pageant masters and Medieval Studies professors Rob Barrett and Carol Symes will hold auditions for UIUC's medieval acting troupe: a group of students, faculty, and staff who will rehearse and perform two of the fifty pageants that make up the Corpus Christi Cycle performed annually in the medieval city of York from the 13th to the 16th centuries. We're charged with two of the most...
  • 2024-04-12 - The Program in Medieval Studies is delighted to congratulate Prof. Hermann von Hesse, whose recent fellowship award will support the research and writing on his book project: Love of Stone Houses: Urban Merchants, Ancestral Spaces and Sacred Objects on Africa’s Gold Coast, 1700-1890.
  • 2024-04-10 - Prof. Padraic Rohan -- Transforming Empire: The Genoese from the Crusades to Columbus
  • 2024-04-05 - Medieval Black London: The Before Lives of the Archive of Transatlantic Slavery
  • 2024-03-13 - Prof. Gian Piero Persiani: Readers, Recipients, and Fans of Poetry in Tenth-Century, Courtly Japan
  • 2023-10-31 - On August 15, 2023, Brepols released a new book: Sources of Knowledge in Old English and Anglo-Latin Literature: Studies in Honor of Charles D. Wright. For 32 years, Professor Charlie Wright taught in the English department at the University of Illinois, serving as Associate Head of English from 1995 to 1997 and the Director of Medieval Studies from 2011 to 2015. His wide-ranging...
  • 2023-04-21 - On April 21, 2023, Medieval Studies partnered with the Spurlock Museum for a film screening and falconry demonstration, and attendees flocked to the event! Local falconry enthusiasts joined the Medieval Studies community for a screening of the 2020 documentary film Overland, as well as a talkback with the film's director, Revere...
  • 2023-01-19 - The Program in Medieval Studies is excited to partner with the Program in Jewish Culture & Society and the Unit for Criticism & Interpretive Theory to welcome Professor Geraldine Heng (University of Texas at Austin) to the University of Illinois on January 26. Professor Heng will deliver the Krouse Family Visiting Scholar in Judaism and Western Culture Fund lecture, entitled "Race Before...
  • 2022-10-26 - "The Saint and the Emir: Christian-Muslim Encounters in Early Medieval Italy" Within the incredibly diverse political, cultural, and linguistic landscape of early medieval southern Italy, Muslims lived and worked alongside Christians (both Latin and Greek) and Jews. While most of the medieval texts that record the interactions between these various religious communities...
  • 2022-10-04 - This summer I conducted archaeological excavations at the Carson site near Clarksdale, Mississippi.  This is a mound center used and occupied by Mississippian peoples beginning around the year A.D. 1000 until the time of European contact.  My research explores the connections between this site in Mississippi and the site of Cahokia near present-day St. Louis.  Preliminary work (...
  • 2022-09-05 - Join us on Wednesday, September 21, for the first meeting of this year's Medieval Studies Colloquium. This talk asks the question of how, as scholars mainly of written works, we can restore to the story of Englishness the lively material interactions between words, bodies, plants, stones, metals, and soil, among other things, that would have characterized it for the early medieval English...
  • 2022-04-19 - On April 8th, 2022, members and guests of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Program in Medieval Studies gathered in the Architecture Building to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the program. The event was attended by current and past students, faculty members, and other friends of the program. The evening began with opening remarks from the Associate Dean of LAS Dr. Clare Haru...