Major Public Events, 2007 - 2009

18-20 October 2007: "Al-Andalus: Cultural Diffusion and Hybridity in Iberia (1000-1600)." An interdisciplinary conference on the culture, literature, language and history of the Iberian Peninsula, at the Pyle Center. Medieval Iberia represents a unique perspective on cultural/social change, given the coexistence of courtly, municipal, frontier and crusade societies within the Peninsula, as put in contact by the three major cultures-- Christian, Jewish and Arabic-- that coexisted in Iberia from the 8th through the 16th centuries. The cultures blended: sometimes peacefully, sometimes with resistance.

The conference, organized by Medieval Studies faculty members Ivy Corfis (Spanish and Portugese), Tom Dale (Art History), Ray Harris (Spanish and Portugese), and Michael Shank (History of Science), featured plenary addresses by Jerrilynn D. Dodds (Architectural History and Theory, City University of New York), Ross Brann (Judeo-Islamic Studies, Cornell University), Francisco Javier Hernández (Carleton University), Bernard R. Goldstein (Religious Studies, University of Pittsburgh), and Michael A. Sells (Islamic History and Literature, University of Chicago), plus 23 shorter papers by speakers from Spain and Israel as well as North America. The detailed program can still be found on the web at http://spanport.lss.wisc.edu/al-andalus/

26 October 2007: Public lecture by Paul Strohm (Columbia University), "Conscience: From Piers Plowman to Henry VIII."

27 March 2008: Public lecture by Hanns Hubach (University of Zurich), "Matthias Grunewald's 'Lamentation of Christ' and the Veneration of the Holy Sepulcher in Aschaffenburg."

10 April 2008: Public lecture by Marianne Kalinke (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign), "Cultural Transfer in the Norse World: The Case of Klari saga."

17 April 2008: Public lecture by Amy Eichhorn-Mulligan (University of Memphis), "Mother Ireland becomes King: Women, Power and Sovereignty in Medieval Ireland."

2-4 May 2008: Germanic Linguistics Annual Conference 14 (GLAC), hosted by UW-Madison linguists at the Pyle Center. This event, the largest Germanic linguistics conference in North America, attracted over 150 attendees. The program consisted of 61 talks, including plenary addresses by Jan Terje Faarlund (University of Oslo) and Heidi Harley (University of Arizona). A number of the presentations dealt with medieval and early modern topics. Of special interest to medievalists were sessions focused on Old High German, Old English and Old Saxon metrics, as well as several sessions dealing with medieval verbal morphology and sound change. Work in Germanic historical linguistics in recent decades has demonstrated renewed appreciation for detailed philological spadework, and the many papers based on work with original manuscripts reflected this trend.

GLAC 15 will be held in Banff, Alberta, from April 30-May 3, 2009 and will be co-sponsored by the Society for Germanic Linguistics, the Forum for Germanic Language Studies (UK), and Studies in the History of the English Language. For more information, see: http://ling.ucalgary.ca/banff2009/

16-17 May 2008: "Crossing Boundaries at Medieval Universities: Intellectual Moments, Academic Disciplines and Societal Conflict." International conference at the Pyle Center, marking the retirement of William Courtenay, Hilldale Professor and C. H. Haskins Professor of History. The main speakers were David Luscombe (University of Sheffield), Marcia Colish (Yale), Chris Schabel (University of Cyprus), Maarten Hoenen (Universität Freiburg im Breisgau), John Murdoch (Harvard), Kent Emery (Notre Dame), Michael McVaugh (University of North Carolina), Danielle Jacquart (École Pratique des Hautes Études, Paris), Ken Pennington (Catholic University of America), Karl Shoemaker (UW-Madison), Robert Lerner (Northwestern), and Jürgen Miethke (Heidelberg Universität).

18 February 2009: Public lecture by John D. Niles (UW-Madison), "War and the Containment of Violence in Anglo-Saxon England: A Problem in Mentalities."

2 April 2009: Public lecture by Herbert L. Kessler (Johns Hopkins University),"The Sanctifying Serpent: Christ's Pictured Body as a Source of Healing." Conrad A. Elvehjem Building, room L150, 5:00 pm. The lecture will explore ways in which the Brazen Serpent trope gets mapped onto images of the Crucifixion, from the ninth century through the twelfth, to trigger the notion of spiritual and carnal cures through the process of looking at art.

17-18 April 2009: "Other Peoples' Thinking: Language and Mentality in England before the Conquest," a Burdick-Vary Symposium at UW-Madison sponsored by the Institute for Research in the Humanities with support from the Medieval Studies Program. How did the people of Anglo-Saxon England conceive of their place in the world that they inhabited? To what extent do the textual records dating from that formative period reflect underlying assumptions that may have no exact equivalents today, and that require explication if the culture of that era is not to be misunderstood? This two-day conference will provide an opportunity for specialists to share insights into these questions. Speakers have been asked to explore the extent to which the lexicon pertaining to a given area of experience provides access to a people’s mentality.

The main speakers will be Robert E. Bjork, Arizona State University; Kathleen Davis, University of Rhode Island; Antonette diPaolo Healey, University of Toronto; Nicole Discenza, University of South Florida; Roberta Frank, Yale University; Joseph C. Harris, Harvard University; Karl Reichl, University of Bonn; and Elaine Treharne, Florida State University. Cross-disciplinary and theoretical perspectives will be encouraged through the participation of additional panelists, includingAndrew Rabin (University of Louisville: Anglo-Saxon law) and, from the UW-Madison faculty, Thomas Dale (Art History), Thomas DuBois (Scandinavian Studies and Folklore), Harold Scheub (African Languages and Literature), Walton O. Schalick (History of Medicine and Bioethics), Frank Salomon (Anthropology), and Karl Shoemaker (History and Legal Studies).

For abstracts, the program, and a more complete description, see the Institute’s home page and follow the link there: http://irh.wisc.edu/. All lectures and panels are free and open to the public. Those wishing to attend are encouraged to email the organizer in advance: John D. Niles, jdniles@wisc.edu