{"id":102,"date":"2016-05-12T10:21:47","date_gmt":"2016-05-12T14:21:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/scriparts\/?page_id=102"},"modified":"2018-04-09T10:54:50","modified_gmt":"2018-04-09T14:54:50","slug":"past-events","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/scriparts\/events\/past-events\/","title":{"rendered":"Past Events"},"content":{"rendered":"

2017-2018: “<\/span><\/strong>Scripts”<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

Self-presentation in Egyptian Funerary Monuments of the Middle Kingdom<\/a>
\n<\/b><\/span>Tuesday,\u00a0April 3rd<\/span>, 5:00-6:30pm:\u00a0Dr. Denise Doxey<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"SC227685\"Denise Doxey<\/strong>\u00a0<\/span>is Curator, Ancient Egyptian, Nubian and Near Eastern art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Before joining the staff of the MFA, she was Keeper of the Egyptian Section of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. She completed her B.A. at the State University of New York at Albany, her M.Phil at Oxford University and her Ph.D. at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author or co-author of four books and nu
\nmerous articles on various aspects of Egyptian and Nubian art, archaeology and civilization. She has excavated in Greece and Egypt and has taught Egyptology courses at the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard University. At the MFA, she was the co-curator of The Secrets of Tomb 10A: Egypt 2000 BC and Gold and the Gods: Jewels of Ancient Nubia. She currently serves on the board of ICOM\u2019s International Committee for Egyptology and is president of the New England Chapter of ARCE.<\/p>\n

During Egypt\u2019s Middle Kingdom (ca. 2040-1640 BCE), the funerary monuments of regional officials integrated scenes and inscriptions created to demonstrate that they had lived and served in accordance with\u00a0<\/span>maat<\/i>, the concept of justice and world order. Because these officials served as intermediaries between the people of their districts and the central government, tomb scenes portray them as rulers over the local population while, at the same time, offering formulas and autobiographies display humble obedience to the king and, through him, to the gods. Dr. Doxey\u2019s talk will discuss her research into how texts and images were strategically combined to serve as a sort of\u00a0<\/span>curriculum vitae<\/i>\u00a0<\/span>for admission to the afterlife, while also exploring their intended audiences, non-royal, royal, and divine.<\/span><\/p>\n

Event will be held in\u00a0the Executive Boardroom at the Boston University Elie Wiesel Center for Jewish Studies (147 Bay State Road Boston, MA 02215) on Tuesday, April 3rd from 5:00-6:30. All interested faculty, graduate and undergraduate students are encouraged to attend.<\/p>\n

When Buddhism Turned to Writing<\/a>
\nTuesday,\u00a0<\/span>March 20th, 5:00-6:30pm:\u00a0Professor\u00a0Richard Salomon<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"DSC_0450\"<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Dr. Richard Salomon\u00a0<\/span><\/b>is Professor of Asian Languages (Sanskrit) and William P. And Ruth Geberding University Professor at the University of Washington. He also directs the University of Washington\u2019s Early Buddhist Manuscripts Project.<\/span><\/p>\n

According to the historical traditions of the Therav\u0101da (southern) school of Buddhism, it was around the first century BCE, during a time of crisis and famine, that Buddhists first felt the need to supplement their original purely oral mode of textual preservation by recording the \u201cscriptures\u201d in written form. But until recently, no actual manuscripts from this early period had survived, so that the details of the process of shifting from oral to written transmission were completely unknown.<\/span><\/p>\n

However, the discoveries in recent decades of hundreds of unprecendently early Buddhist manuscripts from the ancient region of Gandh\u0101ra (modern northern Pakistan and eastern Afghanistan), some dating back to the first century BCE, provide specimens of texts from very near the beginning of the written tradition of Buddhism. Examples and illustrations from these Gandh\u0101ran manuscripts will show how Buddhist canonical and post-canonical texts were first rendered into written form and how this gradually led to the development of a formal literary tradition.<\/span><\/p>\n

Event will be held in\u00a0the library at the Boston University Elie Wiesel Center for Jewish Studies (147 Bay State Road Boston, MA 02215) on Tuesday, March 20th from 5:00-6:30. All interested faculty, graduate and undergraduate students are encouraged to attend.<\/p>\n

Back to West African Script Styles: A Taxonomy and Provisional Implications for Historical Analysis<\/a>
\nThursday, February 15th, 5:00-6:30pm:\u00a0Professor Mauro Nobili, with response by Professor Fallou Ngom<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"MN-450x450\"Dr. Mauro Nobili<\/strong>\u00a0is an\u00a0Assistant Professor of History & African American Studies at\u00a0University of Illinois. Dr. Nobili\u00a0is a historian of pre-colonial and early-colonial West Africa, with a specific interest in the area of the modern Republic of Mali and the town of Timbuktu. His focus is on Muslim societies of the region and their Arabic manuscript heritage. He conducts research in several collections of Arabic manuscripts from West Africa, stored in public or private libraries in Africa (Mali, Nigeria, Senegal, Niger, Ghana, and Ivory Coast), in Europe (Denmark and France) and North America (USA). Nobili has worked and published on topics linked to Arabic calligraphies and script styles, Islamic eschatology, genealogies and the West African chronicle tradition.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

Among the different aspects of the literate cultures of Islamic West Africa that have been neglected by scholars is the study of the local \u201cstyles\u201d of writing the Arabic alphabet.\u00a0Most of the time, scholars refer to the styles displayed in West African Arabic-based manuscripts as\u00a0maghribi\u00a0\u2013 the script peculiar of North Africa west of Egypt. Others employ the \u201cumbrella term\u201d\u00a0sudani\u00a0\u2013 which is in fact used to describe a \u201cdegenerated version\u201d of the\u00a0maghribi\u00a0. In his paper, Professor Nobili first explores the genealogy of the term\u00a0sudani\u00a0and proves its inadequacy to represent the many different styles found in West African manuscripts. Then, he introduces his more accurate yet preliminary classification of such styles, comparing three of them (Saharawi, Suqi, and Barnawi) and presenting their paleographic features. He concludes by showing how the analysis of West African scripts is not a futile exercise of paleography. On the contrary, it provides crucial information on the development of literacy in different parts of West Africa.<\/p>\n

\"ngom\"Dr. Fallou Ngom\u2019s<\/b>\u00a0<\/span>current research interests include the interactions between African languages and non-African languages, the Africanization of Islam, and Ajami literatures\u2014records of West African languages written in Arabic script. He hopes to help train the first generation of American scholars to have direct access into the wealth of knowledge still buried in West African Ajami literatures, and the historical, cultural, and religious heritage that has found expression in this manner. Another fascinating area of Dr. Ngom\u2019s work is language analysis in asylum cases, a sub-field of the new field of forensic linguistics. His work in this field addresses the intricacies of using knowledge of varied West African languages and dialects to evaluate the claims of migrants applying for asylum and determine if the person is actually from the country that he or she claims. Dr. Ngom\u2019s work has appeared in the International Journal of the Sociology of Language, Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, Language Variation and Change, and African Studies Review, among others.<\/span><\/p>\n

Event will be held in\u00a0the library at the Boston University Elie Wiesel Center for Jewish Studies (147 Bay State Road Boston, MA 02215) on\u00a0Thursday, February 15th from 5:00-6:30. All interested faculty, graduate and undergraduate students are encouraged to attend.<\/p>\n

Pure Words from the Water: Haudenosaunee Uses of Wampum
\n<\/a><\/strong>Friday, October 13th, 5:00-7:00pm:\u00a0Professor Philip P. Arnold<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Arnold-Phil-hq\"<\/p>\n

Philip P. Arnold is Associate Professor and Chair of Religion Department at Syracuse University as well as core faculty in Native American and Indigenous Studies. \u00a0He is the Director of the Sk\u00e4\u00b7no\u00f1h\u2014Great Law of Peace Center (<\/span>www.skanonhcenter.org\/<\/span><\/a>). \u00a0His books are\u00a0<\/span><\/span>Eating Landscape: Aztec and European Occupation of Tlalocan\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/i>(1999);\u00a0<\/span><\/span>Sacred Landscapes and Cultural Politics: Planting a Tree<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span>(2001);\u00a0<\/span><\/span>The Gift of Sports: Indigenous Ceremonial Dimensions of the Games We Love<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span>(2012) and\u00a0<\/span><\/span>Urgency of Indigenous Religions<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span>(University of New Mexico Press, forthcoming). \u00a0He is a founding member of\u00a0<\/span><\/span>Neighbors of the Onondaga Nation<\/b>\u00a0<\/span>(NOON)<\/span>,<\/b>\u00a0<\/span>(<\/span>www.peacecouncil.net\/NOON\/index.html)<\/span><\/a>\u00a0<\/span>and established the\u00a0<\/span><\/span>Doctrine of Discovery Study Group<\/b>\u00a0<\/span>(<\/span>www.doctrineofdiscovery.org<\/span><\/a>) He is the President of the the\u00a0<\/span><\/span>Indigenous Values Initiative<\/b>\u00a0<\/span>(<\/span>www.indigenousvalues.org<\/span><\/a>), a non-profit organization to support the educational work of the Sk\u00e4\u00b7no\u00f1h\u2014Great Law of Peace Center.<\/span><\/p>\n

Professor Arnold\u00a0will be presenting on his latest work, entitled\u00a0<\/span>\u201cPure Words from the Water: Haudenosaunee Uses of Wampum\u201d. The Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) have used wampum for millennia. It is connected with the founding events of the \u201cGreat Law of Peace,\u201d which took place in what is now known as Central New York. This epic story depicts how the 5 warring nations (Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, and Seneca) came together in peace at Onondaga Lake (near Syracuse) through the use of wampum in condolence ceremonies established by the Peacemaker for Hiawatha and the Tadodaho. Wampum is used in strings and belts from the time of the Peacemaker until today and is understood to denote a purity of intention in speech, because of its relationship with water. It has been an important feature of the Haudenosaunee treaty relationships with European and American governments.<\/p>\n

Flyer to come. Event will be held in\u00a0the library at the Boston University\u00a0<\/span>Elie Wiesel Center for Jewish Studies (147 Bay State Road
\nBoston, MA 02215) on Friday October 13th from 5:30-7:30. All interested faculty, graduate and undergraduate students are encouraged to attend.<\/p>\n

Seasonal Gods and Cosmic Kings: The Politics of Belief on a Classic Maya Lintel<\/a>
\nWednesday, November 1st, 5:00-7:00pm:\u00a0Professor\u00a0Stephen Houston<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Stephen<\/span><\/p>\n

Stephen Houston serves as the Dupee Family Professor of Social Sciences at Brown University, where he also holds an appointment in Anthropology. A specialist in Classic Maya civilization, writing systems, and indigenous representation, Houston is the author of many books and articles, including, most recently,\u00a0<\/span><\/span>Temple of the Night Sun<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span>(Precolumbia Mesoweb Press),\u00a0<\/span><\/span>The Maya<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span>(with Michael Coe, now its 9th edition), and\u00a0<\/span><\/span>The Life Within: Classic Maya and the Matter of Permanence<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span>(Yale University Press), winner of a PROSE Award in 2014. \u00a0He was co-curator, too, of a major show,\u00a0<\/span><\/span>Fiery Pool: The Maya and the Mythic Sea<\/span><\/i>, which was exhibited at the Peabody-Essex Museum, the Kimbell, and the St. Louis Museum of Fine Arts. Houston has been honored with a MacArthur, along with fellowships and grants from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Science Foundation, Dumbarton Oaks, the Clark Art Institute, and the National Endowment for the Humanities; he has also been the Ailsa Mellon Bruce Senior Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art. His current projects concern the central role of young men in Classic Maya text and image, the lives and roles of Maya sculptors, and reports on two large-scale excavations, one at the great dynastic center of Piedras Negras, Guatemala, the other, El Zotz, in the same country. In recognition of Houston’s scholarship, the President of Guatemala awarded him, in 2011, the Grand Cross of the Order of the Quetzal, that country’s highest honor. For that same body of work, Houston also received the Tatiana Proskouriakoff Award in 2013 from the Peabody Museum, Harvard University. He is a\u00a0<\/span><\/span>summa cum laude<\/span><\/i>\u00a0<\/span>graduate of the University of Pennsylvania; his Ph.D., awarded in 1987, is from Yale.<\/span><\/p>\n

Professor Houston’s work, entitled “Seasonal Gods and Cosmic Kings: The Politics of Belief on a Classic Maya Lintel” covers a set of monuments that graft Maya dynastic politics onto concepts of sun, moon, seasons, and other solar patterns. Among the most potent images in the Maya world are those that fuse dynastic needs with mythic verities. Kings and nobleman come to discharge, or are seen to discharge, roles and duties set in the remote past. Expansive beings, the gods themselves, undertake tasks that humans can emulate. Through deity impersonation, those same people become one with supernatural figures. A compact illustration of these themes is a set of lintels taken over 50 years ago from what is now the Republic of Guatemala. For the most part, the carvings have languished in obscurity, only to re-emerge, after decades, in the recent past. A fresh set of images and technical assays permits a re-examination of their content, in sculptures commissioned for an unknown site under the control of the kingdom of Yaxchilan, Mexico. One carving in particular, to be studied closely here, grafts the supernatural and the political in a work that exemplifies Classic Maya fusions of identity. In doing so, it engenders a sense of inevitability, likening dynastic statecraft, hierarchy, and acts of building to the cosmic order of gods.<\/p>\n

Flyer to come. Event will be held in\u00a0the library at the Boston University<\/span>\u00a0<\/span>Elie Wiesel Center for Jewish Studies (147 Bay State Road<\/span>
\nBoston, MA 02215) on Wednesday, November 1st from 5:30-7:30. Reception will follow in the Boardroom of the Elie Wiesel Center. All interested faculty, graduate and undergraduate students are encouraged to attend.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

2016-2017: \u201cThe Unfolding of Scripture Through Movement\u201d<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

“Cosmos and Creation in the Twelfth Century: An Interpretation of Genesis 1” <\/strong><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Monday, April 24, 5:30 PM: Margot Fassler at the Boston Museum of Science Planetarium<\/strong><\/p>\n

Margot Fassler is a musicologist known for her innovative work at the intersection of music, liturgy, and theology in medieval European Christianity. Before taking up her current position in the departments of music and theology at Notre Dame, she taught for many years at the Institute for Sacred Music at Yale University, serving as director for ten years. Her most recent book, The Virgin of Chartres: Making History through Liturgy and the Arts<\/em> (Yale University Press, 2011), is a prize-winning exploration of the intersections between liturgy, theology, and architecture at the famous Chartres Cathedral in France.<\/p>\n

Her newest work on Hildegard of Bingen, supported by a Guggenheim and an ACLS Digital Innovation Fellowship, explores the way that liturgy, theology, music, drama, and the visual arts work together. Fassler has worked with digital artist Christian Jara\u00a0and the planetarium staff at the University of Notre Dame to develop a digital model of Hildegard’s complex visualization of creation.\u00a0This model of the universe, based on Hildegard’s treatise <\/span>Scivias,<\/i> is a full-dome digital presentation with music, created by Christian Jara and Margot Fassler, with a soundtrack by musicians from the Notre Dame Program in Sacred Music based on chants by Hildegard relating to her vision of the cosmos as it was created and spins in time toward its end.<\/span><\/p>\n

Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) was a German nun, a prophet who wrote theological treatises, biblical commentary, nearly 400 letters, poetry and drama; she composed music, and designed art works. She was a scientist too, and had great interest in the cosmos, its creation, and its meanings as a work of divine inspiration. To display this\u00a0work Fassler and Jara constructed a model depicting stages of the “Cosmic Egg,\u201d from Hildegard’s description of a big bang within a dark chaos to a spinning and fully zoomable globe that grows through six days of development, enhanced by music composed by Hildegard as a companion to the text\/illustration.<\/p>\n

Performing Sanskrit Scripture in Kerala, India<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Monday, March 27, 5:30 PM: Leah Lowthorp and Finnian Moore Gerety, with Frank Korom, Moderator
\nPhotonics Colloquium Room, Photonics Building, 9th Floor (8 St. Mary\u2019s Street)<\/strong>
\n<\/strong>Reception to Follow at MeiMei Restaurant (506 Park Drive)
\nLowthorp Workshop: Monday, March 27, 2:30-3:45 in Professor Kyna Hamill’s TH 102, Dramatic Literature course in the College of Fine Arts (members of the BU community are welcome to attend)\u00a0<\/em>
\n<\/strong><\/p>\n

Kutiyattam(s) in Context: Complicating Rituality and Aesthetics in Sanskrit Theater<\/strong><\/p>\n

Leah Lowthorp holds a dual doctoral degree in Anthropology and Folklore & Folklife from the University of Pennsylvania and is currently a postdoctoral fellow in Folklore and Mythology at Harvard University. As part of her dissertation work on the impact of UNESCO recognition of K\u016btiy\u0101ttam as an Intangible Cultural Heritage in Kerala, India, she was trained in the techniques and performance of the tradition. She has a unique ability to bridge the divide between \u201cstudy of\u201d and \u201cparticipation in\u201d this tradition, and in her lecture\/demonstration she will share her perspective on \u201cthe ways artists emically conceive of rituality in relation to contemporary practice both inside and outside of the temple.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kutiyattam(s) in Context Talk Description: Widely considered the oldest continuously performed theater in the world, Kutiyattam Sanskrit theater has been performed as a hereditary temple art by upper-caste men and women in Kerala since the eleventh or twelfth century C.E. Characterized by some as a \u201cvisual sacrifice\u201d(chakshusha yajna), it was performed exclusively by hereditary performers within temple theaters until the mid-twentieth century. Following intense social and political upheavals in twentieth century Kerala, Kutiyattam performers and performance spaces were democratized, and it is now performed by hereditary and non-hereditary performers on temple and public stages throughout Kerala, India, and the wider world. This talk explores the impact of Kutiyattam\u2019s democratization upon notions of rituality and aesthetics in performance. Based on nearly two years of ethnographic research among the Kutiyattam community in Kerala, India, it focuses on the ways in which Kutiyattam artists emically conceive of rituality and aesthetics in relation to both past and contemporary practice. By examining the divergent ways in which artists contextually conceptualize these categories\u2014temporally, spatially, and via repertoire\u2014Dr. Lowthorp complicates the binary relationship between rituality and aesthetics that has been assumed in previous academic studies of Kutiyattam.<\/p>\n

When Scripture Comes Alive: Aesthetics of Memory in Vedic Chanting in Kerala<\/strong><\/p>\n

Finnian M. Gerety holds a doctoral degree from the Department of South Asian Studies at Harvard University and is Visiting Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Brown University. He works on ritual, text, and the senses in South Asian religions, with a focus on Hindu traditions of India. He has authored an article soon to appear in The Journal of Asian Ethnology<\/em> entitled “Digital Guru: Embodiment, Technology, and the Transmission of Traditional Knowledge in Kerala,”\u00a0 which explores the manner in which the Nambudiri Brahmins of the South Indian state of Kerala transmit “what may be the oldest surviving musical culture in South Asia, a fixed oral tradition of sacred songs used in ritual (s\u0101maveda<\/em>). Without recourse to written notation, Nambudiri practitioners teach songs face-to-face, using their voices and a distinctive system of hand gestures to convey melodies to their students.”<\/p>\n

When Scripture Comes Alive Talk Description:\u00a0While the Sanskrit scriptures of Hinduism, the Vedas, are widely available in manuscripts and books, many Hindus believe that the power of Vedic formulas (mantras) can only realized in performance, chanted aloud from memory by Brahmin priests. In Kerala, this authority is vested in lineages of Nambudiri Brahmins, who boast a tradition of Vedic transmission and performance going back many centuries. In this talk Dr. Gerety will focus on the aesthetics of Nambudiri performance, which are concerned above all with demonstrating mnemonic mastery over the mantras, liturgies, and rules that inform Vedic recitation and ritual. In this context, competence is predicated on precise chanting, posture, breath control, and ritual purity; to guard against mistakes, prompters guide the priests’ every gesture and utterance with cues and hand signals. In this aesthetic realm, faithful replication of traditional norms is paramount, personal expression is discouraged, and audience participation is tightly controlled. Members of the public are only invited to watch and listen from a distance, perform acts of worship directed towards the performance, and make cash donations. In this way, the aesthetics of memory foster the Nambudiris’ collective identity and regional reputation as living embodiments of Hindu scripture.<\/p>\n

Frank Korom is Professor of Religion and Anthropology at Boston University.<\/p>\n

Please contact scripart@bu.edu for more information on the workshop.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Mapping and Unmapping Jewish History in Early Modern Bibles<\/a>
\n<\/span><\/span><\/strong>Monday, February 13, 2:30-4:00 PM: Jeffrey S. Shoulson\u00a0at\u00a0the Elie Wiesel Center for Jewish Studies
\n<\/strong>147 Bay State Road, 2nd Floor Library<\/strong><\/p>\n

Boston University Jewish Studies Research Forum and the BU Program in Scripture and the Arts are pleased to welcome Professor\u00a0Jeffrey S. Shoulson. Shoulson is Doris and Simon Konover Chair of Judaic Studies, Director of the Center for Judaic Studies and Contemporary Jewish Life, Professor of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages, and Professor of English at the University of Connecticut. He is also author of Milton and the Rabbis: Hebraism, Hellenism, and Christianity<\/em> (2001) and Fictions of Conversion: Jews, Christians, and Cultures of Change in Early Modern England<\/em> (2013). He is also co-editor of Hebraica Veritas? Christian Hebraists and the Study of Judaism in Early Modern Europe<\/em> (2004).<\/p>\n

\u201cMapping and Unmapping Jewish History in Early Modern Bibles\u201d will examine the role played by maps depicting the Holy Land and other biblical locations\u2014printed in Bibles as well as in other accounts of the region\u2014in the construction of spaces construed as \u201cJewish.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gesture and Power: Religion, Nationalism, and Everyday Performance in Congo<\/a>
\n<\/span><\/strong><\/span>Thursday, November 3, 5:30 PM: Yolanda Covington-Ward
\nSargent (635 Commonwealth Ave), Room 102<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yolanda Covington-Ward is a professor of Africana Studies at the University of Pittsburgh. Trained as an anthropologist, she is the author of Gesture and Power: Religion, Nationalism, and Everyday Performance in Congo<\/em> (2015, Duke University Press). Her research interests revolve around the relationship between social connections, interpersonal interactions, and group identities, and how they impact and are impacted by physical bodies. She has conducted extensive ethnographic research in the Democratic Republic of Congo and among Liberian communities in the United States. Her lecture will focus on embodiment and religion as explored in her recent book. We are excited to bring this important work to colleagues in religion, literature, anthropology, and African studies.<\/p>\n

Friday, November 4th, 10:00-11:00AM: Yolanda Covington-Ward
\n<\/strong>William O. Brown Seminar Room (505), African Studies Center (232 Bay State Rd)<\/strong><\/p>\n

Professor Covington-Ward will hold a workshop for faculty and graduate students on Friday, November 4, from 10 AM -11:30 AM in the William O. Brown Seminar Room (505) in the African Studies Center (232 Bay State Rd). The workshop will be on her ongoing work on Liberian diasporas entitled \u201cI Don\u2019t Even Know Monrovia in the First Place\u201d: Displaced Bodies and Shifting Identities in the Liberian Diaspora. Please RSVP for a pre-circulated paper:\u00a0https:\/\/goo.gl\/forms\/CMPEtQg8gVbcjqxk1.\u00a0More details found <\/span>here<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

2015-2016: \u201cReading Between Word and Image in Medieval Europe, Africa, and Western Asia\u201d<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

The 2015-2016 Scripture and the Arts program theme was titled “Reading Between Word and Image in Medieval Europe, Africa, and Western Asia.” Our three-\u00adspeaker program featured Marcus Milwright on the seventh-\u00adcentury Dome of the Rock mosaic inscriptions in Jerusalem; Caroline Walker Bynum on medieval German devotional objects related to veneration of the Holy Family; and Gary Vikan on the Christian art of Ethiopia.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Dome<\/p>\n

November 9, 2015: “Medium and Message: Decoding the Mosaic Message in \u2018Abd al-Malik\u2019s Dome of the Rock\u201d with Marcus Milwright<\/strong><\/p>\n

Marcus Milwright, from the University of Victoria Department of Art History and Visual Studies, is an authority on the art and architecture of the Islamic Middle East, cross-cultural interaction in the Medieval and early Modern Mediterranean, and craft practices in Late Ottoman Syria. In this lecture, he examined the golden mosaic inscriptions on the seventh-century Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem. These inscriptions contain professions of faith, verses drawn from the Qur\u2019an, and other statements of a religious nature. Professor Milwright considerd this mosaic writing in the context of late antique craft practices and early Arabic epigraphy in order to suggest new ways of understanding the messages conveyed by the mosaic inscriptions and their role in the ideological program of the early Islamic state.<\/p>\n

Closely examining these inscriptions in light of historical mosaic inlay techniques, architectural practices, the development of the Arabic script, and Quranic development, Professor Milwright compellingly framed novel ways of understanding the original purpose of the Dome of the Rock and its place in early Islam. The event evoked a lively conversation about the early social and religious development of both the early Islamic state and Islam itself and drew a broad range of responses from audience members representing archaeology, art history, religious studies, linguistics, and other disciplines.<\/p>\n

\"2015<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

March 24, 2016: \u201cHoly Beds and Holy Families: Encounters with\u00a0Devotional Objects in the Metropolitan Museum of Art\u201d with Caroline Walker Bynum<\/strong><\/p>\n

Caroline Walker Bynum, from the Institute for Advanced Study, is a\u00a0preeminent\u00a0scholar in the field of Medieval Christian Studies, and her work has been instrumental in introducing the concept of gender into the study of medieval Christianity. In this lecture, she\u00a0 presented material thematically linked to her most recent publication, Christian Materiality.<\/i>\u00a0At an exhibit in Detroit fifty-five years ago, a much loved beguine cradle on loan from New York’s Metropolitan Museum was treated simply as a piece of furniture. But at the Met, the cradle, which once held a Christ child laid in it by the religious women in whose community it stood, points the viewer toward other works related to the holy family, all on display nearby but not usually considered together. \u00a0Interpreting these devotional objects in their social and devotional context, Professor Bynum argued that medieval images\u2014both literary and material\u2014evoked, even compelled, a far more complex, nuanced, and even contradictory sense of the holy than much recent work on materiality suggests.
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

Bynum\u2019s talk also explored the pregnant ambiguities that lie at the boundaries between worship, play, and ornamentation. Drawing primarily on objects found at the Metropolitan Museum, Bynum\u2019s discussion highlighted rich layers of interactive sensuality\u2014particularly sight and touch\u2014that characterized late medieval Christian worship and which have since been lost or relegated to obscurity. The lecture was well attended by faculty, staff, and students of the university as well as members of the larger Boston community, whose attendance was particularly sought.<\/p>\n

\"2016<\/p>\n

April 4, 2015: \u201cThe Sacred Art of Ethiopia\u201d with Gary Vikan<\/strong><\/p>\n

Professor Vikan, the Benedict Distinguished Visiting Professor at Carleton College, was also the director of the Walters Art Museum for 18 years and brought a wide range of expertise to his brief visit to Boston University. Professor Vikan\u00a0 engaged with how Ethiopian Christian art is distinctive from that of Byzantium and \u201cwestern\u201d Christianity in style and iconography as well as in the\u00a0ritual of its use, how Jesus has been understood and portrayed in Ethiopia, and who the great Ethiopian artist Fere Seyon was in this context. He discussed the history and character of\u00a0Ethiopian Christian art\u2014icons,\u00a0manuscripts, and crosses\u2014from its first tentative appearance on fourth-century coinage to the eighteenth century. The lecture drew heavily on objects in the Walters Art Museum collection in Baltimore,\u00a0which is the finest of its kind outside of Ethiopia, but also addressed other works, including the great\u00a0\u201cHoly Land\u201d\u00a0architectural complex at Lalibela.<\/span><\/p>\n

Dr. Vikan has been quite active in the international conversation around how to handle trade in antiquities, particularly since the rise of ISIS and concerns about the possibility that looting and the illegal sale of antiquities might support their military goals. We took advantage of Dr. Vikan\u2019s expertise by having him offer a workshop on \u201cThe Legal and Moral Challenges of Acquiring Antiquities and Medieval Art: A Case Study,\u201d which brought in participants from museum studies and other related programs. We were also thrilled to welcome about twenty members of Boston\u2019s Ethiopian community to the public lecture. In sum, Vikan\u2019s visit was especially gratifying in that it enabled us to reach a range of BU and Boston community members we have never drawn in before.
\n\"2016<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

For events beyond the past academic year, please reference the annual reports and the “Lectures and Events” news feed. Thank you for your interest!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

2017-2018: “Scripts” Self-presentation in Egyptian Funerary Monuments of the Middle Kingdom Tuesday,\u00a0April 3rd, 5:00-6:30pm:\u00a0Dr. Denise Doxey Denise Doxey\u00a0is Curator, Ancient Egyptian, Nubian and Near Eastern art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Before joining the staff of the MFA, she was Keeper of the Egyptian Section of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6862,"featured_media":0,"parent":6,"menu_order":2,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/scriparts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/102"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/scriparts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/scriparts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/scriparts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6862"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/scriparts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=102"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/scriparts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/102\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":904,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/scriparts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/102\/revisions\/904"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/scriparts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/6"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/scriparts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}