Events

Bass-Baritone Stephen Caracciolo presents and performs in Purcell’s London, a concert of verse anthems, with four guest vocal soloists from Washington National Cathedral — soprano Allison Mondel, soprano Crossley Hawn, countertenor Roger Isaacs, and tenor Oliver Mercer. The concert will be performed in collaboration with the Baltimore Baroque Band, Peabody’s ensemble specializing in historically-informed performances. Brian Bartoldus will be the guest conductor.

Works featured on the program include O Sing unto the Lord; O Give Thanks; Jehova, quam multi sunt hostes mei; Rejoice in the Lord, Alway; Thou knowest, Lord; Evening Service in G Minor; and Come Ye Sons of art.

One of the unique characteristics of Purcell’s verse anthems is they may be performed with soloists taking responsibility for all of the written sung music or in combination with a chamber choir joining and amplifying passages where Purcell has soloists singing at the same time. UMBC’s Camerata Chamber Choir will serve as the ripienists who fill out the tutti portions of Purcell’s exuberant cathedral and court music heard in London in the 1680s-90s. The performance will be conducted by Brian Bartoldus of Baltimore’s professional vocal ensemble ensemble, Third Practice.

Admission: $20 general, $10 seniors, $5 students, available through MissionTix. Tickets will also be available at the door, cash sales only.

October 30 2015
Futures of the Past
International Brotherhood of Teamsters Room [Gelman Library 702, GW Foggy Bottom Campus]
10 AM - 5 PM (includes lunch and a reception)
An all day symposium featuring new work in medieval and early modern studies. Please join us for some energetic conversation!

• Kim Hall, Barnard College, author of Sweet Taste of Empire (forthcoming)
• Patricia Clare Ingham, Indiana University, author of The Medieval New: Ambivalence in an Age of Innovation
• J. Allan Mitchell, University of Victoria, author of Becoming Human: The Matter of the Medieval Child
• Julie Orlemanski, University of Chicago, author of Symptomatic Subjects: Bodies, Signs, and Narratives in Late Medieval England (in progress)
• Coll Thrush, University of British Columbia, author of Indigenous London: Native Travellers at the Heart of Empire (forthcoming)
• Henry S. Turner, Rutgers University, author of The Corporate Commonwealth: Pluralism and Political Fictions in England, 1516-1651 (forthcoming)

Presentation titles, a schedule for the day, and a link to sign up for lunch and a reception will be posted shortly on the GW MEMSI blog.

Dr. Shannon McSheffrey  (Ph. D, Toronto), Professor, Department of History, Concordia University, Montreal, will speak on her research on women in late medieval London, including her work in digital humanities. She manages a database relating to the late medieval London Consistory court at http://digitalhistory.concordia.ca/consistory/index.php. In her lecture she will focus on a case study: in the spring of 1488, Margaret Heed, a young London woman about seventeen or eighteen years old, dithered about whether she would marry the man her father chose for her or another man whom she clearly preferred. Margaret’s dilemma highlighted a medieval paradox: young unmarried women were amongst the most powerless persons in medieval society, and yet at this one juncture in her life, as she was about to get married, a young woman held a particularly powerful card, as her consent was necessary for a marriage to be valid. Margaret’s story is a medieval one – but it’s also a 21^st-century digital humanities tale. We have more historical information than ever thanks to the digital revolution, but to interpret Margaret’s story, we also need the humanities, to teach us how to read the subtleties of the evidence, and indeed to remind us about how much we still do not know. 
Professor McSheffrey has published a number of scholarly articles and four books, Gender and Heresy: Women and Men in Lollard Communities, 1420-1530 (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995); Love and Marriage in Late Medieval London (Medieval Institute Publications, 1995); Lollards of Coventry 1486-1522 (co-authored with Norman Tanner), Camden Fifth Series, vol. 23 (Cambridge University Press, 2003);Marriage, Sex, and Civic Culture in Late Medieval London (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006). She has won several awards for her research and teaching and was elected a fellow of the Royal Historical Society of the U.K. in 2002.