Barbara H. Rosenwein has been an animating presence in the Chicago medieval studies community for more than four decades. From her days as a doctoral candidate at the University of Chicago through her long and lively career at Loyola University of Chicago, Professor Rosenwein has brought the medieval past into dialogue with contemporary questions, mainly through her engagement with other social sciences. While she has made Chicago her home, she has achieved international renown through her research on the monastery of Cluny and more recently through her pioneering work on the history of emotions. Honored by guest professorships at the École des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales and the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, as well as at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands, Professor Rosenwein was a Guggenheim Fellow in 1991 and has been a Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America since 2002. Within the United States, moreover, generations of undergraduates have been introduced to the medieval past and all its complexities through her Short History of the Middle Ages.

This symposium explores the use of social science methodologies and theory in the writing of medieval history through the career of one of its most distinguished proponents.

Preliminary Schedule (subject to change)

8:30-8:45 am: Welcome

8:45-10:45 am: From Chicago to Cluny

Chair: Maureen C. Miller, Professor of History, University of California, Berkeley

“A Rendez-vous in Chicago in the 1960s”

Lester K. Little, Dwight W. Morrow Professor Emeritus of History, Smith College

“The New Discovery of Old Saints in Sixth-Century Gaul”

Constance Brittain Bouchard, Distinguished Professor of Medieval History, University of Akron

“To Be or Not to Be a Bishop in Merovingian Francia”

Kirsten DeVries, Roanoke College

“Charles the Simple and the Hand of St. Denis”

Karl F. Morrison, Lessing Professor Emeritus of History and Poetics, Rutgers University

10:45-11:15 am: Coffee

11:15 am-12:15 pm: The Social Sciences and History

Chair: Theresa Gross-Diaz, Associate Professor of History, Loyola University Chicago

“The Sociology of Masculinity: Modern to Medieval”

Allen J. Frantzen, Professor of English and Faculty Scholar, Loyola University Chicago

“The Fourth Trace: Integrating Social Science and Natural Science into Medieval History”

Patrick J. Geary, Professor of the School of Historical Studies, Princeton Institute for Advanced Study

12:15-1:15 pm: Catered lunch

1:15-2:30 pm: Emotions: Texts and Contexts

Chair: Bruce L. Venarde, Professor of History, University of Pittsburgh

“Revisiting Medieval English Jewry: The Search for Emotion in Legal Records”

Frances H. Mitilenos, Lecturer, Oakton Community College

“The Life of Jesus in Early Printed Bibles: New Emotional Communities”

Sharon Farmer, Professor of History, University of California, Santa Barbara

“Martyrdom in the Baltic? Sorrow in Helmold of Bosau’s Cronica Slavorum”

Jilana Ordman, doctoral candidate, Loyola University Chicago

2:30-3 pm: Coffee

3-4 pm: Emotions: Interdisciplinary Approaches

Chair: Edward Wheatley, Professor of English, Loyola University Chicago

“Dulcedo musicae modulationis: Music and Emotions in the Homilies of Heiric of Auxerre”

Thomas Green, doctoral candidate, Loyola University Chicago

“Inciting Despair”

Elina Gertsman, Assistant Professor of Medieval Art, Case Western University

4-4:45 pm: Teaching the Middle Ages: A Roundtable and Tribute

Panelists: Lester K. Little, Bruce L. Venarde, Maureen C. Miller, Edward Wheatley

Sponsored by Loyola University Chicago and the University of California, Berkeley.

Faculty and graduate students of Center for Renaissance Studies consortium institutions may be eligible to apply for travel funds to attend CRS programs or to do research at the Newberry. Each member university sets its own policies, limitation, and deadlines; contact your Representative Council member in advance for details.

Learn more about Newberry Center for Renaissance Studies programs.