Master Aleksandr Ruslanovich :
Lady Morwenna Westerne :
Master Justin du Coeur :
In the SCA context -- as I've often said, I'm a dilletante. My primary
focus these days is gaming, but I've been getting back into dance, and
right at the moment I'm playing around with several things. I tend to
focus on late-period, mainly because I'm extremely fond of using period
books when I'm studying a topic, and those are *vastly* easier to obtain
for the 16th and 17th centuries than earlier times.
Lord Diego Mundoz :
Lady Emmanuelle de Chenonceaux :
Master Seamus Donn :
Mistress Gwendolyn of Middlemarch :
Lord Kali Harlansson of Gotland :
Seigneur Jehan du Lac :
Master John McGuire :
Shi Hua Fu :
Lady Yelizaveta Medvedeva :
Russia, under Ivan IV and beyond; Calais in the end of the 1500s;
England just before The Conquest. I'm more interested in everyday lives
- -- especially of artisans -- than I am in politics, economics, or religion.
England under Elizabeth, particularly the middle of her reign.
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Well, right at the moment I'm actually doing a lot of light study of
Ancient History. That's not so much something I set out to do, as that I
discovered The Teaching Company a while back, a really neat firm that
specializes in producing college-level courses on tape. They're very
strong in Ancient History, so I've been doing a lot of Greece and Rome.
(Although, that said, I just picked up several of their Medieval
courses, and am looking forward to getting around to them soon.)
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dar-al-Islam. My most recent book purchases were an
annotated Quran, an Arabic grammar, and a book on Arabic script
(which I should commend to the calligraqphers).
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I am interested in French history. I have a new cookbook on Spanish cuisine, and a book I haven't started yet on Medieval pilgrimage in England.
13th century Ireland, late 16th century Ireland, and my household is slowly dragging me into Norse stuff. :-)
[Also 2nd millenium BC Babylon and Assyria, but that's a bit outside the SCA timeperiod!]
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Right now, because of my work on the ballet de cour,
the 1580 - 1610 period of France and Italy, and,
because of my reading, the British Isles around 1000.
My original, and longest-lasting, interest is Scandinavia, 800 - 1100, plus
saga-period Iceland. But I get interested in lots of other places and
periods all the time; most recently, I'd say the crusader Kingdom of
Jerusalem. Ask me again next month.
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I do have my particular focus in the 16th century, particularly France,
although I do have other pockets of interest, like the Latin Kingdom of
Jerusalem. I'm interested in everything about the time my persona lives
in: politics, religion, military history, economics, families and
household life, food, cooking, dining, food service, manners and
customs, clothing, pottery, material culture generally and what the
French historians call "l'histoire de mentalite" (or, "what were they
thinking??"). Particular projects I'm working on now include translating
a period French cookbook, putting together a web site on manners
(including putting various primary sources like the "Havamal" and "The
Babees Book" online), putting my collection of historic military prints
on-line (Braun & Hogenberg engravings of 16th c. battles and such), and
various clothing projects involving dorky Elizabethan fashions.
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Tudor and Elizabethan England and Europe.
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"Currently stuck in the Ming Dynasty of China. Help! Let me out!"
More specifically, he's been studying the food, clothing, calligraphy
and society of period China, especially focusing on Keifeng and the
Jewish population there.
I'm currently reading two fascinating books. One is Lloyd Berry and
Robert Crummey's book "Rude and Barbarous Kingdom: Russia in Accounts
of Sixteenth-Century English Voyagers", which is about the Muscovy
Company founded in London in 1554, and contains first-hand accounts of
the extensive trade and travel with Russia between 1553 and 1604
(including all of the townspeople on the docks watching the arrival of
Russian ambassadors in London). The second is "Life along the Silk
Road" by Susan Whitfield, an account of individuals who traveled the
Silk Road between 750-1000 AD, based on documents in the British
Library. I'm also working on Chinese costume history in order to make
new garb for Hua Fu, and reorganizing and expanding my Russian
costuming information for an upcoming garb workshop in Carolingia.
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