Thought Crimes: Subversive Politics in Art Made For Medieval Jews

CMRS Co-sponsored Lecture

At the Maurice Amado Lecture in Sephardic Studies, Marc Michael Epstein (Vassar College)will explore issues of temporality (the way in which the passing of time is indicated or implied) in illuminated manuscripts made for Jews in the fourteenth century. What happens when, viewing images as a frozen snapshots in time, we consider the potentially politically subversive implications of the implied action that will ensue in the moment after the one that is frozen in the frame? What can we learn from such considerations about the political and theological views of the constellation of patrons, rabbinic advisors, scribes, designers, illustrators and illuminators who collaborated to produce these beautiful and iconographically complex masterpieces?

Moderator: Sarah Abrevaya Stein

Sponsored by the UCLA Alan D. Leve Center for Jewish Studies. Cosponsored by the UCLA Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, UCLA Department of History, UCLA Department of Art History. Additional Funding Provided by Viterbi Program In Mediterranean Jewish Studies.

PRE-REGISTRATION IS REQUIRED.

To RSVP please email cjsrsvp@humnet.ucla.edu or call (310) 267-5327.