First Annual Carl Sheppard Memorial Lecture in Medieval Studies, Thursday, October 25, 7:30 p.m.
Professor Robert S. Nelson, Yale University: "'Lords of One Quarter and One Half Quarter of the Empire of Romania': Byzantine Art and State Authority in Venice"
Part of the James Ford Bell Library "Celebrating Venice!" series
"Once did she hold the gorgeous East in fee And was the safeguard of the West..." Wordsworth thus begins a sonnet, titled "On the Extinction of the Venetian Republic," written in 1802 after the city had fallen to Napoleon. The English poet had learned well an insistent theme of Venetian political propaganda. Although the historical reality was more complex, the message was essential to Venetian identity, and art and spoils of victory over Byzantium played an important role in maintaining this and other myths of the city. This lecture will examine the Venetians use and adaptation of Byzantine artifacts during and after the Middle Ages.
Robert Nelson is a professor of the History of Art at Yale University, where he studies and teaches medieval art, mainly in the Eastern Mediterranean, and the history and methods of art history. He was the co-curator of Holy Image, Hallowed Ground: Icons from Sinai at the J. Paul Getty Museum in 2006-2007. His book, Hagia Sophia, 1850-1950 (2004), asks how the cathedral of Constantinople, once ignored or despised, came to be regarded as one of the great monuments of world architecture. Current projects involve art and the ideology of war, the social lives of illuminated Greek manuscripts in Byzantium and their reception in Renaissance Italy, the artistic perception of light in the Middle Ages, and the collecting of Byzantine art in twentieth-century Europe and America.
Among Professor Nelson's many other publications are Later Byzantine Painting: Art, Agency, and Appreciation (2007) and, as co-editor, The Old Testament in Byzantium (with Paul Magdalino, 2010); San Marco, Byzantium and the Myths of Venice (with Henry Maguire, 2010); and Approaching the Holy Mountain: Art and Liturgy at St. Catherine's Monastery in the Sinai (with Sharon Gerstel, 2011).
Rosemary Stanfield-Johnson is a professor of Religious History in the Department of History at the University of Minnesota, Duluth. Professor Stanfield-Johnson's research focus is late medieval and early modern Iranian history, Shi'i political and popular culture, and popular sectarian literature. Her publications include "The Tabarra'iyan and the Early Safavids" (2004), "Sunni Survival in Safavid Iran: Anti-Sunni Activities during the Reign of Tahmasp I" (1994), "Yuzbashi-yi Kurd Bacheh and 'Abd al-Mu'min Khan the Uzbek: A Tale of Revenge in the Dastan of Husayn Kurd" (2007), and "The Hyderabad Connection in the Dastan of Hoseyn Kord" (2004). She is currently working on a book on the theology, the politics, and the practice of public ritual in 16th century Iran. 
Anatoly Liberman, professor of German, Scandinavian and Dutch at the University of Minnesota, will speak to us on the topic of "Who was Odin, and Why Did People Fear Him?" Prof. Liberman has published widely across the spectrum of Germanic linguistics, but his primary interest has been the history of English words. His many works include the recent publication of a popular book for lay readers entitled Word Origins... and How We Know Them: Etymology for Everyone (2005), as well as An Analytic Dictionary of English Etymology (2008), and A Bibliography of English Etymology (2009). 
Claire Waters, professor of English at the University of California - Davis, will speak to us about "Loving Teaching: Status, Exchange and Translation in 13th c. Didactic Poetry." She studies late-medieval literature and culture, with particular interests in saints' lives, preaching, Chaucer, manuscript culture and the Old French fabliaux. She is a member of the editorial board of the Broadview Anthology of British Literature. Her recent work includes Virgins and Scholars: A Fifteenth-Century Compilation of the Lives of John the Baptist, John the Evangelist, Jerome, and Katherine of Alexandria (2008), "The Labor of Aedificatio and the Business of Preaching in the Thirteenth Century" (2007), and Angels and Earthly Creatures: Preaching, Performance, and Gender in the Later Middle Ages (2004).
Eric Carlson is a professor of History at Gustavus Adolphus College. Carlson has published three books: Marriage and the English Reformation (1994), 'Practical Divinity': The Works and Life of Revd Richard Greenham (with Kenneth L. Parker, 1998), and (as editor and contributor) Religion and the English People 1500-1640: New Voices/New Perspectives (1998). He also published several articles and essays on aspects of 16th and 17th century English religion, most notably the controversial "Clerical Marriage and the English Reformation (1992), "The origins, function, and status of the office of churchwarden, with particular reference to the diocese of Ely" (1995), "The Boring of the Ear: Shaping the Pastoral Practice of Preaching in England, 1540-1640" (2001), and "Good Pastors or Careless Shepherds? Parish Ministers and the English Reformation" (2003).
