Professor discusses book on medieval lawJan. 27, 2011 KALAMAZOO--Western Michigan University's Dr. Jana Schulman will talk about her recently published bilingual edition of the Jónsbók, a late 13th-century legal text, Thursday, Feb. 10, at 7 p.m. in Room 3025 of Brown Hall.
Jónsbók's contents focus on land use, tenancy, personal rights, farming, maritime law, marriage and family law, and inheritance, in addition to poor and theft law. Schulman's is the first translation into English of any Jónsbók manuscript. It makes the text accessible to English-language readers, providing a more comprehensive history of medieval Icelandic law for scholars worldwide. Schulman received her doctoral degree from the University of Minnesota, where she studied medieval English, German and Scandinavian languages and literatures. At WMU, she teaches Old English, Old Norse, medieval literature, British literature and Western world literature. Her scholarship centers on law and literature in medieval Iceland and Anglo-Saxon England, as well as on women and epics. Schulman has edited and co-edited several books, and her essays have appeared in Scandinavian Studies, Germanic Review and various essay collections. She is the recipient of a FRACASF grant from WMU, a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship for College Teachers, and several Fulbright grants for her research in Iceland. For more information about this or other Scholarly Speakers Series events, contact Dr. Anthony Ellis, Department of English, at anthony.ellis@wmich.edu or (269) 387-2606. Media contact: Tonya Durlach, (269) 387-8400, tonya.durlach@wmich.edu WMU News |
Schulman, WMU professor of English, will discuss "The Job of a Philologist is Never Done: Translating and Editing Jónsbók, the Laws of Later Iceland." The lecture is part of WMU's English Scholarly Speakers Series, and is open to the public free of charge.