Leili Anvar (Sorbonne, Paris) "From the Desert of Arabia to the Gardens of Herat: Wanderings of Majnûn, the Poet-Lover" In this presentation, we will follow Majnûn in his journeys from the Arabic poems to the great Persian masnavis (composed by Nezâmi, Amir Khosrow Dehlavi and Jâmi). We shall see how -with the development of sufism and...
Prashant Keshavmurthy (McGill University) "Reading Nizāmī Ganjavī as a Novelist" Neither the Byzantines nor the Persians had any generic name for the Greek and Persian novels that were composed in the 12th century. Beholden to older (Attic Greek and Abbasid Arabic) models, the taxonomies of literary forms in both geographically adjacent literary cultures lagged behind the...
CLICK HERE TO REGISTER About the Lecture I would like first to question the benefit that specialists of Greco-Roman slavery can gain from dialogue with the historians of slavery from other periods. Considering the question of the relationship between debt, servitude and slavery in archaic Greece, I will first show how recent approaches in the...
Shakespeare’s Macbeth seems to come across best in black-and-white. The recent release of a stunning new version of this blood-soaked tragedy, directed by Joel Coen and starring Denzel Washington and Frances McDormand, has spurred renewed interest in the play and its history in film. Throne of Blood, Akira Kurosawa's 1957 Japanese reworking of Macbeth (also...
The caliph Hārūn al-Rashīd (d. 193/809) allegedly led the ḥajj nine times over the course of his twenty-three-year reign, in 188/804 he was also the last ʿAbbāsid caliph to lead the pilgrimage rites. The pilgrimage served as a means of legitimation as well as a place of succession and nomination, with Hārūn and his wife Zubayda bt....
Justine Landau (Sorbonne) "An Epic Tribute to the Lyric Poem" Poetry does things with words. In the premodern world, this fact is perhaps nowhere acknowledged more unanimously than in the Persianate sources. Chief among the arts of language, lyric poetry is associated with “licit magic,” after the Arabic saying, since its mastery is said to...
The Spring 2022 session of the California Medieval History Seminar will take place at its original venue, the Huntington Library. The seminar meets to discuss four pre-distributed research papers Participants are scholars in the field at various stages of their careers. All attendees at the seminar are expected to read the papers in advance and discuss...
Julia Rubanovich (Hebrew University of Jerusalem) presents an online lecture titled "The Tale of Yūsuf and Zulaykhā through the Eyes of a Jewish Poet". This talk will examine a string of episodes from the tale of Yūsuf and Zulaykhā embedded into the “Book of Genesis” (Bereshit-nāma), a biblical poem composed by the fourteenth-century Judeo-Persian poet...
Paul Losensky (Indiana University) "A Common Thread: Three Literary Careers in Early Modern Persia, England, and Spain" The emergence of the concept of the Global Renaissance has brought new attention to the political, diplomatic, economic, and artistic connections between major civilizational centers in the early modern period. For the most part, however, literature has remained...
A conference organized by the officers of UCLA MEMSA: Chase Caldwell Smith (History), Richard Ibarra (History), and Stefanie Matabang (Comparative Literature) Keynote Speakers: Roland Betancourt (UC Irvine) and Nicholas R. Jones (UC Davis) Research on the premodern intersection of race, gender, and sexuality has steadily increased as a result of the efforts of a diverse group of scholars working across traditional periodization and geographic limits....
Shahzad Bashir (Brown University) "The Market in Poetry in the Persian World" Iranian 250, “Persian Literature in English Translation: Global and Interdisciplinary Perspectives,” taught by Associate Professor Domenico Ingenito (NELC), offers a survey of medieval and early modern Persian literature in English translation. The seminar fosters interdisciplinary conversations among graduate students from a plurality of departments and...
A roundtable organized and moderated by Professor Giulia Sissa (Departments of Political Science, Comparative Literature and Classics, UCLA). “Decolonizing Classics” is a novel challenge for scholars in the Humanities and, even more pointedly, for those who study the societies of ancient Greece and Rome. The stake is not merely relevance, usefulness or epistemic legitimacy, but...
This conference brings together a diverse group of scholars to evaluate the state of research regarding the evolving inter-relationships of Christians, Jews, and Muslims within premodern Iberia and explore the lasting influence of this paradigm shift. The intended emphasis is on the intersection of quotidian mechanisms and longer-term (statutory, theological, sociological) trajectories. By what means...
Join us for our Open House and New Book Salon with ELIZABETH MORRISON, Senior Curator of Manuscripts at The J. Paul Getty Museum, and writer BOYD MORRISON, for a discussion of their new book, The Lawless Land (Tales of the Lawless Land Book 1). New Book Salon 4:30 – 5:30 pm Pacific Time Onsite in Royce 306 and...
The California Medieval History Seminar fosters intercampus networking and intellectual exchange by acquainting participants with historical research in medieval studies currently underway in California. The seminar meets quarterly to discuss pre-distributed research papers (two by faculty members, two by graduate students). During AY 2022-23, the seminar will meet on October 29, February 11, and May...
"Making Things Visible: Galileo and the Spottiness of the Moon" by guest scholar Brian Baigrie (IHPST Toronto). Register to attend here. The Fall 2022 CMRS-CEGS Research Seminar is “Picturing Knowledge in Historical Perspective” (Philosophy 206) taught by Professors Calvin Normore (Philosophy) and Brian Copenhaver (Philosophy, History). This interdisciplinary seminar traces some of the ways, from...
We welcome the Byzantine Studies Association of North America (BSANA) and participants to the 48th Annual Byzantine Studies conference at UCLA! Complete details and registration at https://cmrs.ucla.edu/conference/byzantine-studies/
"Curzio Inghirami (1614-1655), Forger and Playwright of Volterra" by guest scholar Ingrid Rowland (Architecture, University of Notre Dame). Online with Zoom and in-person in Royce 306. Register to attend in person here. Register to attend on Zoom here. The Fall 2022 CMRS-CEGS Research Seminar is “Picturing Knowledge in Historical Perspective” (Philosophy 206) taught by Professors...
Organized by Chris Johanson (Classics and Digital Humanities, UCLA) and Zrinka Stahuljak (CMRS-CEGS, UCLA). This workshop will serve as a forum on Digital Humanities research in Cultural Heritage sites. The focus will be on the Eastern Adriatic sites over a long period of time (300-1600). The Eastern Adriatic, with its rich ancient, late antique, medieval...
UCLA will be hosting the Western Ottomanists’ Workshop (WOW) hybrid, both in person and online. Organized by CMRS-CEGS faculty member Choon Hwee Koh (UCLA, History) and hosted by the UCLA Center for Near Eastern Studies. Friday, November 18 10383 Bunche Hall (10th floor) & Zoom 1:30pm Registration 2pm Opening Speech – James Gelvin (UCLA) 2:30-3:30pm Panel...