Professor Obermeier Publishes Book Review

Dr. Obermeier has published a book review of Joerg O. Fichte's From Camelot to Obamalot: Essays on Medieval and Modern Arthurian Literature (Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 2010) in the Journal for English and Germanic Philology 114.3 (2015): 453-56.

Relevant Links: 

http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5406/jenglgermphil.114.3.0453#pdf_only_tab_contents

Helen Damico's Book Discussion and Signing at the UNM Bookstore

Professor Emerita of English Medieval Language and Literature, Damico hosted a discussion and signing of her new book, Beowulf and the Grendel-Kin: Politics and Poetry in Eleventh-Century England (West Virginia University Press, 2015)  on Tuesday, October 13th, at the UNM Bookstore:

Faculty & Graduate Conference Appearances and Presentations since Spring 2014

Anita Obermeier. "Birth and Birth Control in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales." Biennial London Chaucer Conference: Science, Magic, and Technology. University of London. London, UK: July 10-11, 2015.

Anita Obermeier. "Merlin, the Clown, and the Queer in Rowley’s The Birth of Merlin." 50th International Congress on Medieval Studies,. Western Michigan University. Kalamazoo, MI: May 14-17, 2015.

Anita Obermeier. "Teaching Provençal Lyrics and the Cathars." 50th International Congress on Medieval Studies. Western Michigan University. Kalamazoo, MI: May 14-17, 2015.

Kelly J. Hunnings. "Patronage, Poetic Identity, and Domestic Tensions: Jane Wiseman and Mary Leapor, 1717-1746." Feminist Research Institute (FRI) Lecture Series . Univ. of New Mexico. Albuquerque, NM: April 2015.

Anita Obermeier. “Medieval Empress Cunegund’s Sterility as Disability and Magic in 21st-Century German Historical Fiction." Annual Meeting of the Medieval Association of the Pacific. University of Nevada-Reno. Reno, NV: April 10-11, 2015.

Kelly J. Hunnings. "Mary Robinson, Collaborative Writing, and Genres of Women's Autobiography." America Society of Eighteenth Century Studies (ASECS). . Los Angeles, CA: March 2015.

Presented with Leslie Morrison, PhD

Julie Williams. "One Voice is Not Enough to Tell a Story: Writing as Community Creation in Native American Women's Fiction." Native American Literature Symposium. . Isleta, NM: March 12-14, 2015.

Julie Williams. "Access to Nature for Students with Disabilities." Center for Teaching Excellence Success in the Classroom Conference. University of New Mexico. Albuquerque, NM: February 19, 2015.

Julie Williams. "Trans-Atlantic Artistry in Blue Ravens, Hungry Generations, and The Heartsong of Charging Elk." American Indian Studies Association. . Albuquerque, NM: February 5-6, 2015.

Julie Williams. "Preparing for Take-Off: Learning to Fly in Graduate School." Modern Language Association. Canada. Vancouver, BC: January 8-11, 2015.

Kelly J. Hunnings. "Solitude and Isolation: John Clare's Struggle for Childhood Familiarity." Pacific Ancient Modern Language Association (PAMLA). . San Diego, CA: May 2014.

Anita Obermeier. “’Torn between Two Lovers’: Formalism, Feminism, and Other Isms in Teaching the Pan-European Medieval Lyrics." 49th International Congress on Medieval Studies. Western Michigan University. Kalamazoo, MI: May 8-11, 2014.

Helen Damico Book Discussion & Signing - Tuesday, October 13th

Anita Obermeier publishes article on Merlin's Devil Conception in Arthuriana's special volume dedicated to "Arthur on the Stage."

In her most recent article, “Merlin’s Conception by Devil in William Rowley’s Play The Birth of Merlin” (Arthuriana 24.4 (2014): 48-79), Anita Obermeier argues that Rowley’s early modern play amalgamates both the medieval Galfridian-based and Francophone narratives of Merlin’s conception by daemon, incubus, and devil in order to engage contemporary early seventeenth-century debates on the devil’s influence in the world, to ventriloquize social commentary via the figure of the Clown, and to have Merlin hail Prince Charles as the future Arthur.

Jonathan Davis-Secord Awarded Medieval Academy Book Subvention

Assistant Professor Davis-Secord's book, Joinings: Compound Words in Old English Literature, forthcoming from the University of Toronto Press, has been awarded the Medieval Academy Book Subvention, which provides support for the publication of first books at university and scholarly presses.

Helen Damico publishes Beowulf and the Grendel-kin: Politics and Poetry in Eleventh-Century England

In Beowulf and the Grendel-kin: Politics and Poetry in Eleventh-Century England, Helen Damico presents the first concentrated discussion of the initiatory two-thirds of Beowulf’s 3,182 lines in the context of the sociopolitically turbulent years that composed the first half of the eleventh century in Anglo-Danish England.

Damico offers incisive arguments that major historical events and personages pertaining to the reign of Cnut and those of his sons recorded in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the Encomium Emmae Reginae, and major continental and Scandinavian historical texts, hold striking parallels with events and personages found in at least eight vexing narrative units, as recorded by Scribe A in BL, Cotton Vitellius A.xv, that make up the poem’s quasi sixth-century narrative concerning the fall of the legendary Scyldings. 

Given the poet’s compositional skill—widely relational and eclectic at its core—and his affinity with the practicing skalds, these strings of parallelisms could scarcely have been coincidental. Rather, Damico argues that examined within the context of other eleventh-century texts that either bemoaned or darkly satirized or obversely celebrated the rise of the Anglo-Danish realm, the Beowulfian units may bring forth a deeper understanding of the complexity of the poet’s compositional process.

Damico illustrates the poet’s use of the tools of his trade—compression, substitution, skillful encoding of character—to reinterpret and transform grave sociopolitical “facts” of history, to produce what may be characterized as a type of historical allegory, whereby two parallel narratives, one literal and another veiled are simultaneously operative. 

Beowulf and the Grendel-kin lays out the story of Beowulf, not as a monster narrative nor a folklorish nor solely a legendary tale, but rather as a poem of its time, a historical allegory coping with and reconfiguring sociopolitical events of the first half of eleventh-century Anglo-Saxon England.

Beowulf and the Grendel-kin: Politics and Poetry in Eleventh-Century England is available through the West Virginia University Press.

Anita Obermeier's "Witches and the Myth of the Medieval ‘Burning Times’” cited on one of the 500 most visited websites on the internet

Anita Obermeier's research, "Witches and the Myth of the Medieval ‘Burning Times’” received a citation by the folks at io9.com, the Gawker fantasy/sci-fi blog, one of the 500 most visited websites on the internet:  http://io9.com/10-worst-misconceptions-about-medieval-life-youd-get-fr-1686799982  (See section 5)

10 Worst Misconceptions About Medieval Life You'd Get From Fantasy Books

Some tropes are so ingrained in Medieval-inspired fantasy stories that it's tempting to think that they represent real aspects of Medieval life. But often these stories are just reinforcing myths and misconceptions about life in the Middle Ages.

Read more...

Dr. Helen Damico inducted as a Fellow to the Medieval Academy of America

Medieval Academy  of America

19 January 2015 To the Members of the Medieval Academy: I am very pleased to introduce the 2015 Class of Fellows and Corresponding Fellows of the Medieval Academy of America: FELLOWS: Helen Damico (Univ. of New Mexico) Sharon Farmer (Univ. of California, Santa Barbara) Margot Fassler (Univ. of Notre Dame) Robin Fleming (Boston College) Richard Kaeuper (Univ. of Rochester) Maureen Miller (Univ. of California, Berkeley) David Nirenberg (Univ. of Chicago) Katherine O'Brien O'Keeffe (Univ. of California, Berkeley) Anders Winroth (Yale Univ.) CORRESPONDING FELLOWS: Paul Brand (Univ. of Oxford) Constant Mews (Monash Univ.) Felicity Riddy (Univ. of York) I hope you will join me in honoring these accomplished scholars during the Fellows' Plenary Session of the upcoming Annual Meeting.   Lisa Fagin Davis Executive Director, Medieval Academy of America Secretary to the Fellows

Anita Obermeier Publishes Book Review

Anita Obermeier publishes book review of Scattergood, John, Occasions for Writing: Essays on Medieval and Renaissance Literature, Politics, and Society (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2010) in Mediävistik 26 (2013): 288-89.

Marisa Sikes to teach Middle English at Austin Peay

In April, Marisa Sikes, PhD in Medieval Studies, accepted a tenure-track position at Austin Peay State University in Clarksville, Tennessee, one of the Tennessee state universities. She will be joining their faculty as the Middle English specialist with secondary responsibilities in History of the English Language and World Literature. We wish you all the best, Marisa, and a wonderful career.
~Dr. Obermeier

Faculty and Graduate Student Appearances in Fall 2013

September

Jonathan Davis-Secord. "Exploitation of Compound Frequency in Old English Style." Studies in the History of the English Language. Brigham Young University. Provo, UT: September 26-28, 2013.

October

Lisa Myers. "Music Theory and Performance in the Middle English Breton Lay Sir Orfeo." Southeastern Medieval Association. Appalachian State University. Boone, NC: October 3-5, 2013.

Association for the Arts of the Present (ASAP). Wayne State University. Detroit, MI: October 3-6, 2013.
W. Oliver Baker. "Meth, Rural Whiteness, and the Ozarks: Neoliberalism and the Great Recession in Winter’s Bone."
Ann D’Orazio. "Save Our City: Transmetropolitan and the Antihero Citizen."
Stephanie Spong. "'Affection Would Be Revolution Enough': Public Eroticism and the Re-Imagined Love Lyric in Bruce Andrews' Designated Heartbeat."

Western Literature Association. Berkeley, CA: October 9-12, 2013.
Erin Murrah-Mandril. "Preserving the Ghosts of the Alamo: Adina de Zavala's History and Legends."
Melina Vizcaino-Alemán. "Critical Regionalism and The West: Intersections of Architecture and Literature in the Southwest."
Julie Williams. "Western Writing and Wheelchairs: Embodiment and Ability in Women's Writing about Place."

Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association. Vancouver, WA. October 9-13, 2013.
Doaa Omran. "(Re) Defining Islamic Terrorism: A Middle Eastern Perspective."
Erin Woltkamp. "Performing the Discourse of Power: Breaking Away From the Madwoman in the Attic Through Discursive Tactics in Villette."

Natasha Jones. "Social Justice as Technical Communication Pedagogy." Council for Programs on Technical and Scientific Communication (CPTSC). Cincinnati, OH: October 2013.

November

Daoine Bachran. "Being (post)Human: Mechanization, Militarization, and Human Rights in Chicana/o Science Fiction." American Studies Association Annual Meeting. Washington D.C.: November 21, 2013.

Kathleen Washburn. "Modern American Indian Literature: Early Twentieth-Century Texts and Contexts." The Newberry Library Colloquium. Chicago, IL: November 13, 2013.

Francesca Tuoni presents at Medieval Academy at UCLA

Francesca Tuoni, PhD student in Medieval Literature, received a travel bursary award from the

prestigious Medieval Academy of America for the paper "Arabisms and Hospitallers: A Plausible Pathway into Middle English" that she presented at the Annual Meeting of the Medieval Academy at UCLA, April 10-12, 2014.

Nicholas Schwartz receives Bilinski Dissertation Fellowship

Five talented doctoral students in the humanities at UNM will receive 2014 Russell J. and Dorothy S. Bilinski Dissertation Fellowships thanks to a generous gift from the Bilinski Educational Foundation, including Nicholas Schwarz (English), for his work on history in the 11th-century writings of the Archbishop Wulfstan of York.

Alternate Stephanie Spong (English) is also to be commended for her outstanding dissertation project.

2014 Bilinski Fellows:
http://artsci.unm.edu/news/2014-bilinski-fellows-announced.html

http://artsci.unm.edu/for-students/fellowships/recipients/2014.html

Emilee Howland-Davis into a Bright Future

Emilee Howland-Davis has been accepted into the English PhD program at the University of Missouri at Columbia with a full assistantship and two fellowships: the Medieval and Renaissance Studies Supplemental Graduate Fellowship, as well as the English Department Fellowship. Emilee will continue studying Arthurian Literature in the context of magic. We will miss you, Emilee, and wish you all the best. Dr. Obermeier

English 500 Symposium -- Friday, Dec. 6, 2013 in Zimmerman Library

The English 500 Symposium

Friday, December 6th
Frank Waters Room, Zimmerman Library

9:00-10:20: PANEL I

Emily Frontiere (MA program, Medieval Studies)
“Costs, Costs, Costs and Nothing is Done”: Lawyers and Power in Charles Dickens’s Bleak House

Emily Simons (MA program, Medieval Studies)
Blurred Lines: The Female and the Animal in Marie de France’s Lais

Bradley Tepper (MA program, Literature)
Thomas Hardy’s Use of Law in Tess of the d’Urbervilles

10:30-11:50: PANEL II

Margaux Brown (MA program, Literature)
From Christian Salvation to Literary Salvation: Jupiter Hammon’s “An Essay on Slavery”

Megan Malcom-Morgan (MA program, Literature)
An Echo in the Hollow: The Intrusion of Race in Washington Irving’s The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

Mariya Tseptsura (PhD program, Rhetoric & Writing)
The Return of Cold War Rhetoric: Mission Possible?

12-1: LUNCH BREAK

1:10-2:30: PANEL III

Leandra Binder (PhD program, BILS)
“Maddened Blood”: Nietzschean Animalism in Felix Salten’s Bambi

Kelly Hunnings (PhD program, BILS)
Seeking the Familiar in John Clare’s Middle Period Satire

Gerard Lavin (MA program, Medieval Studies)
Instrument of Revelation: Understanding “Pearl” as an Object of Religious Contemplation

2:40-4:30: PANEL IV

Diana Filar (MA program, Literature)
Windigo, Overheard Dreams, and the Direct Impact of Story: Vengeful Agency as Influenced by Ancestral Stories in Louise Erdrich’s Round House

Amy Gore (PhD program, ALS)
Indigenizing the Gothic Novel: Harold Johnson’s Backtrack and its Uncanny Conventions

Kathryn Manis (MA program, Art History)
Man and Superman: Reframing the “Man of Steel” in Michael Chabon’s The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay

Karra Shimabukuro (PhD program, BILS)
Grimm and La Llorona: Liminal Space or Appropriation?

Justin Brock speaks on "The Critical Voices From the Joyous Gard: the Homosocial and the Feminine in the Stanzaic Morte Arthure" Friday, Nov. 1, 12:00 noon

The Feminist Research Institute is proud to host the FRI Research Lecture Series:

"The Critical Voices From the Joyous Gard: the Homosocial and the Feminine in the Stanzaic Morte Arthure"

Justin Brock, PhD Student at the Univ. of Oregon and UNM Alumnus

Friday, November 1, 2013 from 12:00 - 1:00 PM

Mesa Vista 1104 (History Common Room)

http://femresin.unm.edu/events/2013/11/brock/

Justin, as many of you know, was the FRI Graduate Assistant last year and is returning to UNM for this special presentation after graduating with his MA in English with a focus on Medieval Studies.  We are thrilled to welcome him back and we invite you to join us for this event.  We look forward to learning a great deal from his discussion.

Should you have any questions, please feel free to contact us at femresin@unm.edu or visit us on the web at http://femresin.unm.edu.

Anita Obermeier and Marisa Sikes Contribute to Oxford Guide

Anita Obermeier and Marisa Sikes contributed “Augustine’s Retractationes” to The Oxford Guide to the Historical Reception of Augustine (Eds. Karla Pollmann and Willemien Otten, 3 vols., Oxford: Oxford UP, 2013. 1: 467-70). 

http://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-oxford-guide-to-the-historical-reception-of-augustine-9780199299164?cc=&lang=en&q=augustine's%20reception&tab=description

Faculty and Graduate Student Appearances for May 2013

48th International Congress on Medieval Studies. Kalamazoo, MI. May 9-12, 2013.
Helen Damico. “Shade and Substance: Emma of Normandy in Eleventh-Century Documents.”
Jonathan Davis-Secord. “The Rhythmic Identity of Ælfric and Winchester.”
Jonathan Davis-Secord organized “The Benedictine Reform in Anglo-Saxon England.”
Anita Obermeier organized of four TEAMS sessions on teaching the Middle Ages:
   “Taking It Public: Programming, Pedagogy, and Outreach: A Roundtable”
   “Teaching Medieval Jews: A Roundtable”
   “Teaching the Medieval Survey”
   “Teaching the Black Death”
Nicholas Schwartz. “Wulfstan and the Old English Boethius: A (Partial) Reconsideration of the Textual Transmission of the ‘Three Orders’ in Anglo-Saxon England.” UNM Institute for Medieval Studies Graduate Student Prize Winner.
Nicholas Schwartz. Panelist in “Taking It Public: Programming, Pedagogy, and Outreach: A Roundtable”

Association for the Study of Literature and Environment. Lawrence, KS. May 28-June1, 2013.
Julie Williams. “This Land Belongs to All of Us: Disabilities Access and the Need for Nature.”

Greg Martin: Bosque Preparatory School: Commencement Address, May 24, 2013
Reading and Discussion. Stories for Boys. Ballard Branch. Seattle, WA. May 1, 2013.
Feature and Interview. Stories for Boys. KING5 TV Morning News Hour.  Seattle, WA. May 2, 2013.
Interview. Stories for Boys. NPR: KUOW’s Weekday Interview with Marcie Sillman. Seattle, WA. May 2, 2013.
Reading and Discussion. Stories for Boys. North Seattle Community College. Seattle, WA.  May 2, 2013.
Reading and Discussion. Stories for Boys. Capitol Hill Branch.  Seattle, WA.  May 2, 2013.
Reading and Discussion. Stories for Boys. Columbia Branch Seattle, WA.  May 3, 2013.
Reading and Discussion. Stories for Boys. Greenwood Branch.  Seattle, WA.  May 4, 2013.
“Stories for Boys: Book-It Repertory Theatre Staged Readings.” Seattle Reads. Seattle, WA. May 4, 2013.
Reading and Discussion. Stories for Boys. Southwest Branch. Seattle, WA.  May 5, 2013.
Reading and Discussion. Stories for Boys. Northeast Branch. Seattle, WA.  May 5, 2013.
Interview.  Stories for Boys. PBS:  Well Read.  Seattle, WA. May 6, 2013.

Justin Brock and Annarose Fitzgerald Garner FRI Awards

Justin Brock (recent MA in Medieval Studies) received the 2013 Best Student Paper Prize from the Feminist Research Institute for his essay, "The Critical Voices from Joyous Gard: The Homosocial and the Feminine in the Stanzaic Morte Arthur."
Annarose Fitzgerald, PhD candidate in Literature, competed successfully for an FRI Graduate Student Research Grant for her dissertation research on Modernist poet Mina Loy at Yale University's Beinecke Library.