Graduate Workshop with Professor Andrew Irving (Ph.D. '12): "Procession as Cultural Technique"

This seminar aims to provide an introduction to the concept of “culture technique," developed by a leading exponent of German media theory, and to experiment in using this as tool to understand an annual liturgical procession from early medieval Montecassino. The seminar is divided into two parts. First we will discuss Bernhard Siegert’s “(Not) in Place: The Grid, or Cultural Techniques of Ruling Spaces.” Second, we will read together descriptions (in Latin) of the ritual procession excerpted from epistolary, liturgical, and historical sources. First we will try to understand the Latin. Then, together, we will explore to what extent Siegert’s notion of “cultural technique” may shed new light on what this procession effected. Latin comprehension need be no barrier to participation: we will be exploring and translating the texts together in the seminar.