Dzon Awarded Exchange Fellowship in Oxford
Mary Dzon, associate professor of English, has been awarded an exchange fellowship with Corpus Christi College at the University of Oxford in England.
This fellowship is a one-month exchange opportunity during Oxford’s Trinity term (late spring)
sponsored by the Huntington Library in San Marino, California. Dzon, researcher of medieval literary culture and spirituality, will examine late-medieval manuscripts from the college’s collection as well as at the Bodleian Library. During her stay, Dzon will be able to interact with other scholars, archivists, and faculty in the vibrant medieval studies community Oxford hosts.
“The interdisciplinary field of medieval studies is pursued slightly differently, with different emphases, in North America and Britain, so this wide exposure will be quite helpful to me,” Dzon said.
Dzon’s archival research is intended to enrich her monograph in progress, tentatively titled Divine Wrath in the Imaginative Theology of Late-Medieval England. This monograph will analyze theological and literary medieval texts of England along with contemporary imagery to understand emotions of Christians during the time, as well as the emotions they were or were not willing to attribute to the Trinity and also the Virgin Mary.
“The mystery of a God who affectively relates to humans, yet is also entirely different from them, seems to have been an important issue within late-medieval devotional culture,” Dzon suggests.
She was inspired to write this monograph from her previous study on the late-medieval images of the baby Jesus and his mother Mary, where she explored spiritual perspectives on Christ’s childhood at the time in addition to Mary’s power within the medieval Christian imagination.
After the fellowship, Dzon will share her findings and experiences in Oxford with the UT community and will continue to present her work on divine emotionality at medieval studies conferences.
by Sloan Docekal