On Thursday 2 May, Prof. Peter Lake, University Distinguished Professor of History and Professor of the History of Christianity (Divinity School), at Vanderbilt University, will be speaking on

Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar and the Search for a Useable (Christian?) Past

The talk will be in the British and Irish Studies Room of the Norlin Library (M519) at 5pm.

Some of Prof. Lake’s longer publications include The politics of the public sphere in early modern England  (co-edited 2007), Religious politics in post-reformation England: essays in honour of Nicholas Tyacke  (co-edited 2006), The Anti-Christ’s lewd hat: Protestants, Papists and players in post-Reformation England (2002), Politics, religion, and popularity in early Stuart Britain: essays in honour of Conrad Russell (co-edited 2002), The boxmaker’s revenge: ‘orthodoxy’, ‘heterodoxy’, and the politics of the parish in early Stuart London (2001), Conformity and orthodoxy in the English church, c. 1560-1660  (co-edited 2000), Culture and politics in early Stuart England  (co-edited 1993), Anglicans and Puritans?: Presbyterianism and English conformist thought from Whitgift to Hooker (1988), Moderate Puritans and the Elizabethan church (1982).

CMEMS Invited Lecture Series

Thursday 21 March 2013 at 5pm

(University Club 105)

Professor Mark Gregory Pegg (Washington University)

“Comparative History, Grand Narratives and the Medieval World”

This talk is about overcoming the tension between what some scholars see as the crippling legacy of microhistory (and arguably postmodernism) which supposedly denies the ability to write sweeping narratives about the past and what other scholars see as the tendency of wide-ranging narratives to eliminate historical detail and dissent for sake of chronological clarity, so that all too frequently the most traditional assumptions about a topic simply get artfully remade in the novelistic forward rush of telling a story.  The recent historiographic arguments for “transnational” histories, as well as the renewal of debate about comparative history, all circle around the problem of how does the historian write a grand narrative with the same level of detail as a microhistory, and so what are the methodological frameworks, let alone artistic ones, by which such histories can be written in the twenty-first century.  Moreover, how does the historian emphasize the contingency and specificity of the past over millennia without succumbing to ahistorical superficiality or the essentialism that has become so common in other fields analyzing large swathes of human history (such as cognitive science, psychology, and anthropology).  These questions of method, form, and content, let alone intellectual justification, shape his forthcoming book Beatrice’s Last Smile: A History of the Medieval World 200-1600 (Oxford University Press).

Professor Mark Gregory Pegg is the author of The Corruption of Angels: The Great Inquisition of 1245-1246 (Princeton University Press, 2001); and A Most Holy War: The Albigensian Crusade and the Battle for Christendom (Oxford University Press, 2007).

A reception will follow Professor Pegg’s talk.

Thursday 6 December, 5pm: CMEMS Invited Speaker Series

Corinne Wieben (History, University of Northern Colorado), “Vir et Maritus: Marriage and Masculinity in Late Medieval Lucca.”

Professor Wieben will discuss a precirculated research paper, part of her ongoing research on the records of marriage disputes in the fourteenth-century episcopal and communal courts of Lucca.

Location: BRITISH AND IRISH STUDIES ROOM (M519), NORLIN LIBRARY

Wednesday 5 December, 5pm: Faculty and Graduate Interdisciplinary Seminar in pre-1700 British Studies

Sid Fox (Independent Scholar) “The Origins of Shakespeare”

Location: BRITISH AND IRISH STUDIES ROOM (M519), NORLIN LIBRARY

(In association with the Center for British and Irish Studies)

Friday 16 November, 12 noon: CMEMS Coffee Talk in Humanities 245

Scott G. Bruce (History), “Abbot Maiolus of Cluny, Ambassador to the Dead.”

Professor Bruce will discuss a precirculated research paper, the first fruits of a new book project on the Feast of All Souls in medieval Christianity.

Free coffee, tea and cookies will be available at this talk.

Location: HUMANITIES 250

Wednesday 14 November, 5pm: Faculty and Graduate Interdisciplinary Seminar in pre-1700 British Studies

David Paradis (History) “Authority and Justice during the English Rising of 1381″

Location: BRITISH AND IRISH STUDIES ROOM (M519), NORLIN LIBRARY

(In association with the Center for British and Irish Studies)

Thursday 8 November, 2pm: CMEMS Coffee Talk

Anne E. Lester (History), “Creating Cistercian Nuns: The Women’s Religious Movement and its Reform in Thirteenth-Century Champagne.”

Professor Lester will discuss the origins and argument of her new book, which was published by Cornell University Press in 2011 and won the 2012 Best First Book of Feminist Scholarship on the Middle Ages award presented by the Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship.

Free coffee, tea and cookies will be available at this talk.

Location: HUMANITIES 245

Prof. Richard C. Hoffmann Emeritus Professor of History at York University, Toronto

Prof. Brian Catlos of the Dept of Religious Studies, Prof. William Kuskin of the Dept of English, Prof. Anne Lester of the Dept of History and Prof. John Slater of the Dept of Spanish and Portuguese

Peter Remien, who is currently completing a PhD in the Dept of English