Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Tilting Toward The Light: Translating The Medieval World On The Ming-Mongolian Frontier, Carla Nappi

The Medieval Globe

Ming China maintained relationships with neighboring peoples such as the Mongols by educating bureaucrats trained to translate many different foreign languages. While the reference works these men used were designed to facilitate their work, they also conveyed a specific vision of the past and a taxonomy of cultural differences that constitute valuable historical sources in their own right, illuminating the worldview of the Chinese-Mongolian frontier.

Japan On The Medieval Globe: The Wakan Rōeishū And Imagined Landscapes In Early Medieval Texts, Elizabeth Oyler

The Medieval Globe

This essay explores how the poetry collection Wakan rōeishū becomes an important allusive referent for two medieval Japanese works, the travelogue Kaidōki and the nō play Tsunemasa. In particular, it focuses on how Chinese poems from the collection become the means for describing Japanese spaces and their links to power, in the context of a changing political landscape.

The Painter, The Warrior, And The Sultan: The World Of Marco Polo In Three Portraits, Sharon Kinoshita

The Medieval Globe

In the wake of Edward Said’s Orientalism and postcolonial theory, Marco Polo is often cast as a quintessentially Western observer of Asian cultures. This essay seeks to break his text out of the binaries in which it is frequently understood. Returning the text to its original title, “The Description of the World,” it reconstructs the diversity of late thirteenth-century Asia through the portraits of three figures who were Marco’s contemporaries.

Towards A Connected History Of Equine Cultures In South Asia: Bahrī (Sea) Horses And “Horsemania” In Thirteenth-Century South India, Elizabeth Lambourn

The Medieval Globe

This article explores ways that the concept of equine cultures, developed thus far principally in European and/or early modern and colonial contexts, might translate to premodern South Asia. As a first contribution to a history of equine matters in South Asia, it focuses on the maritime circulation of horses from the Middle East to Peninsular India in the thirteenth century, examining the different ways that this phenomenon is recorded in textual and material sources and exploring their potential for writing a new, more connected history of South Asia and the Indian Ocean world.

The Geographic And Social Mobility Of Slaves: The Rise Of Shajar Al’Durr, A Slave-Concubine In Thirteenth-Century Egypt, D. Fairchild Ruggles

The Medieval Globe

Large numbers of outsiders were integrated into premodern Islamic society through the institution of slavery. Many were boys of non-Muslim parents drafted into the army, and some rose to become powerful political figures; in Egypt, after the death of Ayyubid sultan al-Salih (r. 1240–49), they formed a dynasty known as the Mamluks. For slave concubines, the route to power was different: Shajar al-Durr, the concubine of al-Salih, gained enormous status when she gave birth to his son and later governed as regent in her son’s name, converting to Islam after her husband’s death and then reigning as sultan in her …

Identity In Flux: Finding Boris Kolomanovich In The Interstices Of Medieval European History, Christian Raffensperger

The Medieval Globe

The politics of kinship and of monarchy in medieval eastern Europe are typically constructed within the framework of the modern nation-state, read back into the past. The example of Boris Kolomanovich, instead, highlights the horizontal interconnectivity of medieval Europe and its neighbors and demonstrates the malleability of individual identity within kinship webs, as well as the creation of situational kinship networks to advance individuals’ goals.

Periodization And “The Medieval Globe”: A Conversation, Kathleen Davis, Michael Puett

The Medieval Globe

The period categories “medieval” and “modern” emerged with—and have long served to define and legitimate—the projects of western European imperialism and colonialism. The idea of “the medieval globe” is therefore double edged. On the one hand, it runs the risk of reconfirming the terms of the colonial, Orientalist history through which the “medieval” emerged, thus homogenizing the plural temporalities of global cultures and effacing the material effects of the becoming of the Middle Ages and its relationship to conditions of globalization. On the other hand, “the medieval globe” brings to bear a comparative focus that does not ask when and …

Editor’S Preface, Carol Symes

The Medieval Globe

No abstract provided.

The Medieval Globe 2.1 (2016), Carol Symes

The Medieval Globe

No abstract provided.

Fort St. Joseph Archaeological Project Annual Report, 2015, Michael S. Nassaney

Fort St. Joseph Archaeological Project

This year the Fort St. Joseph Archaeological Project (hereafter the “Project”) established new standards in research, teaching, and public outreach in the study of the fur trade and colonialism in southwest Michigan. The Project continues to collaborate in the generation and dissemination of knowledge under the auspices of the Fort St. Joseph Archaeology Advisory Committee (FSJAAC), Western Michigan University (WMU) faculty and students, interested stakeholders, supporters, members, and community volunteers. Highlights of 2015 include:

• Fort St. Joseph was featured in the exhibit “Evidence Found” at the Kalamazoo Valley Museum in 2015, enjoyed by some 60,000 visitors.
• The Register of Professional …

Power Relations At The Cistercian Abbey Of St. Mary At Rushen: With Special Interest In Connections At Furness And Influence Through The Kingdom Of The Isles, Valerie Dawn Hampton

Dissertations

The Isle of Man is an island situated in the Irish Sea at the geographical center of the British Isles. During the Middle Ages, the Isle of Man, which was only two hundred and twenty-two square miles, surprisingly was the seat of an important Viking kingdom that controlled and patrolled the Irish Sea and Hebrides. Rushen Abbey, a Savigniac monastery, was founded in 1134 near Ballasalla, in the parish of Malew, in the southeast of the Isle of Man.

This dissertation focuses on the influence that Rushen Abbey exerted on the ecclesiastical institutions and secular personas within the area of …

“A Difficult And Dangerous Thing”: Religious Reform In Late Medieval Ulm, 1434-1532, Jamie Mccandless

Dissertations

This work examines the relationship between mendicant Orders and the city council of Ulm in the period of religious reforms from the fifteenth century to the early Reformation in the sixteenth century. It challenges the view that the Observant reforms were unsuccessful because they failed to reform substantially their Orders, that their reforms were too conservative to respond to current trends in religion, or that they failed to prevent, in some way, the development of the antifratneral or anticlerical policies of the Reformation. This work also considers that nature of the Observant reforms themselves, the problems that religious Order’s had …

“Men Of Good Timber”: An Archaeological Investigation Of Labor In Michigan’S Upper Peninsula, Aaron Howe

Masters Theses

This study approaches the material assemblage of Coalwood, a cordwood camp that operated from 1900-1912 in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, with a dialectal method and a theory of internal relations in order to understand how daily life was produced and reproduced. Common sense notions often see home and work as separate entities that only relate to one another externally. My archaeological and historical research abstracts domestic labor as a set of social relations that are dialectically and internally connected to the processes of capital accumulation. My archaeological analysis concludes that both productive and reproductive labor was conducted within the home and …

The Vulgate Commentary On Ovid's Metamorphoses, Book 1, Frank T. Coulson

TEAMS Secular Commentary Series

Composed around 1250 by an unknown author in the region of Orléans, the Vulgate Commentary on Ovid's Metamorphoses is the most widely disseminated and reproduced medieval work on Ovid's epic compendium of classical mythology and materialist philosophy. This commentary both preserves the rich store of twelfth-century glossing on the Metamorphoses and incorporates new material of literary interest, while the marginal glosses in many respects reflect the scholar interests of an early thirteenth-century schoolmaster. The Vulgate Commentary is always transmitted as a series of interlinear and marginal glosses surrounding the text manuscript, whereas other earlier commentaries were independent of a full …

Front Matter, Medieval Feminist Forum, V.51, No.1, 2015

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.

Reginal Intercession And The Case Of Cristina, Convicted Murderer, Katherine Allocco

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

In the winter of 1328-1329, Cristina, widow of Thomas Scot, potter of London, was convicted, imprisoned in Newgate and sentenced to hang for the crime of murdering her husband. Her execution was delayed due to her pregnancy. In January or February 1329, Cristina sent a letter to Isabella of France, queen mother, requesting a King’s pardon. On March 2, Edward III pardoned Cristina, at his mother’s request, through letters patent. It appears that Isabella, who had an established reputation as an intercessor for both personal petitions and general political appeals, had successfully interceded on Cristina’s behalf. Although medieval queens- both …

The War Of The Two Jeannes And The Role Of The Duchess In Lordship In The Fourteenth Century, Katrin E. Sjursen

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

In the mid-fourteenth century, two women headed opposing parties in a civil war for control of the duchy of Brittany in France. Conventional scholarship explains their involvement in politics and warfare as exceptions possible only during emergencies. Contemporary chronicles and the letters of the two women themselves, however, tell another story, one in which these two women participated in politics and warfare even before their husbands entered captivity. Their participation makes sense if we recognize that medieval society understood lordship as a form of shared governance performed by a noble couple. While separate roles did exist for the husband and …

Kingship And Masculinity In Late Medieval England, Jennifer Thibodeaux

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.

Unrivalled Influence: Women And Empire In Byzantium, Hailey Lavoy

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.

Back Matterr, Medieval Feminist Forum, V.51, No.1, 2015

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.

The Life Of St. Winifred: The Vita S. Wenefrede From Bl Lansdowne Ms 436, James Ryan Gregory

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.

A Bibliographical Guide To The Study Of The Troubadours And Old Occitan Literature, Robert A. Taylor

Research in Medieval and Early Modern Culture

Although it seemed in the mid-1970s that the study of the troubadours and of Occitan literature had reached a sort of zenith, it has since become apparent that this moment was merely a plateau from which an intensive renewal was being launched. In this new bibliographic guide to Occitan and troubadour literature, Robert Taylor provides a definitive survey of the field of Occitan literary studies - from the earliest enigmatic texts to the fifteenth-century works of Occitano-Catalan poet Jordi de Sant Jordi - and treats over two thousand recent books and articles with full annotations. Taylor includes articles on related …

Aribo, De Musica And Sententiae, T. J. H. Mccarthy

TEAMS Varia

Music was central to the medieval church's public worship: it was the essential medium of the Mass and the Divine Office. In this new critical edition, T. J. H. McCarthy presents the Latin text and the first English translation of Aribo's musical treatise, De musica and Sententiae. Written between 1070 and 1078, it is concerned with the workings of the liturgical music that Aribo and his contemporaries called Gregorian chant, and builds off of and responds to several contemporary treatises by Abbot Bern of Reichenau and his pupil Herman, Abbot William of Hirsau, Frutolf of Michelsberg, and Theoger of Metz. …

Ancient Magic And Modern Accessories: Developments In The Omamori Phenomenon, Eric Teixeira Mendes

Masters Theses

This thesis offers an examination of modern Japanese amulets, called omamori, distributed by Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines throughout Japan. As amulets, these objects are meant to be carried by a person at all times in which they wish to receive the benefits that an omamori is said to offer. In modern times, in addition to being a religious object, these amulets have become accessories for cell-phones, bags, purses, and automobiles. Said to protect people from accidents, disease, loneliness, failure, computer viruses, among many other things, these objects are one of the few material aspects of religion that are a …

Gender And Genre In La Estoire De Seint Aedward Le Rei: Reading Versions Of Medieval Queenship, Alexandra Verini

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.

Elizabeth De Burgh, Lady Of Clare (1295-1360): Household And Other Records, Linda E. Mitchell

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.

Three Spanish Querelle Texts: A Bilingual Edition And Study, Elena Woodacre

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.

Heroines Of The French Epic: A Second Selection Of Chansons De Geste, Kathy M. Krause

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.

Conflicting Femininities In Medieval German Literature, Olga V. Trokhimenko

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.

Back Matter, Medieval Feminist Forum, V.50, No.2, 2015

Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality

No abstract provided.