MEMS is delighted to welcome Prof. William Chester Jordan to give this year’s Anselm lecture: ‘1096: Killing as Retribution, Defiance and Atonement’ on Tuesday 7th November 2017 at 6pm in Grimond Building, Lecture Theatre 2.

Abstract of the lecture
There are many earlier examples of the elevation of acts of lethal violence to a sanctifying status.  As this lecture attempts to demonstrate, however, the year 1096 was remarkable for how many people of widely different backgrounds contributed to and came to accept the appropriateness of this conceptual shift.  What were the circumstances of the transformation? What justifications were alleged? What were the long-term consequences. Building on the superb work of many other scholars, this lecture aims to further the discussion.

Speaker biography
William Chester Jordan is the Dayton-Stockton Professor of History and Chairman of the History Department at Princeton University. He is also a former Director of the Program in Medieval Studies at Princeton. Prof. Jordan has studied and published on the Crusades, English constitutional history, gender, economics, Judaism, and, most recently, church-state relations in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.

Cultures of Performance in Medieval and Early Modern Europe is a new research cluster founded by University of Kent colleagues, Dr Clare Wright, Dr Sarah Dustagheer and Dr Rory Loughnane. The group comprises staff and students from the University, and will investigate a range of performance events in Europe, c. 500 to c. 1700.

From plays and pageants to poetry and processions, music, liturgy and dance, performance here is broadly conceived and studied from a variety of methodological and historical perspectives, including its place in modern performance practice.

The research cluster launches on Thursday 12th October with the first of its interactive performance workshops, followed by drinks and discussion. The event is free and open to all. Starts at 5.15pm, Lecture theater 2, Darwin College, University of Kent.

Cultures of Performance in Medieval and Early Modern Europe will hold regular performance workshops throughout the year where it will explore some of the texts, ideas and questions members encounter in their research. Details of these can be found on the cluster’s blog.