The caliph Hārūn al-Rashīd (d. 193/809) allegedly led the ḥajj nine times over the course of his twenty-three-year reign, in 188/804 he was also the last ʿAbbāsid caliph to lead the pilgrimage rites. The pilgrimage served as a means of legitimation as well as a place of succession and nomination, with Hārūn and his wife Zubayda...
Justine Landau (Sorbonne) "An Epic Tribute to the Lyric Poem" Poetry does things with words. In the premodern world, this fact is perhaps nowhere acknowledged more unanimously than in the Persianate sources. Chief among the arts of language, lyric poetry is associated with “licit magic,” after the Arabic saying, since its mastery is said to...
The Spring 2022 session of the California Medieval History Seminar will take place at its original venue, the Huntington Library. The seminar meets to discuss four pre-distributed research papers Participants are scholars in the field at various stages of their careers. All attendees at the seminar are expected to read the papers in advance and...
Julia Rubanovich (Hebrew University of Jerusalem) presents an online lecture titled "The Tale of Yūsuf and Zulaykhā through the Eyes of a Jewish Poet". This talk will examine a string of episodes from the tale of Yūsuf and Zulaykhā embedded into the “Book of Genesis” (Bereshit-nāma), a biblical poem composed by the fourteenth-century Judeo-Persian poet...
Paul Losensky (Indiana University) "A Common Thread: Three Literary Careers in Early Modern Persia, England, and Spain" The emergence of the concept of the Global Renaissance has brought new attention to the political, diplomatic, economic, and artistic connections between major civilizational centers in the early modern period. For the most part, however, literature has remained...
A conference organized by the officers of UCLA MEMSA: Chase Caldwell Smith (History), Richard Ibarra (History), and Stefanie Matabang (Comparative Literature); sponsored and hosted by the CMRS Center for Early Global Studies. Keynote Speakers: Roland Betancourt (UC Irvine) and Nicholas R. Jones (UC Davis) Research on the premodern intersection of race, gender, and sexuality has steadily increased as a result of the efforts of...
"Permanence & Decay" Keynote Speakers: Melody Jue (UCSB) and Amir R, Mufti (UCLA) Please see the flyer or visit the website for more details. RSVP here by Friday, May 6, 2022 at 5pm PST. Review the COVID-19 protocol provided on the flyer prior to attending the event. Questions? Contact the Organizing Committee at ucla.elts.conference@gmail.com. UCLA ELTS Graduate Conference 2022...
"Permanence & Decay" Keynote Speakers: Melody Jue (UCSB) and Amir R, Mufti (UCLA) Please see the flyer or visit the website for more details. RSVP here by Friday, May 6, 2022 at 5pm PST. Review the COVID-19 protocol provided on the flyer prior to attending the event. Questions? Contact the Organizing Committee at ucla.elts.conference@gmail.com. UCLA ELTS Graduate Conference 2022...
Shahzad Bashir (Brown University) "The Market in Poetry in the Persian World" The discussion will focus on Professor Bashir’s book The Market in Poetry in the Persian World (Cambridge UP, 2021), which treats poetic utterances as objects of material value sought by those with power and resources. The book provides a sense for the texture...
Organized and moderated by Professor Giulia Sissa (Departments of Political Science, Comparative Literature and Classics, UCLA). “Decolonizing Classics” is a novel challenge for scholars in the Humanities and, even more pointedly, for those who study the societies of ancient Greece and Rome. The stake is not merely relevance, usefulness or epistemic legitimacy, but also political...
This session has been cancelled. Camilla Miglio (La Sapienza, Rome) "From Medieval Persian Literature to Modernist German Poetry" Iranian 250, “Persian Literature in English Translation: Global and Interdisciplinary Perspectives,” taught by Associate Professor Domenico Ingenito (NELC), offers a survey of medieval and early modern Persian literature in English translation. The seminar fosters interdisciplinary conversations among graduate...
Online public lecture, “Pictorial Systems and the Visual Engine,” Gabriel Greenberg (UCLA/Stanford). Register to attend.
A conference organized by Professor Thomas Barton (History, University of San Diego). The complete schedule and full details are available at the conference website. Sponsored by: UCLA CMRS Center for Early Global Studies UCLA Department of History UCLA Division of Humanities UCLA Division of Social Sciences UCLA Center for Near Eastern Studies UCLA Islamic Studies...
Join us for our Open House and New Book Salon with ELIZABETH MORRISON, Senior Curator of Manuscripts at The J. Paul Getty Museum, and writer BOYD MORRISON, for a discussion of their new book, The Lawless Land (Tales of the Lawless Land Book 1). New Book Salon 4:30 - 5:30 pm Pacific Time Onsite in...
Kanner Forum Featuring Matthew Vernon Join UCLA English for "Unexceptional Blackness and Blind Matter," a talk by Matthew Vernon, Associate Professor of English Literature at the University of California, Davis. Professor Vernon will discuss Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’s adaptation of Everyman as it relates to invisibilization of race. Professor Vernon will focus on the problems and possibilities...
The California Medieval History Seminar fosters intercampus networking and intellectual exchange by acquainting participants with historical research in medieval studies currently underway in California. The seminar meets quarterly to discuss pre-distributed research papers (two by faculty members, two by graduate students). During AY 2022-23, the seminar will meet on October 29, February 11, and May...
"Making Things Visible: Galileo and the Spottiness of the Moon" by guest scholar Brian Baigrie (IHPST Toronto). Register to attend here. The Fall 2022 CMRS-CEGS Research Seminar is “Picturing Knowledge in Historical Perspective” (Philosophy 206) taught by Professors Calvin Normore (Philosophy) and Brian Copenhaver (Philosophy, History). This interdisciplinary seminar traces some of the ways, from...
Byzantine Studies Association of North America (BSANA) Annual Conference. Detailed information regarding the schedule and registration is at the conference site -- click here.
"Curzio Inghirami (1614-1655), Forger and Playwright of Volterra" by guest scholar Ingrid Rowland (Architecture, University of Notre Dame). Online with Zoom and in person in Royce 314. Register to attend in person here. Register to attend on Zoom here. The Fall 2022 CMRS-CEGS Research Seminar is “Picturing Knowledge in Historical Perspective” (Philosophy 206) taught by...
Organized by Chris Johanson (Classics and Digital Humanities, UCLA) and Zrinka Stahuljak (CMRS-CEGS, UCLA). This workshop will serve as a forum on Digital Humanities research in Cultural Heritage sites. The focus will be on the Eastern Adriatic sites over a long period of time (300-1600). The Eastern Adriatic, with its rich ancient, late antique, medieval...
UCLA will be hosting the Western Ottomanists' Workshop (WOW) hybrid, both in person and online. Organized by CMRS-CEGS faculty member Choon Hwee Koh (UCLA, History) and hosted by the UCLA Center for Near Eastern Studies. Friday, November 18 - Day 1 10383 Bunche Hall (10th floor) & Zoom Alternate plans for strike 1:30pm Registration 2pm...
UCLA will be hosting the Western Ottomanists' Workshop (WOW) hybrid, both in person and online. Organized by CMRS-CEGS faculty member Choon Hwee Koh (UCLA, History) and hosted by the UCLA Center for Near Eastern Studies. Friday, November 18 - Day 1 10383 Bunche Hall (10th floor) & Zoom 1:30pm Registration 2pm Opening Speech - James...
A symposium organized by Professor Massimo Ciavolella (ELTS and Comparative Literature, UCLA), Professor Emerita Valeria Finucci (Romance Studies, Duke University) and doctoral candidate Megan Tomlinson (ELTS, UCLA). The symposium will examine how the study of a person's facial features or expressions as indicatives of character or ethnicity, has evolved from the crossroad of magic, religion,...
"From Romance to Romance: Translating among Medieval and Early Modern Romance Vernacular Texts (13th-18th c.)," is a two-day conference focusing on the many cross-influences among Romance literatures and cultures from the Middle Ages through more recent times, with special attention to the topic of translation. More than 25 international scholars will examine different aspects of...
"From Romance to Romance: Translating among Medieval and Early Modern Romance Vernacular Texts (13th-18th c.)," is a two-day conference focusing on the many cross-influences among Romance literatures and cultures from the Middle Ages through more recent times, with special attention to the topic of translation. More than 25 international scholars will examine different aspects of...
CMRS-CEGS Conference “Destroyed, Removed, and Reassembled: Book Collections in the Premodern World,” organized by Matthew Fisher (English, UCLA) and Devin Fitzgerald (Library Special Collections, UCLA). Day 1 – Friday, February 3, 2023 9:15 – 9:45 am Coffee, tea, fruit, pastries 9:45 – 10:00 Welcoming Remarks Zrinka Stahuljak (UCLA), CMRS-CEGS Director Matthew Fisher (UCLA) and Devin...
Miguel Valerio (Spanish/Performing Arts, Washington University in Saint Louis) is the speaker at this seminar which is part of the UCLA Program in Experimental Critical Theory. Co-sponsored by the CMRS Center for Early Global Studies.
The California Medieval History Seminar fosters intercampus networking and intellectual exchange by acquainting participants with historical research in medieval studies currently underway in California. The seminar meets quarterly to discuss pre-distributed research papers (two by faculty members, two by graduate students). During AY 2022-23, the seminar will meet on October 29, February 11, and May...
Erin Kathleen Rowe (Vice Dean for Undergraduate Education, Professor of History, Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, Johns Hopkins University) will give a talk about African and Black saints in early modern Iberia. Beginning in the seventeenth-century, members of the Carmelite order adopted two ancient Ethiopian saints, Efigenia and Elesban. While their interest in ancient...
Pepperdine University Professor Jennifer A. T. Smith's The Book of Faith: A Modern English Translation, offers a critical introduction to, and translation of, Reginald Pecock's The Book of Faith. Organized by Arvind Thomas (UCLA), moderated by Wendy Scase (Birmingham), with Steven Justice (UC Berkeley), Ian Forest (Oxford University) and Michael Calabrese (CSULA) as respondents. Attend...
Complete details including registration, schedule, speakers, and abstracts are on the conference webpages. An international conference on the past, present, and future of medieval studies in Europe organized by Professor Meredith Cohen (Art History, UCLA) and Professor Zrinka Stahuljak (CMRS-CEGS Director). Bringing together scholars of medieval France from the Anglophone and Francophone worlds, the conference will honor the legacy...
Complete details including registration, schedule, speakers, and abstracts are on the conference webpages. An international conference on the past, present, and future of medieval studies in Europe organized by Professor Meredith Cohen (Art History, UCLA) and Professor Zrinka Stahuljak (CMRS-CEGS Director). Bringing together scholars of medieval France from the Anglophone and Francophone worlds, the conference will honor the legacy...
The sounds of the medieval past are conjured in Paris-based Ensemble Dialogos’s presentation of the legend of Barlaam and Josaphat, a concert to be held in conjunction with the conference on Saturday, February 25, from 3-4:15 pm at the Getty Center. Wildly popular in medieval Europe, the tale of Prince Josaphat and his hermit-teacher Barlaam...
Postponed -- to be re-scheduled. Ilse Sturkenboom (Art History, Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich)
Patrick Boucheron (History, Collège de France) is the speaker at this seminar which is part of the UCLA Program in Experimental Critical Theory. Co-sponsored by the CMRS Center for Early Global Studies and the French Embassy Center of Excellence at UCLA.
Professor Christian Keime (Classics, University of Cambridge) gives a public lecture, part of the CMRS-CEGS Research Seminar for Winter 2023, “Historicity. Re-reading Michel Foucault,” taught by UCLA Professor Giulia Sissa. Join on Zoom at https://ucla.zoom.us/j/95860364810?pwd=VTJJY2oyS1YyLy9KNTB5TFZXRWhKQT09 Password: Plato
This is the first of the Games and Korean History webinar series in Winter 2023, presented by Chosŏn History Society and hosted by the UCLA Center for Korean Studies. This series brings together game creators, history teachers and scholars, and the gaming community through discussions over Korean history and its simulation. Dr. Álvaro Sanz from Paradox...
A symposium organized by Joseph F. Nagy (Celtic Languages and Literatures, Harvard University). 1:00 pm-1:15 pm Welcome 1:15-3:00 SESSION I - Kersti Francis (UCLA), Moderator “Early Irish Law and Indo-European Studies – A Review of the Case” Fangzhe Qiu (University College Dublin) - Via Zoom “‘Woe, ah alas!’ – The Piercing Poetry of Urard mac...
Professor Sara Brill (Philosophy, Fairfield University) gives a public lecture, part of the CMRS-CEGS Research Seminar for Winter 2023, “Historicity. Re-reading Michel Foucault,” taught by UCLA Professor Giulia Sissa. In Foucault’s later engagement with Greek antiquity, the concept of bios finds revolutionary force less in its usefulness to a notion of biopolitics (in bio-) than...
Register to attend in person in Royce 306. Register to attend online with Zoom. Challenges to inferiorizing conceptions of women’s nature that grew in prominence in the 16th and 17th centuries should be seen not just as applications of changing philosophical conceptions of nature under the rise of mechanical philosophy, but as helping to shape...
Register to attend in person in Royce 306. Register to attend online with Zoom. Challenges to inferiorizing conceptions of women’s nature that grew in prominence in the 16th and 17th centuries should be seen not just as applications of changing philosophical conceptions of nature under the rise of mechanical philosophy, but as helping to shape...
Register to attend in person in Royce 306. Register to attend online with Zoom. Challenges to inferiorizing conceptions of women’s nature that grew in prominence in the 16th and 17th centuries should be seen not just as applications of changing philosophical conceptions of nature under the rise of mechanical philosophy, but as helping to shape...
Michael J.B. Allen passed away on Saturday, February 25, 2023. Professor Allen was Director of the UCLA Center for Medieval & Renaissance Studies from 1988-1993. Prior to that, he had served as Assistant Director, then Associate Director of CMRS for many years. Indeed, he was actively involved in the Center and its activities since he...
This lecture, "Religious dissent and violence in Late Antiquity," is by Professor Maijastina Kahlos (Helsinki/Lisbon), part of the CMRS-CEGS Research Seminar graduate course for Spring 2023, Persecution and Defiance: Religious Minorities in the Roman World 200-700 CE (History201B). Violence was part of the late antique life. How considerable role did violent conflicts play in Late...
CMRS-CEGS Workshop “Possession: Race, Gender, and Ownership in the French Atlantic," a lecture by Jennifer Palmer (History, University of Georgia). Organized by Barbara Fuchs (English, Spanish, UCLA) and Andrew Devereux (History, UCSD). Click for readings.
CMRS-CEGS Seminar Organized by Barbara Fuchs (English, Spanish, UCLA) and Andrew Devereux (History, UCSD). With Chloe Ireton (History, University College London) and Jennifer Palmer (History, University of Georgia). Register to attend IN PERSON: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSemJHpVpq0pLc-TmRvDLGA8HAsge07N3yYwIlh7GnziEFyCHQ/viewform Register to attend on ZOOM: https://ucla.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJAsdOivrz8tH9CcxbiZNPQBDWUruZXm-P08 Click for readings.
CMRS-CEGS Workshop "Slavery & Freedom in Black Thought in the Spanish Atlantic in the 16th Century," a lecture by Chloe Ireton (History, University College London). Organized by Barbara Fuchs (English, Spanish, UCLA) and Andrew Devereux (History, UCSD). Register to attend IN PERSON (only option): https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdNPbpXliFnZcDsMWffTPVmezNm7Cagdk9iVAtKBdDWyXasvg/viewform Click for readings.
UCLA Center for the Study of Religion is sponsoring a talk with Azzan Yadin-Israel (Jewish Studies, Rutgers University). With the exception of the cross, the apple—as the forbidden fruit—may be the most widely-recognized biblical image. Yet the Book of Genesis in the Hebrew original does not name the species of fruit that caused the Fall...
A roundtable organized by Giulia Sissa (Classics, Political Science, UCLA). Iacopo Costa (CNRS and Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne) “Can We Bypass the Middle Ages When We Read Aristotle?” Dimitris Vardoulakis (Western Sydney University) “Aristotle’s Phronesis: a Hidden Presence in Political Philosophy?” Guillaume Navaud (Lycée Henri IV) "Correcting/Cancelling Evil in Literature: a Resurgence of an Anti-Aristotelian Platonism?"...
CMRS-CEGS Conference Organized by Chet Van Duzer (Lazarus Project, University of Rochester) and Stephen P. McCormick (Romance Languages, Washington & Lee University). See the complete schedule at the conference website. Register to attend in person in Royce 314. Register to attend online with Zoom. Image: Naples BN MS IVE9, f. 24r Virgil Georgics zonal mappamundi
“Silver: Mutability and Materiality across Seventeenth-Century Networks of Trade and Plunder in the Indian and Atlantic Oceans” Nancy Um (Associate Director, Research and Knowledge Creation, Getty Research Institute) This talk delves into the circulation of silver in the late seventeenth century, a time when the silver streams of Potosi fueled the global maritime trade. It...
This lecture, "The Acts of the Christian Martyrs and Court Protocols," is by Professor Éric Rebillard (Cornell), part of the CMRS-CEGS Research Seminar graduate course for Spring 2023, Persecution and Defiance: Religious Minorities in the Roman World 200-700 CE (History201B). It has long been assumed that acts of martyrs derived from court protocols of their...
In most of the older studies of the Renaissance, Eastern Central Europe was a “dark area” about which very little was said. We have since come a long way in understanding 15th-century culture in Hungary, Slavonia and Croatia. A thriving Renaissance movement was spreading, and its focal point was Bishop John Vitez, a generous patron...
Johanna Drucker (School of Education & Information Studies, UCLA) discusses her book Inventing the Alphabet (The University of Chicago Press, 2022) with Helen Deutsch (English, UCLA). Register to attend in person Royce 306. Register to attend online with Zoom. (Originally scheduled for April 25, 2023)
This lecture, "Re-Staging the Judean 'Nation': The Rise of the Neighborhood in Roman Palestine," is by Professor Charlotte Fonrobert (Stanford), part of the CMRS-CEGS Research Seminar graduate course for Spring 2023, Persecution and Defiance: Religious Minorities in the Roman World 200-700 CE (History201B). Co-sponsored by UCLA Alan D. Leve Center for Jewish Studies. Professor Fonrobert...
The California Medieval History Seminar fosters intercampus networking and intellectual exchange by acquainting participants with historical research in medieval studies currently underway in California. The seminar meets quarterly to discuss pre-distributed research papers (two by faculty members, two by graduate students). During AY 2022-23, the seminar will meet on October 29, February 11, and May...
Marco Polo and his father and uncle spent seventeen years in China, and because of his personal history there, Sinologists have long scrutinized and debated his connection to the larger history of China and his status as a historical writer of China. In response to biographical discussions about Polo in Sinology, this talk investigates the...
This symposium will focus on Korea and Eurasia from the thirteenth to sixteenth centuries and highlight thematic approaches that resonate with other places and periods. The symposium features scholars interested in integrating early modern Korea into regional and global narratives. Their projects weave together Mongolian, Ming, Koryŏ, and Chosŏn histories or provide interdisciplinary perspectives on...
08:00–08:15 PST Introduction & Welcome Patrick Morgan, Hannah Thomson, and Chase Caldwell Smith PANEL 1: CULTURAL CIRCULATION IN PRE-MODERN ASIA 08:15–08:30 PST "Nonnational Affinities and Shared Scape of Romances: Persianate World in Circulation" Yoonus Kozhisseri, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay 08.30–08:45 PST "Monsters, Deities, and Humanity in the Early Modern Philippines" Zhiyu Chen, University of...
This lecture, "Of Marginal Importance? The Role of Marginalia in Studying Late Medieval Manuscripts," is by Tomislav Matić (Croatian Institute of History), Visiting Scholar, UCLA CMRS Center for Early Global Studies, a public event conducted at the Huntington Library. Reading a text, at least to a Medieval reader, was not a one-way process. In the Middle...
As part of the CMRS-CEGS Research Seminar graduate course for Fall 2023, Money Matters: Between Antiquity and the Enlightenment (ca. 600-1600), guest lecturer, Wolfgang Mueller (Fordham University) will share about his research that focuses on written norms and laws of the European West between 500 and 1500 CE. He is author of several scholarly monographs,...
In the 16th century, a Hebrew-speaking, battle-scarred, Black-skinned Jew named David Reubeni appeared suddenly in Venice with a desperate plan to restore Jewish pride and political independence. Why did kings, bishops, rabbis, bankers, and even a pope, open their homes and wallets for him? Some answers from one of the weirdest documents of Jewish history,...
CMRS-CEGS/AARHMS Symposium As part of its thematic series of co-sponsored sessions this academic year on “Iberian History as Global History” at major international conferences, the American Academy of Research Historians of Medieval Spain (AARHMS) has partnered with UCLA’s CMRS Center for Early Global Studies (CEGS) to host this symposium on The Western Mediterranean and the...
Friday, November 3, 2023 6:00 PM - 7:30 PM (Pacific Time) Lenart Auditorium, UCLA Fowler Museum REGISTER HERE A journey to find extraordinary people leads to the discovery of a community living on the shores of Sabah, Malaysia and the Philippines. An ethnolinguistic group that dwelled on houseboats for hundreds of years moving across the...
As part of the CMRS-CEGS Research Seminar graduate course for Fall 2023, Money Matters: Between Antiquity and the Enlightenment (ca. 600-1600), guest lecturer, Professor Craig Muldrew (Cambridge, UK) will share about his expertise in British Social and Economic History from 1500 to 1800. Craig Muldrew's research mainly focuses on the investigation of the economic and...
Junior Faculty Series: Caroline (Caz) Batten When: Tuesday, November 28, 2023 10:30 am Where: Kaplan Hall 193 This seminar is centered around a work-in-progress book chapter exploring the Old English metrical charms, a set of twelve vivid and enigmatic magic spells written down in the tenth and eleventh centuries. The seminar will be a chance to...
Junior Faculty Series: Caroline (Caz) Batten When: Tuesday, November 28, 2023 4:00 pm Where: Kaplan Hall 193 What does it mean, culturally speaking, to get sick? What makes a body healthy? This talk explores depictions of disease in medical remedies and healing charms from the medieval North Atlantic, a multilingual zone of intensive cultural interaction and exchange....
A Workshop Hosted by Global Antiquity for Colleagues in California December 5–6, 2023 | Royce Hall 306 Global Antiquity is thrilled to announce its inaugural workshop titled “(Re)envisioning Ancient Worlds.” This event, held at UCLA in Royce 306 over two days (December 5 and 6, 2023), will include invited speakers from across the University of...
December 8th, 2023 Special Collections Roundtable UCLA Luskin Conference Center 425 Westwood Plaza Los Angeles CA, 90095 Laureate Classroom Refreshments Served 3:00–5:00 PM Roundtable and Discussion Followed by Reception South Courtyard, Luskin Center 5:15 PM (Los Angeles Time) December 9th, 2023 Symposium 8:30 - 5:00 PM (PST) UCLA Luskin Conference Center 425 Westwood Plaza...
As the theater of engagement and integration of communities originating on the shores or from the hinterlands of Africa, Asia, and Europe, the Mediterranean region served as a dynamic center of interaction and exchange from Antiquity through early modernity. Even as it began to lose political and economic centrality, it has remained a zone of...
"On the Introduction of Chinese Decorated Paper to Iran and How it Revolutionized Manuscript Production in the Islamic World" Guest speaker: Ilse Sturkenboom (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München) The fifteenth-century introduction of long sheets of brightly colored and gold-embellished paper from Ming China to Iran provided book artists with a range of new possibilities in the production of...
Participation in the Seminar consists of group discussion of pre-circulated papers, typically drafts of articles, book chapters, or dissertation chapters (with complete apparatus). Two of the papers are ordinarily by emerging scholars (including PhD students) and the other two are by established scholars. We allocate one hour per paper and presenters should anticipate substantial, and...
Copy of Kunyu quantu 坤輿全圖 (Complete map of the world), 1674, Ferdinand Verbiest, S.J. held at the Clements Library at the University of Michigan. Image stitched together from individual images of each frame of the map screen. Guest Speaker: S.E. Kile (University of Michigan) "Was the World Early Modern?: Telescopes, Surgery, and Print Media in China,...
This lecture takes up questions in African Medieval to Early Modern ivory imagery and sources framed in part around a set of seemingly anomalous motifs that address how power and ivory have mutually shaped each other both in Africa (particularly Nigeria) and in European contexts. Among the works taken up are images of elephants in...
Description of Lecture: The reception of Italian lyrical poetry in Cyprus during the time of Venetian rule (1489-1571) yielded rich fruits. The precious collection of Cypriot love poems, preserved in a unique manuscript at the Marciana Library in Venice, is a mature expression of Renaissance reflections and artistic sensitivity. Simultaneously, it reveals a convergence of...
Abstract: The ideal of "death for the fatherland" (Pro patria mori) may seem to be an invariable reality of human society, from Sparta and Athens to today's wars. In fact, it is a political imaginary whose periodization can be traced. Ernst Kantorowicz, in a famous article published in 1951, proposed an analysis of this problem....
Guest Speaker: Hannah Barker (Arizona State University) In 1455, the Venetian patrician Giosafat Barbaro encountered an old friend in surprising circumstances. As a young merchant in the Black Sea port of Tana, Barbaro had met and befriended a local Tatar notable named Chebechzi. At the end of his time in Tana, Barbaro returned home expecting...
Participation in the Seminar consists of group discussion of pre-circulated papers, typically drafts of articles, book chapters, or dissertation chapters (with complete apparatus). Two of the papers are ordinarily by emerging scholars (including PhD students) and the other two are by established scholars. We allocate one hour per paper and presenters should anticipate substantial, and...
Herman L. Bennett is a Professor at the Graduate Center (CUNY) and Director of the Institute for Research on the African Diaspora in the Americas and the Caribbean (IRADAC). He has held faculty positions at UNC-Chapel Hill, The Johns Hopkins University, Rutgers University, and the Free University of Berlin. CANCELED - This lecture is...
MORNING SESSION 08:00–08:15 PDT Opening Words Chase Caldwell Smith, Patrick Morgan, and Sofía Yazpik 8:15–8:20 PDT Welcome Zrinka Stahuljak, Director, CMRS Center for Early Global Studies, UCLA PANEL 1: Making South Asian and Indian Ocean Materialities Moderator: Chase Caldwell Smith 8:20–8:40 PDT Traded Silks for the Gods in Kerala: Patola, its Connections, Contributions and...
Participation in the Seminar consists of group discussion of pre-circulated papers, typically drafts of articles, book chapters, or dissertation chapters (with complete apparatus). Two of the papers are ordinarily by emerging scholars (including PhD students) and the other two are by established scholars. We allocate one hour per paper and presenters should anticipate substantial, and...
Cappella Romana brings to life the vibrant soundscape of medieval Thessaloniki, Byzantium's second largest city. Hear ancient hymns honoring the city's patron, the ever-popular St. Demetrios, sung on the weekend of his annual feast day. Experience ecstatic Byzantine chants for the saint adorning the Cathedral Rite of Constantinople, sung by the women and men of...
The UCLA Medieval Texts Reading Group welcomes undergraduate students, graduate students, staff, and faculty interested in medieval literature. On the third Friday of each term, we get together to discuss a text in English translation from across the Global Middle Ages, to think about what it tells us about its cultural and literary context. Each discussion will be...
This lecture tackles the question of “authenticity” when writing crime novels set in the remote past. Agapitos’ three novels (published between 2003 and 2009 in Greece), which are set in the first half of ninth-century Byzantium during the rule of the last iconoclast emperor, Theophilos (r. 829–842), form the basis of a lively discussion about...
A two-day symposium and workshop that brings together specialists of Persian literature, junior faculty, and graduate students to facilitate in-depth conversations on Nezāmi in a stimulating intellectual environment at UCLA. On the first day of the conference, “Rediscovering a Persian Treasury of Global Literature,” invited speakers will deliver lectures that offer insights on the most recent...
Camilla Mileto and Fernando Vegas will present a hybrid lecture entitled "Earthen Architecture and Heritage Conservation: Case Studies from Spain." Mileto and Vegas are Professors of Architecture and Historic Preservation at the Universitat Politècnica de Valencia, and directors of the research group Res-Arquitectura: Research, Conservation, and Dissemination of Architectural Heritage. They are also current Getty...
Abstract: At the end of the 1650s, Melchiorre Cafà, a Maltese sculptor, was newly established in Rome. Rome was the most significant site for sculptural production in Europe at that time. It was also a Golden Age of sculpture as artists vied for papal commissions and pushed the limits of their medium. They transformed hard...
The UCLA Medieval Texts Reading Group welcomes undergraduate students, graduate students, staff, and faculty interested in medieval literature. On the third Friday of each term, we get together to discuss a text in English translation from across the Global Middle Ages, to think about what it tells us about its cultural and literary context. Each discussion will be...
"Between Two Worlds: The Roma and Early Global Print Cultures" Guest Speaker: Kristina Richardson (University of Virginia) Richardson will show that Roma and other traveling people not only blocked printing between 800 and 1450 in North Africa and West Asia, but as they migrated into central Europe in the 1410s, they introduced print technology in...
Organizers: Stefania Tutino (UCLA), Andrea Robiglio (KU Leuven), and Eva Del Soldato (UPenn) The question of how knowledge transfers has become central for understanding the culture of the premodern world in a global perspective. This workshop is interested in exploring the question of what happens when transfer fails: what happens when knowledge is not “translated”...
This session is with Assistant Professor Lamia Balafrej (Art History). These workshops aim to provide quality feedback on a first full draft of a pre-tenure book manuscript in preparation for publication. Workshop participants are faculty members and doctoral graduate students selected by the author of the book manuscript. This is a continuing series, and junior...
Participation in the Seminar consists of group discussion of pre-circulated papers, typically drafts of articles, book chapters, or dissertation chapters (with complete apparatus). Two of the papers are ordinarily by emerging scholars (including PhD students) and the other two are by established scholars. We allocate one hour per paper and presenters should anticipate substantial, and...
Striving for Expertise Guest Speaker: Carla Pestana (UCLA) Scholars often refer to Samuel Pepys as an early example of a state bureaucrat, his career as a civil servant in the burgeoning Restoration bureaucracy offering documentation of an important shift in governance. Of equal note—and perhaps greater interest—is the way Pepys himself aimed for expertise. Not...
Participation in the Seminar consists of group discussion of pre-circulated papers, typically drafts of articles, book chapters, or dissertation chapters (with complete apparatus). Two of the papers are ordinarily by emerging scholars (including PhD students) and the other two are by established scholars. We allocate one hour per paper and presenters should anticipate substantial, and...
Organizers: Sixiang Wang & Choon Hwee Koh
To mark 650 years since Boccaccio’s death, a conference on Boccaccio’s Other Wor(l)ds invites exploration of Boccaccio’s “Other Words” and “Other Worlds.” Boccaccio’s narratives—not limited to the Decameron—vividly depict cultural and intellectual exchanges, emphasizing human behavior, morality, and societal complexities across the Mediterranean and beyond, including Cathay. In the Decameron, the Levant serves as a crucial geographical and cultural...
Organizers: Stefania Tutino and Greg Woolf
