The Conferences, Lectures, and Visitors Committee introduced its lecture series, the Convivium, in January 2023. The Convivium offers a space to learn about in-progress research and works, showcase faculty, alumni, and community accomplishments, provide an arena for advanced PhD students to present their research topics, and host joint events and lectures by visiting scholars.
The name “convivium,” or banquet, echoes the long-lasting analogy between physical and spiritual nourishment, as well as the rituals traditionally interweaving the two.
A bi-weekly hybrid event, the Convivium typically takes place Fridays at 2:30 pm in person and via Zoom, October through December and January to April each year. A light lunch at 1:00 pm precedes all meetings, which students and faculty are warmly invited to attend. Visit www.medieval.utoronto.ca/events for full details and to RSVP.
2026 / 2027
- September 11 - CJ Jones (University of Notre Dame), Liturgical Books, Religious Bodies: Manuscripts and Monastic Technologies of the Self
- September 25 - Michael Herren (York University / CMS), Hisperica Famina III: Incipit, Finit, Amen?
- October 9 - Elaine Treharne (Stanford University), ‘Everyday’ handwriting in the Middle Ages and Why it Matters
- October 23 - John Schechtman-Marko (CMS PhD Candidate) / Adam Lalonde (CMS PhD Candidate)
- November 6 - Carolyn Meussig
- November 20 - TBA
- December 4 - Bennett Lecture
- January 8 - Stephanie Lahey (Old Books New Science)
- January 22 - Diego Espinoza Bustamante (CMS PhD Candidate) / Royā Einypourfazli (CMS PhD Candidate)
- February 5 - TBA
- March 5 - Old English Colloquium
- March 19 - TBA
- April 2 - Annual Alumni Lecture
- April 9 - Annual O'Donnell Lecture
PAST CONVIVIA
2025 / 2026
- September 12 - Sébastien Rossignol (Memorial University), 'Tenere suam aquam equo modo': Understanding the Urbanized Energy Landscape of Medieval Silesia
- September 26 - Lisa Fagin Davis (Medieval Academy of America), The Materiality of the Voynich Manuscript
- October 24 - Thomas J. Finan (Saint Louis University), Gaelic Ireland: Revising the Narrative with Archaeology and Digital Humanities
- November 7 - David Townsend (English / CMS), Historical Fiction and Its Discontents
- November 21 - CMS PhD Candidate, Jamie St. Clair Collings, Art, architecture, and geometricity in later twelfth- and thirteenth-century Cistercian spiritual practice
- December 5 - Bennett Lecture: Rita Copeland, Politics, Ethics, Style: Why Giles of Rome’s 'De regimine principum'?
- January 9 - David Ungvary (Bard College), Ashes to Ashes, Cover to Cover: Perusing Christian Poetry Books in the Post-Roman West
- January 23 - CMS Student Research Presentations
- Claire Davis (CMS PhD Candidate), The Text(ile) of 'Exodus': Reading Old English Poetry as Craft
- Wynn Martin (CMS PhD Candidate), From Albion to Omega: the Transmission of the Matter of Britain to Scandinavia
- February 6 - Dorothea Kullmann (French / CMS), A pacifist heroic epic? The 12th-century 'Girart de Roussillon' in its political and ideological context(s)
- March 6 - Siobhain Bly Calkin (Carleton University), Writing Passion Relic Agency in Pilgrim Tales of Christian-Muslim Contexts
- April 9 - Annual Alumni Lecture: Faith Wallis (McGill University), How to Think like a Physician: Master Bartholomeus and the Transformations of Medicine in 12th-Century Europe
- April 10 - Annual O'Donnell Lecture - Susan Rankin (University of Cambridge), 'Historiae' for St Katherine: Competitive Liturgical Composition in 11th-Century Normandy?
- April 17 - Toronto Old English Colloquium: Lindy Brady (Edge Hill University), Multilingualism, Old English, and the Viking Age
2024 / 2025
- October 11 - Latin Town Hall
- October 25 - James Ginther (CMS / St. Mike’s), Anselm the Fool: Meditation and the Joy of Unbelief in the Proslogion
- November 8 - James Robson (Harvard), Commenting on Commentaries: The History, Development, and Diversity of the Chinese Commentarial Tradition (hosted with Practices of Commentary)
- November 22 - PhD Candidates 4: Alex Bermúdez Manjarrés (CMS PhD Candidate), Collecting the self. Petrarch’s Letter Collection and Self-Writing of a Late Medieval Intellectual / Martha Culshaw (CMS PhD Candidate), A Reformer’s Dilemma: Colette of Corbie and Clare of Assisi’s Rule of Life
- December 6 - Annual Bennett Lecture: W. John Bennett Distinguished Visiting Scholar, Margot Fassler (Notre Dame), The Poor Clares of Villingen: Music, Liturgy and Art in an Enclosed Convent.
- January 10 - PhD Candidates 5: Jack McCart (CMS PhD Candidate), The Patronage of John de Pulteney (d. 1349): Commerce, Commemoration, and Corruption in Fourteenth-Century London / Matthew Reid (CMS PhD Candidate), A Dialogic Approach to an Old English Boethian Metre
- January 24 - Landon Reitz (Faculty of Arts & Science Postdoctoral Fellow), ‘Wer hât mich guoter ûf getân?’ Imagining the Reader in German Medieval Literature
- February 7 - Chris Nighman (CMS / Wilfrid Laurier), Digital addenda/corrigenda for printed critical editions of Latin texts: Auxiliary resources for the Electronic ‘Manipulus florum’ Project
- March 7 - Jane Tylus (Yale University), CRRS / CMS Joint Lecture, Women as Witnesses: Grieving Mary in Medieval and Early Modern Europe
- March 21 - Rebecca Stephenson (University College, Dublin), The End of the World or merely another Viking raid? Vikings, the Apocalypse, and Byrhtferth’s Scientific Writing around the year 1000
- March 28 - Sarah Bowden (King's College London), Voicing Sin: The Textuality of the Confessional Voice in Twelfth-Century Germany
- April 4 - Annual Alumni Lecture, Anna Wilson (Harvard), The Past and Future of Medieval Studies in Ernest Wilkins' "Letter to Petrarch"
- April 11 - Annual O'Donnell Lecture with JMLAT hosted by Greti Dinkova-Bruun: Stella Panayotova (The Royal Library, Windsor) The Power of Latin: Text-image-concept Amalgams in Illuminated Manuscripts
- April 17 - Old English Colloquium 2025, Janet Ericksen (University of Minnesota-Morris), Reading the Gaps in MS Junius 11 / symposium on the Poems of the Junius Manuscript
2023 / 2024
- September 29 - Voicing Hidden Stories with Alexandra Gillespie (U of T), Suzanne Akbari (IAS, Princeton), Jessica Lockhart (U of T), Rachel Di Cresce (U of T), and Melissa Moreton (IAS, Princeton)
- October 13 - PhD Candidates 2: Gregory Carrier (CMS PhD Candidate): Chronicling Disability in the Life of Herman of Reichenau (1013-1054) / Mark Gibbard (CMS PhD Candidate): Mythological Interpretation in the First Vatican Mythography and Irish saga
- October 27 - Claudio Cataldi (Università Kore di Enna), The Bodley Glossaries in collaboration with the Dictionary of Old English and Practices of Commentary
- December 8 - Annual Bennett Lecture: Pasquale Porro (University of Turin), Do We Really have a Natural Desire to Know God? Philosophy, Theology, and Faith, 1270-1320
- January 12 - Lori Walters (CMS Associated Scholar / Florida State University), Christine de Pizan’s Queen’s Manuscript (BL, Harley 4431) as the High Point of Her Career
- January 26 - Karla Mallette (University of Michigan), Hang Time: Thinking about the future in the medieval Mediterranean
- February 9 - Postdoctoral Fellows 1: Tommaso De Robertis (Marie Sklodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Global Fellow), Towards a new conception of physical space: John Philoponus and his Renaissance readers / Noam Sienna (Faculty of Arts & Science Postdoctoral Fellow), The Mishnah MS A: Rethinking the Beginnings of Jewish Book Culture
- March 1 - Shami Ghosh (CMS), Puzzling over Parzival, or How to be Good in a Bad, Bad World
- March 15 - PhD Candidates 3: Ariana Sider (CMS PhD Candidate), Fixing Senses in Late-Medieval Tournai: The Example of Méhaut de Waudripont / Bard Swallow (CMS PhD Candidate), 'Translatio' of the Untranslatable: writing an English verse form in Latin
- March 22 - Hans-Jochen Schiewer (Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg) Preaching as Literature: (Mendicant) ‘Popularization’ of Theology and the Bible around 1300
- April 5 - Annual Alumni Lecture: Andrew Hicks (Cornell University), Listening Otherwise in Classical Persian Literature
- April 12 - Carmen Cardelle de Hartmann (University of Zurich), Petrus Alfonsi, A 12th-Century Spanish Polymath and Christian Convert: An Intellectual Profile
- April 19 - Old English Colloquium: Tarren Andrews (Yale University), Legacies of Surveillance: Data, the Domesday Book, and the Dawes Act
2022 / 2023
- January 13 - Sebastian Sobecki, (English / CMS) News from the Archive: An Unknown Personal Manuscript by Thomas Hoccleve
- March 10 - PhD Candidates 1: Mary Maschio (CMS PhD Candidate), Weaving Greek Threads into French Romance: Commercial Networks and Technical Language in the 'Roman de Thèbes' (c.1150) and the Roman d’Énéas (c.1160) / Eva Plesnik (CMS PhD Candidate), 'Et in otio de negotiis cogitare’: Imperial leisure and place-making in Petrarch’s Milan correspondence
- March 24 - Cameron Laird (Post-doctoral fellow, CMS / DOE), The Hidden Tradition of Old English Riddles
- April 14 - Annual Alumni Lecture: Gur Zak (Hebrew University of Jerusalem), Humanist Compassions: A Literary History of An Emotion
- April 21 - Annual O'Donnell Lecture: Scott Bruce (Fordham University), Origen Issues: The Reception of a Renegade Greek Theologian in Early Medieval Europe