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June 2022
*CANCELLED* CMRS-CEGS Research Seminar: Iranian 250
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 students from a plurality of departments and programs, including Islamic Studies, Gender Studies, History, Art History, Global Medieval and Renaissance Studies, English, and Comparative Literature.…
Read More about *CANCELLED* CMRS-CEGS Research Seminar: Iranian 250May 2022
Roundtable: Neoclassic or New Classics? Challenges, Debates, Perspectives
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 credentials. The “Classics” in education and in academia are being asked to give account of their role in shaping not just cultures, but cultural identities;…
Read More about Roundtable: Neoclassic or New Classics? Challenges, Debates, PerspectivesCMRS-CEGS Research Seminar: Iranian 250
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 of the Persian world by discussing what made poetry precious and a carrier of social relations, political and religious authority, economic exchange, and the articulation…
Read More about CMRS-CEGS Research Seminar: Iranian 2502nd Annual European Languages & Transcultural Studies Graduate Student Conference – Day 2
"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 Organizing Committee: Anna Bonazzi, Amber Sackett, Kendell Clarke, and Megan Tomlinson.
Read More about 2nd Annual European Languages & Transcultural Studies Graduate Student Conference – Day 22nd Annual European Languages & Transcultural Studies Graduate Student Conference – Day 1
"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 Organizing Committee: Anna Bonazzi, Amber Sackett, Kendell Clarke, and Megan Tomlinson.
Read More about 2nd Annual European Languages & Transcultural Studies Graduate Student Conference – Day 1Intersectionality in the Early Global World
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 a diverse group of scholars working across traditional periodization and geographic limits. Nevertheless, a great deal of work remains to be done to understand the…
Read More about Intersectionality in the Early Global WorldCMRS-CEGS Research Seminar: Iranian 250
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 on the sidelines of this discussion. The talk will consider the stakes and challenges of bringing the vast Persophone literary sphere into conversation with contemporary…
Read More about CMRS-CEGS Research Seminar: Iranian 250CMRS-CEGS Research Seminar: Iranian 250
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 Shāhīn. Shāhīn’s work is situated at a convenient juncture for comparative analysis: it is preceded by the poem Yūsif-u Zulaykhā erroneously ascribed to Firdausī (composed at the end…
Read More about CMRS-CEGS Research Seminar: Iranian 250California Medieval History Seminar, Spring 2022
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 discuss the research. Speakers and paper topics are announced by e-mail. Click here for additional information about the seminar. The authors and papers under discussion at…
Read More about California Medieval History Seminar, Spring 2022CMRS-CEGS Research Seminar: Iranian 250
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 conduce to “the accomplishment of great things in the order of the world” (Nezâmi ‘Aruzi, Chahâr maqâle, II). The philosophers of the classical period discussed the…
Read More about CMRS-CEGS Research Seminar: Iranian 250April 2022
‘Aqām al-ḥajj Fulān’: The Leaders of Abbasid Pilgrimage in the Early Islamic Annalistic Tradition
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 bt. Jaʿfar (from whence the Darb Zubayda) in particular undergoing extensive infrastructural works on the pilgrimage route. The leaders of the ḥajj – and of the summer…
Read More about ‘Aqām al-ḥajj Fulān’: The Leaders of Abbasid Pilgrimage in the Early Islamic Annalistic TraditionNew Book Salon: “Throne of Blood” by Robert N. Watson
Shakespeare’s Macbeth seems to come across best in black-and-white. The recent release of a stunning new version of this blood-soaked tragedy, directed by Joel Coen and starring Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand, has spurred renewed interest in the play and its history in film. Throne of Blood, Akira Kurosawa's 1957 Japanese reworking of Macbeth (also in black and white) has often been called the greatest film adaptation of Shakespeare ever made, with rave reviews from T.S. Eliot, Harold Bloom, and…
Read More about New Book Salon: “Throne of Blood” by Robert N. WatsonComparatism and Slavery: Methods, Definitions, Issues
A lecture by Professor Paulin Ismard (History, Université Aix-Marseille). Organized by the UCLA Program in Experimental Critical Theory and co-sponsored by CMRS-CEGS. About the Lecture: Professor Ismard will question the benefit that specialists of Greco-Roman slavery can gain from dialogue with the historians of slavery from other periods. Considering the question of the relationship between debt, servitude and slavery in archaic Greece, he will first show how recent approaches in the field of the global history of labour and slavery…
Read More about Comparatism and Slavery: Methods, Definitions, IssuesCMRS-CEGS Research Seminar: Iranian 250
Prashant Keshavmurthy (McGill University) "Reading Niẓāmi Ganjavī’s Leylī u Majnūn as a Novel" Neither the Byzantines nor the Persians had any generic name for the Greek and Persian novels that were composed in the 12th century. Beholden to older (Attic Greek and Abbasid Arabic) models, the taxonomies of literary forms in both geographically adjacent literary cultures lagged behind the innovations of literary practice. Neither did Constantinopolitan literary culture, centered in the courts of the Komnenian dynasty, produce any theoretical reflection on Theodore…
Read More about CMRS-CEGS Research Seminar: Iranian 250CMRS-CEGS Research Seminar: Iranian 250
Leili Anvar (Sorbonne, Paris) "From the Desert of Arabia to the Gardens of Herat: Wanderings of Majnûn, the Poet-Lover" In this presentation, we will follow Majnûn in his journeys from the Arabic poems to the great Persian masnavis (composed by Nezâmi, Amir Khosrow Dehlavi and Jâmi). We shall see how -with the development of sufism and its influence upon Persian literature- the character of Majnûn has been turned into a hero of mystic love and also how Leylâ became Leyli and…
Read More about CMRS-CEGS Research Seminar: Iranian 250Illustrating the Vitae patrum: The Rise of the Eremitic Ideal in Fourteenth-Century Italy
The Annual Richard & Mary Rouse History of the Book Lecture In the late third and fourth centuries, a number of men and women from Egypt, Palestine, and Syria chose to make a daring break with society, renouncing their familial claims and wealth so that they could lead a life of perfection in the desert. By withdrawing from society to the desert to undergo the ultimate test of faith, these men and women, known to later generations as the Desert…
Read More about Illustrating the Vitae patrum: The Rise of the Eremitic Ideal in Fourteenth-Century ItalyCMRS-CEGS Research Seminar: Iranian 250
Dominic Brookshaw (Oxford University) "Zulaykha’s Redemption: From Lustful Villain to Female Icon" The guile associated with Zulaykha in the Qur’an is largely absent from her depiction in the ghazals of fourteenth-century Iran. The negativity surrounding Zulaykha’s expression (or manifestation) of female sexuality dims in the Persian ghazal where we witness the character’s salvific rehabilitation. On the surface, Zulaykha represents female-driven sexual desire, an impulse celebrated infrequently in Persian lyric poetry. That Zulaykha seeks to initiate a sexual liaison with her…
Read More about CMRS-CEGS Research Seminar: Iranian 250Magdeburg, 1554: Flacius Illyricus Applies for a Grant
A lecture by Professor Anthony Grafton (Princeton University). Ecclesiastical history began in the 1550s, when the Lutheran Matthias Flacius Illyricus organized a collaborative century-by-century history of Christianity. This confessional project never reached completion, and its thick volumes met with severe criticism from co-religionists as well as Catholics. Nonetheless, it provided a new model for the study of the past, inspiring a revolution in historiography. That’s the standard story. It’s not wrong: Flacius did many original things: for example, writing and…
Read More about Magdeburg, 1554: Flacius Illyricus Applies for a GrantIslamic Sensory History: Notes on an Emerging Field
The sensory turn in many areas of the humanities has failed to make a significant impression on Islamic and Middle East Studies, and on the study of Islamic history in particular. In the last couple of years, however, there has been a rise in interest in historical manifestations of the Muslim sensorium. This is demonstrated by a series of symposia devoted to the topic on both sides of the Atlantic, contributions by single scholars as well as team-based research projects,…
Read More about Islamic Sensory History: Notes on an Emerging FieldHebrew Illuminated Manuscripts: Transcultural Interpretation and Transmission
This conference (online and onsite) brings together scholars to consider different manuscript communities in Europe, their textual and iconographic traditions, and more globally, an exploration of communities that produced “families” of Hebrew manuscripts and enabled transmissions across languages and societies. Motivation to organize this conference stems from The J. Paul Getty Museum’s recent acquisition of the Rothschild Pentateuch. This manuscript serves as a case study on how a single object crosses geographical and religious boundaries and provides the impetus for…
Read More about Hebrew Illuminated Manuscripts: Transcultural Interpretation and TransmissionMarch 2022
Contactless Comparison
Alexander Beecroft, (Jessie Chapman Alcorn Memorial Professor of Foreign Languages, University of South Carolina) presents a talk titled “Contactless Comparison.” It’s easy to compare things that are produced near each other, by people who are able to influence each other. Traditionally, comparative literature has therefore compared literatures in close contact with each other: at first European literatures; later literatures in European languages around the world, and sometimes even contemporary literatures in non-European languages where the influence of European literature is…
Read More about Contactless ComparisonWhy (and How) Should a Platonist Laugh at Eros? Humor and Love in the “Symposium”
A lecture by Pierre Destrée (Université de Louvain), part of the Winter 2022 CMRS-CEGS Research Seminar, Classics 250, “Eros. Amor. The Erotic Cultures of the Early Global World” taught by Professor Giulia Sissa (Political Science and Classics). In all societies and cultures, the erotic experience is complex. It is shaped by norms, habits, emotions and manners of living the body. Such an experience crosses a variety of discourses and domains of knowledge. We will look at this phenomenon, the erotic, as…
Read More about Why (and How) Should a Platonist Laugh at Eros? Humor and Love in the “Symposium”From Medieval Afghanistan, “The Most Beautiful of Stories”: Jami’s Yūsuf-u Zulaykhā, a Persian reading group and workshop series
The UCLA CMRS Center for Early Global Studies and Musa Sabi Chair in Iranian Studies, in collaboration with the Center for Near Eastern Studies and the Program on Central Asia, invite scholars and graduate students from across the world to participate in the following research program: From Medieval Afghanistan, “The Most Beautiful of Stories”: Jami’s Yūsuf-u Zulaykhā, a Persian reading group and workshop series, which will take place via Zoom on a weekly basis between January and June 2022. The…
Read More about From Medieval Afghanistan, “The Most Beautiful of Stories”: Jami’s Yūsuf-u Zulaykhā, a Persian reading group and workshop seriesUnreadable Exemplars: Veiled Women and Exotic Others in 16th-Century Books
The UCLA Department of European Languages and Transcultural Studies presents the 2021-2022 Charles Speroni Endowed Chair Lecture by Professor Susan Gaylard. Early sixteenth-century developments in printing brought forth a profusion of illustrated history books. Many of these histories included a high proportion of women’s images and biographies. Yet by the 1560s, images of women had largely disappeared from the emerging genre of the portrait book. Why did images of women disappear, and where did they go? This talk argues that…
Read More about Unreadable Exemplars: Veiled Women and Exotic Others in 16th-Century BooksFebruary 2022
RESCHEDULED The Future of Medieval France
RESCHEDULED FOR FEBRUARY 2023 An international conference on the past, present, and future of medieval studies in Europe. Organized by Associate Professor Meredith Cohen (Department of Art History, UCLA) and Professor Zrinka Stahuljak (CMRS Director, Department of Comparative Literature, and European Languages & Transcultural Studies, UCLA). Schedule and location to be announced.
Read More about RESCHEDULED The Future of Medieval FranceA Two-Way Road: Comparative Anthropology of Eros and Sensuality in Latin Elegy and the Greek Novel
A lecture by Romain Brethes (Sciences Politiques, Paris), part of the Winter 2022 CMRS-CEGS Research Seminar, Classics 250, “Eros. Amor. The Erotic Cultures of the Early Global World” taught by Professor Giulia Sissa (Political Science and Classics). One of the emerging questions facing scholars of the Greek novel, and imperial Greek literature more generally, is the question of whether Greek authors were interested in, and betrayed knowledge of, Latin literature and culture. The orthodox view has for a long time been…
Read More about A Two-Way Road: Comparative Anthropology of Eros and Sensuality in Latin Elegy and the Greek NovelFrom Medieval Afghanistan, “The Most Beautiful of Stories”: Jami’s Yūsuf-u Zulaykhā, a Persian reading group and workshop series
The UCLA CMRS Center for Early Global Studies and Musa Sabi Chair in Iranian Studies, in collaboration with the Center for Near Eastern Studies and the Program on Central Asia, invite scholars and graduate students from across the world to participate in the following research program: From Medieval Afghanistan, “The Most Beautiful of Stories”: Jami’s Yūsuf-u Zulaykhā, a Persian reading group and workshop series, which will take place via Zoom on a weekly basis between January and June 2022. The…
Read More about From Medieval Afghanistan, “The Most Beautiful of Stories”: Jami’s Yūsuf-u Zulaykhā, a Persian reading group and workshop seriesNew Book Salon: Zrinka Stahuljak’s “Les Fixeurs au Moyen âge – Histoire et littérature connectées”
A book panel on "Invisible Persons, Invisible Texts: Translation and Translators in Medieval and Modern Afghanistan and the West" with Zrinka Stahuljak (UCLA), Jawanshir Rasikh (Independent Scholar), and Arezou Azad (Oxford). Discussant: Domenico Ingenito (UCLA). Register to attend on Zoom. 9:30 am - 11 am Pacific Time Organized by the UCLA Program on Central Asia. Afghanistan through Afghan Voices is a series of virtual workshops that highlights and critically engages with recent scholarship on one of the most culturally diverse…
Read More about New Book Salon: Zrinka Stahuljak’s “Les Fixeurs au Moyen âge – Histoire et littérature connectées”Green Like a Woman: Gender Expression and Erotic Manners
A lecture by Tommaso Gazzarri (Union College), part of the Winter 2022 CMRS-CEGS Research Seminar, Classics 250, “Eros. Amor. The Erotic Cultures of the Early Global World” taught by Professor Giulia Sissa (Political Science and Classics). Professor Gazzarri's research explores the ancient association of the color galbinus with the figure of the cinaedus (Martial 3.82.5; Juvenal 2.97). Like Greek chloros, galbinus corresponds to a hue between yellow and green. Unlike viridis, galbinus, when referring to persons, is utilized mainly to describe women…
Read More about Green Like a Woman: Gender Expression and Erotic MannersFrom Medieval Afghanistan, “The Most Beautiful of Stories”: Jami’s Yūsuf-u Zulaykhā, a Persian reading group and workshop series
The UCLA CMRS Center for Early Global Studies and Musa Sabi Chair in Iranian Studies, in collaboration with the Center for Near Eastern Studies and the Program on Central Asia, invite scholars and graduate students from across the world to participate in the following research program: From Medieval Afghanistan, “The Most Beautiful of Stories”: Jami’s Yūsuf-u Zulaykhā, a Persian reading group and workshop series, which will take place via Zoom on a weekly basis between January and June 2022. The…
Read More about From Medieval Afghanistan, “The Most Beautiful of Stories”: Jami’s Yūsuf-u Zulaykhā, a Persian reading group and workshop seriesMEMSA Race Reading Group
For the final winter quarter meeting of the MEMSA premodern race reading group, discussion centers on Sylvia Wynter's "Unsettling the Coloniality of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom: Towards the Human, After Man, Its Overrepresentation-- An Argument." UCLA graduate students and faculty from all departments and all participatory levels are welcome to join the discussion, whether you want to contribute to the conversation or just listen in. Please read these meeting ground rules prior to attendance. This is a laid back group so come, discuss…
Read More about MEMSA Race Reading GroupCalifornia Medieval History Seminar, Winter 2022
The Winter 2022 session of the California Medieval History Seminar will take place online instead of at its usual 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 discuss the research. Click here for additional information about the seminar. The following papers will be discussed at the seminar and available for…
Read More about California Medieval History Seminar, Winter 2022Copying and Reading Sacred Scriptures: Qurʾan and Torah in Comparative Perspective
This talk by Professor Daniella Talmon-Heller (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev) will highlight commonalities and differences between Jewish and Muslim thinking about the aural, graphic, and material forms of the Torah and Qurʾan. Jews and Muslims have both been preoccupied with transcribing and reading the authentic text as accurately as possible while securing its sanctity. They have adopted similar devices to facilitate its precise graphic representation, but ultimately employed different solutions regarding the design and format of the material object.…
Read More about Copying and Reading Sacred Scriptures: Qurʾan and Torah in Comparative PerspectiveA Woman’s Pleasure: Philosophy and Sexuality in the Poetry of Sulpicia
A lecture by Erin McKenna Hanses (Penn State University), part of the Winter 2022 CMRS-CEGS Research Seminar, Classics 250, “Eros. Amor. The Erotic Cultures of the Early Global World” taught by Professor Giulia Sissa (Political Science and Classics). In his diatribe against love in De Rerum Natura Book 4, Lucretius includes an idea found rarely in male-authored Roman poetry: the Epicurean asserts that there is mutua voluptas between men and women and that both partners can experience pleasure in matters of sex. In this paper, Dr. Hanses argues…
Read More about A Woman’s Pleasure: Philosophy and Sexuality in the Poetry of SulpiciaFrom Medieval Afghanistan, “The Most Beautiful of Stories”: Jami’s Yūsuf-u Zulaykhā, a Persian reading group and workshop series
The UCLA CMRS Center for Early Global Studies and Musa Sabi Chair in Iranian Studies, in collaboration with the Center for Near Eastern Studies and the Program on Central Asia, invite scholars and graduate students from across the world to participate in the following research program: From Medieval Afghanistan, “The Most Beautiful of Stories”: Jami’s Yūsuf-u Zulaykhā, a Persian reading group and workshop series, which will take place via Zoom on a weekly basis between January and June 2022. The…
Read More about From Medieval Afghanistan, “The Most Beautiful of Stories”: Jami’s Yūsuf-u Zulaykhā, a Persian reading group and workshop seriesAs Inconvenient and Offensive as Abundance
Adam Talib ( School of Modern Languages and Cultures, Durham University) discusses "As Inconvenient and Offensive as Abundance." Literary studies developed in European modernity in conditions of cultural scarcity and narrowness, though it has often laid claims to universality and universal applicability, especially as it rose to epistemic hegemony in its colonial and global phases. The inability of Euro-American literary paradigms and priorities to engage meaningfully with world-literary traditions is by now uncontroversial, but the field of comparative literature has struggled…
Read More about As Inconvenient and Offensive as AbundanceFrom Medieval Afghanistan, “The Most Beautiful of Stories”: Jami’s Yūsuf-u Zulaykhā, a Persian reading group and workshop series
The UCLA CMRS Center for Early Global Studies and Musa Sabi Chair in Iranian Studies, in collaboration with the Center for Near Eastern Studies and the Program on Central Asia, invite scholars and graduate students from across the world to participate in the following research program: From Medieval Afghanistan, “The Most Beautiful of Stories”: Jami’s Yūsuf-u Zulaykhā, a Persian reading group and workshop series, which will take place via Zoom on a weekly basis between January and June 2022. The…
Read More about From Medieval Afghanistan, “The Most Beautiful of Stories”: Jami’s Yūsuf-u Zulaykhā, a Persian reading group and workshop seriesJanuary 2022
From Medieval Afghanistan, “The Most Beautiful of Stories”: Jami’s Yūsuf-u Zulaykhā, a Persian reading group and workshop series
The UCLA CMRS Center for Early Global Studies and Musa Sabi Chair in Iranian Studies, in collaboration with the Center for Near Eastern Studies and the Program on Central Asia, invite scholars and graduate students from across the world to participate in the following research program: From Medieval Afghanistan, “The Most Beautiful of Stories”: Jami’s Yūsuf-u Zulaykhā, a Persian reading group and workshop series, which will take place via Zoom on a weekly basis between January and June 2022. The…
Read More about From Medieval Afghanistan, “The Most Beautiful of Stories”: Jami’s Yūsuf-u Zulaykhā, a Persian reading group and workshop seriesMEMSA Race Reading Group
The reading to be discussed is "Creating Chichimec-Uanacaze Ethnic Identity," Chapter 4 from Angélica Jimena Afanador-Pujol's The Relación de Michoacán: (1539-1541) and the Politics of Representation in Colonial Mexico. The Introduction to the book is also included as optional reading, which may be very helpful in providing a context for the Relación. You can find a PDF here. MEMSA reading group meetings are open to graduate students and faculty. All participatory levels are welcome to join the meeting, whether interested…
Read More about MEMSA Race Reading GroupWhere Does Nature End and Culture Begin? Cultural Heritage between Anthropology and Epistemology
The speaker is Etienne Anheim (EHESS-CRH). The title of his talk is "Where Does Nature End and Culture Begin? Cultural Heritage between Anthropology and Epistemology." The heritage movement that affects contemporary society has continued to expand, but the notion of heritage has also diversified. One of its main divisions has been based on the opposition between cultural heritage and natural heritage, the latter related directly to the current interest in the preservation of the environment at large. In this talk,…
Read More about Where Does Nature End and Culture Begin? Cultural Heritage between Anthropology and EpistemologyFrom Medieval Afghanistan, “The Most Beautiful of Stories”: Jami’s Yūsuf-u Zulaykhā, a Persian reading group and workshop series
The UCLA CMRS Center for Early Global Studies and Musa Sabi Chair in Iranian Studies, in collaboration with the Center for Near Eastern Studies and the Program on Central Asia, invite scholars and graduate students from across the world to participate in the following research program: From Medieval Afghanistan, “The Most Beautiful of Stories”: Jami’s Yūsuf-u Zulaykhā, a Persian reading group and workshop series, which will take place via Zoom on a weekly basis between January and June 2022. The…
Read More about From Medieval Afghanistan, “The Most Beautiful of Stories”: Jami’s Yūsuf-u Zulaykhā, a Persian reading group and workshop seriesFrom Medieval Afghanistan, “The Most Beautiful of Stories”: Jami’s Yūsuf-u Zulaykhā, a Persian reading group and workshop series
The UCLA CMRS Center for Early Global Studies and Musa Sabi Chair in Iranian Studies, in collaboration with the Center for Near Eastern Studies and the Program on Central Asia, invite scholars and graduate students from across the world to participate in the following research program: From Medieval Afghanistan, “The Most Beautiful of Stories”: Jami’s Yūsuf-u Zulaykhā, a Persian reading group and workshop series, which will take place via Zoom on a weekly basis between January and June 2022. The…
Read More about From Medieval Afghanistan, “The Most Beautiful of Stories”: Jami’s Yūsuf-u Zulaykhā, a Persian reading group and workshop seriesMEMSA Race Reading Group
The reading group kicks-off the quarter discussing the introduction from Cord Whitaker's Black Metaphors, titled "Moving Backward: Blackness in Modernity, Early Modernity, and the Middle Ages". The text is here. Please read the meeting ground rules prior to attendance. Register for the meeting here. Open to UCLA Faculty and Graduate Students. Questions? Contact memsa.ucla@gmail.com. Future meetings will be on January 25 (Week 4) and February 15 (Week 7) from 2-1 pm PT on Zoom.
Read More about MEMSA Race Reading GroupAncient and Modern Categories: How Historians Formulate Race
A lecture by CMRS-CEGS Associate Yonatan Binyam, President's Postdoctoral Fellow, UCLA Institute for Society and Genetics, Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies. In this talk, Dr. Binyam reviews some of the objections against premodern race studies and clarifies some of the arguments, models, and approaches utilized in the field. More specifically, he presents race-making as a comparative category to analyze modes of social formation in antiquity, illustrating the value that premodern race studies hold for the study of…
Read More about Ancient and Modern Categories: How Historians Formulate RaceDecember 2021
Reading Against Distraction in Early Medieval England
Junior Faculty Book Manuscript Workshop This session with Assistant Professor Erica Weaver (English) explores intersections of attention, obedience, and performance in 10th- and 11th-c. Benedictine monasticism as she examines these issues in her book Reading Against Distraction in Early Medieval England. Reviewers are Bruce Holsinger (University of Virginia) and Katherine O’Brien O’Keeffe (UC Berkeley). 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…
Read More about Reading Against Distraction in Early Medieval EnglandNew Book Salon: Carla Pestana’s “The World of Plymouth Plantation”
Author Carla Gardina Pestana (History, UCLA) joins Alex Mazzaferro (English, UCLA) in discussion about her new book, The World of Plymouth Plantation. Register to attend online. The English settlement at Plymouth has usually been seen in isolation. Indeed, the colonists gain our admiration in part because we envision them arriving on a desolate, frozen shore, far from assistance and forced to endure a deadly first winter alone. Yet Plymouth was, from its first year, a place connected to other places.…
Read More about New Book Salon: Carla Pestana’s “The World of Plymouth Plantation”November 2021
RESCHEDULED From Romance to Romance: Translating Medieval and Early Modern Romance Vernacular Texts (13th-18th c.) – Day 2
RESCHEDULED FOR NOVEMBER 2022 In the past decades, there have been many studies devoted to aspects of medieval translation. For example, the conferences on The Medieval Translator, and the series of collective monographs resulting from them, illustrate the wealth of approaches that have shed light on this important topic. Clearly, the act of translating from one language into another was crucial in medieval culture. As an intellectual practice, translation finds its origins in the methods of Latin rhetoric, which fostered…
Read More about RESCHEDULED From Romance to Romance: Translating Medieval and Early Modern Romance Vernacular Texts (13th-18th c.) – Day 2MEMSA Reading Group
This session will discuss Geraldine Heng's "A Global Race in the European Imaginary: Native Americans in the North Atlantic," which is chapter 5 from The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages (the book's introduction is also provided in the link above as an optional reading). Open to UCLA Faculty and Graduate Students. Access the Reading Group Meeting Ground Rules here. Register for the meeting here. Questions? Contact memsa.ucla@gmail.com.
Read More about MEMSA Reading GroupRESCHEDULED From Romance to Romance: Translating Medieval and Early Modern Romance Vernacular Texts (13th-18th c.) – Day 1
RESCHEDULED FOR NOVEMBER 2022 In the past decades, there have been many studies devoted to aspects of medieval translation. For example, the conferences on The Medieval Translator, and the series of collective monographs resulting from them, illustrate the wealth of approaches that have shed light on this important topic. Clearly, the act of translating from one language into another was crucial in medieval culture. As an intellectual practice, translation finds its origins in the methods of Latin rhetoric, which fostered…
Read More about RESCHEDULED From Romance to Romance: Translating Medieval and Early Modern Romance Vernacular Texts (13th-18th c.) – Day 1Afterlives: Dante in Dialogue with East Asian Buddhism | Day 2
In The Metaphysics of Dante’s Comedy, one of the most significant contributions on Dante’s thought in modern scholarship, Christian Moevs presents an interpretation of the Florentine poet’s worldview that is consistent with Eastern spirituality. Moevs’s allusions to non-dualistic principles of Indian and Asian religion and thought in the context of an in-depth examination of Dante’s metaphysics offer the opportunity to advance a productive inquiry that may bridge conventional divides between medieval literature in Europe and cultural productions in medieval East…
Read More about Afterlives: Dante in Dialogue with East Asian Buddhism | Day 2Afterlives: Dante in Dialogue with East Asian Buddhism | Day 1
In The Metaphysics of Dante’s Comedy, one of the most significant contributions on Dante’s thought in modern scholarship, Christian Moevs presents an interpretation of the Florentine poet’s worldview that is consistent with Eastern spirituality. Moevs’s allusions to non-dualistic principles of Indian and Asian religion and thought in the context of an in-depth examination of Dante’s metaphysics offer the opportunity to advance a productive inquiry that may bridge conventional divides between medieval literature in Europe and cultural productions in medieval East…
Read More about Afterlives: Dante in Dialogue with East Asian Buddhism | Day 1Petrarch’s African canzoniere: Lyric Anthropology and the Question of Race
CMRS-CEGS / Comparative Literature Co-Sponsored Lecture Ayesha Ramachandran (Associate Professor of Comparative Literature, Yale University) "Petrarch’s African canzoniere: Lyric Anthropology and the Question of Race" Is the rhetoric of Petrarchan poetry a foundational discourse of early modern race-making? And what might it mean to investigate early modern lyric as site for reflection about race and cross-cultural difference? This talk returns to Petrarch’s Rerum vulgarium fragmenta, often described as the urtext of modern lyric poetry, to reveal its textual and conceptual…
Read More about Petrarch’s African canzoniere: Lyric Anthropology and the Question of RaceChosŏn Korea and the Imperial Tradition in East Asia, 1392-1592
Junior Faculty Book Manuscript Workshop This is the first of a series of workshops that 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 book manuscript’s author. This is a continuing series and inquiries by junior faculty wishing to benefit are welcome. Please contact the Director, Zrinka Stahuljak. This session is with Assistant Professor SIXIANG WANG (Asian Languages…
Read More about Chosŏn Korea and the Imperial Tradition in East Asia, 1392-1592October 2021
California Medieval History Seminar, Fall 2021
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 discuss the research. Speakers and paper topics are announced by e-mail. Click here for additional information about the seminar. The following papers will be discussed at the seminar: Jessie Sherwood (UC, Berkeley) "Converts in the Law: Rules and Norms for Baptism and Apostasy in the Early Middle…
Read More about California Medieval History Seminar, Fall 2021MEMSA Race Reading Group
This session will discuss Geraldine Heng's "A Global Race in the European Imaginary: Native Americans in the North Atlantic," which is chapter 5 from The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages (the book's introduction is also provided in the link above as an optional reading). Open to UCLA Faculty and Graduate Students. Access the Reading Group Meeting Ground Rules here. Register for the meeting here. Questions? Contact memsa.ucla@gmail.com.
Read More about MEMSA Race Reading GroupVirtual Classrooms and Mercantile Mischief in Shakespeare’s England
Distinguished Visiting Scholar Lecture Rescheduled from April 30, 2020. Please see event registration details below. Susan Phillips (English, Northwestern University). What happens when the schoolmaster is banished from the early modern classroom? The popular vernacular textbooks that flooded the European market in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries posed precisely this question when they claimed—on title pages and in prefatory material—not simply to stand in for the schoolmaster, but to displace him altogether. Most were practical how-to guides that offered entertaining dialogues…
Read More about Virtual Classrooms and Mercantile Mischief in Shakespeare’s EnglandSeptember 2021
MEMSA Race Reading Group
Sponsored by MEMSA, the Race Reading Group takes place virtually and is open to UCLA faculty and graduate students. Chapter 4 from Michael Gomez's book African Dominion, "Slavery and Race Imagined in Bilād As-Sūdān" will be under discussion. Here is a link to the text. You can register to attend the Sept. 30 meeting here. The meeting dates for the rest of the quarter will be October 28 (week 5) and November 18 (week 8), all from 12-1 pm PT.…
Read More about MEMSA Race Reading GroupAugust 2021
MEMSA Race Reading Group
We invite you to join us for the first meeting of the Medieval and Early Modern Student Association (MEMSA) and Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies (CMRS) co-sponsored Race Reading Group that will explore a variety of scholarly research on pre-modern race. The first meeting will be held virtually over Zoom on August 26, 2021. The group is open to UCLA students and faculty and meetings will focus on the discussion of one reading (an article or selections from a…
Read More about MEMSA Race Reading GroupMay 2021
Resilience, Resistance, and Renewal in the Medieval and Early Modern World
Graduate Student conference organized by the UCLA Medieval and Early Modern Student Association (MEMSA). The global medieval and early modern world (broadly considered, ca. 900-1750) underwent myriad profound changes, from devastating famines, plagues, and wars to an increased entanglement of the continents, economic transformations, and technological and scientific developments. These changes were often accompanied by calls for the reshaping of the institutions and structures – political, religious, intellectual, etc. – which undergirded societies’ approach to these challenges, encompassing such responses…
Read More about Resilience, Resistance, and Renewal in the Medieval and Early Modern WorldBeholding Beauty: Sa’di of Shiraz and the Aesthetics of Desire in Medieval Persian Poetry
New Book Salon Author Domenico Ingenito (Assistant Professor of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, UCLA) with discussants Lara Harb (Assistant Professor of Near Eastern Studies, Princeton University) and Marisa Galvez (Associate Professor of French and Italian and, by courtesy, of German Studies, Stanford University) Beholding Beauty: Sa'di of Shiraz and the Aesthetics of Desire in Medieval Persian Poetry, Brill, 2020. Beholding Beauty: Saʿdi of Shiraz and the Aesthetics of Desire in Medieval Persian Poetry explores the relationship between sexuality, politics, and…
Read More about Beholding Beauty: Sa’di of Shiraz and the Aesthetics of Desire in Medieval Persian PoetrySigns of Sex: Comparative Semiotics of Virginity in the Greco-Roman, Jewish and Christian Worlds
CMRS Conference Organized by Giulia Sissa, Professor of Political Science and Classics, UCLA Virginity can be defined as a condition of sexual integrity, more specifically as the inexperience of full intercourse. This condition concerns mostly women before heterosexual coition. It involves corporeal, social, moral and emotional aspects. In modern Western anatomy, a thin piece of skin is allegedly located at the entrance of the vagina: its breakage is supposed to signify that penetration has occurred, whereas its integrity is supposed…
Read More about Signs of Sex: Comparative Semiotics of Virginity in the Greco-Roman, Jewish and Christian WorldsSlavery’s Archive in the Premodern World
Watch this event on YouTube: Part 1, Part 2 CMRS Workshop organized and moderated by Lamia Balafrej, Assistant Professor, Arts of the Islamic World, UCLA Department of Art History. Slavery is often equated with archival lack and erasure, an assumption perhaps inherited from the study of the Atlantic slave trade but which might not hold for the premodern world. For one thing, in the medieval Mediterranean for example, people could slip in and out of the category of slavery—anyone could become a slave and…
Read More about Slavery’s Archive in the Premodern WorldApril 2021
Symposium in Homage to Michel Jeanneret (1940-2019)
Organized by Jean-Claude Carron (Research Professor, UCLA). This symposium convened to honor Michel Jeanneret (1940-March 2019) will memorialize the critical and creative achievements of one of the pillars of early modern studies today. We will bear witness to his pioneering contributions to the current critical discourse on French and European studies, covering both the ancient and nouveau régimes, from the Sixteenth century, with, among others, Vinci, Erasmus, Rabelais, Ronsard, Montaigne, to Versailles, Nerval, and contemporary French cultural politics (« Cinquante-huit…
Read More about Symposium in Homage to Michel Jeanneret (1940-2019)Dancing Odissi and the Question of the ‘Medieval’ in Indian Performance History
New Book Salon A discussion with Professor Anurima Banerji (UCLA, Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance) and Professor Urmimala Sarkar (Jawaharlal Nehru University, School of Art and Aesthetics) about Professor Banerji's recent book Dancing Odissi: Paratopic Performances of Gender and State, winner of the 2020 de la Torre Bueno Prize awarded by the Dance Studies Association. Click here to register on Zoom.
Read More about Dancing Odissi and the Question of the ‘Medieval’ in Indian Performance HistoryLaw and Disorder: Fools, Outlaws, and Justice in the Middle Ages and Renaissance – Day 2
CMRS Symposium Is justice possible when foolishness runs rampant? Are folly and mockery valid means to restrain those who abuse power and thwart just treatment of the populace? This virtual conference, with presentations ranging from the high Middle Ages to the 20th century, will examine the social order reflected in the concepts of justice and its untidy, outspoken discontents—fools, scofflaws, even criminal figures. In the medieval and early modern periods, fools generally wore the mantle of outsider and rule-breaker; they…
Read More about Law and Disorder: Fools, Outlaws, and Justice in the Middle Ages and Renaissance – Day 2Law and Disorder: Fools, Outlaws, and Justice in the Middle Ages and Renaissance – Day 1
CMRS Symposium Is justice possible when foolishness runs rampant? Are folly and mockery valid means to restrain those who abuse power and thwart just treatment of the populace? This virtual conference, with presentations ranging from the high Middle Ages to the 20th century, will examine the social order reflected in the concepts of justice and its untidy, outspoken discontents—fools, scofflaws, even criminal figures. In the medieval and early modern periods, fools generally wore the mantle of outsider and rule-breaker; they…
Read More about Law and Disorder: Fools, Outlaws, and Justice in the Middle Ages and Renaissance – Day 1California Medieval History Seminar, Spring 2021
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 discuss the research. Speakers and paper topics are announced by e-mail. Click here for additional information about the seminar. These are the papers under discussion which are available for download in advance of the seminar: Christopher Bacich (Stanford University) “The Death of the Soul and the…
Read More about California Medieval History Seminar, Spring 2021Spatial Grammars: The Union of Art and Writing in the Painted Books of Aztec Mexico
Annual Armand Hammer Art History Lecture Watch this lecture on YouTube. This lecture by Elizabeth Hill Boone (Art History, Tulane), focuses on the painted books of Aztec Mexico, sixteenth-century documents that some people consider to be works of Art and others consider to contain Writing. The talk thus explores that place where our Western conceptions of Art and Writing come closest together. The Aztecs and their neighbors conceptualized writing and image-making as a single cultural category, one that involved a nonverbal system…
Read More about Spatial Grammars: The Union of Art and Writing in the Painted Books of Aztec MexicoWorks-in-Progress Happy Hour
Professor Raphaëlle Burns, Department of French & Francophone Studies, UCLA “The Stories We Tell: Novellas, News, and the Uses of Casuistry in Early Modern Europe” CMRS is hosting twice-monthly Works-in-Progress Happy Hours to promote intellectual exchange and collegiality while most of us are continuing to work and learn remotely. The Happy Hours are open to UCLA faculty and graduate students and consist of a short informal presentation followed by open discussion. Raphaëlle Burns teaches and writes about the literatures and…
Read More about Works-in-Progress Happy HourMarch 2021
CMRS Reading Group for Graduate Students and Faculty
CMRS hosts a monthly medieval and Renaissance reading group for graduate students and faculty. CMRS-affiliated graduate students and faculty propose and share an article or a book particularly important for their research, and then participate in an informal discussion about that text. Seeing the diverse topics and methods of our research as one of the central strengths of CMRS, the reading group is focused on providing an intellectually-stimulating but casual space to foster the sorts of conversations that took place…
Read More about CMRS Reading Group for Graduate Students and Faculty“The Enemy in Italian Renaissance Epic” – New Book Salon
Professor Andrea Moudarres, UCLA Department of Italian, discusses his recent book, The Enemy in Italian Renaissance Epic with Professor Gerry Milligan (Director of College Honors Programs, CUNY College of Staten Island). The Enemy in Italian Renaissance Epic follows the same narrative of internal strife, exploring enmity within the self, the state, and the world through the prism of prominent works of the Italian literary canon: Dante’s Commedia, Luigi Pulci’s Morgante, Ludovico Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso, and Torquato Tasso’s Gerusalemme Liberata. The…
Read More about “The Enemy in Italian Renaissance Epic” – New Book SalonA Library of Memories: Textual Preservation at the Monastery of St. Michael in Egypt
The Annual Richard & Mary Rouse History of the Book Lecture This year's speaker is Andrea M. Achi, PhD, Assistant Curator in the Department of Medieval Art and The Cloisters at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. In 1910, a group of Egyptian farmers claimed they discovered a hoard of Coptic manuscripts in a stone vat outside the village of al-Hamuli of the Fayyum Oasis in Egypt. Sold to J. Pierpont Morgan in 1911, the find amounted to…
Read More about A Library of Memories: Textual Preservation at the Monastery of St. Michael in EgyptFebruary 2021
Works-in-Progress Happy Hour
Professor Stella Nair, Art History, UCLA “The Gendered Landscapes of Inca Architecture” CMRS is hosting twice-monthly Works-in-Progress Happy Hours to promote intellectual exchange and collegiality while most of us are continuing to work and learn remotely. The Happy Hours are open to UCLA faculty and graduate students and consist of a short informal presentation followed by open discussion. Stella Nair’s scholarship focuses on the built environment of indigenous communities in the Americas and is shaped by her interests in construction…
Read More about Works-in-Progress Happy HourCalifornia Medieval History Seminar, Winter 2021
The Winter 2021 session of the California Medieval History Seminar will take place online instead of at its usual 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 discuss the research. Speakers and paper topics are announced by e-mail. Click here for additional information about the seminar. These are the papers…
Read More about California Medieval History Seminar, Winter 20211521: Making the World While Breaking the World
Watch this event on YouTube Although Columbus discovered the Americas at the end of the fifteenth century, the world only became global in the sixteenth century, when the remnants of Magellan’s bedraggled crew straggled back to Spain. Their arrival marked a blue marble moment for early Europeans, as there could no longer be serious doubt about the unity of the globe. For the crew, however, the Europe they found in 1522 differed from the one they departed in 1519. Martin…
Read More about 1521: Making the World While Breaking the WorldCMRS Reading Group for Graduate Students and Faculty
CMRS hosts a monthly medieval and Renaissance reading group for graduate students and faculty. CMRS-affiliated graduate students and faculty propose and share an article or a book particularly important for their research, and then participate in an informal discussion about that text. Seeing the diverse topics and methods of our research as one of the central strengths of CMRS, the reading group is focused on providing an intellectually-stimulating but casual space to foster the sorts of conversations that took place…
Read More about CMRS Reading Group for Graduate Students and FacultyWorks-in-Progress Happy Hour
Professor Adriana Vazquez, Classics, UCLA “The Influence of Vergil’s Epic Program on Gabriel Pereira de Castro’s Poem Ulisseia ou Lisboa Edificada (1636)” CMRS is hosting twice-monthly Works-in-Progress Happy Hours to promote intellectual exchange and collegiality while most of us are continuing to work and learn remotely. The Happy Hours are open to UCLA faculty and graduate students and consist of a short informal presentation followed by open discussion. Adriana Vazquez joined the Classics Department at UCLA in 2017. In addition…
Read More about Works-in-Progress Happy Hour“Bodies and Maps” — A New Book
Since antiquity, artists have visualized the known world through the female (sometimes male) body. In the age of exploration, America was added to figures of Europe, Asia, and Africa who would come to inhabit the borders of geographical visual imagery. In the abundance of personifications in print, painting, ceramics, tapestry, and sculpture, do portrayals vary between hierarchy and global human dignity? Are we witnessing the emergence of ethnography or of racism? Yet, as this volume shows, depictions of bodies as…
Read More about “Bodies and Maps” — A New BookJanuary 2021
Works-in-Progress Happy Hour
Professor Peter Cowe, Near Eastern Languages & Cultures, UCLA “Armenian Integration into Sequential Hemispheric Cultural Norms as Illustrated by the Alexander Romance" CMRS is hosting twice-monthly Works-in-Progress Happy Hours to promote intellectual exchange and collegiality while most of us are continuing to work and learn remotely. The Happy Hours are open to UCLA faculty and graduate students and consist of a short informal presentation followed by open discussion. S. Peter Cowe is Narekatsi Professor of Armenian Studies at UCLA and has taught…
Read More about Works-in-Progress Happy HourCMRS Co-sponsored Event | Saʿdi of Shiraz and the Aesthetics of Desire in Medieval Persian Poetry
Book launch: Domenico Ingenito's "Beholding Beauty: Saʿdi of Shiraz and the Aesthetics of Desire in Medieval Persian Poetry" (Brill, 2020) A conversation with Paul Losensky (Indiana University) and Jane Mikkelson (University of Virginia) Register to attend on Zoom. Sponsored by the Center for Near Eastern Studies. Beholding Beauty: Saʿdi of Shiraz and the Aesthetics of Desire in Medieval Persian Poetry explores the relationship between sexuality, politics, and spirituality in the lyrics of Saʿdi Shirazi (d. 1292 CE), one of the…
Read More about CMRS Co-sponsored Event | Saʿdi of Shiraz and the Aesthetics of Desire in Medieval Persian PoetryCMRS Reading Group for Graduate Students and Faculty
CMRS hosts a monthly medieval and Renaissance reading group for graduate students and faculty. CMRS-affiliated graduate students and faculty propose and share an article or a book particularly important for their research, and then participate in an informal discussion about that text. Seeing the diverse topics and methods of our research as one of the central strengths of CMRS, the reading group is focused on providing an intellectually-stimulating but casual space to foster the sorts of conversations that took place…
Read More about CMRS Reading Group for Graduate Students and FacultyWorks-in-Progress Happy Hour
Stefanie Matabang, Graduate Student, Department of Comparative Literature, UCLA "Making the Middle Ages Filipino: Colonial Philippines and the Imagined Medieval Period of Empire" CMRS is hosting twice-monthly Works-in-Progress Happy Hours to promote intellectual exchange and collegiality while most of us are continuing to work and learn remotely. The Happy Hours are open to UCLA faculty and graduate students and consist of a short informal presentation followed by open discussion. Stefanie Matabang received her B.A. at UC Berkeley with a Double…
Read More about Works-in-Progress Happy HourDecember 2020
CMRS Co-Sponsored Workshop | Steadfast Imagining: Lyric Meditation, Islamic Philosophy, and Comparative Religion in the Works of Bidel of Delhi (d. 1720)
Session 5 | Bidel in Modern Central Asia, South Asia, Afghanistan, Iran: The Geopolitics of Literary Legacy December 18 RSVP Here (Zoom registration) Bidel’s reception history in modern Afghanistan, Iran, Central Asia, and South Asia is a fascinating and complex case study in the geopolitics of literary legacy. In Iran, Bidel has been dismissed as an obscure poet whose difficult style relegates him to a peripheral corner of the Persian canon. Bidel’s legacy in South Asia is complicated by the…
Read More about CMRS Co-Sponsored Workshop | Steadfast Imagining: Lyric Meditation, Islamic Philosophy, and Comparative Religion in the Works of Bidel of Delhi (d. 1720)CMRS Co-Sponsored Workshop | Steadfast Imagining: Lyric Meditation, Islamic Philosophy, and Comparative Religion in the Works of Bidel of Delhi (d. 1720)
Session 4 | Worlds Together Shined: Bidel, Traherne, and Experiments in Comparison A Comparative Project by Jane Mikkelson and Timothy Harrison December 11 RSVP Here (Zoom registration) There are tantalizing similarities between the poetry of Bidel and his contemporaries and early modern English meditative poetry. These literary traditions are not in direct contact with each other, yet they operate in strikingly similar ways (for instance, in their assimilation of scientific ideas and engagement with philosophy and theology). Moreover, these poets are…
Read More about CMRS Co-Sponsored Workshop | Steadfast Imagining: Lyric Meditation, Islamic Philosophy, and Comparative Religion in the Works of Bidel of Delhi (d. 1720)CMRS Reading Group for Graduate Students and Faculty
CMRS hosts a monthly medieval and Renaissance reading group for graduate students and faculty. CMRS-affiliated graduate students and faculty propose and share an article or a book particularly important for their research, and then participate in an informal discussion about that text. Seeing the diverse topics and methods of our research as one of the central strengths of CMRS, the reading group is focused on providing an intellectually-stimulating but casual space to foster the sorts of conversations that took place…
Read More about CMRS Reading Group for Graduate Students and FacultyNew Book Salon
Erica Weaver, Assistant Professor of English at UCLA, and co-editor Daniel C. Remein, Associate Professor of English at the University of Massachusetts Boston, discuss their book Dating Beowulf: Studies in Intimacy. Dating Beowulf playfully redeploys the word ‘dating’, which usually heralds some of the most divisive critical impasses in the field, to provocatively phrase a set of new relationships with an Old English poem. The volume argues for the relevance of the early Middle Ages to affect studies and vice-versa,…
Read More about New Book SalonNovember 2020
CMRS Co-Sponsored Workshop | Steadfast Imagining: Lyric Meditation, Islamic Philosophy, and Comparative Religion in the Works of Bidel of Delhi (d. 1720)
Session 3 of the multidisciplinary workshop series on Steadfast Imagining: Lyric Meditation, Islamic Philosophy, and Comparative Religion in the Works of Bidel of Delhi (d. 1720) Friday, November 20, 2020 1:00 PM - 2:30 PM (Pacific Time) Register to attend here. This is Session 3 of the multidisciplinary workshop, Steadfast Imagining: Lyric Meditation, Islamic Philosophy, and Comparative Religion in the Works of Bidel of Delhi (d.1720) organized and led by Prof. Domenico Ingenito (UCLA, Near Eastern Languages and Cultures) and Dr. Jane Mikkelson (University…
Read More about CMRS Co-Sponsored Workshop | Steadfast Imagining: Lyric Meditation, Islamic Philosophy, and Comparative Religion in the Works of Bidel of Delhi (d. 1720)Works-in-Progress Happy Hour
Laura Muñoz, PhD Student, UCLA Department of Spanish & Portuguese “Valencia, All a Riot: Lope de Vega’s (Re)Creation of the Valencian Cityscape" CMRS is hosting twice-monthly Works-in-Progress Happy Hours to promote intellectual exchange and collegiality while most of us are continuing to work and learn remotely. The Happy Hours are open to UCLA faculty and graduate students and consist of a short informal presentation followed by open discussion. LAURA MUÑOZ examines the theatrical production of early modern Valencian playwright Guillén…
Read More about Works-in-Progress Happy HourCalifornia Medieval History Seminar, Fall 2020
The Fall 2020 session of the California Medieval History Seminar will take place online instead of at its usual 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 discuss the research. Speakers and paper topics are announced by e-mail. Click here for additional information about the seminar. The papers under discussion…
Read More about California Medieval History Seminar, Fall 2020CMRS Reading Group for Graduate Students and Faculty
CMRS hosts a monthly medieval and Renaissance reading group for graduate students and faculty. CMRS-affiliated graduate students and faculty propose and share an article or a book particularly important for their research, and then participate in an informal discussion about that text. Seeing the diverse topics and methods of our research as one of the central strengths of CMRS, the reading group is focused on providing an intellectually-stimulating but casual space to foster the sorts of conversations that took place…
Read More about CMRS Reading Group for Graduate Students and FacultyWriting Plague: Jewish Sources on the Great Italian Plague (1631)
Susan Einbinder, Professor of Hebrew & Judaic Studies and Comparative Literature, University of Connecticut Historians have long noted the literary abundance that characterizes the Great Italian Plague of 1631, but little attention has been paid to the Jewish sources. Yet, Hebrew narrative, poetic, homiletical, and liturgical responses to the worst plague outbreak in northern Italy since the Black Death are revealing and important. These texts document efforts – administrative, medical, spiritual, practical – to meet the challenge of a pandemic.…
Read More about Writing Plague: Jewish Sources on the Great Italian Plague (1631)Augustine’s Divjak Letters 10* and 24*: Slavery, Captivity, Status and Original Sin
Susanna Elm, Sidney H. Ehrman Professor of European History, UC Berkeley This presentation is part of the CMRS-sponsored Fall 2020 LAMAR Seminar: “The Late Antique World: Transitions and Transformations Between Classical and Medieval” (Classics 250). Invitations to register for the Zoom link will be sent by email. Image at top: Detail from a late antique mosaic of a man named Fructus being served wine by two of his slaves, Myro and Victor. From Uthina (Oudna) in Tunisia, now in…
Read More about Augustine’s Divjak Letters 10* and 24*: Slavery, Captivity, Status and Original SinOctober 2020
CMRS Conference: Varallo and the Sacri Monti of Northwestern Italy, Day 2
Watch this event on YouTube: Introduction, Day 2 Session 1, and Day 2 Session 2. This conference, organized by Geoffrey Symcox (History, UCLA), explores the history and extraordinary art of the Sacri Monti and highlights the contributions of young scholars to this new field of research. G. Symcox “Jerusalem in the Alps: The Sacro Monte of Varallo and the Sanctuaries of North-Western Italy” ISBN: 978-2-503-58057-9 The cluster of pilgrimage centers known as the Sacri Monti, or Holy Mountains, in the western…
Read More about CMRS Conference: Varallo and the Sacri Monti of Northwestern Italy, Day 2CMRS Conference: Varallo and the Sacri Monti of Northwestern Italy, Day 1
Watch this event on YouTube: Introduction, Day 2 Session 1, and Day 2 Session 2. This conference, organized by Geoffrey Symcox (History, UCLA), explores the history and extraordinary art of the Sacri Monti and highlights the contributions of young scholars to this new field of research. G. Symcox "Jerusalem in the Alps: The Sacro Monte of Varallo and the Sanctuaries of North-Western Italy" ISBN: 978-2-503-58057-9 The cluster of pilgrimage centers known as the Sacri Monti, or Holy Mountains, in the western…
Read More about CMRS Conference: Varallo and the Sacri Monti of Northwestern Italy, Day 1Works-in-Progress Happy Hour
Carla Neuss, Graduate Student, Department of Theater, UCLA "South African Medievalism" CMRS is hosting twice-monthly Works-in-Progress Happy Hours to promote intellectual exchange and collegiality while most of us are continuing to work and learn remotely. The Happy Hours are open to UCLA faculty and graduate students and consist of a short informal presentation followed by open discussion. Carla Neuss is a Ph.D. candidate in the Theatre and Performance Studies Department at UCLA. She previously earned her B.A. at UC Berkeley in…
Read More about Works-in-Progress Happy HourEarly Christian Storyworlds
C. Michael Chin, Associate Professor of Classics, UC Davis This presentation is part of the CMRS-sponsored Fall 2020 LAMAR Seminar: “The Late Antique World: Transitions and Transformations Between Classical and Medieval” (Classics 250). The session is open to non-enrolled students but it involves a practical element (recreating a late antique pilgrimage) and Professor Chin asks those who attend to not leave before the end of the full session, at least 2-2.5 hours. Invitations to register for the Zoom link will…
Read More about Early Christian StoryworldsCMRS Annual Open House 2020-21
We invite you to join CMRS Director Zrinka Stahuljak and the Center’s faculty, students, associates, and staff for the annual Open House celebrating the start of the new academic year. This is the Center’s 58th year of promoting interdisciplinary and cross-cultural studies of the years 600-1600 C.E. Drop in online this year to say hello to old colleagues and introduce yourself to new faculty, new students and those who share your scholarly interests. Find out more about the programs, fellowships,…
Read More about CMRS Annual Open House 2020-21CMRS Reading Group for Graduate Students and Faculty
CMRS hosts a monthly medieval and Renaissance reading group for graduate students and faculty. CMRS-affiliated graduate students and faculty propose and share an article or a book particularly important for their research, and then participate in an informal discussion about that text. Seeing the diverse topics and methods of our research as one of the central strengths of CMRS, the reading group is focused on providing an intellectually-stimulating but casual space to foster the sorts of conversations that took place…
Read More about CMRS Reading Group for Graduate Students and FacultyWorks-in-Progress Happy Hour
Kersti Francis, Graduate Student, Department of English, UCLA "Magic and Gender in the Medieval Romances Partenopeu de Blois (Old French) / Partenope of Blois (Middle English)" CMRS is hosting twice-monthly Works-in-Progress Happy Hours to promote intellectual exchange and collegiality while most of us are continuing to work and learn remotely. The Happy Hours are open to UCLA faculty and graduate students and consist of a short informal presentation followed by open discussion. Kersti Francis is a PhD candidate in English…
Read More about Works-in-Progress Happy HourMay 2020
POSTPONED – Archive and Theory: The Future of Anglo-American Early Modern Disability Studies
A conference sponsored by UCLA Center for 17th-and-18th Century Studies. Organized by Helen Deutsch (UCLA), Jason Farr (Marquette University), Paul Kelleher (Emory University), and Jared Richman (Colorado College). Co-sponsored by UCLA’s Dean of Humanities, Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Undergraduate Education Initiatives-Disability Studies, Department of English, Department of History, and Joyce Appleby Chair of America in the World Chair Fund. Click here to see additional conference details.
Read More about POSTPONED – Archive and Theory: The Future of Anglo-American Early Modern Disability Studies