Dear colleagues and students,
The Program in Cultures, Civilizations and Ideas cordially invites you to its next colloquium talk: a presentation by Dr. Dorothy Kim, Assistant Professor of English Literature at Vassar College on “Jewish/Christian Relations and the Egerton Hours.” Dr. Kim will unfold how medieval English manuscript culture relates to dialogue between religious communities. An abstract for Dr. Kim’s talk is below.
The talk will take place in the Bilkent Library Orientation Room from 12:40 to approximately 13:20 on Tuesday, March 22, followed by time for questions. Sandwiches and fruit juice will be available.
Best wishes,
CCI Colloquium Committee
William Coker and Sjoerd Levelt
Tuesday, March 22, 12:40-14:00. Bilkent Library Orientation Room:
Dr. Dorothy Kim, Vassar College,
“Jewish / Christian Relations and the Egerton Hours.”
In examining the relationship of Ancrene Wisse and the Egerton Hours, both of thirteenth-century provenance, this talk concerns itself with the entangled worlds of female Christian readers, male Christian book producers and illuminators, and the Jews living in their midst. It will examine especially the Egerton Hours, a thirteenth-century Oxford Book of Hours (c. 1270) and its production history in
relation to the William of Devon Group. In
particular, it will raise questions about how we can
conceptualize the entangled medieval process
whereby Christian devotional art is realized and
recalibrated in relation to Jewishness. As well as
accounting for the gender dynamics in texts such as
these—especially within the triangulated relation
between female reader and (often) commissioner,
male scribe and illuminator, and the image of male
Jewishness—this article will draw upon the theories
of entanglement and ‘intra- action’, as posited by
Karen Barad, to deconstruct the totalizing idea of a
‘grotesque hall’ of antisemitic images, particularly those appearing in the Egerton Hours. Finally, it will evaluate how the interactions of these groups gather together for moments of ‘intra-action’ on the manuscript page in order to produce Christian material devotion for female lay communities.