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A more varied day.
Change and Transformation
There was some excellent stuff in here. Hervin Fernándex-Aceles presented on 'External Influences and Transformation in the Early Charters of Medieval Sardinia', which was a really interesting set of stuff - there's no written history for Sardinia from before the 11th century, and then nothing but monastic and church charters for some time, so it's a peculiarly narrative-free history. And yet within that, there are vernacular texts - in both Roman and Greek scripts - from very nearly the beginning of the charters.
Manuel Fialho Silva did a piece on the medieval expansion of Lisbon over the period from 1147-1325, passing from being part of Dar al-Islam to a more European/Christian control. I've a lot of interesting notes here on the change from Islamic courtyard houses (I remember seeing these in Delhi) to the long narrow lots with facades more typical of Europe, and also on the appearance of segregated religious areas in the city under European rule, as opposed to the more integrated population of Islamic rule.
And then Sean Ó Hoireabhárd gave a really, really interesting presentation on pre-Invasion territorial changes in Ireland, including concepts like the donation of 'sword land' to the Church both as piety and as a way of anchoring newly conquered land into the conqueror's territory, and the Viking towns - there being no native Irish ones - as capitals of Irish kingdoms. There's also evidence of some of the annals being copied and altered around this time so that some kings could lay claim to larger areas when they were representing themselves to the Norman invaders; Tiarnan of Breifne seems to have been trying stuff on this way to claim chunks of Meath.
Collaging / Mindmapping / Zine Making with Your Research: A Presentation and Demonstration
This was a fringe piece, nothing new in it in terms of techniques per se, but I was fascinated by the application of zine-making - which I associate with the punk and sf communities - being applied to academic presentation.
Fantastic Beasts, II
Kyrie Miranda spoke about the origins of accounts of mythological beasts in the Physiologus and then traced their occurence through other texts, including a fascinating process whereby the moral/metaphorical meanings in the original text get stripped away, and then new ones are applied - often quite different.
Lucia Simona talked about examples of 'wonders' from a Persian point of view, particularly from al-Qazwini's Book of Wonders of the Age, which was, she reckons, specifically written to evoke wonder and awe, and not necessarily as a factual account - but was then taken as factual. Some of it has the same weirdness-increases-with-distance-from-the-writer thing as was noted the previous day by Robert Cutrer in Yngvar's Saga.
And then Bernadette McCooey spoke about pre-Modern Icelandic farming. I have very few notes because I was glued to the screen, but I did download her PhD for later reading. It's a magnificently cross-disciplinary work, coming from "a range of written sources, including literature, legal texts and the máldagar (church-charters), as well as archaeological disciplines and environmental sciences", and I suspect that's my reading for next week sorted.
The Carolingian World
I tried to pay attention, I really did. But the Carolingians, it turns out, bore me only slightly less than Late Rome, and I could not tell you one thing from this, except that there were some nice pictures of coins.
Medieval Food in a Remote Learning Environment: Pedagogy and Resources
This was another fringe piece, presented by a group called 'Mens et Mensa', who specialise in teaching food history. I don't teach much - not formally, anyway - but I was fascinated by the fact that almost all (possibly actually all; I don't recall hearing a male voice at any point) the people talking about teaching experiences in classrooms and online were women. Also, the teaching seems to be very hands-on, from herb samples being passed around in classrooms to field trips and cooking sessions. There's a formal membership for the group, and I might sign up when I'm employed again.
Change and Transformation
There was some excellent stuff in here. Hervin Fernándex-Aceles presented on 'External Influences and Transformation in the Early Charters of Medieval Sardinia', which was a really interesting set of stuff - there's no written history for Sardinia from before the 11th century, and then nothing but monastic and church charters for some time, so it's a peculiarly narrative-free history. And yet within that, there are vernacular texts - in both Roman and Greek scripts - from very nearly the beginning of the charters.
Manuel Fialho Silva did a piece on the medieval expansion of Lisbon over the period from 1147-1325, passing from being part of Dar al-Islam to a more European/Christian control. I've a lot of interesting notes here on the change from Islamic courtyard houses (I remember seeing these in Delhi) to the long narrow lots with facades more typical of Europe, and also on the appearance of segregated religious areas in the city under European rule, as opposed to the more integrated population of Islamic rule.
And then Sean Ó Hoireabhárd gave a really, really interesting presentation on pre-Invasion territorial changes in Ireland, including concepts like the donation of 'sword land' to the Church both as piety and as a way of anchoring newly conquered land into the conqueror's territory, and the Viking towns - there being no native Irish ones - as capitals of Irish kingdoms. There's also evidence of some of the annals being copied and altered around this time so that some kings could lay claim to larger areas when they were representing themselves to the Norman invaders; Tiarnan of Breifne seems to have been trying stuff on this way to claim chunks of Meath.
Collaging / Mindmapping / Zine Making with Your Research: A Presentation and Demonstration
This was a fringe piece, nothing new in it in terms of techniques per se, but I was fascinated by the application of zine-making - which I associate with the punk and sf communities - being applied to academic presentation.
Fantastic Beasts, II
Kyrie Miranda spoke about the origins of accounts of mythological beasts in the Physiologus and then traced their occurence through other texts, including a fascinating process whereby the moral/metaphorical meanings in the original text get stripped away, and then new ones are applied - often quite different.
Lucia Simona talked about examples of 'wonders' from a Persian point of view, particularly from al-Qazwini's Book of Wonders of the Age, which was, she reckons, specifically written to evoke wonder and awe, and not necessarily as a factual account - but was then taken as factual. Some of it has the same weirdness-increases-with-distance-from-the-writer thing as was noted the previous day by Robert Cutrer in Yngvar's Saga.
And then Bernadette McCooey spoke about pre-Modern Icelandic farming. I have very few notes because I was glued to the screen, but I did download her PhD for later reading. It's a magnificently cross-disciplinary work, coming from "a range of written sources, including literature, legal texts and the máldagar (church-charters), as well as archaeological disciplines and environmental sciences", and I suspect that's my reading for next week sorted.
The Carolingian World
I tried to pay attention, I really did. But the Carolingians, it turns out, bore me only slightly less than Late Rome, and I could not tell you one thing from this, except that there were some nice pictures of coins.
Medieval Food in a Remote Learning Environment: Pedagogy and Resources
This was another fringe piece, presented by a group called 'Mens et Mensa', who specialise in teaching food history. I don't teach much - not formally, anyway - but I was fascinated by the fact that almost all (possibly actually all; I don't recall hearing a male voice at any point) the people talking about teaching experiences in classrooms and online were women. Also, the teaching seems to be very hands-on, from herb samples being passed around in classrooms to field trips and cooking sessions. There's a formal membership for the group, and I might sign up when I'm employed again.
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