Greetings all,
I want to begin with a special thank you to Nick Spitulski for stepping up and teaching MEDREN 2666, "Magic and Witchcraft," this fall. Following several faculty departures and retirements, qualified instructors are hard to find. Nick has a long association with our historically most popular course: as a doctoral student "back in the day," he acted as TA for Professor Richard Greene. Still, Nick has put in an enormous amount of work into teaching the class on top of his regular administrative duties. Nick also revived the CMRS Film Series which has not run since before COVID. A selection of some movie gems like Witchfinder General as well as free Adriatico’s pizza and discussion helped fill Hagerty 180 for each show.
Enrollments in 2666, while still strong, are not what they used to be. Changes to the university’s General Education requirements and the provision of a smorgasbord of courses for students to choose from, make it increasingly harder to fill our MEDREN undergraduate courses. Thankfully our excellent publicity team of Megan and Genevieve continues to spread the word about CMRS courses and events in timely and imaginative ways. Another response to low enrollments is to convert our GE courses to fit one of the new GE Themes. I recently did this with my course on Shakespeare’s London so that it fits the GE Lived Environments category. The move seems to have worked judging by the strong enrollments in next semester’s offering. Professor Naomi Fukumori has converted her Medieval Kyoto course in the same way and will be offering it in autumn semester 2025. Curriculum innovation is ongoing.
Collaboration is key to the success of an interdisciplinary unit like CMRS and this semester witnessed a new programming collaboration with the Melton Center for Jewish Studies. CMRS was happy to work with Melton Center Director Hannah Kosstrin, in bringing to campus Professor Alan Verskin from the University of Toronto. Alan spoke to a packed audience about his fascinating translation and edition of the sixteenth century travelogue of David Reubeni, the self-proclaimed Black Jewish Messiah.
In another collaboration, CMRS and Lord Denney’s Players organized a mini-symposium around LDP’s production of John Fletcher’s The Faithful Shepherdess (c.1609). CMRS Associate Director Jonathan Combs-Schilling kicked off proceedings with a talk about Guarini's Il Pastor Fido, an Italian tragicomedy that established many of the genre’s conventions that Fletcher later developed. Although Fletcher’s play flopped at its first performance, Lord Denney’s Players’ revival was a resounding success. As LDP proves that the plays of Shakespeare’s contemporaries can still engage us, we look forward to future innovative productions.
We look forward now to our next symposium on February 21-22, called "Sea Studies: Exploring the Medieval and Renaissance Maritime Humanities." Papers from historical, literary, and environmental scholars will dive into a shoal of topics including underwater archaeology, fisheries, shipboard entertainers, and the representation of the sea in Dante. Please follow this link to Sea Studies for further details.
Happy and healthy holidays and new year to you all.
Chris
