“The Poetic Theology of Michael Allen”
Friday, November 16, 2012
The Neoplatonists invented a philosophical technique to explicate Homer in a morally comforting way, calling it ‘poetic theology.’ With very different motives, Michael J. B. Allen has made himself the modern master of this method, applying it ingeniously and abundantly to the immense corpus of Latin philosophy produced by Marsilio Ficino in the Renaissance. Professor Allen’s studies of Ficino’s Phaedruscommentaries, for example, do for our time what Porphyry did in his Cave of the Nymphs around 260 CE. On the occasion of his retirement, this symposium celebrates Professor Allen, his work and his special gift of reading philosophy like a poet and poetry like a philosopher. Organized by Professor Brian Copenhaver (Philosophy, UCLA).
CMRS Ahmanson Conference
“Cross-Cultural Encounters in the Medieval and Early Modern Mediterranean”
Thursday, January 31 – Friday, February 1, 2013
Throughout the medieval and early modern periods, contact zones of trade, translation, coexistence, and intellectual exchange flourished episodically in Muslim occupied Spain, the kingdoms of al-Andalus, Sicily, the Levant, Byzantium, southeastern Europe, and Arabic Persia. They provide opportunity for the study of interlingual communication, economic and cultural trade, political, military and philosophical conflict and conquest, and cultural and religious negotiation. The facility with which ideas and technologies traversed the Mediterranean is testament to the commonalities underlying the apparently dramatic contrasts between linguistic, ethnic, and religious groups. This conference, organized by Professors Chris Chism (English, UCLA), Sharon Gerstel (Art History, UCLA), Teofilo Ruiz (History, UCLA), and Zrinka Stahuljak (French & Francophone Studies, UCLA), brings together an international array of authorities in the field of Mediterranean Studies to delineate multicultural modelsin the Mediterranean and its surrounding transcontinental circuits, to see how they negotiate difference over time and across various cultural and political divides.
CMRS/Getty Symposium
“Medievalism’s Manuscripts: The History of Medieval Manuscripts off the Shelf”
Friday, April 12, and Saturday, April 13, 2013
The history of medieval manuscripts is not yet complete. Manuscripts continue to survive disasters both natural and human-made, change hands and locations. Their stories begin, but very emphatically do not end, on the shelf. Join medieval scholars from across North America and England to consider how torn, burnt, defaced, erased, stolen, borrowed, and lost medieval manuscripts shape our ideas about the medieval past.
The post-medieval fates of medieval codices attest to a near-infinite variety of uses and abuses. After they were first created, medieval manuscripts were plundered for valuable illuminations, bought and sold by collectors of libraries small and large, and read and edited by scholars seeking to make sense, historically and artistically, of the Middle Ages. The symposium will explore a range of topics, from the practice of cutting and collecting images, to the 18th and 19th century re-inventions of the medieval past, to medievalisms and the place of manuscripts in modern theoretical constructs such as the politics of the body and colonial studies.
“Medievalism’s Manuscripts: The History of Medieval Manuscripts off the Shelf” will coincide with the installation at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles of “Untold Stories: Collecting and Transforming Medieval Manuscripts.” Primarily drawn from the Getty Museum's permanent collection and including several outside loans, the exhibition reveals the ways in which manuscripts have been refashioned both conceptually and physically and explores the long and eventful history of these books before their entry into museum and private collections.
The UCLA Young Research Library is also pleased to present an accompanying exhibition in the Welcome Gallery, “Off the Shelf: Medieval Manuscripts and the Aesthetics of the Past.” Support for this conference has been provided by the J. Paul Getty
Museum and the UCLA Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies.
CMRS Conference
“From Earthly Pleasures to Princely Glories in the Medieval and Renaissance Worlds”
Friday, May 17 and Saturday, May 18, 2013
Established in 1963, the UCLA Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies celebrates its fiftieth anniversary in 2013. This year is also the anniversary of Machiavelli’s The Prince; that influential work was written 500 years ago in 1513. This conference honors both of these milestones.
Using The Prince and the extraordinary luxuries of the Italian Renaissance court as a point of departure, this conference reflects upon the universal experience of the aesthetics of material culture and everyday life. What constitutes luxury and endows objects and activities with the qualities of beauty and value? What is pleasing to the senses and how is art and artistic expression experienced and appreciated by people of all segments of society throughout Europe and beyond during the Middle Ages and Renaissance? In keeping with the celebratory spirit of the occasion, this conference is organized around broad themes relevant to revelry, merriment, and delight.
This conference is organized by the Fondazione per l’Istituto Italiano di Scienze Umane, the Australian Institute of Art History of the University of Melbourne, and the UCLA Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. It is the second of a series of scientific and cultural events devoted to the Italian Renaissance in the quincentenary of Machiavelli’s The Prince.
“The Monstrous and Marvelous in Myth”
Saturday, June 1, 2013
A symposium in conjunction with the CMRS Seminar organized by Professor Joseph Nagy (English, UCLA). Sponsored by the UCLA Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies; the UCLA GE 30 Cluster Course, “Neverending Stories: Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Myth”; and the Department of English “Capstone” Seminar Program.
UCLA Medieval & Early Modern Studies Assn. Graduate Student Conference
“Pedagogical Approaches to Medieval and Early Modern Studies”
Friday, June 7, 2013
The last two decades have seen radical revisions to curricula at universities and colleges around the world. But have curricular changes been accompanied by pedagogical developments? When it comes to teaching, graduate students often learn by doing. By virtue of their experiments and their proximity to the undergraduate curriculum, they are among the most innovative educators on their campuses. The Medieval and Early Modern Students Association at UCLA invites graduate students to share their experience at a conference on June 7, 2013, that deals with teaching Medieval and Early Modern material in the undergraduate classroom. We are pleased to announce that our keynote speaker will be Distinguished Professor and Waldo W. Neikirk Chair for Innovative Undergraduate Education Robert N. Watson.
