Carnevale ~ Media-evale  March 14-16, 2005

Oyez, Oyez, Oyez! Missives and Messages: Media in the Middle Ages

Monday, March 14, 4pm - 9pm
Thomas Center
Official Opening of Colloquium and Art Exhibit
Introductory Remarks: Bill Hutchinson, "From the Collector's Eye."
Keynote Speaker: Amilcare Iannucci, Professor of Comparative Literature and Director of the Humanities Center at the University of Toronto
Reception

Tuesday, March 15
Thomas Center

2:00 pm Coffee
2:30 pm Public Lecture: Professor David Stanley on the Chartres Cathedral: Architecture as Media
4:00 pm Public Lecture: Professor Robert Westin on Renaissance Painting and Scupture: Art as Media

Why media? And why the Middle Ages?

In a world in which electronic technology has become the primary means of disseminating information, it is often difficult to imagine how knowledge was shared in the days before the electronic age. Yet clearly it was. Indeed a close examination of media in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern period suggests strongly that modern media are by no means novel but rather are rarely more than an electronic upgrades to highly effective analogue paradigms. The Distant Early Warning System (the "DEW line"), a series of connecting radio towers stretched across the northern hemisphere to detect ICBMs during the Cold War, takes its cue from the series of watchtowers built along the Andalucian front by the Moors of Southern Spain in the early Middle Ages.

Similarly, the modern photo essay takes would appear to be inspired by the highly detailed diachronicity of the Bayeux Tapestry or indeed, from the sculpted friezes of medieval cathedrals.

Church bells functioned as alarm clocks to signal the start of masses and the time of day, while the shape and decoration of churches often took the place of books to teach the lessons of Christianity.

In the past, letters were used instead of email and telephone while songs, such as the Chanson de Roland, served to announce news of victories and defeat. Similarly, epics, sung or written were the history texts of their days. In the Middle Ages, mystic visions, not televisions, brought messages from afar.

This year's colloquium aims to examine the role and the form of media in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Period from a truly interdisciplinary perspective and with an emphasis on the issues of source, imagery, and reception. The purpose is to better comprehend the role that various media have historically played and, therefore, to better understand its role in our own time.

--Mary Watt

Presented in association with
The City of Gainesville Department of Cultural Affairs

Generously supported by
The France Florida Research Institute
The Department of Germanic and Slavic Studies
The Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, Program in Italian Studies