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Calendar
“Thrice-Born Latinity” After a first birth before the age of the Roman Kings, the Latin language has enjoyed many rebirths: one in the Carolingian era, another in the High Middle Ages, and a third in the Renaissance. In our own time, two extraordinary scholarly enterprises have renewed the vigor of Latinity: the Catalogus Translationum et Commentariorum (CTC) and the I Tatti Renaissance Library (ITRL), the first led by Professor Virginia Brown of the Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, Toronto, the second by Professor James Hankins of Harvard University. With the generous support of the Cassamarca Foundation, the UCLA Department of Italian and CMRS present a conference to discuss and celebrate the work of Professors Brown and Hankins. The program explores the implications for humanist scholarship of the CTC, the ITRL, and the texts and authors illuminated by them. Guest speakers will include Professor Christopher Celenza (Johns Hopkins University), Professor Frank Coulson (Ohio State University), Professor Anthony D’Elia (Queens College, Kingston), Professor Charles Fantazzi (East Carolina University), Julia Gaisser (Bryn Mawr), Craig Kallendorf (Texas A&M), David Marsh (Rutgers University), Dr. Diana Robin (The Newberry Library), Professor Shane Butler (UCLA), and Professor Fabio Troncarelli (University of Tuscia, Viterbo). At the end of the conference, Professors Brown and Hankins will reflect on the presentations and discussions. A conference presented by CMRS and the UCLA Department of Italian, made possible by the generous support of the Cassamarca Foundation. Organized by Professors Brian Copenhaver, Massimo Ciavolella, and Michael Allen.
CMRS Sawyer Seminar, “Biblical Roots: Talmud, Disputation and the Torah” Speakers to include Professors Bill Schniedewind (NELC, UCLA), Howard Wettstein (Philosophy, UCR), Eliott Dorff (American Jewish University). Reasoned debate was the core of Talmudic methodology, the Rabbinic method par excellence of discerning the Bible’s real meanings. The early Rabbis thought of the written Torah recorded by Moses as less extensive than the oral Torah known to the prophets and handed down to themselves. Debate over the oral Torah and its relation to the Bible was also summarized in the written Mishna and later Talmudic texts. Disputes about these texts and the oral traditions behind them generated great heat, but it was heat in the service of light. Strikingly, the Talmud says of divergent, even contradictory, teachings that ‘these and also these others are the words of the Living God,’ a principle that guided the early Rabbis as they developed methods of analyzing God’s words while holding sacred their own disputes about the meanings of those words. Download the readings in advance at www.cmrs.ucla.edu/disputation_readings/index.html#biblical_roots. You will need to contact CMRS for the user name and password to access the files. Call 310-825-1880 or email cmrs@humnet.ucla.edu.
California Medieval History Seminar The California Medieval History Seminar meets at the Huntington Library to discuss 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.
CMRS Sawyer Seminar, “Gilbert Crispin: The Disputation of a Jew with a Christian” Speakers to include Professors Howard Wettstein (Philosophy, UCR), and Steven Kruger (CUNY). The Abbott of Westminster after 1085 was Gilbert Crispin, a follower of Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury. Before 1100, Gilbert wrote The Disputation of a Jew with a Christian About the Christian Faith, an early survivor from a series of literary versions of debates about religion between Christians and Jews – debates in which Jews were often forced to participate. Gilbert presents his text as the record of a real event or events, and he describes the Jew’s arguments as ‘consequent and logical.’ ‘He explained with equal consequence his former objections,’ Gilbert writes, ‘while our reply met his objections foot to foot.’ Gilbert adds that the disputation led to the conversion of another ‘of the Jews who were then in London, with the help of God’s mercy.’ Download the readings in advance at www.cmrs.ucla.edu/disputation_readings/index.html#gilbert_crispin. You will need to contact CMRS for the user name and password to access the files. Call 310-825-1880 or email cmrs@humnet.ucla.edu.
CMRS Roundtable, “The Sea of Stories: Framed Narratives and Medieval Mediterranean Poetics” Prof. Karla Mallette (Humanities Institute, UCR) will present her current research on framed narratives in Arabic, Latin, Spanish and Italian. Her presentation will focus on two broad themes: using contemporary scholarship on Mediterranean studies to map the narrative collections and trace their Mediterranean itineraries; and re-evaluating the “Arabic thesis” in light of the transmission of narratives between Arabic and Romance literary traditions in the Mediterranean.
CMRS Sawyer Seminar, “Ancient Church Councils: How formal were they, and was there discussion?” Guest speaker Thomas Graumann (University of Cambridge). In the ancient church, the meeting of bishops in synods or councils became an increasingly frequent occurrence. Often fundamental theological topics were on the agenda, in particular questions about the Trinity and Christology. One expects these to be the object of intense discussion. However, it is not straightforward to assess how bishops debated the issues in hand, or whether they “discussed” them at all. Of the earliest councils only indirect news and patchy documentation survives, from which evidence of discussion has to be extrapolated. Of later and better-documented councils, in particular the so-called “ecumenical” councils, extensive records are extant. Yet these appear to have little interest to reveal openly what discussions took place. They require scrupulous analysis to uncover how substantive theological debate was conducted, and which other factors influenced decisions. To understand such purported debates, it is further necessary to inquire into analogies and possible models for conciliar formats and conduct of business and to consider social conventions. Download the readings in advance at www.cmrs.ucla.edu/disputation_readings/index.html#church_councils. You will need to contact CMRS for the user name and password to access the files. Call 310-825-1880 or email cmrs@humnet.ucla.edu.
CMRS Sawyer Seminar, “Disputing Love: Abelard, Heloise and Bernard of Clairvaux” With Constant Mews (Monash University). Abelard, in 1115 the most celebrated logician of his day, fell in love with a brilliant and beautiful young student named Heloise. Their story of tragic love, starting with bad judgment, causing Abelard to be castrated, and ending in conventual solitude, was all the more dramatic because they were passionate debaters about despair, salvation and personal obligation in and out of wedlock. A current of disputation runs not only through the late letters that they exchanged after events tore them apart but also through an anonymous exchange of letters (preserved at the abbey of Clairvaux) that, it is argued, they wrote during the affair. The seminar will consider disputation about love as a consistent theme of their relationship from its earliest phases, comparing what they both had to say about love, with the reflections on the subject of Abelard’s famous adversary, Bernard of Clairvaux, whom Heloise once welcomed to the Paraclete. Download the readings in advance at www.cmrs.ucla.edu/disputation_readings/index.html#abelard. You will need to contact CMRS for the user name and password to access the files. Call 310-825-1880 or email cmrs@humnet.ucla.edu.
CMRS Roundtable: “The Song of Roland and the Leges Barbarorum” Dr. Leena Löfstedt discusses the Song of Roland. Different commentaries of the Song of Roland invoke Germanic tribal laws to explain the protagonists' behavior, but these tribal laws are neither identified nor quoted. Since several of the tribal laws (Leges Barbarorum) that could have been known by Charlemagne, and the author(s) of the Song of Roland alike, exist in modern editions, a more explicit comparison is possible. And it adds a new dimension to the Song of Roland, maybe explaining some of the minstrel's commercial success.
CMRS Co-sponsored Lecture: “Archipelagic Macbeth” CMRS and the UCLA Department of English co-sponsor a lecture by Professor John Kerrigan (University of Cambridge). Over the last few years , Dr. Kerrigan has been devolving seventeenth-century 'Eng Lit', showing how much remarkable writing was produced in Wales, Scotland, and Ireland, and how preoccupied such English authors as Milton, Marvell, and Defoe were with the often fraught interactions between ethnic, religious, and 'national' groups around the British-Irish archipelago. In the course of this research, he has found himself engaging with the claims recently made by historians that the great crises of the period stem from the instabilities of a state-system which, between 1603 and 1707, was compound, multiple, and inclined to let local quarrels spiral into civil wars. This lecture returns 'the Scottish play' (1605-6) to the context provided by James VI of Scotland's accession to the throne of England (plus Wales) in 1603, which brought with it sovereignty in Ireland. It shows how these matters of state are inextricable--this being Shakespeare--from the rhetorical make-up of the play, not least its neglected concentration on greeting. Hail and farewell.
Sixteenth History of the Book Lecture: “Christine de Pizan and the Chapelet des Vertus” The History of the Book Lecture series brings eminent scholars to UCLA to share their expertise about medieval and renaissance books and manuscripts. The sixteenth lecture in the series is presented by Mary Rouse (CMRS, UCLA) , who has co-authored five books and over sixty articles on medieval florilegia and medieval libraries, and on the production and use of manuscripts in the later Middle Ages. She is an authority on the book culture of medieval Paris and, more recently, of renaissance Paris. Her current research has focused on the history of a medieval French florilegium known as the Chapelet des Vertus “Garland of Virtue” and the use made of it by Christine de Pizan. As France’s first female essayist, Christine has become an industry in recent decades, especially with the growth of feminist studies. Her use of the Chapelet reveals a surprising and previously unrecognized aspect of Christine’s use of her sources, and demonstrates once again that the lady was, indeed, literate in Latin as well as French. The Chapelet is known in fourteen manuscripts. UCLA’s Charles E. Young Research Library has recently acquired one of only two manuscripts of this work now in North America (the other is at the Morgan Library).
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