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Dec
1

Did You Know the Aeneid Has a Sequel? Renaissance Addendum!

Mini-MEMS Lunch and Learn December 1, 12:15 on WebEx

Location

Online

Date & Time

December 1, 2021, 12:15 pm – 12:45 pm – Canceled

Description

Professor Timothy Phin, Ancient Studies, leads our newest online installment of the Mini-MEMS Lunch and Learns on December 1 at 12:15 on Webex:
Modern students of Latin have often felt that the 12th book of the Aeneid ends on an abrupt note.  Maffeo Vegio, a poet of the 15th century, agreed.  He penned an addendum to Vergil's poem, "completing" the work, and securing for himself quite a bit of fame.  This talk is an exploration of the Aeneid's "future." We will look at Vegio's work, his life, and the fervor for Vergil in the Renaissance.

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Nov
1

Law and Order in Ancient Rome and Beyond

A return of Mini-MEMS Lunch and Learns!

Location

Online

Date & Time

November 1, 2021, 12:15 pm – 12:45 pm

Description

Mini-MEMS Lunch and Learns are chances for the professors working with the Medieval and Early Modern Studies minors to informally share their work through a brief presentation and Q and A.  Our first Lunch and Learn of the school year will be led by Dr. Molly Jones-Lewis in Ancient Studies.

Law & Order in Ancient Rome and Beyond
You probably know that Roman Law formed the basis for modern European law, but what was that law like? How do we know what it was, and what can it tell us about law today? This will be a crash course in the way Romans tried to regulate their society with an interactive hypothetical case that we'll work through together. Be prepared for traffic drama, murderous barbers, and sketchy doctors with questionable business models!

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May
5

Mini-MEMS Lunch and Learn

Imagined Beauty in the Venetian Ospedali Grandi

Location

Online

Date & Time

May 5, 2021, 12:15 pm – 12:45 pm

Description

Dr. Maust, UMBC Department of Music, will share her research in-progress in this final Mini-MEMS Lunch and Learn of the semester.
Eighteenth-century tourists flocked to Venice's four renowned institutions for orphans and foundlings, the Ospedali Grandi, to experience music-making by the infamous figlie del coro.  Many penned accounts praising the women's virtuosic mastery of demanding instrumental and vocal repertoire, declaring them among the best musicians in Western Europe.  The women performed behind a lattice screen, which left them shrouded in mystery and resulted in fantastical accounts that imagined them to be beautiful, young virgins.  In a rare first-hand meeting with the figlie del coro in 1743, Jean-Jacques Rousseau was horrified to discover that the musicians serenading him were mature women aged 21-60, and many were physically deformed, scarred from illness, and otherwise unattractive to him.  Struggling to rectify the women's enchanting musical performance with their overwhelming physical "flaws," Rousseau eventually resolved that the women's intellectual wit and musical prowess rendered them sufficiently attractive to him. This presentation theorizes eighteenth-century female "ugliness" as a social disability and evaluates the complex intersection of physical disability with female musical virtuosity and enfreakment.  

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Apr
7

MEMS Colloquium: "Listeners as Players, Music As Play"

Presented by Dr. Elizabeth Randell Upton (UCLA)

Location

Online

Date & Time

April 7, 2021, 7:00 pm – 8:00 pm

Description

The Medieval and Early Modern Studies minor of UMBC's Department of History hosts Dr. Elizabeth Randell Upton, an Associate Professor of Musicology at the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music.  Dr. Randell Upton's primary research area is medieval music. Her recent work examines late fourteenth and early fifteenth century vocal music to discover evidence for the experiences of performers and listeners in the medieval past, recorded in surviving musical notation.  
Join us on Zoom for her lecture: "Listeners as Players, Music as Play."  
For questions or further information, contact Laurel Bassett: lburgg1@umbc.edu.

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Dec
9

Mini-MEMS Lunch and Learn

Instrument to Intellectual: Italian Female Artists,1600s

Location

Online

Date & Time

December 9, 2020, 12:15 pm – 1:45 pm

Description

From Instrument to Intellectual: Portraits of Italian Women of the 16th Century

Sure, she can play the virginal, but can she paint? That was the question of Giorgio Vasari, whose seminal art history marveled at the first Italian women to become professional artists.  Dr. James Magruder will look at how the first cohort of Italian female artists depicted themselves and some of the women around them, first as gentlewomen and increasingly as intellectuals.  Where Vasari positioned them as marvels of Nature, they depicted Nature to prove their full humanity, as well as full equality with their fathers, teachers, and husbands.

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Oct
28

Mini-MEMS Lunch and Learn

Musical Instruments of the Renaissance on Zoom

Location

Online

Date & Time

October 28, 2020, 12:15 pm – 12:45 pm

Description

Want to hear a racket?  Come learn about musical instruments of the Renaissance!  (Yes, a racket IS an instrument!)  Dr. Lindsay Johnson will demo a variety of Renaissance wind instruments, from the racket (an early bass double reed) to the crumhorn (sounds like a glorified kazoo!) to the shawm (an early oboe) to the recorder) so much better than what you learned in 3rd grade!).  Come hear what these instruments sound like, see how they work, and laugh at Dr. Johnson's attempts to play them (she's actually a violinist).  Curiosity encouraged.
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Oct
29

THE ENGLISH JOAN OF ARC: Saint, Witch, Man, Maid, or Whore

MEMS Fall Colloquium Lecture, Gail Orgelfinger

Location

Library and Gallery, Albin O. Kuhn

Date & Time

October 29, 2019, 4:00 pm – 5:30 pm

Description

Because the English were ultimately responsible for executing Joan of Arc, the usual view of their changing judgments of her is a progressive one—from witch to heroine to saint. However, their opinions prove to be much more varied and nuanced, encompassing praise, blame, and uneasiness all within 200 years of her death. This talk discusses some of these complex reactions from English historians, playwrights, and biographers through the Early Modern era.

Gail Orgelfinger, Senior Lecturer of English at UMBC, Emerita, is the author of Joan of Arc in the English Imagination, 1429–1829 (Penn State University Press, 2019).

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Mar
12

A NEW STORY OF THE BLACK DEATH

How Genetics Is Transforming Our Narratives Of The Plague

Location

Library and Gallery, Albin O. Kuhn

Date & Time

March 12, 2019, 4:00 pm – 6:00 pm

Description

Monica Green, Professor of History at Arizona State University, specializes in medieval European medical history and the global history of infectious diseases.  In her talk she will show how our understanding of the Black Death, the plague pandemic that ravaged Europe, the Middle East, and north Africa between 1346 and 1353, has been transformed in the last decades because of new developments in genetics. Historians and archaeologists are now learning to incorporate the findings from genetics into new narratives, ones that show that this largest of pandemics was even larger, and more widespread, than we ever imagined before. Our story must now include not only the Mediterranean and Europe, but also China and perhaps even much of sub-Saharan Africa.


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