The Ordered Universe will be represented at the 2018 International Congress on Medieval Studies, the 53rd meeting, with two sessions on medieval thinking about, well, order. The congress takes place as usual in May, when the migratory patterns of medievalists all over the world bring them, unerringly, to Western Michigan University, and Stadium Drive/Howard. The first session comprises a textual focus on the later 12th and 13th century:
Structures of Order in Medieval Science I: Experience and Authorities
Roger Bacon on Matter: Between Aristotle and Experience
Nicola Polloni, Durham UniversityThe Oyster and the Cloister: Alexander Neckam and the Process of Zoological Exposition in the late Twelfth Century
Timothy Farrant, University of OxfordRobert Grosseteste’s Letter 127 and the Ordering of Knowledge
Giles Gasper, Durham University
The second session takes a different, art-historical approach to the themes of order and its articulation:
Structures of Order in Medieval Science II: Visualization and Diagrammatic Expression
‘ad huiusmodi figuram: visualising astronomical knowledge in England, c. 1140-1260’
Laura Cleaver, Trinity College, DublinOrdering the Cosmos: Reconstructing a diagram of Opicinus de Canistris (1296- c. 1354)
Sarah Griffin, University of OxfordVisual Pedagogies in Twelfth-Century Saint Victor
Karl Kinsella, University of York
We are extremely grateful to all of the speakers for responding so enthusiastically to the invitations, and look forward very much indeed to developing the sessions, broadening the themes and ordering, and disordering in creative ways, our thoughts. The Kalamazoo sessions form part of a suite of activities in North America in May 2018 organised with the Institute of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, Durham University, and McGill University, Montreal.