2022 Princeton Medieval & Early Modern Studies Graduate Conference
December 3, 2022 | Louis A. Simpson International Building, Room A71
“How did they learn? How did they teach?: Exploring Knowledge Transmission from Late Antiquity to the Early Modern”
Much of our modern knowledge is the result of centuries of experiments driven by human desire to record and pass down successes, failures and lessons learned. The timespan from the periods often called “Late Antique” to that called “Early Modern” offers enormous scope to explore the historical record of knowledge transmission across diverse social contexts. This conference explored the many networks and forms of knowledge transmission active across the Late Antique and Early Modern periods.
For the full program, please visit the conference website.
Sponsored by the Program in Medieval Studies, the Committee on Renaissance and Early Modern Studies, the Department of Art and Archaeology, The Center for Collaborative History, the Seeger Center for Hellenic Studies, the Princeton Graduate School, the Program in History of Science, and The Delaware Valley Medieval Association.
Thank you to graduate students Sharifa Lookman, Mathilde Sauquet, and John White (Art & Archaeology) for organizing this conference.
2021 Princeton Medieval Studies Graduate Conference
March 6, 2021 | Zoom
“Reclaiming Losses: Recovery, Reconquest, and Restoration in the Middle Ages”
Loss can be accepted or contested. This conference will consider how perceptions of legacy and entitlement stirred ambitions to reassert lost claims from Late Antiquity through the Late Middle Ages. From the last great war of antiquity between Persia and Rome to Charlemagne’s Roman renovatio, Byzantine expansion, contestation over Iberia, and the later crusades, many medieval conflicts were justified as campaigns to reconquer and restore past order. Beyond political and territorial pursuits, contemporaries sought to reclaim losses of all kinds, whether legal, economic, intellectual, social, cultural, physical, emotional, or spiritual.
This conference explored the circumstances under which medieval people made claims to past legacies, how they asserted those claims, and what it meant to express them as calls for restitution. How did contemporary understandings of legacy and entitlement factor into perceptions of loss? How did the motive to restore a loss—whether real or imagined—shape contemporary choices and their outcomes? When was loss understood as a fundamental challenge to individual or collective identity and what resulted from such challenges?
For the full program, visit the conference website.
Cosponsored by Art & Archaeology, English, French & Italian, German, Judaic Studies, Near Eastern Studies, Philosophy, Religion, Spanish & Portuguese, the Center for Collaborative History, the Center for the Study of Religion, the Committee for the Study of Late Antiquity, the Humanities Council, the Program in the Ancient World, and the Institute for International and Regional Studies.
Thank you to graduate students Eric Medawar and Rachel Gerber (History) for organizing this conference.
