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I. The twentieth biennial meeting of the Society took as its general theme ‘Contributions’. Featured were five keynotes, fifty-five regular papers and four project reports. 152 persons registered for the conference.
Five keynote lectures were delivered.
Maria Dahvana Headley, ‘Centuries of Contributors: on the Collective Parentage and Ownership of Stories with Staying Power’
Sam Leggett (University of Cambridge, UK), ‘The Future of Studying the Early Middle Ages? Inter and Multi-Disciplinary Contributions and Collaboration’
Sara Pons-Sanz (Cardiff University, UK): ‘Aldred’s Old Northumbrian Glosses: Devotional, Scholarly and Pedagogical Interests in a Multilingual Context’
Stephanie Trigg (University of Melbourne, Australia), ‘Face, Mouth and Lips: Facial Gesture and Rhetoric in Early English Writing’
Michael Wood (Professor of Public History, University of Manchester, UK), ‘Why the Early Middle Ages Matter’
Selected after double-blind peer review, fifty-five papers were delivered.
Abby Ang (Indiana University, Bloomington, USA), ‘Scholarship and Activism: Mutual Aid in Indiana’
Daniel Anlezark (University of Sydney, Australia), ‘King Alfred the Great and Asia’
Max Ashton (Stanford University, USA), ‘Domestic Ruin in the Exeter Book Weapon Riddles’
George Beckett (Leeds University, UK), ‘Manuscript Memory: Reading Beowulf as “Intratext”’
Tom Birkett (University College Cork, Ireland) ‘On Engliscre spræce? Old English and the Politics of “Intralingual” Translation’
Dieter Bitterli (University of Zurich, Switzerland), ‘Human/Non-Human Interaction in Exeter Book Riddle 62’
Birgitte Breemerkamp (independent scholar), ‘Runes, Riddles, and Rhymes: the Five Rune Poems as Pedagogical Tools’
Samuel Cardwell (University of Toronto, Canada), ‘Where Did “Mission” Come From? Bede and the Idea of Evangelisation in Early Medieval England and Beyond’
Megan Cavell (University of Birmingham, UK) & Jennifer Neville (Royal Holloway, UK), ‘Virtue in the Face of Vice: Group Identity and Boniface’s Riddles’
Marilina Cesario and Elisa Ramazzina (Queen’s University Belfast, Ireland), ‘Fiery Skies and Bloody Waters in Old English Literature’
Giovanni Collamati (Sapienza University of Rome, Italy), ‘Basileus Anglorum or just rex Anglorum?: Looking for the True Meaning of a Greek Title in the Anglo-Saxon Chancery’
Brian Cook (Auburn University, USA), ‘Animal Lessons from Early Medieval England’
Robert DiNapoli (independent scholar), ‘“Well, that’s cast rather a pall over the whole evening, hasn’t it?” The Curious Matter of Death in The Fortunes of Men’
Claudia di Sciacca (University of Udine, Italy), ‘Connecting Sanctity: St Oswald from Seventh-Century Northumbria to Modern Age Italy’
Daniel Donoghue and Ravi Mynampati (Harvard University, USA), ‘Unearthing Style in OE Poetry Using Machine Learning’
Conan Doyle (independent scholar), ‘Classical Medicine in Early Medieval England: the Reception and Vernacular Fortunes of Galen of Pergamon’
Matthew Firth (Flinders University, Australia), ‘Intertextual Archetypes: the Royal Woman as “Wicked Queen”’
Roy Flechner (University College Dublin, Ireland), ‘The Re-Written Bible of Insular Canon Law’
Rachel Fletcher (University of Glasgow, UK), ‘Unusual Applications of Old English in Dictionary Annotations’
Karel Fraaije (University College London, UK), ‘How to Turn a Skin Lump into a Bird: Multilingual Puns in Against a Wen’
Nickolas Gable (University of California, Berkeley, USA), ‘Non-Human Consent: Visual Communication and the Will of Objects in Beowulf’
Anca Garcia (University of South Florida, USA), ‘The Dreamer’s Trajectory: Between Trauma and Sublime Experience in The Dream of the Rood’
Trisha Gupta (New York University, USA), ‘Penetrating, Piercing, and Androgenizing: the Linguistic Defining, Redefining, and Blurring of Gender in the Beowulf Manuscript and the Skylitzes Chronicle’
Brittany Hanlon (University of Cambridge, UK), ‘The Violent Act of reaflac: Old English Accusations of Illegitimate Land Seizure in Tenth-Century Property Disputes’
Millie Horton-Insch (University College London, UK), ‘Early Medieval English Embroideries and Reassessing “The Winchester School”’
Daria Izdebska (Liverpool Hope University, UK), ‘Emotion Vocabularies in the Old English Prose Saints’ Lives: a Corpus-based Investigation of Affect’
Emily Kesling (University of Oslo, Norway), ‘Writing Alfred’s Texts in the Tenth Century’
Emma Knowles (University of Sydney, Australia) ‘Crossing the readan mare: the Old English Exodus and Latin Biblical Poetry’
Kevin R. Kritsch (McNeese State University, USA), ‘The Wood of the Cross: an Apocryphal Motif and its Reception in Early Medieval England and Ireland’
Gesner Las Casas Brito Filho (LABORA-USP, Brazil), ‘The Temple of the King: Notes on Architectural Images in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Junius 11’
Tristan Major (Qatar University, Qatar), ‘Textual Transmission of Frithegod’s Breviloquium vitae beati Wilfridi’
Austin Mason (Carleton College, USA) ‘Transformation by Fire: an Experimental Archaeology Approach to Pottery and Cremation in Early Medieval England’
Francisco J Minaya Gómez and Javier E Díaz Vera (University of Castilla-La Mancha, Spain), ‘Weaving Wondrous Worlds: Aesthetic Emotion Research in Old English Texts’
Neville Mogford (University of Birmingham, UK), ‘A Brutal World: Non-Human Violence in the Bern Riddles’
Martine Mussies (Utrecht University, The Netherlands), ‘Saints, Sisters and Sluts: Male-Female Friendships in the Context of Alfred the Great’
Kauê Junior Neckel (Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Brazil), ‘Beyond gens Anglorum: Bede’s construction of otherness in the Ecclesiastica Historia Gentis Anglorum (731)’
John D. Niles (University of Wisconsin-Madison and University of California, Berkeley, USA), ‘Plants as Combatants in a Cosmic War against Infectious Disease: an Integrative Look at the Nine Herbs Charm’
Elisabeth Okasha (University College Cork, Ireland), ‘Early Medieval Sundials’
Eleni Ponirakis (University of Nottingham, UK), ‘An Englishman, an Irishman, a Frenchman and a Greek – How Greek Neoplatonic Thought Created Intellectual Links between England, Ireland and the Continent’
Andrew Rabin (University of Louisville, USA), ‘Uncertain Judgment: the Ordeal in Hagiography and Law’
Rachel Scoggins (Lander University, USA), ‘Female Isolation in Beowulf and Judith’
Cassandra Schilling (Flinders University, Australia), ‘“At Your Service”: Women as Contributors to the Culture of Exchange in Old English Literature’
Joseph Shack (Harvard University, USA), ‘Time, Eternity, and the Thematic Sequencing of Texts in Cotton Tiberius B. I’
Grant Simpson (University of Göttingen, Germany), ‘Building an Orthographically Indifferent Search Engine for Old English: Lessons from the ECHOE Project’
Tatyana Solomonik-Pankrashova (European Humanities University, Vilnius, Lithuania & Kaunas University of Technology, Lithuania), ‘Christian Hymnody in the Old English ‘Boethius’ Metre 20’
Harriet Soper (Lincoln College, University of Oxford, UK), ‘Forms of Death in the Exeter Book Riddles’
Jake A. Stattel (Trinity College, University of Cambridge, UK), ‘Thegns and Kings: Legal Authority in the Danelaw’
Emily Sun (Harvard University, USA), ‘“And They Wended Home”: Saintly Reorientations and Translations in Ælfric’s Lives of Saints’
Alex Traves (University of Sheffield, UK), ‘Kingship and the Family in Early Medieval England: Competition or Co-operation?’
Carolyn Twomey (St Lawrence University, USA), ‘The Old Minster, Winchester, and its Baptistery’
Paul Vinhage (Cornell University, USA), ‘Alcuin’s Contribution to Aelfric’s Latin/Old English Grammar’
Stefany Wragg (St George’s College, Weybridge, UK), ‘Between Kin and Queen: the Mediatory Position of Early English Queens, 650–850’
Jonathan Wilcox (University of Iowa, USA), ‘Objects that Object, Subjects that Subvert: the Contribution of Heroic Riddles to Questions of Agency’
Abigail Williams (University Nottingham, UK), ‘Quantity and Quality: Examining Representations of Women and “Instruction” in Old English Texts’
Carol Williams (Monash University, Australia), ‘Osbern of Canterbury (d. 1094), Musician and Theorist’
Four project reports were delivered.
Megan Cavell (University of Birmingham, UK), ‘Group Identity and the Early Medieval Riddle Tradition’
Daniel Donoghue (Harvard University, USA), ‘Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library Report’
Martin Foys (University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA), ‘Old English Poetry in Facsimile Report’
Winfried Rudolf (University of Göttingen, Germany), ‘ECHOE – Electronic Corpus of Anonymous Homilies in Old English’
Because of the global pandemic, this conference was organized online, with the organization shared by four institutions across three continents. The various conference organizing committees were composed of the following individuals:
Conference coordinating committee: Lilla Kopár, Thijs Porck and Chelsea Shields-Más
Winchester committee: Carolin Esser-Miles, Eric Lacey, Ryan Lavelle and Katherine Weikert
Montréal committee: Bruce Gilchrist and Christopher Vaccaro
Adelaide committee: Matthew Firth, Cassandra Schilling and Erin Sebo
Leiden committee: Marcelle Cole, Judith Kaup, Elise Louviot and Thijs Porck
Because of the online nature of the conference, no pre-conference workshop was organized. Instead, an online open-mic ‘scholarship slam’ was held with brief presentations about forthcoming publications by Birgitte Breemerkamp, Christina Lee, Francis Leneghan, John D. Niles, Elisabeth Okasha, Thijs Porck and Harriet Soper, as well as short project reports on ‘RuneS’ (Gaby Waxenberger and Kerstin Kazzazi), ‘Alfred the Great and the Emergence of English Prose’ (Francis Leneghan and Amy Faulkner), the Insulae research group (Kauê Junior Neckel), ‘How to Trace Latin Sources of OE Medicine?’ (Conan Doyle), ‘A Thesaurus of Old English and the Digital Platform Evoke’ (Thijs Porck and Sander Stolk), ‘CLASP: A Consolidated Library of Anglo-Saxon Poetry’ (Rachel Burns), ‘The Vocabularium’ (Karel Fraaije), ‘The Oxford English Dictionary’ (Inge Milfull), ‘Spirits and Spirituality’ (Eleni Ponirakis) and ‘Deciphering the Leiden Riddle’ (Marcelle Cole and Thijs Porck).
A full report of the conference can be found on the Society’s website: https://isseme.org/2021/11/22/looking-back-at-isseme-2021-contributions-17-1821-22-june-2021/
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II. General Business Meeting held online on 22 June 2021, President Thijs Porck presiding.
The President reported on behalf of the Executive Committee:
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1. Gratitude was expressed to all those who had assisted in making the Winchester-Montreal-Flinders-Leiden conference such a success.
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2. Special words of gratitude were expressed to Sarah Gilbert, who took care of the technology behind the online conference, and Kristen Carella, for her role in leading the society over the past two years.
The Executive Director Kristen Carella reported on behalf of the Executive Committee:
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1. Name change of the Society: following an election, the Society changed its name from International Society of Anglo-Saxonists to International Society for the Study of Early Medieval England, effective 19 November 2019.
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2. Election of Members of the Advisory Board: effective 1 December 2019, Kristen Carella was appointed Executive Director. A new Advisory Board was elected in April 2020: Judith Kaup, Lilla Kopár, Elise Louviot, Aman Nadhiri, Thijs Porck, Chelsea Shields-Más, Emily Thornbury and Hirokazu Tsurushima. Advisory Board members whose term of office expired in the period 2019–2021 were Helen Foxhall Forbes, Steven Harris, Rory Naismith, Andrew Rabin, Rebecca Stephenson and Francesca Tinti. ISSEME is grateful for their service to the Society.
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3. Election of Officers: effective 10 October 2020, the Advisory Board elected Thijs Porck to the position of President and Chelsea Shields-Más became Vice-President. In December 2020, Lilla Kopár was elected as Treasurer of the Society. In addition, a Climate Committee and Mentoring Scheme was formed to work on improving the professional lives of ISSEME’s members and colleagues in the field. The members of the Climate Committee were Judith Kaup, Elise Louviot, Chelsea Shields-Más and Emily Thornbury.
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4. Membership: the Society is in the process of moving from one membership database to another and, as a result, total membership numbers could not be reported at the Business Meeting.
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5. Finance report: the Society is in good financial shape, supported by income through membership fees. Along with its mandated costs (tax dues, nonprofit registration and accountant fees), ISSEME financially supported the following activities in the report period: website and membership database, Zoom licenses for the online conference and publication prizes. It also made a charitable donation to the Dictionary of Old English in the amount of 2100 USD.
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6. A fully revised constitution will be put to the vote in December 2021.
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7. ISSEME New Voices: Chelsea Shields-Más reported on the sessions at Leeds and Kalamazoo.
Elise Louviot reported on behalf of the Awards Committee:
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1) ISSEME publication prizes 2019–2020:
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(a) Best Book
Chris Fern, Tania Dickinson and Leslie Webster, eds, The Staffordshire Hoard: an Anglo-Saxon Treasure (London, 2019)
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(b) Best First Monograph
Emily Kesling, Medical Texts in Anglo-Saxon Literary Culture (Cambridge, 2020)
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(c) Best Article
Nicole Marafioti, ‘Secular and Ecclesiastical Justice in Late Anglo-Saxon England’, Speculum 94.3 (2019), 774–805, shared with Rory Naismith and Francesca Tinti, ‘The Origins of Peter’s Pence’, English Historical Review 134/568 (2019), 521–552
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(d) Best Article by an Early-Career Researcher
Yuta Uchikawa, ‘Core and Periphery in Anglo-Saxon England: the Mercian Assemblies in the Kingdom of the Anglo-Saxons and the Formation of the English Kingdom’, East Asian Journal of British History (2019)
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(e) Best Edition or Translation
Roy Flechner, ed. and trans., The Hibernensis; Book 1: a Study and Edition; Book 2: Translation, Commentary, and Indexes (Washington, DC, 2019)
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(f) Best Teaching Aid
Megan Cavell, with Matthias Ammon, Neville Mogford and Victoria Symons, ed. and trans., The Riddle Ages: Early Medieval Riddles, Translations and Commentaries (2013; redeveloped 2020), https://theriddleages.com
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III. The Society’s new website is https://isseme.org/ and will feature updates on ISSEME’s activities, including its upcoming biennial conferences.
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