Hope Williard
I am currently a postdoctoral researcher at Utrecht University, where I work with Robert Flierman and Anne Sieberichs on the project "Lettercraft and Epistolary Performance in Early Medieval Europe, 476–751 CE". My research explores letter writing and literary culture in late antiquity and the early Middle Ages. I am particularly interested in the reuse and transformation of Roman culture in the late antique and early medieval worlds, which is in the subject of my first book Friendship in the Merovingian Kingdoms: Venantius Fortunatus and his contemporaries (ARC Humanities Press, 2022).
Prior to coming to Utrecht, I was an associate lecturer (adjunct professor) and academic subject librarian for classics and medieval studies at the University of Lincoln, where I taught a range of courses on the ancient and medieval worlds, including a module on ancient graffiti. From August 2022 to April 2023, I held a Research Libraries UK/AHRC Professional Practice Fellowship, researching how PhD students in history learn to find, use, and make digital tools and resources for their work.
I did my PhD in History at the University of Leeds (2017), an MPhil in Medieval History at Cambridge (2012), and a BA in Medieval Studies at Brown University (2011).
Prior to coming to Utrecht, I was an associate lecturer (adjunct professor) and academic subject librarian for classics and medieval studies at the University of Lincoln, where I taught a range of courses on the ancient and medieval worlds, including a module on ancient graffiti. From August 2022 to April 2023, I held a Research Libraries UK/AHRC Professional Practice Fellowship, researching how PhD students in history learn to find, use, and make digital tools and resources for their work.
I did my PhD in History at the University of Leeds (2017), an MPhil in Medieval History at Cambridge (2012), and a BA in Medieval Studies at Brown University (2011).
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Books by Hope Williard
Papers by Hope Williard
friendship networks, focusing on the interconnected writings of three Merovingian authors. Venantius Fortunatus was an Italian-born poet who spent most of his career writing for Merovingian elites. The royal officials Dynamius and Gogo composed letters found in a compilation of sixth-century letters called the Epistolae Austrasicae. Using the letters and poetry of these three writers, this essay argues that literary skill facilitated the creation and maintenance of connections across distance and was a necessary part of elite identity. It shows that Gregory of Tours’ dramatic rhetorical claim did not reflect the true state of literature in Gaul.
Conference Presentations by Hope Williard
friendship networks, focusing on the interconnected writings of three Merovingian authors. Venantius Fortunatus was an Italian-born poet who spent most of his career writing for Merovingian elites. The royal officials Dynamius and Gogo composed letters found in a compilation of sixth-century letters called the Epistolae Austrasicae. Using the letters and poetry of these three writers, this essay argues that literary skill facilitated the creation and maintenance of connections across distance and was a necessary part of elite identity. It shows that Gregory of Tours’ dramatic rhetorical claim did not reflect the true state of literature in Gaul.
Session 1219: Erasure in Late Antiquity, I: Erasing Text and Image?
Erasure entails not only destruction but also replacement and rewriting. This session focus on the Eastern Roman Empire to explore what scholars miss when using the concept of erasure to understand late-antique and Byzantine manuscript palimpsests and altered mosaics. The first paper (Rossetto) explores the processes of erasure and overwriting identified in monastic palimpsests from the Sinai, highlighting overwritten and previously unknown texts. The second paper reinterprets mosaic alteration, through analysing changes as interactions with and subversions of local Islamic aniconic trends (Sauquet) and by considering how deliberate shuffling and restricted recognisability can reinforce and emphasise the visual and material properties of mosaics (Stroth).
Session 1619: Erasure in Late Antiquity, II: Erasure, Law, and the Late Roman Court
This session will focus on alternative forms of historical, cultural, and even legislative erasure at the very highest political level: the court of the emperors’ itself. The first paper (Kybett) explores the personification of the goddess Roma in the poetry of Claudian as a rebuttal to Prudentius’ Christian portrayal of the goddess and his attempts to erase pagan culture from the political sphere. The second (Rockwell) looks at the retroactive ‘erasure’ of legislation by Justinian and its repercussions on various aspects of 6th-century life. The third (Anderson) approaches the apparent visual erasure of royal status when Theodosian dynasts adopted penitent clothing in times of crisis.
Session 1719: Erasure in Late Antiquity, III: Erasing the Dead
This panel considers the role of erasure in shaping memories of violent or conflicting pasts in Late Antiquity. Hay considers the integration and assimilation of Roman and Jewish pasts on later Christian sarcophagi. Holob considers the association of Jesus and martyrs with the ghosts of those who had died a violent death. Boers’ paper continues these themes to show how both victims and perpetrators not only rewrote but even removed physical traces of violence in attempts to control the memory of violent events in 4th-century church conflicts.
Session 1819: Erasure in Late Antiquity, IV: The Agency of Erasure
This panel addresses the agency of erasure: who commissioned it, who carried out, who interprets it as erasure. Usherwood examines the commissioners and executors of 4th-century epigraphic erasures. To complete the panel and strand, Walker considers the role of modern scholars in the act of erasure, using Nonnus to argue that disciplinary categorisation and exclusion actively erase elements that do not fit their visions of Late Antiquity.