Date: October 7, 2026 (Wednesday)
Time: 4:00 pm - 5:30 pm
Venue: Seminar Room, Room 7.45, 7/F, Run Run Shaw Tower, Centennial Campus, HKU (MTR: Exit C1)
Seats are available on a first-come, first-served basis.
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Title
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Abstract
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Sacred Skins: The Making of a Medieval Manuscript |
This workshop will take us into the world of the medieval manuscript. Working with the University of Hong Kong’s newly acquired collection of manuscript fragments, we will see what evidence these miraculous survivals can provide for the ways in which manuscripts were made, circulated, and used. In doing so, we will come to recognize the profound symbolic role manuscripts played in the medieval worldview as sources of knowledge, signs of wealth, and models of faith. |
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Date: October 8, 2026 (Thursday)
Time: 4:00 pm - 5:30 pm
Venue: HKU Black Box, Room 54, LG/F, Centennial Campus, HKU (Location map) (MTR: Exit C1)
Seats are available on a first-come, first-served basis.
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Title
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Abstract
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Dear and Precious, Loathsome and Vile: Law and Emotion in Early Medieval England |
This talk will examine how a particularly violent episode in the reign of King Æthelred ‘the Unready’ exemplifies the complex relationship between emotion and law in early medieval England. The dispute record recounts a series of legal violations—theft, murder, violation of sanctuary, and the rejection of royal prerogative. Crucially, the participants in the dispute frame their motivations as emotional, rather than political, to avoid accusations of bias, self-interest, or hypocrisy. As we shall see, this episode vividly illustrates how the performance of emotion could both serve and undermine the exercise of legal authority. |
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Andrew Rabin is a professor of English at the University of Louisville, his research examines the law and literature of early medieval England. His books include Crime and Punishment in Anglo-Saxon England (2020), Wulfstan: Old English Legal Writings (2020), The Disputatio Puerorum: A Ninth-Century Monastic Instructional Text (2017), and The Political Writings of Archbishop Wulfstan of York (2015). His most recent book is pseudo-Arnald of Villanova: Alchemical Tracts (2026), the first in a three-volume set on alchemy in the Middle Ages. In addition, he has edited multiple essay collections and published more than seventy scholarly articles. Professor Rabin is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society and the Society of Antiquaries.
