Silences And Sounds

I was in a conversation recently with someone facing one of the dread tasks of academic writing: turning a conference paper into an article.

This year the wild grape took over EVERYTHING, so I decided it was the year to make grape jelly.

A surprisingly familiar complaint In July 1703, the clergy of Bregenz sent a complaint to the city council.

In a world where searching is increasingly awful, I decided to replicate some of the early web patterns: a listing of blog favorites.

Sometimes an archival document tells you about the period when it was written.

I was in Vorarlberg, Austria (on the Bodensee) for research as part of a large summer archival trip – thanks to the Fyfe Faculty Excellence fund.

Once upon a time, a King murdered a Bishop.

Down time matters.

When I opened the prayerbook, it was the gore that drew my attention first, as I mentioned in a previous post.

Fifteenth-century prayer could, we have long known, center its attention on the more graphic elements of the Passion.

The first Monday of a new month is a day of possibilities, a day on which all kinds of streaks can start, a day on which… one wants to wind back the clock and have another couple days of weekend.

I’ve been re-reading Lorraine Daston’s Rules: A Short History of What We Live By (which is brilliant -- you should go read it yourself!)

If you are certain kind of medievalist, the painted wall of long ago holds a special allure.

(Image from Walters Ms.

How did medieval people learn music?

The devout sister reading one of Thalbach’s fancier prayerbooks, OENB 11750, had her choice of several prayers after she received the sacrament at mass.

Once upon a time five days ago, we were all learning a lot about hantavirus.

Every so often, my brain likes to parse out the habits I live by as a set of small working principles.

If you think about it, pandemic music is not always about remembering.

If you think about it, the 2020 pandemic gave us a rare opportunity to watch cultural amnesia in action.

After hours and hours immersed in the Very Long PrayerbookTM from the 16th century that I’ll be speaking on at the Medieval Congress at Kalamazoo this year, I thought a little leavening -- something that WASN’T a description of lines (Curved?

One of the things that shows up again and again in early devotional books is instruction that feels, at first glance, almost excessive.

Every archival journey has its moments of mystery.

In our medievalism discussions this semester, we’ve often asked a deceptively simple question: what does it mean to “use” the medieval past?

One of the small, slightly ridiculous things I sometimes do in the archive is count the lines in decorative initials – the enlarged “drop caps” that begin sections of text.