Please join us for a lecture by Caroline Walker Bynum on Friday, November 9, 2012 at 4:00 pm in the Segel Theater of the Graduate Center, CUNY.* Dr. Bynum is Professor emerita of Medieval European History at the Institute for Advanced Study, and University Professor emerita at Columbia University.

“The Anthropomorphic and the Other: Medieval Holy Objects in Comparative Perspective”

Students of comparative religion, cognitive scientists, art historians, and historians sometimes use paradigms from non-western religions to raise questions about the role of material objects in Christianity.  Recently, such discussion has focused on images and controversies about them. In her talk, Prof. Bynum argues that the most important material manifestation of the holy in the western European Middle Ages was the Eucharist and suggests both that understanding it is enhanced by the use of comparative material and that considering it as a case study of divine materiality leads to a more sophisticated formulation of comparative paradigms.  

*The Graduate Center is located at 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY.

This event is co-sponsored by the Pearl Kibre Medieval Study and The Center for Humanities.