Yale Lectures in Medieval Studies
The Yale Lectures in Medieval Studies is an interdisciplinary lecture series organized by the Medieval Studies Program at Yale University. The mission of the series is to bring to Yale America’s most creative scholars of the Middle Ages to present innovative and exciting work in fields such as paleography, codicology, liturgical studies, music, history of art, archaeology, history, literature, and philosophy. The series, which is organized by students in medieval disciplines, emphasizes intellectual diversity and rigorous scholarship and is a vital part of Yale’s interdisciplinary approach to the medieval period.
The Yale Lectures in Medieval Studies is generously supported by the Medieval Studies Program, the Institute for Sacred Music, the Office of the University Secretary, and the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.
2012-2013
Thursday, October 4, 2012
Marcia Colish, Lecturer in History
Yale University
Title: "The Boys on the Beach: Fortunes and Misfortunes of Rufinus of Aquileia in Medieval Debates on Fictive Baptism"
Thursday, November 1, 2012
Stacy Klein, Associate Professor of English
Rutgers University
Title: "The Militancy of Gender and the Making of Sexual Difference in Anglo-Saxon Literature, c. 700-1100 AD"
Room 101, Linsly-Chittenden Hall, 63 High Street
5:30 p.m., reception to follow
Thursday, November 8, 2012
Adam Kosto, Professor of History
Columbia University
Title:" Statim invenire ante: Finding-Aids In Prescholastic Legal and Administrative Manuscripts"
Room 101, Linsly-Chittenden Hall, 63 High Street
5:30 p.m., reception to follow
2011-2012
October 6, 2011
Aden Kumler, Assistant Professor of Art History
University of Chicago
Title: "The Genealogy of Jean le Blanc: Accounting for the Materiality of the Medieval Eucharist"
October 24, 2011
Louisa Burnham, Associate Professor of History
Middlebury College
Title: "Golden Showers: The Coagulating Cosmos of a Fourteenth-Century Mad Scientist"
November 14, 2011
Giles Constable, Professor Emeritus
School of Historical Studies, Institute for Advanced Studies
Title: "Letter Collections in the Middle Ages"
January 26, 2012
Nicholas Watson, Professor of English
Harvard University
Title: "Angel Magic in the Medieval University: John of Morigny Rewrites the Ars Notoria
April 25, 2012
Jocelyn Wogan-Browne, Professor of English; Mullarkey Chair
Fordham University
Title: "Thinking Multilingually about the Middle Ages: Must We?"
2010-2011
October 14, 2010
Dyan Elliott, Professor of Humanities & History
Nortwester University
Title: "The Bride of Christ Goes to Hell: The Life and Times of a Medieval Metaphor"
October 28, 2010
Susan Einbinder, Professor of Hebrew Literature
Hebrew Union College
Title: "Seeing the Blind: Trauma and Poetry in the Medieval Ashkenaz"
November 11, 2010
Denys Turner, Horace Tracy Pitkin Professor Historical Theology
Yale University
Title: "The 'Pre-' and the 'Post-'; But Which is the Age in the Middle?"
February 3, 2011
David Wallace, Judith Rodin Professor of English
University of Pennsylvania
Title: "Where Europe Begins and Ends: Problematics of Literary History, 1348-1418
February 17, 2011
Rachel Fulton Brown, Associate Professor of History
University of Chicago
Title: " 'Behold, the Handmaid of the Lord': Reflections on the Virgin's Humility"
March 24, 2011
Holger Klein, Associate, Professor of Art History and Archaeology
Columbia University
Title: "Image, Text, and Sacred Matter: The 'Limburg Staurotheke" and the
Rhetoric of Relics in Byzantium"
March 31, 2011
Anne Walters Robertson, Professor of Music and Humanities
University of Chicago
"Masses Based on Secular Songs and the Christological Art, Theology, and Literature of Mid- Fifteenth-Century Europe"
Previous Lectures:
October 22, 2009
Celia Chazelle, Professor of History
College of New Jersey
Title: "Why is This Feast Different from All Other Feasts? The Eucharist in Early
Medieval Europe"
October 8, 2009
Rita Copeland, Professor of English, Comparative Literature and Classical Studies
University of Pennsylvania
"Naming, Knowing, and the Object of Language in a Twelfth-Century Grammar Curriculum"
February 18, 2010
Paul Freedman, Chester D. Tripp Professor of History
Yale University
Title: "European Impressions of India and China in the Middle Ages"
February 2, 2010
Christopher MacEvitt, Associate Professor of Religion
Dartmouth College
Title: "Fidelity among Infidels: Martyrs and Muslims in Franciscan Memory"
April 8, 2009
Herbert Kessler, Professor of Art History
Johns Hopkins University
"Crucifix as Cure: Medieval Art and Healing"
April 16, 2009
Elizabeth A.R. Brown, Professor Emerita of History
City University of New York
"Testamentary Bequests and the Power of the Living (Le vif saisit le mort):
The Case of Jeanne de Navarre (d. 1305) and Philip the Faire of France
(r. 1285-1314)"
January 22, 2009
Amy Hollywood, Professor of Christian Studies
Harvard Divinity School
"Don't Touch Me"
November 6, 2008
Barbara J. Newman, Professor of English,
Religion and Classics and Johns Evans Professor of Latin Language and Literature
Northwestern University
"Langland, Julian, and the Art of Lifelong Revision"
November 20, 2008
Aviad Kleinberg, Professor of History
Tel Aviv University.
"Useful Trespasses"
January 30, 2008
Maria Rosa Menocal,
Sterling Professor of Humanities
Yale University
"Finest Flowering": Poetry and Medieval Spain
February 20, 2008
Daniel Lord Smail
Professor of History
Harvard University
"Emotions and Somatic Gestures in Medieval Narratives: The Case of Raoul de Cambrai"
Room 208, Whitney Humanities Center
5:30 p.m., reception to follow
March 4, 2008
Bernard McGinn
Professor Emeritus of Historical Theology and of the History of Christianity
University of Chicago Divinity School
"The Evangelical Pearl: The Last Masterpiece of
Medieval Women's Mysticism"
Room 108, Whitney Humanities Center
5:30 p.m., reception to follow
March 28, 2008
Roger Wright
Professor of Spanish
School of Cultures, Languages and Area Studies
University of Liverpool, UK
"Bilingualism and Diglossia in the Iberian
Peninsula, 300-1350"
Room 208, Whitney Humanities Center
4:30 p.m., reception to follow
April 9, 2008
Roger S. Wieck
Curator of Medieval & Renaissance Manuscripts
The Morgan Library and Museum
"The Sacred Bleeding Host of Dijon"
Room 208, Whitney Humanities Center
5:30 p.m., reception to follow
November 9, 2006
"Juggling the Middle Ages: The Reception of Our Lady's Tumbler and Le Jongleur de Notre Dame"
Jan Ziolkowski
Arthur Kingsley Porter Professor of Medieval Latin, Harvard University
Room 208, Whitney Humanities Center
5:30 p.m., reception to follow
October 24, 2006
"Piers Plowman and the Invention of London Literary Language"
Anne Middleton
Florence Green Bixby Professor of English Emeritus, University of California, Berkeley
Room 208, Whitney Humanities Center
5:30 p.m., reception to follow
October 12, 2006
"The Idea of the Nation as a Political Community: New or Old"
Susan Reynolds
Senior Fellow, Institute of Historical Research, University of London
Room 208, Whitney Humanities Center
5:30 p.m., reception to follow
September 28, 2006
"The Legacy of the School of Auxerre: Glossed Bibles, School Rhetoric, and the Universal Gilbert"
E. Ann Matter
Associate Dean of Arts and Letters and Professor of Religious Studies,University of Pennsylvania
Room 208, Whitney Humanities Center
5:30 p.m., reception to follow
September 19, 2006
"Light at Sinai, Natural, Artifical, Divine"
Robert Nelson
Robert Lehman Professor of Art History, Yale University
Room 208, Whitney Humanities Center
5:30 p.m., reception to follow
April 6th , 2006
"Druids: Ritual and the Enlightenment at Chartres"
Margot E. Fassler
Robert Tangeman Professor of Music History and Liturgy and Professor of Musicology at the School of Music, Yale University
LC 317
5:30 p.m., reception to follow
February 9, 2006
"The Blood of Wilsnack and the Fifteenth Century"
Caroline Walker Bynum
Professor of Western European Middle Ages, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton
Lecture Hall, Yale Center for British Art
5:00 p.m., reception to follow
October 6, 2005
“Visual Representation of Commerce and the Market in Medieval Art”
Jonathan J.G. Alexander
Sherman Fairchild Professor of Fine Arts, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University
Room 317, Linsly-Chittenden Hall
5:00 p.m., reception to follow
September 22, 2005
“Early Medieval History in the 21st Century: A Molecular Approach”
Michael McCormick
Francis Goelet Professor of Medieval History, Harvard University
Room 319, Linsly-Chittenden Hall
5:30 p.m., reception to follow
April 14, 2005
“Grandees and Grocers: Elite and Popular Religion and the Book of Hours in Late Medieval
England”
Eamon Duffy
President of Magdalene College and Professor of the History of Christianity, University of Cambridge
Eamon Duffy is a leading authority on late medieval and early modern religion. Published in 1992, his monumental book, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, 1400-1580 (Yale University Press) continues to make a powerful contribution to study of the pre-Reformation Church; the work was awarded the 1994 Longman’s History Today Prize for the best historical work published in Britain. His micro-history, The Voices of Morebath was published in 2002 by Yale University Press. Analyzing the impact of religious change on the lives of ordinary people in this small hamlet, this moving work revisits the fifty years between 1530 and 1580. Bringing a new immediacy to our understanding of the impact of the Reformation, this work was awarded the Hawthornden Prize for Literature.
October 11, 2004
“Saint Erkenwald: Narrative and Narrative Artistry”
Marie Borroff
Sterling Professor of English Emeritus, Yale University
Marie Borroff is the Sterling Professor Emeritus at Yale University, where she has taught since 1952. Borroff is an authority on medieval English literature, being well-known for her translations of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Patience, and Pearl; she has also published Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: A Stylistic and Metrical Study (Yale University Press, 1962). Professor Borroff is a distinguished teacher whose lectures were videotaped for the Yale Great Teachers Series. She has just published a collection of her essays, Essays, Chiefly Medieval (Yale University Press, 2005) and in 1995 was honored with a festschrift.
