Explores the invisible man, in Ralph Ellison’s “The Invisible Man,” as borrowing upon associations of patriarchal maleness, in the sense Ann Douglas in her “Terrible Honesty” argues 20s modern’s did, to secure freedom from feelings of entrapment by maternal figures, whose near-proximity to him is expressed in the text as often incestuous, gross;…[Read more]

This is the Introduction to my new book, _Victorian Skin: Surface, Self, History_.

This article explores the changes to the legal status of Scots in ‘English Ireland’ after the advent of the Scottish Wars of Independence (c.1295). There appears to have been a drastic change in status as the Scots in Ireland were not explicitly labelled before 1295, but were afterwards and they were arrested on sight usually. It is also peculiar…[Read more]

This paper examines two issues: misconceptions concerning English law in high medieval Ireland; and the invention and mutation of an exceptio (objection) in court which was based on a fabrication. The plea, or defensive claim, was that the plaintiff in a court case was an unfranchised Gael (Hibernica/Hibernicus) and therefore could not sue a civil…[Read more]

Exemplaria review essay by Sarah Elliott Novacich of recent books by Simon Gaunt, Jonathan Hsy, and Shirin Khanmohamadi on medieval contact zones.

While the trope of the Islamic pilgrimage (ḥajj) is well known, the impact of the imagery and concept of travel on poetic production from the Islamic world, particularly in Persian, has not merited the same scrutiny. This chapter introduces one of the most important and yet least-studied Persian travel narratives to an interdisciplinary r…[Read more]

This is an Accepted Manuscript, for an article forthcoming in Antiquity (2019), and remains subject to pre-publication type-editing and proofing. Please cite as James M. Harland, ‘Memories of Migration? So-called “Anglo-Saxon” Burial Costume of the 5th Century AD,’ Antiquity 93 (2019). A link to the final publication at Cambridge University Press…[Read more]

This article examines how the Persian prison poem (habsiyāt) incorporated Islamic legal norms for governing non-Muslim peoples into its poetics. By tracing how Khāqāni of Shirvān (d. 1199) brought the aesthetics of incarceration to bear on Islamic legal regulations pertaining to non-Muslim communities (ahl al-zemma), I offer a new perspective on…[Read more]

Architecture Space and Society Research Centre, Birkbeck (University of London) Friday 1st March 2019
Keynes Library, School of Arts, 43 Gordon Square
Registration: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/conquest-and-construction-tickets-55022443610

Two late medieval manuscripts have been rediscovered in the library of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in Weimar in 2018. The paper gives, for the first time, a complete codicological and paleographical analysis of both manuscripts, presents a medieval owner and, last but not least, identifies the works contained in both codices.

The article presents two manuscripts illuminated in Basle c 1420/40.

The contribuition presents an online-repository of illuminated manuscripts preseved in the abbey Stams in Tyrol

The article presents illuminated charters and discusses how they might be presented online.

In 1526, royal refiner and natural historian Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo (1478-1557) praised the singular quality of the “muchos tesoros de oro labrado / en poder delos indios q̄ se hā cōquistado” (lxv, v). By 1535, however, he had to define what, exactly, he meant by gold: “No hablo aquí en el oro que se ha habido por rescates, o en la guerra, ni…[Read more]

A brief note on the boar in medieval culture for a special issue on animals in the Middle Ages