Ahmanson Research Fellow Project Talk Nicholas Fenech’s project is an immersion in the textual dimensions of historical knowledge, taking as its case-study a single Elizabethan treatise on foreign policy, ascribed to both Lord Burghley and Francis Bacon, existing in multiple variants with extensive but unrecognized debts to Florentine political theory and historiography. The implications of this study should be felt as much by scholars of Guicciardini and Machiavelli as by historians of Burghley and humanist politics. If the project is…

You are invited to join CMRS Director Massimo Ciavolella and the Center’s staff for the annual Open House celebrating the start of the new academic year. This is the Center's 56th year of promoting interdisciplinary and cross-cultural studies related to the years 600-1600 C.E. You are invited to come and meet professors, students, colleagues, and friends who share scholarly interests. Find out more about the programs, fellowships, grants, and publications pertaining to Medieval and Renaissance Studies at UCLA. Please register…

September 21-23, 2018, brings LA ESCENA, Los Angeles’ first Hispanic classical theater festival, to the Greenway Court Theater (544 N. Fairfax). Schedule details and tickets are at http://diversifyingtheclassics.humanities.ucla.edu/la-escena/ Cutting-edge Mexican company EFE Tres will present Lope de Vega’s El príncipe inocente (The Innocent Prince), a meditation on political power and culpability reimagined as a dialogue in a prison cell, and El Merolico (The Mountebank), a reworking of Cervantes’ comic interludes as delivered by a traveling performer in small-town Mexico (in Spanish, with English subtitles).…

Please join us for a guest lecture titled "Defining Medieval Stupefaction" from Ahmanson Research Fellow, Laura Godfrey, Ph.D candidate in Medieval Studies at the University of Connecticut. Her dissertation, "Be wholly out of body: Astonishment in Late English Literature," examines the limits of embodiment during moments of somatic overwhelm that lead to insight and understanding. Her work at UCLA Library Special Collections focuses primarily on late medieval medical understanding of sensory and cognitive loss. Laura will discuss her research, which…

Set in an isolated medieval village in France, Sorceress (Le Moine et la Sorcière) is based on the writings of Etienne de Bourbon, a thirteenth-century Dominican friar who is sent by the Pope to seek out heresy. Etienne discovers that, when their children are sick, the village women go to a forest woman, Elda, to help them heal their babies. Elda is schooled in the ancient arts of healing, the use of leaves, seeds, and bark, and, if need be,…

CMRS Roundtable The critical opinion of Andrew Marvell’s “An Horatian Ode upon Cromwell’s Return from Ireland” has largely been that the lyric’s imagination of nationhood is ambiguous, unlike that in Milton’s Of Education. Of Education argues for a new style of education for national leaders that would improve on a “defect” of Sparta’s: Milton’s would be “equally good for both peace and war.” Using computational text analysis methods, Dr. Valerie Shepard (UCLA Graduate Student Resource Center and CMRS Associate) compares…

CMRS Distinguished Visiting Scholar Lecture As portrayed in a sixteenth-century bio-chronicle of the port city of Aden in Yemen, men of renowned piety performed miracles that delivered their devotees from pirates and tempests, ensured success in the marketplace, and calibrated the sometimes treacherously plural urban milieu. Can these miracles or their retelling be said to characterize a city-based identity, a distinctive maritime culture, and a networked transoceanic world in the context of the “pre-modern” Indian Ocean? The sea is a…

Medieval and Renaissance themes continue to have a profound influence on contemporary comic books and graphic novels. Join Dr. Kristina Markman (History, UCLA) for a panel discussion featuring comic creators Conor McCreery (Kill Shakespeare, IDW Publishers), GMB Chomichuk (Midnight City, Infinitum, Rust and Water, Raygun Gothic) and industry veteran Howard Chaykin (The Divided States of Hysteria, Image, Marvel, and DC Comics). Advance registration is required. Please click here to complete the short registration form. No fee. Limited seating. Self-pay parking in…

CMRS Medical Humanities Conference Humanity has always approached disease with a mixture of curiosity and dread. Medieval and early modern people were no exception, displaying a deep fascination with virulent ailments and all sorts of physical deformities. But despite this a attraction, few artists of these eras engaged in the depiction of disease. When they did, their expression was particular to the medium used and differed among artists even when using the same medium. Since such an effort was outside…

CMRS Distinguished Visiting Scholar Lecture When Margery Kempe visited York Minster in 1417 she was befriended by two of the choral vicarii, John Kendale “and another preste whech song be the bischopys grave.” The grave in question belonged to Archbishop Richard Scrope, who was executed under Henry IV and whose semi-suppressed cult remained a matter of some delicacy. Kendale and his unnamed fellow were not only counseling Kempe, but introducing her to the Minster’s history, saints, and monuments—an official part…

The Spring Session of the California Medieval History Seminar meets at the Huntington Library 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 at this seminar are: Allison Perchuk (CSU Channel Islands) “Landscapes of St…

Akira Kurosawa's brilliantly conceived re-telling of Shakespeare's King Lear magically mixes Japanese history, Shakespeare's plot and Kurosawa's own feelings about loyalty in the masterpiece, “Ran”. Set in 16th-century Japan, Lord Hidetora, announces his intention to divide his land equally among his three sons. This decision to step down unleashes a power struggle between the three heirs. (Running time: 2 hours, 42 minutes) Advance registration is requested. Please click here to complete the short registration form. No fee. Limited seating. Self-pay parking…

Second California Symposium on Catalan Studies Monday April 23,  Royce Hall 306 8:30 AM Breakfast 9:00 Welcoming Remarks: John Dagenais and Gemma Repiso 9:15 Linguistic Variation and Language in Contact | Moderator: Ji Young Kim Dues llengües, dues pronunciacions? Un projecte de corpus per a la fonologia bilingüe del castellà i català Monja Burkard (University of Vienna) El català i el castellà: comparació de les actituds lingüístiques a Palma i Barcelona Anna Tudela (Beijing Foreign Studies University) Flexibilitat sintàctica del…

Annual William & Lois Matthews Samuel Pepys Lecture Samuel Pepys began his diary of the 1660s in shorthand, a measure designed to protect its contents from prying eyes in dangerous times. This proved a wise move, for, as a rising man in Restoration London, his journal was to be full of his private schemes, good and bad. The ‘bad’ make for impressive reading; they include adulterous designs, corrupt dealings, and Machiavellian ploys designed to advance him in Charles II’s government.…

CMRS Roundtable / Medical Humanities From poisoning to epilepsy, demonic possession to venereal disease, Shakespeare’s Hamlet touches on a wide range of bodily maladies, played out in the person of the Danish prince and echoed in the voices of those around him, including the ghost, the gravedigger, and Ophelia. Building on the fascination with demonology most often identified in King Lear, CMRS Associate Dr. Sara Frances Burdorff (English, UCLA) explores some of the ways in which Hamlet, too, is a…

CMRS Symposium The Bilingual Foundation of the Arts is staging one of Calderón’s most profound tragedies in Los Angeles April 13-22. This tragedy dramatizes the psychological downfall of Henry VIII (Enrique Octavo) whose sensual passion makes him vulnerable to the shrewd manipulation of his ambitious minister Wolsey (Volseo) and the seductive and no less ambitious Anne Boleyn (Ana Bolena). Both induce the monarch to break up his marriage with Catherine of Aragon—daughter of the “Reyes Católicos” Isabelle and Ferdinand of…

This joint meeting of the Celtic Studies Association of North America (CSANA) and the 40th Annual UC Celtic Studies Conference features papers on all aspects of Celtic culture including language, literature, history, art, and archaeology, from late antiquity to the present day. The program is organized by Professor Joseph F. Nagy (Professor Emeritus, UCLA; Celtic Languages and Literatures, Harvard University), Dr. Karen E. Burgess (UCLA-CMRS), and the Celtic Colloquium student group. Funded by the Campus Programs Committee of the Program…

CMRS Distinguished Visiting Scholar Lecture   Please note the location of this lecture has changed from Royce Hall Room 306. The new location is Moore Hall Room 100. When discussing the Mediterranean economy many people focus on international shipping; but most economic activity—even today, never mind a millennium ago—is regional, and, above all, highly local. In this talk, CMRS Distinguished Visiting Scholar Chris Wickham (Emeritus Chichele Professor of Medieval History, University of Oxford; Fellow, All Soul’s College) explores the local…

CMRS Distinguished Visiting Scholar Lecture The eleventh-century church of the Dormition (Koimesis) of the Virgin at Daphni on the outskirts of Athens is one of the most famous Byzantine monuments known, appearing even in general histories of art. Yet very little has been published on its mosaics in the past 60 years, and the program of decoration has never been evaluated. In this talk, CMRS Distinguished Visiting Scholar Leslie Brubaker (Professor of Byzantine Art History, University of Birmingham) analyzes the…

Organized by Professor Calvin Normore (Philosophy, UCLA), the topic of this year’s workshop will be announced — further details when available. No fee. Limited seating. Self-pay parking in lots 2, 3, and 4. Parking information at https://main.transportation.ucla.edu/campus-parking/visitors

CMRS Roundtable In the aftermath of the assassination of Duke John of Burgundy (1419), a pivotal event in the Hundred Years’ War, the duke’s shattered skull became a famous bone of contention in disputes about the past. The controversial skull was kept by Carthusian monks and shown as a curiosity to visiting royalty until the Revolution. Modernity turned this unholy relic and macabre symbol of national disaster into a scientific specimen. It was repeatedly exhumed and studied, sketched and photographed,…

The Hebrew Aljamiado Research Group of the Department of Spanish & Portuguese and the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies are offering a workshop in learning to read 14th-16th century Judeo-Spanish texts written using the Hebrew alphabet: Hebrew “aljamiado” writing.  Attendees will also learn about the cultural context of Hebrew aljamiado writing in the Peninsula and in the Sephardic diaspora. Professor Michelle Hamilton of Spanish & Portuguese Studies at the University of Minnesota, a leading scholar of these texts, will…

CMRS Lecture In this talk, Herbert Morris (Professor of Philosophy and Professor of Law Emeritus, UCLA) analyzes Michelangelo’s treatment of Adam and Eve in three panels of the Sistine Ceiling devoted to their creation, temptation, and expulsion. Delving into topics that have been minimally attended to in the critical literature or not at all, this talk examines aspects of the paintings in which Michelangelo departs from the text of Genesis, such as the nakedness of Adam and Eve in the…

A one-day symposium follows the 1586 voyage of the ship Red Dragon. The ship’s little-known logbook, documenting its journey from England, to Sierra Leone, Rio de la Plata and Salvador da Bahia, illuminates the early interconnected histories of Europe, Africa, and Latin America. Speakers: Vanessa Wilkie, Huntington Library Eleanor Hubbard, Princeton University David Wheat, Michigan State University Kara Schultz, Vanderbilt University Gabriel Rocha, Drexel University Karen Ordahl Kupperman, New York University This conference is made possible by the generosity of…

CMRS Early Modern Conversions Conference Can objects convert? Exploring the relationship between objects and conversion can usefully complicate the usual distinctions between subjects and objects. From sacramental materials to holy wells, human hands to books, new kinds of food and drink to precious metals and forms of currency, objects can both convert and be converted, tangling any linear chain of causality. Objects are also purposes, inviting us to ask not only the how but also the why of conversions. This…

Scholars of Yiddish literature have proposed that the first extant Purim Shpiel (Purim Play) continued the tradition of early modern German and English dramatizations of the Book of Esther. Jews would have gone to see these plays performed in the ports, inns, and streets of early modern Germany, and adapted them to their own, very riotous, holiday festivities. In this talk, Dr. Chanita Goodblatt (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev) discusses three plays, within a multi-cultural and multi-temporal context: Meistersinger Hans…

Annual Armand Hammer Art History Lecture On Christmas Day 1130, Roger de Hauteville, leader of the Normans in Southern Italy, had himself crowned king of Sicily. He and his leading ministers immediately set about creating a hybrid material and visual culture for the new monarchy, by importing elements from contemporary Byzantium, the Fatimid Mediterranean, and various sources in Latin Europe. In the chapel of King Roger’s chief palace in Palermo, known as the Cappella Palatina, an exotic variety of forms,…

Dramatic Readings with Commentary In anticipation of Purim, this program offers an examination and celebration of the Hebrew dramas of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Italy, including Leone de’ Sommi’s talmudic Comedy of Betrothal, originally written as entertainment for this carnivalesque Jewish festival. The readings are mostly in English (with a sampling of Hebrew and Italian for flavor). Hosted by Ariane Helou (UCLA), Erith Jaffe-Berg (Theater, Film and Digital Production, UC Riverside), and Daniel Stein Kokin (Nazarian Center for Israel Studies, UCLA;…

This symposium with Dr. Carme Font (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, and CMRS Associate) examines the influence of prophetic writing as a constituent element of what has been termed the Long Reformation. It focuses on women’s prophecy as the dominant linguistic culture of Reformed spaces stemming from different practices of Bible reading and interpretation. The symposium will explore the continuities of medieval mysticism as it becomes prophecy in reformed communities of faith, which are as yet largely unexplored. Advance registration is…

CMRS Roundtable Unfortunately, this event has been cancelled. We hope to reschedule it at another time. Everyone knows there’s “something different” about the plays Shakespeare wrote after Henry V. In this talk Dr. Steve Sohmer (Fleming Fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford) suggests that Julius Caesar (1599) is the fulcrum on which the playwright’s career turned, and that concurrent with the writing of this Roman play he entered into a decade-long period of profound religious doubt culminating in The Tempest (1611).…

The Winter Session of the California Medieval History Seminar meets at the Huntington Library 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 at this seminar: Brenda Deen Schildgen (UC Davis) -…

CMRS Co-sponsored Conference The Annual Colloquia in Armenian Studies are a forum for graduate and undergraduate students from various disciplines whose research bears on Armenian Studies to present scholarly papers in the humanities and social sciences, within disciplines as wide-ranging as Anthropology, Archaeology, Art history, Comparative Literature, Gender Studies, History, and Political Science. The complete schedules are posted on the Near Eastern Languages and Cultures website.  

Twenty-Seventh Richard and Mary Rouse History of the Book Lecture The 1584 imperial copy of historian Mustafa Âli’s account of the Ottoman-Safavid wars, the Nusretname, is one of the most sumptuous manuscripts in the Topkapi Palace Library in Istanbul. In this History of the Book Lecture, Emine Fetvaci (Associate Professor of Islamic Art and Chair of the Department of the History of Art and Architecture, Boston University) compares the first illustrated copy prepared for the author in Aleppo with the…

Medical Humanities / CMRS Distinguished Visiting Scholar Lecture The inquisitiveness of the human intellect has provoked a desire to see inside the body of man and animals since early recorded history. However, the perceived utility of anatomical knowledge has waxed and waned in both the scientific and artistic communities over the centuries. Although it may be assumed that a comprehensive knowledge of the body is a sine qua non for medical professionals, the teaching of anatomy in medical schools has…

CMRS Ahmanson Conference Although not as well-known as other prominent families such as the Medici, Visconti, or Borgia, the Malatesta of Rimini, especially during the leadership of Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta (1417-1468), occupy a central position in the history of the Italian Renaissance. Gifted with great military skill and a profound sensibility for the arts, the “wolf of Rimini” became the epitome of the “man” of the Renaissance. The great Swiss historian Jakob Burckhardt, in his influential The Civilization of the…

CMRS Roundtable Completed in 1326, Peter of Dusburg’s Chronicon terrae Prussiae is the earliest known history of the Teutonic Order, its military victories against the Baltic pagans, and its wars against the Lithuanians. As many scholars have demonstrated, Dusburg’s chronicle was intended to provide legal and theological justification for the continuation of the Order’s wars at a time when its military practices had come under widespread criticism. In this Roundtable talk, Dr. Kristina Markman (History, UCLA) shows that Dusburg’s chronicle…

Set in the wake of the Spanish conquest of Mexico, Salvador Carrasco’s stunning film La Otra Conquista explores the personal, social, and spiritual dimensions of conquest through the eyes of the conquered. Tracing the experiences of a young Aztec scribe facing the destruction and replacement of his faith and a well-intentioned friar charged with his spiritual reeducation, this film examines what it means to convert. Q & A with lead actor Damián Delgado (Topiltzin/Tomás) will follow the film. Advance registration…

Personifications of the continents of Europe, Africa, Asia, and America abounded in Renaissance and Early Modern Europe. The continents, depicted as female (and sometimes male) figures, appeared in political processions, court performances, ceiling and wall frescos, maps, atlases, frontispieces, poems, travelogues, costume books, prints, paintings, textiles, ceramics, sculptures, wood pulpits, and sculptured tympanums. While the rise in the popularity of these images in the early modern period may well have been related to encounters in the Americas, which increased the…

In the second half of the fifteenth century, Venetian, Greek, Albanian, Dalmatian, and Jewish merchants settled in the Southern Italian region of Puglia.  Here they played a major role in the organization of maritime networks and operating commerce along both the Adriatic and Eastern Mediterranean routes. In spite of the unstable political situation in the Aragonese Kingdom of Naples, the favorable economic conditions and the political protection of Venice triggered a flourishing of cultural activity on the Italian Adriatic coast,…

CMRS Distinguished Visiting Scholar Lecture Medieval treasuries provide a material witness to the interests and aspirations of the individuals and institutions that created them. For the central Middle Ages, there is extensive written evidence of the multiple uses made of treasuries and their contents by royal women and men. Treasuries could function as a source of gifts for allies, which bound them with obligations; prestigious possessions of one’s own for ostentation before an elite audience; or financial reserves that could…

Sound—whether thunder or psalmody—plays a role in the formation and perception of the sacred. Religions acknowledge the importance of sound, manifested in the voice of God, the call to prayer, collective chant, and other profound ways. Sound unifies communities in sacred worship and affirms sacred hierarchies. It is captured in images and contained in built environments. Sound—human, angelic, primordial, heavenly— is critical to spiritual transformation. The connection of sound and the sacred is born in the first cry of a…

Claude L. Hulet, 96, of La Cañada, California passed away peacefully on August 22, 2017. He was born in 1920 in rural, Michigan. He worked hard growing up on a farm during the depression. At the same time he was able to maintain his studies and was eventually accepted to the University of Michigan. He majored in Spanish and French and also graduated from the English language institute. After completing his BA degree, the Cultural Division of the Department of…

CMRS Roundtable The old Carolingian and medieval route through the Savoie French Alps connected Grenoble to Turin. The route followed what had been the Roman Road and before that a Celtic pathway that is often suggested as Hannibal’s route into Italy. Along the ancient pathway over the Col du Clapier-Savine Coche Pass, a ruined stone refuge guards the way at an altitude of 2200 meters (7000 ft.), above which weather could become a limiting factor any day of the year.…

The Fall Session of the California Medieval History Seminar meets at the Huntington Library 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. These are the papers under discussion at this seminar: Geoffrey Koziol (UC Berkley) - “The Devil in the…

In the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, Spanish forces swept into North Africa and conquered a series of coastal towns from Morocco to Libya. Historians have seen this as a kind of mirror image of Muslim conquests in the Iberian Peninsula, and the subsequent occupation seemed to take place in the familiar context of Christian-Muslim relations in the western Mediterranean. As such, Spaniards are presumed to almost have a pre-knowledge of a land that was an overnight sail from…

CMRS screens the 1922 Scandinavian silent film documentary classic Häxan (a version of which is known in English as Witchcraft Through the Ages), directed by Benjamin Christensen with live piano accompaniment by Cliff Retallick. Introductory remarks by Professor Arne Lunde (Scandinavian, UCLA). The CMRS Film Series is made possible by the Armand Hammer Endowment for the UCLA Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies.

CMRS Roundtable Even in this era of increasing skepticism about Petrarch’s break with the medieval past, his Latin epic, the Africa, is still seen as a major monument ushering in the Renaissance through its classicizing form and themes. Walter of Châtillon’s Alexandreis, a Latin epic about Alexander of Macedon written almost two centuries earlier, can lay claim to most of the ‘new’ classicisms detected in Petrarch’s Africa. In this Roundtable, Justin Haynes (Department of Classics, UC Davis) exposes the great lengths Petrarch went to in order to bury the…

The UCLA Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies Emerging Scholar conference directly engages the CMRS mission to support Graduate Student research. This one-day conference features UCLA graduate students from a variety of departments including Art History, Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, History, French, and English presenting recent research from topics that relate to CMRS’s sphere of interest defined broadly as the period from Late Antiquity to the mid-seventeenth century. Organized by Sharon Gerstel, UCLA Professor of Art History and CMRS…

CMRS Distinguished Visiting Scholar Lecture Over the course of the late-thirteenth and fourteenth centuries — as they subdued, expelled, and enslaved Muslim populations — the kings of the Crown of Aragon recruited thousands of North African cavalry soldiers, whom they called jenets, to serve in their armies and in their courts as body guards, members of their entourage, and even, on occasion, as their entertainment. Drawing on Latin, Romance, and Arabic archival sources from Spain and North Africa, CMRS Distinguished Visiting Scholar Hussein…

In a famous passage of Survival in Auschwitz, the memoir that emerged from his harrowing experience in the concentration camp, Primo Levi strives to recall from his memory Canto 26 of Dante’s Inferno – a canto that narrates the mad flight and tragic fall of the Greek hero Ulysses. Levi’s account of Ulysses’ speech to his companions in Inferno 26 turns into the prism through which the reader of Survival journeys across nearly three millennia of European history, from the…

CMRS Roundtable Almost without exception, the established English-language scholarly and popular narratives of the history of Islamic Spain present the period of the Umayyad Caliphate of Córdoba and the era of the taifa kings that followed it as a “Golden Age” of tolerance, ethnoreligious diversity, and cultural dynamism.  In this view, the incursion first of the Almoravids, and then of the Almohads brought this “Golden Age” to an abrupt end. These two regimes, whose foreign, Berber character is inevitably emphasized,…

UCLA Department of French & Francophone Studies 22nd Annual Graduate Student Conference "Que sais-je?: Rethinking Learning and Knowledge" Keynote Speaker: Leon Sachs, University of Kentucky For further information, write Allison Kershner in the Department of French and Francophone Studies. Co-sponsored by UCLA-CMRS.

Founded in 305 as a fortified villa of a retired emperor, Split developed into a medieval town, keeping traces from all periods and incorporating them into one harmonic whole. In 1979 the historic core of Split was declared a World Heritage Site on account of its well preserved architecture from all periods, and also because it is still a living organism with all urban functions. The rapid growth of the modern city, the pressure of commercialization, and unfavorable changes in…

Wind down first week with an evening of food, drink, and socializing with your fellow medieval and Renaissance scholars. Catch up with old friends and make new ones. This event is exclusively for UCLA graduate students--all departments are welcome! No registration necessary.

Please join CMRS Director Professor Massimo Ciavolella and the staff of the Center for our annual Open House celebrating the start of a new academic year. This year marks CMRS’s 54th year of promoting interdisciplinary and cross-cultural studies of the period from Late Antiquity to the mid-seventeenth century. Come meet other faculty members, students, colleagues, and friends who share these interests and find out more about CMRS’s programs, fellowships, grants, and publications. We look forward to seeing you at our Open House…

CMRS Conference The threshold of the home constitutes a literal boundary between public and private, between the domestic and the political. It is also a border that, by its very nature, invites transgression. It is a boundary that exists to be crossed. This conference, organized by Dr. Sara Burdorff (UCLA, English) and the student group Colloquium for Oral and Popular Tradition Studies, takes the literal liminality of the domestic threshold as its inspiration, exploring the comparable permeability of more abstract thresholds…

Marxiano Melotti (Università degli Studi Niccolò Cusano & Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca) speaks on Renaissance imagery as used in advertising. Co-sponsored by the UCLA Department of Italian. Advance registration not required. No fee. Limited seating. Funding is provided by the Armand Hammer Endowment for the UCLA Center for Medieval & Renaissance Studies and the Franklin D. Murphy Chair in Italian Renaissance Studies.

She heard a mission from God. They called it heresy. Join CMRS for a special screening of the 1928 silent movie masterpiece “The Passion of Joan of Arc” (Director: Carl Theodor Dreyer) with live musical accompaniment by renowned silent film pianist Cliff Retallick. Famous for its cinematography and early use of the close-up as well as Jeanne Falconetti’s iconic portrayal of the 15th-century saint, this film recounts Joan’s final days as she is interrogated and tortured by the French clerical…

CMRS Roundtable The illustrations in Andreas Vesalius’s De humani corporis fabrica libri septem, first published in Basel in 1543, were revolutionary in their number, their quality, and in their integration with the text. In this talk, CMRS Associate Monique Kornell (Independent Scholar) looks at Vesalius’s concerns for the legibility of the identifying characters in the Fabrica illustrations and those for the Epitome of the same year and considers changes he made to the woodblocks for the corrected edition of the Fabrica of 1555. Advance registration not required. No…

The spring session of California Medieval History Seminar meets at the Huntington Library to discuss four pre-distributed research papers. Participants are expected to read the papers in advance and come prepared to discuss them. Speakers and paper topics are announced by e-mail. To be added to the announcement list contact us. Advance registration is required — write to cmrs@humnet.ucla.edu to register. These are the papers under discussion at this seminar: Norman Underwood (UC Berkeley) – "Let's Be Professional: Clerical Discipline and…

CMRS Distinguished Visiting Scholar Lecture How do human beings think about, talk about and prepare for contingency? How do we think about futurity – events to come, good or ill? In this talk, CMRS Distinguished Visiting Scholar, Karla Mallette (Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, University of Michigan) looks to the Muslim-Christian borderlands of the medieval Mediterranean in search of the emergence of the modern concept of risk. Co-sponsored by the UCLA Department of Italian. Advance registration not required. No…

The early modern period (c. 1450-1750) witnessed a massive dislocation of people and artifacts as a result of migration, religious conflicts, expanding trade routes, missionary activities, slavery, and colonization. The confrontation between materiality and mobility that ensued gave rise to new, often unexpected, forms of creativity. Focusing on art — on making and engaging with it, on performance and self-representation – this conference foregrounds the critical creative and imaginative processes involved in making worlds. Organized by Bronwen Wilson (Department of…

CMRS Roundtable How did noble women represent themselves through the objects they acquired, wore, and used to outfit their living quarters? In this roundtable, Professor Diane Ghirardo (Architecture, USC) addresses this question by examining Lucrezia Borgia's jewelry, library, art and religious objects, and the decoration of her quarters in the Estense Castle and Palazzo di Corte in Ferrara. In addition she compares Lucrezia Borgia's accoutrements with what is known of Isabella d'Este's artifacts and residences. Advance registration not required. No…

CMRS Conference The tropes are as well-known as they are myriad. Deals with the devil. Hell running short of guests, or being robbed of its prey. Heaven dispatching angels to save individuals from their own folly. Ghosts and goblins shaking mortals from their mundane complacency. Gods and goddesses from various pantheons trying on human guise. Witches, genies, and sundry monsters rattling their cages, to the consternation of those in their presence. In the course of each scenario, accidents happen, mistakes…

“La Fée” is a film released in 2011 written and directed by Dominique Abel. Arriving at a small hotel, a mysterious woman named Fiona informs night shift worker Dom that she is a fairy and will grant him three wishes. After she grants his first two wishes--and he falls in love with her--she disappears, and Dom must find her. Is she a real fairy--or something else? Join CMRS for a screening of the Belgian film “La Fée” as the kick-off…

CMRS Lecture We are so used to the idea of the royal mistress as a constituent element of the French king’s grandeur that we tend not to think about how strange it is that in Ancien Régime France nine women who were not part of the royal family exercised significant political influence, their position imagined as part of a “tradition” and its occupants perceived as a coherent group. Although kings throughout medieval and early modern Europe had extra-conjugal sexual partners,…

Annual Will & Lois Matthews Samuel Pepys Lecture Professor Efraín Kristal (Spanish and Portuguese, UCLA) traces the emergence of Early Modern Spanish epic poetry to allegorical poetry from Burgundy, to Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, and to translations of these works from French and Italian into Spanish.  He gives pride of place to Jeronimo de Urrea's La Carolea, an epic poem about military campaigns in the time of Charles V; and to Alonso de Ercilla y Zúñiga's La Araucana: the highpoint of…

A Conference Organized by the UCLA Mellon Program in Post-Classical Latin The starting point for this conference is the statement “they saw it with their own eyes”: this phrase appears frequently on Fra Mauro’s fifteenth-century map of the world, a landmark in cartography because of Mauro’s decision to use the most recent eyewitness testimony rather than exclusively patristic and ancient sources. In his inscriptions on the map which describe in vivid detail his reasoning for certain depictions, Mauro often repeats…

CMRS Roundtable Steve Sohmer (Fleming Fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford) considers why Her Majesty's Government has yet to reveal the inspiration for Shakespeare's Jessica - and the identity of the bard's Jewish girlfriend. Advance registration not required. No fee. Limited seating. Funding for the CMRS Roundtable series is provided by the Armand Endowment for the UCLA Center for Medieval & Renaissance Studies.

King Richard III was one of the few English kings for whom the precise location of his grave had been lost. In 2012, during an excavation, his putative remains were found underneath a carpark in Leicester. Dr Turi King led the genetic analysis which led to the identification of the remains as those of King Richard III. Turi King, PhD (Reader in Genetics and Archaeology, University of Leicester) will discuss the case from the very beginning covering the archaeology, osteology,…

Distinguished Visiting Scholar Lecture Is it possible to derive historical meaning from the grubby fingerprints and torn leaves that scholars find inside medieval books? Can surviving medieval manuscripts be matched to contemporary accounts of the mistreatment of books – those of Geoffrey Chaucer, whose Wife of Bath famously tears leaves from her husband’s book; or those of the fourteenth-century bibliophile Richard de Bury, whose medieval reader’s “nails are stuffed with fetid filth as black as jet” and whose “nose, running…

CMRS Lecture CANCELED To Be Rescheduled Scholars of Yiddish literature have proposed that the first extant Purim-Shpil (Purim Play) continued the tradition of early modern English and German dramatizations of the Book of Esther. In this talk, Professor Chanita Goodblatt (Foreign Literatures & Linguistics, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev) will focus on the carnivalesque aspect of these plays, involving issues of misrule, as well as the social and political consequences of what Joy Wiltenburg terms “Disorderly Women and Female Power.”…

The importation of French courtly material in thirteenth-century Norway and Iceland completes a cycle  of cultural transmission and expansion begun almost four centuries earlier with the Viking expansion  outward from the Northern peripheries of the known world to the neighboring insular regions of the  British Isles, to Northern France and finally to the medieval center of the world, Jerusalem. This talk by Sif Ríkharðsdóttir (University of Iceland) addresses the way in which such cross-cultural literary exchange partakes in the formation…

CMRS Roundtable Throughout the Renaissance, the interest in insects lagged behind the study of zoology and natural history. Yet the honeybee represents an exception because of its symbolic dimension in the Bible as well as in the Greek and Roman literary heritage. In this talk, Professor Cynthia Skenazi (French and Italian, UC Santa Barbara, and CMRS Associate) shows how Pierre de Ronsard’s poetry offers a way to explore how references to bees brought together politics, religion, gender, and poetry in…

Annual Armand Hammer Art History Lecture New digital tools are transforming the ways in which we do research and teach. Caroline Bruzelius (Anne Murnick Cogan Professor of Art and Art History) shares how at Duke University, the Wired! group has been experimenting with integrating technologies into traditional courses. They have also created a lab running six or seven concurrent research projects with teams of graduate and undergraduate students working side by side. The projects range from a GIS database that…

A distinctive feature of the new religious orders of the thirteenth century (Franciscans and Dominicans among others) was their adoption of apostolic poverty. Friars focused their action on charity and outdoor preaching to convert the urban poor from heretical practices. In this talk, Caroline Bruzelius (Anne Murnick Cogan Professor of Art and Art History, Duke University) describes how the friars began to create large churches and preaching piazzas that changed the character of medieval cities in Italy, and asks how…

Organized by Professor Calvin Normore (Philosophy, UCLA), the topic of this year’s workshop is the “Deadly Sins.” Saturday, February 25 10 AM - Peter King (Toronto) - "Moral Fatigue" 11:30 AM - Janelle Aijian (Biola) - "Wishing and Hoping: Diverging sources of understanding acedia" 1 PM - Lunch 2:30 PM - Bonnie Kent (U.C. Irvine) - Anger, Justice, and the Guise of Virtue 4 PM - Chantelle Saville (Auckland) - "Luxuria: Robert Holcot on Deadly Sin" Sunday, February 26 10:30…

CMRS Distinguished Visiting Scholar Lecture Taking up a field of research familiar to many medievalists but largely unknown from an Armenian  perspective, CMRS Distinguished Visiting Scholar Dr. Tim Greenwood (Senior Lecturer in Medieval History, University of St. Andrews)  explores the character and development of legal practice and performance across medieval Armenia from Late Antiquity down to 1100 CE. Dr. Greenwood presents and assesses a small selection of legal documents drawn from two collections of material: firstly, a group of more…

CMRS Distinguished Visiting Scholar Breton – the Celtic language spoken in Brittany in the northwest of France – has been in close contact  with Romance (developing into French) ever since the Celtic migration from southern England and Cornwall. This contact has led to massive influence on Breton on all linguistic levels (especially phonology and lexicon). This talk by CMRS Distinguished Visiting Scholar Anders Richardt Jørgensen (English, Uppsala University) will highlight how we often find that to this day, due to…

The winter session of California Medieval History Seminar meets at the Huntington Library to discuss four pre-distributed research papers. Participants are expected to read the papers in advance and come prepared to discuss them. Speakers and paper topics are announced by e-mail. To be added to the announcement list contact us. Advance registration is required — write to cmrs@humnet.ucla.edu to register. These are the papers under discussion at this seminar: Margaret Trenchard-Smith (Independent Scholar) - “Unfit to Nurse: Ancient and Medieval…

CMRS Roundtable Professor Stefania Tutino (History, UCLA) uses the fascinating and dramatic story of the seventeenth-century Neapolitan Jewish nobleman Duarte Vaaz, Count of Mola, to discuss how the Roman Inquisition dealt with the economic implications of converting Jews. By investigating the complex relationship between theology, economy, and politics, this talk explores the important role that moral theology assumed in adapting traditional Catholic doctrine to both the apostolic needs of conversion and the demands of the growing money-market economy. Advance registration…

Author and translator Raymond Scheindlin will present his new book, Vulture in a Cage, and the eleventh-century poet at its center, Solomon Ibn Gabirol, one of the most celebrated poets and philosophers of the medieval Judeo-Arabic Golden Age. The author of delicate and intimate devotional poetry that holds an honored place in the liturgies of many Jewish communities, Ibn Gabirol also wrote personal poetry, in which he speaks of his intellectual ambitions and his frustration at having to live among…

The medieval sources produced in Rome and about Rome collectively exhibit a singular characteristic  which scholars have not yet adequately identified or addressed as a uniquely Roman feature. In contrast with most other cities and institutions, Rome and its church did not develop the diachronic relationship with their memory and territory that would have resulted in the writing of chronicles and annals. Instead, Roman historical writing adopted a synchronic approach that mirrored the conceptual structure expressed in rituals, catalogues, and…

CMRS Roundtable Manuscript studies scholars are well versed in the rich illuminations and miniatures in late-medieval English manuscripts, but scholars have spent less time considering the culture of decorated manuscripts in the early modern period. This talk by Vanessa Wilkie (William A. Moffett Curator of Medieval and British Manuscripts, The Huntington Library, and CMRS Associate) will explore the culture of commissioning that created these highly illustrated and personal manuscripts in late-Tudor and early-Stuart England, the role the College of Arms…

CMRS Symposium Umberto Eco (January 5, 1932 - February 19, 2016) is still best known today for his novel Il nome della rosa (The Name of the Rose). The novel was published in 1980 and became an international sensation, selling over 10 million copies worldwide. In reality, Eco was a Professor at the University of Bologna and a scholar of Thomas Aquinas and medieval aesthetics, who also wrote fiction. His concern for medieval philosophy, however, was not strictly academic but…

A murder mystery at a Benedictine abbey requires the sherlockian insight of Brother William of Baskerville (Sean Connery) and his young apprentice, Adso of Melk (Christian Slater). Confronted by the suspicious deaths of several friars amid the simmering tensions of monastic rivalries, the detectives come face to face with the Inquisition during their investigation. Join CMRS for a screening of the 1986 film adaptation of Umberto Eco’s playfully intellectual mystery novel, The Name of the Rose. Running time 130 minutes.…

CMRS Ahmanson Conference Treatises discussing the origin, nature, and effects of love are prevalent throughout the European Renaissance. The Neo-Platonic tradition of love treatises has been studied for its philosophical and literary implications and for its influence on sixteenth-century culture; these studies have illuminated how the "ladder of love" model permeates poetry, prose narratives, and religious and moral treatises. Less attention has been paid to medical treatises dealing with the somatogenesis of love and its effects, or chapters in books…

CMRS Roundtable Marta Albalá Pelegrín (Assistant Professor, Medieval and Early Modern Iberian literature and drama, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona) explores the vital role of Spanish patronage in the Roman curia, with a keen eye on the importance that theater came to have for diplomatic enterprises. Spain, second only after Italy in number of prelates, possessed a wealth of curial members who soon understood the importance of artistic patronage in carving a lasting image for Spanish rulers. Building upon recent…

Richard and Mary Rouse History of the Book Lecture Dr. Erik Kwakkel with students. While medieval manuscripts in Special Collection libraries were generally produced and preserved for posterity, not everything written down in the Middle Ages was intended to be kept forever: some information was disposable. Introducing a range of transitory objects, Dr. Erik Kwakkel (Leiden University) explores two related queries: What purpose did they serve; and, in what way do their material features reflect their short lifespan? This lecture…

CMRS Distinguished Visiting Scholar Lecture Sir Kenelm Digby (1603-65) lived a dazzlingly varied life: bouncing between the courts of London, Paris and Rome, befriending everyone from Ben Jonson and René Descartes to Oliver Cromwell, and producing original works of theology, philosophy, and experimental science. Despite these achievements he has faded from most accounts of the seventeenth century, remembered only for scandals like his supposed poisoning of his wife, Venetia, and his more outlandish claims, such as his ability to cure…

CMRS Roundtable   Professor Bronwen Wilson (Art History, UCLA) Ancient debates about similarities and differences between animals and humans were rekindled during the sixteenth century in Italy. In visual imagery, treatises, dialogues, and orations, artists, natural historians, physiognomists, poets, and polymaths examined the physical characteristics of animals, how they communicated, and the moral, social, and political lessons they yielded for civil life. Because of their predictable behavior, animals were also recommended as a means to discern the increasingly fraught disjunction…

CMRS Symposium The Renaissance was a period defined by visions of the future. Renaissance humanists including Petrarch, Dante, Leonardo Bruni, and Vasari expressed a concern for the future, fame, and posterity. At the same time, European explorers, merchants, soldiers, and missionaries traversed the globe fueled by visions of the future as well as imperial ambition. Renaissance discoveries, inventions, and developments generated a sense of excitement and wonder but also concern for the future among Europeans. At times, enthusiasm and optimism…

CMRS Roundtable Drawing on material from documents kept by the Inquisition, as well as Rabbinical and other Jewish sources relating to the 16th and 17th centuries, UCLA Research Professor of Germanic Languages, Marianna Birnbaum, identifies and discusses the lives and activities of five distinct groups as aspects of the Sephardic Jewish identity. Advance registration not required. No fee. Limited seating. Funding for the CMRS Roundtable series is provided by the Armand Hammer Endowment for the UCLA Center for Medieval &…