Objects of Belief: Dissent, Reform and Material Culture in Late-Medieval England
Objects of Belief
International Workshop organized by the project B01 „Artefacts, Treasures and Ruins – Materiality and Historicity in the Literature of the English Middle Ages“ (Head: Prof. Dr. Andrew James Johnston) in cooperation with Dr. Joshua Easterling (Murray State University)
The international workshop examines the relation of religious dissent and reform to material culture in late-medieval England. Throughout the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, preoccupation with the otherwise non-material matter of orthodox doctrine was routinely given material expression by both orthodox and heterodox Christians. The veneration and iconoclastic destruction of religious objects, relics, and images; the material books that came “under suspicion” of promoting heterodox teachings; the bodily matter of the Eucharist; the transformation of heretics into little more than combustible material—these and other features of England’s religious and secular landscape demonstrate that spirit (or spirituality) and material were not separate but in fact tightly interwoven forms of cultural making.
The workshop seeks to elucidate precisely why and how regimes of religious belief expressed themselves through forms of making, orthodox or otherwise, that encompassed “matter” and made it a part of those same beliefs. In doing so, the workshop will assist in generating an ambitious and expansive understanding of religious controversy and its materiality.
The event is open to the public, with advance registration requested.
Programm
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Thursday, 01 August 2019 |
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13.30 |
Registration |
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14.30 |
Welcome Address, Joshua Easterling (Freie Universität Berlin): “Some Uncertainties: Matter in Medieval English Literature” |
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15.00 |
Anke Bernau (University of Manchester): “Friars’ Knots and Knots of Gold: Girdling Late Medieval England” |
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16.00 |
Coffee |
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16.30 |
Sarah Salih (King’s College London): “Actor or Prop? Lively Things and Human Puppets in Medieval English Drama” |
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17.30 |
Reception |
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Friday, 02 August 2019 |
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09.30 |
Joshua Easterling (Freie Universität Berlin): “Annihilation and Reform in Walter Hilton’s Latin Letters” |
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10.30 |
Ian Forrest (Oxford University): “Division and Decay: Power over the Material World in the Late Medieval Church” |
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11.30 |
Coffee |
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12.00 |
Andrew Larsen (University of Wisconsin, Madison): “Wyclif, Lollardy, and Material Scepticism of Transubstantiation” |
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13.00 |
Lunch |
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14.30 |
Kantik Ghosh (Oxford University): “‘Prime Matter’ in Wycliffite Discourse” |
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15.30 |
Shannon Gayk (Indiana University Bloomington): “Believing in the Pardoner’s Objects” |
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16.30 |
Coffee |
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17.00 |
Andrew James Johnston (Freie Universität Berlin): “Religious Archaeology: The Matter of the Green Chapel in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” |
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Saturday, 03 August 2019 |
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09.30 |
Michael Sargent (CU New York): “The Matter of Belief: Nicholas Love’s Erotic Rhetoric in Defense of the Doctrine of the Real Presence” |
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10.30 |
Fiona Somerset (University of Connecticut): “My Yoke is Soft: Object as Metaphor in Cambridge University Library MS Ff.6.31” |
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11.30 |
Coffee |
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12.00 |
Claire M. Waters (University of California, Davis): “Prayer Is a Bead Is a Rose: The Immaterial Matter of the Rosary” |
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13.00 |
Lunch |
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14.30 |
Andrew James Johnston (Freie Universität Berlin): Conclusions |
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15.30 |
Summary/Farewell |
Time & Location
Aug 01, 2019 - Aug 03, 2019
Sitzungsraum SFB-Villa, Schwendenerstraße 8, 14195 Berlin-Dahlem
Further Information
Contact: Martin Bleisteiner, m.bleisteiner[at]fu-berlin.de