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User:Michael Chidester
| Michael Chidester | |||||||||
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| Nationality | American | ||||||||
| Education | B.A. Philosophy | ||||||||
| Alma mater | Brigham Young University | ||||||||
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Michael Chidester is the Editor-in-Chief of Wiktenauer and, as Director of the Wiktenauer, an officer of the Historical European Martial Arts Alliance.
Michael has been studying historical European martial arts since 2001. He was a member of the Association for Renaissance Martial Arts until 2006, where he achieved the rank of general Free Scholar, and he acted as the ARMA Provo Study Group Leader from 2007 until its dissolution in 2009. Michael co-founded the True Edge Academy of Swordsmanship in 2009, and until late 2010 was senior instructor at its Provo, Utah branch.
In 2012, Michael was appointed to the newly-established position of Director of the Wiktenauer by the HEMA Alliance general council, formalizing the role of principal designer and editor that he had assumed in early 2010. As Wiktenauer lead, Michael has assembled the most complete catalog of HEMA manuscripts currently available, including such resources as scans, transcriptions, and translations, and is currently laboring to assemble a similar catalog of printed treatises. In 2013, these efforts earned him a HEMA Scholar Award for Best Supporting Researcher.
Michael has lectured on Medieval and Renaissance martial arts at the Historical Swordplay Symposium at the Massachusetts Center for Interdisciplinary Renaissance Studies, Life, the Universe, & Everything: the Marion K. “Doc” Smith Symposium at Brigham Young University, and numerous HEMA events including Blood on the River, Broken Point, Fechtschule America, Fechtschule New York, HEMAC Dijon, the Iron Gate Exhibition, Longpoint, Meyer Symposium, and the Purpleheart Armoury Open.
In 2010, Michael received a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy from Brigham Young University, with a minor degree in Military Science and additional coursework in Italian and Spanish. He developed a degree of fluency in the latter while living abroad in Mexico between 2002 and 2004. He is a founding member of the Society for Historical European Martial Arts Studies, a member of the Western Martial Arts Coalition, and a Lifetime Member of the HEMA Alliance.
Research
Concordances
While he designed much of the infrastructure of Wiktenauer, Michael's primary area of research is mapping out the connections between the various books and manuscripts in the corpus of historical European martial arts literature. Based on this research, he has put together a number of concordance documents that lay out the versions of each treatise side-by-side, both for ease of reference and as the first step toward creating critical editions of these treatises. Michael's concordances can be found on the following pages:
Transcription
Michael has also begun participating in the work of transcribing fencing manuals. He has transcribed the following works:
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Translation
Michael's translation work can be found in the following articles:
- Peter von Danzig zum Ingolstadt
- Pseudo-Hans Döbringer
- Octavio Ferrara
- Fiore de'i Liberi
- Paulus Kal
- Paride del Pozzo
Contact
For questions about the Wiktenauer or his research, or to inquire about donating content to the wiki, Michael can be contacted either via email or on his talk page.
