Events

Dr. Michael D. Danti, FSA (PhD, University of Pennsylvania 2000) will give the Spring 2017 MEMS Colloquium Lecture, cosponsored by the Dresher Center Humanities Forum, Ancient Studies, Political Science, and Visual Arts. Danti has 25 years experience directing archaeological projects in the Middle East, including excavations and surveys in Syria, Iran, and Iraqi Kurdistan. From 1991–2010, his research focused on the Early Bronze Age site of Tell es-Sweyhat near Raqqa and Aleppo on the Euphrates River.  He is Assistant Professor of Archaeology at Boston University, Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London, and a Consulting Scholar, University of Pennsylvania Museum. His work includes archaeological research on the recent looting and destruction of antiquities in Iraq and Syria. Danti serves as a consultant for the U.S. Department of State.  He will discuss ancient and medieval archaeological sites and treasures which have been destroyed or affected and report on what he and his colleagues are doing to address this cultural heritage crisis.

Professor Danti is the Academic Director of ASOR Cultural Heritage Initiatives, an international, collaborative effort to respond to the destruction of cultural heritage in Syria and northern Iraq. ASOR has assembled a team of scholars with professional connections to leading academic and cultural institutions in Syria, Iraq, the United States, Canada, England, France, Germany, Lebanon, and Jordan. Groups of concerned citizens in Syria and Iraq have been taking action, and ASOR formed alliances and partnerships with these groups.

Free concert.  To reserve a ticket follow the link.

This free First Friday concert series on the Walters’ Sculpture Court features a different group of dynamic faculty and student performers from the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University each month.

In medieval Europe, the walled garden with fragrant flowers, herbs, sweet breezes, bird songs, and a gurgling fountain was idealized as a place of delight for the senses and escape from the tumult of everyday cares. Such aspects of life inspired works of art that stirred all the senses—sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch—and that are the focus of the ground-breaking international loan exhibition A Feast for the Senses: Art and Experience in Medieval Europe, at the Walters from October 16, 2016 to January 8, 2017.

The exhibition brings together more than 100 works representative of the late medieval period—roughly the 12th to the 15th century—to explore how the senses enhance the experience of art. . . and how art triggers sensate experience. Included are stained glass, precious metals and gemstones, ivories, tapestries, paintings, prints, and illuminated manuscripts from public and private collections in the U.S. and abroad.

This exhibition runs from October 16 2016 through January 8 2017

A Feast for the Senses: Art and Experience in Medieval Europe has been organized by the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, in partnership with the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota.

This exhibition received major funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities: Exploring the human endeavor; the Institute of Museum and Library Services; the National Endowment for the Arts; and anonymous donors, with additional support from the Gary Vikan Exhibition Fund, Nanci and Ned Feltham, and the Helen Hughes Trust. The accompanying catalogue was made possible by an anonymous donor. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, or the National Endowment for the Arts.

This exhibition is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities.

Asian Studies Lecture 

 

 “Reflections in a Yoshiwara Mirror: Representing the 'Beauties of the Azure Towers' in Print,” Professor Julie Nelson Davis, Professor of the History of Art (Modern East Asian), University of Pennsylvania.

 

Abstract: In 1776 publishers Tsutaya Jūzaburō and Yamazaki Kinbei issued The Mirror of Yoshiwara Beauties, Compared.  Featuring sumptuous illustrations by two leading painters, Kitao Shigemasa and Katsukawa Shunshō, this album exploited full-color multiple block printing to represent the glamorous “beauties” of the licensed pleasure district, the Yoshiwara.  This presentation will explore issues of collaboration between the publishers and painters as well as their larger social and economic network. By reading the album against guidebooks to the district, this talk further addresses how images and text operated to promote the fantasies of the quarter for its audiences.

The UMBC MEMS Minor welcomes Professor Bernadette Andrea,

Celia Jacobs Endowed Professor of British Literature at the University of Texas, San Antonio

Dr. Andrea will visit UMBC on Tuesday, September 27, to speak on

 

The Islamicate Geographies of “The Female Wits” on the Early Modern English Stage

During the second half of the seventeenth century, both the suppression of the public stage and its “restoration” along with the monarchy were represented through shifting signifiers of Islam, most of them distorted by English ignorance and prejudice.  Such signifiers range from Oliver Cromwell’s depiction as a “Turkish tyrant” to Charles II’s portrayal as the polygamous “Grand Signior.” The first production to test the ban on public performances—William Davenant’s The Siege of Rhodes in 1656—featured a Muslim character as its protagonist. John Dryden’s The Conquest of Granada, which launched the genre of Restoration heroic drama in 1670, followed Davenant’s lead. It is within this ideological framework that English women found new opportunities for public expression as actresses, patrons, and playwrights. While other women penned and even performed plays during the Restoration, the sustained professional career of Aphra Behn, who bore the orientalist epithet “Loves great Sultana,” set the stage for the epochal season of 1695/96, when a group of female playwrights debuted together for the first time in English theatrical history: Catherine Trotter, Delarivier Manley, and Mary Pix.  Two of their plays contain explicitly Islamicate themes, whereas none of the male playwrights for this season followed suit.  This presentation assesses these plays, and others by “the female wits,” with attention to their “imaginative geographies” (in Edward Said’s phrase) and how their gendered themes shape a discourse of competing empires.

Dr. Andrea's  recent books include English Women Staging Islam, 1696–1707 (Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies [University of Toronto], 2012); Early Modern England and Islamic Worlds, with Linda McJannet (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011); and Women and Islam in Early Modern English Literature (Cambridge University Press, 2007)

MEMS is delighted to announce that at the UMBC 50th Anniversary Celebration, Professor Amy Froide of the Department of History will speak to
UMBC alumni, faculty, administrators, and guests on the subject of her new book, Silent Partners: Women as Public Investors during Britain's Financial Revolution, 1690-1750 (Oxford University Press, 2016).

Dr. Froide, Associate Professor of History, will offer a sneak peek at her new book on women investors in the world’s first stock market. Between a fifth and a third of investors in the Bank of England, joint stock companies, and government debt during Britain’s Financial Revolution were women, and Froide argues that women’s capital helped the rise of Britain as a trading and colonial empire. Women were early adopters of new financial opportunities and also served as investors for their husbands, brothers, and nephews. “Silent Partners” will hit bookstores this fall. Refreshments will be served.   Seating is limited.

“Some wine, ho!” Shakespeare, Women, and the Story of English Wine

What did Shakespeare’s contemporaries drink and what did they think about it?  If we think about Renaissance beverages at all, we tend to link Renaissance England with beer.  But wine was everywhere in Shakespeare’s plays and Shakespeare’s England.  More than a beverage, it was invested with all kinds of significance.  It was also a problem because it was usually imported, expensive, and spoiled. This talk explores the untold story of English wine and, in particular, the contributions of Shakespeare and women to that story.  To help us understand the English dream of growing their own grapes and making their own wines, Frances Dolan will range from Shakespeare’s London to colonial Virginia, from the sixteenth century to popular depictions of that period today.

Frances E. Dolan is Distinguished Professor of English at the University of California, Davis.  A former president of the Shakespeare Association of America, she has edited six Shakespeare plays.  She is also the author of five books, most recently Twelfth Night:  Language and Writing (2014) and True Relations:  Reading, Literature, and Evidence in Seventeenth-Century England (2013), as well as numerous essays on a wide range of topics. She is an award-winning teacher and welcomes the chance to meet and learn from students.

Sponsored by the Dresher Center Humanities Forum, Medieval and Early Modern Studies, History Department, English Department, and Gender and Women's Studies

 

Commemorating the 400^th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death (1616)

DOUBLE, DOUBLE,

TOIL AND TROUBLE…..

Come join us as the English Department reads

scenes from Shakespeare’s Macbeth

Wed. March 23, 12-1 (free hour)

PAHB 4th Floor Lounge