Lectures and Conferences

To help maintain its leading place in medieval studies, the Medieval Institute sponsors every year individual lectures, small workshops, and larger conferences. The Institute also co-sponsors many events with other departments and programs on campus. The graduate students annually invite a distinguished medievalist to visit the campus, discuss work with the students, and deliver a lecture.

January 17, 2008: Lecture by Robert G. Babcock, Yale University

January 23, 2008: Lecture by Sarah Downey, University of Tennessee, Knoxville

February 4, 2008: Lecture by Hildegund Müller, Austrian Academy of Sciences

February 7, 2008: Lecture by Riccardo Quinto, University of Padua

March 18, 2008: Medieval Hebrew Poetry Reading with Peter Cole, poet, translator, and 2007 MacArthur Fellow

April 10, 2008: Lecture by Luis Girón Negrón, Harvard University

April 26, 2008: Seminar with Cristina Maria Cervone, Villanova University and Medieval Institute Mellon Fellow

May 5, 2008: Lecture by Sharon Farmer, University of California, Santa Barbara

For other campus events of interest to medievalists, see below.

See the bottom of this page for a list of past events.

--------

Lecture: "Mythology and Biblical Exegesis in a Medieval Schoolroom"

Robert G. Babcock, Edwin J. Beinecke Curator of Medieval Manuscripts, Yale University.

Robert G. Babcock holds an M.A.(1981) and a Ph.D. (1983) in Classics from Duke University. He studied at the Institut für Mittellateinische Philologie of the Freie Universität Berlin as a fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (1984) and was elected a member of the Comité Internationale de Paléographie Latine in 1998. His research interests include Latin paleography, textual criticism and transmission of Latin authors, Medieval Latin, Greek papyrology, and the reception of the classics in American literature. His publications, largely concerned with medieval manuscripts of classical Latin literature, have appeared in several books and numerous journals, including Scriptorium (2000) and Aevum (2000).

--------

Lecture: "Twelfth-century Prior Meets Eighth-century Hermit: Alexander of Ashby's Life of St. Guthlac"

Sarah Downey, Lecturer, Department of English, University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

Sara Downey holds a Ph.D. in Medieval Studies from the University of Toronto and earned her B. A. in Classics from the University of the South. Her 2004 dissertation is entitled "Intertextuality in the Lives of St. Guthlac." Her research interests include: the classical and Late Antique tradition in Anglo-Saxon England; translation practices and theories in medieval Europe; and medieval hagiography (English and Latin).

--------

Lecture: "Preaching the Gospel: Augustine of Hippo, His Audience, and His Readers"

Hildegund Müller, Research Fellow, Austrian Academy of Sciences, CSEL.

Hildegund Müller received her Ph.D. in classical philology from Vienna University. Currently, she is involved in the preparation of an edition of Augustine's Enarrationes in Psalmos for the CSEL series as a research fellow. She has lectured both at Comenius University (Bratislava, Slovakia) and at Vienna University. Müller has published several articles on the topic of Augustine as a preacher and issues regarding Augustinian textual transmission.

--------

Lecture: "Stephen Langton's Commentary on the Sentences in the Light of His Quaestiones"

Riccardo Quinto, Associate Professor of the History of Philosophy, University of Padua.

Prof. Quinto received his Ph.D. at "S. Cuore" Catholic University of Milan. He is currently working on a Langton edition and has published on topics related to Langton, Hugh of St. Cher, and Dominican Scholasticism in journals such as Medioevo,Cahiers de l'Institut du Moyen Age grec et latin, and Studi Medievali. At the University of Padua, he is the director of the "C. Giacon" Interdepartmental Center for Research into Medieval Philosophy.

--------

Medieval Hebrew Poetry Reading by Peter Cole

Poet Peter Cole has published two volumes of his own poetry and is also an award-winning translator of medieval Hebrew and Arabic poetry. An anthology of his translations, The Dream of the Poem: Hebrew Poetry from Muslim and Christian Spain, 950-1492, came out in 2007. He won the Modern Language Association-Scaglione Translation Prize for Selected Poems of Shmuel HaNagid, and the Times Literary Supplement-Porjes Hebrew Translation Prize for Selected Poems of Solomon Ibn Gabirol. These prize-winning translations showcase two of the great Hebrew poets of the Andalusian “Golden Age,” and offer readers a lyrical illustration of the extraordinary Arab-Jewish cultural partnership that flourished in tenth- through twelfth-century Spain. In 2007, Cole received a "genius" award from the MacArthur Foundation. He lives in Jerusalem and co-edits Ibis Editions, a small press devoted to the dissemination of medieval and modern literature of the Middle East.

Tuesday, March 18, 2008
5:00 p.m.
Eck Visitors Center Auditorium
(A book signing will follow the reading)

--------

Lecture: "‘There is food in Egypt! It is floating down the river!’ Notes on Judeo-Spanish Belles-lettres and the Medieval Coplas de Yosef"

Luis Girón Negrón, Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures and of Comparative Literature, Harvard University.

Prof. Girón Negrón received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in religion and literature, in addition to his A.B. in mathematics and philosophy and an M.T.S. from Harvard Divinity School. His publications include Las Coplas de Yosef: Entre la Biblia y el Midrash en la poesía judeoespañola (with Laura Minervin) and Alfonso de la Torre's 'Visión Deleytable': Philosophical Rationalism and the Religious Imagination in 15th Century Spain. His research interests focus on Golden Age Spanish literature and medieval, Arabic, Latin, and Hebrew literatures as well as the history of religions. Currently, he is working on projects that include a study and anthology of medieval Hispano-Latin narratives on the translation of saints and the theft of relics.

--------

Mellon Seminar

2007-08 Medieval Institute Mellon Fellow Cristina Maria Cervone, Assistant Professor of English, Villanova University, will lead a seminar discussion of her manuscript, Love's Leap: Incarnational Poetics in Late Medieval England, with a panel of three scholars. Joining Prof. Cervone as respondents to her work will be:

Gary Macy, John Nobili, S.J. Professor of Theology, Santa Clara University

Alastair Minnis, Professor of English, Yale University

Andrew Galloway, Professor of English and Medieval Studies, Cornell University.

Saturday, April 26, 2008
9:30 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.
Medieval Institute Reading Room
715 Hesburgh Library
(Lunch for attendees will follow.)  

Lecture: "Mediterranean Influences on Northern French Culture: Southern Italians, Spaniards and Muslims in the Accounts of Count Robert II of Artois, 1291-1302"

Sharon Farmer, Professor of History, University of California, Santa Barbara.

Prof. Sharon Farmer received her Ph.D. from Harvard University and her research focuses on medieval women and gender, medieval towns and the poor, and relations between western Europe and the east. Currently, she has a project underway on "Saracen Paris: Oriental Luxury, Parisian Crafts, and the Making of Europe's Fashion Capital." Her publications include Surviving Poverty in Medieval Paris: Gender, Ideology and the Daily Lives of the Poor and Gender and Difference in the Middle Ages, coedited with Carol Pasternack.

Other Campus Events of Interest to Medievalists

The William and Katherine Devers Program in Dante Studies sponsors a series of lectures each term that will be of interest to scholars of medieval literature. The schedule of lectures is posted at Devers Program in Dante Studies.

The Erasmus Institute at the University of Notre Dame also coordinates a program of lectures and seminars often of interest to medievalists. For information, visit its website at Erasmus Institute.

Previous Lectures and Conferences

Fall 2007
Spring 2007
Fall 2006
Spring 2006
Fall 2005
Spring 2005
Fall 2004
Spring 2004
Fall 2003
Spring 2003
Fall 2002
Spring 2002
Fall 2001