New Medieval/Renaissance Studies Union to host internationally renowned scholar of Anglo-Saxon Studie
Morgantown, W.Va., September 7, 2007: Dr. Martin K. Foys, Professor of English at Hood College and internationally recognized medieval and renaissance scholar, will lecture on Wednesday, September 19, 2007 at 7:30 p.m. at the Bloch Learning and Performance Center, Room 200A in the Creative Arts Center, and Thursday, September 20 at noon in the Mountainlair’s Gluck Theater.
The event is hosted by the Medieval/Renaissance Studies Union, a new academic society comprised of several faculty and students in the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences and other colleges at West Virginia University.
On September 19, Professor Foys will discuss “Digitally Editing the Bayeux Tapestry” which will introduce his audience to a virtual representation of this embroidered record of the Battle of Hastings, and on September 20, he will lecture on “Wanted Dead and Alive: How King Harold Lost the Battle of Hastings and Lived to Tell About It” which concerns construction of myths surrounding the death of King Harold at Hastings in 1066, the year the Normans invaded England.
Dr. Martin K. Foys earned a BA from Drew University, and an MA and PhD from Loyola University where he is currently a professor of English. He devised, designed and programmed an edition to the virtual Bayeux Tapestry, an edition that earned the title Best New Edition from the International Society of Anglo-Saxonists in 2005. The original Bayeux Tapestry is an embroidered cloth depicting the 1066 Norman invasion of England and is annotated in Latin.
He has recently become interested in medieval cartography and theorizing problems with virtual medieval studies. This interest, as well as his earlier work on the Bayeux Tapestry, resulted in the book, “Virtually Anglo-Saxon: Old Media, New Media, and Early Medieval Studies in the Late Age of Print. In his book, Foys argues that early medieval culture did not favor the representational practices privileged by the modern age and that five hundred years of print culture have shut-off modern readers from a medieval audience’s interpretation of text and images.
“Martin K. Foys is one of those rare young medievalists who has developed the breadth of possibilities in our field instead of a single-focused scholarly discipline, and who has done so with equally rare success,” described Dr. Patrick Conner, Professor of English at WVU.
Professor Foys’s visit is supported by funds from WVU’s Eberly College of Arts and Science, the College of Creative Arts, the Division of Art, the Department of History and the Department of English.
The Medieval/Renaissance Studies Union was formed last spring by Drs. Pat Conner and Lara Farina in the Department of English and Dr. Kate Staples in the Department of History in WVU’s Eberly College of Arts and Sciences, and Dr. Janet Snyder in WVU’s College of Creative Arts.
The Union is expected to provide interested students and faculty with an opportunity to discuss and find courses on early cultures, art, language and literature. They currently are investigating the possibility of a new minor in Medieval/Renaissance Studies.
A website for Foys’s virtual Bayeux Tapestry is available online at http://www.sd-editions.com/bayeux/index.html. For more information on the event or the Medieval/Renaissance Studies Union, please contact Dr. Patrick Conner at Patrick.Conner@mail.wvu.edu, or any of the group members listed above.
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