HAA Guest Lecture – Dr. Irit Kleiman
Tuesday, March 4th
6:00pm in CAS 132
Dr. Irit Kleiman
Associate Professor of Romance Studies, Boston University
Title: “Where Does Transgression Begin?”
Before he was a saint renowned for spectacular bleeding sores, Francis of Assisi was a merchant’s son, wealthy and troubled. His path to canonization led to the mountains and deep into the forest, to sermons discoursed before flocks of birds. Look closely at the faces Giotto renders: at the saint’s calm, attentive expression, and his companion’s disarray. What separates the saint from the madman? The eye of the beholder. The gesture of the witness. Where does transgression begin, or the courage art demands?
Dr. Kleiman teaches courses on the literatures and cultures of medieval and Renaissance France in a global context, and serves on the faculty of the BU Core Curriculum in the Humanities.
Her interdisciplinary research asks questions about the dialogue between literature and the Law, the writing of history, the cultural production of memory, affect, material culture, and sensory encounters, especially tactile. Much of her critical writing is informed by an ongoing engagement with the intellectual legacies of psychoanalysis.