From The Hub: Call it the Villon epiphany. François Villon was a 15th-century French poet. His work has been passed down in many hand-scribed manuscripts, but none of them are originals in the author’s hand. On an autumn day in 1980, Stephen Nichols was in Paris studying different parchment manuscripts of the poet’s Le Testament. […]

From The Hub: Bernadette Wegenstein, a Johns Hopkins professor of media studies and filmmaker, recalls working on her new documentary, The Good Breast, and feeling a bit hesitant to put too much of herself into the film. Yes, her voice is heard asking questions, since she’s the director. And her considerable research shaped The Good Breast, which is […]

From The Hub: Katherine Robinson uses three different translation dictionaries in her work, but she isn’t learning a new language. She’s learning a very, very old language—Middle Welsh, which predates the language of Shakespeare by centuries. Robinson has been familiarizing herself with the medieval language as part of the prep work for her dissertation research, which she’ll undertake […]

From The Hub: For writer and historian Lawrence Jackson, joining Johns Hopkins University was an appealing homecoming for several reasons. Beyond the emotional resonance of Baltimore—Jackson grew up here, still has family here, and has written frequently about the city—there’s the academic proximity to the roots of many research topics that intrigue him, including the histories of […]