Carnivalesque 105

"I'm not saying it DEFINITELY wasn't meant to be a damn(ed) fuckin Abbot, I just think it's unlikely."

And so begins the September 2014 edition of Carnivalesque!

The above quotation is drawn from a post by Kate Wiles in the post, "But What About the D?" she examines the stray mark in the marginal annotation that caused a stir many months back when it emerged as the first attestation of "fucking" as a derogatory adjective. After a considered discussion of the hand, the stray marks, and the smudging, she concludes that the scribe was only moderately infuriated by the abbot, rather than completely, brimstone-invoking outraged at him.

In further news of insightful analyses of interesting manuscripts, Erik Kwakkel has a new blog! All hail! And Adam Carter McCollum resolves some Old Georgian scribal abbreviation issues in a recent post (that is best viewed in browsers other than Safari).

We began by covering pre-modern swearing. Now on to pre-modern peeing: Don't be put off by the fact that Jennifer Sherman Roberts' post includes the phrase "collected around 60 buckets of human urine, waited for it to ferment to the point of turning black, and then boiled it down into a syrup"; In "Great Globs of Glowing Urine" she reviews the process by which phosphorous was initially isolated. And even though it was done so as a part of the now-discredited science of alchemy, this overview, as well as the embedded video, should still be be enough to convince the cranky physicists of the world that the history of pre- and early-modern science is cool, interesting, and deeply worthwhile.

The Renaissance Mathematicus wrote a two-parter, also broadly in history of science. "Galileo, Foscarini, the Catholic Church, and Heliocentricity in 1615," part 1 and part 2, offers an overview of the collision between science and Scripture at the start of the seventeenth century and the consequences of that explosive interaction.

The new Thor is a woman, which has generated lots of discussion about the representations of women in pre-modern societies and their mythologies in comics, video games, and movies and the extent to which those representations are grounded in history. Into the fray leapt some archaeologists who pronounced that fully a half of Viking warriors were women. Professor Grumpy writes two posts in which he takes an in-depth look at the funerary evidence; in a response, David Perry grapples with the evidence itself as well as the implications of the different modes of interpreting it in his post "Viking Women Warriors and Diversity in Literature."

This is not the only recent thread of online discussion about diversity in medieval studies, medievalism, and representations of the past:

The group blog In the Middle Medieval has been hosting a series of guest posts on various aspects of diversity and the lack thereof in English Medieval Studies and in Medieval Studies and the academy more broadly. In reverse order of their appearance in the series: Jonathan Hsy's post "Intersections: On Annoyances, Mistakes and Possibilities" focuses on two major topics: the place of Asian bodies in MS, and how, as teachers, we can accommodate students with a range of disabilities and differences (without putting those two in the same category) and acknowledge our mistakes along the way. Helen Young's post, "Re-Making the Real Middle Ages" focuses on the neo-medieval fantasy that the Middle Ages was all very, very white and how to introduce medieval racial diversity to a popular and student audience. Dorothy Kim, in her post "Divergent Bodies and Medieval Studies" writes about the slowly shifting demographics of Medieval Studies and the micro- and macroagressions and policing faced by medievalists of color. And finally (or firstly), Michelle Warren writes about "Diversity and #medievaltwitter."

Further discussion of #medievaltwitter can be found in Sjoerd Levelt's post "Twitter at Historical Conferences: How to introduce it to those who are not #twitterstorians themselves." Building upon other recent writing about using Twitter at conferences, he explores some of the issues that tweeting a conference can present (or might seem to present for people who are unfamiliar with the platform) and writes specifically about how he aimed to address these issues at the recent International Conference on the Medieval Chronicle. The post includes some helpful templates.

And finally, from medievalist to neo-medieval: Atlas Obscura now includes a post about growing a neo-Gothic cathedral in the forests of Bergamo, Italy.

Carnivalesque 87

Welcome to the next installment of Carnivalesque, a roundup of the best recent blogging on the ancient and medieval worlds!

The Olympics are now upon us, so let's begin with a few looks back at the original Olympic Games and medieval sport:

Cambridge don Mary Beard casts a classicist's gaze at the ancient Olympics.

And the British Library's medieval manuscripts blog offers images of medieval water sports and a papyrus with winners' names.

There seemed to be a good bit of interest in ancient and medieval canines, real and in name only, in the last few months:

How do you decline "Rover" and conjugate "fetch!" in ancient Greek? Find out in a post on the names of dogs in ancient Greece  over at Wonders and Marvels.

And when is a she-wolf not a she-wolf? When the Dusthoveller is writing about Isabella, the regent of France and the iconography of the Chapel of St. Stephen's at Westminster.

Segueing into further biographies of ancient medieval women:

What's that on your head? Four updates on the head of Nefertiti from Zenobia, Empress of the East.

A saint, sister or slut? You decide after reading a quick biographical rundown of Edith of Wessex, Queen of England and wife of Edward the Confessor that offers lots of interesting details about her life and the changing loyalties of her immediate context.

Sappho, as quoted by the Emperor Julian, an adventure in the later Roman Empire.

The Olympics theme is running deep in this series of links. Medievalists on women in sport.

Medieval scribbling offers further insight into the lives of medieval subjects with doodles and mmmmarginalia and medieval illuminations and scribal practices which can be thought of as being curiously high-tech.

And to end with a total non-sequitur, because medievalists do see summer movies, choose your bat-time and bat-channel with wine in thirteenth-century England and Vandals in tenth-century Europe.

Carnivalesque! (Or, One More Post About Academic Blogging Before the Actual Academic Blogging is Resumed)

I'm hosting Carnivalesque this month. For the uninitiated, Carnivalesuqe is a  blog carnival (that is, a themed collection of posts by a variety of authors) that alternates monthly between early modern and ancient/medieval topics. July is an ancient/medieval month, and the collection of links and some terribly incisive commentary will be posted here on July 28 (or thereabouts).

If you'd like more information, you can find it here.

You can nominate posts, your own or others', on all matters ancient and medieval using this form or by emailing me at sarah (dot) j (dot) pearce (at) gmail (dot) com; if you submit by email, please make sure either to put "blog" or "carnivalesque" in the subject line so your submission gets directed to the right folder.