ONLINE SEMINAR SERIES: CEMMS visiting speaker seminar series
Centre for Early Modern and Medieval Studies
CEMMS visiting speaker seminar series
Join us for an intellectually stimulating series of research seminars.
Autumn 2020 Online Visiting Speaker Series
Week 2, Monday 5th October, Week 2, 5PM, by Zoom
Dr Shazia Jagot, University of York, 'Divination, Astrolabes, & Arabic Mathematics in the Canterbury Tales & Troilus & Criseyde'
Abstract: Chaucer is a keen mathematician, or so he tells us. His references to arithmetic and algorithms, and his unfinished Treatise on an Astrolabe, all draw on developments in Arabic mathematics: a transmission of learning that he has more awareness of than we might first assume. This paper will open up ways of exploring Chaucer’s use of Arabic mathematics that will take us from ninth-century Baghdad to fourteenth-century Canterbury. But it does so by foregrounding a form of an obscure form of mathematical divination known as geomancy that Chaucer references in 'The Knight’s Tale' and Troilus and Criseyde. I will argue that this form of divination-by-numbers, which is expressly Arabic in nature, can shed light on quintessential Chaucerian ideas of fortune, ‘cas’ or chance, and ekphrasis in these texts. This, I argue allows us to locate an Arabic presence in Chaucer’s poetics and position Arabic as an embedded culture force in Middle English poetry in innovative and exciting directions.
This paper will also delve into ways of challenging, disrupting and decolonizing an approach to sources and analogues that has long been central to the study of late medieval writers but also resonates across a longer history of the study of English literature.
Week 6, Monday 2nd November, 5PM, by Zoom
Work in Progress Flash Presentations - an open session for all CEMMS members and interested parties to present for five minutes on developing work in the early modern or medieval fields.
Week 9, Monday 23rd November, 5PM, by Zoom
Dr Ladan Niayesh, University of Paris, 'Thinking Race & Empire with Russians & Tatars in Early Modern England'
Week 11, Monday 7th December, 5PM, by Zoom
CEMMS Virtual Seasonal Pub Quiz
The Premodern Critical Race Studies Reading Group
will meet, by Zoom, twice during the term - please watch your emails for dates and readings.
To join in with any of the above activities you will need access to Zoom, an online meeting platform you can find out more about here. If you are a University of Sussex student or staff member you will have an account associated with your log in. Rachel Stenner will send out the zoom links for each session in advance. Please email to be added to the mailing list: [email protected]. Undergraduates are especially, and very warmly, welcome.