Conway Lectures
In 2002, the Medieval Institute inaugurated a lecture series in honor of Robert M. Conway, a 1966 graduate of Notre Dame, trustee of the University, and long-time friend and supporter of the Medieval Institute. The annual Conway Lectures bring senior scholars of international distinction to Notre Dame each fall to speak on topics across a variety of disciplines. The lectures are then published by the University of Notre Dame Press.
Niklaus Largier is Professor of German and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley, where he holds the Sidney and Margaret Ancker Chair in the Humanities. He has published on medieval mysticism, the history of ascetic practices, prayer, and aesthetic experience. His books include an edition of the works of Meister Eckhart (Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 1993); In Praise of the Whip: A Cultural History of Arousal (Zone Books, 2007), and Die Kunst des Begehrens: Dekadenz, Askese und Sinnlichkeit (C. H. Beck, 2007). In a number of recent essays he discusses medieval practices of contemplation, the stimulation of sensation and affect, and the emergence of aesthetic experience. He is currently working on a book on figuration, tentatively entitled Figures of Possibility.
Future Conway Lectures will be delivered by Peter Adamson, Professor of Late Ancient and Arabic Philosophy, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, in 2019.
OUR PAST CONWAY SPEAKERS
2017
Susan Rankin (Cambridge), "Manuscripts for Musicians: 750–900"
2016
William J. Courtenay (U Wisconsin–Madison), "Religious Ritual and Prayers for the Dead in the Medieval University of Paris"
2015
John V. Fleming (Princeton), "Asceticism and Literature in the Middle Ages"
2014
Alice-Mary Talbot (Dumbarton Oaks), "Varieties of Monastic Experience in Byzantium, 9th–15th Centuries"
Published as Varieties of Monastic Experience in Byzantium, 800-1453 (2019)
2013
Anne D. Hedeman (U Kansas), "Visual Translation and the First French Humanists”
2012
Sylvia Huot (Cambridge), “Giants in Medieval Romance Literature”
Published as Outsiders: The Humanity and Inhumanity of Giants in Medieval French Prose Romance (2016)
2011
Barbara Newman (Northwestern), “Medieval Crossover: Reading the Secular Against the Sacred”
Published as Medieval Crossover: Reading the Secular Against the Sacred (2013)
2010
Roberta Frank (Yale), “Slip Slidin’ Away: The Nimble Leaps of Early Northern Verse”
2009
John Marenbon (Cambridge), “Abelard in Four Dimensions”
Published as Abelard in Four Dimensions: A Twelfth-Century Philosopher in His Context and Ours (2013)
2008
Jonathan Riley-Smith (Cambridge), “The Templars and the Hospitallers as Professed Religious in the Holy Land, 1120-1291”
Published as Templars and Hospitallers as Professed Religious in the Holy Land (2009)
2007
A. C. Spearing (U Virginia), “Medieval Autographies: The 'I' of the Text”
Published as Medieval Autographies: The "I" of the Text (2012)
2006
Beat Brenk (University of Basel), “Our Lady: The Apse and the Icon”
Published as The Apse, The Image, and The Icon: An Historical Perspective of the Apse as a Space for Images (Reichert Verlag, 2010)
2005
Calvin Bower (Notre Dame), “Grasping the Wind: Words for Melodies in South-German Liturgical Music, 800-1200”
2004
Rosamond McKitterick (Cambridge), “Perceptions of the Past in the Early Middle Ages”
Published as Perceptions of the Past in the Early Middle Ages (2006)
2003
Paul Strohm (Columbia), “English Writing and the Pre-Machiavellian Prince”
Published as Politique: Languages of Statecraft between Chaucer and Shakespeare (2005)
2002
Fr. Ulrich Horst (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität), “The Teaching Authority of the Pope”
Published as The Dominicans and the Pope: Papal Teaching Authority in the Medieval and Early Modern Thomist Tradition (2006)
