"The Return of the Middle Ages in Post-Communist East-Central Europe"
Tuesday, January 16, 2007 Gábor Klaniczay, Professor of Medieval History at the Central European University and former director of the Hungarian Institute for Advanced Study will discuss "The Return of the Middle Ages in Post-Communist East-Central Europe"; co-sponsored by the UCLA Department of History. View pictures >>
CMRS Faculty Roundtable: “Medieval Cripples, Visible and Invisible”
Wednesday, January 17, 2007
This talk by Professor Christopher Baswell (Department of English, UCLA, and CMRS Associate Director, Medieval Studies) will discuss two instances in which crippled bodies intrude themselves upon the attention of medieval readers and the social worlds of their texts, one instance from the twelfth century, and another from the later fourteenth. The word “cripple,” from an Anglo-Saxon word that means “to creep,” was more apt for people with mobility impairments in the Middle Ages than it is perhaps today. In fact, the ‘able’ body was neither quite so frequent nor so dominating in the Middle Ages or Renaissance as it became later. Eccentric bodies abounded. Illness increased the proportion of the deaf, blind, and lame. Medieval manuscripts and Renaissance prints have many images of the blind and of people using crutches. Others are shown dragging their twisted bodies about by means of small hand trestles. In these images the blind and lame emerge, neither institutionalized nor hidden away. If not ‘normal’, they often seem quite ordinary. There are also disabled people of great fame and accomplishment in the Middle Ages. Hermann of Reichenau, also called Hermannus Contractus, ‘Hermann the Cripple’, was one of the most celebrated eleventh century scholars of Latin, Greek, and Arabic. He could scarcely move without assistance. King John the Blind ruled Bohemia from 1309 to 1346, and died in battle, fighting the English at Crécy. Nonetheless, people with eccentric bodies were usually just that – eccentric, found at the edges of the social order and culturally invisible. View pictures >>
E. A. Moody Medieval Philosophy Conference
Friday, January 19 - Sunday, January 21, 2007
A workshop coordinated by Professor Calvin Normore (Philosophy, UCLA) that will consider the topic "Anselm and the Anselmian Tradition?". Participants include Professor Mary Beth Inghem (Loyola Marymount),
Professor Rega Wood (Stanford), Professor Chris Martin (Auckland),
Professor Peter King (Toronto),
Dr. Tomas Ekenberg (Uppsala),
Professor Mikko Yrjonsuuri (Helsinki),
and Professor Henrik Lagerlund (University of Western Ontario). Download the complete schedule (15 kb PDF). Visit the conference website at http://www.humnet.ucla.edu/humnet/phil/Lectures/Moody.htm View pictures >>
CMRS Distinguished Visiting Scholar Lecture: “Image and Exposition: Iconography and Doctrine in Medieval East Asian Buddhism”
Monday, January 22, 2007 Focusing especially on the esoteric traditions of medieval Chinese and Japanese Buddhism, in which images most clearly vie with doctrinal formulations for the attention of both the believer and the scholar, this presentation by CMRS Distinguished Visiting Scholar Robert M. Gimello (Visiting Professor in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University, and Professor Emeritus, East Asian Studies, University of Arizona) will explore—against the background of modern theory, and from a somewhat comparative perspective—Buddhist thought and practice in a period when questions about the relationship between word and image seemed, in one way or another, especially urgent. View pictures >>
“From ‘Zhunti’ to ‘Juntei Kannon’: Japanese Transformations of the Chinese Buddhist Occult”
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
The Center for Buddhist Studies Colloquium presents a lecture by CMRS Distinguished Visiting Scholar Professor Robert M. Gimello (Harvard University). The little-known Indian tantric deity Cund was a significant presence in the Buddhisms of both late traditional China and medieval Japan but served notably different functions in each. These differences will be described and a tentative historical explanation of them will be proposed. They will then be interpreted as symptomatic of deeper and larger differences between the esoteric Buddhism of China and that of Japan.
CMRS Distinguished Visiting Scholar Lecture: “A Postmodern View of Byzantine Art”
Thursday, January 25, 2007 The discovery of Byzantine art in the first quarter of the 20th century had a profound impact on Modernist artists. In this lecture, CMRS Distinguished Visiting Scholar Anthony Cutler (Evan Pugh Professor of Art History at Pennsylvania State University) considers and contrasts their uses of Byzantium with an approach--rarely taken even today--shaped by attitudes that can be described as Postmodernist. While these attitudes themselves are now “history,” they still have much to offer to our understanding of Byzantium. View pictures >>
“Holy Image, Hallowed Ground: Icons from Sinai, A Symposium”
Friday, January 26 - Saturday, January 27, 2007
This symposium is presented by CMRS and the Department of Manuscripts at the J. Paul Getty Museum in conjunction with the exhibition “Holy Image, Hallowed Ground: Icons from Sinai” on view at the Getty Museum from November 14, 2006 to March 4, 2007. Additional support for the conference has been provided by the UCLA Departments of Art History, Classics, and Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, and the UCLA Center for Near Eastern Studies. The exhibition reveals the central role of the icon in Orthodox devotion and religious practice during the Byzantine era. It also considers how the geographical and historical position of The Holy Monastery of St. Catherine at Mount Sinai, Egypt—the oldest continuously operating monastery in existence—contributed to the formation of its astonishing holdings of icons and books. The first day of the symposium (January 26), “Performative Icons: Holy Image and Sacred Space at Mount Sinai,” will take place at the J. Paul Getty Museum and will examine objects and themes associated with the exhibition. On Saturday (January 27), the symposium moves to the UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History for “Sinai in Context,” a consideration of the icons in a broader historical and cultural context. Related lectures are planned with Anthony Cutler on Thursday, January 25 (see calendar entry above) and Bissera Pentcheva on Sunday, January 28, at 3:00 pm in University Hall at Loyola Marymount University. Prof. Pentcheva (Assistant Professor of Art and Art History, Stanford University) will discuss “The Performative Icon.” For more information about the conference, please contact Michelle Keller at 310-440-7034 or write mkeller@getty.edu. View pictures >>
CMRS Disitinguished Visiting Scholar Lecture: "Boats and Beachcombing: Poets and Power in Early Medieval Ireland, Some Stories from Cormac's Glossary"
Monday, January 29, 2007 In this lecture, Dr. Paul Russell (Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse, and Celtic, Pembroke College, University of Cambridge) considers a series of stories preserved in the encyclopaedic Glossary attributed to the late ninth-century king and bishop of Cashel, Cormac mac Cuilennáin. He argues that, because of the particular distribution of these stories through the Glossary, they may have been absorbed into it at the same time. Consequently, it is worth exploring the thematic links between them. It emerges that there are several interrelated themes of which (unsurprisingly for material collected in a glossary) the power of language is the most dominant. View pictures >>
CMRS Faculty Roundtable: “Conversion and the Self”
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
In this talk, Dr. Leonard Koff (CMRS Associate) discusses an issue that medieval conversion narratives sometimes explicitly, sometimes implicitly raise: the status of the body of a convert. It asks, for example, in what ways is the body converted when the heart or the mind is? Does the body always follow the mind? And for how long? Can the mind keep the body from "falling back," from returning to what is always postulated as the body's "mind of its own"? Is the mind-body dualism, which medieval conversion narratives and indeed conversion theory assume, ever healed? The most thoughtful conversion narratives illustrate how others have literally healed the mind-body split, or how that split can be healed. The desire to heal it gives medieval conversion narratives not only their psychological, but also their philosophical energy. Dr. Koff will look at an early medieval conversion narrative that brought psychological and physical wholeness, a 14th-century story of conversion where a converted body proves theological truths claimed to restore wholeness, and some rabbinic theorizing about conversion, bodily impurity, and the status of the pure converted body in this world. View pictures >>
CMRS Disitinguished Visiting Scholar Lecture: “Sons and Fathers: the Expression of Patronymy in Celtic Onomastics”
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
A lecture by Dr. Paul Russell (Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse, and Celtic, Pembroke College, University of Cambridge).
CMRS Distinguished Visiting Scholar Lecture: “The Nature of Learned Discourse in Early Medieval Ireland”
Thursday, February 1, 2007
A lecture by Dr. Paul Russell, Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse, and Celtic, Pembroke College, University of Cambridge.
“Making Sense of the Chinese Rites Debate: Rome 1735, Los Angeles 2007”
Thursday, February 1, 2007
Professor Carlo Ginzburg’s (History, UCLA) lecture is the keynote address for the conference “The Orsini. A Roman Baronial Family in Context: Politics, Society, and Art” (see entry below). This program is co-sponsored by the Ahmanson Foundation, the UCLA Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, the UCLA Center for Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Studies, the Charles E. Young Research Library Department of Special Collections, and the UCLA Department of Italian. View pictures >>
“The Orsini: A Family of Roman Baroni in Context—Politics, Society, and Art”
Thursday, February 1 - Saturday, February 3, 2007
The Orsini are one of the oldest and most prominent families in Italian history. This international conference will coincide with the completion of a two-year project to create a digital catalogue for Orsini family papers in the Department of Special Collections in the Charles E. Young Research Library at UCLA. This Orsini collection constitutes a significant portion of the family’s private archive, with documents dating from circa 1300 to 1950. The conference is an opportunity for scholars to share current scholarship on the family and its milieu, and a means for encouraging scholars to take full advantage of this exceptionally rich, but long under-utilized collection. The focus of the conference will be on the early modern period, and topics will range from the research-potential of baronial archives to the family’s political strategies, and from social questions such as the position of Orsini women to artistic patronage. This constellation of perspectives will yield a portrait of the family, in context, as a formidable political, economic and social entity, and also as a human one. The conference is organized by Guendalina Ajello (Orsini Archivist, Department of Special Collections, UCLA Charles E. Young Research Library) who is directing the project to facilitate access and use of the Orsini documents at UCLA. Professor Carlo Ginzburg (History, UCLA) will be presenting the keynote lecture. This conference is co-sponsored by the UCLA Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, the UCLA Center for Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Studies, the UCLA Charles E. Young Library Department of Special Collections, and the UCLA Department of Italian. Additional information about the Orsini project at UCLA is in the Project section of the Center's website. View pictures >>
CMRS Seminar: “Lady Mary Wroth’s Interrogations of Nationalism”
Friday, February 9, 2007
Lady Mary Sidney Wroth came from a family with a history of strong political involvement, which included significant travel on the continent. This background is reflected in her lengthy prose romance, The Countesse of Montgomery’s Urania, by Wroth’s continual attention to issues of identity as they are affected by place, familial ties, emotional entanglements, and political responsibilities. In this talk, Prof.Sheila Cavanaugh(Department of English, Emory University) argues that Wroth’s convoluted style simultaneously establishes and undermines links between characters and their countries of origin, adoption, or sovereignty, thereby constructing a romance where emerging strategies of narratology and nationalism continually shape each other. Wroth interrogates competing personal and political allegiances, as she creates a formidable contribution to early modern prose fiction. Presented in conjunction with the annual CMRS Seminar, coordinated by Professor Lowell Gallagher. View pictures >>
CMRS Lecture: “Liturgical Performance in the Early Middle Ages”
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
A lecture by Eric Palazzo (Director of the Center for Advanced Study of Medieval Civilization, University of Poitiers) which will explore the differents aspects of the definition of the liturgical performance in the early Middle Ages with a special interest on some liturgical texts, exegetical treatises on Liturgy and on some images "showing" the performance of ritual and its anthropological and theological meanings. View pictures >>
CMRS Faculty Roundtable: “Three Most Mysterious Women and the Genesis of Dante's Divine Comedy”
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
Can anything new be said about Dante? Professor Aino Paasonen (Antioch University, LA, CMRS Associate) will discuss Dante's allegorical canzone of exile, Tre donne intorno al cor mi son venute (“Three women have encircled my heart...”) as the key to a new understanding of the creative process that led to the Commedia. In the theater of Dante's heart, three women visit Amor, the god of Love, who does not at first recognize them. Only one of them tells him her name and her birthplace: Drittura (Rectitude/Justice), born at the source of the Nile. The second woman is Drittura's daughter, and the third woman is born of the second. Who are they? The conversation Dante overhears sparks a rebirth of his identity, a realignment of his life as a man and as a poet. In sending his canzone out into the world, Dante challenges his reader to identify the tre donne. Enlisting recent research as well as Helen Vendler's notion of "characteristic authorial patterns," this talk also seeks to imagine the concatenated events that led Dante to abandon his doctrinal works, the Convivio and the De vulgari eloquenzia, pushing them aside like the boosters of a rocket launched towards the stars. About this 107-line canzone, the Dante scholar, Remo Fasani has said, “If, for some reason, I had to save just one page, one single page of all Italian poetry, it would be this canzone.” View pictures >>
Medieval Slavic Workshop
Friday, February 16, 2007
CMRS is one of the co-sponsors of the annual Medieval Slavic workshop, coordinated by Professor Gail Lenhoff (Slavic Languages and Literatures, UCLA). For further information on presenters and topics, download the schedule (PDF 15kb).
California Medieval History Seminar
Saturday, February 17, 2007
The California Medieval History Seminar meets at the Huntington Library to discuss pre-distributed research papers. Participants are expected to have read the papers in advance and come prepared to discuss them. The California Medieval History Seminar is supported by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, as well as the CMRS, the Huntington Library, and the Caltech Huntington Committee for the Humanities.
CMRS Distinguished Visiting Scholar Lecture: “Believing the Impossible: Aethiopika and Critical Romance”
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
In this lecture, Professor Jonathan Crewe (Dartmouth University) argues that one important feature of critical romance, at least since the Aethiopika, is its tendency to empower belief and limit skepticism. Despite or because of the ironic hyper-skepticism of sophisticated authors regarding the tropes, conventions, and wish-fulfilling imperatives of the genre, skepticism becomes an object as well as the medium of critical interrogation. View pictures >>
Fourteenth History of the Book Lecture
Friday, February 23, 2007
The History of the Book Lecture series brings eminent scholars to UCLA to share their expertise about medieval and Renaissance books. Father Justin of St. Catherine’s Monastery, Mount Sinai, Egypt, presents the fourteenth lecture in the series. He will discuss the history of the library at the monastery and current projects underway to preserve its precious volumes, while at the same time making them more accessible to scholars. View pictures >>
Annual Meeting of the Medieval Association of the Pacific (MAP)
Friday, March 2 - Saturday, March 3, 2007 The CMRS hosts the annual meeting of the Medieval Association of the Pacific (MAP) at UCLA. A call for papers will be issued to MAP members in Fall 2006. The complete program will be posted on the CMRS website in January 2007. Keynote speakers will be Caroline Bynum (Princeton Institute for Advanced Study) and Paul E. Dutton (Simon Fraser University). Local arrangements are being coordinated by Dr. Blair Sullivan (CMRS) and Prof. Scott Kleinman (Cal State University, Northridge). For more information, or to register, see MAP’s website at www.cmrs.ucla.edu/MAP.
Renaissance Conference of Southern California
Saturday, March 3, 2007 The CMRS is one of the co-sponsors of the Renaissance Conference of Southern California’s annual interdisciplinary conference at the Huntington Library. This year’s keynote speaker, Professor Paula Findlen (History, Stanford University), will present “The Dearth of a Naturalist: Knowledge and Community in Renaissance Italy.” Download the conference schedule at www.cmrs.edu/programs/rcsc_program_2007.doc. Advance registration is required. For more information see RCSC’s website at www.rcsca.org.
The Fourth Rebecca Catz Memorial Lecture: “Presumable West African Routes Created by the Portuguese Explorers, including Vasco da Gama”
Tuesday, March 6, 2007 Claude L. Hulet (Professor Emeritus, Spanish and Portuguese, UCLA) will present the fourth lecture in this series established in memory of Dr. Rebecca Catz, a long-time CMRS Associate and scholar of sixteenth-century Portuguese history and literature. The series is made possible through the generosity of Dr. Boris Catz, Rebecca’s husband. Professor Hulet will discuss presumable West African routes created by the Portuguese explorers, including Vasco da Gama’s historic conquest of the South Atlantic in 1497-1499, and his establishment of the classic maritime route bringing Europe and Asia together by sea. By invitation only. View pictures >>
CMRS Distinguished Visiting Scholar Lecture: “El Greco’s Neoplatonism and the Eyes of Reason”
Thursday, March 8, 2007 A lecture by CMRS Distinguished Visiting Scholar Nicos Hadjinicolaou (Visiting Professor of Art History, University of Cyprus, and Professor Emeritus in Art History, University of Crete). View pictures >>
CMRS Faculty Roundtable: “Poets of Two Hearts, Latin and English” Wednesday, March 14, 2007
Many poets of the Renaissance were bilingual in Latin and their native language, and their writings in the mother tongue were governed by their early training in Latin, a language which was preferred to the mother tongue for most scholarly, diplomatic, and business purposes. In this talk, Prof. Riley describes typical English grammar school education of the 16th and 17th centuries and shows its effects on the writings of John Milton and Thomas May. Presented in conjunction with the annual CMRS Seminar, coordinated by Prof. Lowell Gallagher (UCLA, English). View pictures >>
