Category Archives: Seminars & Lectures

Seminar: ‘The Cleveland Fountain (Paris, 1320 ca.) and Multisensory Art History’, by Philippe Cordez and Gerhard Lutz, University of Padua, 30 November 2022, 17:00 CET

The hydraulic and musical fountain in the Cleveland Museum of Art offers a perfect opportunity for theoretical reflection and practical experimentation in multisensory art history.

Online Lecture: ‘Heritage in Crisis 2: Decolonising Ukrainian Cultural Heritage’, ICOM UK Talks, 30 November 2022, 12:30 GMT

This talk will consider why Russian colonial narratives persist in the west and how heritage and cultural professionals can contribute towards developing a non-prejudiced narrative about Ukraine.

Lecture: ‘”So shall the king greatly desire thy beauty”: on the sculptures of knights and ladies at Santa María la Mayor de Toro (Zamora)’, by Marina Aurora Garzon Fernandez, The Courtauld Research Forum, 23 November 2022, 17:00 GMT

Traditionally interpreted as images of the fight against evil, a reading of these scenes based on Psalm 44 and the Song of Songs, biblical passages alluding to the marriage between Christ and the Church, offers a new perspective on the sculpture program of Santa María la Mayor de Toro.

Lecture: ‘A Beautiful Lie: Medieval Art Forgeries in Catalonia’, Alberto Velasco, Murray Seminar at Birkbeck, 6 December 2022 17:00 GMT

The reasons for the production and commercialization of medieval fakes in Catalonia during the first half of the twentieth century are unique and specific, and they are explained by cultural, political and social conditions that, nevertheless, find points of contact in other parts of Europe.

Lecture: ‘Dynastic Change, Family Networks and Female Genealogies in Medieval Armenia (11th-13th C.), by Zara Pogossian, University of Florence, East of Byzantium Lecture, 15 November 2022, 12:00 EST

This lecture will focus on a period of medieval Armenian history – eleventh to late thirteenth centuries – that was characterized by a gradual deterioration and break-down of its until then traditional social structure based on land-holding military families known as nakharars.

Seminar Series: The Medieval Black Sea Project, Princeton University, 17 November 2022 – 9 March 2023

This seminar series showcases new research on contact, conflict and exchange in the region of the medieval Black Sea. Our invited speakers will share their expertise on the various aspects of the region’s past, building on analyses of textual, art historical and archaeological material. A wide range of historical sources will be considered, allowing us to explore the agency not only of elite, but also of non-elite individuals and groups. 

Lecture: ‘Speculative Geometry and the Opening Page of ‘Sir Gawain and the Green Knight”, by Arthur Bahr, University of Wisconsin, 17:00-18:30 CST

Although not representationally illustrative like its facing page, the anomalous text-block of 91/95r nevertheless illustrates the perceptual challenges posed by Sir Gawain’s literary and numerical structures.

Lecture: ‘New Directions in Manuscript Studies: The Digital and Manual Future’, by Professor Elaine Treharne, 9 November 2022, 16:00-17:30 EST

Elaine Treharne is Senior Associate Vice-Provost for Undergraduate Education, Roberta Bowman Denning Professor of Humanities and Professor of English at Stanford University, where she teaches Manuscript and Archival Studies, and Early British Literatures.

Lecture: ‘From Archive to Repertoire in Late Medieval Women’s Caregiving Communities’, by Sara Ritchey, University of Wisconsin, 11 November 2022, 17:00-18:30 CST

Drawing on a range of thirteenth- and fourteenth-century French and Latin sources, including saints’ lives, charters, psalters, devotional miscellanies, drama, and poetry, this talk will survey the performance of healthcare that religious women (primarily beguines and Cistercians) provided in hospitals, leprosaria, infirmaries, and bedsides.