For our Spring 2025 meeting, we will meet on May 16, 3:00 – 5:00 PM, in Kaplan 193, and we will read the short Middle English poem Wynnere and Wastoure. This peculiar mid-14th-century alliterative poem (in Middle English, but don’t be discouraged! do your best!) sets two allegorical figures, Winner and Waster, against each other in […]
This workshop invites participants to develop status as a category of analysis for the pre- and early modern world by investigating categories of social practice that were current in the past. Interested participants should be prepared to share a specific, concrete case study from their area of research between the 3rd and 19th centuries (roughly […]
CMRS Center for Early Global Studies is hosting a summer language workshop on Lesser Taught Research Languages. This year it is featuring Tangut. It will take place over five sessions and will be led by Dr. Nikita Kuzmin. Dr. Kuzmin is an independent scholar specializing in Tangut and Silk Road studies. He earned his Ph.D. […]
To mark 650 years since Boccaccio’s death, a conference on Boccaccio’s Other Wor(l)ds invites exploration of Boccaccio’s “Other Words” and “Other Worlds.” Boccaccio’s narratives—not limited to the Decameron—vividly depict cultural and intellectual exchanges, emphasizing human behavior, morality, and societal complexities across the Mediterranean and beyond, including Cathay. In the Decameron, the Levant serves as a crucial geographical and cultural […]
Late Antique eXcursus (LAX) is a new seminar series at UCLA sponsored by the Robert and Dorothy Wellman Chair in Medieval History and by the CMRS Center for Early Global Studies. The series, which hosts a visiting scholar of Late Antiquity or the early Middle Ages each quarter, is designed to support graduate education, make […]
Libraries occupied a central place in the organization and reproduction of pre-modern knowledge cultures. Texts had been assembled in archives of various kinds from the Bronze Age, but most were of only ephemeral interest. Only when writing was deployed to create works intended to have lasting value – as literature, as contributions to science, or […]
The UCLA Medieval Texts Reading Group welcomes undergraduate students, graduate students, staff, and faculty interested in medieval literature. On the third Friday of each term, we meet to discuss a text in English translation from across the Global Middle Ages and consider what it tells us about its cultural and literary context. Each discussion will […]
Renart li rous: The Physiognomy of a Traitor The Roman de Renart, an Old French literary cycle composed between the late-twelfth and mid-thirteenth centuries, tells the tale of the fox, Renart, who wreaks havoc on his society through renardie, or foxish and deceitful misbehavior. The first branch, or section, of the cycle recounts how Renart […]
Participation in the Seminar consists of group discussion of pre-circulated papers, typically drafts of articles, book chapters, or dissertation chapters (with complete apparatus). Two of the papers are ordinarily by emerging scholars (including PhD students) and the other two are by established scholars. We allocate one hour per paper and presenters should anticipate substantial, and […]
This aspirational, historical, and critical book offers a fundamental rethinking of the relationship between humans and the rest of nature — a vital perspective in a moment defined by environmental crisis, increasing authoritarianism, social justice movements, and global calls for systemic change. Drawing upon writings from a wide range of fields, Claire Farago combines a […]