Artifacts

Illuminations of William de Brailes

One very important facet of my Honors Thesis is the individual study of one of the three Bibles involved in the overall project: a manuscript with the shelfmark MS.MR.Frag.63. This is a sixty-eight leaf fragment of an English Bible produced ca. 1240 in Oxford, England in a professional manuscript workshop known for its master, William de Brailes. This project is a testament to the interdisciplinary nature of Medieval Studies; I have sections of this paper which fall under the categories of Art History, Medieval History, Modern American History, Codicology, Paleography, Fragmentology, and so much more. Although the link included below shows some of the most fascinating and fun illuminations included in MS.MR.Frag.63, these are not the only important aspects of the manuscript on which I work. In fact, illumination is one of the portions of manuscript research that I am the least interested in. People often think that manuscript research is all about the text, i.e. what does it say?, but I actually work on the text itself very little. I am interested in using small physical aspects on the manuscript itself and external records to find the individuals who have handled this manuscripts throughout the last 750-plus years, and in doing this, I begin to reconstruct a small piece of history.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/9SmtoxWwQXohrKMg6

Summer 2018 Mid-term Update

I have been immensely enjoying my study abroad in Edinburgh, Scotland these past three weeks. Taking classes in both Scottish History and Museum Curation, I have been learning so much and exploring not only the museums but the monuments and castles of Scotland. Below is a link to a Google Photos album documenting the places I’ve travelled to for my coursework, including the beautiful Rosslyn Chapel, where I am thrilled to be spending a month as an intern starting in about ten days. My Scottish History course is a survey lecture on the past two thousand years, so we are moving in broad strokes. For my Museum Curation course, we travel for each class meeting to a different museum or historic site (today was Glasgow’s own Kelvingrove Museum) and discuss the presentation of the material- is the visitor experience enjoyable and is the museum/site presenting the information in a way that is understandable? This experience has been enlightening and inspiring so far, and I am looking forward to the next six weeks!

https://photos.app.goo.gl/Vo1JzQLM4uvSbVd88

Summer Plans 2018

This summer, I will have the immense pleasure and opportunity to spend two months in Edinburgh, Scotland studying abroad. I will be participating in a Museum Studies program through Arcadia University, comprising of four weeks of courses in Scottish history and Museum Studies, and another four weeks of an internship. I have not yet been placed in an internship, but it will probably have to do with archives, historical homes and estates, or something related to Museum Studies. I am so incredibly excited to not only spend the summer studying something new (that could potentially turn into a career), but also to live in one of my favorite cities.

Myths and Legends

Below I have attached an article by Simon Coupland about the modern myths surrounding Vikings. I love this article because the portrayal of medieval figures and events in the media is something that I am very passionate about, and I feel that this article gives wonderful insight into the way the modern world perceives Vikings. If the author of this article had written after the release of the Vikings TV show, I would be interested to know his take on that show’s portrayal of historical figures such as Ragnar Lothbrok and Rollo, Duke of Normandy. I think that the modern media loves to either over-romanticize the Middle Ages or portray them as completely and utterly horrible, with no in between, and thus I think that this article does a good job of grounding such a stereotypical image of a Viking in historical reality.

http://http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/24427035.pdf