Last updated April 18, 2011

CANTUS joins MARGOT!

The CANTUS database for Latin ecclesiastical chant was housed for over a decade at the University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada. Thanks to the lead researcher Debra Lacoste, University of Waterloo and developer Jan Koláček, Charles University, Prague, the project has recently undergone major changes: the new site, which is now affiliated with MARGOT, is intended to serve both, users researching chant and database contributors. CANTUS provides a searchable database of detailed information for the over 370,000 chants entered to date.

The VIIIth International Conference of the Department of French at the University of Cairo took place from November 8 to 10, 2010 at the University of Cairo on the subject :
PARCOURS/ÉCHANGES ET RECOUPEMENTS CULTURELS.

This conference was organized in collaboration between the University of Cairo, the University of Guelph (Faculty of Arts) and MARGOT. Thanks to a SSHRC grant, MARGOT was able to co-finance this conference that brought together about 50 scholars and students from Canada, France, Ireland, Japan, Turkey, Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Greece, Lebanon, Vietnam, Palestine and other countries. Some of the questions at the heart of the conference were:

• What are the issues in intercultural exchange and the transformations it causes in attitudes?
• To what extent do literary works mirror these exchanges and intercultural migrations?
• To what extent does travel literature bear witness to the reactions that are evoked when meeting the Other?
• To what extent have translations and adaptations contributed to the historical and cultural path of humanity as we try to lift the barriers between cultures?
  

Spring 2013 -- Colloque MARGOT:

The Fourth International MARGOT Conference is to be held at Barnard College, Columbia University on the topic "Women and Community 700-1700 in Print and Online".

CALL FOR PAPERS: The Digital Middle Ages: Teaching and Research.

MARGOT Conference announcement and call for papers (June 2009)

Proposals for complete sessions and individual presentations are currently being accepted for the Third International MARGOT Conference (Moyen Age et Renaissance Groupe de recherches – Ordinateurs et Textes) to be held at Barnard College, Columbia University, New York from June 16 to June 17, 2010. DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSION: Friday, October 2, 2009.This conference is co-sponsored by the University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada

IOF anouncement (May 2009)

Christine McWebb together with colleagues from the University of Waterloo, St. Hilda’s College at Oxford University, Barnard College at Columbia University and the University of Cairo, Egypt were awarded an IOF (CAN$46,000 for one year) in order to further international collaborative projects of MARGOT. Specifically, this grant will partially fund the Third International MARGOT Conference to be held at Barnard College, June 16-17, 2010 and a joint conference at the University of Cairo in the Fall of 2010 (the Calls for Papers will be posted shortly). Further, the grant will provide funding for student training in the areas of medieval studies and the digital humanities and will fund the next student from the University of Cairo to spend one semester training with MARGOT in Fall 09.

Two recent feature articles published. (October 2008)

If you would like to know more about MARGOT and the Debating the Roman de la rose in Text and Image project, please read the following two feature articles: “From illuminated manuscript to e-book,” August 20, 2008 in the University of Waterloo’s Daily Bulletin and “Project aims to make French literature more accessible”, October 11, 2008 in Waterloo’s daily newspaper, The Record.

Gender, Writing, and Performance: Men Defending Women in Late Medieval France, (1440-1538) (Oxford: OUP, 2008) (July 2008)

This book explores the poetics of literary defences of women written by men in late-medieval and early-modern France. It fills an important lacuna in studies of this polemic in imaginative literature by bridging the gap between Christine de Pizan and a later generation of women writers and male, Neo-Platonist writers who have recently all received due critical attention. Whereas male-authored defences composed between 1440 and 1538 have previously been dismissed as 'insincere' or 'mere intellectual games', Swift formulates reading strategies to overcome such critical stumbling blocks and engage with the particular rhetorical and historical contexts of these works. Edited and as yet unedited texts by Martin Le Franc, Jacques Milet, Pierre Michault, and Jean Bouchet -- catalogues of women, allegorical narratives, and debate poems -- are brought together and analysed in detail for the first time in order to explore, in particular, how such works address the misogynistic spectre of Jean de Meun's Roman de la rose.

This project is now complete and has been published on our site under the title Reading the Roman de la rose in Text and Image (July 2008)

Developing a multi-media teaching and research tool: Christine McWebb has transformed the existing Roman de la rose excerpts into what is essentially an e-book respecting the medieval manuscript layout with two rubrics and representative miniatures for each segment. The excerpts are searchable using the tools developed by TAPoR. She has selected chronologically relevant manuscripts for the display of the miniatures which are annotated with bibliographic references and manuscript descriptions. This enhancement allows for comparative iconographic research and for a more comprehensive teaching where text and image can be read in conjunction with each other.

Dr. Catherine Dubeau has joined the MARGOT team as a principal researcher. (July 2008)

Dr. Dubeau joined the Department of French Studies at the University of Waterloo in Fall 2007 at the rank of Assistant Professor. She completed her PhD on the works of Mme Necker and Mme de Staël under the supervision of Prof. Thierry Belleguic at Laval University and Philippe Berthier at Paris III-Sorbonne Nouvelle. She will join the MARGOT group with an editing project of Mme Necker's private and privately owned manuscripts which contain such documents as correspondence, her diaries, legal records and so forth. These materials have never been edited and are generally not accessible to the public. We welcome Dr. Dubeau to the group!

Two new texts added to MARGOT in the Campsey project: (November 2007)

Professor Laurie Postlewate, Barnard College, Columbia University, and Dr. Helen Swift, St Hilda's College, Oxford University have recently joined the MARGOT team as principal researchers. (November 2007)

Laurie Postlewate is Professor of French at Barnard College, Columbia University and a long-time collaborator of Prof. Delbert Russell, co-founder of MARGOT. Prof. Russell and Prof. Postlewaite are currently collaborating on a project studying the production and reception of texts written in the French of England during the Middle Ages. Their translation of a series of representative medieval French verse saints' legends written in England, in the period 1150-1425, will be one volume in the "French of England in Translation" series, published by Arizona State University Press. This series, directed at both students and researchers, will make this often neglected medieval corpus more accessible to a modern audience.

Helen Swift is fellow and tutor in Medieval French at St Hilda's College, Oxford University and will be working with Christine McWebb on the expansion of the Debating the Roman de la rose project. Dr. Swift's forthcoming anthology Les femmes et la 'Rose': XV-XVI siècles will make use of the Roman de la rose excerpts published on the MARGOT site. The excerpts will be expanded in order to reflect the issues discussed in Dr. Swift's anthology.

Developing a multi-media teaching and research tool (November 2007):

Christine McWebb is currently in the process of transforming the existing Roman de la rose excerpts into what will essentailly be an e-book respecting the medieval manuscript layout with two rubrics and representative miniatures for each segment. She has selected chronologically relevant manuscripts for the display of the miniatures which will be annotated with bibliographic references and analytical commentary. This enhancement of the existing excerpts will allow for comparative iconographic research and for a more comprehensive teaching where text and image can be read in conjunction with each other.

Professor Russell is currently preparing an electronic version of two early editions of the works of Marie de Gournay: (November 2007)

L'Ombre de la damoiselle de Gournay (1626), and Les Advis ou les Presens de la demoiselle de Gournay (3e éd., 1641). The initial electronic edition will make the early editions accessible for electronic searching, or for continuous reading. The addition of a modern critical apparatus to the text will be a future stage of the project.

A Memorandum of Agreement will be signed shortly by the University of Cairo, University of Guelph, and the University of Waterloo for collaborative teaching and research activities. (November 2007)

The units involved are SOLAL (School of Languages and Literatures, Guelph), MARGOT and the Département de français, Cairo. MARGOT has committed to receiving one graduate student per year for a one term training period in electronic text editing and digital archiving. The first student is scheduled to arrive in Fall 2008 from Cairo University.

The two Canadian partners have also agreed to improve the local infrastructure in the Département de français at Cairo University by purchasing several computers and software in order to enhance and to facilitate communication and collaboration.

A joint conference is planned for Fall 2010, topic to be determined, at Cairo University.