Hi Everyone,

First, welcome to our new listserv. It’s been a little while coming, but it’s operational now.

Second, join us for another fun reading of Beowulf this coming Monday. Details below and flyer attached. I’ll be having some hard copy flyers go out Thursday too.

Third, I’m listing future events below the announcement for Beowulf as well so you can have that info, though some details are still to be completed.

Monday September 9 @ 5:15 pm:

The UNL Medieval and Renaissance Studies Program invites you to our first event of the year: a pizza-filled reading of Beowulf. Everyone is welcome to attend and participate (or not) in our reading. We will mostly use Seamus Heaney’s translation, but reading from the original is also encouraged!

Where: Dudley Bailey Library, Andrews Hall 2nd Floor *Bring a book (Seamus Heaney translation) if you have one. We’ll have some texts to share and access online as well.* WILL INCLUDE PIZZA! Free!

We will read for about an hour or a little longer, so we won’t be reading the whole thing. Stay as long as you can!

Future Events:

Event from Concordia University which may be of interest: September 17 @ Concordia : Dr. William J. Purkis, 7 p.m in Thom auditorium. "The Greatest Lies”? Devotion to Relics of the Christ in Medieval Latin Christianity"

William J. Purkis is Professor of Medieval History and Head of the School of History and Cultures at the University of Birmingham, UK. He is the author of Crusading Spirituality in the Holy Land and Iberia, c.1095–c.1187 (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2008), co-editor (with MatthewGabriele) of The Charlemagne Legend in Medieval Latin Texts (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2016), and co-editor (with Andrew Jotischky) of A Companion to Medieval Pilgrimage (Amsterdam: Arc Humanities Press, forthcoming 2024). He has also published extensively on aspects of the history of crusading, pilgrimage, and monasticism in the central Middle Ages, and in 2017 he co-curated (with Abigail Cornick) the Holy City, Holy War: Devotion to the Sacred in Crusader Jerusalem exhibition at the Museum of the Order of St. John, London. He is currently completing a book on the material religion of crusaders and other Latin Christians associated with the crusading movement, to be published by Yale University Press

October 29, 2024. MRST UNL presents: Dr. Charles Parker, St. Louis University, 5:30 pm, Bailey Library, Andrews Hall, City Campus UNL “Geographies of Salvation: Sacred Landscapes, Conversion, and Early Modern Religion, 1400-1800”

Dr. Parker is Professor of History at St. Louis University and co-editor of the series: Entanglements, Interactions, Economies in the Early Modern World, Amsterdam University Press . This talk will consider religious encounters and space from a global perspective, and it will reflect on Dr. Parker’s current project on conflicts over space, including sacred space, in early modern missionary encounters. His talk begins with the premise that as religious groups introduced new religion and conversion practices into new regions, they also introduced new relationships to the land that affected a range of issues, like labor, gender norms, ways of being in the world, and power structures, for example.

November 18, 2024. MRST UNL Presents: A screening of “Il Moro” a new short film on the Medicis, and a talk-back with director Daphne Di Cinto. The short movie is based on the real story of Alessandro de' Medici, first Duke of Florence and first man of African descent to become a head of State in Renaissance Europe (trailer: https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://vimeo.com/573594129__;!!PvXuogZ4sRB2p-tU... ). (Co-sponsored with UNO Medieval and Renaissance Studies). Location TBA.

December 2024 MRST UNL Presents: A pre-holiday screening of “The Lion in Winter,” 1968 Academy award-winning film starring Katherine Hepburn, Peter O’Toole, Anthony Hopkins, Timothy Dalton, and Nigel Terry. Historical drama based on the family life and political machinations of Henry II, Eleanor of Equitane, and their children Richard, Geoffrey, and John. (Location TBA)

Cheers! -- Dr. Kelly Stage (she/her) Associate Professor of English, UNL Director of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, UNL