Popular Culture and the Deep Past 2022 - The Experimental Archaeology of Medieval and Renaissance Food
**No registration for any in-person events outside of cooking demos (Special Sessions 4-5) is required, though encouraged, and all events are free and open to the public. There will be a maximum 36 participants permitted per cooking demo; please register via the in-person registration form below. Registration will be required for Zoom livestream access.**
In-person registration link for Friday, February 11 - Saturday, February 12: https://cmrs.osu.edu/events/pcdp-2022-experimental-archaeology-medieval-renaissance-food/registration-form.
Zoom registration link for Friday - Paper Sessions 1-4 & Special Session 1 simulcast: https://osu.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJYldO-ppzorE9PL2loWaTH9dd9cNuPgS-Ce
Zoom registration link for Saturday - Paper Sessions 5-7 simulcast: https://osu.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJ0tcO6grD8jGtHAix7UuaQsGh7UoRp3cB5l
Zoom registration link for Saturday - Special Sessions 2-5 simulcast: https://osu.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJwsdO6prTMtGdxlsHljxs57Ikg9AVPRhD5M
February 11-12, 2022
Ohio Union & Zoom - The Ohio State University
On February 11-12, 2022, the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies will host its biennial celebration of Popular Culture and the Deep Past (PCDP) at the Ohio State University, with ‘The Experimental Archaeology of Medieval and Renaissance Food.’ As in past years, this event will feature a scholarly conference (with papers, round tables, and other academic events) nested within a Renaissance-faire-like carnival (featuring exhibits, gaming, contests, and activities of all kinds).
Over the last decade or so, scholar-cooks, TV chefs, and research teams like the Folger’s ‘Before Farm to Table’ initiative have been recreating Medieval and Renaissance dishes with the help of historic recipes, ingredients, tools, and techniques. The challenges are many--making a chicken supper from a Renaissance cookery book will teach us little if we use a factory-raised bird full of antibiotics—but so too are the insights and pleasures to be gained. We stand to learn much about these cultures and the lived, embodied experiences of their members by actively preparing and consuming their own food and drink.
As an exploration of historic culinary arts and cuisine, this PCDP will feature several scholar-cooks who will prepare various concoctions in the Ohio Union’s Instructional Kitchen. To complement these lecture-demonstrations we seek papers from faculty, graduate students, and others that address any and all aspects of Medieval and Renaissance food cultures. Topics might include recipe books as literary texts, cooking and eating as social practices, and the pleasures and perils of recreating historic dishes. Speakers may also propose small-scale cooking demonstrations.
Schedule
(All times EST)
Friday, February 11
8:45 – 10:20 a.m. – Welcome and opening remarks (Chris Highley – Director, Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, The Ohio State University); Session 1 – Zoom
Moderator: Chris Highley
Yukie Baba (Hitotsubashi University), “The Star Chamber Dinner Account during the Easter Term in 1636”
Tien-yi Chao (National Taiwan University), “’Treason’s in a December-pie’: Mince Pies in England, 1610-1660”
Jaweria Tahir (University of Karachi), “Exploring the Popularity of Pasta and Spaghetti during the Renaissance”
10:20 – 10:30 a.m. – Break
10:30 a.m. – 12:10 p.m. – Session 2 – Zoom
Moderator: Chris Highley
Stuart Peachey (Historical Management Associates, Ltd.), “The Grayhill Project”
Rebekah Pratt-Sturges (Northern Arizona University), “Flesh Rendered on Gilded Pages: Representations of Meat in Fourteenth-Century Hunting Manuals”
Daniel Serra (Memento Past Food), “Reconstructing a Cuisine with No Written Recipes: Working with the Tastes of Early Medieval Scandinavia (Viking Age)”
Andrea Marti Serrano (University of Valencia), "Genestada: a Project of Recreation and Dissemination of the Food in the Late Middle Ages in the Crown of Aragon"
12:10 – 12:30 p.m. – Break
12:30 – 1:50 p.m. – Session 3 – Zoom
Moderator: Leslie Lockett (Associate Director, Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, The Ohio State University)
Richard Fitch (Historic Royal Palaces), “Roasting the Renaissance: Experiments with Historic Cooking for Visitors to a Tudor Royal Kitchen”
Sarah Gordon (Utah State University), “Mixing Ingredients, Mixing Genres: The Poetics of Cooking in Le Ménagier de Paris, 1393”
Brendan O’Neill and Aidan O’Sullivan (University College Dublin), “Experimental Archaeology and Investigating Food and Cooking in Early Medieval Ireland, 400-800 CE”
1:50 – 2:00 p.m. – Break
2:00 – 3:20 p.m. – Session 4 – Zoom
Moderator: Chris Highley
Mary M. Alcaro (Rutgers University), “’A Kernel of Comfort for the Soul’: Julian of Norwich, William Langland, and the Significance of Nut Metaphors for Middle English Vernacular Contemplation”
William Rubel (Independent Scholar), “The Bread Recipes of ‘TT’ and Sir Hugh Plat”
Joshua Michael (The Ohio State University), “Food for the Body, the Soul, and the Visionary Mind: The Social – and Perhaps Culinary – Contexts of Saint Edward’s Miracles”
7:00 – 8:30 p.m. - Special Session 1 – 180 Hagerty Hall
Introduction and Moderator: Leslie Lockett
Claire Simmons (The Ohio State University), “Foods of Lent in the 19th-century Medievalist Imagining”
Saturday, February 12
**Special Sessions 3-4 will be simulcast in the Milestones Room, Ohio Union, for our in-person guests to view. Unfortunately we will be unable to host the originally-planned hands-on cooking demo for Special Session 4, and Special Session 5 has been canceled.**
9:00 – 10:30 a.m. – Special Session 2 – Instructional Kitchen, Ohio Union (+ Zoom livestream)
Introduction and Moderator: Chris Highley
Scott Stull (SUNY Cortland), “Confronting Stereotypes about Late Medieval Food: Elegant Dishes from the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries”
10:10 – 11:00 a.m. – Session 5 – Maudine Cow Room, Ohio Union (+ Zoom livestream)
Moderator: Tamara Mahadin (Ph.D. candidate, Department of English, The Ohio State University)
Sarah-Grace Heller (The Ohio State University), “Aphrodisiac Salads”
Jasmine Beaulieu and Hannah Curtis (University of Akron), “Early Modern Recipe Transcription: The ‘Each One Teach One’ Method”
11:15 a.m. – 12:15 p.m. – Special Session 3 – Zoom (+ simulcast in Milestones Room)
Introduction and Moderator: Leslie Lockett
Sarah Peters Kernan (Independent Scholar), “Tasting and Knowing: The Kitchen as a Space for Historical Inquiry”
12:30 – 1:20 p.m. – Session 6 – Maudine Cow Room, Ohio Union (+ Zoom livestream)
Moderator: Abby Greff (Ph.D. candidate, Department of English, OSU)
Laura Angotti (Independent Scholar), “Medieval Mead: Recipes from Wellcome MS.MSL.136 as an Exemplar”
Channon Mondoux (Independent Scholar), “The Ancient Art of Baklava: Peeling Back the Layers”
1:30 – 3:00 p.m. – Special Session 4 – Zoom (+ simulcast in Milestones Room)
Introduction and Moderator: Rick Livingston (Associate Director, Humanities Collaboratory, The Ohio State University)
Marissa Nicosia (Penn State University), “Learning ‘How to Make Knotts’: Shaping Sweets and Researching a 1677 English Recipe Manuscript with Undergraduate Students”
3:00 – 4:20 p.m. – Session 7 – Maudine Cow Room, Ohio Union (+ Zoom livestream)
Moderator: Professor Jonathan Combs-Schilling (Department of French and Italian, OSU)
George Carroll and Miranda Hvinden (Independent Scholars), “Recreation and Use of Chiseldon and Oseberg Iron Age Cauldrons”
Luc Guglielmi (Kennesaw State University), “Linking Romans Carnaval to Louisiana Southwest Mardi Gras Celebration: From Gumbo to King Cake”
Allie Terry-Fritsch (Bowling Green State University), “Iconoclastic Feasting: Food Metaimages at the Renaissance Banquet Table and Liturgical Altar in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe”
Saturday Exhibitions
Creative Arts Room, Ohio Union
9:30 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.
- Calligraphy Guild of Columbus (https://calligraphyguildofcolumbus.org )
The Calligraphy Guild of Columbus is a nonprofit educational association which was founded in 1981. Its mission is to foster the appreciation and practice of calligraphy and book arts through the study of its historical and contemporary applications. Please join them on-site to view their exhibit and watch as they practice their scripts live! Requests for scripted names are happily accepted, and, time permitting, they may even have some copies of the day’s Special Session recipes on hand!
- Sharon Mech - Fiber Arts
Sharon Mech of Columbus, Ohio, is an expert in historical and contemporary textile arts. She will be bringing her historic, pedal-powered spinning wheel back to PCDP so she can demonstrate pre-industrial techniques for turning wool into yarn. In addition to her day job in software sales, Sharon has recently channeled her skills into the production of countless cloth masks for protection against Covid. Stop by her station in the Creative Arts Room, watch her operate her spinning wheel, and ask her some questions about the many stages of premodern textile production.
- Medieval and Renaissance Book Fair
If you’re interested in Medieval / Renaissance / Early Modern literature, history, culture, art, philosophy, stop by, say hi to members of our Medieval and Renaissance Graduate Student Association who will be staffing our Book Fair tables, and look through our collection of texts available free of charge to interested attendees. (Donations are always welcome!)
Lower Level Lounge, Ohio Union
9:30 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. (and online throughout the event Fri. & Sat.)
EMROC Transcribe-a-thon
CMRS is pleased to host the Early Modern Recipes Online Collective, which invites anyone interested to help transcribe recipes from the manuscript of a seventeenth-century English gentlewoman. Each transcriber will need to create an account, but that’s simply a matter of entering an email and name. Guidance for new transcribers could be found at: https://emroc.hypotheses.org/spring-2022-transcribathon-grace-carterets-recipes.
EMROC Steering Committee member Hillary Nunn, Professor of English at the University of Akron, will be on site in the Union Saturday to answer any questions about the project and facilitate the transcription process.
9:30 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.
Coloring Station
We provide crayons and early modern woodcut images of food and agriculture. Come coloring the pages and learning more about early modern foods.
Dance Room 1, Ohio Union
12:00 – 12:30 p.m. and 4:30 – 5:00 p.m.
The Confused Greenies of Players' Patchwork Theatre Company present
The Horrible and Terrifying Deeds and Words of Niphleseth, Queen of the Wild Island of Chitterlingonian Sausages
Misinterpreting François Rabelais's 16th Century satirical novels The Horrible and Terrifying Deeds and Words of the Very Renowned Pantagruel King of the Dipsodes, Son of the Great Giant Gargantua as factual travelogues, the commedia dell'arte characters of bombastic Dottore Gratiano, braggart Capitano Testosteroné, scheming Brighella, and foolish Arlecchino are on an adventure to search for the infamous Chitterlings of Wild Island! But will they encounter these strange people made of sausage or is it all an elaborate con? Discover the mysterious contents crammed with laughs and stuffed into our newest farce, Niphleseth, Queen of the Chitterlings!
(Check out their previous performances @ https://www.youtube.com/user/TheConfusedGreenies/videos )
Dance Room 2, Ohio Union
10:30 – 11:00 a.m. and 3:00 – 3:30 p.m.
The Order of the Cardinal (https://www.facebook.com/theohiostatedagclub/ )
The Order of the Cardinal introduces and trains individuals in the athletic role-playing hobby that is Foam Fighting, a nationalized rule set of foam fighting and light role-playing. It provides an opportunity to safely practice martial-arts like sword fighting and medieval reenactment with foam weapons.
Additional info on demos TBA!
180 Hagerty Hall (along College Road, across from the Ohio Union)
1:00 – 2:15 p.m.
Joe Dorrian – Ohio School of Falconry (https://www.ohioschooloffalconry.com )
The Ohio School of Falconry was founded in 2014 with the goal of making the falconry experience accessible to people from all walks of life. Located at historic Camp Mary Orton in the scenic Olentangy Highbanks area of Columbus, Ohio, the school is licensed at both the state and federal levels to provide a variety of hands-on falconry programming. Join director Joe Dorrian for an educational presentation on the history of falconry, followed by a live demo out on the OSU Oval! (weather permitting)
Invited Speakers
Sarah Peters Kernan is an independent culinary historian and Scholar-in-Residence at the Newberry Library (Chicago, IL). While earning her PhD in History at The Ohio State University, she discovered that she not only loves eating a wide range of foods, but also thoroughly enjoys researching historical food topics. Her research cumulated in a dissertation based on the physical examination of manuscript and early print cookeries held in archives throughout the United States and England. She is currently working on her first monograph based on her dissertation research, Creating Cookbooks: Networks of Recipe Readers and Writers in England, 1300–1700. She is also developing a digital edition of Lady Anne Percy’s Recipe Book (NYPL Whitney Ms 2) based on her transcription and research of the manuscript while a 2014 Food Studies Fellow at the New York Public Library. Her research on bread and baking in medieval England has been published in the Food and History, a journal for which she now serves as a Corresponding Member. She has also served as an editor of The Recipes Project since 2019. Her research has been supported by several organizations, including the Medieval Academy of America and the Bibliographical Society of America.
Since moving to the Chicago area in 2014, she has become active as a public historian. She teaches a variety of culinary history courses in continuing education and adult learning programs at the Newberry Library and the College of DuPage. She collaborates frequently with the Newberry Library, assembling modules on food history topics for Digital Collections for the Classroom, teaching programs on culinary history for teachers, and appearing on the Shelf Life podcast. She has also worked with The Met Cloisters (New York), the Manuscript Cookbooks Survey, and the Culinary Historians of Chicago.
Marissa Nicosia is an Associate Professor of Renaissance Literature at Penn State Abington, where she teaches, researches, and writes about early modern English literature, food studies, book history, and political theory. She has also taught at Scripps College, the University of Pennsylvania, and the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. She received her B.A. in English Literature and Creative Writing from Barnard College, Columbia University in 2007 and her Ph.D. in English from the University of Pennsylvania in 2014. Her public food history website Cooking in the Archives features more than a hundred updated recipes and has had approximately 260,000 visitors. She has published her research on early modern literature, material texts studies, and food studies in a variety of peer-reviewed journals and collections of essays as well as public fora.
Through the Andrew W. Mellon- Rare Book School Fellowship in Critical Bibliography, she organized symposia at Scripps and Penn State Abington, took three courses at The Rare Book School at the University of Virginia, and continues to explore new approaches to early modern materials with other fellows. She also served as the Secretary of the Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography at Rare Book School. At Penn State Abington, she is a member of the organizing committee for the Book, Archive & Museum (BAM) program and advises students enrolled in BAM track of the Letters, Arts & Sciences Major.
Scott Stull currently works at the Department of Sociology/Anthropology, State University of New York College at Cortland and Ithaca College. Scott does research in Medieval Archaeology with a focus on the built environment and on experimental archaeology. He is interested in status and identity in material culture, the built environment, and daily life. He has examined medieval Europe and colonial America in his studies. He also works in experimental archaeology, specifically with food and ceramic replication. A recent built environment publication is 'Architectural Satire in the Tales of the Miller and Reeve' with Michael Twomey. He is also studying medieval food culture through replicating medieval ceramics and cuisine.
Lodging
We are unable to provide a room block for this event, but the Hampton Inn and Suites - Downtown Columbus will offer a 10% discount for reservations for guests noting they’ll be attending the OSU CMRS Pop Culture and the Deep Past event. You have to call in (NOT reserve online) for the discount.
Address: 501 North High Street, Columbus, Ohio 43215, USA
Contact info: +1 614-559-2000
CFP Submission Guidelines:
Conference presentations will generally be limited to 20 minutes duration, followed by 10 minutes of discussion (we can accommodate paper presentation via Zoom); they will be organized thematically into sessions of three or four papers each. Other presentations, including music, dance, art, gaming, readings, and other activities or displays, will be accommodated more freely according to our resources of space and scheduling.
Please send your presentation ideas to cmrs_gaa@osu.edu, including a title, abstract, and contact information. Abstracts should be no more than 300 words and attached as either a Word document or PDF. We will begin evaluating proposals after November 19, 2021; submissions after that date will be happily received up until the time of the event, but their inclusion will depend on remaining openings in the schedule.
