Past Lectures
The Center for Medieval Studies hosts a series of scholarly lectures each semester to which all faculty, graduate students, interested undergraduate students and interested members of the general public are invited. Each lecture is followed by a reception hosted by the Center. Talks, which are offered by the Fordham Medieval Fellows, the Fordham faculty, and medieval scholars specifically invited to Fordham for the lecture series, range over all the disciplines.
The Cloisters and the Jews in Medieval Spain: A Conversation on Art, Literature, and History
Peter Cole, Katrin Kogman-Appel, and Jonathan Ray
Sunday, September 19, 1:00pm via Zoom Webinar
Sponsored by Fordham Center for Jewish Studies and the Met Cloisters
The Now of the Rose
Melanie Garcia Sympson, Elina Gertsman, Sandra Hindman, Meradith McMunn, Christine McWebb, Jonathan Morton, and Stephen G. Nichols
Wednesday, October 20, 12:00pm via Zoom Webinar
Co-sponsored with Les Enluminures
Scales of Knowledge: From Cosmos to Book
Ghent Autumn School in Medieval Languages and Cultures
Monday, October 18 - Thursday, October 21
&
Image as Compilation: Jerusalem in the Liber Floridus and Beyond
Hanna Vorholt (Universisty of York)
Thursday, October 21, 12:30-2:00pm via Livestream
Co-sponsored with The Henri Pirenne Institute for Medieval Studies (Ghent), Centre for Medieval Literature (Odense and York), The Center for Medieval Studies (York)
Virtual Lecture with Karla Mallette (University of Michigan)
Wednesday, November 10, 12:30pm via Zoom
Co-sponsored with The Henri Pirenne Institute for Medieval Studies (Ghent), Centre for Medieval Literature (Odense and York), and the Centre for Medieval Studies (York)
In-person Lecture with Suzanne Conklin Akbari (Princeton - IAS)
Wednesday, December 1, 2:30pm
Exhibiting Medieval Spain: Yesterday and Today
Sunday, December 5, 1:00pm via Zoom Webinar
Sponsored by the Fordham Center for Jewish Studies and the Met Cloisters
Putting on Cologne: An Exploration of a Medieval City
Ephraim Shoham-Steiner (Ben-Gurion University)
Wednesday, December 8, 4:00pm
Co-sponsored with the Fordham Center for Jewish Studies
The Impostor Sea: Fraud in the Medieval Mediterranean
Hussein Fancy (University of Michigan)
Tuesday, September 29, 2020, 5:30pm via Zoom
Women and Wills in Medieval London: A Master Class
Caroline Barron (University of London)
Wednesday, October 21, 2020, 12:00pm via Zoom
"Go Forth and Learn”: The Artist Joel ben Simeon and a Newly Discovered Hebrew Manuscript
A joint program between Fordham's Center for Jewish Studies and Les Enluminures, featuring Sandra Hindman, Sharon Liberman Mintz, Nina Rowe, with a keynote by Katrin Kogman-Appel
Thursday, October 22, 1:00pm via Zoom
Seminar and Workshop: Pandemics through Time: The Renaissance Experience and Modern Pedagogy
Co-sponsored with the Renaissance Society of America
Friday, November 13, 10:00am via Zoom
Holy Healing: Saints and Leprosy in the Middle Ages
Jennifer Edwards (Manhattan College)
Thursday, December 3, 2020, 12:00pm via Zoom
Faculty Book Talk: Getting the Blues: Vision and Cognition in the Middle Ages (2018)
Brian J. Reilly (Fordham University)
Friday, January 17, 2020, 5 p.m.
Campbell Hall, Multipurpose Room (Rose Hill)
Medieval Movie Night: The Princess Bride
Friday, February 7, 2020, 5:30 p.m.
Scripture Transformed in Late Medieval England: The Religious, Artistic, and Social Worlds of the Welles-Ros Bible (Paris, BnF fr. 1)
Kathryn Smith (New York University)
Thursday, February 27, 2020, 6 p.m.
McMahon 109 (Lincoln Center)
Planets and Angels, Facts and Values: Paradiso 29
Alison Cornish (New York University)
Tuesday, March 10, 2020, 6 p.m.
O'Hare Special Collections, Walsh Library (Rose Hill)
The following event was canceled following the closure of the University due to COVID-19.
Peter Lombard from the Manuscripts: Teaching, Career, and the Schools of Paris
Mark Clark (Catholic University of America)
Wednesday, April 29, 2020, 12 p.m.
O'Hare Special Collections, Walsh Library (Rose Hill)
"The Series: Hoccleve's Year of Mourning"
Sebastian Sobecki (University of Groningen)
Tuesday, September 17, 2019, 1 p.m.
O'Hare Special Collections
Co-sponsored with Department of English
"Geographic Information Systems, Reflectance Transformation Imaging, and the Prosopography of 13th-Century London"
John McEwan (Post-Doctoral Fellow, Walter Ong SJ Center for Digital Humanities, St. Louis University)
Tuesday, October 8, 2019, 5:30 p.m.
FMH 314
Co-sponsored with the Fordham Digital Humanities Consortium
Jews and Christians in the Medieval City: Art, Archaeology, and Traces of the Past
Thursday, October 24, 2019, 6 - 8 p.m.
McNally Amphitheatre
Fordham Lincoln Center
Biduum Latinum 2019 - De Architectura: Writings on Architecture from Antiquity to the Renaissance
Thursday and Friday, October 24 and 25, 2019
Featuring: Posicio Officinarum [monasterii], Code
presented by Prof. Scott Bruce (History / Medieval Studies)
Friday, October 25, 2019, 12 - 4 p.m.
Walsh Library
For the remaining schedule see here: Thursday. October 24 and Friday, October 25
"Memoria Sefardí"
Judith Cohen (York University)
Tuesday, October 29, 2019, 6 p.m.
Butler Commons
"Writing as Wayfinding: Pilgrimage Ecopoetics and the Medieval Moment"
Susan Signe Morrison, University of Texas
Wednesday, November 6, 2019, 1:30 p.m.
O'Hare Special Collections
Co-sponsored with the Department of Art History and Music, and the Program in Jewish Studies
"Jerusalem: City of the Book"
Merav Mack (Hebrew University of Jerusalem) and Benjamin Balint
Wednesday, November 13, 2019, 6 p.m.
McNally Amphitheatre
Co-sponsored with the Center for Orthodox Studies
Thursday, January 24
Pamela Patton, Princeton University
Guess Who’s Coming to Seder: Skin Color in the Iberian Haggadot
Co-sponsored with Dept. of Art History and Music and the Jewish Studies Program
Friday, February 8
Alkemie Early Music Ensemble
Cyprus 1400: An Island at the Crossroads of Culture
Co-sponsored by Dept. of Art History and Music
Monday, February 11
William P. Stoneman, Harvard University
Fordham University Library MS 3, Private Collections, and Public Libraries: The World of Linked Data
First Annual Fordham Library Associates Lecture
Wednesday, April 10
Adam Cohen, University of Toronto
Social and Sacred in the Medieval Haggadah
Co-sponsored with Dept. of Art History and Music and the Jewish Studies Program
Thursday, May 2
Paul Bertrand, University of Louvain
Jay Diehl, Long Island University, Fordham Medieval Fellow
Laura Gathagan, SUNY-Cortland
Benjamin Pohl, University of Bristol, Fordham Medieval Fellow
Leah Tether, University of Bristol, Fordham Medieval Fellow
Everyone Has Problems: Messy Manuscripts and Difficult Documents (Workshop)
Tuesday, September 11, 6:00 pm
Nicola McDonald, York University
The Question of Middle English Romance
Friday, October 12, 6:15 pm
Eric Ramírez-Weaver, University of Virginia
Classical and Medieval Astronomy: the Phaenomena, Pliny, and the Presentations of the Heavens
Co-sponsored with the Department of Classics
Thursday, October 18, 6:00 pm
Jacqueline Jung, Yale University
The Work of Gothic Sculpture in the Age of Photographic Reproduction
Co-sponsored with the Department of Art History and Music, and the Department of Jewish Studies
Thursday, October 25, 5:30 pm
Emmanuel Falque, Institut catholique, Paris
Bonaventure Colloquium: The Entrance of God into Theology
Co-sponsored with the Department of Philosophy
Tuesday, January 23, 6:00 pm
Emanuel Fiano, Fordham University
The Trinitarian Debates, the Rise of Theological Debates, and the Parting of the Ways in Late Antiquity
Wednesday, February 21, 6:00 pm
Susan Boynton, Columbia University
Guiraut Riquier's Songs: Time and Memory
Thursday April 12,1:00 pm
Thomas Madden, St. Louis University
The War of Towers: Italian Maritime Rivalries in Thirteenth-Century Crusader Syria
Friday, September 29, 12:00 pm
John D. Niles, UC Berkeley & Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison
Total Medicine: An Approach to the Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Healing Texts
Thursday, October 19, 6:00 pm
Richard Teverson, Fordham University
Roman Royal Histories: The Cultural Legacies of Kingdoms Allied to the Roman Empire After Their Annexation
Wednesday, November 8, 12:00 pm
Teodolinda Barolini, Columbia University
Realism Versus Reality in Dante's Paradiso
Monday, November 27, 6:30 pm
Jacqueline Horner-Kwiatek, mezzo-soprano (formerly of Anonymous 4)
A Flower in Winter: The Challenges and Rewards of Singing Hildegard
Co-sponsored by the Music Department
Tuesday, February 14, 4:30 p.m.
Medieval Poetry Reading
Walsh Library, O'Hare Special Collections
Thursday, April 27, 5:30 p.m.
Frank Coulson (Ohio State University)
A Newly Discovered Fragment of Giovanni del Virgilio's Expositio on the Metamorphoses in Walsh Library, Fordham University, Duane Library 351
Tuesday, September 13, 6 p.m.
Robert Pinsky (Boston University)
Quickness and Form, Absence and Being: a Technical Approach to Inferno
Corrigan Conference Center, Fordham University Lincoln Center
Co-sponsored by the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures and the Curran Center for American Catholic Studies
Wednesday, September 14, 12 p.m.
Magda Teter (Fordham University)
Simon of Trent: A Liminal Figure in Jewish-Christian Relations
Walsh Library, O'Hare Special Collections
Friday, September 30, 3 p.m.
Robin Fleming (Boston College)
Vanishing Plants, Animals, and Places Britain's Transformation from Roman to Medieval
Humanities Institute, Mertz Library, New York Botanical Garden
The lecture will be followed by an exhibit of medieval and Renaissance herbals
Saturday, October 1, 9 a.m.–5 p.m.
Biduum Latinum Fordhamense (Latin Bootcamp)
New York Botanical Garden
Prior registration is required; Please RSVP to [email protected]
Friday, October 14, 2016
Scott Bruce (University of Colorado Boudler)
Reading: The Book of the Undead
Location and time to be determined
Sunday, October 30, 10 a.m.
Sarit Kattan Gribetz (Fordham University)
Lecture and Tour of the Met Exhibit: "Jerusalem 1000-1400"
The Met Fifth Avenue
Tuesday, December 6, 6 p.m.
John McCaskey (2016-17 Medieval Fellow: Fordham University)
Inductio: The Medieval Transmission and Humanist Solution to 'The Scandal of Philosophy'
Walsh Library, O'Hare Special Collections
Monday, January 25, 1 p.m.
Thelma Fenster (Fordham University)
Christine de Pizan and Poetic Justice for the Jews. Or not.
Campbell Multipurpose Room
Tuesday, February 23, 5 p.m.
Dee Dyas (University of York)
The Dynamics of Pilgrimage: Sensory Experience and the Power of Place
Walsh Library, O'Hare Special Collections Room
Wednesday, March 2, 6:30 p.m.
Marc Epstein (Vassar College) and Sarah Lipton (SUNY Stony Brook)
Jews in Medieval Art: A View from the Inside and Outside
Fordham Law School, LAW 1-01, LC Campus
Offered in connection with Magda Teter's Medieval Jewish history class; co-sponsored by the Center for Medieval Studies.
Wednesday, April 20, 1 p.m.
Jonathan Phillips (University of London, Royal Holloway)
The Memory of Saladin in the Modern Middle East
O'Hare Special Collections Room, Walsh Library, Rose Hill Campus
Thursday, September 17, 1 p.m.
Sarit Kattan Gribetz (Fordham University)
The Mothers in the Manuscripts: Christian Origins according to the Jewish Life of Jesus (Toledot Yeshu)
McGinley Music Room
Tuesday, October 13, 6:45 p.m.
Joshua O'Driscoll (Morgan Library and Museum)
The insight of inscriptions: Writing for Images in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries
McGinley 235
Thursday, November 12, 5:30 - 8 p.m.
Christopher Baswell (Columbia University and Barnard College)
Master Class on Scholarly Editing (by RSVP only; email [email protected])
Campbell Multipurpose Room
Tuesday, December 1, 1 p.m.
Ronald Herzman (State University of New York College at Geneseo)
Dante and the Frescoes at the Sancta Sanctorum
Campbell Multipurpose Room
Tuesday, January 20, 6:45 p.m.
Brian Reilly (Fordham University)
Seeing Irony in Chrétien de Troyes's Cligès
McGinley 236
Monday, February 9, 1 p.m.
Eleanor Johnson (Columbia University)
Dramatic Contemplation: Participatory Likeness in the Play of Wisdom
Walsh Library, O'Hare Special Collections Room
Saturday , March 7, 9 a.m.
35th Annual Conference of the Center of Medieval Studies
Reading and Writing in City, Court, and Cloister
Lincoln Center Campus
Tuesday, March 24, 1 p.m.
Bruce O'Brien (University of Mary Washington)
Written Languages, Translation. and Ethnicity in the Aftermath of the Norman Conquest
Walsh Library, O'Hare Special Collections Room
Monday, September 15, 1 p.m.
Alex Novikoff (Fordham University)
The Ars Disputandi and the "Art" of Disputation
Walsh Library, O'Hare Special Collections Room
Friday, October 10, 4 p.m.
Emma Campbell (University of Warwick)
Genre Trouble: Translating Textual and Sexual Identities in Old French Saints' Lives and Romance
Faculty Lounge, McGinley 237
Thursday, November 6, 1 p.m.
Andrew Irving (The General Theological Seminary of the Episcopal Church)
Mass Transit: Mass Book Design in the Twelfth Century
Walsh Library, O'Hare Special Collections Room
Tuesday, December 9, 6 p.m.
David Wrisley (Medieval Fellow and American University of Beirut)
Islamicate Worlds, the Late Medieval Court of Burgundy and the Mediterranean: Representations, Encounters, Debates
Faculty Lounge, McGinley 237
Thursday, January 23, 1 p.m.
Robert Davis (Fordham University)
Feeling Nothing: Affect and Absence in
Late Medieval Christian Devotion
Campbell Multipurpose Room, Campbell Hall
Tuesday, February 25, 5:15 p.m.
Janine Peterson (Marist College and Medieval Fellow)
Between Sanctity and Heresy: Suspect Saints in
Late Medieval Italy
McGinley Center, Faculty Lounge
Saturday and Sunday, March 29-30
34th Annual Conference of the Center for Medieval Studies
The French of Outremer: Communications and Communities
in the Crusading Mediterranean
Lincoln Center Campus, 12th Floor Lounge
Monday, April 28, 1 p.m.
Mathew Mesley (University of Zürich and Medieval Fellow)
Beyond Celibacy: Medieval Bishops and the Representation and Regulation of Clerical Masculinity.
Walsh Library, O’Hare Special Collections Room
Monday, February 4, 5:15 p.m.
Tia Kolbaba (Rutgers University)
"All things are clear and open that are in the divine scriptures":
Interpretative Ideals and Polemical Purposes in Byzantine Exegesis
McGinley Center, Faculty Lounge
Co-sponsored with Orthodox Christian Studies
Wednesday, February 20, 7 p.m.
Film and Discussion: "The Way" (2010)
Introduced by Richard Gyug(Fordham University)
Flom Auditorium, Walsh Library
Co-sponsored with Frances and Ann Curran Center for American Catholic Studies
Saturday and Sunday, March 9-10
33rd Annual Conference of the Center for Medieval Studies
Putting England in Its Place:
Cultural Relations and Cultural Production
Lincoln Center Campus, 12th floor lounge
Wednesday, March 20, 5:30 p.m.
Susan Foran (University of Bergen and Fordham Medieval Fellow)
A Nation of Knights: Chivalry and National History in
Late Medieval Scotland
McGinley Center, Music Room
Monday, April 22, 12:45 p.m.
Pamela O. Long (National Humanities Center)
Thinking with Technologies and Material Culture in
Medieval Europe
McGinley Center, Faculty Lounge
Co-sponsored with the Department of History
Wednesday, September 11, 12:30 p.m.
Andrew Albin (Fordham University)
Canor and Its Discontents: The Vicissitudes of Mystical Angelic Song in Late Medieval England
Walsh Library, O’Hare Special Collections Room
Friday, October 18, 4:30 p.m.
Christopher Given-Wilson (University of St Andrews)
Writing a Chronicle in the Late Middle Ages
McGinley Center, Faculty Lounge
Thursday, November 21, 12:45 p.m.
Dale Kinney (Bryn Mawr)
The Triconch Churches near Sohag,Upper Egypt
Walsh Library, O’Hare Special Collections Room
Tuesday, December 3, 4 p.m.
Monica Green (Arizona State University)
The Differential Impact of the Medical Translations
Coming out of Southern Italy, Spain, and the
Crusader Kingdoms in the 11th and 12th Centuries
McGinley Center, Faculty Lounge
Friday, January 20, 4:30 p.m.
O'Hare Room, 4th Floor, Walsh Library, Rose Hill Campus
Queenship and the Language of Command: Some Evidence from the English Chancery Records
Lisa Benz St. John, Fordham Medieval Fellow
Monday, February 13, 1 p.m.
Faculty Lounge, McGinley Center, Rose Hill Campus
John Chrysostom on the Biology of Madness and the Pathology of Sin
Wendy Mayer, Australian Catholic University
Co-Sponsored by Christian Orthodox Studies and the Department of Theology
Thursday, March 8, 4 p.m.
Butler Commons, Duane Library, Rose Hill Campus
Woden's Tree and Christ's Cross, The Mystery of the Stave Church
Ronald G. Murphy, SJ, Georgetown University
Loyola Chair Lecture
March 31-April 1, Leon Lowenstein Building, Lincoln Center Campus
32nd Annual Conference of the Center for Medieval Studies
Think Romance! : Re-conceptualizing a Medieval Genre
Co-Sponsored with the Department of English
Friday, May 4, 5:15 p.m.
Butler Commons, Duane Library, Rose Hill Campus
Balance and Imagination: The Impact of a New Model of Equilibrium on Scholastic Thought, 1250-1350
Joel Kaye, Barnard College
Thursday, October 13, 5:30 p.m.
Tognino Hall, Duane Library, Rose Hill Campus
Blood Matters: Reading with the Heart in Medieval Devotional Literature
Jocelyn Wogan Browne, Fordham University
Inaugural Lecture, Thomas F. X. Mullarkey Chair in English Literature
Monday, October 31, 5:15 p.m.
Faculty Lounge, McGinley Center, Rose Hill Campus
The Power of the Anglo-Saxon Concubine: Aelfgifu of Northampton
Helen Damico, University of New Mexico
Thursday, November 17, 1 p.m.
Campbell Multipurpose Room, Campbell Hall, Rose Hill Campus
The Apocalyptic First Crusade, 1095-1099
Jay C. Rubenstein, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
Friday, December 9, 4:30 p.m.
12th Floor Lounge, Leon Lowenstein Building, Lincoln Center Campus
Building-in-Time: Thinking and Making Architecture in the Premodern Age
Marvin Trachtenberg, Institute of Fine Arts, NYU
Sunday, February 13, 9:30 a.m. - 5:30 p.m.
12th Floor Lounge, Leo Lowenstein Building, Lincoln Center
Challenging the Myths of Art History: A Symposium in Honor of Linda Seidel
Saturday, February 26, 1 - 5 p.m.
South Lounge, Leon Lowenstein Building, Lincoln Center
A Symposium on Skaldic Poetry
Thursday, March 3, 12:45 p.m.
Music Room, 2nd Floor, McGinley Center
Cipher, Celebrant, Symbol: Painting Priestly Identity in Late Medieval Italy
Gregory Waldrop, SJ, Fordham University
See article on Fr. Waldrop's talk from Inside Fordham
Friday, March 25, 1 p.m.
University Commons, 3rd Floor, Duane Library
The Virtues of Jesus in Aquinas and Bonaventure
Joseph Wawrykow, University of Notre Dame
Sponsored by the Department of Theology
March 26-27, Leon Lowenstein Building, Lincoln Center
31st Annual Conference of the Center for Medieval Studies
The Metaphysics of Aquinas and Its Modern Interpreters: Theological and Philosophical Perspectives
Friday, April 8, 5 p.m.
O'Hare Room, 4th Floor, Walsh Library
Ambiguity in Medieval Icelandic Sagas
Rolf Stavnem, Fordham Medieval Fellow and University of Aarhus
Wednesday, Sept. 22, 3:30 p.m.
Tognino Hall, 2nd floor, Duane Library
London Theatre before the Theatre (1576) or How I Spent My Summer Vacations
Mary C. Erler, Fordham University
Third Annual English Department Inaugural Lecture
Friday, Sept. 24, 5:15 p.m.
Flom Auditorium, Walsh Library
Tales from a Forgotten Rome: Pagan Image Programs in the Early Christian City
Susanna McFadden, Fordham University
Wednesday, Oct. 20, 11:45 a.m.
O'Hare Room, 4th floor, Walsh Library
What's Your Pleasure? Mass-Market Medieval Romance
Nicola McDonald, Fordham Medieval Fellow and University of York, UK
See article on Dr. McDonald's talk from Inside Fordham
Friday, November 19, 5:15 p.m.
O'Hare Room, 4th floor, Walsh Library
DYSTOPIA: Augustine's City of Gaud
Peter Kaufmann, University of Richmond
Co-sponsored with the Dept. of Theology
Monday, Dec. 6, 12:45 p.m.
Tognino Hall, 2nd floor, Duane Library
Vengeance, Jews, and the Christ Child in Les Enfaunces Jesu Crist (Bodleian)
MS Selden Supra 38)
Maija Birenbaum, Fordham Medieval Fell