Prof. Lester | AS.100.416

History through Things | Fall 2020 1

AS.100.416

History through Things: Objects, Circulations, and Encounters in the Medieval World

Prof. Anne E. Lester

And two Indian nuts (coconuts) for drinking with silver feet (Item et due nuces indie ad potandum cum pedibus argenti) similar to that

referenced in Marseille inventory, 23 Aug 1295. See: https://public.dalme.org/features/a-pair-of-coconut-shell-goblets/

Seminar

Fall 2020 | Tuesdays 1:30-4pm | Online Office Hours: Thursdays, 2-4 pm -- by appointment so I can set up zoom meetings

Course Description How do we write history through things? How do we tell the past differently if we use objects to lead the way? What sorts of ideas and concepts, experiences and emotions, practices and beliefs do objects and material things convey? What perspectives can a focus on things offer that move historians beyond the purview of the written text? The medieval world was steeped in objects, far more so than texts. Only recently, however, have historians turned to things to find new histories, to ask new questions, and offer up new narratives of the past. Together we will use objects as our guide in uncovering and recovering histories of the medieval world. This course will range widely. We will follow the circulation of things and people; we will look for objects as they are preserved in written lists, romances, letters, inventories, descriptions and in the archaeological record, in museum collections, and private troves. Uncovering and thinking with objects is not always easy. We will spend as much time examining and analyzing objects in the medieval world as we will considering methodologies for their interpretation and use as historical sources.

Objects that persist over time, in descriptions or as physically preserved things from the medieval period reveal different layers of that past. They hold a history of their materials, their making, and their changing meaning as they moved through time. Considerations of an object’s materiality reveal still more layers of past experience, often many more than texts alone. Moreover, objects open to us the worlds of those who could not write: the experiences of peasants, women, travelers, knights, and slaves, as well as of the objects themselves. This course asks us to consider closely what attention to materiality can do for historians: when it works and when it does not, what are its benefits and where do its limitations lie? Course Goals and Ambitions *To engage students in an in-depth study of the medieval world through texts and objects.

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* To investigate how objects and things aid in seeing, framing and analyzing the past differently. * To perceive, define, and understand connectivity, circulation, and encounter through the lens of things. * To consider the effects of thinking about people as things; and subjects as objects. * To enhance research skills and critical inquiry to make arguments grounded in contextualization and

comparison. * To question and understand different forms of historical narratives and argumentation. * To produce a final research paper project (15-20 pages) that reflects your accumulated knowledge in

the class. Assignments and Evaluation Weekly Writing and Discussion (40%) Open, engaged and reflective discussion is the backbone of the seminar. For this to be a successful class, everyone is asked to come prepared and eager to talk about the readings and the ideas they generate for you. This semester, our format will be slightly different over zoom, but the goal is still to generate an on-going conversation about the medieval world. We will need to be patient and generous with each other, with our technologies and personal circumstances, but I am confident that we can have a meaningful discussion each week.

Writing is a fundamental to how we express our ideas and to help us evolve and reckon with our thinking. Writing also helps us process and understand new interpretations and different perspectives. Even as historians take on new modes of expression like online writing in blogposts, tweets and podcasts, writing is still fundamental to the work we do. To this end, you are asked to write weekly critical terms and keyword reading reflections (10 in total). These are not meant to be polished and perfected pieces of writing, but rather to encourage the flow of ideas, the synthesis of material, and to help you reflect on what we’ve read and to generate questions in turn. Sometimes I will ask you to engage in a specific writing exercise, but most often I ask that you generate a list of several 4-5 critical terms and keywords that can help us generate a holistic and meaningful conversation about the big ideas contained in the readings. Choose 2 or 3 that you would like to elaborate on and write a couple of sentences about each. I am assigning these in lieu of more formal response papers (or something similar). If I get the feeling that students are not putting much thought or consideration into their keywords, then I will switch to the old-fashioned response paper model. You should plan to write about 500 words or so for each of these reflections. I will also ask you to share 2-3 critical questions that emerge for you from the readings.

Your reading reflections should be submitted to me 24 hours before our class meeting, therefore by Monday at 1:30 each week. Please email them to me and I will read and offer comments before we meet the following day. I will also use your response to guide our discussion. Things in Context: Object Exhibition (15%) On Week 10 you will not have a writing assignment, but rather you are asked to curate one room of a virtual museum exhibit designed around an object of your choice, ideally one that will be form part of your final paper. The exhibit should take the form of a virtual museum tour which would contextualize your object in relation to similar things, identify and comment on its place of origin, its use, its materials, its preservation: all the things that come across to us when we visit a museum exhibit on a dedicated theme. The assignment is the first step (a research practicum) in beginning the process of research for the final research paper that will be the capstone of the class. All research begins with creating a context for an idea, event, person or object; in our case the focus is a material object of significance from the medieval world. You will have ample time to identify an object of interest and to begin to consider, where

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and how it was made, who possessed it, what it meant, what other examples existed that gave it meaning, and how it relates to other things in the past. For this assignment I encourage you to use the program known as ArtSteps, which facilitates building a virtual exhibit. If this seems to complex or is not idea for your project you may also use PowerPoint or a similar platform to generate your room of the exhibit. Traveler’s Tale: Telling the History of a Thing (15%) During the final week of class, you are asked to complete and submit a podcast recording (no longer than 8 mins) telling the story of the movement of an object related to your final research paper. Your podcast is a telling of the past in oral form and asks that you think about and reveal the history of a thing as it moved over space and through time to the present day. For this assignment you are asked to think about sounds, spaces, places, peoples, that your object may have encountered and how it was shaped or affected by those in turn. This assignment asks you to tell the past in a different way, offering a different register than we often use when we engage in formal academic writing. Yet it is also meant to be a step in the process of completing the final research paper (a research practicum 3). Generating the podcast will help you sharpen your argument and help you consider the significance of your research question. Ideally, during the final week of class, we will share our podcasts with the class and received feedback from our peers. Final Research Paper (30%) In consultation with the professor, you will identify a research topic that will build over the course of the semester through the scaffolded assignments listed above (research practicum 1-3). This paper will allow you to explore the place of a specific medieval object, to consider its creation, making and meaning and to follow its movements over time and space. More details about the final paper will be circulated throughout the semester. The goal is to generate an engaged, argumentative piece of writing that allows you to explore both material objects from the medieval past but also strategies for writing about and with things. The paper should be 15-20 pages and should follow the formal guidelines circulated during the semester. In Sum…. Grading Breakdown: 40% Active and engaged participation in discussion; submission of keywords/critical terms for each

class meeting (10 in total). Due the Mondays before each class meeting by 1:30p. This includes being vigilant about attendance, and meeting with me to discuss your ideas and argument for your final research paper and the assignments that lead you there.

5% Due Friday, October 16 by NOON. Research Practicum 1. Preliminary research paper proposal and bibliography. You must meet with me at least once to discuss this project.

15% Due Friday, November 6 by NOON. Research Practicum 2. Things in Context: Object Exhibition. Virtual Museum Exhibit. You must meet with me at least once to discuss this project.

15% Due Friday, December 4 by NOON. Research Practicum 3. Traveler’s Tale: Telling the History of a Thing. Podcast presentation of your paper. You must meet with me at least once to discuss this project.

25% Due Friday, December 18 by NOON. Final research paper on a topic of your choice dealing with some aspect of History through Objects – ca. 15-20 pages in length. The final grade for this paper will have built into it the paper proposal generated in Week 7 (5%) and will build upon the research you do on the previous exhibit and podcast assignments above.

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Class Policies and Professor’s Quirks: • Feel free to come and talk/schedule a zoom meeting with me during office hours for any reason

whatsoever! You are especially encouraged to do so if you find yourself having trouble keeping up! • This is a relatively new class for me, and so I welcome suggestions from you to help improve the

course and urge you to share them with me during the term. If there are aspects about our zoom meetings and discussions that are not running well for you, please let me know so I can think about ways to tweak our format and respond as best as possible. Class via zoom is new to all of us and will take some time to get used to.

• I care about attendance and punctuality. I expect you to attend every class meeting. More than one unexcused absence from class will lower your final grade for the course. Chronic lateness to class will similarly lower your final grade, as will chronic silence. If you cannot attend class, if you become ill, if there is a last minute change in your schedule please email me beforehand!

• Please come to class prepared. What does this mean? I expect for you to have read the assigned readings for class carefully and thoughtfully. When you come to class, I expect you to have a few concepts in mind that you would like to talk about. That is, just doing the reading is not enough – I expect you to reflect on it. What issues are raised? How does this material relate to the course as a whole? Is the reading controversial or questionable in any way? Does it raise questions for you? The weekly reading reflections are intended to help you generate these ideas in advance.

• Assignments are due on their due date. (Ideally!) – That said, we are in a very different moment this semester and I anticipate and understand that things in all of our lives may change, become more challenging as the semester progresses, and that at certain times you may need more time to complete an assignment. This is not my preference for you, but if that become an issue, please email me as soon as possible and we will find a workable solution.

• Since we learn less and remember less when we multitask: o I ask you to refrain from taking notes on your laptop during class. You may look at notes as

we meet, but please take class notes in a notebook. o Please silence your cell phone during class. Do not text or check for or send messages during

class meetings. • Thanks for taking care of your physical needs BEFORE class meets – it is distracting to have students

leave the room/zoom meeting for bathroom breaks. I will be sure to build such breaks into our seminar meetings. Similarly, please do not turn off your zoom screens during class, you need to present at all times during class.

Texts and Class Resources I have tried to limit the books for purchase to only the absolute minimum. All of the readings and sources referenced below will be available digitally online. Most readings are accessible through the library e-reserves and there is a link to the weekly readings at the topic of our Blackboard course page. Some weeks I will offer links to additional sources, to museum collections, and to useful resources, all of which I will put in folders and assignment rubrics accessible through Blackboard.

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Books for Purchase: Geoffrey de Villehardouin and Jean de Joinville, Chronicles of the Crusades, trans. Caroline Smith (New York: Penguin, 2008). ISBN: 9780140449983.

Recommended:

Edmund De Waal, The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Hidden Inheritance (New York: Vintage, 2011). ISBN-10: 0099539551. (You will have the option to read along and to discussion and reference throughout the semester.)

Useful Digital and Online Resources: The Douay-Rheims Bible online: www.drbo.org The Latin Vulgate Bible online: www.latinvulgate.com Erik Kwakkel’s tumblr: http://erikkwakkel.tumblr.com/ Discarding Images: http://discardingimages.tumblr.com/ Looking beneath the Surface of Medieval Manuscripts: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/peering-beneath-the-surface-of-ancient-manuscripts/ The Getty’s Iris, post on exclusion in MMs: http://blogs.getty.edu/iris/dialogue-exposing-the-rhetoric-of-exclusion-through-medieval-manuscripts/ Map of Digitized MMs throughout the world: http://digitizedmedievalmanuscripts.org/app/ Wellcome Library Blog (super cool medical mss!): http://blog.wellcomelibrary.org/tag/medieval-manuscripts/ The Middle Ages for Educators (useful links and digital tools): http://middleagesforeducators.com British Library MM Blog: http://blogs.bl.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/ Musée du Louvre, Paris: https://www.louvre.fr/en Musée du Cluny, Paris: https://www.musee-moyenage.fr/en/home.html Cleveland Museum of Art: https://www.clevelandart.org Walters Museum of Art: https://thewalters.org Metropolitan Museum of Art: https://www.metmuseum.org The Met Cloisters, New York: https://www.metmuseum.org/visit/plan-your-visit/met-cloisters … more useful links will be added to our Blackboard site and to this Syllabus document

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Weekly Schedule of Classes, Reading & Assignments Week I: [1 Sept] Introductions to the Class and the Subject Before we meet have a look at: Begin to look through Elina Gertsman and Barbara H. Rosenwein, The Middle Ages in 50 Objects

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018) – Fully available online via Library Catalog: https://www-cambridge-org.proxy1.library.jhu.edu/core/books/middle-ages-in-50-objects/7790E73257A1021E779B0C35B4CF8166

For our first class meeting we will discuss the format of the course, its goals and objectives, and go over the syllabus, and establish some guidelines for discussion and classroom community.

***

P A R T I : O B J E C T S A N D / I N T E X T : F i n d i n g T h i n g s i n t h e P a s t Week 2: [8 Sept] History with Things: Historians, Objects, and the Material Turn Read: Leora Auslander, “Beyond Words,” The American Historical Review 110 (2005): 1015-1045. Tim Ingold, “Materials Against Materiality,” Archaeological Dialogues 14 (2007): 1-16. Frank Trentmann, “Materiality in the Future of History: Things, Practices, and Politics,” Journal of British

Studies 48 (2009): 283-307. Sampling of Medieval Things: Choose one object from The Middle Ages in 50 Objects that you find

especially intriguing and be prepared to say why. It may help to write your thoughts in a paragraph or bullet points.

Weekly Writing: Taking our cues from Ingold, find a stone or other small object and set it near you or in front of your computer as you read and consider the role of things in our lives. In one-page or less write about your object or your stone: what does it look like, where did it come from (an alley, back garden, pathway or long held collection); what kind of stone is it; what is it made of or what is embedded in it; what sorts of ideas, associations, memories does it provoke for you; how does it connect you to the use and existence of materials around you? Consider how materials play a role in our experiences of the world. Identify 3-5 keywords from the readings that resonate for you and that provoke questions. Generate 2-3 critical questions that the readings have left unanswered. For the next class meeting, find or make a list: it can be a grocery list, a packing list, a list of books you read over the summer, etc. Have it on hand for next week.

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Week 3: [15 Sept] The Indian Ocean: Making a World from a List

Fragments of biblical texts in the Cairo Geniza

Read: Primary Text: “Abraham’s List,” from Lambourn, Abraham’s Luggage, pp. 252-267. ** Marina Rustow, The Lost Archive: Traces of a Caliphate in a Cairo Synagogue (Princeton: Princeton

University Press, 2020), 23-54. Elizabeth A. Lambourn, Abraham’s Luggage: A Social Life of Things in the Medieval Indian Ocean World

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), 1-103. Igor Kopytoff, “The Cultural Biography of Things: Commoditization as Process,” in The Social Life of

Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective, ed. Arjun Appadurai (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 64-91.

Prof. Solomon Schechter, examining Geniza documents in Cambridge University (ca. 1898)

Weekly Writing: Identify 3-5 keywords from the readings that resonate for you and that provoke questions. Consider how lists of objects key to or index needs, wants, behaviors, and practices in the past or yet to

come. How can we use lists as historians to think about and reconstruct the past? What are their limitations? What does your list (which you should be willing to share with the class) say about you? Are there more complex ideas under the surface of lists? Emotions, memories, worries?

Generate 2-3 critical questions that the readings have left unanswered.

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Week 4: [22 Sept] The Ecologies of Objects: Cultural Production and the Nature of Things

Medieval chestnut trees, C initial, in Régime du corps, France, Rouen, ca. 1440-1450 Morgan MS M.0165, fol. 88r

Read: Primary Text: “The Cluniac Sign Lexicon” in Scott G. Bruce, Silence and Sign Language in Medieval Monasticism

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), Appendix A, 177-182. Read with Bruce, Silence and Sign Language, chapter 3, 77-97. ** Paulo Squatriti, Landscape and Change in Early Medieval Italy: Chestnuts, Economy, and Culture

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), chapter 1-3, pp. 1-129. Richard C. Hoffman, “Economic Development and Aquatic Ecosystems in Medieval Europe,” The American

Historical Review 101 (1996): 631-669. Aden Kumler, “Manufacturing the Sacred in the Middle Ages: The Eucharist and Other Medieval Works of

Ars,” English Language Notes: Special Issue on Medieval Materiality 53 (2015): 9-44. You may also look at: Lambourn, Abraham’s Luggage, chapter. 6: “The ‘Simple’ Bare Necessities: On Water and Rice,” 165-188

Medieval monk fish, marginal manuscript detail. Weekly Writing: Identify 3-5 keywords from the readings that resonate for you and that provoke questions. Consider how the Cluniac sign list might allow historians to reconstruct the ecology of eleventh-century Burgundy: what did monks wear, use, eat? What was most important to them as reflected through these things? How do language and objects relate or reflect one another? How do animals like fish reshape, silently and without texts, our environments and ecologies? Generate 2-3 critical questions that the readings have left unanswered.

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Week 5: [29 Sept] Objects of Knowledge: Monastic Books in Medieval Normandy Read: Primary Texts: Compare the library booklists at Le Bec and Fécamp (see articles below. I know these lists are in Latin. Do

your best to pull out books, that is, authors and titles that you might recognize or be able to translate).

Betty Branch, “Inventories of the Library of Fécamp from the Eleventh and Twelfth Century,” Manuscirpta 23 (1979): 159-172.

Laura Cleaver, “The Monastic Library at Le Bec,” (Chapter 7) and Jenny Weston, “Manuscripts and Book Production at Le Bec,” (Chapter 6), both in A Companion to the Abbey of Le Bec in the Central Middle Ages (11th -13th Centuries), ed. Benjamin Pohl and Laura L. Gathagan (Leiden: Brill, 2018), pp. 171-205 and 144-170.

NB: Read in this order. Consider the survival rate of manuscripts when comparing the two lists at the end of each article.

** Pascale Bourgain, “The Circulation of Texts in Manuscript Culture,” in The Medieval Manuscript Book:

Cultural Approaches, ed. Michael Johnston and Michael an Dussen (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), pp. 140-159.

Carol Symes, “Manuscript Matrix: Modern Canon,” in Oxford Twenty-First Century Approaches to Literature: Middle English, ed. Paul Strohm (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 7-22.

Recommended: Extraordinary Manuscripts: Christopher de Hamel, Meeting with Remarkable Manuscripts: Twelve Journeys into the Medieval World

(New York and London: Penguin, 2016), Chapter 6: “Hugh Pector” pp. 232-279, and/or Chapter 8 “The Carmina Buriana,” pp. 330-375.

Pages from the Nowell Codex, from Electronic Beowulf, http://ebeowulf.uky.edu/#nowellcodex

Weekly Writing: Identify 3-5 keywords from the readings that resonate for you and that provoke questions. Consider the booklists carefully and from them reconstruct the reading life of a Norman monk. What sorts of things did monks read in the 11th and 12th centuries? Who else was reading and writing at that time? What did these texts offer up and what do they tell us about the imaginative and intellectual worlds of Christian monks? What does it mean when texts are bound together? How does that inform our perspective on the past? Do you possess an unusual gathering of texts? Generate 2-3 critical questions that the readings have left unanswered.

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Week 6: [6 Oct]: Objects of/in Romance

France, Roman de la Rose, ca. 1320 Morgan, MS .372 fol. 2v, image of Avarice and her objects of desire

Read: Primary Texts: Robert of Clari, The Conquest of Constantinople, trans. Edgar Holmes McNeal (New York: Columbia

University Press, rpt. 2005). (It's a short text, read in full. Available online: https://www-fulcrum-org.proxy1.library.jhu.edu/concern/monographs/3197xm36t

Marie de France, “La Fresne” (The Ash Tree) in The Lais of Marie de France: Text and Translation (Broadview Editions), ed. And trans. Claire M. Waters (Toronto: Broadview Press, 2018).

Geoffrey de Villehardouin and Jean de Joinville, Chronicles of the Crusades, trans. Caroline Smith (New York: Penguin, 2008), Two Crusade Songs, 337-345.

** Katherine C. Little, “The Politics of Lists,” Exemplaria 31 (2019): 117-128. Anne E. Lester, “What Remains: Women, Relics and Remembrance in the Aftermath of the Fourth

Crusade” Journal of Medieval History 40 (2014): 311-328. Sharon Kinoshita, “The Poetics of Translatio: French-Byzantine Relations in Chrétien de Troyes’s Cligés,’’

Exemplaria 8.2 (1996): 315-354. Weekly Writing: Identify 3-5 keywords from the readings that resonate for you and that provoke questions. Consider the role of objects and tokens in these memoires and literary texts. What sorts of meaning to objects encode? How to they function as gifts, tokens, mementos? How might a history of emotions help us to think about what stories and ideas objects carry with them? What is the role of translation in the movement of things? Generate 2-3 critical questions that the readings have left unanswered.

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Week 7: [13 Oct]: Research Week & Personal Meetings This week we will not meet together as a class, rather I ask you meet with me separately to discuss your final paper project. Please email me to set up a zoom meeting. By the end of the week, your first RESEARCH PRACTICUM 1 (5%) is due Friday Oct. 16th. Choose an object or a set of things that you would like to focus on for your final research paper project. In 1-2 pages: (a) describe the object (or things) in detail and do your best, recognizing we are still early on in the process, (b) to reconstruct a biography for it. Then, (c) lay out a research agenda for the next steps you will take to learn more and to begin to formulate a thesis about your things. Finally, (d) include a preliminary bibliography which includes (at least 2 primary sources, 3-5 books, and 5-7 articles). Proposals (encompassing parts a-d) should be ca. 5-pages total.

Lady Philosophy’s instructions to her pupils, line-drawing, ca. 11th century

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P A R T I I : M A T E R I A L S a n d M A K I N G o f O B J E C T S For the next three weeks of the course we will pay close attention to materials and materiality, that is, what the materials and making of objects can tell us about their meaning, value, and persistence over time. Taking a materialities approach asks that we look behind the biographies of our objects to probe what other meaning their materials held for those who created and preserved them. Why wrap desiccated bones in gold? Why write on pig and calf skins? Why make fine cloth from hemp fiber? What do such practices tell us about the society that made use of material in these ways? How do such material practices reflect on the social ecologies of the medieval world? * Begin to consider and compile images and things for your object exhibit assignment.

Borghorster Reliquary Cross, Germany, St.Nikomedes, ca. 1050

Week 8: [20 Oct] Sticks and Stones: Reliquaries & the Language of Enshrinement Read: Primary Text: “Abbey of Clairvaux’s Treasury Inventory,” text and translation A. E. Lester as a PDF (I will

circulate) ** Julian Luxford, “Recording and Curating Relics at Westminster Abbey in the Late Middle Ages,” Journal of

Medieval History 45 (2019): 204-230. Caravans of Gold, Fragments of Time: Art, Culture, and Exchange Across Medieval Saharan Africa, ed.

Kathleen Bickford Berzock (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019), chapter 1, pp. 23-37, chapter 12, pp. 175-202; and chapter 14, pp. 213-222.

Joseph Ackley, “Copper-Alloy Substrates in Precious-Metal Treasury Objects: Concealed and Yet Excessive,” Different Visions: A Journal of New Perspectives on Medieval Art (4 (2014): 1-34 (online).

Holger A. Klein, “Eastern Objects and Western Desires: Relics and Reliquaries Between Byzantium and the West,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 58 (2004): 283-314.

Elina Gertsman, “Matter Matters” in Feeling Things: Objects and Emotions through History, ed. Stephanie Downes, Sally Holloway, and Sarah Randles (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018/online 2020), 1-19.

Weekly Writing: Identify 3-5 keywords from the readings that resonate for you and that provoke questions. Consider the medieval life of gold: what routes did it travel? How was it used and reused? What did gold do for relics and how was it important for the process of enshrinement? Did decoration enhance the material quality of relics, or create a juxtaposition? What did such paradoxes do for medieval viewers and for the devout? What kinds of arguments can historians make from inventories of precious objects? Generate 2-3 critical questions that the readings have left unanswered.

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Week 9: [27 Oct] Skin and Bones: Parchment, Ivory, and the Senses

Scribe purchasing parchment, Hamburg Bible, 1255 (Copenhagen, RL. MS 4, 2o) f. 183v.

(see https://brewminate.com/making-medieval-manuscripts/) Readings: Raymond Clemens and Timothy Graham, Introduction to Manuscript Studies (Ithaca: Cornell University

Press, 2007), 1-35. Bruce Holsinger, “Of Pigs and Parchment: Medieval Studies and the Coming of the Animal,” PLMA 124

(2009): 216-623. Jeffrey M. Hamburger, “Openings” in Imagination, Books and Community in Medieval Europe (Melbourne:

Macmillan, 2010), 50-133. Sarah Guerin, “Avorio d’ogni ragione: The Supply of Elephant Ivory to Northern Europe in the Gothic Era,”

Journal of Medieval History 36 (2010): 156-174. Alexa Sand, “Materia Meditandi: Haptic Perception and Some Parisian Ivories of the Virgin and Child,”

Different Visions: A Journal of New Perspectives on Medieval Art 4 (2014): 1-28. (Additional Readings if you like:) Karina Grömer, Gabriela Russ-Popa, and Konstantinia Saliari, “Products of Animal Skin from Antiquity to

the Medieval Period,” Annalen des Naturhistorischen Museums in Wien 119 (2017): 69-93. Jacqueline E. Jung, “The Tactile and the Visionary: Notes on the Place of Sculpture in the Medieval

Religious Imagination,” in Looking Beyond: Visions, Dreams, and Insights in Medieval Art and History, ed. Colum Hourihane (Princeton: Index of Christian Art, 2010), 203-240.

Weekly Writing: Identify 3-5 keywords from the readings that resonate for you and that provoke questions. Consider the ways that humans and animals overlap and interact through the production of parchment and ivory objects. How do these materials contribute to and inform the sensor experiences of the past? What can we know about the feeling of things? What kinds of work do certain materials do in communicating religious and intellectual ideas? Generate 2-3 critical questions that the readings have left unanswered.

**Keep working on your Virtual Exhibition

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Week 10: [3 Nov] Finely Made, Vibrant Matter: Cloth and/in Stone

Gothic statues of Margrave Eckard II and his wife Uta in Naumburg Cathedral in Naumburg, Saxony Anhalt, Germany.

Read:

Valerie L. Garver, "Sensory Experiences of Low-Status Textile Workers,” in Sensory Reflections: Traces of Experience in Medieval Artifacts, ed. Fiona Griffiths and Kathryn Starkey, (Berlin: De Gruyter Press, October 2019), 50-76.

Maureen C. Miller, “Men and Women” In Clothing the Clergy: Virtue and Power in Medieval Europe, c. 800-1200 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press), 141-176.

Jacqueline E. Jung, Eloquent Bodies: Movement, Expression, and the Human Figure in Gothic Sculpture (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2020), chapters 1-2 (1-90)

Weekly Writing: ** This week only turn in keywords and questions. NO other writing is required. Identify 3-5 keywords from the readings that resonate for you and that provoke questions. Consider and reflect upon the labor that went into the production of cloth, textiles, and stone carving. These objects were all carefully worked by highly skilled laborers and such labor was often gendered. How do objects help us see behind the things to those who worked them, made them from raw materials? How does the attention to the bodily form relate to or reflect the qualities inherent in stone (or ivory, or textiles) as a material? Generate 2-3 critical questions that the readings have left unanswered. **RESEARCH PRACTICUM 2: Virtual Exhibition due Friday, Nov. 6th at NOON Virtual Exhibition – Set your object in context and on display with at least 7 objects relating a thematic concept or argument.

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P A R T I I I : O b j e c t s i n M o t i o n – T e l l i n g t h e A r c o f T h i n g s Turn back to Kopytoff, “The Cultural Biography of Things,” and refresh yourself about his arguments as we move forward. Week 11: [10 Nov] Objects of Desire: Relics, Memory & Crusade Culture

Gilt-silver heraldry cup from the Resafa Hoard, ca. 1190-91

height: 8.5 cm; width: 16.3 cm Read: Primary Texts: Geoffrey de Villehardouin and Jean de Joinville, Chronicles of the Crusades, trans. Caroline Smith (New

York: Penguin, 2008), Crusaders in the East: chapters 9-13, pp. 246-311. “The Testament of Eudes of Nevers,” Translated by A. E. Lester, PDF (I will circulate this) ** Anne E. Lester, “Remembrance of Things Past: Memory and Material Objects in the Time of the Crusades,

1095-1291,” in Remembering the Crusades and Crusading, ed. Megan Cassidy Welch (London: Routledge, 2017), 73-94.

Nicholas L. Paul, To Follow in Their Footsteps: The Crusades and Family Memory in the High Middle Ages (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2012), Chapter 3, “The Fabric of Victory,” 90-133.

Richard A. Leson, “A Constellation of Crusade: The Resafa Heraldry Cup and the Aspirations of Raoul I, Lord of Coucy,” in The Crusades and Visual Culture, ed. Elizabeth Lapina, Aprial Morris, Susanna A. Throop, and Laura J. Whatley (Franham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2015), 75-90.

Ruba Kana’an, “Patron and Craftsman of the Freer Mosul Ewer of 1232: A Historical and Legal Interpretation of the Roles of Tilmïdh and Ghulam in Islamic Metalwork,” Ars Orientalis 42 (2012): 67-78. And Lisa Golombek, “The Language of Objects in the Islamic World,” Ars Orientalis 42 (2012): 15-21.

Weekly Writing: Identify 3-5 keywords from the readings that resonate for you and that provoke questions. Consider the meaning of things translated out of place. What other ideas and concepts hold on in things? Why might this be the case? What sorts of objects have meaning for Joinville and why? Can we impute the same kinds of meanings onto Eudes of Nevers’s objects? Generate 2-3 critical questions that the readings have left unanswered.

Prof. Lester | AS.100.416

History through Things | Fall 2020 16

Week 12: [17 Nov] Trade Networks: Silk, Spice and Porcelain

Alms and crusade bourse (purses), ca. 13-14 C. (see: http://cottesimple.com/articles/aumonieres/)

Read: Anne E. Lester, “Trade,” in A Cultural History of Western Empires in the Middle Ages, ed. Matthew

Gabriele, vol. 2 (London: Bloomsbury: 2018), chapter 2; 45-69. Paul Freedman, “Spices and Late-Medieval European Ideas of Scarcity and Value,” Speculum 80 (2005):

1209-1227. Geraldine Heng, "An Ordinary Ship and Its Stories of Early Globalism: World Travel, Mass Production, and

Art in the Global Middle Ages" Journal of Medieval Worlds (2019) 1: 11–54. Anthony Eastmond, “Diplomatic Gifts: Women and Art as Imperial Commodities in the 13th Century, “ in

Liquid & Multiple: Individuals & Identities in the Thirteenth-Century Agean, ed. Guillaume Saint-Guillain and Dionysios Stathakopoulos (Centre de recherche d’histoire et civilization de Byzance, Monographies 35) (Paris: CNRS, 2012), 105-133.

Sharon Kinoshita, “Almería Silk and the French Feudal Imaginary: Toward a “Material” History of the Medieval Mediterranean,” in Medieval Fabrications: Dress, Texitles, Clothwork, Clothwork and Other Cultural Imaginings, ed. E. Jane Burns (New York: Palgrave, 2004), 165-176.

Sharon Farmer, “Global and Gendered Perspectives on the Production of a Parisian Alms Purse, c. 1340,” Journal of Medieval Worlds 1 (2019): 45-83.

Cypress, porcelain bowl, woman spinning between two cypress trees, ca. 12th C

Weekly Writing: Identify 3-5 keywords from the readings that resonate for you and that provoke questions. Consider the labor behind the objects we read about this week. Is it gendered; how so? Does its gendered association carry with it? How and when to people and things come to be conflated or considered in similar terms in this period? What are the effects of such slippage? Generate 2-3 critical questions that the readings have left unanswered.

Prof. Lester | AS.100.416

History through Things | Fall 2020 17

Week 13: [24 Nov] Thanksgiving Break Watch: The Red Violin Research and work on your podcast If you are not familiar with the genre, listen to 4 episodes of a podcast of your choice (some options will be posted)

Continue to work on RESEARCH PRACTICUM 3 Podcast Assignment DUE FRIDAY Dec. 4th: – Consider the invisible stories and pathways that lie behind an object: its making, its manipulation, its storage, for example. What are the things we don’t see in the object world, when an object is right in front of us? Week 14: [1 Dec] Slaves, the Historical Record, and the Problem of Historical Narrative

Saint Maurice depicted in sculpture on Magdeburg Cathedral

Read: Hannah Barker, That Most Precious Merchandise: The Mediterranean Trade in Black Sea Slaves, 1260-

1500 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019), chapters 1, 2 and 4. Madeline Caviness, “From the Self-Invention of the Whiteman in the Thirteenth Century to the The Good,

the Bad, and The Ugly,” Different Visions 1 (2008): 1-33. Jacqueline E. Jung, “Reflections on Africans in Gothic Sculpture,” Yale University Press Blog, July 21, 2020:

http://blog.yalebooks.com/2020/07/21/reflections-on-africans-in-gothic-sculpture-part-1/ (Recommended to consider): Jack Linchuan Qiu, “Goodbye iSlave: Making Alternative Subjects Through

Digital Objects,” in Digital Objects, Digital Subjects: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Capitalism, Labour and Politics in the Age of Big Data, ed. David Chandler and Christian Fuchs (London: University of Westminster Press, 2019), 151-164.

CODA: Peter N. Miller, History & Its Objects: Antiquarianism and Material Culture since 1500 (Ithaca: Cornell

University Press, 2017), chapter 6 and Conclusion, pp. 123-139, 200-210. Weekly Writing: Identify 3-5 keywords from the readings that resonate for you and that provoke questions. Consider how the dynamics of medieval slavery differed from modern ideas about slavery and Atlantic slavery specifically. How and why did identity markers begin to shift at the end of the middle ages? What was the effect of this? How did the concept of race function in the medieval world? Did it exist at all? How can thinking about and through things change how we think about and see slavery in the past? Generate 2-3 critical questions that the readings have left unanswered.

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History through Things | Fall 2020 18

Dec. 4: Share your podcasts with the class December 18th: Final Research Papers Due

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