September 4: Alison Altstatt

On Friday, September 4, at 1:30 pm, Alison Altstatt of the University of Northern Iowa will present “Re-membering the Wilton Processional: a Manuscript Lost and Found.” Prof. Altstatt’s talk is related to a notated leaf of an English medieval manuscript held in the Special Collections of the University of Iowa Libraries, the co-sponsor of her talk. Musical, textual, and codicological evidence supports the identification of the leaf as a fragment of a processional from Wilton Abbey, an important center for women’s Latin learning from its tenth-century foundation to its sixteenth-century dissolution. The recovery of the University of Iowa leaf, along with more than thirty others, provides a window into the abbey’s musico-poetic tradition, its processional liturgies, and its dramatic rituals.

In order to view the manuscript, Colloquium will be held in the Main Library in room 2032.  (Please note this change of location.)   Room 2032 is on the south end of the second floor, across the central hall from the music librarian’s office.