The Forum for Research in Medieval Studies (FoRMS)

The Forum for Research in Medieval Studies (FoRMS) will host its first event this coming Monday, Sep 15, from 12–1 p.m. in Tisch 1014. We hope this event will be both a place for folks to get together to share their summer readings (sponsored by FoRMS!) and for new members to get to know the group. 

We will kick off FoRMS first academic gathering of the year with Davis' presentation, Dual Converso Prophets and the Improvisation of Faith, and Yueling's presentation, Writing in Sino-Islamic Arts in Ming and Qing China.

Sometime in late January of 1429, two women—Joanna (or Joan) Clifland and her new neighbor, Margery Baxter—engaged in a quiet conversation by Joanna’s fireside, huddled over their needlework. By the time the conversation ended, Margery had implicated herself as not only a heretic, but as a prominent figure enmeshed in a network of heretics and their supporters across the county of Norfolk. Joanna’s deposition is lengthy, but it is only at the end that she mentions, almost offhandedly, that her two servants, Joan Grymle and Agnes Bethom, had been present the entire time—and even directly addressed by Margery herself in her attempts at proselytization. What’s more, when called to testify, the younger of the two girls, Agnes, corrects one aspect of her mistress’s account in court. Sixty years earlier, in the archiepiscopal court of York, Ellen, the wife of Thomas Taliour, recounted before the judge that thirteen years earlier, she had refused the offer of her former mistress to serve as a wet nurse for her child on the grounds that she did not love her former mistress’s son as much as she loved her own child, and would not be willing to sacrifice her child’s life for that of her mistress’s son. 

Although separated by geography and time, these examples pose interesting questions for conventional views of servants and service in late medieval England: the obligatory hierarchy implied between servant and employer; the “life cycle” model that has prevailed of seeing service as one “stop” along the way to maturity and adulthood; and the insulation of servants from the personal matters of those whom they serve. Taking as my time period roughly c. 1300 to 1500, and drawing on a combination of legal and literary sources, I hope to explore the degree to which servants were embedded within the households they served, and how this embedding may disrupt both internal hierarchies among servants and the larger inequalities of social class embodied by the employer/employee relationship.  

Title: Using Medieval Disputations to Resolve Liminal Paradoxes in St. Erkenwald

Abstract: The liminal relationship between body and soul in the anonymous Middle English alliterative poem St. Erkenwald (c. 1400) reveals its reception of and contention with medieval theories of the intellect that attempt to reconcile classical philosophy with Christianity. The poem resembles a quodlibetal question about the limits of hylomorphism in a resurrection. Diverging from previous scholarship that draws theological conclusions, this paper discusses the poem’s philosophical diction and argues that Thomas Aquinas’s (d. 1274) definitions of corruption and identity resolve contradictions that the poem raises as it lingers with intermediate ideas of death and limbo.  

This presentation will explore the etiquette of marriage as seen in a Safavid Shī’ī compendium of hadith, Ḥilyat al-Mottaqīn or The Adornment of the Pious, written by Moḥammad-Bāqir Majlisī, a significant scholar. Published in 1671 in Persian, Majlisī’s book was intended for an everyday audience and describes quotidian customs in great detail. One of the most striking hadith in the chapter on marriage notes prohibited and exhorted times of day for sexual intercourse, and it further reveals medical ideas of generation and ways to ensure the morality of one’s offspring and thus society as a whole. This chapter is a useful case study on the expectations held of marriage, and indicates the specificity of religious instruction for one who wanted to be an exemplary Muslim. By studying this text, we can gain a richer picture of the expectations, ideals, and boundaries of Safavid marriage as well as ideals of reproduction.

Title: Heavenly Precision and Hidden Machines: Qi Yanhuai and the Clockwork Celestial Globes of Late Imperial China

Abstract: This presentation examines the production and pedagogical utility of clockwork celestial globes in late imperial China, focusing on the work of Qi Yanhuai (1774-1841) to recenter these artifacts from marginal curiosities to scientific instruments. While many histories of Chinese science begin with texts, this presentation employs a material culture approach—analyzing extant objects alongside contemporary accounts—to recover historical practices of those who built and used these globes.

These mechanical globes were significant artifacts for their time: they served as platforms for fashioning scholarly identities for both gentry and artisans, acted as essential tools for disseminating new astronomical theories, and provided conceptual models for self-organization and automation. By investigating the material traces and social and cultural contexts surrounding Qi’s instruments, this talk offers two primary interventions. First, it places Chinese clockwork globes within a global comparative framework of "polite" and "practical" astronomy, challenging their status as a horological oddity. Second, it demonstrates that popular movements were more engaged with imperial astronomy than current historiography would suggest. Ultimately, this presentation asserts that celestial globes in China can inform us about the changing nature of astronomical knowledge and time measurement and the social value of technical and scientific practices.

Short Bio: Christopher DeCou is a sixth year doctoral candidate in the History department. His dissertation "The Stars in Their Eyes: Materials for Making Time in the Qing Empire, 1700–1900" explores the culture of timekeeping and instrument making in late imperial China. He completed his undergraduate training in Chinese as well as Medieval and Early Modern Studies at the University of Michigan and did his masters at the University of Chicago.