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I. The nineteenth biennial meeting of the Society took as its general theme ‘Anglo-Saxons and Anglo-Saxonists in the Southwest’. The conference was attended by 121 registrants.
Three keynote lectures were delivered:
John Blair, ‘How Anglo-Saxon was the South-West?’
Adam Miyashiro, ‘Mythmaking the “Anglo-Saxon”: Settler Colonialism, White Supremacy, and Medieval Heritage Politics’
Katherine O’Brien O’Keeffe, ‘Wayward Tongues: Disciplining Speech in the Anglo-Saxon South-West and Elsewhere’
The Tuesday conference luncheon featured a lecture:
Patricia Crown, ‘The Middle Ages in New Mexico: a Perspective from Chaco Canyon’
Fifty papers were read in a combination of plenary and break-out sessions.
Leslie Webster, ‘The “Dowlish Wake” Sculpture of St Peter: New Light on Monastic Art in South-West England in the Later Anglo-Saxon Period’ (read by Carol Neuman de Vegvar)
Rory Naismith, ‘Making Money in the South-West: Minting and Society in Late Anglo-Saxon England’
Alexandra Makin, ‘Southern English Traditions in Early Medieval Embroidery and the Bayeux Tapestry’
Christopher M. Roberts, ‘What does Anglo-Saxon Mean to You?’
Ben Garceau, ‘Anglo-Saxonism, la raza latina, and American Borderlands’
Karen Jolly, ‘Anglo-Saxons on Exhibit’
Paul Vinhage, ‘Bede, Arator, and Rhetorical Allegoresis’
Christopher A. Jones, ‘Diatessaron Studies and Some Anglo-Saxon Harmonies of the Passion Gospels’
Deanna Brooks, ‘Hrabanus Maurus in the West: the De institutione clericorum, Wulfstan’s “Commonplace Book”, and Anglo-Saxon Intellectual Culture in Worcester’
Marjorie Housley, ‘There’s No Place like eðel: Knowledge, Landscape, and Home in the American Southwest and Anglo-Saxon England’
Maggie Heeschen, ‘The Mercian Space of the Beowulf-Poet’
Alexander Bolintineanu, ‘Unmapping Beowulf: Monster Habitats and Digital Platforms’
Leslie Lockett, ‘Was Alfred’s Enchiridion a Source for the Old English Soliloquies?’
Rachel Hanks, ‘Crossing Languages: Grammatical Theory and Semiotics in Alfred’s Preface to the Pastoral Care’
Patrick Naeve, ‘Comparing the Many Worlds of Orosius: the Old English and Arabic Translations of The History against the Pagans’
Rebecca Brackmann, ‘“Ðis bið god læcedom”: Placebo and Meaning Responses in Old English Medicine’
Erin E. Sweany, ‘Ethics and Comparing Indigenous Herbal Medicines’
Jacob Wayne Runner, ‘Orientalism, Medievalism, and Questioning Essentialism in Old English Literature Studies’
Emily Butler, ‘Emma and the Traumas of Conquest: Reading Vulnerability in the Encomium Emmae’
Tarren Andrews, ‘Comparative Colonialism: a Parallel Consideration of the Domesday Book and the Dawes Rolls’
Matthew T. Hussey, ‘Degenerate Uncial in South-West Anglo-Saxon England’
Amy Williams Clark, ‘The Development of the Anglo-Saxon Boundary Clause Revisited’
Kathryn Lowe, ‘A New Single-sheet Diploma of King Edgar’
Marilina Cesario, ‘“Terraemotus magni erunt per loca et pestilentiae et fames terroresque de caelo et signa magna erunt” (Luke 21:11): Representations of eorðstyrung in Old English Literature’
Elisa Ramazzina, ‘The Colours of the Rainbow in Anglo-Saxon Literature’
James Aitcheson, ‘Comets, Eclipses, and other Celestial Phenomena in Late Anglo-Saxon England’
John D. Niles, ‘Poetry South-West: Craft Poets and the New Poetry Flourishing in and around Wessex ca. 940–980’
Mary Kate Hurley, ‘Deserving Time: Calendrical Poetics, Temporality, and the Old English Elegies’
Evelyn Reynolds, ‘Toward the Limits of Imagination: Narrative Movement and Stasis in Soul and Body’
Erica Weaver, ‘Performing Reform’
Max Stevenson, ‘Winchester Tropes and the Poetics of Intercalated Form’
Benjamin A. Saltzman, ‘The Sight of Sin in the Anglo-Saxon Psychomachia Illustrations’
Dana Oswald, ‘Fertility, Childbirth, and the Textual Body of the Anglo-Saxon Woman’
Caroline Batten, ‘Whole, Holy, Healthy: the Poetics and Cultural Context of Metrical Charm 7’
Amanda Kenney, ‘Heavenly Pity: Plague in Bede’s Ecclesiastical History’
Brian O’Camb, ‘John Heywood’s Early Modern Proverb Poetry and the Rhetorical Use of Proverbs in the Exeter Anthology of Old English Verse’
Dabney A. Bankert, ‘The Post-medieval Anglo-Saxon Glossaries in the Bodleian Library, Oxford’
Kees Dekker, ‘The Junius Manuscripts: a Reconstruction of the Original Collection’
Bernard Meehan, ‘Anglo-Saxon England and South-West Ireland: Cultural Interconnections in the Inscription on the Eighth-century Ardagh Chalice’
Joey McMullen, ‘Irish Cosmology in the Court of King Alfred’
John Gallagher, ‘Meteorology and Hydrology in Anglo-Saxon Biblical Exegesis’
Jill Fitzgerald, ‘Polychromatic Cham’
Eduardo Ramos, ‘Racial Essentialism in Cynewulf’s Elene’
Heide Estes, ‘Jews, Gender, and Disability in the Old English Elene’
Gerard Lavin, ‘Competing Rhetorics: Literacy, Latinity, and Realpolitik at the Synod of Nidd’
Lisa Weston, ‘With One Voice, in One Tomb: Memorializing Friendship’
Colleen M. Curran, ‘A New Manuscript of Aldhelm’s Carmen de virginitate’
Aaron J. Kleist, ‘Ælfric’s Chronology and Canon’
Evan Wilson, ‘Ælfric’s Lives of Saints and the Rise of Romance’
Tristan Major, ‘Translating Ælfric in the Seventeenth Century: London, British Library, Harley MS 438’
Seven project reports were delivered.
Stephen Pelle, ‘The Dictionary of Old English’
Claire Breay, ‘Curating “Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms” at the British Library’
Britt Mize, ‘The Beowulf’s Afterlives Bibliographic Database’
Emily Thornbury, ‘Cambridge Elements: the Anglo-Saxon World’
Thomas N. Hall and Grant Leyton Simpson, ‘ECHOE: the Electronic Corpus of Anonymous Homilies in Old English’
Lilla Kopár, ‘Andvari: Portal to the Visual World of Early Medieval Northern Europe’
Christina Lee, ‘AncientBiotics: What Next?’
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II. General Business Meeting held in the Student Union Building, University of New Mexico, 2 August 2019, at 15:45, President Timothy C. Graham presiding.
The President reported on behalf of the Executive Committee:
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1. The twentieth conference of the Society will be held at the University of Nottingham and the University of Leicester in July 2021, hosted by Christina Lee and Philip Shaw. The conference theme will be ‘Borderlands’.
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2. The twenty-first conference will be held at Concordia University, Montreal, 10–14 July 2023, hosted by Stephen Yeager and Manish Sharma. The conference theme will be ‘The Global Far North’.
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3. Gratitude was expressed to all those who had contributed to making the Albuquerque conference such a success.
The Executive Director reported on behalf of the Executive Committee:
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1. Election of Officers and Membership of the Advisory Board: Timothy Graham continues as President until 31 December 2019, when, in accordance with the Society’s constitution, First Vice-President Christina Lee (University of Nottingham) will take over as President for the two-year term from 1 January 2020 to 31 December 2021. Rory Naismith will serve on the board as ex officio member representing Anglo-Saxon England.
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2. Election of new members of the Advisory Board: the term of office expires 31 December 2019 for the following Advisory Board members: Damian Fleming, Andrew Rabin, Francesca Tinti, Carol Neuman de Vegvar and Johanna Kramer. They were thanked for their service. A proposed amendment to the Society’s constitution to introduce more slates of candidates so that the board represents a broader range of demographics (including, for example, geography, discipline, and under-represented scholars) will be put to the vote in the autumn of 2019.
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3. Finance report: From membership dues and related interest, ISAS has cash assets of approximately $38,500, $23,700 of which is retained in mutual funds. Adjusted net assets for 2019–2020 are $21,275.
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4. Membership: there are currently 658 active members (dues-paying or life/honorary), compared to 637 in 2017. There are 545 dues-paying members, compared to 515 in 2017.
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5. Honorary membership of the Society: at the Albuquerque conference, honorary memberships were awarded to Roberta Frank, Simon Keynes, Elisabeth Okasha and Ursula Schaefer.
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6. ISAS volumes: the seventh volume, England, Ireland, and the Insular World: Textual and Material Connections in the Early Middle Ages, based on the 2013 Dublin conference and edited by Mary Clayton, Alice Jorgensen and Juliet Mullins, has been published. The eighth volume, The Daily Lives of the Anglo-Saxons, based on the 2015 Glasgow conference and edited by Carole Biggam, Carole Hough and Daria Izdebska, has been published. Volume 9, Global Perspectives on Anglo-Saxons and Anglo-Saxonisms, based on the 2017 Honolulu conference and edited by Karen Louise Jolly and Britton Brooks, is projected for publication during 2020.
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7. ISAS publication prizes 2017–2019 (selected by the Awards Committee, chaired by Johanna Kramer):
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(a) Best Essay (paper or electronic)
Martha Bayless, ‘The Fuller Brooch and Anglo-Saxon Depictions of Dance’, Anglo-Saxon England 45 (2017): 183–212
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(b) Best First Monograph
Herbert R. Broderick, Moses the Egyptian in the Illustrated Old English Hexateuch (London, British Library Cotton MS Claudius B.iv (Notre Dame, IN, 2017)
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(c) Best Book (single- or co-authored)
Lindy Brady, Writing the Welsh Borderlands in Anglo-Saxon England (Manchester, 2017)
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(d) Best Research Aid (in any medium) [shared]:
Claire Breay and Joanna Story, eds, Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms: Art, Word, War (London, 2018)
Hans Sauer and Elisabeth Kubaschewski, Planting the Seeds of Knowledge: an Inventory of Old English Plant Names (Munich, 2018)
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(e) Best Edition or Translation (in any medium):
Jacob Riyeff, trans., Saint Æthelwold of Winchester: The Old English Rule of Saint Benedict with Related Old English Texts (Collegeville, MN, 2017)
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8. Change of name for the Society: following the conference, the Executive Director will initiate an online referendum to consider whether the Society should change its name. If a majority is in favour of a name change, there will be a further process to decide upon the new name.
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III. The conference was preceded by a two-day pre-conference workshop on the theme ‘Interacting with Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts’. Facilitated by Claire Breay of the British Library, Bernard Meehan of Trinity College Dublin and Timothy Graham of the University of New Mexico, the workshop included twenty-six postgraduate participants from seventeen different universities. Individual sessions of the workshop addressed the topics ‘The Materiality of Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts’, ‘The St. Cuthbert Gospel: a Case Study’, ‘Palaeographical and Codicological Links between the Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms and Ireland’, ‘Manuscript Evidence for the Origins and Development of Early Anglo-Saxon Studies’, ‘Public Engagement with Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts’, ‘Technological Innovations in Manuscript Studies’ (session led by Abigail Robertson of the Getty Research Institute), and ‘Innovations with Imaging: the Book of Kells, the Book of Mulling, the Otho-Corpus Gospels, the Bodmin Gospels’.
The conference opened with a welcome reception in the Spanish Gardens of the Hotel Albuquerque in Albuquerque’s eighteenth-century Old Town. The second day’s sessions were followed by a reception at the University of New Mexico’s celebrated Maxwell Museum of Anthropology. The mid-conference excursion was to Acoma Pueblo, the oldest continuously inhabited site in North America. During the conference, Ann Baum’s quilt based on one of the cross-carpet page designs of the Lindisfarne Gospels was on display (the quilt was previously shown, as yet incomplete, during the Honolulu meeting in 2017). The conference ended with a dinner at Seasons Rotisserie and Grille in Old Town, with a performance by local early music group Música Antigua de Albuquerque.
A group of delegates participated in a two-day post-conference excursion to Santa Fe, Chimayó, Los Alamos, and Bandelier National Monument, the site of ancient Anasazi cliff-dwellings.
Full details of the conference are available on the website of the University of New Mexico’s Institute for Medieval Studies at http://ims.unm.edu/events/isas2019/.Footnote 1
Open access
