Medieval: Workshops and Colloquia
One of the most exciting aspects of graduate work in the Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Chicago is the opportunity to participate in the many Workshops sponsored through the Council on Advanced Studies. These workshops typically meet bi-weekly for lectures and discussion of papers, dissertation proposals, chapters and other work in progress presented by graduate students, faculty members and visiting scholars.
Inaugurated in its current form in 1994, the Medieval
Studies Workshop is one of the best-established of these workshops.
Like other workshops, the Medieval Studies Workshop sponsors some
fifteen (or so) speakers each academic year; unlike other
workshops, the Medieval Studies Workshop has also sponsored a number of
conferences ("Crafting History for the Present: Uses of the Past
in the Middle Ages," and "'Genus Regale et Sacerdotale': The
Image of the Bishop Around the Millennium"). The Medieval Studies
Workshop also regularly sponsors sessions at the International Congress
on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo. Participants in the Workshop include
graduate students and faculty in History, Art History, English, Classics,
Music, Divinity, Linguistics, Romance and Germanic languages and literature,
and NELC (Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations).
Medievalists working in Byzantine history also attend the Late Antique and Byzantine Studies Workshop, featuring speakers in history, art history, archaeology, theology, and literary criticism, with participants drawn from other nearby Midwestern universities as well as from Chicago. Medievalists working in Islamic and near Eastern studies also attend the Middle East History and Theory Workshop, co-sponsored by the Center for Middle Eastern Studies which likewise hosts an annual conference.
The University hosts a number of annual seminars, some of which focus on medieval themes. Most recently, the 2001-2002 Sawyer Seminar on Islam drew together scholars from around the world working on medieval and early modern Islam and on interactions between Islam and Christendom in the medieval and early modern world.