CMRS Open House
October 11, 2005
The Center invites faculty and students with an interest in Medieval and Renaissance Studies to attend an open house to mark the beginning of the new academic year. Meet the Center’s staff and learn about the programs, awards, and fellowships available from CMRS. CMRS Director Brian P. Copenhaver will make some brief remarks at 5 pm. There will also be a used book sale featuring items of interest to scholars of the Middle Ages and Renaissance.
UCLA Sounds presents "Voxfire"
November 1, 2005
A concert of early music by the acclaimed vocal group Voxfire. Complete program to be announced.
CMRS Faculty Roundtable, "Viking Archaeology and the Stave Church at Mosfell"
November 2, 2005 Professor Jesse Byock (Germanic Languages, UCLA) will discuss his recent archaeological work in Iceland. CMRS faculty, associates, graduate students, and friends are invited to attend. Bring your lunch! The Center will provide soft drinks and coffee.
"Speaking Memory: Oral History, Oral Culture, and Italians in America"
November 3-6, 2005 CMRS is one of the co-sponsors of the 38th annual conference of the American Italian Historical Association (AIHA). The program will focus on research in the fields of oral history (“spoken memory”), local history, ethnography, oral and folk tradition, as they pertain to Italians in America. The plenary speaker will be Alessandro Portelli of the Università La Sapienza in Rome. Other speakers include Professor Geoffrey Symcox (History, UCLA) who will discuss the CMRS’s Repertorium Columbianum publication series, which encompasses the writings and personal documents of Christopher Columbus. The conference is presented under the auspices of the Consulate General of Italy in Los Angeles, in conjunction with the multimedia festival "Italian Los Angeles: Celebrating Italian Life, Local History, and the Arts in Southern California," October 23-December 4, 2005. CMRS Associate Dr. Luisa Del Giudice (Director, IOHI – Italian Oral History Institute, Los Angeles) is Conference Chair.
California Medieval History Seminar November 5, 2005
The California Medieval History Seminar meets at the Huntington Library to discuss four, pre-distributed research papers. Participants are expected to have read the papers in advance and come prepared to discuss them. The California Medieval History Seminar is supported by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, as well as the CMRS, the Huntington Library, and the Caltech Huntington Committee for the Humanities.
"Charisma and Aura: A Medievalist Raid on Some Post-Medieval Categories"
November 10, 2005
Charisma and aura have developed as historical concepts and critical categories largely through the influence of two writers, Max Weber and Walter Benjamin. Charisma analyses political leadership and aura the aesthetics of western art up to the twentieth century. In this lecture, Professor Stephen Jaeger (Comparative Literature, and Germanic Languages and Literatures, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign) broadens their definition and applies them to modes of representation in medieval art, literature, and culture. Co-sponsored by CMRS and the Department of Germanic Languages.
CMRS Faculty Roundtable, "The Orsini Collection"
November 16, 2005
Guendalina Ajello (New York University, and Special Collections, Young Research Library, UCLA) will discuss the Orsini family documents (some of which date from the fourteenth century) in Special Collections and the project underway to catalog them. (For more on the Orsini collection, see page 3 of the CMRS Annual Brochure for 2005-06.) CMRS faculty, associates, graduate students, and friends are invited to attend. Bring your lunch! The Center will provide soft drinks and coffee.
Annual Hammer Foundation Lecture, "From Magic to Science: Picturing a Way Out"
December 2, 2005 As of the year 1499, when Marsilio Ficino died, knowledge of magic, astrology, and other occult wisdom counted as evidence of great intellectual achievement. We know this from reading Ficino's obituary, for example. By 1727, when Isaac Newton died, interest in occultism of any kind counted as evidence of intellectual disgrace. We know this from reading Newton's obituary. What happened in the two cultures between Ficino's death and Newton's death? How did magic become intellectually disreputable? Pictures show us an important part of the answer. Picturing natural and unnatural objects, which in Ficino's day was a tool for the magus, became a weapon against magic by Newton's time. In the interim, Leonardo, Descartes and other prominent figures showed how pictures that once led into magic could also lead out of it. CMRS Director Brian P. Copenhaver (Udvar-Hazy Professor of Philosophy and History, UCLA) presents this year's Hammer Foundation Lecture.
Coptic Christianity
December 5, 2005
A lecture by Professor Heike Behlmer (Sydney). Co-sponsored by the Department of History and the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies.
