• Lecture by Hannah Barker, “In Distant Places Among Alien People: Slavery, Friendship, and Tatar-Venetian Relations in the 15th Century”

    Guest Speaker: Hannah Barker (Arizona State University) In 1455, the Venetian patrician Giosafat Barbaro encountered an old friend in surprising circumstances. As a young merchant in the Black Sea port of Tana, Barbaro had met and befriended a local Tatar notable named Chebechzi. At the end of his time in Tana, Barbaro returned home expecting […]

  • California Medieval Seminar (Spring 2024)

    Participation in the Seminar consists of group discussion of pre-circulated papers, typically drafts of articles, book chapters, or dissertation chapters (with complete apparatus). Two of the papers are ordinarily by emerging scholars (including PhD students) and the other two are by established scholars. We allocate one hour per paper and presenters should anticipate substantial, and […]

  • CANCELED – Lecture by Prof. Herman Bennett

    Herman L. Bennett is a Professor at the Graduate Center (CUNY) and Director of the Institute for Research on the African Diaspora in the Americas and the Caribbean (IRADAC). He has held faculty positions at UNC-Chapel Hill, The Johns Hopkins University, Rutgers University, and the Free University of Berlin.     CANCELED – This lecture is […]

  • Thinking With Materiality in the Early Global World – MEMSA Graduate Student Conference

      MORNING SESSION 08:00–08:15 PDT Opening Words Chase Caldwell Smith, Patrick Morgan, and Sofía Yazpik 8:15–8:20 PDT Welcome Zrinka Stahuljak, Director, CMRS Center for Early Global Studies, UCLA PANEL 1: Making South Asian and Indian Ocean Materialities Moderator: Chase Caldwell Smith 8:20–8:40 PDT Traded Silks for the Gods in Kerala: Patola, its Connections, Contributions and […]

  • California Medieval Seminar (Fall 2024)

    Participation in the Seminar consists of group discussion of pre-circulated papers, typically drafts of articles, book chapters, or dissertation chapters (with complete apparatus). Two of the papers are ordinarily by emerging scholars (including PhD students) and the other two are by established scholars. We allocate one hour per paper and presenters should anticipate substantial, and […]

  • Cappella Romana: In the Footsteps of St. Demetrios

    Cappella Romana brings to life the vibrant soundscape of medieval Thessaloniki, Byzantium’s second largest city. Hear ancient hymns honoring the city’s patron, the ever-popular St. Demetrios, sung on the weekend of his annual feast day. Experience ecstatic Byzantine chants for the saint adorning the Cathedral Rite of Constantinople, sung by the women and men of […]

  • Medieval Texts Reading Group Fall 2024 Meeting

    The UCLA Medieval Texts Reading Group welcomes undergraduate students, graduate students, staff, and faculty interested in medieval literature. On the third Friday of each term, we get together to discuss a text in English translation from across the Global Middle Ages, to think about what it tells us about its cultural and literary context. Each discussion will be […]

  • Lecture by Panagiotis Agapitos, “Byzantine Crime Novels in the Twenty-first Century: From History to Fiction”

    This lecture tackles the question of “authenticity” when writing crime novels set in the remote past. Agapitos’ three novels (published between 2003 and 2009 in Greece), which are set in the first half of ninth-century Byzantium during the rule of the last iconoclast emperor, Theophilos (r. 829–842), form the basis of a lively discussion about […]

  • Conference by Domenico Ingenito, “Nezāmi and the Iranian World”

    A two-day symposium and workshop that brings together specialists of Persian literature, junior faculty, and graduate students to facilitate in-depth conversations on Nezāmi in a stimulating intellectual environment at UCLA. On the first day of the conference, “Rediscovering a Persian Treasury of Global Literature,” invited speakers will deliver lectures that offer insights on the most recent […]