Centre for Medieval Studies

Led by the efforts of Sebastian Sobecki, a partial copy of The Travels of Sir John Mandeville that scholars believed was penned in the mid-1300s is now part of the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library’s collection.

“This is one of the texts that made explorers believe in circumnavigation,” says Sobecki, a professor in the Faculty of Arts & Science’s department of English who cross-appointed to the Centre for Medieval Studies.

To secure the ancient manuscript, Sobecki collaborated with the Fisher Library as well as the University Library.

“This is big news for the university – I'm thrilled,” says Sobecki. “This is probably one of our most important medieval manuscripts and it could be a crown jewel of the Fisher collection.”

Written on animal skin, Mandeville’s Travels is considered one of medieval Europe’s biggest bestsellers.

“It’s quite likely that this is the earliest surviving copy of what was one of the most popular and influential works of the Middle Ages,” says Tim Perry, a medieval manuscripts and early books librarian at the Fisher Library.

The manuscript was purchased from Bernard Quaritch Ltd – a London-based bookseller that specializes in rare books and manuscripts. Previously, it was owned by the Duke of Manchester’s family in the United Kingdom.

Written in insular French (or Anglo-French), the manuscript consists of 40 leaves – or 80 pages – and includes a substantial fragment of Mandeville’s Travels (chapters 11-12, 13-16 and 23-31). Each leaf measures approximately 27.5 by 18.5 centimetres.

The writing is on specially prepared animal skin – likely sheep or calf skin – rather than paper.

The book purports to be the travel memoir of Mandeville, though it’s more accurately described as fiction. He claims to have travelled through Turkey, Persia, Syria, Arabia, Egypt, Libya, Ethiopia, India and China in the 1320s or '30s.

It’s filled with tales of exotic beasts, treasures beyond imagination, as well as magical kingdoms with mythical people such as dog-headed humans and other strange creatures – all hallmarks of today's science fiction – and the book is considered by some to be one of the first widespread tales in the genre.

And the Travels goes beyond simply writing about destinations, delving into subjects such as religion and politics. For example, while trekking through Egypt, Mandeville engages in a lengthy conversation with the sultan of Egypt.

“They exchange ideas about the Qur’an and the Bible,” says Sobecki. “And they discuss differences of belief between Muslims and Christians. It's really quite open-minded.

“But it's not a religious text. This is a secular adventure text about [fictional] monsters of the East and what Asia looks like. This is one of the great global travel writing texts and it's remarkable for its tolerance and openness.”

Part of that adventure includes visiting the enchanted kingdom of Prester John, a legendary Christian patriarch and king who ruled over a large Christian settlement in India.

Mandeville describes the kingdom as having unmatched wealth with an abundance of precious stones, including an entire river composed of gemstones instead of water, which flows down from enormous mountains, and yields especially sweet-tasting fish.

Tim Perry is a medieval manuscript sand early books librarian at the Fisher Library.

Where did the author get his material for this book? From combining several authentic travel accounts from a variety of sources and adding his own flair.

“There's quite a lot of material from the 13th-century Franciscan missions to the Mongols,” says Sobecki. “They brought back fantastic reports about the peoples of Central Asia. Some of them are accurate, some are laced with fiction and science fiction.”

So who, exactly, was Sir John Mandeville?

“That’s a good question. We don't know that,” says Sobecki, noting that it is the subject of scholarly debate. “John Mandeville was probably a fictional name, one of the earliest pen names.”

Whoever the author is, it’s generally accepted that he didn’t do much travelling himself. However, he was a master at taking other people’s accounts and creating a new narrative.

“Someone said, very accurately, that his longest journey was to the nearest library,” says Sobecki. “So he was probably the world's greatest armchair traveller.”

Some scholars have suggested that the Travels was written by Jan de Langhe, a Flemish monk pretending to be an Englishman. He was known to be a prolific writer and avid collector of travel memoirs right up to his death in 1383.

What also makes this manuscript so important is that it’s far more than just a prize – it’s a valuable tool for research and teaching.

“This is a book for readers, for real use,” says Sobecki. “We're trying to work out where in the family tree of Mandeville manuscripts this text belongs. And for teaching purposes this text would be enormously helpful because Mandeville is a canonical English writer and is taught every year, not only in my course, but in several others across ��˾��ֱ��. This manuscript also presents many teaching opportunities for undergraduate, master’s and PhD students: comparing later Middle English translations to the original Anglo-French text.”

As well, this text can shed light on many other facets of historical literature and publishing.

“Once we know where this manuscript fits, maybe we can locate the particular dialect where the writing came from,” says Sobecki. “We can also understand more about how these early medieval manuscripts of Mandeville’s Travels were circulated in England.”

Sobecki adds that he can’t wait to dive into Mandeville’s pages and see what secrets can be unlocked.

“This text has really inspired people,” he says. “This is the text that really made me fall in love with medieval travel writing. I've worked with thousands of manuscripts, but every time you're in the presence of something that was written 700 years ago by hand, it’s just amazing.”

��˾��ֱ�� researchers train AI to read difficult-to-decipher medieval texts

Christopher.Sorensen — Wed, 24 Feb 2021 18:35:57 +0000

��˾��ֱ�� researchers train AI to read difficult-to-decipher medieval texts

Christopher.Sorensen Wed, 02/24/2021 - 13:35

Cutline

Researchers at ��˾��ֱ�� and at University College, London are training software, called Transkribus, to read and transcribe hand-written Latin, which is often full of strange spellings, hyphenations and abbreviations (photo by fotographo/iStockPhoto)

Rachel Lott

Topic

Our Community

��˾��ֱ��

Artificial Intelligence

Centre for Medieval Studies

Computer Science

Faculty of Arts & Science

Research & Innovation

��˾��ֱ�� Scarborough

In a move that could transform manuscript studies, University of Toronto researchers have partnered with a team in the United Kingdom to develop a program that can read and transcribe the handwritten Latin found in 13th-century legal manuscripts.

While scholars have been making digital images of these manuscripts for years, transcribing and comparing these texts is painstaking and tedious work that can take years or even decades to complete. That's because medieval handwriting can often look crabbed and unintelligible, with non-standardized spellings, hyphenations, abbreviations, calligraphic flourishes and any number of distinct “hands.”

But machine-reading software called Transkribus promises to change the field. Using artificial intelligence (AI), the software can theoretically be trained to read any type of handwriting, in any language – and Michael Gervers, a professor of medieval social and economic history at ��˾��ֱ�� Scarborough, says it could eventually be applied across medieval studies.

“When – rather than if – the process is successful, it will make an enormous difference to the way medievalists approach their subject,” says Gervers, who is also cross-appointed to the Centre for Medieval Studies in the Faculty of Arts & Science.

Developed by READ COOP SCE, an international consortium of scholars, scientists and archivists, Transkribus not only digitizes manuscripts and transcribes their contents but “recognizes” idiosyncratic features across multiple manuscripts, thus enabling comparison. The software’s recent successes include the transcription of manuscripts from colonial Mexico, the Hanseatic League and early 20th-century Ireland.

The software first came to Gervers’s attention back in 2016 when it was still getting off the ground. Gervers, who has worked with Latin manuscripts since the 1970s, put together a ��˾��ֱ�� team including Graeme Hirst, a professor in the department of computer science who works on natural language processing, and alumna Hannah Lloyd, now a PhD student in history at Yale University.

They also joined forces with another team already working with Transkribus at University College, London (UCL). Scholars in UCL’s Bentham Project were teaching the software to read 18th-century philosopher Jeremy Bentham’s handwritten papers. By sharing resources for software development, the two teams trained Transkribus more quickly and efficiently.

The teaching process wasn’t easy. Transkribus learns by “looking” at a sample page and comparing it line-by-line with a pre-prepared transcription. Lloyd spent hours selecting text to feed the software.

The team ran into two major problems: hyphens and abbreviations. Medieval scribes often saved valuable parchment by abbreviating words – sometimes dramatically. They would also write up to the very border of the script area before arbitrarily hyphenating whatever word they were on when they ran out of space. Since Transkribus “reads” whole words rather than individual letters, it had to learn to recognize words even when abbreviated or hyphenated.

Clearing those hurdles is now paying off. The new Latin-reading Transkribus is capable of precisely transcribing the peculiar handwriting found in 13th-century Latin legal documents.

Though the program is currently trained for Latin legal texts, it’s only a matter of time before it can be adapted to literary texts and more.

Gervers notes that Transkribus would be an ideal program for Ge’ez, an Ethiopic script he has worked with alongside Latin since the 1990s. Largely unchanged over its 2,000-year history, the Ge’ez script was used in one of the earliest known complete Gospel manuscripts and is still used in Ethiopia today.

Gervers says the script is “perfect for machine transcription.” Why? Ge’ez has no abbreviations and conveniently puts colons at the ends of words and sentences.

Early English drama resources offer insights on theatre from Middle Ages, Shakespeare

geoff.vendeville — Thu, 17 Dec 2020 20:50:44 +0000

Early English drama resources offer insights on theatre from Middle Ages, Shakespeare

geoff.vendeville Thu, 12/17/2020 - 15:50

Cutline

Illustration of the Rose Theatre (image courtesy of William Dudley, John Greenfield, C.Walter Hodges, The Museum of London and the Rose Theatre Trust)

Sean McNeely

Topic

Global Lens

Centre for Medieval Studies

English

Faculty of Arts & Science

Humanities

Shakespeare

Theatre

The Records of Early English Drama (REED) research collaboration has pulled back the curtain on two new online resources that bring a vibrant period of historical theatre performance, including the time of Shakespeare, to life.

Available on REED Online, the Hampshire and the Rose Playhouse Prototype provide valuable resources for teaching and research that are filled with surviving records and images of drama, music and other popular forms of entertainment in England from the Middle Ages (late 10^th century) to 1642.

An international scholarly project founded in 1975, REED is focused on researching and cataloguing the context from which the drama of Shakespeare and his contemporaries grew by locating, transcribing and editing historical documents that capture the history of drama, music and other forms of secular entertainment.

At the University of Toronto, REED is associated with the department of English in the Faculty of Arts & Science, the Centre for Medieval Studies, the Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies and the Poculi Ludique Societas.

And with REED’s latest resources, students, scholars and researchers can easily attain “a more vibrant understanding of the range and the dynamism of entertainment,” says Professor Emerita Sally-Beth MacLean of the department of English, REED’s director of research and general editor.

“Professors and students of drama and theatre, Elizabethan literature, early modern English history, language and manuscript studies could all make use of these resources.”

REED Online’s Rose Playhouse Prototype includes an interactive map of the London area that links to extensive records and images.

The Hampshire collection provides an extensive and varied collection of dramatic records, the largest digital edition made available by REED to date.

“It includes medieval and renaissance entertainment performed by local people and professional actors, minstrels, musicians, acrobats, jesters, even animals in towns, villages, as well as the cities of Southampton and Winchester and Winchester College School where the performance venue in the medieval dining hall remains intact,” says MacLean.

This collection also offers rare glimpses into the inner workings of performance, such as records of expenses for constructing stages and sets in Winchester College Hall, licences granted to acting troupes and details about the elaborate entertainment line-up for Queen Elizabeth in 1591. The records and documents are also linked to a geographic information system (GIS) provincial map of England, showing where they originated.

Edited by MacLean herself, the Rose Playhouse Prototype offers historical records and information relating to Philip Henslowe's Rose Playhouse. Constructed on the south bank of the Thames River in 1587, it may have been the first playhouse to ever stage a Shakespeare production.

This collection includes historic gems such as the deed of partnership for the Rose and the theatre inventories of the Lord Admiral’s Men, a famous acting troupe of the late 1500s.

“The Rose Playhouse Prototype is our first in a projected series of individual Elizabethan and Jacobean playhouse digital editions that could be used in classrooms where drama from the period is taught,” says MacLean. “It should be of particular interest for faculty teaching Shakespeare.

“For the first time, the dramatic records are linked with manuscript images and detailed interactive mapping of all London area locations associated with the theatre, as well as historical data available on other open access websites.”

Those websites include international databases such as the Henslowe-Alleyn Digitisation Project, which is part of the archives of Dulwich College in London.

This archive holds thousands of pages of manuscripts left to the college by its founder, actor Edward Alleyn (1566-1626) and makes up one of the largest archives of material on professional theatre and dramatic performance in early modern England, during the age of Shakespeare and his contemporaries.

“I hope the Rose Prototype will stimulate an expanding partnership of collaborators to research and edit all the Elizabethan and Jacobean playhouses for the REED series,” says MacLean. “If our research can lead to new collaborations with archaeologists, local historians, museums and heritage sites that would be terrific.”

In fact, MacLean hopes both new collections attract attention globally.

“I would like to see our outreach expanded to bring many more students, scholars and a wider public around the world to our work,” she says.

With support from The Weeknd, ��˾��ֱ��'s Ethiopic program soars past $500,000 endowment goal

Christopher.Sorensen — Mon, 02 Nov 2020 17:12:13 +0000

With support from The Weeknd, ��˾��ֱ��'s Ethiopic program soars past $500,000 endowment goal

Christopher.Sorensen Mon, 11/02/2020 - 12:12

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Bikila Award president Tessema Mulugeta presents Arts & Science Dean Melanie Woodin with The Weeknd’s cheque for $30,000 – pushing the Ge’ez course’s endowment past the $500,000 goal (photo by Diana Tyszko)

Lucianna Ciccocioppo

Topic

Our Community

Centre for Medieval Studies

Ethiopic

Faculty of Arts & Science

Near & Middle Eastern Civilizations

New College

��˾��ֱ�� Scarborough

The future of the University of Toronto’s Ethiopic program – the only one of its kind in North America and among a handful in the world – just got brighter.

The endowment that makes the program possible has surpassed its goal of $500,000 thanks to another gift from Toronto native, Abel Tesfaye, the international, award-winning singer, songwriter and recording producer known as The Weeknd. This support enables ��˾��ֱ�� to offer at least one Ge'ez language course each year.

“Our heartfelt thanks to The Weeknd for his ongoing commitment to Ethiopic studies at ��˾��ֱ��,” said Professor Melanie Woodin, dean of the Faculty of Arts & Science. “This gift means the endowment celebrates a significant fundraising milestone. For us, it signifies an important partnership with the Ethiopian-Canadian community, one we hope to continue to grow.

“We share a vision and an understanding of the value in preserving the Ge’ez language. The impact of The Weeknd’s continued support is truly appreciated, for current and future faculty, students and alumni.”

Ethiopic studies at ��˾��ֱ�� launched three years ago with a course on Ge’ez, an ancient language used primarily for liturgical Christian services. Currently, ��˾��ֱ�� is the only university in North America, and one of the very few universities in the world, that regularly offers a course on Ge’ez. It’s part of the Semitic group of languages, including Hebrew, Arabic and Aramaic, and remains a fundamental language for classical studies such as Latin and Greek.

The program, jointly run by the Faculty of Arts & Science’s department of Near and Middle Eastern civilizations and the Centre for Medieval Studies, was just shy of reaching its fundraising goal when The Weeknd, recently named one of Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People of 2020, made a $30,000 gift.

This is The Weeknd’s second donation to ��˾��ֱ�� in support of the Ethiopic program. His first was a $50,000 gift in 2016, as part of the fundraising drive led by the Bikila Award – an Ethiopian-Canadian organization that fosters academic and business excellence and encourages volunteerism – to galvanize its community to support the new endowment.

From left: Bikila Award president Tessema Mulugeta, Bikila board member Behailu Atnafu, The Weeknd’s parents Walelegne Teshome and Samrawit Hailu, Faculty of Arts & Science Dean Melanie Woodin and Professor Michael Gervers (photo by Diana Tyszko)

Tessema Mulugeta, president of Bikila, called it “a pivotal moment in our history here in Toronto” while recently presenting The Weeknd’s cheque together with board member Behailu Atnafu and The Weeknd’s parents, Samrawit Hailu and Walelegne Teshome, to Woodin on a fall day at the Faculty Arts & Science.

“��˾��ֱ��’s Ethiopic studies will illuminate to the world the hidden, untouched millennial scripts in Ge’ez and uncover rich texts of philosophy, grammar, mathematics, astronomy, history, medicine and law,” said Mulugeta. “During this modern age, current and future generations of ��˾��ֱ�� students can continue to access Ethiopia’s past and unlock tantalizing deposits of wisdom from distant eras of human history.”

For Professor Michael Gervers, who teaches Ethiopian history at ��˾��ֱ�� Scarborough and the St. George campus, more than 40 years of scholarly research, including digitizing church manuscripts in Ethiopia, has emphasized “how significant and important this culture is.” He gave the first gift in 2015 to launch the endowment campaign.

“I spent decades in Ethiopia and saw that almost every single church I went to had manuscripts that nobody was reading except the monks and priests for their daily or weekly services. But there was all this other literature just sitting there.”

Gervers explained that not many people are aware that the king of Ethiopia converted to Christianity before the Roman emperor Constantine did in Byzantium. “It goes right back to somewhere around 333 to 340 CE. And you can’t have a religion without a book,” said Gervers.

With Ethiopia having a written historical tradition older than any other country in Africa, that’s a lot of books. In fact, it’s been recently discovered that the oldest complete Gospel manuscript in the world is from Ethiopia, opening up a plethora of new scholarship questions.

Undergraduate student Saba Ebrahimpour, a member of New College who's studying Ge'ez, said it’s very important for her to read the literature in its original language.

“When I was studying for this course, I was going through the Bible in the English translation and the professors were teaching us how to translate it,” she said. “I compared the two languages, and there were some differences between the two.”

Ebrahimpour searched for other sources but found there weren’t any. And she said there are few professors who can teach Ge’ez, “So ��˾��ֱ�� has a very big job to do.”

Ge'ez will be a significant component of graduate student Arshan Hasan’s research – and this first course is a vital start.

“Of the classical Semitic languages, Ge'ez is one of the most understudied despite it being one of the most unique,” said Hasan. “It has a unique script in its family that really needs to be taught alongside the language, rather than self-taught. Grammatically it is so remarkable and so different from its sister languages while also still being very familiar.

“It reopens many lost horizons.”

Ge’ez student Arshan Hasan (photo courtesy of Arshan Hasan)

Highlighting, remembering and teaching the history, languages and cultures in this cradle of civilization in the Horn of Africa are just some of the reasons Ethiopians in Canada have supported and continue to give to ��˾��ֱ��’s program.

“We were and are people of many literatures,” said Mulugeta. “The study of Ge’ez will help us make sense of ourselves, our early civilizations, our beliefs and cultures and, most importantly, our interconnectedness in the world.”

The program, and particularly the Ge’ez course, has put ��˾��ֱ�� “on the map because we're doing it and nobody else is,” said Gervers. “The Ethiopic program at ��˾��ֱ�� has enormous potential.”

Markus Stock, the 17th principal of University College, to focus on student experience

Christopher.Sorensen — Fri, 07 Feb 2020 19:40:28 +0000

Markus Stock, the 17th principal of University College, to focus on student experience

Christopher.Sorensen Fri, 02/07/2020 - 14:40

Cutline

Markus Stock, the 17th principal of University College, smiles during his installation ceremony on Wednesday at Hart House (photo by Johnny Guatto)

Sean McNeely

Topic

Our Community

Student Experience

Department of Germanic Languages and Literature

Rose Patten

Centre for Medieval Studies

Cheryl Regehr

Faculty of Arts & Science

The new principal of University College wants to remove the “but” that sometimes appears when students and alumni describe the University of Toronto.

“The University of Toronto is a world-renowned academic institution, but it can stressful … ��˾��ֱ�� has a solid international reputation for research, but it can be a little overwhelming,” said Markus Stock in an interview in advance of his installation ceremony on Wednesday as the college’s 17^th principal.

He said he would like to see that “but” replaced with an “and” – in particular, an “and” that highlights the many benefits of ��˾��ֱ��’s college system, including a welcoming, friendly and supportive atmosphere to accompany the university’s reputation for world class academics and research.

“If we could insert the colleges into the conversation right at that point, people might say, ‘��˾��ֱ�� has an immense reputation as a research institution and its colleges provide students with a valuable support system and social connection.’ I think that would be ideal,” said Stock.

Stock’s installation ceremony, held in Hart House’s Great Hall, was attended by ��˾��ֱ�� President Meric Gertler, Vice-President and Provost Cheryl Regehr, Chancellor Rose Patten and Faculty of Arts & Science Dean Melanie Woodin, among others.

The procession enters Hart House’s Great Hall. From left to right: President of University College Literary & Athletic Society Danielle Stella, Governing Council Chair Claire Kennedy, University College Principal Markus Stock and ��˾��ֱ�� President Meric Gertler (photo by Johnny Guatto)

An associate professor of German and medieval studies, Stock joined ��˾��ֱ�� in 2005 and was previously chair of the department of Germanic languages and literatures. He took over the role of principal of University College on Jan. 1. for a four-year term. The college, established in 1853, was previously led by Professor Donald Ainslie for eight years.

Stock said he is keenly focused on enhancing the student experience and intends to be a hands-on principal by driving forward student-centred initiatives and programs founded primarily on student engagement and interaction.

“Talking with students, I’m figuring out how we can best support their experience on campus,” said Stock. “For me, figuring that out might be the most fascinating part of the job.

“I’m finding out what their aspirations are to see where we can support their academic excellence, but then also emphasize their college is a place where they can live and congregate.”

From left to right: Associate Professor Jennifer Jenkins, Faculty of Arts & Science Dean Melanie Woodin, Vice-President and Provost Cheryl Regehr, University College Principal Markus Stock, Chancellor Rose Patten, Professor Walid Saleh (photo by Johnny Guatto)

Stock said he is excited about the college’s future and intends to fully embrace and celebrate equity and diversity within the college’s student body. He also plans on stressing the importance of student mental health and well-being.

“That’s something I feel very strongly about,” he said. “We have to figure out how to provide services to students who face a mental health crisis – but, to an equal degree, ensure that students who are happy now stay happy during their rigorous academic experience at this university. I think the colleges play a huge role in that.”

��˾��ֱ�� President Meric Gertler shakes hands with Markus Stock, the 17^th principal of University College (photo by Johnny Guatto)

Stock also plans to capitalize on the newly renovated student and research spaces as he leads the completion of the University College Revitalization Project.

“What are we going to do with these spaces? How can our new spaces help us with this?” he said, noting that he plans to take full advantage of new spaces for students to freely connect, recharge and easily access support services.

“If I could look back in five years and we instituted many initiatives that led to our students to continue to have a fulfilled academic life, but also have access to valuable learning beyond academics, I think that would be a big success,” he said.

Three ��˾��ֱ�� researchers win Polanyi Prize for work in astronomy, English and medicine

geoff.vendeville — Tue, 04 Feb 2020 16:01:35 +0000

Three ��˾��ֱ�� researchers win Polanyi Prize for work in astronomy, English and medicine

geoff.vendeville Tue, 02/04/2020 - 11:01

Cutline

��˾��ֱ��'s three Polanyi prize-winners (from left to right): Audrey Walton, Mamatha Bhat and Maria Drout (all photos by Nick Iwanyshyn)

Topic

Astronomy & Astrophysics

Centre for Medieval Studies

English

Faculty of Arts & Science

Faculty of Medicine

John Polanyi

Polanyi Prize

University Health Network

Vivek Goel

Three University of Toronto researchers, all rising stars in their respective fields, have been awarded the prestigious John Charles Polanyi Prize.

The ��˾��ֱ�� winners are Mamatha Bhat of the Faculty of Medicine and the University Health Network (UHN), Maria Drout of the David A. Dunlap Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics and Audrey Walton of the department of English – both in the Faculty of Arts & Science.

“To receive this prize is an enormous achievement,” says Vivek Goel, ��˾��ֱ��'s vice-president, research and innovation, and strategic initiatives.

“The Polanyi prize is an important honour and a clear sign that an early-career researcher's work is having an impact.”

The $20,000 annual prizes, funded by the Ontario government and awarded by the Council of Ontario Universities, are given to five outstanding researchers in the early stages of their career who are pursuing post-doctoral studies or who have recently been appointed faculty at an Ontario university. The prizes are distributed among five fields: chemistry, physics, economic science, physiology/medicine and literature.

Bhat, an assistant professor in the department of medicine and a staff hepatologist and clinician-scientist at UHN, was recognized for her research into the long-term health outcomes of patients after a liver transplant. Drout, an assistant professor of astronomy and astrophysics, was honoured for her work in the new field of “multi-messenger” astronomy. Walton, an assistant professor of English who is also at the Centre for Medieval Studies, received the prize for her research showing that medieval England produced a large body of literature in the vernacular as opposed to Latin.

The award is named after John Polanyi, a ��˾��ֱ�� University Professor of chemistry and joint winner of the 1986 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for “contributions concerning the dynamics of chemical elementary processes.”

Mamatha Bhat: Improving long-term outcomes for liver-transplant patients

(photo by Nick Iwanyshyn)

Mamatha Bhat became fascinated with the liver as a resident in gastroenterology at McGill University during her hepatology rotation.

“It performs hundreds of functions that most people aren’t even aware of,” she says.

She went on to complete a fellowship in transplant hepatology at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., followed by a PhD in medical biophysics with a focus on molecular and computational biology.

Today, her research focuses on how to ensure the long-term health of patients after they undergo a liver transplant.

“When you look at the short-term health outcomes of liver transplant patients – within the first year following the transplant, success rates have increased substantially over the last 30 years. But when you look at long-term survival and outcomes beyond one year, there has been very little improvement,” she says.

A lot of the focus of clinical research has been on ensuring the organ isn’t rejected by the patient’s immune system. However, Bhat says long-term considerations, including an increased risk of cancer and metabolic disease, have not been as thoroughly investigated.

It’s a problem that is becoming more pronounced as more Ontarians receive a liver transplant and as higher success rates mean transplant patients live longer.

Based in UHN’s Multi-Organ Transplant Program, the largest adult transplant program in North America, Bhat is well positioned to tackle the challenge. Last year, UHN performed more than 700 transplants, including more than 200 liver transplants.

Emphasizing the need for translational research, Bhat is leading a team that includes both lab-based and clinical trainees at different stages of training.

“I find the best research emerges from the exchanges between trainees and researchers,” she says. “Each brings their own perspective – whether it’s a focus on clinical care or lab-based knowledge. The back-and-forth of new ideas leads to some exciting outcomes.”

Winning the Polanyi Prize in Physiology/Medicine is a great honour, says Bhat, adding that it speaks to larger research goals.

“It’s a wonderful sign of support for the importance of this translational research that will provide improved long-term outcomes for our patients,” she says. “That’s what means the most.”

Maria Drout: Ushering in a new era of astronomical research

(photo by Nick Iwanyshyn)

In August 2017, Drout and her collaborators witnessed an event that had never been seen before: a kilonova – an explosion resulting from the collision of two neutron stars. But what made the observation truly historic was the fact that the stellar merger that created the explosion in a galaxy 130 million light-years away also generated gravitational waves that were detected here on Earth.

It was the first time a single cosmic phenomenon was observed in both visible light and gravitational waves, ushering in the “multi-messenger” era in astronomy.

For her research in this new field, as well as the study of short-lived events like supernovas and the evolution of massive stars, Maria Drout was awarded the Polanyi Prize in Physics.

“I’m incredibly honoured to receive the prize,” says Drout. “John Polanyi is an inspiration not only because of his dedication to groundbreaking research, but because of his ability to effect real change that benefits the world.

“I hope to honour this legacy by continuing my work and by building new initiatives to promote effective science communication across Canada."

Drout’s research is providing insight into multiple areas of investigation: the fundamental physics of matter in extreme conditions; the origin of the heaviest elements on the periodic table; and new and unusual types of explosions that challenge our theoretical understanding of stellar death. For example, Drout led the analysis of observations of the kilonova that proved heavy elements like gold and platinum were created in neutron star mergers and not – as had been proposed for decades – in supernovas.

“The Polyani Prize is wonderful recognition of Maria’s highly innovative research, which has seen her rise to international prominence within a few years of receiving her PhD,” says Professor Ray Carlberg, chair of the astronomy and astrophysics department.

Audrey Walton: Understanding medieval England's role in popularizing the vernacular

(photo by Nick Iwanyshyn)

Audrey Walton’s award-winning scholarship focuses on sacred language, literary cultures, vernacularity and world religions – with particular focus on the early medieval period in England.

Walton was awarded the Polanyi Prize in Literature for her ongoing work on how and why medieval England was a European leader in developing a large body of literature in the vernacular, meaning a local native language rather than Latin.

While established scholarship has focused on the notion that medieval authors viewed Latin as sacred, Walton’s work challenges this assumption and shows that English authors often blurred the boundary between local speech and standardized sacred language. Her research aims to revise the conventional understanding of the historical development of European literature.

More generally, Walton’s work is concerned with multilingualism, linguistic divides and the exchange of ideas across regions in medieval Europe, with particular focus on social, political and religious developments concurrent with these phenomena.

“We are all immensely proud of Audrey,” says Professor Paul Stevens, chair of ��˾��ֱ��’s English department.

“Audrey joins five other members of the department in winning this prestigious award – Angela Esterhammer, Andrea Most, Katie Larson, Andrea Charise and most recently Danny Wright,” Stevens said.

“It’s an outstanding group, remarkable for the rigour, originality and diversity of their research. Audrey’s work on the complex constitution of Anglo-Saxon textual culture is a revelation.”

International Women's Day: ��˾��ֱ�� Libraries acquires rare manuscript by 'extraordinary feminist icon'

geoff.vendeville — Wed, 06 Mar 2019 05:00:00 +0000

International Women's Day: ��˾��ֱ�� Libraries acquires rare manuscript by 'extraordinary feminist icon'

geoff.vendeville Wed, 03/06/2019 - 00:00

Cutline

��˾��ֱ�� Libraries acquired a manuscript of Le Livre de Paix (The Book of Peace) by Christine de Pizan, which dates back to 1470. She has been described as one of the earliest feminists (photo by Geoffrey Vendeville)

Geoffrey Vendeville

Topic

City & Culture

Centre for Medieval Studies

English

Faculty of Arts & Science

Global

Humanities

Research & Innovation

��˾��ֱ�� Libraries

Christine de Pizan, one of the first women in the West to earn a living by her pen, is increasingly seen as one of the most important thinkers of her time.

University of Toronto Libraries recently acquired a rare 15^th-century manuscript of the writer's Le Livre de Paix (The Book of Peace), announcing the new addition in the run-up to International Women's Day.

��˾��ֱ��’s copy, written on vellum around 1470, is one of just three manuscripts of The Book of Peace known to have survived. The other two are held at the Royal Library of Belgium and the National Library of France.

Described by one modern scholar as the “mother of humanist feminism,” Christine was the only woman in her day to make a living through writing. (“De Pizan” is a toponym so the usual way of referring to her is “Christine.”)

“She’s a very unusual character, not only as a woman but as a writer in general,” says Suzanne Akbari, a professor of English and medieval literature who is also the director of the Centre for Medieval Studies. Akbari is writing a book about Christine and Chaucer.

Christine’s work was widely circulated in her lifetime, and her fame lasted more than a century after her death circa 1430. But her writing fell out of favour until more attention was paid to female writers, women's history and literary canon building in the early 20^thcentury, particularly in the 1970s, Akbari says.

Lori Walters, a visiting scholar at the centre and professor emerita at Florida State University, says Simone de Beauvoir led the way for Christine's re-discovery when, in The Second Sex, she credited the 15^th-century woman of letters as being the first woman to have written a defence of her sex.

Unusual for the time, Christine was a skilled scribe and supervised the production of manuscripts of her works. “Christine's technical expertise and her determination to fashion herself according to her own ideas of what a woman should be make her an extraordinary feminist icon,” Walters says.

Suzanne Akbari, director of ��˾��ֱ��'s Centre for Medieval Studies (photo by Geoffrey Vendeville)

Christine was born in Venice in 1364, but spent all but her earliest years in France. Her father was an astrologer and physician to King Charles V. Her life was upended by a quick succession of misfortunes: the death of the king, the death of her father and the death of her husband. To make matters worse, the heir to the throne, Charles VI, suffered a series of mental breakdowns, throwing the kingdom into disarray. Christine cultivated patrons and turned to writing to provide for herself, three children, niece and widowed mother, Akbari says.

“In her works, she has what you might call allegorical autobiographies in which she talks about her life in metaphorical terms,” she says.

“In one of them, she memorably describes how she was turned from a woman into a man in a time of hardship. It's a way of describing in a really vivid way how she had to take on certain kinds of roles and certain kinds of tasks in the world, very different from what most women would have to deal with.”

Listen to Akbari, alumnus Chris Piuma and librarian Timothy Perry discuss The Book of Peace on the podcast The Spouter-Inn

The Book of Peace was written when factions vied to fill the vacuum left by Charles VI. The book, which Christine dedicated to the dauphin Louis of Guyenne, describes the princely virtues necessary for peace and good leadership. Karen Green, the co-editor of a modern English translation of The Book of Peace, says Christine “feminizes” virtues like justice, which gives her writing a flavour unique for the time.

Christine participated in public literary discussions that were typically off limits for women, Akbari says. “I think she was really interested in moulding a public persona for herself,” she says. These conversations often happened through the circulation of bundles of letters or debate transcripts.

In one debate, she criticized the objectification of women in Roman de la Rose, a popular 21,000-line poem that tells the story of wooing a maiden, symbolized by a rosebud. A 14^th-century copy of the poem is one of the jewels of ��˾��ֱ��’s medieval collection.

“In a way that's very audacious,” Akbari says about Christine getting involved in the discussion about Roman de la Rose. “There's no other woman writer doing anything like that.”

��˾��ֱ��’s copy of The Book of Peace opens with a vivid illustration adorned with gold leaf that depicts Christine presenting the manuscript to the dauphin.

Timothy Perry, a medieval manuscript and early book librarian at ��˾��ֱ��, says the book was rebound in the early 19^th century to be added to the royal library of Louis XVIII. That sale ultimately fell through. More recently, it belonged to Pierre Bergé, the long-time business and life partner of fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent.

Christine de Pizan in a 19^th-century version of a 15^th-century manuscript illustration (photo via The Print Collector/Getty Images)

The acquisition from a bookseller in the U.S. was made possible thanks to the support of the B.H. Breslauer Foundation and Friends of the Fisher Library.

”One of the things we're excited about is that (the manuscript) can be used in such a variety of ways,” Perry says. It offers something for scholars of medieval French literature, historians of female scholarship and art historians alike.

Akbari sees the potential for symposia focused on the The Book of Peace or Christine’s views on Roman de la Rose. The manuscript also lends itself to themes like freedom of speech and a writer’s responsibility in times of political upheaval, she says.

It's fitting to celebrate Christine on International Women's Day, Akbari says – even if Christine is a significant writer in her own right and although she had some ideas that would be considered highly conservative today.

“It's easy for many of us to think we're in a post-feminist age,” Akbari says. “But, on the other hand, we also see a lot of reasons to believe that we're wrong to imagine that,” she adds, citing the rolling back of personal liberties for women in the U.S. and structural inequities like the gender wage gap.

“There's still a value in thinking about those kinds of issues, and so they're playing out in the public sphere in ways that Christine herself would have been really interested in and, I have no doubt, really engaged in,” she says.

��˾��ֱ�� in videos: The best of 2017

vzaretski — Thu, 14 Dec 2017 05:00:00 +0000

��˾��ֱ�� in videos: The best of 2017

vzaretski Thu, 12/14/2017 - 00:00

Cutline

Richard Marsella, executive director of the Regent Park School of Music and ��˾��ֱ�� PhD student, was featured this year in an episode of the On Location series (photo by Romi Levine)

Veronica Zaretski

Topic

City & Culture

Art Museum

Centre for Medieval Studies

Undergraduate Students

Throughout 2017, we shared with you how members of the ��˾��ֱ�� community pushed boundaries, innovated and made the year a little more fun and inspiring for the rest of us. As the year winds down, we look back on some of the best ��˾��ֱ�� stories from the year – in videos.

The people of #UofTGrad17

Convocation ceremonies bring an atmosphere of celebration to ��˾��ֱ�� – and a couple of musicians brought a melodic spin to this year’s spring convocation.

Michael Bridge started playing the accordion when he was five years old. He completed his undergraduate degree at ��˾��ֱ�� and graduated with a master's degree in accordion performance during this year’s spring convocation. Now, he is continuing his education at ��˾��ֱ�� with a PhD in accordion performance.

In the video above, he plays the accordion and tells us about the complexity of the instrument and his love for it. “My experience at ��˾��ֱ�� has changed my understanding of what the accordion can do,” he tells videographer Lisa Lightbourn.

During spring convocation, we went behind the scenes with another musician at ��˾��ֱ��: Roy Lee, ��˾��ֱ�� alumnus, Carillonneur, and the man behind the bells at Soldier’s Tower.

Precilla Veigas moved everyone with her indomitable spirit. After facing many challenges, including immigrating twice and rebuilding her credentials after arriving in Canada in 2005, Veigas found out that she had terminal cancer halfway through her PhD degree.

Veigas completed her PhD program, contributing research that could help save future emergency room patients who require blood transfusions. She died in October.

“I feel I’ve accomplished what I wanted to do,” said Veigas back in the spring, when she received her PhD in a private degree-presentation ceremony. “Cancer didn’t prevent me from doing that.”

On Location

In the On Location series, ��˾��ֱ�� News reporter Romi Levine explores the impact of ��˾��ֱ�� experts and their research on the city.

Levine and Lightbourn-Lay head to different neighbourhoods in Toronto, and speak with experts on topics ranging from forensic sciences to architecture and installation art.

The episode above takes viewers to Regent Park, to explore a collaboration between ��˾��ֱ�� Faculty of Music researchers, Regent Park School of Music and Turning Point Youth Services, a housing facility for young men who have been involved with the youth criminal justice system.

The collaboration brings youth from the housing facilities to Regent Park to learn how to play an instrument of their choice. “It brings people together 100 per cent and mends a lot of relationships,” says one of the participants about the initiative.

Truth and Reconciliation

Crowds of visitors came to see artist Kent Monkman’s art at ��˾��ֱ��’s Art Museum last winter as Canada was getting ready to mark its 150th year. “At this moment in time it’s important to have a critical perspective on Canada,” Monkman said. His large-scale paintings, explored in the video above by Lightbourn-Lay, subvert a classical style while challenging the history of colonialism in Canada.

Art Museum Director Barbara Fischer asked Monkman in 2014 to put something together for Canada 150, part of an effort by the Canadian Museums Association to reflect on how museums have framed Canadian history.

“What is the function of art and what is the purpose of art?” Monkman asks in the video above. “Is it only to show beauty or pleasure? I don’t believe so. Art has to be challenging, and sometimes it has to take us to dark places or challenging places.”

A dictionary of very old words

What does Old English sound like? Turns out, not a whole lot like English.

Robert Getz and Stephen Pelle are the drafting editors of the Dictionary of Old English, a project that various scholars at the Centre for Medieval Studies have been working on since the 1970s.

The dictionary maps around 35,000 words of the oldest period of the English language (from the middle of the 7th century to 1150).

In the video above, the two take us behind the world of old English, where rain is described as “heaven’s showers," and share the meaning behind their favourite words, like heolop-helm (helmet of invisibility) and wite-hus (house of punishment).

Back to school

NerdyAndQuirky (a.k.a. YouTube superstar and ��˾��ֱ�� student Sabrina Cruz) gave first-year students five tips to survive their first year. “Participate, make friends with people as lost and confused as you are,” says the popular Cruz.

The working life at ��˾��ֱ��

Photographer Ken Jones has worked at ��˾��ֱ�� Scarborough for 36 years and has spent 24 as staff photographer, capturing countless memories in unforgettable photographs.

In the video above, the man behind the camera is finally in front of it, explaining his work, which also happens to be his passion.

And then there's Terry Gardiner. A former ballet dancer with a life-long commitment to serving communities, Gardiner pivoted his career after graduating with a master’s degree in social work from the university. He is now the manager of diversity, equity and student experience at the Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work.

In the video above, he takes us to Regent Park, where he volunteers as a ballet teacher at the Coleman Lemieux dance school.

A new chapter for ��˾��ֱ�� Mississauga

When Ulli Krull was installed as ��˾��ֱ�� Mississauga’s ninth principal, the renowned chemist and judoka described his vision to build on ��˾��ֱ�� Mississauga’s record of excellence, and performed his signature fingertip push-ups.

He also advised students to open their minds and ask themselves, “with what I have learned, what can I do next?”

The holidays are around the corner

Krull took a different approach to chemistry in this recent video celebrating the holiday season at ��˾��ֱ�� Mississauga.

And to mark the end of 2017, ��˾��ֱ�� President Meric Gertler looks back on everything we have to celebrate during this holiday season.

“It’s about innovation and discovery, striving for excellence and standing up for what’s right: As a community we greet neighbours and friends and turn vision into reality,” says Gertler in the video above.

From everyone at ��˾��ֱ�� News: Enjoy this holiday season and Happy 2018.

The English of a Millennium Ago: ��˾��ֱ�� compiles "Dictionary of Old English"

ullahnor — Fri, 06 Jan 2017 19:33:31 +0000

The English of a Millennium Ago: ��˾��ֱ�� compiles "Dictionary of Old English" ullahnor Fri, 01/06/2017 - 14:33

Brent Ledger

Author legacy

Brent Ledger

Topic

City & Culture

Old English

Faculty of Arts & Science

Centre for Medieval Studies

Language

Subheadline

Now at “H,” the Centre for Medieval Studies' dictionary is close to defining every word from the language’s earliest days

Just when you think you know your own language, along comes a hellwyrgen.

Rob Getz ran across the creature in a 12th-century manuscript, where it was pushing some thieves suffering torments in hell into a pit of boiling tar.

As an interim co-editor of the Dictionary of Old English, a ��˾��ֱ�� project that aims to map all of the roughly 35,000 words from the earliest form of the language, Getz is no stranger to challenging words. But this one was a stretch.

Not so much the first part which is obvious – hell. But the second part looked like it might be derived directly from the verb wyrgan or wyrigan meaning “to curse, revile, condemn.” It’s actually identical to the second part of a noun used to describe the mother of the monster Grendel in the Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf.

So in the end, a hellwyrgen turns out to be something like a monstrous female creature from hell, or hell-hag.

Read about the dictionary at CBC News

Old English, which arose from the Germanic language of the Anglo-Saxon settlers who came to Britain from northern Europe in the fifth and sixth centuries, is the direct ancestor of our modern tongue.

It has bequeathed us dozens of common words – from “hound” (hund) to “house” (hūs). But the language has changed so much over the centuries that anyone reading an Old English text such as Beowulf would not recognize most of the words. Even the alphabet was different with fewer letters, a different letter for “w,” the wonderful “eth” (ð) and the runic “thorn” (þ) standing in for “th.”

Scholars at the Faculty of Arts & Science's Centre for Medieval Studies have been working on a comprehensive dictionary of the tongue since the 1970s, and with the release of “h” this year, they have now published definitions for more than half the words.

Computers have made things somewhat quicker, and a digitized corpus, consisting of at least one copy of every known text in Old English (from poems to royal records), means that they can now search more easily for words and citations. But scholars still have to organize the words and define their meaning.

Here, there is no algorithm to aid them – just countless dictionaries, Latin sources and the lexicographer’s best intuition.

Some words appear only once in the corpus, while others, such as the Old English for “hand,” “head” and “heart” are both common and complicated. The 39-page entry for heorte (“heart”) contains more than a dozen major meanings, including the seat of love, of courage and even of the intellectual faculties.

The section on the letter “h” was particularly difficult, and not just because it begins with more words than any other except “s” and “f.” It contains key verbs and pronouns, as well as the interrogatives – who, what, when, where and why – all of which began with hw in Old English. The interrogatives “are fairly uncomplicated in terms of their meaning,” says Stephen Pelle, an interim co-editor of the dictionary – but they “can be very complicated grammatically.”

Old English portrays another world, a world where rain might be described as “heaven’s showers” (heofonscur), but the language is also a window into the philosophical, moral, legal and linguistic roots of our own.

If we’re to understand those roots, we need to know the language the people spoke, says Getz. To that end, the lexicographers are trying to be as comprehensive as possible, picking up words earlier dictionary makers missed.

“If we’re doing our job right,” says Pelle, “we should be able to catch just about every word that survives in an old English text.”

Illustration: Charles&Thorn

Ten Interesting Words from Old English

Hring – ring. A lot of words that today start with consonants like "r," "l" and "n" began in Old English with h. Thus hleahtor (“laughter”), hnutu (“nut”) and hnappian (“to nap”). (The h was pronounced, at least in the early Old English period so hleahtor would sound similar to the modern word laughter with a huff of breath at the beginning.)

Hē, hēo, hit – the ancestors of our “he,” “she” and “it.” They occur about 200,000 times in the old English corpus.

Hūs – “house,” “building” and, in some contexts, “brothel.” The Anglo-Saxons loved compound words and hūs figures in more than 100 of them, including ealu-hūs (“ale house”), gyst-hūs (“guest house”) and pleg-hūs (“theatre” or “playhouse”).

Heoloþ-helm – a helmet that makes the wearer invisible. A demon wearing one of these figures in a medieval retelling of Genesis. He sneaks into Paradise and tries to trick Adam and Eve into eating the forbidden fruit.

Hunig-smæc – It sounds like a breakfast cereal, and it certainly has a sweet side. It comes from the Old English for “honey” and “smack,” or “taste” so it means “taste or flavour of honey.”

Hærfest-handfull – “harvest handful” or the grain given a labourer as his due during harvest.

Hǣmed – marriage but also cohabitation, adultery and even “the intercourse of animals.”

Hwæt – The most famous hard-to-define word in old English, hwæt opens the great Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf. As a pronoun, it’s well understood. As a particle or interjection, as in Beowulf, not so much. Seamus Heaney, the great Irish poet who translated the poem to acclaim in 2000, rendered it simply as “so.” Others have gone for “lo,” “hark” and “behold.” The Dictionary of Old English’s answer is: It depends. It might mean: “now,” “so,” “listen,” “why,” “now look,” “indeed,” etc..., but it depends on the context. The complete definition covers 26 pages.

This story is republished from ��˾��ֱ�� Magazine

Centre for Medieval Studies

Medieval Studies, Centre for

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Listen to Akbari, alumnus Chris Piuma and librarian Timothy Perry discuss The Book of Peace on the podcast The Spouter-Inn

��˾��ֱ�� in videos: The best of 2017

The people of #UofTGrad17

On Location

Truth and Reconciliation

A dictionary of very old words

Back to school

The working life at ��˾��ֱ��

A new chapter for ��˾��ֱ�� Mississauga

The holidays are around the corner

The English of a Millennium Ago: ��˾��ֱ�� compiles "Dictionary of Old English"

Read about the dictionary at CBC News

Ten Interesting Words from Old English

See more stories at ��˾��ֱ�� Magazine