Humanities Student Spotlight:

Medieval Graduate Students Host National Conference

On February 28-March 1, the Ohio State Medieval and Renaissance Graduate Students Association, with support from the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies (CMRS), hosted the seventh annual Vagantes Conference in Medieval Studies. English graduate students Ryan Judkins, Elizabeth Zimmerman, and Jennifer Gianfalla served as conference co-chairs.

Vagantes is a traveling, student-run conference for national and international graduate students studying any aspect of the Middle Ages. The conference was established in 2002 to foster a sense of community among medievalists in the early stages of their careers, provide an interdisciplinary forum for the presentation of their scholarship, and showcase the resources of host institutions.

In his welcoming remarks, Richard Firth Green, director of CMRS stressed what "an exciting time it is to be a medievalist," highlighting the benefits to traditional scholarship brought by advances in technology and communication. "We have available to us tools and resources earlier generations could barely have dreamed of . . . .You are all standing on the threshold of an exciting new world of electronic research. The possibilities and opportunities are literally endless and I have never felt more optimistic about the future of our discipline."

Keynote speakers were Barbara Hanawalt, the King George III Professor of British History at Ohio State, who presented "Expert Witnesses and the Detection of Fraud in Late Medieval London," and Elaine Treharne, professor of English at Florida State University, who presented "Architexts of the Future: Early English Books and their Readers." Nearly 40 student presentations were given under diverse subjects such as: Reality and Truth in Late Medieval Metaphysics; New Rome: Memory, Communication, and Identity; Orthodox Imagery: Negotiating the Boundaries of Belief; and Investigating the Body in Medieval Art and Literature.

Beyond the strong series of student presentations and the two keynote addresses, participants enjoyed receptions, a performance of medieval music by the Early Interval Group, and the opportunity to view rare books and manuscripts from the university’s collections. The activities culminated with a banquet at the Blackwell Hotel.

"It was an extraordinarily successful conference," said Judkins. "Presenters and attendees were coming up to me during and after commenting on how impressed they were, and the Florida State University folks, who are hosting it next year, joked about how hard they were going to have to work to match it. I think it showed both medieval studies and Ohio State as a whole in an excellent light."