Summer 2005

Professor Patricia Dailey was working in a bookstore in Paris when she began delving into the owner's collection of medieval books. After coming across Hadewijch's work, she knew her life would never be the same.

" I was completely disoriented [by Hadewijch]. It spoke in a completely other way than the philosophy and theology I was used to and I was so taken by its strangeness -- its sophistication and refusal to speak in a kind of systematic fashion, that I vowed that if I ever went to grad school, I would focus on women mystics, primarily Hadewijch. Not a calculated career choice, that's for sure, as she's a Middle Dutch poet and only a few people even read Middle Dutch in the US!"

Dailey came to Columbia University last year. She is one part of a vibrant community of medievalists at Columbia -- a community undergoing a renaissance of its own.

Columbia University has long been renowned for its various offerings in Medieval Studies -- an interdisciplinary study that involves the literature, language, art, music, history and politics of a rich thousand-year period of time between 500 and 1500 CE. Recently, however, medievalism at Columbia has been charged with a new vigor: New professors, an Anglo-Saxon colloquium, a Medieval Guild that meets more often with more members, MARVEL (a medieval and renaissance discussion group), a Medieval Studies University Seminar, conferences, plays and an updated and energized Interdepartmental Committee on Medieval and Renaissance Studies.

Anybody interested in anything medieval at Columbia can start at the committee's website, http://www.columbia.edu/cu/medren. The site lists information on faculty, courses, events, links, and details about the March 25th recruiting colloquium, "Performance in Multiple Dimensions."

Under the auspices of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, the committee also sponsors a graduate certificate in Medieval and Renaissance Studies. Candidates may take a variety of classes in Art History and Archaeology; Classics; East Asian Langauges and Cultures, English and Comparative Literature; French and Romance Philology; Germanic Languages; History; Italian; Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures; Music; Philosophy; Political Science; Religion; Spanish and Portuguese.

" I really think it's important for people to try as much as they can to study beyond the main specialty of their field," said Susan Boynton, Professor of Medieval Music History. "To me the certificate is a feather in your cap. It's a certification that you're not only qualified in your field, but that you've moved outside the range of your study of focus."

" This really is an enlivened moment for Medieval Studies here," said Professor Paul Strohm, who recently came to Columbia from Oxford to teach Medieval English Literature. "In every way we're activating ourselves in ways we haven't before."

One new program initiated by Dailey is the Anglo-Saxon Studies Consortium. The group, which has its own website at www.columbia.edu/cu/assc, is an interuniversity forum for scholars interested in the language, literature and culture of early medieval England. It's based in Columbia , New York University, Princeton, and Rutgers. Members have been invited to be part of an international conference with Clare Lees in England at King's College London to discuss new approaches to Anglo-Saxon studies.

" In England , there's a huge crisis in Anglo-Saxon studies," said Dailey. "I wanted to know how we can allow Anglo-Saxon wstudies to be done in a way that would incorporate contemporary thought. I think Anglo-Saxon studies are right for that kind of dialogue -- how we think of body, gender, sovereignty, kingship, belonging, dwelling, subjectivity. It's so estranged for us because we see premodern as primitive, but its complexity is in fact very rich."

One of the legends of medieval studies at Columbia, English Literature Professor Robert Hanning, has been teaching for 45 years.

" It's a fascinating moment in European civilization that stands behind a lot of institutions and baggage today," said Hanning. "I am fascinated by anything that uses the imagination to recreate a visual history of the past. Professor [Joan] Ferrante and I have increasingly encouraged our students to move outside of their focus. We've been lucky that there's always been large numbers of medieval colleagues within other disciplines to whom we've been able to refer our students."

" The medieval life is so intertwined," said Brenna Mead, a PhD English student, writing her dissertation on literary translation as it reflects and impacts linguistic politics in 12th and 14th-century England as seen through the lens of the works of Chaucer and Marie de France. "You can't separate out elements of culture and life that you can today. Ideas of gender and politics, church and state are so different today. You can't study medieval pop culture without studying commerce or religion."

Brenna helps to run the Medieval Guild, a support group for medievalists at Columbia, which meets once a week. Students can bring their conference papers or chapters of their dissertation to share with members. The Guild also sponsors an annual conference in October with a different theme each year and keynote speakers from around the world.

" Medievalists face special challenges that other students might not have," said Brenna. "We have a thousand years to deal with, and we're required to know a lot of languages. In some ways there's a type of intrigue. Preenlightenment science and religion offer completely different concepts of the world than we're used to. You're able to see things that help frame our current perceptions of the world."

Without the luxury of mass production, all manuscripts had to be written by hand and translated accordingly.

" We feel because we're dealing with fragments of manuscripts we're like architects piecing together parts of a world," said Brenna. "Books were as much about art as they were about literature."

Professor Joan Ferrante is currently compiling a database of medieval women's letters (4th to 13th centuries) which the CCNMTL ( Columbia Center for New Media Teaching and Learning) has put online. You can view this project at: http://db.ccnmtl.columbia.edu/ferrante/index.html.

This database is "for the use of the larger community of scholars or interested people," said Ferrante. "The letters to or from women are there in Latin, with translations and some biographical and historical material."

" I just feel lucky to be a medievalist at Columbia," said Ellen Ketels, a PhD English student who also helps to run the Guild. "A lot of people on the outside have a stereotype of medievalists that I don't think is right. People think of medievalists as people who like to dress up in costume and play with swords. But I like to think of us as more cosmopolitan than the stereotype. We are planning an April Fools Day Chaucer reading, but that's about the dorkiest think we've done this year."

One of the lesser known programs at Columbia, with just under a dozen students, is the Liberal Studies MA in Medieval Studies. The 36-credit interdisciplinary program allows students to take a wide variety of classes in medieval history, philosophy, art, and literature and culminates in a substantial paper. It draws a diverse crowd of students.

" I am enjoying the program very much," said Karen Dubinsky, who has an MBA from Columbia and currently runs a marketing consulting business. "The best thing about it is the fascinating subject matter and the quality of the professors. In the future, I'd like to teach some area of medieval studies."

According to Bob Hanning, the job placement record for PhDs is the best in the country.

" We haven't had a medievalist since 1992 who's finished a PhD at Columbia not get a job," said Hanning. "Unless of course they weren't looking for one."

Many choose to pursue careers as professors, and some have chosen to become archivists or librarians.

" There's been great stability here," said Hanning. "A sense of continuity which I think is important. Columbia has been a lively and important center for medieval studies all through the twentieth century and right into the twenty-first."