University of Michigan
Medieval and Early Modern Studies
1029 Tisch, 435 S. State St., Univ. of Michigan
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1003
Phone: 734-763-2066 // Fax: 734-647-4881
Program Associate: Terre Fisher (telf@umich.edu)
Faculty Contact, 2021-2022: Enrique Garcia Santo Tomas (enriqueg@umich.edu)
Romance Languages and Literatures, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor MI 48109-1003 Phone: 734-764-5344
For further information about programs, degrees, and affiliated faculty, please visit our website: www.lsa.umich.edu/mems/
Lectures and Events:
In 2021-2022 due to continuing COVID concerns, most events were conducted via Zoom. Lecturers/presenters included U-M graduate students Zachary Kopin (History), Bethany Donovan (History), Frank Espinosa (History), Taylor Sims (History) and Hayley Bowman (History), as well as faculty members Ryan Szpiech (Romance Languages and Mideast Studies), George Hoffmann (Romance Languages and Literatures, French), Gottfried Hagen (Mideast Studies), and Kenneth Mills (History), Nora Grundtner (Humanities Institute). Outside speakers included Ariel Fox (Chinese Literature, East Asian Language, U Chicago); Juan Carlos Flores (Philosophy, University of Detroit-Mercy). Justin Stearns (NYU-Abu Dhabi), Adam Clulow (University of Texas-Austin); Jin Xu (History of Art and Asian Studies, Vassar College), Michael Johnston (Purdue University), Richard Pegg (Asian Art, The MacLean Collection), Lorraine Daston (Max Planck Institute; U Chicago), Yuhua Wang (Harvard University), Michele Matteini (Art History, NYU), Zaroui Pogossian (University of Florence), Sachiko Kawai (National Museum of Japanese History), Adriana Vazquez (UCLA; American Academy in Rome), Akinwumi Ogundiran (University of N Carolina-Charlotte).
Special lectures and ongoing U-M colloquia featured in OCT: “The Cornucopian Stage: Dramas of Endless Surplus in Early Modern China”; “Great Lakes Adiban Society Workshop.” NOV: “Revealed Sciences: Religion, Science, and the Occult in Early Modern Morocco”; “The Massacre and the Conspiracy: Locating the Japanese Diaspora in Seventeenth Century Southeast Asia.” DEC: “A Vineyard Garden in the Afterlife: The Shi Jun/Wirkak Tomb (580 CE) and Viticulture on the Silk Road.” JAN: “The Blue Maps of China.” FEB: “The Secret History of Rules: Algorithms, Laws, and Paradigms”; “The Rise and Fall of Imperial China: The Social Origins of State Development”; “Glitches in Art Historical Flow, ca. 1750.” MAR: “Shaping the Landscape or Invisible Landscapes? Some Medieval Armenian Monastic Complexes between Past and Present”; “Uncertain Powers: Sen’yōmon-in and Landownership by Royal Women in Early Medieval Japan”; “Arcadia Brasiliensis: Landscape and Colonial Dislocation in the Poetry of Cláudio Manuel da Costa”; “‘The Things to Come’: Francisco Solano Faces Irremediable Humanity.” APR: “Little Ice Age and the Oyo Empire: An Unfinished Process of Recovery in West Africa, ca. 1420-1840.”
Additionally, as usual we supported meetings of the Premodern Colloquium on the following topics: “Anti-Aljamiado: Transliterating Arabic in the Antialcoranes”; “Love of Wisdom, Ancient Sources, and Innovation in Medieval Philosophy: Contemplative Desire according to Henry of Ghent”; “A Matter of Jurisdiction: ‘Guelfs and Ghibellines’ in the French Wars of Religion”; “‘As though death should every hour approach’: Reformation Adaptations in English Women’s Wills”; “Manuscript to Print in England: Reconsidering the Divide”; “An Ottoman Encyclopedist as Public Intellectual: Katib Chelebi (1609-1657)”; “‘Con mis manos’: Multi-Sensory Mysticism in the Seventeenth-Century Spanish World.”
Annual budget: $34,000
