SPRING 2024
Session 2: “Secularism”
Friday, April 19, 9:30am — 11am
Primary Readings:
Rushain Abbasi, “Did Premodern Muslims Distinguish the Religious and Secular? The Dīn–Dunyā Binary in Medieval Islamic Thought,” Journal of Islamic Studies 31, no. 2 (May 2020): 185–225.
Talal Asad, “Reading a Modern Classic: W. C. Smith’s ‘The Meaning and End of Religion,’” History of Religions 40, no. 3 (2001): 205–22.
Saba Mahmood,“Religious Reason and Secular Affect: An Incommensurable Divide?” in Is Critique Secular? Blasphemy, Injury, and Free Speech, eds. Talal Asad, Wendy Brown, Judith Butler, and Saba Mahmood (New York: Fordham University Press, 2009), 58–94.
Optional Additional Readings:
Talal Asad, “Thinking about Religion through Wittgenstein,” Critical Times 3, no. 3 (December 2020): 403–42.
Wendy Brown, “Introduction,” in Is Critique Secular? Blasphemy, Injury, and Free Speech (New York: Fordham University Press, 2009), 1–13.
Wendy Brown, Judith Butler, and Saba Mahmood, “Preface, 2013” in Is Critique Secular? Blasphemy, Injury, and Free Speech (New York: Fordham University Press, 2013), vii–xx.
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Session 1: “Religion”
Friday, March 29, 9:30am — 11am
Primary Readings:
Tomoko Masuzawa, “Preface” and “Introduction,” in The Invention of World Religions: Or, How European Universalism Was Preserved in the Language of Pluralism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), ix –33.
Eduardo Mendieta, “Society’s Religion: The Rise of Social Theory, Globalization, and the Invention of Religion” in Religions / Globalizations: Theories and Cases, eds. Hopkins, Lorentzen, Mendieta, and Batstone (Durham: Duke University Press, 2001), 46–65.
Brent Nongbri, “Introduction” and Ch. 1: “What Do We Mean by Religion?” in Before Religion: A History of a Modern Concept (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013), 1–24.
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Session 3: Wan-Chuan Kao, White before Whiteness in the Late Middle Ages
Friday, May 3, 9:30am — 11am (on Zoom)
Session 4: Workshop – Julie Orlemanski
Friday, May 17, 9:30am — 11am
Session 5: Workshop – Noel Blanco Mourelle
TBA
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WINTER 2024
Session 3:
Secularization, Race, and the Colonial Encounter
Friday, February 23, 9:30am — 11am
Primary Readings:
Hickman, Jared. “Globalization and the Gods, or the Political Theology of ‘Race.’” Early American Literature 45, no. 1 (2010): 145–82.
Wynter, Sylvia. “1492: A New World View,” in Race, Discourse, and the Origin of the Americas: A New World View, eds. Vera Lawrence Hyatt and Rex M. Nettleford, (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1995), 5–57.
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Session 2: Secularism
Friday, February 2, 9:30am — 11am
Primary Readings:
Anidjar, Gil. “Secularism.” Critical Inquiry 33 (Autumn 2006): 52-77.
Asad, Talal. “1: What Might an Anthropology of Secularism Look Like?” In Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity, 21-66. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003.
Coviello, Peter. “Introduction: What We Talk about When We Talk about Secularism.” In Make Yourselves Gods: Mormons and the Unfinished Business of American Secularism, 23-47. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2019.
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Session 1: A Secular Age ?
Friday, January 12th, 9:30am — 11am
Primary Readings:
“Introduction” and “Chapter 1: The Bulwarks of Belief,” in Charles Taylor, A Secular Age, pp. 1-89 (notes, pp. 779-786).
Optional Additional Readings:
Talal Asad, “Secularism, Hegemony, and Fullness,” 2007, https://tif.ssrc.org/2007/11/17/secularism-hegemony-and-fullness/
Courtney Bender, “Every Meaning Will Have Its Homecoming Festival: A Secular Age and the Senses of Modern Spirituality,” 2016, in Working with A Secular Age
Ian Alexander Cuthbertson, “The Problem of Enchantment,” Religion Compass 12.9 (2018)
Saba Mahmood, “Can Secularism Be Other-wise?” 2010, in Varieties of Secularism in a Secular Age
John Lardas Modern, “The Sun Shone Fiercely Through the Window at Starbucks (Part I) and (Part II),” 2010, https://tif.ssrc.org/2010/09/09/through-the-window-at-starbucks-i/ and https://tif.ssrc.org/2010/09/14/through-the-window-at-starbucks-ii/
***
Winter 2024 Meetings
Session 1: January 12
Session 2: February 2
Session 3: February 23
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FALL 2023
Session 4: “Belief”
Friday, November 17th, 9:30am – 11am CST
Primary Readings:
Daston, Lorraine. “Marvelous Facts and Miraculous Evidence in Early Modern Europe.” Critical Inquiry 18, no. 1 (1991): 93-124.
Justice, Steven. “Did the Middle Ages Belief in Their Miracles?” Representations 103, no. 1 (2008): 1-29.
Pooley, William. “Who Believes in Belief?” Magic, Ritual, Witchcraft (Winter 2021): 371-380.
Optional Additional Readings:
Green, Richard Firth. “1. Believing in Fairies,” In Elf Queens and Holy Friars: Fairy Beliefs and the Medieval Church, 11-41. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016.
Image: London, British Library, MS Yates Thompson 26, f.24r
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Session 3: “Disenchantment”
Friday, November 3rd, 9:30am – 11am CST
Primary Readings:
Asad, Talal. “Introduction: Thinking about Secularism.” In Formations of the Secular: Christianity, Islam, Modernity, 1-17. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003.
Josephson Storm, Jason Ānanda. “Introduction.” In The Myth of Disenchantment: Magic, Modernity, and the Birth of the Human Sciences, 1-21. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017.
——. “The World of Enchantment; or, Max Weber at the End of History.” In The Myth of Disenchantment: Magic, Modernity, and the Birth of the Human Sciences, 269-301. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017.
Walsham, Alexandra. “The Reformation and ‘The Disenchantment of the World’ Reassessed.” The Historical Journal 51, no. 2 (June 2008): 497-528.
Recommended Reading:
Zimmerman, Andrew. “Decolonizing Weber.” Postcolonial Studies 9, no.1 (2006): 53-79.
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Session 2: Genealogies of Religion
Friday, October 20th, 9:30am – 11am CST
Primary Readings:
Asad, Talal. “1. The Construction of Religion as an Anthropological Category.” In Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islams, 27-54. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993.
Asad, Talal. “3. Pain and Truth in Medieval Christian Ritual.” In Genealogies, 83-124.
Optional Reading:
Asad, Talal. “4. On Discipline and Humility in Medieval Christian Monasticism.” In Genealogies, 125-167.
***
Session 1: “Religion”
Friday, October 6th, 9:30am – 11am CST
Primary Reading:
Smith, Jonathan Z. “Religion, Religions, Religious.” In Critical Terms for Religious Studies, edited by Mark C. Taylor, 269-84. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1998.
Biller, Peter. “Words and the Medieval Notion of Religion.” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 36.3 (1985): 351–69.
Masuzawa, T. “Theology, the Fairy Queen.” Modern Intellectual History 19, no. 4 (2022): 1262-1285. [Open Access]
Optional Additional Reading:
Schilbrack, Kevin, “The Concept of Religion.” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2022 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2022/entries/concept-religion/
Ristuccia, N.J. “Lex: A Study on Medieval Terminology for Religion.” Journal of Religious History, 43 (2019) : 531-548.
Sheehan, J., Trüper, H., & Wimmer, M. “Beyond Secularized Eschatology Introductory Remarks.” Modern Intellectual History 19, no. 4 (2022):1182-1190.
Image: London, British Library, Add. 23923, fol.2
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SPRING 2023:
Friday, May 19th, 10:30am – 12pm CST
Primary Reading:
Jonathan P. Berkey, Popular Preaching & Religious Authority in the Medieval Islamic Near East. Seattle & London: U of Washington P, 2001. 3-22.
Michael Camille, “Seeing and Reading: Some Visual Implications of Medieval Literacy and Illiteracy.” Art History 8.1 (1985): 27-50.
David Lawton, Voice in Later Medieval English Literature: Public Interiorities. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2017. 1-12.
Brian Stock, The Implications of Literacy: Written Language and Models of Interpretation in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1983. 3-11.
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WINTER 2023:
“Exile, Diaspora, and Sovereignty: Rethinking the Medieval Canon on Indigenous Lands”
Workshop with Suzanne Conklin Akbari (IAS)
Tuesday, February 28th
***
“What Did Medieval Slavery Look Like?”
Session with Pamela Patton (Princeton)
Co-sponsored with the Slavery and Visual Culture Working Group
Friday, February 24th
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Orality and Writing
Friday, January 20th, 9:30am – 11am CST
Primary Reading:
Tahera Qutbuddin, Arabic Oration: Art and Function. Boston & Leiden: Brill, 2019. 1-20.
R. W. McCutcheon, “Silent Reading in Antiquity and the Future History of the Book.” Book History 18 (2015): 1-32.
Paul Zumthor, “Spoken Language and Oral Poetry in the Middle Ages.” Style 19.2 (1985): 191-198.
Recommended:
Michel Banniard, “The Transition from Latin to the Romance Languages.” In The Cambridge History of the Romance Languages. Martin Maiden, John Charles Smith, and Adam Ledgway, editors. Cambridge (UK): Cambridge UP, 2013. 57-106.
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FALL QUARTER 2022:
Friday, December 2, 10:30am – 12pm CST
Primary Reading
Suzanne Conklin Akbari, “Race, Environment, Culture: Medieval Indigeneity, Race and Racialization.” In A Cultural History of Race. Volume Two: A Cultural History of Race in the Medieval Age, edited by Thomas Hahn. 2021. 47-66.
Jodi A. Byrd, “Introduction.” In The Transit of Empire: Indigenous Critiques of Colonialism. 2011. xv-xxxix.
Ann McGrath and Lynette Russell, “History’s Outsiders?: Global Indigenous Histories” In The Routledge Companion to Global Indigenous History, edited by Ann McGrath and Lynette Russell. 2021. 1-30.
Vanessa Watts. “Indigenous Place-Thought and Agency Amongst Humans and Non-Humans (First Woman and Sky Woman Go On a European World Tour!)” Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society 2.1 (2013): 20-34.
Friday, November 11, 10:30am – 12pm CST
Primary Reading
Arvin, Maile. “Analytics of Indigeneity.” In Native Studies Keywords, edited by Stephanie Nohelani Teves, Andrea Smith, and Michelle H. Raheja. Tucson: U of Arizona P, 2015. 119-129.
Duperron, Brenna. “Ghostly Consciousness in The Book of Margery Kempe.” ELN 58.2 (2020): 121-135.
Hurley, Mary Kate. “Choosing a Past: Fictions of Indigeneity in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.” In American/Medieval Goes North: Earth and Water in Transit, edited by Gillian R. Overing and Ulrike Wiethaus. Göttingen: V&R Unipress, 2019. 137–66.
Recommended Reading
Andrews, Tarren and Wallace Cleaves. “Indigenous Futures and Medieval Pasts: A Conversation.” ELN 58.2 (2020): 167-179.
Cleaves, Wallace. “From Monmouth to Madoc to Māori: The Myth of Medieval Colonization and an Indigenous Alternative.” ELN 58.2 (2020): 21-34.
Friday, October 7, 9:30 – 11am CST
Primary Reading
Altschul, Nadia. Politics of Temporalization: Medievalism and Orientalism in Nineteenth-Century South America. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 2020. 1-20.
Andrews, Tarren. “Indigenous Futures and Medieval Pasts:An Introduction.” ELN 58.2 (2020): 1-17.
Tuck, Eve, and K. Wayne Yang. “Decolonization Is Not a Metaphor.” Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education and Society 1.1 (2012): 1– 40.
Recommended Reading
Dodds Pennock, Caroline and Amanda Power. “Globalizing Cosmologies.” Past & Present 238.13 (2018): 88-115. [READ PREVIOUSLY BY LEXICON]
Miyashiro, Adam. “Our Deeper Past: Race, Settler Colonialism, and Medieval Heritage Politics.” In “Critical Race and the Middle Ages,” edited by Dorothy Kim. Special issue, Literature Compass 16.9–10 (2019). [READ PREVIOUSLY BY LEXICON]
Andrews, Tarren and Wallace Cleaves. “Indigenous Futures and Medieval Pasts: A Conversation.” ELN 58.2 (2020): 167-179.
SPRING QUARTER 2022:
FALL QUARTER 2021:
Friday, October 8, 9:30 – 11am CST
PDFs found on our Readings page
Chouin, Gerard. “Reflections on Plague in African History (14th-19th c.),” Afriques 9 (2018): https://journals.openedition.org/afriques/2228
Fancy, Nahyan, & Green, Monica H. (2021). “Plague and the Fall of Baghdad (1258).” Medical History 65.2 (2021): 157-177.
Singer, Rachel. “The Black Death in the Maghreb: A Call to Action.” Journal of Medieval Worlds 2.3-4 (2020): 115–123.
Varlik, Nükhet. “Beyond Eurocentric Histories of Plague .” Early Science and Medicine 22.4 (2017): 361-374.
Recommended Reading
Green, Monica H. “The Four Black Deaths.” The American Historical Review 125.5 (2020): 1601–1631. [Optional]
Roosen, Joris & Curtis, Daniel R. “The ‘Light Touch’ of the Black Death in the Southern Netherlands: an Urban Trick?” The Economic History Review 72.1 (2019): 32-56. [Optional]
Green, Monica H. “Taking “Pandemic” Seriously: Making the Black Death Global.” Pandemic Disease in the Medieval World: Rethinking the Black Death. Ed. Monica Green. ARC Press. 2014. 27-62. [Optional]
Zoom Link: https://uchicago.zoom.us/j/91868802391?pwd=eTRJY2RyQXI1TCsxbVd5Ui9rdlVHZz09
Please Contact Us or email Alexa Herlands at aherlands@uchicago.edu for the Zoom password.
Although readings are yet to be confirmed, the Lexicon Project hopes to continue our Fall 2021 schedule on Friday, October 22, Friday, November 5 and Friday, December 3.
SPRING QUARTER 2021:
Friday April 9 9:30am-11am CST
Marshall GS Hodgson, “The Interrelations of Societies in History,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 5.2 (1963): 227-250.
Geraldine Heng, “A Global Middle Ages,” in A Handbook of Middle English Studies, ed. by Marion Turner (Chichester, 2013), 413-429.
Kathleen Davis and Michael Puett, “Periodization and the ‘Medieval Globe’: A Conversation,” The Medieval Globe 2 (2015): 1-14.
Sierra Lomuto, “Becoming Postmedieval: The Stakes of the Global Middle Ages,” postmedieval 11 (2020): 503–512.
Recommended Reading
Sharon Kinoshita, “Deprovincializing the Middle Ages,” in The Worlding Project: Doing Cultural Studies in the Era of Globalization, ed. by Rob Wilson and Christopher Leigh Connery (Berkeley, 2007), 61-75.
Geraldine Heng, “The Global Middle Ages: an Experiment in Collaborative Humanities, or Imagining the World, 500-1500 C.E” English Language Notes 47 (2009): 205-216.
Jessica Berman, “Is the Trans in Transnational the Trans in Transgender?” Modernism / Modernity 2 (2017) https://modernismmodernity.
Patrick Boucheron, “Overture,” in France in the World, 2019 (2017), xxxi-xxxix.
Zoom link (please Contact Us for the password!): https://uchicago.zoom.us/j/97726593887?pwd=UC9kYW8reXRRZzkvcjRFZmFPRmkzZz09
Friday April 23, 9:30-11am CST
Shahab Ahmed, What is Islam? The Importance of Being Islamic (Princeton, 2016), selections from chapter 1 “Six Questions About Islam”.
François-Xavier Fauvelle-Aymar, The Golden Rhinoceros: Histories of the African Middle Ages, translated by Troy Trice (Princeton, 2018), introduction.
Monica Green, “The Four Black Deaths,” American Historical Review 125:5 (2020): 1601-31.
Cecily J. Hilsdale, “Worldliness in Byzantium and Beyond: Reassessing the Visual Networks of Barlaam and Ioasaph,” Medieval Globe 3.2 (2017): 57-96.
Marina Rustow, “Paper: The Search for a Sustainable Support,” in The Lost Archive: Traces of a Caliphate in a Cairo Synagogue (Princeton, 2020), 113-137.
Zoom link (please Contact Us for the password!): https://uchicago.zoom.us/j/98122907557?pwd=UTdWMHBmOVgrN0dyZXVSenErU3lMUT09
Friday May 7, 9:30-11am CST
Catherine Holmes and Naomi Standen, “Introduction: Towards a Global Middle Ages,” Past & Present 238, Suppl. 13 (November 2018): 1–44.
Caroline Dodds Pennock and Amanda Power, “Globalizing Cosmologies,” Past & Present 238, Suppl. 13 (November 2018): 88–115.
Alan Strathern, “Global Early Modernity and the Problem of What Came Before,” Past & Present 238, Suppl. 13 (November 2018): 317–344.
Recommended Reading
Glen Dudbridge, “Reworking the World System Paradigm,” Past & Present 238, Suppl. 13 (November 2018): 297–316.
Roy Flechner, “Review Essay: How Far is Global?” Medieval Worlds 12 (2020): 255–266.
Alex West, “The Hemispheric Middle Ages,” Medieval Indonesia, 28 October 2019, https://indomedieval.medium.com/the-hemispheric-middle-ages-part-i-173779f237f6
Shahab Ahmed, What is Islam? The Importance of Being Islamic (Princeton, 2016), further selections from chapter 1 “Six Questions About Islam”.
Zoom link (please Contact Us for the password!): https://uchicago.zoom.us/j/93299318779?pwd=OGswaEcybE5ONUlwME1WZUJkRXc5dz09
Friday May 28, 9:30-11am CST
James Cuno. “Epilogue: Global History and the Art Museum,” in Toward a Global Middle Ages: Encountering the World through Illuminated Manuscripts, edited by Bryan C. Keene (Los Angeles, 2019), 249–254.
Mamadi Dembélé, Ahmed Ettahiri, Youssef Khiara, and Yousuf Abdallah Usman. “Fragments at Risk: The Protection of Cultural Heritage in Mali, Morocco, and Nigeria,” in Caravans of Gold, Fragments in Time: Art, Culture, and Exchange across Medieval Saharan Africa, edited by Kathleen Bickford Berzock (Evanston, 2019), 75–87.
Dan Hicks. The Brutish Museums: The Benin Bronzes, Colonial Violence and Cultural Restitution (London, 2020), 1-36.
Yirga Gelaw Woldeyes. “Holding Living Bodies in Graveyards.” Africa Is a Country, January 21, 2021. https://africasacountry.com/2021/01/holding-living-bodies-in-graveyards
Recommended Readings
Andrea Myers Achi and Seeta Chaganti. “‘Semper novi quid ex Africa’: Redrawing the Borders of Medieval African Art and Considering Its Implications for Medieval Studies,” in Disturbing Times Medieval Pasts, Reimagined Futures, edited by Catherine Karkov, Anna Kłosowska, and Vincent W.J. van Gerven Oei (Santa Barbara, 2020), 73–106.
Flaminia Gennari-Santori, “An Art Collector and His Friends: John Pierpont Morgan and the Globalization of Medieval Art.” Journal of the History of Collections 27. 3 (2015): 401–411.
Questionnaire: “Decolonization.” October 174 (2020). Selections: Andrea Carlson (Ojibwe) (pp. 17-19), Elise Y. Chagas, Isabela Muci Barradas, and Paulina Pineda (pp. 20-26), Hannah Feldman (pp. 44-48).
NB: Participants unfamiliar with museum practices may also wish to consult John Zarobell, Art and the Global Economy (Oakland, California, 2017) for insight into how globalization is transforming collecting and exhibition practices, particularly the chapters “Museum Funding: Who Shapes Institutions?,” “Expansion and Diversification of Auction Houses,” and “The Art Market in the Margins.”
Zoom link (please Contact Us for the password!): https://uchicago.zoom.us/j/98640142782?pwd=SXM4enFicklJZjB5dk1jSFJKV1JEQT09