The 40th annual Sewanee Medieval Colloquium met at the University of the South, April 4-5, 2014. The theme of this year’s colloquium was “Medieval Emotions,” and the meeting will include papers and roundtables discussing medieval literature, music, art, history, philosophy and religion. The colloquium featured plenary lectures by William M. Reddy (Duke University) and Miri Rubin (Queen Mary, University of London). Dr. Reddy is the William T. Laprade Professor of History and Cultural Anthropology at Duke, and a major theorist of the emotions. His most recent book, The Making of Romantic Love: Longing and Sexuality in Europe, South Asia and Japan, 900-1200 CE (University of Chicago Press, 2012), explores the differing practices of “love” across medieval cultures, and won the 2013 David H. Pinkney Prize for the Society of French Historical Studies.
Miri Rubin is Professor of Medieval and Early Modern History and Head of the School of History; she studies the social and religious culture of Europe, and is the author of numerous books and articles on medieval culture and religion, including Corpus Christi: The Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture (Cambridge University Press, 1992) and Emotion and Devotion: The Meanings of Mary in Medieval Culture (Central European University Press, 2009) and Mother of God: A History of the Virgin Mary (Yale University Press, 2010). She often appears on the BBC to speak about the Middle Ages. The Sewanee Medieval Colloquium will also feature a roundtable on “Scholastic Emotion” led by Mark D. Jordan, Reverend Priscilla Wood Neaves Distinguished Professor of Religion and Politics at John C. Danforth Center for Religion and Politics (Washington University, St. Louis).
Dr. Jordan is the author of numerous books, including The Invention of Sodomy in Christian Theology (University of Chicago Press, 1997), The Ethics of Sex (Basil Blackwell, 2002), and Rewritten Theology: Aquinas After his Readers (Basil Blackwell, 2006), and was a Guggenheim Fellow in 1996-97. All events, excepting meals, were free and open to the Sewanee community. Professor Rubin’s lecture was at 9:30 AM, Friday, April 4; Professor Reddy’s lecture is at 4:30 PM, Saturday, April 5; Professor Jordan’s roundtable is at 10:30 AM, Saturday, April 5, all in Gailor Auditorium.