Distinguished Visiting Scholars

Each year, CMRS sponsors Distinguished Visiting Scholars whose knowledge enriches the academic life of UCLA’s students and faculty, and promotes scholarship in the larger community. CMRS DVS present classes and seminars, participate in conferences and symposia, and deliver public lectures.

2019-20

Jay Reed (Classics and Comparative Literature, Brown University)
Massimo Riva (Italian, Brown University)
Ivan Lupic, (English, Stanford University)
Ad Putter (Medieval English, University of Bristol)
Arietta Papaconstantinou (Classics, University of Reading)
Mary Channen Caldwell (Music, University of Pennsylvania)
Susan Phillips (English, Northwestern University)

2018-19

R. Howard Bloch (Yale University), Sterling Professor of French
Leah DeVun (Rutgers University), Associate Professor of History
Aram Kerovpyan (École Practique des Hautes Études), Founder and Director of the Center for Armenian Modal Chant Studies
Margaret Kim (National Tsing Hua University), Associate Professor
Ryan Szpiech (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor), Associate Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures
Mirko Tavoni (University of Pisa), Professor of the History of the Iralian Language

2017-18

Leslie Brubaker (University of Birmingham), Professor of Byzantine Art History
Roxani Eleni-Margariti (Emory University), Associate Professor of Middle Eastern Studies
Hussein Fancy (University of Michigan), Associate Professor of History
Kathryn Kerby-Fulton (University of Notre Dame), Notre Dame Professor of English
Therese Martin (Instituto de Historia, Madrid), Tenured Researcher
Francis Wells (Papworth Hospital and University of Cambridge), Surgeon and Associate Lecturer
Christopher Wickham (University of Oxford), Chichele Professor of Medieval History

2016-17

Alexandra Gillespie (University of Toronto, Mississauga), Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of English and Drama
Timothy Greenwood (University of St. Andrews), Senior Lecturer in Medieval History
Anders Richardt Jørgensen (Uppsala University), Researcher in Celtic Studies in the Department of English
Karla Mallette (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor), Professor of Italian and Near Eastern Studies
Joe Moshenska (Trinity College, University of Cambridge), Fellow, Lecturer, and a Director of Studies in English

2015-16

Patrick Boucheron (University of Paris I), Professor of Medieval History
Clodagh Downey (School of Irish, National University of Ireland, Galway)
Eleanor Johnson (English & Comparative Literature, Columbia University)
Joachim Küpper (Director, Freie Universitat’s Dahlem Humanities Center)
Simone Marchesi (Princeton University)
Christopher Nugent (Williams College)
Zara Pogossian (John Cabot University of Rome; Loyola University-Rome)
Karl Steel (CUNY)
Jesús A. Solózano Telechea, University of Cantabria

2014-15

William Burgwinkle is Professor of Medieval French and Occitan Literature at King’s College, University of Cambridge. He specializes in medieval French and Occitan literature and culture, gender and sexuality, and critical theory. He is currently working on Occitan para-poetic texts, the fictional crusades, and medieval French literary culture outside France. He will visit UCLA as a CMRS
Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Department of French and Francophone Studies during the week of November 3, 2014. Public Lecture: “Seeing the Larger Picture?: Writing of the First Vernacular World History in 1209,” November 4, 2014.
Stephen Hinds, Professor of Classics and Byron W. and Alice L. Lockwood Professor of the Humanities at the University of Washington, Seattle, is an authority on post-Classical Latin.
He is especially interested in studying connections between Latin and vernacular texts which approach the condition of translation without quite being the same thing as translation. His larger project explores the classical tradition as process rather than as product, involving micro-negotiations of authors and readers across language and culture. He comes to UCLA as a CMRS Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Department of Classics during the week of April 27, 2015. Public Lecture: “Poetry across Languages: Pairs and Paratexts in Milton and Marvell,” April 27, 2015.
Adam Kosto, Professor of History at Columbia University, specializes in the institutional and legal history of medieval Western Europe, particularly Catalonia and the Mediterranean. He will visit UCLA as a CMRS Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Department of History during the week of February 2, 2015. Public Lecture: “Documenting Safe Conduct in the Middle Ages,” February 3, 2015, Royce 314, 4:30 pm. Christopher Martin, Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Auckland, is an expert on medieval philosophy. He was recently awarded a Marsden Fund grant to explore the
relations among the twelfth-century schools in Paris, focusing on, but not limited to, the debates about the work of Peter Abelard. He will come to UCLA as a CMRS Distinguished Visiting Scholar in the Department of Philosophy for the week of April 6, 2015. Public Lecture: “How Do Angels
Move From Place To Place? A Problem for Medieval Metaphysics,” April 8, 2015.
Tomás Ó Cathasaigh, the Henry L. Shattuck Professor of Irish Studies in the Department of Celtic Languages and Literatures at Harvard University, is a noted authority on medieval Irish culture, language, and literature. His extensive work on early Irish narrative literature has explored its
politico-religious ideology, its relationship to mythology, and its thematic content and structure. He has also studied the political and dynastic elements in the early Irish origin legends. He will visit UCLA as a CMRS Distinguished Visiting Scholar in the Department of English during the week of March 2, 2015. Public Lecture: “Christ as Hero in Early Irish Literature,” March 3, 2015.
Cynthia Robinson, Professor of Art History and Near Eastern Studies at Cornell University, specializes in medieval and Islamic art. She is especially interested in the visual, literary, courtly, and religious manifestations of cultural contact and interchange in the Mediterranean, particularly the Iberian peninsula, between 1000 and 1500. Her current research projects focus on mudéjar architecture (Islamicinfluenced buildings that were built under Christian rule) and Sufi mysticism in Spain. She will be at UCLA as a CMRS Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Department of Art History during the week of April 13, 2015. Public Lecture: “‘The Vision of Him Found in Woman’: The Castilian Virgin
and Iberian Islam,” April 14, 2014.
Paul Strohm is Anna S. Garbedian Professor Emeritus of the Humanities at Columbia University. His research interests include medieval literature, with a focus on transitions from “medieval” to “early modern”; textuality and history; and genre and social change. He will visit UCLA as a CMRS
Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Department of English for the week of October 27, 2014. Public Lecture: “Trouble in Mind: Personal Conscience in the Sixteenth Century,” October 29, 2014.

2013-2014

Mary Carruthers, Professor Emerita of English at New York University and Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford University, specializes in medieval literature and rhetoric, memory and mnemonic techniques, and the history of spirituality. Her latest work looks to the arts for descriptions of medieval persuasion and reception. CMRS Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Department of Art History, week of November 4, 2013. Public lecture: “Visible Textuality: Rhetoric and Sociability in the ‘Troilus Frontispiece’ Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS. 61, fol. 1v),” November 4, 2013.
Francesco Erspamer, Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures at Harvard University, is an authority on Renaissance culture, intellectual history, literature, and politics. His book reviews appear weekly on the website of Rai international, Italica. CMRS Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Department of Italian, week of May 19, 2014. Public lecture: Title to be announced. May 20, 2014.
Dominique Iogna-Prat is Director of Studies, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris. His research pertains to the relationship between space and ecclesiology, that is, how the church came to identify itself in terms of physical space and to define itself in territorial and material
rather than philosophical terms. CMRS Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Department of Art History, week of April 14, 2014. Public lecture: “A fundamentis construere: The Birth and Development of the Ritual of Placing the First Stone (10th-14th Centuries),” April 17, 2014.
Arthur F. Marotti, Distinguished Professor of English Emeritus at Wayne State University, specializes in English early modern studies, Elizabethan and Jacobean lyric poetry, historical approaches to early modern literature, literary transmission in manuscript and print, and the study of literature and religion. CMRS Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Department of English, week of November 18, 2013. Public lecture: “The Poetry Nobody Knows: Rare or Unique Verse in Early Modern English Manuscripts,” November 18, 2013.
Thomas F. Mayer is Professor of History at Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois. He is a noted scholar of Galileo and church history of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries having written two books on the topic with a third in progress. CMRS Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Department of English, week of October 7, 2013. Public lecture: “Trying Galileo,” October 10, 2013.
Ralph O’Connor is Professor of Literature and Culture of Britain, Ireland, and Iceland at the University of Aberdeen. His research interests include medieval Celtic and Scandinavian literature, and medieval North Atlantic studies. CMRS Distinguished Visiting Scholar in the Department of English, week of March 10, 2014. Public lecture: March 11, 2014, 4 pm. Lecture title and place to be announced. Professor O’Connor will also be presenting a paper for the UC Celtic Studies Conference at UCLA, March 13-16, 2014.
Robert W. Thomson is the Calouste Gulbenkian Professor Emeritus of Armenian Studies at the University of Oxford. Professor Thomson’s specialties are Byzantium, patristics, Late Antique thought, Caucasian Studies, classical Armenian literature, scriptural commentary, and the dialogue between Christians and Muslims. CMRS Distinguished Visiting Scholar in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, week of April 7, 2014. Public lecture: “Creating an Armenian Secular Code: The Lawcode of Mxit’ar Gosh and its Rivals,” April 8, 2014, Royce 314, 4 pm.
Daniel Wakelin is the Jeremy Griffiths Professor of Medieval English Paleography at the University of Oxford. He is a specialist in paleography and medieval English literature. Professor Wakelin’s work reveals habits of writing and reading in manuscripts and early English literature that highlight aspects of literary and cultural history. Particular interests are scribal corrections, errors and accuracy, and marginalia as found in humanist reading and scholarship, manuscripts of carols, fifteenth- and sixteenth-century courtly poetry and interludes. CMRS Distinguished Visiting Scholar in the Department of English, week of January 13, 2014. Public lecture: “Signs and Designs: Meaning in Late Medieval Writing,” January 16, 2014, Royce 314, 4 pm.

2012-13

Emma Dillon, Professor of Music at the University of Pennsylvania, specializes in medieval music, sound, and manuscripts. Her research focuses on French musical culture of the twelfth to fourteenth centuries. CMRS Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Department of Classics, week of November 12, 2012. Public Lecture: “Sumptuous Songs: Musical Values and Medieval Romance”
Roberto Fedi, Professor of Italian Literature at the Università per Stranieri in Perugia, has written on Petrarch, Ariosto, Boccaccio, sixteenth-century Italian poetry, and the relationship between literature and figurative arts in the Renaissance. CMRS Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Department of Italian, week of October 15, 2012. Public Lecture: “Raphael the Poet”
Yves Hersant is Director of Studies at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris. He is an authority on Renaissance art and thought, and humanism. CMRS Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Department of Classics/Political Science, week of May 20, 2013. Public Lecture: “Mirrors, Specularity, and Speculation in the Renaissance”
Neil McLeod, Professor in the School of Law at Murdoch University, Perth, Australia, specializes in medieval Irish law. He is the Chair of the PACDIL project to update the Royal Irish Academy’s web-based Dictionary of the Irish Language. CMRS Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Department of English, week of October 29, 2012. Public Lectures: “Bloodshed and Death in Medieval Irish Law,” and “The Lord of Slaughter in Medieval Irish Law”
Robert Taft, SJ, Professor Emeritus of Oriental Liturgy and Languages at the Pontifical Institute in Rome, specializes in Eastern Christian studies, in particular, Byzantine, Armenian, and Syrian liturgies. CMRS Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Department of Art History, week of February 25, 2013. Public Lecture: “Living Life Forwards and Backwards”
Catherine Turocy is Artistic Director of The New York Baroque Dance Company. She is a renowned choreographer, stage director, dancer, and authority on historic dance, especially the transition from late Renaissance to early Baroque dance (c. 1580-1740). CMRS Distinguished Visiting Professor in World Arts and Cultures, week of January 14, 2013. Public Lecture: “The Vitruvian Man Goes Baroque: The Renaissance Legacy and Baroque Dance”
Jesús Rodriguez Velasco is Professor in the Department of Latin American and Iberian Cultures, and at the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society, Columbia University. He is an expert on late medieval Spanish literature and cultural history. His current research concerns marginalia in the law codes. CMRS Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Departments of Comparative Literature, History, and Spanish & Portuguese, week of March 11, 2013. Public Lecture: “The Law Scrapers”

2011-2012

Costantino Esposito is Professor of the History of Philosophy at the Università Degli Studi di Bari Aldo Moro. His research interests include the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, the thought of Martin Heidegger (in particular, his reading of Kant, Schelling, and Augustine), and Francisco Suárez’s work on metaphysics. CMRS Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Department of Philosophy, week of May 14, 2012. Public lecture: “Why Metaphysics Must be Baroque: the Catholic Ontology of Francisco Suárez, S.J.” May 14, 2012.
Thomas Leinkauf is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Leibniz Research Center at the University of Münster. His research interests include Late Antiquity, Renaissance and early modern philosophy, and the early modern philosopher Gottfried Leibniz. CMRS Distinguished Visiting Scholar in the Department of Philosophy, week of May 7, 2012. Public Lecture: May 10, 2012.
Thomas F. Mathews, John Mangeloth Loeb Professor of Art History Emeritus at New York University, is an expert on early Christian and medieval religious art. His research has utilized modern technologies, such as microspectroscopic analysis, to shed light on ancient manuscripts. CMRS Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Departments of Near Eastern Languages & Cultures and Art History, mid-February 2012. Public Lecture: “The Christian Cult of Images and the Ancient Votive Tradition” February 15, 2012.
Peggy McCracken, Professor of French and Women’s Studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, specializes in medieval French and Occitan literature, gender and sexuality, and women’s studies. Her teaching and research interests are in the intersections of medieval literature, history, and theory. CMRS Distinguished Visiting Scholar in the Department of French and Francophone Studies, week of February 20, 2012. Public Lecture: “Embodiment, Intimacy, and Snake-Women” Tuesday, February 21, 2012.
Russ McDonald, Professor of English at Goldsmiths College, University of London, is an authority on Shakespeare, especially Shakespeare’s language and performance history. He is currently President of the Shakespeare Association of America. CMRS Distinguished Visiting Scholar in the Department of English, week of November 7, 2011. Public Lecture: “Shakespeare and the Suspicion of Style,” November 9, 2011, Royce 314, 4 pm. Professor McDonald will also be participating in the CMRS Shakespeare Symposium “Shakespeare + Opera: Found in Translation?” on November 6-7, 2011.
Larry Scanlon is Associate Professor of English at Rutgers University. His specializations include Anglo-Saxon and medieval literature, gender and sexuality, and cultural studies. He is noted for his work on exemplarity and authority in Middle English literature, sodomy in medieval penitentials, literary theory, and Langland studies. CMRS Distinguished Visiting Scholar in the Department of English, week of February 6, 2012. Public Lecture: “Confession / Nature /Foucault: The Heteronormative and the Past,” February 7, 2012.
David Stifter is Professor of Old Irish and Head of the Department of Old Irish at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth. His expertise encompasses ancient, medieval, and modern Celtic linguistics, philology, literature, and archaeology. He is author of the award-winning Sengoídelc: Old Irish for Beginners (Syracuse University Press, 2006). CMRS Distinguished Visiting Scholar in Celtic Studies, week of March 5, 2012. He will be presenting a public lecture as part of the 34th Annual UC Celtic Studies/Annual CSANA Conference, March 8-11, 2012.

2010-2011

Donald Beecher is Professor of English at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. His research interests include Elizabethan prose fiction, Renaissance medicine, folklore and the circulation of early narrative, Italian theatre, and the cognitive sciences and literature. He is a past president of the Canadian Society for Renaissance Studies. CMRS Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Department of Italian, week of April 25, 2011. Public Lecture: “Folk Tales, Fairy Tales, and the Troubled Authorship of the Piacevoli notti (1550),” April 26, 2011.
Marged Haycock, Professor of Welsh at Aberystwyth University, is one of the world’s leading authorities on early Welsh poetry and the figure of the poet in medieval Welsh tradition. In 2007, she published an edition and translation of the poems attributed to the legendary Welsh bard Taliesin, and she is currently preparing a companion volume on the prophetic poems from the Book of Taliesin. CMRS Distinguished Visiting Scholar in Celtic Studies, week of May 30, 2011. Public Lecture: “Beyond the Clouds of Time: Early Welsh Poets and Prophecy,” on June 1, 2011.
Régine Le Jan is Professor of Medieval History at the University of Paris I, Panthéon-Sorbonne, and President of the Society of French Medievalists. Her expertise includes history of the early Middle Ages, social and political anthropology, and gender and kinship relations. CMRS Distinguished Visiting Scholar in the Department of History, week of April 11, 2011. Public Lecture: “Love and Hate in Early Medieval Society,” April 12, 2011, Royce 314, 4:00 pm.
Ralph-Johannes Lilie is Director of Prosopography of the Middle Byzantine Period at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences. He is a leading authority on the political and social history of the Byzantine Empire, and is especially distinguished for his work on the Crusades, on connections to the Arabs, and on territorial administration and its social effects. CMRS Distinguished Visiting Scholar in the Department of History, week of February 21, 2011. Public Lecture: February 23, 2011, “Byzantium and Latin Europe from Model to Rival”
Lauro Martines, Professor Emeritus of History, UCLA, is renowned for his research and publications on the Italian Renaissance. His book, April Blood: Florence and the Plot against the Medici (2003) spent several weeks on the best-seller list in London. He is currently working on a book about war in early modern Europe. CMRS Distinguished Visiting Scholar in the Department of History, week of March 28, 2011. Public Lecture: March 31, 2011, “On the Backs of Civilians: War in Europe, 1500–1700”.
Edwin Williamson, King Alfonso XIII Professor of Spanish Studies, Oxford University, and a Fellow of Exeter College, is well known both as an early modern literary scholar and as an historian. He is a pre-eminent authority on Cervantes’ work, and of Don Quixote in particular. Thanks to funding provided by the UCLA Dean of Humanities, Professor Williamson will spend the Winter Quarter at UCLA. Public Lecture: March 2, 2011, “Authority and Power in Don Quixote”.

2009–10

Zaza Aleksidze is the Senior Scientific Researcher and Chair of the Department of Codicology at the National Center for Manuscripts in Tbilisi, Georgia. An expert of Caucasian Albanian, the ancient language of Azerbaijan, he is renowned for his work deciphering and analyzing the medieval Georgian, Armenian, and Caucasian Albanian texts recently discovered at St. Catherine’s Monastery, Sinai. CMRS Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, April 2010. Public Lecture: “The New Discoveries of Manuscripts in St. Catherine’s Monastery on Mt. Sinai”.
Graham Hammill is Associate Professor of English at the State University of New York at Buffalo. He specializes in early modern British literature, and cross-disciplinary studies in critical theory and visual arts. He is currently studying Machiavelli and Hebrew scripture in relation to notions of sovereignty and covenant. CMRS Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Department of English, April 2010. Public lecture: “Machiavelli and the Jewish Question”.
Coppélia Kahn is Professor of English at Brown University. Her research interests include early modern literature and cultural history, especially the drama and the social construction of gender with a focus on Shakespeare. She was president of the Shakespeare Association of America for 2008-09. CMRS Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Department of English, April 2010. Public Lecture: “Reading Faces in Hamlet”.
John Kerrigan is University Professor of English 2000 at University of Cambridge, and Fellow of St. John’s College. He is an expert on Shakespeare and early modern literature and one of the leading Shakespeareans in England. He is also an authority on modern British language and has recently published the book Archipelagic English (Oxford, 2008). CMRS Distinguished Visiting Scholar in the Department of English, November 2009. Public lecture: “Shakespeare, Oaths and Vows”.
Margaret Laing is Fellow of the Institute for Historical Dialectology, Linguistics, and English Language at the University of Edinburgh. She is a preeminent authority on medieval English dialectology, paleography, and codicology, and the principal researcher for The Linguistic Atlas of Early Middle English (LAEME). She is currently preparing a fully-revised online edition of A Linguistic Atlas of Late Mediaeval English (e-LALME). CMRS Distinguished Visiting Scholar in the Department of English, May 2010. Public Lecture: “Texting the Past: Medieval Writing—Who Needs Spell Check?”.
Philip Rousseau is Andrew W. Mellon Distinguished Professor of Early Christian Studies at Catholic University of America. He is an expert on church history and medieval monasticism. CMRS Distinguished Visiting Professor in the History Department, March 2010. Public Lecture: “Barbarian ‘Modernity’ and the Endurance of Romanitas: Some Continuity Issues Revisited”.
Katharine Simms is Senior Lecturer in Medieval History, Trinity College Dublin. She is an authority on medieval Irish history. CMRS Distinguished Visiting Scholar in the Depart-ment of English, March 2010. Dr. Simms will be one of the keynote speakers for the 32nd UC Celtic Studies Conference at UCLA, March 4-7, 2010.
Hiroshi Takayama is Professor and Chair of the Department of Occidental History in the Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology at the University of Tokyo. He specializes in medieval occidental history, in particular medieval Sicily. He recently published Europe and the Islamic World (2007). CMRS Distinguished Visiting Scholar in the History Department, October 2009. Public Lecture: “The Norman Kingdom of Sicily”.

2008–09

Rick H. Derksen, a leading authority on historical Slavic and Baltic linguistics, is on the faculty of the Leiden University Centre for Linguistics, and has taught in the Departments of Comparative Indo-European Linguistics and Slavic Studies at Leiden University. Dr. Derksen has recently published the monumental Etymological Dictionary of the Slavic Inherited Lexicon (Leiden: 2008) and is a collaborator on the Indo-European Etymological Dictionary project at Leiden University. CMRS Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures and the Indo-European Studies Program, November 2008. Public Lecture: “The Significance of the Baltic Languages in the Reconstruction of Indo-European,” November 18, 2008.
Miguel Falomir is Curator of Renaissance Paintings at the Museo Nacional del Prado in Madrid, Spain, home to many Renaissance masterpieces. He is the author of Tintoretto (London: 2007), which accompanied the first modern exhibition of the Renaissance painter Jacopo Tintoretto’s works since 1937, and co-author of the forthcoming Renaissance Faces: Van Eyck to Titian (National Gallery London: 2008). CMRS Distinguished Visiting Scholar in the Department of Art History, February 2009. Public Lecture: “Art and Politics at the Habsburg Imperial Court c. 1550,” February 3, 2009.
Margaret Mullett is currently Director of the Institute of Byzantine Studies at Queen’s University, Belfast. In fall 2009, she will become Director of Byzantine Studies at Dumbarton Oaks. Professor Mullett, an expert on all aspects of Byzantine cultural history, has written on literacy, patronage, letter-writing, genre, gender, and friendship in Byzantine society. CMRS Distinguished Visiting Scholar in the Department of Art History, November 2008. Public Lecture: “Managing Emotion in the Byzantine Twelfth Century: The Consolations of Rhetoric,” November 12, 2008.
Ruairí Ó hUiginn is Professor of Irish at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth. He is an expert of both medieval and modern Irish language, and has published extensively on medieval Irish literature. CMRS Distinguished Visiting Scholar in Celtic Studies, March 2009. Public Lecture: “Transforming the Medieval into the Modern: Irish Literature in Spanish Flanders,” March 11, 2009, Royce 314, 4 pm.
Jesús D. Rodriguez-Velasco, Professor of Spanish and Portuguese at Columbia University, and at UC Berkeley, is an authority on medieval and early modern history, law, political theory, and literature. His most recent projects concern chivalric institutions of the fourteenth century, glossed manuscripts produced for private libraries during the fifteenth century, and the political theories common to the Italian cities, Burgundy, and Castile. CMRS Distinguished Visiting Scholar in the Departments of History and Spanish & Portuguese, May 2009. Public Lecture: May 20, 2009, Royce 314, 4 pm.
Gísli Sigurðsson is Research Professor and Head of the Department of Folkloristics at the Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies on the campus of the University of Iceland in Reykjavik. CMRS Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Scandinavian Section, Spring 2009. Public Lecture: May 19, 2009, Royce 314, 4 pm.

2007-08

Jaynie Anderson (Herald Chair of Fine Arts at the University of Melbourne), an authority on Renaissance Venetian painting. Professor Anderson is especially known for her pioneering work in the interpretation of x-rays of Renaissance paintings. CMRS Distinguished Visiting Scholar in the Department of Art History, October 2007.
Heike Behlmer (Senior Lecturer in Coptic Studies, Mcquarie University, Sydney), an expert in the history and literature of Late Antique Egypt and Coptic Studies. CMRS Distinguished Visiting Scholar in the History Department, May 2008.
Patricia Crone (Mellon Professor of Islamic History at the Princeton Institute for Advanced Studies), whose work has shed new light on the religious, social, economic, and legal aspects of Islam in its beginnings in the seventh to tenth centuries. CMRS Distinguished Visiting Scholar in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, February 2008.
Paul Freedman (Chester D. Tripp Professor of History, Yale University), who specializes in medieval social history, the history of Spain, and comparative studies of the medieval peasantry. CMRS Distinguished Visiting Scholar in the Department of History, October 2007.
Ralph Hanna (Fellow of Keble College, and Professor of Paleography, University of Oxford), a preeminent scholar of vernacular manuscripts in medieval England. CMRS Distinguished Visiting Scholar in the Department of English, April 2008.
Peter Klein (Professor of Art History, University of Tübingen), an expert on manuscript illumination, sculpture, and iconography of the Middle Ages. His work focuses on the Apocalypse in medieval art. CMRS Distinguished Visiting Scholar in the Department of Art History, April 2008.
Jacques Lezra (Professor of Spanish and Comparative Literature, New York University), who specializes in the literary and visual culture of Early Modern Europe. CMRS Distinguished Visiting Scholar in the English Department, January 2008.
Nancy Sevcenko (PhD Columbia Uniersity), a leading authority of Byzantine art and manuscripts. CMRS Distinguished Visiting Scholar in the Department of Art History, February 2008.
Helgi Thorláksson (Professor of Medieval Icelandic History, Department of History and Archaeology, University of Iceland), an expert on medieval Scandinavian and Icelandic society and culture. He directs an interdisciplinary archeological and historical excavation project at Reykholt, Iceland. CMRS Distinguished Visiting Scholar in the Scandinavian Section, February 2008.
Susanne Wofford (Dean, Gallatin School, and Professor of English, New York University), whose specialties include Shakespeare, Renaissance and classical epic, and comparative European drama. CMRS Distinguished Visiting Scholar in the Department of English, January 2008.

2006-07

Fernando Cervantes (Senior Lecturer in History at the University of Bristol), specializes in the history of ideas in the Hispanic world. CMRS Distinguished Visiting Scholar in the Department of Political Science, April 2007.
Jonathan Crewe (Professor of English at Dartmouth University, and Director of the Leslie Center for Humanities, Dartmouth), an authority on Renaissance English prose, poetry, and drama, particularly Shakespeare. CMRS Distinguished Visiting Scholar in the Department of English, February 2007.
Anthony Cutler (Evan Pugh Professor of Art History at Pennsylvania State University) specializes in eastern medieval art, currently studying gift exchange between Byzantium and the Islamic world. CMRS Distinguished Visiting Scholar in the Department of Art History, January 2007.
Robert Gimello (Visiting Professor in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, Harvard University, and Professor Emeritus of East Asian Studies, University of Arizona), studies the intersections between Chinese Buddhism and medieval/Renaissance European religious culture. CMRS Distinguished Visiting Scholar in the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures, January 2007.
Nicos Hadjinicolaou (Visiting Professor of Art History, University of Cyprus, and Professor Emeritus in Art History, University of Crete) is an authority on Renaissance art, particularly El Greco and his works. CMRS Distinguished Visiting Scholar in the Department of Art History, March 2007.
William Jordan (Dayton-Stockton Professor of History, Princeton University) specializes in late medieval European history. CMRS Distinguished Visiting Scholar in the Department of History, April 2007.
Patricia Parker (Margery Bailey Professor in English and Dramatic Literature, Stanford University) an authority on early modern English literature and Shakespeare. CMRS Distinguished Visiting Scholar in the Department of English, November 2006.
Paul Russell (Lecturer in Anglo-Saxon, Norse, and Celtic, Pembroke College, Cambridge), an expert in medieval Welsh language, literature, and history. CMRS Distinguished Visiting Scholar in the Department of English, January 2007.

2005-06

Harry Berger, Jr. (Professor Emeritus of Literature and Art History, University of California Santa Cruz and a fellow of Cowell College), an authority on Renaissance literature, particularly Shakespeare and Spenser, and an art historian. CMRS Distinguished Visiting Scholar in the Department of English, May 2006.
Tomasso di Campegna Falconieri (Assistant Professor of Medieval History, Urbino University), specializes in the history of Rome and the Roman church. CMRS Distinguished Visiting Scholar in the Department of History, May 2006.
Valerie Flint (G.F. Grant Professor Emerita, History, University of Hull), renowned for her work on medieval and Renaissance intellectual history, especially the history of magic in late antiquity and the early Middle Ages. CMRS Distinguished Visiting Scholar in the Department of English, April 2006.
Marilyn Heldman (Adjunct Professor of Art History, University of Missouri, St. Louis), a medievalist and authority on Ethiopian art. CMRS Distinguished Visiting Scholar in the Department of Art History, February 2006. Public lecture: “Art of the Ethiopian Church: the Formation of an African Artistic Tradition,” Thursday, February 16, 2006, at 4:00pm in Royce 314.
Jaime Lara (Associate Professor of Christian Art and Architecture, and Chair, Program in Religion and the Arts, Yale University), who has extensively studied the art and architecture of colonial Latin America, including the Mexican missions. CMRS Distinguished Visiting Scholar in the Department of Art History, February 2006. Public lecture: “Rethinking the Spiritual Conquest of Mexico: the Visual Texts of a Medieval Renaissance,” Thursday, February 9, 2006 at 4:00pm, in Royce 314.
Franco Masciandaro (Professor of Italian, University of Connecticut), a specialist in Dante, thirteenth- and sixteenth-century Italian literature, and dramatic theory. CMRS Distinguished Visiting Scholar in the Department of Italian, February 2006. Public lecture: “The Poetics of Friendship in Homer and Dante,” Wednesday, February 1, 2006, at 4:00 pm, in Royce 314.
Derek Pearsall (Harvard University, and Centre for Medieval Studies, University of York), one of the world’s leading scholars of medieval English literature and culture. CMRS Distinguished Visiting Scholarin the Department of English, February 2006. Public lecture: “Piers Plowman and His After-life,” Tuesday, February 14, 2006 at 4:00 pm, in Royce 314.
Anne Lake Prescott (Professor of English, Barnard College), an authority on Renaissance and Early Modern English and French literature. CMRS Distinguished Visiting Scholar in the Department of English, January 2006. Public lecture: “Exploiting a Bad King: Saul in Early Modern England,” Thursday, January 12, 2006 at 4:00 pm, in Royce 314.

2004-05

John Blair (Fellow and Tutor in History, The Queen’s College, Oxford), is a leading authority on Anglo-Saxon history, with a special interest in archaeology, architecture, and religious history. He is the author of the forthcoming book The Church in Anglo-Saxon Society (Oxford University Press, 2005).CMRS Distinguished Visiting Scholar in the Department of History, October 2004.
Stefan Brink (Seminar for Early Scandanavian Culture and Society, Archaeology, Uppsala University), is an expert on Viking history, archaeology, and medieval landscapes in Scandanavia. CMRS Distinguished Visiting Scholar in the Department of Germanic Languages, February 2005.
Eckhard Kessler (Professor Emeritus, Philosophy and History of Ideas in the Renaissance, Ludwig Maximilians University, Munich), is renowned for his work on Renaissance humanisim and philosophy. He will present the Center’s annual Will and Lois Matthews Samuel Pepys Lecture on May 18, 2005. CMRS Distinguished Visiting Scholar in the Department of Philosophy, May 2005.
Catherine McKenna (Professor, English and Irish Studies Program, City University of New York), specializes in medieval Welsh poetry and has edited the works of the Welsh gogynfeirdd poets. CMRS Distinguished Visiting Scholar in the Department of English, November 2004.
Meg Twycross (Professor Emeritus of English Medieval Studies, Lancaster University), is a scholar of medieval and Renaissance theater and pageatry. She also specializes in medieval iconography, and the relationship between image and word. CMRS Distinguished Visiting Scholar in the Department of English, February 2005.

2003-04

Alain Boureau (Director, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris), noted scholar of the intellectual history of medieval Christianity and medieval scholastic thought. CMRS Visiting Professor in the History Department, January 2003. Public lecture: “The Secularization of Time in Late Medieval Monastic Thought,” Friday, January 24, 2003, at 11:00 am, as part of the CMRS conference “Calendar Reform and Religious Reformation.”
Peter Burke (Emmanuel College, Cambridge), renowned authority on social and cultural history of the Renaissance, Renaissance popular culture, and the history of historical thought. CMRS Visiting Professor in the History Department, January 2003. Public lecture: “Reflections on the Cultural History of Time,” Saturday, January 25, 2003, at 5:00 pm, as part of the CMRS conference “Calendar Reform and Religious Reformation.”
Geraint Jenkins (Director, Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies, National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth), a specialist of Early Modern Welsh history and culture, especially the development of Welsh national consciousness. CMRS Visiting Professor in Celtic Studies, March 2003. Public lecture: “Iolo Morganwg: Renaissance Man and the Father of Welsh National Consciousness,” Saturday, March 1, 2003, time to be announced, as part of the CMRS sponsored symposium, “A Saint David’s Day Celebration of Wales.”
James T. Monroe (University of California, Berkeley), an authority on Arabic studies, and Dean of the Hispano-Arabic studies program at UC Berkeley. CMRS Visiting Professor in Spanish and Portuguese, October 2002. Public lecture: “The Arabic Maquama and the Rise of the Modern Novel,” Tuesday, October 8, 2002, at 4:30 pm, in Royce 306.
Shalom Sabar (Chair, Jewish and Comparative Folklore, Hebrew University, Jerusalem), a scholar of Jewish art of the Renaissance, who has also extensively studied the image of the Jew in Renaissance “high” art and popular culture. CMRS Visiting Professor in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, April 2003. Public lecture: “Between Jews and Christians in Renaissance Italy: In the Mirror of Art,” Tuesday, April 22, 2003, at 4:30 pm, in Royce 306.