The Sarum Seminar is a continuously-evolving program for enthusiasts of Gothic cathedrals and medieval life. It began with a 1994 course on Salisbury Cathedral taught by Robert Scott through Stanford University's Continuing Studies Program. That first class has been together ever since, and we are always delighted to welcome new people.

Our primary activities are a series of seminars and meetings, a bi-annual newsletter, and this web site.  You can find out more about membership, the group's organization, and some other related resources below.

Meetings
		Meetings are held in or near Palo Alto, California, roughly once a month during the academic year. They feature talks on architecture, music, and history by university professors, professional practitioners and original research by the seminar's own members. All Sarum Seminar participants are warmly encouraged to develop individual or small-group projects of their choice and present their work in these seminars. There is a $10 fee per session to cover expenses, but your first meeting is free for those who would like to try us out. Unless otherwise specified, we meet at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) located at 75 Alta Road, overlooking the main Stanford campus (directions here). The next-to-occur meetings are at the top of the list. (All dates and speakers are subject to revision.). Information about prior meetings can be found here. This is a record of previous meetings we've held, sometimes with ancillary information such as slides, documents, or links to related material. Future meetings The next to occur are at the top of the list. Medieval matters lecture: Thursday, February 2, 2012, 7-9 pm at Annenberg Auditorium, Cummings Art Building, 435 Lausen Mall, Stanford University. Free and open to the public. (Members-only reception 5:15-6:30 at Memorial Church Round Room.) Co-sponsored with Stanford Continuing Studies and other departments. Robert M. Durling (Emeritus Professor of Italian & English Literature, UC Santa Cruz): Dante now - rescheduled from last May. In English, there is no poet of Dante’s stature except Shakespeare, and in Italy, he is regarded as so unapproachably supreme that he is referred to simply as “The Poet”—no qualifiers are necessary. In this talk, Robert Durling will discuss the challenges—and the exhilaration—of bringing the work of such a vast, intimidating, and luminous poet into English, and how reading him, six hundred years after he wrote, can transfix us and even change our lives. Robert Durling is one of the preeminent translators of Dante into English, and a scholar who has spent more than fifty years crafting versions of the Divine Comedy that bring this superlative 14th-century Florentine poet into conversation with contemporary Americans. Durling is the author of dozens of scholarly articles and three books on Italian Renaissance literature. In 1996, his eagerly-awaited translation of Dante’s Inferno was published by Oxford University Press, followed by Purgatorio in 2003 and Paradiso in 2010. Stanford colleague Michael Wyatt says Durling’s translations are “marvelous, in the richest medieval sense of the term.” Special Collections visit: Wednesday, March 7, 2012, 7-9 pm at Stanford Green Library JOHN MUSTAIN (Special Collections Librarian): Medieval Treasures and Other Delights Seminar: Tuesday, April 10, 2012 (location to be announced) DEBORAH LOFT (Art historian, Colege of Marin): Cross-cultural artistic interchange in medieval Toledo Medieval Matters public lecture: Wednesday May 2, 2012, 7-9pm at Geology 105, Building 320, Stanford. Free and open to the public. Co-sponsored with Stanford Continuing Studies and other departments. MICHELLE BROWN (Manuscript archivist, British Library / Universiy of London): Imagining the exotic: British and Irish attitudes to the cultures of the Eastwern Mediterannean and Near East in the early Middle Ages.. Seminar: June 2012 (date and location to be announced) KERRY McCARTHY (Musicologist, Duke University and early Sarum Seminar member)
Membership
		Benefits of membership include: a copy of our newsletter; invitations to our pot-luck parties, special meetings (such as to the Special Collections at Stanford Libraries), and pre-talk sessions for our sister organizations such as Medieval Matters; the option to receive printed notices about our regular meetings; and the opportunity to contribute towards our expenses, such as bringing speakers to town. You can join us by applying at any meeting, or by mail.  Here's our current membership form. Do please include your postal address, because some communications are only available in hard copy. For more information, please contact the membership chair at Keeping in touch We maintain two group email lists: is open to all (you can sign up here, or send email to the membership chair). is sent only to paid-up members. Please join us! The membership chair will be happy to help you get added to the email list, change your email address, or unsubscribe.
Other resources
		We have a list of interesting web links and related information sources. Please send items for inclusion to John Wilkes at . 2007-08-12 Dick Jones, Within the Spire, Looking Down. An article published in the 2007 edition of Spire, the annual publication of the Friends of Salisbury Cathedral. The course that got this all started Bob Scott's Gothic Cathedrals and Great Churches of England, 1150-1350 Stanford University Continuing Studies course. Bob Scott's course has evolved into a book, The Gothic Enterprise, published by University of California Press in 2003.  Most of the photographs and artwork in the book were supplied by seminar members.  Its bibliography is an updated version of the one originally provided for Bob's course. Cindy Davis has made available her wonderful pictures from the 2001 Salisbury and Cotswolds trip. Virginia Jansen's art history courses at the University of Santa Cruz include some wonderful materials. Her online courses include: Gothic cathedrals and Romanesque architecture. Pointers to other web pages and related information sources that were submitted by the Sarum participants, as well as Dick Jones' Medieval Miracle Cookies recipe. Trips to Salisbury and the Cotswolds (England) In the past, the Sarum group participated in trips to the UK, under the expert guidance of Robert Scott, former Associate Director of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, and Julia Fremon, under the auspices of their company The Sarum Seminar. Salisbury information Salisbury Cathedral - the official web site. Sarum College, in the Salisbury Cathedral Close, where the Sarum Seminar trips were based; contact them for friendly accommodation in a magical setting. Courses include: MA in Christian Spirituality: has been running for ten years and currently has ~90 MA students, some from overseas including the States.  The programme is quite unique as it only requires about 10 days in Salisbury per year. [poster] The Heart of the Divine: Christian spiritual formation for today (Oct'08-Mar'09): a less academic and more experiential course; a day a month for six or ten months [poster] Marion Roberts' The Salisbury Project at the University of Virginia: a superb collection of Salisbury-related plans and images. More information about Salisbury can be found at Visit Salisbury and Salisbury Today.
Organization
		The Sarum Seminar is a collaborative effort, with roles distributed across the following volunteer group officers. Coordinating committee: Julia Fremon (chair, treasurer, co-founder) Elaine Kriegh (membership and communications) Evelyn McMillan (newsletter editor) Bob Nyden (newsletter designer) John Wilkes (website and email list) Bob Scott (Medieval Matters, co-founder) Program advisers: Karen Duncan Linda Jack (past chair) Ann Jones (past chair) Dick Jones Kathleen Much Lola Stephens