CMRS Distinguished Visiting Scholar Lecture The Later Middle Ages are known as a time of violent outbursts of rebellion and repression. Recent historiography, however, has shown that both violent conflict and peaceful resistance were intrinsic parts of daily life in Late Medieval towns in the Kingdom of Castile. Subversive speech and petitioning were used by...

CMRS invites graduate students in all fields of study to attend a social gathering to get acquainted with other students involved in topics pertinent to medieval and Renaissance studies. Come by and meet new colleagues and old friends! Advance registration not required. No fee. Limited seating. Image detail from Paradise (predella panel), ca. 1445, by Giovanni...

CMRS Roundtable Professor Darcy Kern (History, Southern Connecticut State University) considers translation practices in pre- and post-Tridentine Catholic Europe, particularly as they relate to the Venetian interdict crisis and the vernacular pamphlet battle between Paolo Sarpi and Cardinal Roberto Bellarmino. Close attention to debates about the meaning of words reveals that Sarpi, an anti-papalist and anti-Trent...

Environmental Humanities In 1509, Filippo Casavecchia wrote to Niccolò Machiavelli, inviting Niccolò to “stay with me (in the mountains between Florence and Lucca) for 4 days, because I am sure you will not be sorry for it, with respect to my having ordered an entire furnaceful of mortar that contains 40 moggia (660 bushels), with...

On the occasion of the 750th anniversary of the birth of Dante, the UCLA Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies and the UCLA Department of Italian present a screening of D.W. Griffith's  "Drums of Love", the 1928 cinematic retelling of the tragic love story of Paolo and Francesca as told in Canto V of Dante's...

CMRS Roundtable Professor Diane Ghirardo (University of Southern California) discusses Lucrezia Borgia and Isabella d’Este who were related by marriage but shared little else. Sisters-in-law and spouses of lords of prominent Italian states (Ferrara and Mantua), the two women’s seals incorporated the arms of their natal families and those of their husbands, but the differences in...

This lecture by Dr. Alain Touwaide, illustrates the Mediterranean pharmacopeia and shows how ancient drug making is an invaluable source for novel medicines.The search for novel medicines is on the agenda of the pharmacological world across the globe. New substances, new approaches, and new applications are expected to help fight multiple devastating medical conditions, old...

An ethos of noble violence prevailed throughout the early modern period under the rubric of chivalry, often bound up with illicit romances in aristocratic and royal castles. Some of the most celebrated cases of sexual violence, illicit loves and murder in early modern Italy and France unfolded in castles such as those of Gradara and...

An ethos of noble violence prevailed throughout the early modern period under the rubric of chivalry, often bound up with illicit romances in aristocratic and royal castles. Some of the most celebrated cases of sexual violence, illicit loves and murder in early modern Italy and France unfolded in castles such as those of Gradara and...

CMRS Roundtable What were the key stages in the imagination of personified continents? In this presentation, Maryanne Cline Horowitz (Professor of History, Occidental College & UCLA-CMRS Associate) identifies sources for three distinct stages in the development of Renaissance and Baroque personifications of Africa, Asia, Europe, and America.  In the 1570s three variants of an allegorical...

Members of the literate class in medieval China (ca. 6th through 10th centuries) were called upon to produce literary works in a wide range of contexts, from drunken poetry competitions to the civil service exam. In this talk, CMRS Distinguished Visiting Scholar Christopher Nugent (Associate Professor of Chinese, Williams College) examines a number of the...

CMRS Roundtable Alison Locke Perchuk (Art, California State University Channel Islands) considers the production of individual and communal identity as a complex process operating at the intersections of exterior and interior, of physical environment and mental structures, of bodily comportment and spiritual and intellectual practices. Through research in art and architectural history, political and social...

The book of hours is one of the most familiar of medieval manuscript genres and yet it has not played a large part in histories of medieval reading, still less in histories of medieval literature.  In this talk, Professor Jessica Brantley (Yale University) explores the importance of the book of hours for English literary history,...

Digital tools for surveying and representing important architectural heritage have recently become available at low or no cost to everyone including designers, historians, facility managers and tourists. Takehiko Nagakura, an architect from Tokyo and Associate Professor of Architecture at MIT, talks about his digital heritage projects at MIT that use computer graphics animations, photogrammetric modeling,...

CMRS Roundtable Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night is checkered with riddles. This talk by CMRS Associate Dr. Steve Sohmer (Fleming Fellow of Lincoln College, Oxford) proposes to solve them: from who is Quinapalus to the meaning of M.O.A.I. It's eye-opening fun. Advance registration not required. No fee. Limited seating. Funding for the CMRS Roundtable series is provided...

Annual Hammer Art History Lecture Art and architecture were important vehicles of communication for medieval patrons, including popes. In this lecture, Dale Kinney (Eugenia Chase Guild Professor Emeritus in the Humanities and Research Professor, Bryn Mawr College) presents a range of papal images thought to convey political messages, some of which caused international scandals in...

Environmental Humanities Medieval people preferred to bury their dead, flesh still on bones, and to let worms do the work of breaking down the corpse; they thought it a horror to expose human bodies to the appetites of larger animals. They were aware, however, that their funeral rituals were not universal. Early medieval reactions to...