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The Medieval Studies community in the Pioneer Valley is a thriving group of scholars and students who meet several times each year, usually at organized events of relevance to the study of the Middle Ages. The Five College Medieval Seminar sponsors several talks each year and Mt. Holyoke College is the host of the annual Ruth Dean Lecture in the fall. Institutions in the Valley have also underwritten single large gatherings, such as UMass' 2010 International Boccaccio Conference where more than 60 medievalists from six countries came together to share their research.

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Spring 2013

Decorem regni protege: Defining the Medieval Queen

A day-long interdisciplinary conference on the fact and fictions of female rulership in the Middle Ages and early modern Europe, featuring papers by young scholars from Mt. Holyoke and Hampshire Colleges. The conference will take place on Tuesday, 30 April, in the Cassani Seminar Room of Shattuck Hall, on the Mt. Holyoke campus.

Opening remarks at 8:45am, followed by panels and a closing reception at 4pm. Free and open to the public. For more information, please contact Prof. Sean Gilsdorf (sgilsdor@mtholyoke.edu).

The Annual Ruth Dean Lecture:

Professor Cynthia J. Brown
(French, University of California at Santa Barbara)

"Celebrating Women in Manuscript and Print:
Notions of Fame and Authority in Early Modern France"

Prof. Brown is the MLA prize-winning author of Poets, Patrons and Printers: Crisis of Authority in Late-Medieval France. She is also the author of The Queen's Library: Image-Making at the Court of Anne of Brittany (1477-1514) and the critical editor of the works of André de la Vigne and Pierre Gringore.