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.
Dr. Paula Maust is a performer-scholar who has taught in the UMBC Department of Music since 2016. She is the creator of www.expandingthemusictheorycanon.com and has a companion anthology under contract with SUNY Press. As a harpsichordist and organist, she directs Burning River Baroque and Musica Spira and curates thought-provoking concerts connecting early modern music to contemporary social issues. She is currently working on The Ugly Virtuosa, a book project focused on the pejorative rhetoric used to describe the first generation of female professional musicians on the public stage in Western Europe.
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.The MEMS bi-weekly e-newsletter shares information about events, conferences, calls for papers, student and faculty work in the field, and digital resources that enrich our understanding of Medieval and Early Modern Studies. If you have any items you would like to share in the newsletter, please send them to Laurel Bassett at lburgg1@umbc.edu.
THANK YOU!
The MEMS Colloquium with Dr. Elizabeth Upton was a success! Dr. Upton shared her work in progress, which compares game theory with experiences of listening to music, within the context of medieval musical structures and patterns. The event was well attended; students asked terrific questions and made real world connections. Thanks to all of the faculty who participated, especially Dr. Johnson who ably served as facilitator for the event.
ON CAMPUS EVENTS
Wednesday, May 5, 12:15-12:45 PM Mini-MEMS Lunch and Learn on Zoom: ‘Scarcely one without defect:’ Imagined Beauty in the Venetian Ospedali Grandi
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.
Join Zoom Meeting
https://umbc-edu.zoom.us/j/89528628855
Dr. Paula Maust is a performer-scholar who has taught in the UMBC Department of Music since 2016. She is the creator of www.expandingthemusictheorycanon.com and has a companion anthology under contract with SUNY Press. As a harpsichordist and organist, she directs Burning River Baroque and Musica Spira and curates thought-provoking concerts connecting early modern music to contemporary social issues. She is currently working on The Ugly Virtuosa, a book project focused on the pejorative rhetoric used to describe the first generation of female professional musicians on the public stage in Western Europe.
COMMUNITY EVENTS
Saturday, April 24, 1-3 PM CST The Newberry Center for Renaissance Studies presents Anti-Race, 1550-1760
Several new phrases emerged in English print culture 1550-1580 to signify one race, created by God, descended from Adam and Even; while this was the predominant definition of race at this time, and therefore anti-race in conceptualization, other new usages of race tended in the opposite direction, finding races everywhere in the human, animal, vegetable, and even divine worlds as well as also reserving race for the bloodlines of rulers and other nobles. All of these tendencies suggest that racial formation 1550-1760 is more variable, more quotidian, than much scholarship has suggested.
This event is free, but all participants must register in advance and space is limited. To register, email scholarlyseminars@newberry.org.
April 29, 6:30-7:30 PM Facebook Live Event, The Walters Art Museum. Monuments and Memory: Deconstructing Power in Antiquity and the Contemporary
Join the Walters Art Museum and the Dallas Museum of Art for two panels of scholars and artists that deconstruct the power of monuments—both traditional and impermanent—using examples from contemporary art and both museums’ collections. For more information, including how to watch live on Facebook, consult: https://thewalters.org/event/monuments-memory-01/
Thursday, May 13 (12-1 PM) and Friday, May 14 (10:30-3 PM) Documents from Colonial Mexico in the Ayer Indigenous Studies Collection
The Center for American Indian Studies Programs and the Center for Renaissance Studies Programs presents a symposium on how modern audiences can recover premodern Indigenous American voices and perspectives obscured by European colonization. A diverse group of researchers in art history, history, cartography, literature, and beyond will present items from the rich collection of colonial materials in the Edward E. Ayer collection at the Newberry Library. For a full program schedule and the online registration form, consult: https://www.newberry.org/05132021-documents-colonial-mexico-ayer-indigenous-studies-collection
Fall Undergraduate Seminar: The World in the Book: 1300-1800, Center for Renaissance Studies.
Hosted by the Newberry Library’s Center for Renaissance Studies, this 10 week course will use the multidisciplinary field of book history to explore how medieval and early modern people used different media—theological texts, maps, travel narratives, reference works, literature, and more—to make sense of a changing world. Through lectures, discussions, and interactive workshops with faculty from CRS consortium institutions, participants will learn how book history can illuminate the ways in which premodern people used religion, science, art, and technology to grapple with new economic, intellectual, and cultural challenges in a rapidly-expanding global community. The course will meet for 1.5 hours on Tuesdays and Thursdays in fall 2021. The seminar is free and open for undergraduate students in any field of medieval or early modern studies, but space is limited. To apply for the course, complete the application form: https://forms.gle/8k69C1RkNfDFiAXi6
PAPERS AND CONFERENCES
Call for Papers-From Fragment to Whole: Interpreting Medieval Manuscript Fragments.
Hosted by the Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Bristol, this hybrid conference is devoted to the study of manuscript fragments, and what these fragments can tell us about lost books, medieval and post-medieval book history, and textual history. The conference will take place September 16-17. Please send a brief abstract to cms-publicity@bristol.ac.uk by May 31, 2021, indicating interest in the online or in person event. Further information about the conference will be made available at http://www.bristol.ac.uk/medieval
Call for Papers: 97th Annual Meeting Medieval Academy of America, March 9-13, 2022.
The Program Committee invites proposals for papers on all topics and in all disciplines and periods of medieval studies and medievalism studies. We are particularly interested in receiving submissions from those working outside of traditional academic positions. The meeting will take place on the campus of the University of Virginia in Charlottesville and is committed to fostering conversation around the fifth-year anniversary of the Unite the Right rally in August 2017. Additional themes and threads of the meeting include rethinking the global medieval, vulnerability and the ethics of care, queering the medieval, inter-religious coexistence and conflict, trade and cultural exchange and diplomacy and ambassadorial practices. Deadline for submissions is May 15, 2021. For more information, please consult:
https://www.medievalacademy.org/page/2022AnnualMeeting
DIGITAL RESOURCES
The Huntington Library’s Video: Capturing Bestiarium: The Art and Science of Digitization is now available. Join the digital library team for an overview of the process of digitizing documents to make them available to researchers in the Huntington Digital Library. The team demonstrates the steps to digitize the illustrated 15th century bestiary, Dialogus Creaturarum, ascribed to Nicolaus Pergamenus and the Milanese doctor Mayno de Mayneriis. This event is part of the ongoing webinar series The Multi-Storied Library, presented by the library’s Reader Service department. The video can be accessed here: https://www.huntington.org/videos-recorded-programs/capturing-bestiarium
Check out the fascinating interactive New York Times article: “What a Tiny Masterpiece Reveals About Power and Beauty” by Jason Farago.
Zoom in and out of the details of a 17th century Mughal miniature, now held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art and created by an artist called Chitarman. The article also features the work of other medieval manuscript artists and is a terrific experiment in digital storytelling.
“Adventures in Libraries: The Present and Future of Medieval Manuscript Studies.”
The Newberry’s Center for Renaissance Studies presents a series of recorded conversations exploring the past, present, and future of research, teaching, and learning using archival collections. Participants shared their own paths to working with medieval manuscripts, described the challenges along the way, and considered strategies for making the field more diverse, accessible, and engaging for a variety of publics. You can see the full video here:
“Houston, we have a problem:” Erasing Black Scholars in Old English Literature.”
This article, posted at ACMRS Arizona, details experiences of Black students and professors as they work with premodern texts and grammars. The hyperlinks liberally splashed across this article all take the reader to powerful further research and commentary on the subject.
For ongoing digital updates from the Medieval (academic) world, check out #medievaltwitter, #shakeRace, and #raceB4Race.
On our website!
Check out videos of curator Ashley Dimmig’s presentation: Exploring Islamic Manuscripts at the Walters Art Gallery and MEMS faculty Dr. James Magruder’s presentations on Instrumental to Intellectual: Italian Female Artists, 1600s and Resurrection, Metamorphosis, and the Art of Nature in the Dutch Golden Age. http://mems.umbc.edu.
For more information, please join the Medieval and Early Modern Studies Group: https://my3.my.umbc.edu/groups/mems and see our website: www.mems.umbc.edu
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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. My presentation theorizes eighteenth-century female “ugliness” as a social disability and evaluates the complex intersection of physical disability with female musical virtuosity and enfreakment.
Join Zoom Meeting
https://umbc-edu.zoom.us/j/89528628855
Dr. Paula Maust is a performer-scholar who has taught in the UMBC Department of Music since 2016. She is the creator of www.expandingthemusictheorycanon.com and has a companion anthology under contract with SUNY Press. As a harpsichordist and organist, she directs Burning River Baroque and Musica Spira and curates thought-provoking concerts connecting early modern music to contemporary social issues. Dr. Maust also teaches music theory and aural skills at the Johns Hopkins University and Peabody Conservatory. She has forthcoming articles in the Journal of the International Alliance for Women in Music and Women and Music, and she is currently working on The Ugly Virtuosa, a book project focused on the pejorative rhetoric used to describe the first generation of female professional musicians on the public stage in Western Europe.
Sponsored by Medieval and Early Modern Studies and the History Department
]]>The MEMS bi-weekly e-newsletter shares information about events, conferences, calls for papers, student and faculty work in the field, and digital resources that enrich our understanding of Medieval and Early Modern Studies. If you have any items you would like to share in the newsletter, please send them to Laurel Bassett at lburgg1@umbc.edu.
ON CAMPUS EVENTS
Mark Your Calendars!!!! MEMS Colloquium: April 7: 7 PM
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.
Join
Zoom Meeting
https://umbc-edu.zoom.us/j/87556785236?pwd=QlVQdEo2OXBIK3M2WG9DZ0MvajZZUT09
Meeting ID: 875 5678 5236
Passcode: 081181
One tap mobile
+13017158592,87556785236#,*081181# US (Washington DC)
Passcode: 081181
Wednesday, April 7 12-1 PM History Major and Minor Information Session
Come to this information session and get your questions answered about the offerings of the History Department. Professors Froide, Meringolo, Song, McDonough, and Zaidi will be on hand to answer questions and share information about our History Major and Minor, our Minors in Public History and Asian History, the interdisciplinary minor in Medieval and Early Modern Studies and the newly revamped Religious Studies Minor.
https://umbc.webex.com/umbc/j.php?MTID=m80690f20545e31c335c34ef99e29a1d9
Wednesday, Apr 7, 2021 12:00 pm | 1 hour | (UTC-04:00) Eastern Time (US &
Canada)
Meeting number: 120 858 2030
Password: B9eVkhSM
Dial 1208582030@umbc.webex.com
You can also dial 173.243.2.68 and enter your meeting number.
Join by phone +1-202-860-2110 United States Toll (Washington D.C.)
Access code: 120 858 2030
Friday, April 16, 2-4 PM UMBC’s History Department and the Folger Shakespeare Library Host a Virtual Escape Room: The Ghost of Blithfield Hall: A Special Paleographical Mystery
At Blithfield Hall, the ancestral seat of the Bagot family, the ghost of an ancestor roams the corridors. A cache of family letters has been discovered, which seems to hold the answer to the spirit’s unrest. The only problem? These missives were penned in the early 17th century, and other paranormal investigators have failed to make sense of them. It’s up to you to decipher the documents, solve the puzzles, and free the ghost.
Bring your paleographical knowledge and form teams to play, in this live virtual experience. (Small teams of three or four are ideal, but you are welcome to play with a partner or by yourself.)
Reservations are required for this event and can be made athttps://forms.gle/xbibi4j4FUYAKVa57
Want to brush up on early modern handwriting in the meantime? Check out this https://folgerpedia.folger.edu/List_of_online_resources_for_early_modern_English_paleography in the Folger Shakespeare Library’s Folgerpedia!
COMMUNITY EVENTS
Saturday, April 24, 1-3 PM CST The Newberry Center for Renaissance Studies presents Anti-Race, 1550-1760
Several new phrases emerged in English print culture 1550-1580 to signify one race, created by God, descended from Adam and Even; while this was the predominant definition of race at this time, and therefore anti-race in conceptualization, other new usages of race tended in the opposite direction, finding races everywhere in the human, animal, vegetable, and even divine worlds as well as also reserving race for the bloodlines of rulers and other nobles. All of these tendencies suggest that racial formation 1550-1760 is more variable, more quotidian, than much scholarship has suggested.
This event is free, but all participants must register in advance and space is limited. To register, email scholarlyseminars@newberry.org.
Available on youtube May 5: RaceB4Race: “A Conversation with Ibram X. Kendi on Stamped from the Beginning”
In conversation with Ayanna Thompson, Regents Professor of English at Arizona State University and Director of the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, and the RaceB4Race Executive Board, Professor Kendi will discuss the long, premodern histories of race and racism. As the keynote conversation for the RaceB4Race Politics symposium, this event will ask questions about how racist ideas developed and became deeply rooted in our political culture. This conversation will be pre-recorded and available from May 5, 2021-May 19, 2021 on: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCegSaWdZ5ZrSMIPPTDFXaag
PAPERS AND CONFERENCES
April 14-16, 2021 The International Association for Neo-Latin Studies Presents an Online Conference: Digital Humanities and Neo-Latin Studies
This conference, held on zoom, presents a wide variety of projects and perspectives on Digital Neo-Latin Studies. For more information on the presentations and to register, see https://dnls.hypotheses.org/
Call for Papers: 97th Annual Meeting Medieval Academy of America, March 9-13, 2022
The Program Committee invites proposals for papers on all topics and in all disciplines and periods of medieval studies and medievalism studies. We are particularly interested in receiving submissions from those working outside of traditional academic positions. The meeting will take place on the campus of the University of Virginia in Charlottesville and is committed to fostering conversation around the fifth-year anniversary of the Unite the Right rally in August 2017. Additional themes and threads of the meeting include: rethinking the global medieval, vulnerability and the ethics of care, queering the medieval, inter-religious coexistence and conflict, trade and cultural exchange and diplomacy and ambassadorial practices. Deadline for submissions is May 15, 2021. For more information, please consult:
https://www.medievalacademy.org/page/2022AnnualMeeting
DIGITAL RESOURCES
Check out the fascinating interactive New York Times article: “What a Tiny Masterpiece Reveals About Power and Beauty” by Jason Farago.
Zoom in and out of the details of a 17th century Mughal miniature, now held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art and created by an artist called Chitarman. The article also features the work of other medieval manuscript artists and is a terrific experiment in digital storytelling.
“Adventures in Libraries: The Present and Future of Medieval Manuscript Studies”
The Newberry’s Center for Renaissance Studies presents a series of recorded conversations exploring the past, present, and future of research, teaching, and learning using archival collections. Participants shared their own paths to working with medieval manuscripts, described the challenges along the way, and considered strategies for making the field more diverse, accessible, and engaging for a variety of publics. You can see the full video here:
“Houston, we have a problem:” Erasing Black Scholars in Old English Literature.”
This article, posted at ACMRS Arizona, details experiences of Black students and professors as they work with premodern texts and grammars. The hyperlinks liberally splashed across this article all take the reader to powerful further research and commentary on the subject.
Check out the new digital critical edition of The Canterbury Tales:
https://www.canterburytalesproject.org/
For ongoing digital updates from the Medieval (academic) world, check out #medievaltwitter, #shakeRace, and #raceB4Race.
On our website!
Check out videos of curator Ashley Dimmig’s presentation: Exploring Islamic Manuscripts at the Walters Art Gallery and MEMS faculty Dr. James Magruder’s presentations on Instrumental to Intellectual: Italian Female Artists, 1600s and Resurrection, Metamorphosis, and the Art of Nature in the Dutch Golden Age. http://mems.umbc.edu.
For more information, please join the Medieval and Early Modern Studies Group: https://my3.my.umbc.edu/groups/mems and see our website: www.mems.umbc.edu
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