KNOXVILLE — The Marco Institute for Medieval and Renaissance Studies will host its sixth annual symposium Nov. 15-16 as one of the final events of the Medieval and Renaissance Semester at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.
The symposium “Saints and Citizens: Religion and Politics in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance” will be held from 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. both days in the Hodges Library auditorium.
Events have been held across campus this semester to celebrate the era and to study its art, music, drama and achievements.
The Boston Camerata will present its final performance of the semester, “The Abbey of Love: Songs of the Troubadours and Trouveres, 1200-1400,” at 8 p.m. Nov. 16 in the UT Music Hall. The world-renowned group that performs music from the medieval, Renaissance and Baroque periods served as Distinguished Artists in Residence at UT this fall.
Also as part of the semester events, “Sacred Beauty: A Millennium of Religious Art, 600-1600” will remain on display at the Frank H. McClung Museum until Jan. 6, 2008.
All of the events are free and open to the public.
The Marco symposium will discuss recent research on how the concept of sainthood was used to create, define, negotiate and reform communities as small as a cloister or convent or as large as a city or state.
Here is a schedule of lectures:
Thursday, Nov. 15
•9 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. — Thomas Noble, Robert M. Conway Director of the Medieval Institute and professor of history at the University of Notre Dame, will discuss “The Public and the Private in Carolingian Saints, Sanctity and Hagiography.”
•11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. — Maura Lafferty, assistant professor of classics at UT, will discuss “The Trickster Bishop and St. Andrew’s Beard: Relics and Politics in Sixth-century Ravenna.”
•2 p.m. to 3:30 p.m. — Carol Symes, assistant professor of history at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, will discuss “Piety, Power and Political Agency in Medieval Arras: The Confraternity of Jongleurs and the Cult of the Virgin.”
• 4 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. — Greg Kaplan, associate professor of modern foreign languages and literature at UT, will discuss “Sculpting the Visigothic ‘Micro-Christendom’: The Cult of San Millan in the Cave Churches of Valderredible (Cantabria, Spain).”
Friday, Nov. 16
•9 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. — David Defries, lecturer in history at UT, will discuss “Communities of Saint Winnoc: Memory and Mutation in Flanders from the Seventh to the 12th Century.”
•11 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. — Lorenzo Polizzotto, professor of Italian studies at the University of Western Australia, will discuss “Politics and Confraternities in Renaissance Florence.”
•2 p.m. and 3:30 p.m. — Nancy Warren, associate professor of English and courtesy associate professor of religion at Florida State University, will discuss “Words Made Flesh, Flesh Made Words: Julian of Norwich and Her Legacies in Early Modern English Religious Cultures.”
•4 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. — Comments and roundtable with Susan Ridyard, professor and chair of history and director of the Sewanee Medieval Colloquium at the University of the South.
For more information about Marco and the semester, go to http://web.utk.edu/~marco/.
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Contact:
Elizabeth Davis, UT media relations, (865) 974-5179, elizabeth.davis@tennessee.edu