“The Saint and the Hagiographer in Search of Each Other: The Holy Fool as Cultural Symbol, Literary Character and Human Being”
April 7, 2006
The Department of History, the Center for European and Eurasian Studies, the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, and the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures present a lecture by Professor Sergey Ivanov (Russian Academy of Sciences; Moscow State University and Dumbarton Oaks).
Xth UCLA Byzantinist''s Colloquium, “Byzantium on the West Coast”
April 8, 2006 The tenth UCLA Byzantinist's colloquium will be a special celebration showcasing research in Byzantium and related fields, with sessions devoted to Late Antiquity, Byzantine history, and Byzantine art history. View pictures >>
“The Hereford Map and ‘the not so very good’ Laity”
April 11, 2006 A lecture by CMRS Distinguished Visiting Scholar Valerie Flint (G.F. Grant Professor Emerita, History, University of Hull).
“Past Magics: A Conversation between Valerie Flint and Brian Copenhaver on Studying Magic in the Middle Ages and Renaissance”
April 12, 2006
Valerie Flint is G. F. Grant Professor Emerita in the Department of History at the University of Hull. She has written extensively on the history of magic in late antiquity and the early Middle Ages. Among her publications are The Rise of Magic in Early Medieval Europe (Princeton University Press, 1991) and the volume on Ancient Greece and Rome in the Athlone History of Witchcraft and Magic in Europe (Athlone Press, 1999). Brian P. Copenhaver holds the Udvar-Hazy Chair of Philosophy and History in the Department of Philosophy at UCLA, and is the Director of UCLA's Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. He has published numerous books and articles about philosophy, science, magic, medicine, Cabala and the Hermetica in late medieval and early modern Europe. View pictures >>
“On Studying the Spanish and Portuguese Empires Together”
April 13, 2006 A seminar with Professor Sanjay Subrahmanyam (UCLA, Dept. of History) who is one of the foremost historians of the Portuguese empire and of early modern India. He is a prolific and wide-ranging scholar whose work has focused on the interplay between economic, political and cultural history in this period, subsuming several national historical traditions. His most recent books include The Career and Legend of Vasco da Gama (Cambridge University Press, 1998), Penumbral Visions: Making Polities in Early Modern South India (University of Michigan Press, 2001) and a two-volume work entitled Explorations in Connected History (Oxford University Press, 2004). He is fluent in seven languages, including Portuguese. Subrahmanyam has taught and lectured widely in Europe and the United States and is currently director of the Center for Indian and South Asian Studies at UCLA, where he also holds the Doshi Chair in Indian History. Co-sponsored by the Department of Spanish and Portuguese and the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies.
E. A. Moody Medieval Philosophy Workshop
April 15 - April 16, 2006 This year's E.A. Moody Medieval Philosophy Workshop is coordinated by Professor Calvin Normore (UCLA). The program is made possible through the generous support of the UCLA Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, the UCLA Department of Philosophy, and the UCLA College of Letters and Science.
CMRS Faculty Roundtable, “Shakespeare's Reference to Magna Carta in King John Revealed (Probably)—plus Lamord's Identity Discovered (Maybe).”
April 18, 2006 Scholars have long wondered how Shakespeare could have written King John without mentioning Magna Carta. In this lively (and admittedly speculative foray) Dr. Steve Sohmer (Fleming Fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford, and CMRS Associate) will try to persuade you that the playwright makes a subtle but unmistakable reference to the great charter... and then invites you to participate in his quest for the famous Elizabethan behind the mask of Lamord. CMRS faculty, associates, graduate students, and friends are invited to attend. Bring your lunch! The Center will provide soft drinks and coffee. View pictures >>
CMRS Faculty Roundtable, “600 Years of Near Eastern Manuscripts”
April 26, 2006 Dr. Ali Anooshahr (CLIR/Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow, Charles E. Young Research Library, Special Collections, UCLA) discusses the Near Eastern Manuscript collection in YRL’s Department of Special Collections. It comprises ten thousand volumes that range in date from the late 14th to the 20th century, and covers a wide range of genres and subject matters, including history, poetry, theology, medicine, and astronomy. The titles are primarily in Arabic, Persian, and Turkish, with a number of Armenian and Syriac texts. Dr. Anooshahr’s talk is presented in conjunction with the exhibit on display in YRL during the months of April and May. View pictures >>
“The Man Who Would Be King of France: On a Medieval Tale and Life”
May 2, 2006 A lecture by CMRS Distinguished Visiting Scholar Professor Tommaso di Carpegna Falconieri (Medieval History, University of Urbino) analyzing the history of a Sienese merchant who claimed to be the legitimate king of France during the Hundred Years' War. View pictures >>
CMRS Faculty Roundtable, “Allegory of an Early Christian Cabalist: The Isagoge (1509-40) of Paulus Ricius”
May 10, 2006 Dr. Crofton Black (Warburg Institute, London) will discuss Paulus Ricius's Isagoge, an introduction to kabbalah written for a Christian audience in 1509. The Isagoge contains a theory of allegory derived from Peripatetic epistemology and ideas of prophecy and intellectual ascent. In a later redaction, however, Ricius abandoned this hermeneutic framework. This presentation is co-sponsored by the UCLA Center for Jewish Studies. Faculty, students, staff, associates, and friends of CJS and CMRS are invited to attend. View pictures >>
Distinguished Visiting Scholar Lecture, “Dying Angry: The Wrath of Socrates in Plato's Phaedo”
May 10, 2006 Prof. Harry Berger Jr. (Professor Emeritus of Literature and Art History, UC Santa Cruz) has written extensively on Renaissance Literature, Art History, Plato, Literary Theory, and other topics. He has taught and influenced several generations of critics working in a wide variety of fields. Co-sponsored by the UCLA Department of Classics.
Distinguished Visiting Scholar Lecture, “A Little Touch of Harry: The Perverse Henrification of George Bush”
May 11, 2006 Prof. Harry Berger Jr. (UC Santa Cruz, Professor Emeritus of Literature and Art History) has written extensively on Renaissance Literature, Art History, Plato, Literary Theory, and other topics. He has taught and influenced several generations of critics working in a wide variety of fields. Co-sponsored by the UCLA Department of Comparative Literature. View pictures >>
Annual Shakespeare Symposium, “Shakespeare Interrupted: Revisiting 'Problem' Scenes in the Canon”
May 13, 2006 This year's symposium, coordinated by Professor Lowell Gallagher (English, UCLA), examines famous "problem" scenes from an array of Shakespeare's plays. View pictures >>
Will and Lois Matthews Samuel Pepys Lecture, “From Petrarch to Rubens: The Cultural History of Stoicism in the Early Modern Period”
May 17, 2006
Jill Kraye, Librarian and Professor of Renaissance Philosophy at the Warburg Institute, presents this year's talk, “From Petrarch to Rubens: The Cultural History of Stoicism in the Early Modern Period.” Although knowledge of ancient Stoicism did not entirely die out in the Middle Ages, the philosophy underwent a revival from the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries. Interest in Stoicism during this period was by no means restricted to professional philosophers. Many humanists, vernacular authors, emblem book writers, religious thinkers and artists made use of Stoic ideas and themes in their works, bringing knowledge of this classical philosophical system, above all its ethical notions, to a wider public. The lecture will explore the various ways in which Stoicism influenced early modern culture. View pictures >>
“Churches and their Patrons in Romanesque Ireland”
May 19, 2006
The UCLA Celtic Colloquium, Department of English, and Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies present a noontime seminar, with illustrated presentations by Dr. Tomás Ó Carragáin (University College Cork) speaking about “Patronage, Relics and the ‘First Romanesque’”; and, Dr. Jenifer Ní Ghrádaigh (Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies) on “Politics, Patronage and Workshop: Analyzing Romanesque Clonmacnoise.” Lunches are welcome, and come and go as your schedule permits.
California Medieval History Seminar
May 20, 2006 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 Co-sponsored Seminar, “Tales, Poems and Bawdy Songs: Folkloric Imagination in the North”
May 20, 2006 Sponsored by the UCLA Scandinavian Section, the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, the Department of Musicology and the CPC. View pictures >>
CMRS Faculty Roundtable, “‘It is now time to be mindful of death’: The Chora Parekklesion, Palaeologan Burial Chapels, and the Hope for a Peaceful Afterlife”
May 24, 2006
Professor Sharon Gerstel (Art History, UCLA) presents slides and discusses the Chora monastery (the Kariye Camii) which is one of the most famous and most thoroughly published Byzantine monuments. The rich mosaic and fresco programs reflect the ideological views of Theodore Metochites, the Byzantine Prime Minister who funded the decoration of the church. This paper looks at new archaeological data concerning the burial chapel and questions the function of burials within the walls of Byzantine monasteries, examining the contemplation of the dead through the eyes of the monastic community rather through the hopes of the patrons and their families. View pictures >>
“Dante's New Life in Twentieth-Century Literature: Modern Intertextual Appropriation of Dante”
May 25-27, 2006
The literary appropriation of Dante over the last century has been enormous and would seem to justify T. S. Eliot’s assertion that “Dante and Shakespeare divide the modern world between them.” Thus, Dante’s influence has been front and center in all of the world’s modern major literary traditions from T. S. Eliot to William Butler Yeats, from Albert Camus to Jean-Paul Sartre, from Jose Luis Borges to Derek Walcott, from Stefan George to Peter Weiss, from Giorgio Bassani to Giuseppe Ungaretti,, so much so, in fact, that critic Harold Bloom can claim that Dante is “the second center, as it were….” (the first being Shakespeare) of the Western Canon and another more moderate, yet, acute critic of Dante’s modern appropriation, Stuart MacDougal, can maintain: “Dante’s impact on the major writers of the modern world has far exceeded that of Shakespeare.” Modern writers have thus been drawn by the allure of Dante and that of his principal work La Divina Commedia, an allure perhaps best expressed by Jorge Luis Borges in Siete Noches, “It [the Divine Comedy] has accompanied me for so many years, and I know that as soon as I open it tomorrow I will discover things I did not see before. I know that this book will go on, beyond my waking life, and beyond ours”. How does one explain this fascination with Dante, and especially with his principal work, the Divine Comedy? What are the textual characteristics of Dante’s masterpiece which make it an apt vehicle for literary appropriation, thereby allowing it to enjoy a sustained cultural afterlife and to achieve the great time or macrotemporality so eloquently described by Bakhtin in his proverbial formulation? What, moreover, are the more accidental factors (e.g. taste, world view, political agenda, strong supporters, etc.) which account for the popularity of Dante among modern novelists, poets and playwrights, despite the fact that the Florentine poet took a back seat to Petrarch and his works for almost three hundred years? These are some of the issues that this conference, organized by Massimo Ciavolella (UCLA) and Amilcare A. Iannucci (University of Toronto), will explore, as well as the actual workings of intertextual appropriation of Dante and the various forms it takes from citation to allusion to imitation and parody. View pictures >>
The First Annual University of California Conference on Late Antiquity
May 26-27, 2006
The University of California Multicampus Research Group on the History and Culture of Late Antiquity and the UCLA Graduate Student Association for the Study of Late Antiquity holds its First Annual Conference for Faculty and Advanced Graduate Students on Saturday, May 26, 2006 in Bunche Hall on the University of California, Los Angeles campus. This conference serves as the successor of the UCLA Graduate Student Conference on Late Antiquity and is co-sponsored by the UCLA Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. We are pleased to welcome to the conference special guest Bryan Ward-Perkins, author of the recent The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization (Oxford).
CMRS Co-sponsored Seminar “The Legacies of Richard H. Popkin”
June 11-12, 2006 This conference will seek to assess the legacies of the late Richard H. Popkin's work in the many fields he contributed to and helped to form: the history of philosophy and especially the history of skepticism; Jewish studies and especially the history of Jewish-Christian interactions; the intersections of philosophical and religious thought; and the impact of millenarism. Organized by Jeremy Popkin (University of Kentucky) and Peter H. Reill (UCLA). Sponsored by the UCLA Center for 17th- & 18th-Century Studies and the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library; the UCLA Franklin D. Murphy Professor of Italian Renaissance Studies; the UCLA Division of Humanities—Office of the Dean; the UCLA Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies; the UCLA Department of Philosophy; the UCLA Department of History; and the UCLA Center for Jewish Studies.
