Rider Conference Will Explore Medieval and Early Modern Culture

Rider University, in association the Delaware Valley Medieval Association, will host a conference entitled The Hidden and the Revealed in Medieval and Early Modern Culture on Wednesday, February 11, on its Lawrenceville campus. This free, one-day symposium is open to all and will begin at 9:45 a.m. in the Fireside Lounge, located on the third floor of the Bart Luedeke Center.

This interdisciplinary conference will explore revelation and concealment in medieval and early modern culture. The Hidden and the Revealed in Medieval and Early Modern Culture will be highlighted by a keynote address from Ingrid Rowland, an internationally prominent scholar of early modern culture, who will discuss The Subterranean World of Athanasius Kircher. Rowland, a professor at the University of Notre Dame School of Architecture in Rome, writes and lectures on classical antiquity, the Renaissance and the Age of the Baroque for general as well as specialist readers.

A frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books, she is the author of The Culture of the High Renaissance: Ancients and Moderns in Sixteenth-Century Rome (1998), The Scarith of Scornello: A Tale of Renaissance Forgery (2004) and From Heaven to Arcadia (2005), a collection of essays. Rowland has been a Fellow of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, the American Academy in Rome, the Villa I Tatti in Florence and the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles.

Rowland’s most recent book is Giordano Bruno: Philosopher/Heretic, about which the historian Anthony Grafton recently wrote, “Anyone interested in … exploring the real worlds Bruno knew, from royal courts to Inquisition prisons, should do so, from now on, in Ingrid Rowland’s erudite and elegant company.” Rowland’s keynote address, which will be introduced by Deborah Rosenthal, professor of Fine Arts at Rider, will begin at 4:30 p.m. and, like the entire conference schedule, will be open to the general public.

Session 1 of  The Hidden and the Revealed in Medieval and Early Modern Culture, tabbed Bodies and Spaces, will run from 9:45 to 11:15 a.m. and be chaired by Margaret Schleissner, professor of German at Rider. Speakers include:

• Linda Carreiro of the University of Calgary, Revealing the Anatomical Body: Inscriptions within Early Modern Dissection Culture;
• Timothy  McCall of Villanova University, The Signore Hidden and Revealed: the Coretto of Pier Maria Rossi of Parma; and
• Joseph Salvatore Ackley of New York University, Increasingly Improper: 13th and 14th Century Manuscript Illuminations of Biblical Sodomites.

Session 2, from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. is entitled World and Image, and is chaired by Vanita Neelakanta, assistant professor of English at Rider. She will be joined by speakers:

• Matthew Boyd Goldie of Rider University, The Global South of Medieval Maps;
• Dominick Finello of Rider University, Cultural Landscapes and Esthetic Norms in the Quijote; and
• Geoffrey Shamos of the University of Pennsylvania, A Crucial Divide: Visions of Zechariah in the Hortus Deliciarum, fols. 64v. and 65r.

The third and final session, Names and Powers, is scheduled for 2:30 to 4 p.m. and will be chaired by Mary Morse, associate professor of English at Rider. Speakers for Session 3 include:

• Nick Welding of Georgia State University, Unmasking the World: Galileo and Authorship;
• Laura Levine of New York University, Magic and Counter-magic: Spectacles of Visibility; and
• Robert J. Dobie of LaSalle University, The Hidden and the Revealed in Medieval Philosophy.

The three sessions will be followed by a reception in the Rider University Art Gallery from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m., where the exhibition Idol/Idyll: Figure and Landscape is being shown. Idol/Idyll: Figure and Landscape features sculpture by Barbara Goodstein and paintings by Deborah Rosenthal, who is also the exhibit’s curator.

For further information, please contact Adriano Duque at 609-895-5596 or Deborah Rosenthal at 609-895-5589.

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