Centre for Medieval Studies
Somewhat Coherent Research About Medieval Studies
Somewhat Coherent Research About Medieval Studies (SCRAMS) is our weekly postgraduate seminar, at which both PhD and MA students are encouraged to contribute papers, provide feedback to peers, and generally relax at the end of the week.
SCRAMS takes place most Fridays during the teaching semesters, and is occasionally used to provide training sessions in writing conference abstracts and delivering papers.
Follow us on Twitter @SCRAMSYORK for details of coming talks
2023-4
Some highlights of SCRAMS 2023-4
Isaac Lawton (CMS PhD)
Enclosure and Authority on the 14th-Century Manor of Wakefield
Robyn Stewart (CMS PhD)
The Nature of the Text: Rhetoric and Ontology in Johannes Scottus Eriugena's Periphyseon (c. 870)
Katy Bennet (History PhD)
By Force or Free Will? Loyalty and the Lords of Duras, c.1345-147
Aaron Sheldon (CMS PhD)
Love and marriage in the Old Norse World: How a Mother's Love Affected a Daughter's Marriage Prospects
Laura Atkinson (History PhD)
Relationships and Registers: The Disputes of Archbishops Wickwane and Romeyn (1279-96)
Lilly Hammen (CMS MA Alum)
Skilled Smiths and Princes of Elves: The Wayland-legend and the First Age of Middle-earth
Josh Coulthard (CMS MA Alum)
Ambiguity and Ways of Comprehending the Other: Gaels, Scots and Marchers in the Lanercost Chronicle
Basil Price (CMS PhD)
Of Giantesses, Greenland, and Trans*ecology in Jökuls þáttr Búasonar
Niamh McAndrew (CMS MA Alum)
“Worshipp thys crosse”: Reconsidering a Fifteenth-Century Manuscript “Birth Girdle”
Tracey Davison (CMS PhD)
Skeuomorphic Textiles: Stitches in Stone
Rosalind Phillips-Solomon (CMS MA)
“Miraculous Aged Virgin” or Quintessential Virgin Martyr? Late Medieval Imaginings of Saint Apollonia
Sarah McKeagney (History PhD)
Black Antonia and Mariana More: The Recovery of Race in Late Medieval Court Records
Gemma Lees (MA Stained Glass Heritage and Convservation)
Clerical and Lay Representational Strategies in the Nave Aisle Windows of York Minster
George Fowles (CMS PhD)
Christian Centres versus Domestic Destroyers: Spatial Aspects of the Undead in the Íslendingasögur
Hannah Armstrong (English PhD)
A Sceptical Pilgrim: A Medievalist's Account(s) of her Time in Iceland
Taylor Gray (CMS MA Alum)
Tumultuous Seas and Turbulent Minds: Surviving Exile in Andreas and Beyond
Katie Vernon (CMS PhD)
A Workshop on Arms and Armour in Modern Pop Culture
Ellen Gallimore (English PhD)
John Mitchell Kemble on the Synod of Whitby: Secular Historiography and Nineteenth-Century Medievalism
Josie Collings (English PhD)
The Frightened Fisherman: Truth and Illusion in Thor’s Fishing Trip
Maggie Pavleszek (English PhD)
“Arrayed in olden wise”: Norse Medievalism and the Crisis of Cremation in 19th-Century Britain
2022-3
Some highlights of SCRAMS 2022-3
Sarah McKeagney (History PhD)
Masculine Misgovernance: Cross-dressing and boundary-crossing in Late Medieval Cambridgeshire
Brittany Orton (History PhD)
Beyond the Freodowebbe: Examining the affinal networks of seventh-century Mercia and Northumbria
Robyn Stewart (CMS PhD)
Human Reason and Divine Ignorance: The Limits of Knowledge in Johannes Scottus Eriugena's Periphyseon (c. 870)
Bianca Chiacchia (CMS MA Alum)
"They led him out of the town and sent him to hell with his head smitten off": An Analysis and Reassessment of the Ridgeway Hill Mass Grave
Kirsten Ogilby (Visiting PhD)
Religious Medievalism in Frances Burney's "Edwy and Elgiva"
Sara Moure (Visiting PhD)
Flames and Tears around a Magnificent Babylon. The Accursed Biblical City in the Castilian Visual Culture around 1200
Amelie Paulsen (CMS MA Alum)
Custom or Exception – Some Thoughts on the Succession of William Rufus to the English Throne in 1087
Katy Bennett (History PhD)
“Treason and wickedness towards the king”: The Trial and Execution of Guillaume-Sans de Pommiers, April 1377
Isobel Staton (History PhD)
Writing the Manor: Manorial Officers and the Co-Production of Knowledge
Hannah Armstrong (English PhD)
Beyond ‘Lost’ White Communities: Norse medievalisms and Kalaallit Nunaat (Greenland)
Katerina Perdiki (History of Art PhD)
Macrobius in Byzantium: Examinig the Case of the World Map
Gemma Lees (MA Stained Glass Heritage and Conservation)
Conserving Intervention: the Conservational Significance of the East Window of the Stapleton Chantry, North Moreton
Basil Price (CMS PhD)
Queer Indigenous Relationality and Old Norse Studies
Cathy Jamieson (CMS MA Alum)
“Why would anyone want to finally solve it?”: Puzzles, Pleasures and Polyfocalism in the Margins of York Minster Chapter House (completed c.1296)
Ellen Gallimore (English PhD)
Ambiguity, Infidelity, and the Doctrine of the Eucharist: Ælfric’s Sermo de Sacrificio in Die Pascae and Allegations of Norman Fabrication
Aaron Sheldon (CMS PhD)
The Old Norse Family: Talking About Feelings
Josh Coulthard (CMS MA)
The End of the World or a New Beginning: Negotiating New Realities in Post-Edwardian North Wales
Lily Hammen (CMS MA)
The Voice of the Narrator: The Adaptation of Beowulf’s Religious Ambiguity in D.C. Comic’s Beowulf: Dragon-Slayer
Ed Van Der Molen (History PhD (University of Nottingham)
Hagiographic Hegemony? Narrative, Rhetoric and Agency in Late Medieval Canonisation Depositions
Laura Atkinson (History PhD)
Disputes and Dossiers: Registration under Archbishops Wickwane and Romeyn (1279-96)
Isaac Lawton (CMS PhD)
Manorial Officers, Peasant Oligarchs, and Social Control in 14th-Century Wakefield
Marisa Michaud (CMS PhD)
Creating a Popular Saint for a Noble Laity: Approaching Patronage and Production in the Vie de Colette
Nura Hassan (Archaeology PhD)
Exploration of Migration, Religion, and the Substance Economy of Shanga 8th-16th Centuries
Shrek Medievalism
- Ellen Gallimore: "Welcome to Heorot, such a perfect town": Shrek as Grendel Victorious
- Brittany Orton: "For the love of a son": The Fairy Godmother as Medieval Stepmother
- Gemma Lees: The Perfection of Lord Farquaad: The Stained Glass of Duloc Cathedral
- Robyn Stewart: "Ogres are like onions": Approaches the Self and Subjectivity in Medieval Studies
- Kirsten Ogilby: “The years start coming and they don’t stop coming”: Comedic Temporality and Shrek
2021-22
Some highlights of SCRAMS 2021-22
“I Will Go Nowhere”: [No] Future in the Political Landscapes of Njáls Saga and Grettis Saga
Jordan Booker (History of Art PhD)
Working with Museums: Creating Accessible Object Labels
Brittany Orton (History PhD)
Early West Saxon Queenship: A Recovery of Matrilineal Politics in the Eighth and Ninth Centuries
Bianca Chiacchia (CMS MA)
Women in medieval Iceland and England
Madeline Fox (Medieval Literatures & Languages MA)
Optical Theory and Feminine Auctoritas within Chaucer's the Tale of Melibee
Ellen Gallimore (English PhD)
"The great distinctive feature of modern Romanism:" Henry Soames, Ælfric, and Transubstantiation
Katie Vernon (CMS PhD)
"Icham to meche te be cristine!": how giants' race and religion is expressed through their arms and armour
Laura Green (History PhD)
Archbishop Wickwane’s Register: Experiment and Enterprise
Hannah Armstrong (English PhD)
The Saga Landscapes of Sabine Baring-Gould
Aaron Sheldon (CMS PhD)
Keeping in Contact: Mæðgur Relationships in Medieval Iceland
Cathy Jamieson (CMS MA)
Animal Bodies, Sacred Space: interpreting the 14th-century oak carvings in Winchester Cathedral choir through an ecocritical lens
Quantifying Trust: Debt Litigation in London's church courts in the late fifteenth century
Marisa Michaud (CMS PhD)
Some thoughts on text, image, & patronage in an illuminated copy of 'la vie de sainte Colette'
Basil Price (CMS PhD)
Sufficient Tragedy: Masculinity as Cruel Optimism in Beowulf
The Enduring Bonds of Motherhood: Margaret Paston and her Sons
Alicia Maddalena (English PhD)
Some thoughts on the Distribution of Wisdom Words in the Old Norse Poetic Corpus
Maps in the Mind: Romances of the North Atlantic and Coastal Memory
2020-21
Some highlights of SCRAMS 2020-21
Warrior Cleric as Romance Hero: arms-bearing by late medieval English clergymen
Shalfleet, Isle of Wight- Minster Church or Lordly Tower-Nave?
Conscription and Gatekeeping: The Middle English Lyric’s Formal Management of Communal Christian Identities
Thomas More’s Utopia and 'offensive' work in London’s lower Courts c.1470
Mothers, Daughters, and Fosterers: Old Norse Love in the Family
Aqua Vitae: Examining how the water of life became Scotch whisky
The Bed of Grief': Fathers, Sons, and Love in Old Norse Sagas'
Stereotyping the Scythians - or, How to Read Medieval Maps Like a Pedant
Kirstin Barnard (History PhD)
Tensions Between Generosity and Avarice in Small-Scale Communities in Later Medieval England
Karli Grazman (CMS PhD)
'Why etethe he yren?': Bits, Horsemanship, and Lordship in Middle English Romance
Becca Drake (English and Related Literature, PhD)
Writing the Museum: Poetry and the Hull Maritime Project
Stephen Huws (Trinity College Dublin, CMS MA Alum)
Mercy on Stained Glass
Stephanie Skenyon (University of Miami, CMS MA alum)
A Vulnerable Saint in an Inviolable Shrine: St. Æthelthryth, community vulnerability, and the heroics of virginity in the Liber Eliensis
Lauren Stokeld (CMS PhD)
Ditch, Please! Burh, Iron Age Hillforts and Anglo-Saxon Charter Bounds
Alicia Maddalena (English PhD)
Fróðr’s Place in the Old Norse Corpus
Alana Minerva (CMS)
Reauralising Romance: Using Experimental Performance to Investigate Middle English Romance
2019-20
Some highlights of SCRAMS 2019-20
On May 15th, we hosted visiting professor, Shadreck Chirikure, from Oxford's School of Archaeology who spoke about 'Medieval African Urbanisms'. This presentation was jointly organized with CMS and the Department of Archaeology. The lecture was attended by 62 participants from all over the globe. Then on May 22nd, Lane Baker, a postgraduate student at Stanford University in the US contributed a talk, further internationalising our reach and continuing our aim to bring medievalists together at this time.
Jinming Yi (History PhD)
'Authority in levying: financial administration and financial records of York, 1272-1371
Tim Wingard (CMS PhD)
Queering the (Medieval) Non-Human: the Role of the Animal in the Late Medieval Science of Sexuality
Lena Strid (Historical Archaeology PhD, Lund)
Supply and demand in Medieval Scandinavia
Catherine-Rose Hailstone (History PhD)
Place and Space: Gregory of Tours, Materiality, and the Fear of God
Tim Wingard (CMS PhD)
'How do monsters of another species arise?': Nicole Oresme's human-animal hybrids and species panic in late medieval science
Emmie-Rose Price-Goodfellow (CMS PhD)
How do you solve a problem like Rainald? The rewriting of a shared past in the Cistercian exempla collections?'
Sarah McKeagney (History MA alumna)
Female Work in London's Wardmote Records, 1422-3
Karli Grazman (CMS PhD)
Lybeaus Desconus and the Horsey Nature of middle English romances
Becca R. L. Drake (English Lit PhD)
Medieval North Atlantic Navigation
Brittany Orton (History PhD)
Queens of the Pendan Line: Evidence for Female Roles in the Courts
Emma Nuding (CMS PhD)
St Pega reimagined for the thirteenth century
Tim Wingard (CMS PhD)
Giants and Rape in Middle English Romance
Sharon Choe (CECS PhD)
Deformed Bodies and Old Norse Origins in William Blake
Prof. Shadreck Chirikure (Cape Town/Oxford)
Medieval African Urbanism
Lane Baker (Stanford)
Medieval Noise Regulation
Kirstin Barnard (History PhD)
Social Boundaries in Fifteenth-Century London
Catherine-Rose Hailstone (History PhD)
Theology and Cosmology in Late Antique Gaul
Dr Eric Wolever (CMS PhD alumnus)
Post-Doc Projects and Applications
2018-19
Some highlights of SCRAMS 2018-19
Jordan Cook (HoA PhD)
Setting the Scene in the Bouts Workshop "Saint Luke Drawing the Virgin"
Lauren Stokeld (CMS PhD)
Historical Semantics in the Digital Age
Dinah Wouters, (visiting PhD Fellow)
A prophet’s take on Allegory: Hildegard of Bingen’s visionary allegory and exegesis as a literary and cultural form
Giacomo Valeri (English PhD)
Ghosts and Purgatory in the Middle English Gast of Gy
Catherine-Rose Hailstone (History PhD)
Place, Space and Emotion in the buildings and architecture of Gregory, Bishop of Tours
Dr Harriet Evans Tang (CMS PhD alumna)
“Sheep on a (warm?) turf roof” Why place matters in Old Norse-Icelandic texts
Becca Searby (CMS PhD)
Reading Jewish Court Activity in the ‘Room Where It Happened’
Alicia Maddalena (English PhD)
A Word for the Wise: Examining Horskr in the Old Norse Corpus
Eric Wolever (CMS PhD)
Temporal Progression in the Twelfth Century, A Westward Translatio?
Tim Wingard (CMS PhD)
Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth: Nature, sex, and heteronormativity in Middle English Flood narratives
Rob Grout (CMS PhD)
The medieval child in modern social theory: Is childhood a ‘social construct’?
Jinming Yi (History PhD)
Royal power and the legitimation of civic authority: defining a civic register in the fourteenth-century York
Becca Drake (English PhD)
The wind and the willow: heroic affinity with coastal maritime environments in medieval romance and saga literature
Ross McIntire (CMS PhD)
Marking Cuthbert's Footsteps: Memorialization and Material Investment in Post-Conquest Northumbria
Kirstin Barnard (History PhD)
Nuisance Neighbours and the Urban Landscape in Late Medieval London
Dr John Lee (CMS Research Associate)
Careers in Local Government
Catherine-Rose Hailstone (History PhD)
Translation and Language: a help and hindrance in historical thinking
Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow (CMS PhD)
“Following in the Footprints of the Ancient Fathers”: Thinking about the Past in Cistercian Exempla Collections
Dr Anya Burgon and Dr Divna Manolova (CML Post-Docs)
Navigating Post-Docs: Applications and Expectations
Jordan Cook (HoA PhD)
The Spiritual Significance of Tangibility in Dieric Bouts's Triptych of the Life of the Virgin
2017-18
Some highlights of SCRAMS 2017-18
Eric Wolever (CMS PhD)
Three Continents or Four Corners: Twelfth Century Geography between Tradition and Innovation
Dr James Harland (History PhD)
Rethinking Ethnicity in Britain During the "Migration Period'
Catherine-Rose Hailstone (History PhD)
A Discussion on the Methodological Approaches to Historical Emotions: Past, Present and Future
Dr Katherine Weikert (Winchester; York Med Arch alumnus)
Men on the Watch: The Taisson Family and Motte d'Olivet, 1040s-1050s
Joshua Ravenhill (History PhD)
‘Sticks and stones may break my bones’: Ethnic slander towards immigrants in late medieval England
Jordan Cook (History of Art PhD)
Performative Pages, Wretched Readers: Reading Christ’s Body in British Library MS. Egerton 1821
Becca Drake (CMS MA, now English PhD)
Consuming Fish: Nature, the Human, and the Supernatural in the Saga of Ketil Salmon
Luke Giraudet (CMS PhD)
Between Rumour and Reality: Writing Truth in Fifteenth-Century Parisian Journals
Tim Wingard (CMS PhD)
“Giants, Rape, and Abduction in Middle English Romance”
Giacomo Valeri (English PhD)
Performing Grief in Pearl: Experimenting with Language of Christian Mourning
Dr Harriet Jean Evans (CMS PhD)
The Animal Effect: translating the emotions of animals in Old Norse literature
Basil Price (CMS MA)
Navigating the Ins and Outs of an Outlaw: Grettis Saga and the Boundaries of Heroism
Kirstin Barnard (CMS MA, now History PhD)
Disputing Monks: Social Exclusion and the Memorialisation of Conflict at Bardney Abbey
Abi Bleach (CMS MA)
Telling It Slant: Rethinking Early Medieval Cultural Geography
Dr Tine Scheijnen (visiting postdoctoral researcher, University of Ghent)
Le Bone Romance? A medieval quest with classical roots