Medieval Studies

UCHI Co-Sponsors Nineteenth Annual Medieval Studies Conference

Posted on March 5, 2020March 5, 2020 by Siavash Samei

The nineteenth annual Vagantes Conference on Medieval Studies will be held in Storrs and Hartford, Connecticut, on March 19–21, 2020. Plenary lectures for this conference, which is co-sponsored by the University of Connecticut Humanities Institute (UCHI), will be delivered by Dr. M. Breann Leake of UConn English Department and Dr. Thomas E. A. Dale, of the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

The Plenary Lectures

Dr. Leake’s lecture is entitled “‘Nevertheless, You Must Sing’: The Coercion of the Archive.” It will be delivered on Thursday, March 19 at 3PM in the Konover Auditorium in Storrs, CT.

Dr. Dale’s lecture, entitled “Race-Making in Medieval Venice: Representing Saracens and Jews in the Basilica of San Marco, ca. 1215-1280” is scheduled for Saturday, March 21, at 2:30PM in the Hartford Times Building, Room 146.

Other sponsor of this conference include: UConn Medieval Studies Program, Medieval Academy of America, English, Department Speakers and Symposia Committee, Department of English, Department of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages, Center for Judaic Studies, Department of, History, Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Department of Philosophy, and the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center.

For more details and to register, please visit the conference website.

Fellows Talk: Andrea Celli on the Egyptian Slave Hagar in Early-Modern Visual Arts

Posted on February 11, 2020February 12, 2020 by Siavash Samei

A Troubling Presence: The Egyptian Slave Hagar in Early-Modern Visual Arts

Andrea Celli, Ph.D. (Department of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages; University of Connecticut)

February 26, 2020 – 4 to 5PM (UCHI Conference Room: Babbidge Library, 4th Floor South)

From late antiquity to the early-modern period, the Biblical character of Hagar, the Egyptian servant of Sarah and the mother of Abraham’s first child, Ishmael, was often employed as a disparaging device in Christian and Judaic literature. In the Middle Ages, Christian sources used Hagar and Ishmael derogatorily in relation to Muslims; they were the putative descendants of a servant and of the illegitimate son of Abraham and therefore they were not entitled to inherit God’s covenant with Abraham. Yet, Hagar became a successful and popular subject in sixteenth and seventeenth century visual arts, a shift that suggests that patrons and artists were permitted to publicly express compassion toward the fate of an outcast. How to explain this change in approach to a feminine character that often stood for deprecated religious communities and marginalized subjects? This paper will address this visual shift and the broader conceptualization of the figure of Hagar.

If you require accommodation to attend this event, please contact us at uchi@uconn.edu or by phone (860) 486-9057.

Who is Andrea Celli?

Andrea Celli is an Assistant Professor of Italian Literature and Cultural Studies at the University of Connecticut. He graduated in “Letteratura moderna” at the Univerità di Padova (Italy), where he also received his PhD Degree in “Filologia italiana ed Ermeneutica” (2004). In 2012–2013 he spent one year as a visiting fellow at the School of Advanced Study (Institute of Germanic and Romance Studies – University of London). From 2007 to 2014 he lectured “Ermeneutica e Storia della Critica” at the MA in “Lingua, letteratura e civiltà italiana” (University of Lugano, Switzerland). He has published several monographs, essays, and chapters, and translated a number of works from French and Arabic authors (e.g. Louis Massignon and Adonis). His current projects include a study on re-readings of the narratives of Hagar and Ishmael in counter-Reformation discourses on Islam; a monograph on Islam in early-modern Mediterranean Europe, and an Italian translation of Ernst Kantorowicz’s Das Wesen der muslimischen Handwerkerverbaende.

Fellows Talk: Laura Godfrey on “Astonishment in Late Medieval English Literature”

Posted on November 25, 2019November 25, 2019 by Siavash Samei

‘Being Wholly Out of Body’: Astonishment in Late Medieval English Literature

Laura Godfrey, Ph.D. Candidate in Medieval Studies, University of Connecticut
December 4, 2019 – 4 to 5PM (UCHI Conference Room: Babbidge Library, 4th Floor South)

This talk brings together medieval medical and literary descriptions over overwhelming bodily experiences. In medieval literature, when a subject encounters a divine figure, they lose all physical and mental faculties, and after a period of stasis, these faculties are restored, often with heightened senses of perception or newly gained insight. Middle English texts describe this as astonishment, a phenomenon described in medieval medicine as a cerebral malady similar to paralysis or epilepsy. By enmeshing themselves in this cultural rhetoric of dramatic change, medieval authors use literary descriptions to extend the pathology of astonishment and to investigate the effects of this state on the mind and soul.