Upcoming Event: Matthew Goldie on the Antipodes

The Antipodes: Maps and Travel Literature about Another World

Matthew Goldie
Rider University

The antipodes—the places where people stand on the other “side” of the globe from Europe—are usually thought of in comical, satirical terms; the land and its inhabitants are upside-down, offering an inverted mirror for Europeans to see themselves. However, in the earlier Middle Ages, the antipodes engendered debates about the very existence of people and land in other places on the earth. Later, in the twelfth to fifteenth centuries, when theologians and others acknowledged the existence of the antipodes, the lands and their inhabitants troubled ways of thinking about the world. This presentation will briefly describe the earlier debates about the antipodes before exploring how the antipodes challenged the medieval geographical theories of Roger Bacon and others, the representation of the world on mappaemundi such as Lambert of St. Omer’s Liber floridus, and the discussions of circumnavigation in Caxton’s and Mandeville’s texts. Rather than reflecting Others for Europe’s conceptions of itself, the antipodes and antipodeans challenged epistemologies about the earth.

Matthew Goldie is Associate Professor of English at Rider University. He is the author of Middle English Literature: An Historical Sourcebook (Blackwell, 2003 & 2006), articles on Thomas Hoccleve and late-medieval drama, and a forthcoming book on the antipodes.


Friday, March 6, 2009, 7:30 PM
CUNY Graduate Center (365 Fifth Ave. @ 34th St.) Room C197
Reception, with wine and cheese, follows in Room 5109.

***PLEASE NOTE CHANGE IN ROOMS***

Upcoming Event:: Choirs of Angels at the Met

Choirs of Angels: Painting in Italian Choir Books, 1300-1500

Friday, February 6, 2009
6:30 PM
at The Metropolitan Museum of Art
(meet in the Medieval Sculpture Hall)

Barbara Boehm, Curator in the Department of Medieval Art and The Cloisters, will lead a tour of this special exhibition.

NYU English Medieval Forum Events, Spring 2009

We are pleased to announce the list of the Spring semester events for the NYU English Department Medieval Forum. Unless otherwise noted, the Medieval Forum meets on Thursday evenings at 6:30pm.

Please note that our talks will be held in various locations around NYU this semester. (Visitors from outside NYU should bring photo ID to sign into NYU buildings).

All are welcome!

If you have questions, contact Liza Blake, elizabeth[dot]blake[at]nyu[dot]edu.

NYU English Medieval Forum
Fall 2008 Events

February 5
"The Weight of the Past"
Jeffrey Cohen
(George Washington University)
19 University Place, Room 222
Reception at 6pm; lecture at 6:30pm
Co-sponsored with the Anglo-Saxon Studies Colloquium

February 19
"Wondering through the World: Ibn Battuta, the Muslim World, and the 'aja'ib narrative"
Christine Chism
(Rutgers University)
To be held at Columbia University at 6 pm (details TBA)
Co-sponsored with Columbia University

March 10 NEW DATE! Tuesday!
"Cures and Closures: Surgery, Intersex, and the Demands of Difference"
Leah DeVun
(Texas A&M University)
IHPK Conference Room, 285 Mercer Street, 10th Floor
Co-sponsored with CELCE

April 2
"Mythic Capital: Medievalism, Heritage Culture and the Order of the Garter, 1348-2008"
Stephanie Trigg
(University of Melbourne)
19 University Place, Room 222
Co-sponsored with the Medieval and Renaissance Center (MARC)

April 23
"The Politics of the Subjunctive"
Paul Strohm
(Columbia University)
Department of Classics, 100 Washington Square East, Silver Center 503

Jeffrey Jerome Cohen at New York University

The NYU English Department's Medieval Forum and the Anglo Saxon Studies Colloquium present:

"The Weight of the Past"

Jeffrey Jerome Cohen
(The George Washington University)

Thursday, Feb. 5
Reception 6:00pm
Lecture 6:30pm

Room 222 of 19 University Place
(visitors from outside NYU should bring photo ID to sign into the building).

A schedule of Spring Medieval Forum events will follow shortly. If you have questions, contact Liza Blake, elizabeth[dot]blake[at]nyu[dot]edu.

Upcoming Event: Cary Howie, December 5

Waiting for the Middle Ages
Cary Howie
Cornell University

What would it mean to wait for the Middle Ages? This talk is an exercise in a poetics of expectation; or, better yet, a poetics of attention, inwhich what we're looking at, what we're attending to, is also what we're waiting for. After all, the Middle Ages, like all the other kinds of middle age, are tough to isolate and quantify; their time repeatedly threatens to disrupt the time of criticism. This may be to ask, for example, what Marie Howe has in common with Tristan; or what the peasants of medieval pastoral share with Odysseus; but it is, above all, to ask what it means to have something in common, and how a past, no less than a future, is something that can all too easily be foreclosed.

Cary Howie is Assistant Professor of French Literature at Cornell University. He is the author of Claustrophilia: The Erotics of Enclosure in Medieval Literature (Palgrave, 2007).

Friday, December 5, 2008, 7:30 PM
CUNY Graduate Center (365 Fifth Ave. @ 34th St.)
Room 4406.
Reception, with wine and cheese, follows.