Upcoming Medieval and Renaissance Lectures in Pittsburgh

The schedule of events for spring and fall can be found on the Yahoo Calendar page, which is currently maintained by faculty members from multiple universities in the consortium.

Anthony Grafton (Princeton) Wednesday and Thursday, November 3 & 4 at the University of Pittsburgh.

Wednesday, Nov. 3, 5:00 pm
Public Lecture in Frick Fine Arts Auditorium
"How Jesus Celebrated Passover: Renaissance Scholarship and the Jewish Origins of Christianity"
The talk will focus on scholarly efforts to see Jesus as part of a Jewish world, and the Last Supper has the central role in the story.
A reception will follow in the Frick Fine Arts Cloister, 6 p.m. – 7:30 p.m.

Thursday, Nov. 4, 12:30 pm
Humanities Center Seminar CL 602 
"Humanities and Inhumanities"
We will discuss Grafton's review of Louis Menand's book, The Marketplace of Ideas: Reform and Resistance in The American University. The review is from the February 17, 2010, issue of The New Republic: 
http://www.tnr.com/article/politics/humanities-and-inhumanities

Anthony Grafton is one of the world’s most influential scholars of Renaissance humanism and the early modern European “Republic of Letters.” As author, coauthor, editor, or translator, he has published close to twenty books on a variety of topics concerning early modern European culture. He writes about subjects such as footnotes and forgeries, the history of books and readers, Renaissance magic and the legend of Doctor Faustus, and the significance of technical details in early modern astrology, chronology, and science. Three collections of essays, Defenders of the Text (1991), Bring Out Your Dead (2001), and Worlds Made by Words (2009), cover most of the topics and themes that appeal to him. A regular contributor to The New Republic and The New York Review of Books, Grafton has taught at Princeton University since 1975. Professor Grafton has been the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship (1989), the Los Angeles Times Book Prize (1993), the Balzan Prize for History of Humanities (2002), and the Mellon Foundation’s Distinguished Achievement Award (2003). He was recently elected President of the American Historical Association for 2011.

This talk is generously co-sponsored by the University of Pittsburgh Humanities Center and the University of Pittsburgh's Program in Medieval and Renaissance Studies.

Jean Givens (University of Connecticut) "Picturing the Healing Arts: Illustrating a Medieval Book of Remedies." Thursday, January 28 at 4:30 pm the University of Pittsburgh, 202 Frick Fine Arts.

Jean Givens is Professor of Art History. Her research centers on medieval England and France, the history of history of visual and verbal literacy, and design initiatives in twentieth-century Denmark and Sweden. Her books include Observation and Image-Making in Gothic Art (Cambridge University Press, 2005)--awarded the Medieval Academy of America's John Nicholas Brown Prize for 2009-and Visualizing Medieval Medicine and Natural History, 1220-1550 (Ashgate, 2006) co-edited with historians of science, Karen Reeds and Alain Touwaide. A new book on medieval and early modern scientific illustration, Reading Beyond the Text: Image, Word, and the Illustrated Tractatus de herbis, is nearing completion. Her current project, Marketing Modernism: Sweden, Denmark, and the Good Life, addresses a formative alliance between design theoreticians and Nordic policy makers between 1920 and 1960.

Sponsored by the University of Pittsburgh's Medieval and Renaissance Studies Program.

Ayanna Thompson (Arizona State) Thursday and Friday, February 25 & 26 at the University of Pittsburgh.

Thursday, Feb. 25, 4:30 pm
Public Lecture: "Othello in the 21st Century"
Location: G8 Cathedral of Learning, on the ground floor.

Friday, Feb. 26, 11:00 am
Faculty/Grad seminar: "Shakespeare, Race, and Contemporary America"
Cathedral of Learning 512

"Othello in the 21st Century": Is it possible for Shakesepare's Othello to say something of contemporary relevance to a twenty-first-century audience? Or must the play exist as a museum piece of a bygone history and culture, and of bygone cultural constructions? This talk will explore the roles that Othello should play in our twenty-first-century American world. One example will be Peter Sellars's 2009 production of Othello, which destabilized traditional narratives about Shakespeare, race, and performance.

Ayanna Thompson is Associate Professor of English and an affiliate faculty member in Women and Gender Studies and Film and Media Studies at Arizona State University. She specializes in Renaissance drama and focuses on early depictions of race. She is the author of two books: Passing Strange: Shakespeare, Race, and Contemporary America (forthcoming from Oxford), and Performing Race and Torture on the Early Modern Stage (Routledge, 2008). She is the editor of two books: Weyward Macbeth: Intersections of Race and Performance (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), co-edited with Scott Newstok, and Colorblind Shakespeare: New Perspectives on Race and Performance (Routledge, 2006).

Professor Thompson will also hold an open seminar for faculty and graduate students on the topic of "Shakespeare, Race, and Contemporary America." We will convene on Friday, February 26th at 11:00 am in room 512 of the Cathedral of Learning.

This talk is generously co-sponsored by Dean Juan Manfredi of the School of Arts and Sciences and by the Department of English.

For more information, contact Professor Jennifer Waldron (jwaldron@pitt.edu).

Andras Kisery (CCNY) "The Politics of Hamlet: Histories of Reading." Monday, March 15 at 4:30 pm at Carnegie Mellon in A18A Porter Hall.

In recent scholarship, Shakespeare’s Hamlet has once again become a political play. But early modern audiences were also reading versions of Hamlet’s story as narratives about sovereignty, legitimacy and political advancement. In this paper, I approach the politics of the play through its Shakespearean and non-Shakespearean readings and revisions, and highlight some of the shifts they register in the understanding of the realm of politics.

Sponsored by The Pittsburgh Consortium for Medieval and Renaissance Studies.

Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev) "Censorship and the Secularization of Jewish Discourse."  Friday, March 19 at 2:00 pm at the University of Pittsburgh, Cathedral of Learning 501.

Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin is Senior Lecturer in History at Ben-Gurion University. Raz-Krakotzkin has written and lectured widely on various topics of Jewish history: the history of Zionism; the Holocaust; issues of nationalism and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. His most recent book, The Censor, the Editor and the Text (Penn, 2007), examines the impact of Catholic censorship on the publication and dissemination of Hebrew literature in the early modern period. He is currently a fellow at the Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.

Please join us for refreshments after the talk!  Questions? Please contact Professor Jennifer Waldron (jwaldron@pitt.edu).

Sponsored by the Medieval and Renaissance Studies Program, the Program in Jewish Studies, and the Humanities Center at the University of Pittsburgh.

Dan Brayton (Middlebury College) "Shakespeare and the Sea: Why Blue Ecocriticism Matters."Wednesday, March 24 at 4:30 pm at Chatham University in the Welker Room in the Laughlin Music Center.

Dan Brayton is Assistant Professor of English and American Literatures at Middlebury College, where he also teaches in the Environmental Studies Program. He earned his doctorate at Cornell in 2001 and has published in English Literary History, Forum for Modern Language Studies, Shakespeare Quarterly, Scribners’ British Writers series, and WoodenBoat. His has held visiting appointments at Sea Education Association as well as the Williams-Mystic Program in Maritime Studies and has worked aboard sailing ships in the Atlantic, Pacific, and the Caribbean. He is co-editor of a forthcoming volume of early modern eco-criticism (Eco-critical Shakespeare), is the Literature, Art, and Music section editor of a new journal, Coriolis: the Interdisciplinary Journal of Maritime Studies and working on a monograph called Shakespeare and the Global Ocean: Towards a Blue Ecocriticism.

Co-sponsored by The Pittsburgh Consortium for Medieval and Renaissance Studies and the Rachel Carson Institute at Chatham University.  Free and open to the public.

Gonzalo Lamana (Pitt) "Truth, Self-Evidence, and the Colonial Question (ca. 1500)." Friday, April 16 at 3:00 pm at the University of Pittsburgh, Cathedral of Learning 501.

Gonzalo Lamana's research and teaching explore themes of colonialism and subalternity, cultural contact, meaning-making, and historical change. He is the author of several articles and a recent book, Domination without Dominance: Inca-Spanish encounters in Early Colonial Peru (Duke, 2008). Lamana is currently working on two new research projects at the juncture of de-colonial attempts. The first examines colonial acts of reality-making through the lens of magic, while the second examines the emergence of a colonial grammar of difference in the second half of the sixteenth century in the Andes.

Andrew Cutrofello (Loyola University Chicago) "The Dreadful Summit of the Cliff: Kant, Shakespeare, and the Sovereignty of Reason." Friday, Aug. 28 at 3:15 pm at Duquesne University in the Simon Silverman Phenomenology Center, Gumberg Library.

In 1766, Wieland published the first German translation of *Hamlet*. That same year, Kant published a short monograph entitled *Dreams of a Spirit-Seer Elucidated by Dreams of Metaphysics*. In this strange text, Kant chastised himself for having hitherto believed in the existence of ghosts. For the first time, he announces the need for a critique of reason, a project that would take him fifteen years to complete. By then, a veritable Shakespeare cult had grown up in Germany around *Sturm und Drang*. Kant took note of this development, occasionally expressing his wariness about Shakespeare in his lectures on anthropology. In my paper, I suggest that the entanglement between Kant and Shakespeare runs much deeper than has been suspected.

Andrew Cutrofello is a Professor in the Philosophy Department at Loyola University in Chicago.  He is the author of *Imagining Otherwise: Metapsychology and the Analytic A Posteriori* (1997), *The Owl at Dawn: A Sequel to Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit* (1995), *Discipline and Critique: Kant, Poststructuralism, and the Problem of Resistance* (1994), and *Continental Philosophy: A Contemporary Introduction* (Routledge, 2005).  He is currently writing a book about the impact of *Hamlet* on modern European philosophy.

Sponsored by the Department of Philosophy at Duquesne University.

ICMA Fall Conference in Pittsburgh, Friday and Saturday, October 2-3.

A collaborative conference between the International Center of Medieval Art and The Department of History of Art and Architecture, University of Pittsburgh, with co-sponsorship from the Medieval and Renaissance Studies Program at the University of Pittsburgh.

Speakers: Franklin Toker, Nancy Wicker, Kate Dimitrova, Kirk Ambrose, Susan Ward, John Williams, Michael Curschmann, Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski, Alison Stones, Lisa Reilly, Sarah Bromberg, Lawrence Nees, Danielle Oteri, and Colum Hourihane.

For the full program, please see the ICMA website:
http://www.medievalart.org/htm/events.html

Larry Rhu (University of Southern Carolina) "Shakespeare Italianate: Skeptical Crises in Three Plays of Shakespeare." Friday, October 9 at 5pm at The University of Pittsburgh.

Tucci Lecture, Department of French and Italian Co-sponsored by the Medieval and Renaissance Studies Program at the University of Pittsburgh.

Nancy Regalado (New York University) "Who Tells the Stories of Poetry? Villon and his Readers." Thursday, October 29 at 4:30pm at the University of Pittsburgh, 202 Frick Fine Arts.

This talk is drawn from Professor Regalado's current project on the question of why Villon's poetry produces stories. So much of fourteenth- and fifteenth-century poetry is interwoven with historical characters, including the poets themselves, and poets such as Froissart and Machaut often set their lyrics in a narrative. But only Villon's poetry (with all its proper names) makes the reader undertake the task of storytelling.

Nancy Regalado is Professor of French at New York University. Professor Regalado has written and edited many books and articles on medieval literature and culture, addressing topics such as lyric and narrative, reader reception, and performance theory. Her most recent publications include _Performing Medieval Narrative_ (Oxford, 2005), and essays on Villon's Testament and the songs of Jehannot de Lescurel. She has received fellowships from the ACLS and the National Endowment for the Humanities, among many others, along with two teaching awards from NYU.

Co-sponsored by the Department of French and Italian at the University of Pittsburgh.

Two lectures on the topic "The Idea of France in the Middle Ages and Renaissance.” Tuesday, November 3 at 2:30pm at the University of Pittsburgh, Cathedral of Learning, Room 501.

DAISY DELOGU (University of Chicago)
"A Natural King and a Free People: Philippe de Mézières's 'Dream of the Old Pilgrim' (1386-89)"

KATHERINE CRAWFORD (Vanderbilt University)
"Salic Law and the Politics of Exclusion"

Humanities Center event, co-sponsored by the Department of French and Italian and The Medieval and Renaissance Studies Program at the University of Pittsburgh.

Richard Firth Green (Ohio State University) “The Tale of the Vanishing Leper and Other Medieval Urban Legends." Thursday, November 19 at 4:30 at Carnegie Mellon University in Porter Hall A18A.

Professor Green argues that we can find tales in 13C medieval collections of preachers' exempla that conform precisely (not merely in content but in form) to modern urban legends (better termed 'contemporary' legends), a genre that until recently has been thought to be exclusively modern.

Symposium on Medieval and Renaissance Studies: Wednesday, December 2 from 5:00 to 7:00pm at Carnegie Mellon University.

An informal discussion with Pittsburgh faculty Allyson Creasman (CMU), Frank Toker (Pitt), Jen Waldron (Pitt), Dan Selcer (Duquesne), Adam Shear (Pitt), Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski (Pitt), and Peggy Knapp (CMU), all of whom will briefly describe their fields of interest. Graduate and Undergraduate students can see who's doing what, what courses will be offered, and what books are hot.  As in Plato's day, a symposium is a festive occasion implying food as well as conversation; accordingly, the roundtable will be followed by a light supper for everyone who comes, so we can converse in smaller groups.

Sponsored by the Pittsburgh Consortium for Medieval and Renaissance Studies.

Sabine MacCormack (Notre Dame) Thursday and Friday, December 3 & 4 at the University of Pittsburgh’s Cathedral of Learning.

Thursday, 12:30pm, 526 CL
Colloquium discussion of a chapter from her book In The Wings of Time: Rome, the Incas, Spain and Peru

Thursday, 5pm, 501 CL
Lecture, "The Poetics of Representation in Viceregal Peru: A Walk Round the Cloister of San Agustin in Lima"

Friday, 1pm, 526 CL
Discussion of José de Acosta's travel narrative, led by Prof. MacCormack

Humanities Center events, co-sponsored by the Medieval and Renaissance Studies Program at the University of Pittsburgh.

Jonathan Sawday (University of Strathclyde in Glasgow), "Blanks: A Story of Absence"Thursday, January 22nd at 4:30 p.m. at Carnegie Mellon University in the Adamson Wing, Baker Hall 136A.

This lecture will trace part of the history of representing blanks -- gaps, absences, voids, -- in literature and in art from the Renaissance to the present. Jonathan Sawday holds the Chair in English Studies at Strathclyde University. His latest book is Engines of the Imagination: Renaissance Culture and the Rise of the Machine (London and New York, 2007). (bio - poster)

Sponsored by the Pittsburgh Consortium for Medieval and Renaissance Studies.

Hannah R. Johnson (Department of English, University of Pittsburgh) "Allegories of Violence: The Medieval Ritual Murder Accusation and Scholarly Projects of Memory." February 19th at 4:30 p.m. at the University of Pittsburgh's Cathedral of Learning, room 501.

Hannah R. Johnson earned her Ph.D. from Princeton University after receiving an M.A. in Medieval Studies from the University of York (UK). Her teaching and research interests encompass medieval historical writing and modern historiography, contemporary philosophies of history, and the literary aspects of medieval cultural forms committed to truth-telling projects, such as saints’ lives and travel narratives. Her book manuscript, "Crimes and Libels: The Ethics of Memory and the Medieval Ritual Murder Accusation in Jewish History,” examines the intersection of ethical commitments and methodological questions in modern historical writing about the ritual murder accusation. Her most recent article, “Rhetoric’s Work: Thomas of Monmouth and the History of Forgetting,” appeared in volume 9 (2008) of New Medieval Literatures. She has been the recipient of a Mellon fellowship and several research awards.

Professor Johnson’s talk will be followed directly by a MRST Open House Reception. All Pitt/PCMRS students, faculty, partners, and friends are welcome! For location details contact Jen Waldron (jwaldron@pitt.edu)

Sponsored by the University of Pittsburgh’s Medieval and Renaissance Studies Program.

James Martel (Department of Political Science, San Francisco State University) “Hobbes and the ‘Error of Separated Essences’: Rhetoric, Authority and Sovereignty in Leviathan.” Friday, February 27 at 3:15 pm at Duquesne University, College Hall room 220.

Abstract: In this talk I will discuss how the method we use to read a text effects, or even produces the meaning of a given text and also what the political connotations of such a reading might be. In particular, I will be discussing how we read Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan, one of the central canonical texts for political theory. My argument is that when we read Leviathan according to the instructions for reading that Hobbes describes in that book, our understanding of the text changes from one where sovereignty is promoted at the expense of the individuals who form a society, to one in which sovereignty is actually undermined by precisely those individual subjects, or readers, who constitute what can, for lack of a better word, be called “the public.” Hobbes method of reading, demonstrated via his interpretation of scripture, is anti-idolatrous. He opposes what he calls “the error of separated essences” whereby a metaphor or other figure of speech supplants what it is meant to represent (his prime example is the soul, which is originally meant to simply represent “a person” but has superseded that person and become immortal). When we use language idolatrously, we produce an entire system of phantasms, what Hobbes calls “the kingdom of darkness.” When however we use language in a way that is explicitly aware of its representational nature, we engage in a humbler and, I would argue, more democratic, discourse. By analogy between author and text on the one hand and sovereign and subjects on the other (an analogy he frequently makes) we can apply the lessons that we learn about reading the text Leviathan to the political world that Leviathan describes. We see that the sovereign itself could be considered a “separated essence,” a figure who purports to stand for the public but in fact replaces them with its own inflated conception. James Martel is the author of Love is a Sweet Chain: Desire, Autonomy, and Friendship in Liberal Political Theory (Routledge, 2001) and Subverting the Leviathan: Reading Thomas Hobbes as a Radical Democrat (Columbia, 2007).

Joanna Woods-Marsden (Department of Art History, UCLA) "L'Arme and Gli Amori: Gendered Identity in Titian's Portraits for the Este Court of Ferrara." Thursday, March 26th at 4:30 p.m. at the University of Pittsburgh, room 202 at Frick Fine Arts.

The lecture deals with two portraits by Titian. The first is that of Alfonso I d'Este, Duke of Ferrara [Prado, Madrid]. Since his right hand rests on cannon that he cast himself, the talk begins with a focus on war and politics. The other portrait is that of his low-born mistress (the daughter of a hat-maker), Laura Dianti [Kisters Coll., Switzerland], so there is a gender component too, because mistresses of humble origins are rarely identified. She is accompanied by a black child page, the first to appear in Western art, so the paper also has considerable discussion about race in the Renaissance.

Joanna Woods-Marsden got her B.A. and M.A from Trinity College, Dublin University, and her Ph.D from Harvard University. After working in Canadian museums and universities, she joined the faculty at UCLA in 1984, where she is Professor of Italian Renaissance art. Her research interests include the social context for and the function of art, as well as issues of identity in portraiture; Renaissance Self-Portraiture: The Visual Construction of Identity and the Social Status of the Artist was published by Yale in 1998. Her current book project also involves portraiture: The Visual Rhetoric of Power and Beauty: Gendered Identity in Titian's Court Portraits. She has long focused on feminist critical issues, and published “Portrait of the Lady, 1430-1520” in the exhibition catalog Virtue and Beauty, National Gallery of Art, 2001. While Samuel H. Kress Senior Fellow at CASVA (National Gallery of Art) in 2002-03, she did research toward a book-length study of Renaissance portraits of women. She has also published widely on issues of patronage, court art and artists (The Gonzaga of Mantua and Pisanello's Arthurian Frescoes, Princeton, 1988, and many articles). As a Fellow of Villa I Tatti in Florence and the American Academy in Rome, and the recipient of many awards, she has lived in Italy for many years and traveled extensively in that country as well as throughout Western Europe.

Sponsored by the Department of the History of Art and Architecture, The Department of French and Italian, The Cultural Studies Program, and The Women’s Studies Program.

Stuart Clark (Department of History, Princeton University) "The Temptations of St. Anthony and the Art of Discernment." Friday, April 3rd at 4:30 p.m. at Carnegie Mellon University in the Erwin Steinberg Auditorium, Baker Hall A53.

Dr. Clark’s talk will explore the representation of St. Anthony the great – the father of monasticism – in European art of the 15th to 18th centuries and in the theology and demonology of the period. 

Stuart Clark studied at University of Wales, Swansea and at Cambridge. He was senior lecturer in the Department of History at UW Swansea from 1995-98 and then Professor from 1998 to 2008. He is currently teaching at Princeton University (2008 – 2009). He has been a Member of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, and Lilly Fellow at the National Humanities Centre, North Carolina. He was elected to the British Academy in 2000. His many publications include Vanities of the Eye: Vision in Early Modern European Culture (Oxford, 2007), and Thinking with Demons: The Idea of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe (Oxford, 1999).

Sponsored by the Pittsburgh Consortium for Medieval and Renaissance Studies.

Colum Hourihane (Princeton University), “Quid is Veritas? Trying to Disentangle the Real from the Mythical Pilate” Thursday, October 9th at 3:30 p.m. in The University of Pittsburgh's Frick Fine Arts Building, Room 203.

Hourihane is Director of the Index of Christian Art at Princeton University, and the author of two recent studies of medieval art, The Processional Cross in Late Medieval England (2005) and Gothic art in Ireland,1169-1550 (Yale, 2003). He has also edited diverse essay collections, including Spanish Medieval Art (Arizona, 2007) and Objects, Images, and the Word (Princeton, 2003).

Sponsored by the Medieval and Renaissance Studies Program at the University of Pittsburgh.

Mauro Perani (University of Bologna) “What is the ‘European Genizah’? A Survey of Hebrew Manuscript Discoveries in Italy and Spain and their Importance for Jewish Studies” Monday, October 27th at 4:00 in The University of Pittsburgh's Cathedral of Learning, Room 501.

University of Bologna Professor Perani is currently a Padnos Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Frankel Center for Judaic Studies (University of Michigan). He has been Director of “The Italian Genizah Project” since 1992, and his recent publications include Talmudic and Midrashic Fragments from the ‘Italian Genizah’: Reunification of Manuscripts and Catalogue (Giuntina, 2004).

Co-Sponsored by the Jewish Studies Program and the Department of French and Italian at The University of Pittsburgh.

Julia Reinhard Lupton (University of California, Irvine)
Public Lecture:
     Thursday, November 6th at 4:00 p.m. in the Cathedral of Learning G24,
      “Mrs. Polonius Goes to Italy: An Intimate Guide to Shakespeare's
      Europe”

This entertaining and educational jaunt through Shakespeare's Italy explores the weird and wonderful iconography of hotels, hospitality, safe sex, prescription medicine, and forbidden books in Romeo and Juliet, All's Well That Ends Well, and Othello. For more information, please see: www.thinkingwithshakespeare.org/index.php?id=277

Seminar for Faculty and Graduate Students:
     Friday, November 7th, 1:30 p.m. in the Cathedral of Learning 362,
      “Shakespeare and Italy: Enter through Theory”

Julia Reinhard Lupton is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Irvine. Her publications include Citizen-Saints: Shakespeare and Political Theology (Chicago, 2005) and Afterlives of the Saints: Hagiography, Typology, and Renaissance Literature (Stanford, 1996). She has written extensively on Shakespeare, religion, and psychoanalysis. See her website for more details: www.thinkingwithshakespeare.org

Rosamond Purcell & Michael Witmore "Hearsay: On the Universal Languages of Nature" Friday, November 7, 4:30 p.m. at Carnegie Mellon University in the Erwin Steinberg Auditorium, Baker Hall A53.

Please join the Pittsburgh Medieval & Renaissance Colloquium and the Silver Eye Gallery on Friday, November 7th for "Hearsay: On the Universal Languages of Nature" with Rosamond Purcell and Michael Witmore, 4:30 p.m. at Carnegie Mellon University’s Irwin Steinberg Auditorium, Baker Hall A53.

Photographer and essayist Rosamond Purcell has led a distinguished career photographing and writing about natural wonders, curiosities, and collections in museums of natural history.  In this joint dialogue with Renaissance scholar Michael Witmore, Purcell will present a number of images from past and recent work that depict objects which seem to carry with them stories for which there is no origin: occasions for hearsay, one might say. A recurring theme in their discussion will be the ways in which objects taken from nature -- fossils, bones, figured stones -- possess morphological features that are strangely suggestive of language -- an idea that has since at least the Middle Ages led some commentators to seek a universal language in the "Book of Nature."  The presentation will also include photographs of human-made objects that seem to participate in this larger world of signs.

Rosamond Purcell is a world-renowned artist who has photographed behind the scenes in the collections of major museums for more than twenty-five years. Michael Witmore is a professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison specializing in Renaissance studies.  He was formerly a professor of English at Carnegie Mellon University and the director of the Pittsburgh Medieval and Renaissance Consortium.  His book, Culture of Accidents: Unexpected Knowledges in Early Modern England (co-winner of Perkins Prize for Narrative, 2003), explored the ways in which narrative depictions of "accidental events" allowed them to serve as moments of discovery around the turn of the seventeenth century. (poster)

Sponsored by the Pittsburgh Consortium for Medieval and Renaissance Studies and Silver Eye Center for Photography.

Lecture: Timothy Hampton (Department of French and Comparative Literature, UC-Berkley), “The Useful and the Honorable: Literature, Diplomacy, and the Ethics of Mediation in the Late Renaissance” Friday, Febuary 8th at 4:30 in the Adamson Wing, Baker Hall 136A, at Carnegie Mellon University.

This paper will explore a point of contact between the Renaissance political practice of diplomacy, and the emerging discourse of secular literature. Modern diplomatic practice takes shape in and around the culture of Renaissance humanism, which offers deeply idealistic accounts of how diplomacy works. By the late sixteenth century, however, diplomatic theory struggles to bring humanist moral and ethical ideals into harmony with the contingencies of practical diplomacy. One of the ways in which writers reflect on the changes in diplomacy's relationship to moral philosophy is through a consideration of whether political action is to be 'useful' (that is, politically expedient), or 'honorable' (that is, morally correct). This is a topic that occurs repeatedly in discussions of the role of the mediator in diplomatic negotiations. My paper will trace this theme through the works of several late-Renaissance writers. Particular focus will be on Torquato Tasso, the greatest Italian poet of the late Renaissance, and Michel de Montaigne, who writes at length in his Essais about the ethics of diplomacy. I will show that both of these authors use diplomatic representation to explore the dynamics of literary representation. Thus the paper will open perspectives on how literary discourse represents the limits of political power.

Timothy Hampton is currently a Bernie Williams Professor of Comparative Literature and a Professor of French at the University of California, Berkeley. Specializing in early modern European literature and culture, he has written extensively on the relationship between literature and politics, historiography, questions of cultural transmission and cross-cultural encounters. His books include Writing from History: The Rhetoric of Exemplarity in Renaissance Literature (Cornell University Press, 1990) and Literature and Nation in the Sixteenth Century: Inventing Renaissance France (Cornell University Press, 2000), which won the Modern Language Association¹s Scaglione Prize for the best book in French and Francophone Studies. His latest book, Fictions of Embassy: Literature and Diplomacy in Early Modern Europe, will be published later this year.

Sponsored by the Pittsburgh Consortium for Medieval and Renaissance Studies.

Lecture: Edith Balas (Art History, CMU), "The Mother Goddess in Italian Renaissance Art" Friday, Febuary 15th at 4:00 in Frick Fine Arts Building, Room 202 at the University of Pittsburgh.

This talk is co-sponsored by the Medieval and Renaissance Studies Program at the University of Pittsburgh and by the Department of History of Art and Architecture at the University of Pittsburgh.

Lecture: Sara Lipton (Department of History, SUNY Stony Brook), “Jewish Eyes, 1140-1180” Friday, Febuary 29th at 4:00 in The University of Pittsburgh's Cathedral of Learning, Room 501.

This paper examines a range of sources dating to ca. 1140-80 (hagiographical and devotional texts, liturgical objects and images, and their accompanying inscriptions) to examine distinct changes in the representation of Jews in Christian art and thought. It argues that images often read as reflecting a heightened and increasingly "racialized" anti-Judaism are, in the first instance, a by-product of how Christians desired, feared, and used representations of God. Art and society are never discrete, however, and images created to serve internal Christian purposes eventually affected Christian perceptions of actual Jews, and influenced Christian-Jewish social and legal relations.

Sponsored by the Medieval and Renaissance Studies Program at the University of Pittsburgh.

Lecture: Francois Rigolot (Department of French and Italian, Princeton University), "Rabelais and the Renaissance Interpretation of Dreams" Monday, March 17th at 4:00 in The University of Pittsburgh's Cathedral of Learning, Room 501.

Sponsored by the Medieval and Renaissance Studies Program at the University of Pittsburgh.

Lecture: Richard Strier (Department of English, University of Chicago), "Mind and World in The Winter's Tale" Thursday, March 20th at 4:30 in the Giant Eagle Auditorium, Baker Hall at Carnegie Mellon University.

The Carol Brown Lecture at CMU.

Lecture: Richard Strier (Department of English, University of Chicago), "Sanctifying the Bourgeoisie:  The Cultural Work of The Comedy of Errors," Friday, March 21st at 4:00 in The University of Pittsburgh's Cathedral of Learning, Room 501.

Sponsored by the Medieval and Renaissance Studies Program at the University of Pittsburgh.

Lecture: Pamela Sheingorn (Professor Emerita of History, City University of New York), "Was Jesus' Foster-Father a Martyr? Constructing the Death of Joseph the Carpenter" Thursday, March 27th at 4:00 in The University of Pittsburgh's Cathedral of Learning, Room 501.

Sponsored by the Medieval and Renaissance Studies Program at the University of Pittsburgh.

Lecture: Jean Howard (Department of English, Columbia), "Beatrice's Monkey: Staging Exotica on the Early Modern Stage" Monday, April 14th at Washinton & Jefferson on a topic from her most recent book, Theater of a City: The Places of London Comedy, 1598-1642 (UPenn Press, 2006).

For more information about this talk, please contact Kevin Curran (kcurran@staff.washjeff.edu).

Cross-Pittsburgh Course in 17th Century Materialism

Please enjoy these pictures of the Spring 2007 joint 17th-Century Materialism class co-taught by Mike Witmore (CMU: English) and Dan Selcer (Duquesne: Philosophy). Photos taken in the CMU Hunt Botanical Library. 1. 2.

Lecture: Chris Braider (University of Colorado at Boulder), "The Baroque Art of the Mind: Beholding in Dutch Genre Painting." Friday, October 20 at 4:00 pm in College Hall 104 on the Duquesne University campus

Drawing especially on images by Samuel van Hoogstraten, Jan Steen, and Jan Vermeer, this talk explores what genre painters of the Dutch Golden Age made of (i.e., at once construed and constructed) the so-called "modern subject," the sovereign rational ego of both Cartesian metaphysics and northern optical science. The central focus of this exploration is the way in which, by incorporating acts of beholding in the very form of their pictures, Dutch painters dramatize the psycho-physical embodiment that, in determining how the world gets seen, exhibits the inescapably embodied nature of seeing itself. In addition to challenging the axiomatic centrality of the Cartesian model of self as disembodied mind, the example of Dutch art enables us to re-imagine not only Cartesian rationality, but the broader culture of the European baroque of which Descartes and Dutch genre painting turn out to be coordinate and characteristic (if puzzling) expressions.

Prof. Braider teaches seventeenth century French literature, interart problems in early modern Europe, the history of modern philosophy, and literary theory in the Departments of French and Comparative Literature at the University of Colorado at Boulder, and is currently a Visiting Professor in Comparative Literature at Brown University. He is the author of Refiguring the Real: Picture and Modernity in Word and Image, 1400-1700 (Princeton, 1993), Indiscernible Counterparts: The Invention of the Text in French Classical Drama (North Carolina, 2002), and Baroque Self-Invention and Historical Truth: Hercules at the Crossroads (Ashgate, 2004). Additional support received from the Department of Philosophy and the Dean of the McAnulty College & Graduate School at Duquesne University. [poster]

Peter Machamer (University of Pittsburgh, History and Philosophy of Science). Thursday, 22 September, 4pm in Cathedral of Learning 501. "Is Descartes Really a Dualist?"

Adrian Johns (University of Chicago, History). Monday, 3 October, 4:30pm in Frick Fine Arts (Oakland) 125. "Print, Medicine, and the Culture of Credit in Early Modern England."

Klaus Vogelgsang (Universität Augsburg, German Literature). Thursday, 13 October at 4 pm in Cathedral of Learning 501. "Late Medieval Passion Plays as Mass Media."

Jesse Gellrich (Louisiana State University, English and Comparative Literature). Friday, 21 October at 4pm in Frick Fine Arts (Oakland 202). "Oral Tradition and Illustrated Manuscripts from the Middle Ages."

Lecture: Rebecca Bushnell (University of Pennsylvania), "Secrets and Lies in Early Modern English Garden Books." Friday, 4 March at 4:00 pm in the H&SS Auditorium, Baker Hall A53, Carnegie Mellon University.

Rebecca Bushnell's Green Desire: Imagining Early Modern English Gardens was greeted with great enthusiasm by critics last year. The book explores a thriving early modern art form and the subtle interplay of art and nature that it implied. Last year Colin Burrow wrote in the London Review of Books that Bushnell:

writes with great sympathy and quiet wit about the mixture of empiricism, magic and popular lore in [gardening] manuals, and tells the story of the way they were superseded by the apparently more scientific works on horticulture produced under the influence of Bacon and Hartlib. She shows how gardens could be places of both fantasy and discipline, in which gentry gardeners sought to exercise power over nature, and create spaces which were in their way as artful as poems.

Bushnell's talk will focus on how readers and publishers understood the purpose of gardening manuals during the period; a collection of these texts is currently available in the research library of the Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation. After her lecture, the Hunt Institute will offer an exhibition of many of the texts treated in her talk.

Rebecca Bushnell, author of Green Desire: Imagining Early Modern English Gardens (Cornell, 2003), will be speaking on "Secrets and Lies in Early Modern English Garden Books." A reception and book exhibit of many of the texts discussed in the lecture will follow at the Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation (located on the 5th floor of the Hunt Library, Carnegie Mellon). Rebecca Bushnell is Professor of English and Dean of Arts and Sciences at the University of Pennsylvania. She is also the author of A Culture of Teaching: Early Modern Humanism in Theory and Practice (Cornell, 1996) and Tragedies of Tyrants: Political Thought and Theater in the English Renaissance (Cornell, 1990). This event is co-sponsored by the Carnegie Mellon Department of English, Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation, University of Pittsburgh Department of English, University of Pittsburgh Medieval and Renaissance Studies Program and the Pittsburgh Consortium for Medieval and Renaissance Studies.

Two Symposia on Florence Cathedral: Saturday, 26 February (Part 1) and Saturday, March 19 (Part 2), Frick fine Arts Building 202, University of Pittsburgh.

Five distinguished scholars of medieval history from across the country will
convene at these two symposia to debate the historical implications of
excavation results from S. Maria del Fiore, the Cathedral of Florence.

The respondents on February 26 are:

• Ralph Mathisen, professor of classics at the University of Illinois and
leading American specialist in Late Antiquity;
• Thomas F. X. Noble, professor of history, director of the Medieval
Institute at Notre Dame University, and scholar on the medieval papacy.

The respondents on March 19 are:

• Thomas Head, professor of history at Hunter College and leading American
specialist in hagiography and the cult of saints;
• Patrick Geary, professor of medieval history at the University of
California, Los Angeles, and a scholar of medieval relics;
• John Howe, professor of history at Texas Tech University and a specialist
in the eleventh-century church reform, in which Florence Cathedral played a
key role.

The sessions are free and open to the public; no prior registration is
needed. More information is available by e-mailing Prof. Frank Toker (Univ. of Pittsburgh) or calling at 412-648-2419 for conference details. Professor Toker can also make available his 143-page text on historical issues raised by the excavation results, which will be the basis on which these five respondents will speak.

The two symposia are funded through the Samuel H. Kress Foundation, the
University of Pittsburgh School of Arts and Sciences, and the University
Honors College.

Special Event: "Jacques Rancière: Politics and Aesthetics" a conference. March 18-19 2005, 2501 Posvar Hall, University of Pittsburgh.

Participants include: Jacques Rancière (professsor emeritus of aesthetics, University of Paris VIII), Kristin Ross (professor of comparative literature, NYU) , Yves Citton (professor of French literature, University of Grenoble), Bruno Bosteels (assistant professor of Spanish literature, Cornell), Peter Hallward (professor of French, King's College London), Todd May (professor of philosophy, Clemson University), Deborah Blocker (assistant professor of French, University of Pittsburgh), James Swenson (associate professor of French, Rutgers University) , Andrew Parker (professor of English, Amherst College), Solange Guénoun (professor of French, University of Connecticut), Eric Méchoulan (professor of French literature, University of Montreal), Ronald Judy (professor of English, University of Pittsburgh), Gabriel Rockhill (Philosophy, Emory University) and Raji Vallury (assistant professor of French, Kenyon College).

Please e-mail Déborah Blocker for conference details.

Lecture: Niklaus Largier (University of California, Berkeley), "Theaters of Arousal: Medieval and Early Modern Ascetic Practices and the Invention of Pornography." Thursday, 31 March at 4:00 pm at the Berger Gallery, McAnulty College Hall 207, Duquesne University.

In this talk, Professor Largier will discuss the theatrical aspects of medieval and early modern cultures of arousal, focusing on the practice of flagellation, its implications for the history of imagination and emotions, and the origin of early modern pornography from Aretino's Dialogues to Thérèse philosophe. The lecture is related to Largier’s most recent book, Lob der Peitsche. Eine Kulturgeschichte der Erregung or Praise the Whip: A Cultural History of Arousal (C.H. Beck, ZONE Books translation forthcoming), which explores the relation among bodily ascetic practices, eroticism, and literary imagination in the Middle Ages and early modernity.

Parking validation is available for the Forbes Ave. University Parking Garage.
Sponsored by the Pittsburgh Consortium for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, the Duquesne University Department of Philosophy, and the Duquesne University McAnulty College of Liberal Arts and Sciences NEH Endowment Fund.

Lecture: Kathleen Weil-Garris Brandt (New York University), “Person and Persona in Renaissance Portraits: Some Alternative Approaches.” Friday, 19 November at 4:00 pm in Frick Fine Arts Bldg 202.

A student of Italian Renaissance art and architecture, Professor Brandt's
publications include books on Leonardo da Vinci, sixteenth-century
sculpture, and Renaissance palaces. As permanent consultant for Renaissance
art to the Vatican Museums, Professor Brandt was a member of the Vatican
team for the cleaning, conservation, and study of Michelangelo's frescoes in
the Sistine Chapel and which now begins work on the Pauline Chapel.

There will be a reception immediately following Professor Brandt’s lecture.
 
This event has been co-sponsored by the University of Pittsburgh History of Art and Architecture Department and the Pittsburgh Consortium for Medieval and
Renaissance Studies.

Lecture: Elliot Wolfson (New York University), “Othering the Other: Polemic Images of Christianity and Islam in Medieval Kabbalah.”
Tuesday, November 2nd, 4 pm in William Pitt Union, University of Pittsburgh, Dining Room A

Elliot Wolfson is the Judge Abraham Lieberman Professor of Hebrew Studies at NYU. He is an expert in Jewish mysticism and philosophy and publishes widely on gender construction and the history of religion.  His numerous books include Through a Speculum That Shines: Vision and Imagination in Medieval Jewish Mysticism (Princeton University Press, 1994), which won the American Academy of Religion Award for Excellence in Historical Studies.
 
This talk has been organized by the University of Pittsburgh departments of Jewish Studies and Religious Studies.

Lecture: Rosamond Wolff Purcell
Friday, October 29th, 4 pm, Adamson Wing 136a Baker Hall (first floor, down the hall from Hunt Library entrance), Carnegie Mellon

Rosamond Purcell, distinguished photographer, artist, collector and author, will be lecturing on her most recent project, the "Two Rooms" installation at Harvard -- apainstaking recreation of the Danish naturalist Olaus Worm's curiosity cabinet (1657) with a contemporary "collection" curated by the artist. Purcell has collaborated with Stephen Jay Gould on a book about collecting and collectors entitled Finders Keepers, is the author of Special Cases — a study of monsters and marvels in early modernity — and most recently, Owl's Head, a series of essays on her relationship with William Buckminster and his prolific collection of junk in Maine.

Purcell will be discussing her recent extension of the "Two Rooms" project, whichinvolves reproducing various seventeenth century display techniques and objects. The lecture should be of interest to anyone interested in the history of museums and collecting, Renaissance art and aesthetics, and contemporary art and photography. It is co-sponsored by the Silver Eye Gallery in Pittsburgh and the Center for the Arts and Society, Carnegie Mellon University.

Lecture: William Kennedy (Cornell University), "Petrarch and Ronsard as ‘Economic Men’: Interest and Growth in the Rime sparse and the Futures of Later Petrarchism"
Friday, October 22nd, 4 pm, Cathedral of Learning 501

William J. Kennedy teaches the history of European literature and literary criticism from antiquity to the early modern period. His interests focus on Italian, French, English, and German texts from Dante to Milton. His Jacopo Sannazaro and the Uses of Pastoral (University Press of New England, 1983), recipient of the MLA's Marraro Prize, traces the rise of modern pastoral from ancient models. His Authorizing Petrarch (Cornell University Press, 1994) explores the canonizing imitations of that poet's work throughout Europe. His most recent book is The Site of Petrarchism: Early Modern National Sentiment in Italy, France, and England (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003). This event has been co-sponsored by Pitt’s Center for West European Studies and the Pittsburgh Consortium for Medieval and Renaissance Studies.

Lecture: Eve Sussman
Friday, October 15, 4 pm, Adamson Wing 136a Baker Hall (first floor, downthe hall from Hunt Library entrance), Carnegie Mellon

Eve Sussman's work recieved wide acclaim this year at the Whitney Biennial where she exhibited her piece, "89 Seconds at Alcazar," a high-definition video recreation of the scene surrounding the painting of Velasquez's "Las Meninas." Of the piece, Mark Stevens writes in New York Magazine:

For those who love painting, the most memorable work in the show will probably not be a painting but Eve Sussman’s "89 Seconds at Alcazar," an astonishing video that shows Velázquez painting Las Meninas. As the master paints, we see the king and queen, the dwarf, the little prince, the burly dog, and the servants wandering about the room. Sometimes, they are talking, but what we hear is like the murmur of voices from another room. The work is uncanny. The characters have stepped out of art into art, our art.

Eve Sussman is the first speaker in this year's special pairing of lectures on "Renaissance Visuals." A snapshot from the twelve minute video installation can be viewed at the HD Cinema Site. This event is co-sponsored by the Carnegie Mellon Department of Art.

Last spring was the first semester in which the PCMRS promoted or sponsored local events of interest to the medieval and renaissance studies community. Some of these events included:

Lecture: Déborah Blocker, "Mapping Out Discourses on Poetry and the Arts in Early Modern Europe, 1500-1800"
Friday, January 30, 2004

Déborah Blocker is Assistant Professor of French, Department of French and Italian, University of Pittsburgh. In her lecture she will discuss a number of discourses which emerged in Europe between 1500 and 1800 to characterize and evaluate the works produced in the sphere of the arts and letters.

Lecture: Katharine Eisaman Maus, "Idol and Gift in Jonson's Volpone"
Friday, February 27, 2004

Katharine Eisaman Maus is James Branch Cabell Professor of English at the University of Virginia. She is author of Inwardness and Theater in the English Renaissance and co-editor of the Norton Shakespeare.

International Milton Congress
Thursday-Saturday, March 11-13, 2004, Duquesne Union

The International Milton Congress, whose theme is "Milton In Context," will be meeting at Duquesne University this March. Logistical and program information can be found at http://www.miltoncongress.onlyhere.net. Plenary speakers include Stanley Fish, Michael Lieb, David Loewenstein, and Annabel Patterson.

PCMRS Inaugural Lecture: Roger Chartier
Friday, March 19, 2004: "Don Quixote in the Printshop"

Don McKenzie has characterized the sociology of texts as “the discipline that studies texts as recorded forms, and the processes of their transmission, including their production and reception.” Following Don Quixote into the printshop, this lecture will explore how a number of fictional works in the early modern period appropriated such processes and referred to the techniques and individuals involved in the production and reception of “texts as recorded forms.”

Roger Chartier is the Directeur d’études, École des Hautes Études en
Sciences Sociales, Paris, and currently the Annenberg Visiting Professor of
History, University of Pennsylvania. A widely admired cultural historian, he
has made invaluable contributions to the overlapping fields of the history
of the book and the history of reading and print culture, as well as many
areas of early modern literature and historiography.

Gautier de Coincy Conference Program
March 20-21, 202 Frick Fine Arts Auditorium

Saturday 20 March

9h  Welcome and Introduction, Alison Stones (University of Pittsburgh) and Kathy Krause (University of Missouri, Kansas City)

9h 10 Ð 10h30: Les Miracles dans les Manuscrits
Moderator: Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski
       Karen Duys: Book Design and the Figure of the Author
       Olivier Collet: La tradition manuscrite des Miracles et le genre de lÕoeuvre

10h45 Ð 12h15: Miracle et Religion
Moderator: Kathy Krause
       Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski: Gautier and the Typologie of Childbirth Miracles
       Laurel Broughton: Incarnational Piety in Gautier's Miracles of the Virgin
       Yasmina Foehr-Janssens: Histoire poétique du péché: de quelques figures littéraires de la faute dans les Miracle

1h45-3h15: Femmes et Images
Moderator: Bruce Venarde
       Nancy Black: Images of the Virgin Mary in the Soissons Manuscript (B.N. n. a. fr. 24541)
       Kathy Krause: Imagining Women in the Miracles
       Adrian Tudor: Telling the Same Tale? The Miracles de Nostre Dame and the Vie des Pères

3h30-4h30: Gautier et les mots
Moderator: Barbara Sargent-Baur
       Pierre Kunstmann: L'annominatio chez Gautier: vocabulaire et syntaxe
       Robert Clark: Gautier's Wordplay as Devotional Ecstasy

Sunday 21 March

9h15-11h: Gautier et les autres
Moderator: Mary Lewis
       Alison Stones: The Artistic Context of Some Miracles Manuscripts
       Frédéric Billiet: L'adaptation musicale dans l'oeuvre de Gautier de Coincy
       Brian J. Levy: Or escoutez une merveille!' Parallel Paths: Gautier's Miracles and the Fabliaux

11h15-12h15: Table Ronde
Discussion by all participants, led by Ardis Butterfield

These events are free and open to the public. For more information, contact Alison Stones (mastones@hotmail.com or 412 648 2420).

Lecture: Natasha Korda, “A Cry of Players”
Friday, March 26, 2004, Cathedral of Learning

Natasha Korda is Associate Professor of English at Wesleyan University. She
is author of Shakespeare’s Domestic Economies: Gender and Property in Early
Modern England (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002) and co-editor with
Jonathan Gil Harris of Staged Properties in Early Modern Drama (Cambridge
University Press, 2002). Her paper looks at the representation of itinerant women street vendors and their "cries" in plays, prints, ballads, and court music, and their place in the informal economy of early modern London. The paper is framed by a
discussion of Hamlet's advice to the players, and the rhetorical function of
"cries" in that play (hence its title).