*Sawyer Seminar Public Lecture locations are subject to change. Some presentations may be available via ZOOM. Please check schedule as close to the presentation date as possible to confirm the location.*
For information on how to attend contact Diana Malcolm: Email: dbw102@psu.edu
Penn State has issued rules and precautions that follow, or may in some cases exceed, guidance from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) issued in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Please visit https://arts.psu.edu/about-the-college/health-and-safety-guidelines-for-performing-arts/ prior to attending a College event to ensure you are familiar with the rules and expectations.
FALL OF 2022
September 15-16
Thursday, September 15 at 5:00pm: “On Smellscapes, Chocolate and Gardens: Revisiting Olfactory landscapes in Mughal South Asia and colonial New Spain”
Location: 102 Animal, Veterinary and Biomedical Science Building
Speakers:
Marcy Norton,”Chocolate and the Flowery Sensorium 1450 – 1700″
Nicholas Roth, “A Splendid Treasure of Flowers and Fragrance: The Materiality of Horticulture and the Ideal of the city in Early Modern South Asia”
Friday, September 16 at 11:00am: Graduate Workshop
The Archive and the Senses: A Workshop
Instructors Marcy Norton and Nicolas Roth
Registration by emailing kmarini@psu.edu
October 6-7
Thursday, October 6 at 5:00pm: “On Sound and the City: Soundscapes and Listening Methods”
Location: 102 Animal, Veterinary and Biomedical Science Building
Speakers:
Niall Atkinson Niall Atkinson, “Architecture, Contagion, Storytelling in Medieval Florence: Sensorial Experience and Spatial History”
Alex Hidalgo, “Training the Historical Ear: Object Lessons in Sound and Subversion (Mexico City, c. 1690)”
Friday, October 7 at 11:00am: Graduate Workshop
Registration by emailing
2021-2022
September 23–24: Points of Contact
Thursday, September 23 at 6:00 pm: Natalie Rothman lecture, “The Dragoman Renaissance”
Location: Zoom.
To access the recording of the lecture please click “The Dragoman Renaissance”
Friday, September 24 at 2:00 pm: Colloquium
Location: Zoom
Speakers:
Elizabeth Kassler-Taub, “Style, Contagion, and the Colonial Condition in Early Modern Palermo”
Amara Solari, “The Extirpation of Color: Curing Diseases of the Soul in Early Modern Yucatan”
Sept 30 – Oct 1: Sacred Cities: Mobility and Transmission
Thursday, September 30 at 6:00 pm: Lecture by Rosalind O’Hanlon, “City of Possibilities: Aspiration and Transgression in Mughal Banaras”
Location: Zoom
To access the recording of the lecture please click “City of Possibilities”
Friday, October 1 at 2:00 pm: Colloquium
Location: Zoom
Speakers:
Rishad Choudhury, “Ebb of Empire: The Mughal Hajj and the ‘Age of Revolutions’ in the Indian Ocean, 1760-1840”
Barbara Mundy, “Landscape, Smellscape and Disease in Mexico City, 1520-1580”
November 11–12: Transmission and Social Fission
Thursday, November 11 at 6:00 pm: Lecture by Kris Lane, “Transmission & Social Fission: Potosí & the Great Andean Pandemic of 1717-1722″
Location: 112 Borland
To access the recording of the lecture please click “Transmission & Social Fission”
Friday, November 12 Workshop at 2:00 pm: Presentations by early-career with Professor Lane as respondent
Speakers: Frank Lacopo, Kyle Marini, Nicole Jozwyk, Arunima Addy, with additional speakers and speakers’ titles TBD*
December 2–3: Mapping Contagion
Thursday, December 2 at 6:00 pm: Lecture by Colin Rose, “Putting Bologna on the Map: Crime and Disease in an Early Modern GIS”
Location: 112 Borland
To access the recording of the lecture please click “Putting Bologna on the Map”
Friday, December 3 from 2 – 4:30 pm: DH Workshop co-sponsored by the Committee for Early Modern Studies (CEMS): “Getting What You Came For: Leveraging DH Skills as a Graduate Student”
Location: 105 Ferguson (PC Computer Lab)
To attend in person, registration is required
SPRING OF 2022: CONTAINMENT
RESPONSES TO CONTAGION IN THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT
January 20–21: Spaces of Contagion and Cure
Thursday, January 20 at 6:00 pm: Lecture by John Henderson, “Spaces of Contagion and Treatment of Disease in Early Modern Italy”
Location: Zoom
To access the recording of the lecture please click “Spaces of Contagion and Treatment of Disease in Early Modern Italy”
Friday, January 21 at 2:00 pm: Colloquium
Location: Zoom
Speakers:
Jane Stevens Crawshaw, “Quarantine, Plague and the Built Environment: Preventing and Memorialising Disease in Early Modern Venice”
February 24–25: Architectures of Containment
Thursday, February 24 at 6:00 pm: Lecture by Lisa Pon, “Death on Paper in Early Modern Venice”
Location: Zoom
To access the recording of the lecture please click “Death on Paper in Early Modern Venice”
Friday, February 25 at 2:00 pm: Colloquium
Location: Zoom
Speakers:
Trevor Burnard, “‘Inured to labour by degrees’: Contagion, Containment and Enslaved Management on Mid-Eighteenth Century Jamaican Plantations”
Pierette Kulpa, “Santa Rosalia in Palestrina: New Interpretations on an Altarpiece, Adoration, and Abatement”
Kenta Tokushige, “From Exile to Containment: The Jewish Community in Portoferraio”
March 3–4: Geospatial Approaches to Early Modern Cities
Thursday, March 3 at 6:00 pm: Lecture by Farès el-Dahdah, “imagineRio”
Location: Zoom
To access the recording of the lecture please click “imagineRio”
Friday, March 4 at 2:00pm: DH Workshop (GIS introduction Part 2) co-sponsored by the Committee for Early Modern Studies (CEMS)
Location: Zoom
Speakers: “imagineRio” team members who will lead this DH workshop are Farès el-Dahdah with David Heyman, managing director at Axis Maps and Bruno Sousa, GIS Researcher at the Spatial Studies Lab
March 23: Concert by Venice Music Project
Wednesday, March 23 at 7:30 pm: Music for the Lost Daughters of Early Modern Venice (ca. 1675-1775)
Host: Penn State School of Music
Location: Recital Hall
Music by Anfossi, Grossi, Legrenzi, Porpora, Traetta and Vivaldi
Members of the Venice Music Project Ensemble (Venice, Italy)
- Liesl Odenweller, soprano
- Mauro Spinazzè, violin
- Marija Jovanovic, harpsichord and contralto
with the Penn State Baroque Ensemble – James Lyon, director
The concert will feature works from the late 17th and early 18th centuries by several composers who were associated with a couple of the Venetian ospedali – the Ospedale della Pietà, where Antonio Vivaldi taught for many years, and the Ospedaletto. These venerable institutions took in orphaned and foundling girls and provided them with a superb music education. The young women gave public concerts that attracted visitors from all over Europe. In collaboration with the Penn State Baroque Ensemble, internationally acclaimed musicians Liesl Odenweller (soprano), Mauro Spinazzè (violin), and Marija Jovanovic (harpsichord and contralto) – all members of the Venice Music Project Ensemble – will present music that, in some cases, has not been heard in over 250 years. Marica Tacconi, Distinguished Professor of Musicology, will present some of her recent research on this repertoire and provide historical context.
March 24–25: Places of Confinement and Evasion
Thursday, March 24 at 6:00 pm: Lecture by Robin Thomas, “Space Evaders: The Complex Case of Enclosing Architecture in Early Modern Italy”
Location: 112 Borland
Friday, March 25 at 2:00 pm: Colloquium
Location: Zoom
Speakers:
Beatriz Véliz Argueta, “Moralizing the landscape: On runaways, pajuides and the appearance of freedom in XVIII century Guatemala”
Jasenka Gudelj, “To Serve and to Protect: Architecture of War, Trade, and Contagion in the Early Modern Eastern Adriatic”
April 14–15: Comparative Early Modern Visual and Material Culture at Penn State
Thursday, April 14 at 6:00 pm: Evening Lecture by Christy Anderson, “A Community of Strangers: Ships at Sea”
Location: 112 Borland
To access the recording of the lecture please click “A Community of Strangers: Ships at Sea”