OLD ENGLISH NEWSLETTER Published for !e Old English Division of the Modern Language Association of America by !e Medieval Institute, Western Michigan University and its Richard Rawlinson Center for Anglo-Saxon Studies Editor: R.M. Liuzza Associate Editors: Daniel Donoghue !omas Hall VOLUME NUMBER FALL ISSN - O!" E#$!%&' N()&!(**(+ Volume "# Number $ Fall %&&' Editor Publisher R. M. Liuzza Paul E. Szarmach Department of English Medieval Institute The University of Tennessee Western Michigan University "&$ McClung Tower $#&" W. Michigan Ave. Knoxville, TN "(##)-&*"& Kalamazoo, MI *#&&+-'*"% Associate Editors Year’s Work in Old English Studies OEN Bibliography Daniel Donoghue Thomas Hall Department of English Department of English (M/C $)%) Harvard University University of Illinois at Chicago Barker Center / $% Quincy St. )&$ S. Morgan Street Cambridge MA &%$"+ Chicago, IL )&)&(-($%& Assistant to the Editor: Tara Lynn Assistant to the Publisher: David Clark Subscriptions: The rate for institutions is ,%& -. per volume, current and past volumes, except for volumes $ and %, which are sold as one. The rate for individuals is ,$' -. per volume, but in order to reduce administrative costs the editors ask individuals to pay for two volumes (currently "+ & "#) at one time at the discounted rate of ,%'. Correspondence: General correspondence regarding OEN should be addressed to the Editor; correspondence regard- ing the Year’s Work and the annual Bibliography should be sent to the respective Associate Editors. Correspondence regarding business matters and subscriptions should be sent to the Publisher. Submissions: The Old English Newsletter is a referreed periodical. Solicited and unsolicited manuscripts (except for independent reports and news items) are reviewed by specialists in anonymous reports. Scholars can assist the work of OEN by sending offprints of articles, and notices of books or monographs, to the Edi- tor. OEN is published for the Old English Division of the Modern Language Association by the Richard Rawlinson Cen- ter for Anglo-Saxon Studies and Manuscript Research at the Medieval Institute, Western Michigan University. OEN receives no financial support from the MLA; the support of the International Society of Anglo-Saxonists and the Department of English at The University of Tennessee are gratefully acknowledged. Copyright © %&&) The Board of the Medieval Institute Kalamazoo, MI *#&&+-'*"% Editorial Offices Business Offices email: [email protected] email: [email protected] fax: +)'-#(*-)#%) fax: %)#-"+(-+('& phone: +)'-#(*-)#(& phone: %)#-"+(-++"% http://www.oenewsletter.org/OEN/index.php In this Issue Note from the Editor " News Call for Papers: Old English Division, %&&) MLA * ISAS at Kalamazoo %&&) * %&&) NEH Summer Seminar for College and University Teachers: ' “Holy Men and Holy Women of Anglo-Saxon England” Summer Seminar on Palaeography and Codicology, University of New Mexico ' Medieval Academy of America %&&), Boston ) International Conference: “Form and content of instruction in Anglo-Saxon ) England in the light of contemporary manuscript evidence” Institute for Medieval Studies, University of Nottingham: Spring Events ( Manchester Centre for Anglo-Saxon Studies, Spring Events ( Call for Papers: “!e Performance of the Past: History and Histrionics + in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages.” Call for Papers: !e Twentieth Barnard Medieval and Renaissance Conference + Call for Papers: !e Tenth Cardi/ Conference on the !eory and Practice + of Translation in the Middle Ages Call for Papers: !e Heroic Age $$: “Baghdad, Aachen, and Winchester: # Early Medieval Reforms and Reformers” Call for Papers: “!e Anglo-Saxon Landscape” # Heckman Research Stipends at the Hill Monastic Manuscript Library # British Academy Neil Ker Memorial Fund Awards $& Harvard University: Morton Bloom0eld Visiting Scholar Program $& Brief Notices on Publications $& Reports ISAS %&&': Munich $' Dictionary of Old English: %&&' Report (Joan Holland) %$ Essays What are Old English Metrical Studies for? (!omas Bredeho1) %' Assuring the E2cacy of Beowulf for Undergraduate Students (Jennifer M. Santos) "( Circolwyrde : New Electronic Resources for Anglo-Saxon Studies (Edward Christie) *' Research in Progress Report Form '$ How to Reach OEN inside back cover OEN is set in $$/$" Adobe Minion Pro Medium, with special characters drawn from the Unicode font Gentium. It is produced on a Macintosh PowerBook G* using Adobe InDesign CS%. 345678 "# 94. $ " Note from the Editor In this space one year ago (OEN "+.$) it was announced that the Executive Committee of the Old English Division of the MLA had given its approval to a plan to place the contents of odd-numbered issues of OEN online. In a sub- sequent issue (OEN "+.", written in September %&&' but not reaching subscribers until January %&&)) appeared a more detailed description of the OEN website and its companion OEN Bibliography database. !e site (http://www. oenewsletter.org/OEN/) was also announced in the spring of %&&' through various channels, such as the internet mailing lists ANSAXNET and MEDTEXT-L and at the International Congress on Medieval Studies at Western Michigan University. !e sites have been online for almost a year now, and it seems an appropriate time to o/er a 0rst report on their progress. A bewildering variety of statistics on web tra2c are automatically collected by the host server (http://www.ipowerweb.com); herewith, a brief summary of what seems most noteworthy about them. !ose with experience in the online world advise that one should not measure tra2c to a website in terms of ‘hits’; the number of ‘hits’ is simply a raw count of every single 0le of every type downloaded from the web server, includ- ing style sheets, embedded function code, images and whatnot. A single web page can produce ten or more hits each time it is accessed; consequently, hit counts are usually wildly in:ated numbers. A more accurate gauge of a website’s usage, apparently, is the number of pages accessed and, especially, the number of unique visitors (or dis- tinct IP addresses) who viewed the site. By this measure the launch of the OEN online has been a modest success. !e busiest months for the site were March, April, and May, when it was 0rst announced. Each of these months saw more than $$&& unique visitors and over (&&& pages viewed. Soon the feverish excitement of the 0ckle public cooled, however, and by the end of %&&' the site was receiving a small but steady amount of tra2c, averaging around '&& unique visitors a month (about $) a day, though for some reason Tuesdays and Wednesdays consistently have seen more tra2c than other days of the week) and '&&& pages viewed. !ese numbers suggest that people are returning to the site and navigating through a number of pages per visit—just what one would hope from an online journal. !e average visit to the site, however, is only six minutes long: while we would like to regard this as a tribute to the site’s e2cient design, we hope that readers of the print version of OEN are not so hasty. Further analysis of these numbers suggests that the site is beginning to establish a place in the online community. More than (' of visitors to the site arrive there by typing the address directly into their browser or using a book- mark; about # come from links on other pages, and the rest via search engines such as Google. An encouraging trend is that, while in its early months most of the search-engine tra2c was the result of very broad and general queries (e.g., ”Anglo-Saxons”) or a search for a personal name (for obscure reasons, “Andy Orchard” was the most popular), the most common search phrases now are “Old English Newsletter,” “OEN online” and “Old English bib- liography.” Nearly %& of visitors to the site bookmark it or add it to their “favorites” list. All these indicate that the site is becoming more widely known, and visitors are returning to it regularly; we hope we can conclude from all this data that our readers are 0nding it useful to have the OEN available online. !e OEN Bibliography Database (http://www.oenewsletter.org/OENDB/) now has "'" registered users, and on av- erage enrolls at least one new user every day during the academic year. !e occasional reports received from these users indicate that they are encountering few problems. Some have taken the time to note errors in entries and sug- gest improvements in the site’s design, for which we are grateful; all visitors to the site are encouraged to help us improve its accuracy and usefulness. * <5= >9?5@AB C8DA58EE8F CALL FOR PAPERS OLD ENGLISH DIVISION 2006 MLA ANNUAL MEETING Philadelphia, PA December %(–"&, %&&) !e Executive Committee of the Old English Division of the Modern Language Association invites papers for its %&&) program. !e committee has planned three sessions: $. Open Session: papers on any Old English topic are welcome. %. Beowulf: papers on any aspect of the poem are welcome ". Place and Space: papers are invited that apply the topic to secular or religious texts, to travel, to buildings or landscape, to bodies, etc. DEADLINE: Papers or $-page abstracts must be received by $' March %&&) NOTE: All participants must be members of the MLA by $ April %&&) Additional information may be requested from the Program Chair: Professor Marijane Osborn Department of English University Of California at Davis Davis, CA #')$)-+'+$ email: [email protected] phone: '"&-('%-%'(+ / fax: '"&-('%-'&$" (attn: Professor Osborn) ISAS at Kalamazoo 2006 *-( May %&&) !e International Society of