This seminar explores memory as a medium for visual representation, with a focus on the early Christian period to the Middle Ages and early Renaissance. While our study concentrates primarily on art and textual sources from the premodern world, we also engage modern theoretical and scientific scholarship (much of which has come out of the “memory boom,” an explosion of interest in memory as a field of academic interest since the 1980s and 1990s) in our analyses and discussions. Thus the seminar not only considers fundamental questions concerning the workings of ancient and medieval memory, but also serves as an introduction to the methodologies and important works of scholarly literature that have shaped the wide-ranging field of memory studies. Topics include the relationship between the visual and the mnemonic; the changing role of the mnemonic from the early to later medieval period; pilgrimage and sites of memory; the performance of memory through song, homilies, and commemoration of the dead; memory and the passage of time. Readings are drawn from primary sources and a range of fields, including art history, cultural history, anthropology, sociology, and critical theory. What is the relationship of memory to the sense of sight? How is memory used in worship or in spiritual contemplation? How does memory disrupt and remake history? What is the role of forgetting in shaping historical consciousness? What is the relationship between personal and collective memory? The class makes visits to the Yale Art Gallery and the Beinecke Library.
Taught by Nicole Sullo Spring 2019