Jay Winter explores the geometry of memory

On Friday September 23^rd Dr. Jay Winter visited the University of Connecticut to speak at a special event hosted by the English Department titled Behind the Lines, Across Boundaries: A Conference in Honor of Margaret Higonnet.

Winter, the Charles J. Stille Professor of History at Yale University, specializes in World War I history and its impact on the 20^th century. Winter has dedicated his life to studying the remembrance of war, specifically focusing on memorials and mourning sites. He has authored and edited countless books and even produced the Emmy Award winning PBS series, The Great War and Shaping the 20^th Century. Despite an overwhelming list of accomplishments, Winter reiterates, “I would like to be known by two things: by my writing and by my students.”

Winter’s discussion of the spatial logic of war memorials and the geometry of remembrance asked the audience to ponder the idea that horizontality has become the language of mourning. Winter explained that the problem of violence is too big for any one set of scholars to address. He said, “People are influenced more by what they see than by what they read.” Winter’s presentation demonstrated this idea, illustrating it with a host of moving photos of war memorials, monuments, and cemeteries. He explained his concept of the geometry of remembrance by walking the audience through his own experience of aiding in the design the Historial de la Grande Guerre (The Museum of the Great War) in Peronne, France.  The exhibits were designed on a horizontal axis, with the objects of war placed in dugouts in the ground, forcing viewers to look down, much as they would look have at a gravesite or a trench.

Winter also discussed the gendering of mourning, comparing the postures of the granite statues of Karl and Käthe Kollwitz at their son’s gravesite in Belgium (above). Winter noted that on a rainy day, it would appear as though the statue of Käthe Kollwitz were actually crying. Winter concluded his riveting talk with the idea that, since the First World War, horizontality has come to represent horror, as opposed to the “vertical normality” which was common prior to that period.

Ayjan Arik

The award-winning novelist and lecturer Carmen-Francesca Banciu spoke on September 22nd about creative writing and the power of play and creativity. Banciu’s experiences as an immigrant are often echoed in her characters’ journeys. Banciu grew up close to the Hungarian border in a multicultural, multilingual environment, an aspect that is reflected in the way she handles language in her fiction. Her novels deal with the geographic, psychic and linguistic migrations of woman authors in Europe during and after the Communist era.

During her presentation, Banciu examined her complex relationship with languages. As, she explained, “each one has its own, unique sounds and words that evoke special meanings and images.” She often changes the meaning of words and plays with grammar in order to capture the diversity and uniqueness of life, languages, and cultures. The novelist argued that creativity and play have liberating effects on people since they serve as healing tools. Thus instead of fearing failure and avoiding mistakes, she allows them to play out and transforms them into art.

After receiving the prestigious International Short Story award of Arnsberg, Banciu was banned from publishing her work in Romania. As a result, she decided to move to Germany. She is the author of eight books, four novels, and four collections of short stories, which have been translated into many languages.  Since 2013 she also serves as co-editor and deputy director of the multilingual e-magazine Levure Littéraire.

Adriana Alcina Gomes

photo credit:  © Marijuana Georgia Gheorghiu.

Universities worldwide are hosting Transcribathon events in an effort to digitize

thousands of early modern manuscripts. On Wednesday September 14 th the

Humanities Institute and the Folger Shakespeare Library hosted this semester’s

first “Transcribathon.” Over thirty UConn students and faculty came together in

the Great Hall of the Alumni Center and collaborated to transcribe and digitize

original manuscripts from the Age of Shakespeare.

Transcribers learn how to interpret the handwriting and abbreviations used in

early modern writing on the spot, and then encode their findings into Dromio, a

crowd-sourcing tool developed by the Folger Institutue. Dromio allows multiple

transcribers to enter their transcriptions simultaneously. The program then

compiles the entries and highlights discrepancies. The finished product is a fully

digitized version of an original early modern manuscript, ready for publication.

This project will continue throughout the academic year. Students can sign

up and learn how to read original documents of the English Renaissance. They

can also gain a publishing credit on the completed editions of the manuscripts.

If you are a medievalist or early modernist, this project may be for you.

Please contact Hilary Bogert-Winkler (Department of History hilary.bogert-

winkler@uconn.edu) or George Moore (English Department

george.p.moore@uconn.edu) for information on how to participate.

For more information on the Early Modern Manuscripts Online (EMMO) Project:

http://collation.folger.edu/2015/03/emmo-advancing- and-expanding/

On Wednesday, April 20th, Professor Daniel Hershenzon delivered a presentation titled “Redemption and Contentious Objects in the Early Modern Mediterranean” as part of LCL’s Faculty Lecture Series. Hershenzon talked about the distribution and redistribution of religious images across the early modern Mediterranean as partly engendered by the circulation of Christian and Muslim captives in the same place and time. Focusing on paintings and sculptures of Jesus, Mary, and the saints, Hershenzon spoke about the mobility and economy of religious items trafficked between North Africa and the Iberian peninsula, highlighting instances of iconoclasm, objectification, and commodification of such articles as they were repurposed outside of the cultural sphere in which they were created. The talk began with a demonstrative example from – of all places – contemporary Mexico, where a a sculpture of Baby Jesus attributed to the Sevillan artist Juan Martínez Montañez has resided since the early 17th century. This sculpture, an icon of salvation for addicts and kidnapping victims in recent times, was captured en route to Mexico from Spain and held for 6 years in Algiers, before finally being ransomed and arriving safely at its destination. Hershenzon explained that he chose to frame the presentation using this example because it exemplifies the dynamic history of similarly captured images, and “demonstrates the unique long-term reciprocal relation and continuous reversal of roles between god and believers, redeemeers and captives.”

LCL’s very own Maha Darawsha, Professor of Arabic Language, Culture  and archaeologist, spoke on March 23rd about her groundbreaking work – in both the literal and figurative sense – uncovering what is beleived to be a lost Byzantine  church behind the  existence Greek Orthodox  church of the Annunciation in Nazareth, Israel. This was the first season of excavations at the site, which had been surveyed in 2012 but was never excavated.

Her ongoing work on the surrounding area of the church, which began in 2003, has unearthed small sections of ornate mosaic flooring in several test pits that are most likely the remnants of a Byzantine-era structure destroyed by Persian invaders sometime in 614 CE. This discovery is especially salient in that all indications point to this church as the one which early Christian and Muslim texts identify as having been constructed on the sight of the Virgin Mary’s water well. The church’s proximity to the Spring of the Virgin, a water source that continued to serve the local Nazareene community until the late 19th century, serves to support Professor Darawsha’s claims. Some of the mosaics that she has found 1.5 meters below the courtyad surface have suffered damage from recent building projects, but the evidence that remains is sufficient to surmise that Darawsha has encountered the Narthex of the Greek  Orthodox church that affiliated with the Annunciation mentioned in both the Gospel of Luke and the Qura’n.

According to Professor Darawsha,

It seems that we have revealed a fairly large public building whose main hall has a width of 6.5 to 7m. While its true length is unknown, it measures at least 11m on the east-west axis. The building is dated to the late Byzantine period (6-7 centuries AD). Either the structure itself, or at least this narthex pattern paved with a coarse mosaic floors, is typical of churches of the relevant period. The building underwent a phase of repairs close to the period of floor 135, and these floors belong to a later structure. Beneath the walls appears to be a magnificent building dating back to earlier period whose floors had not yet been discovered. This discovery is very similar to finding glass, glassware, and window panes typical of churches from the Byzantine period (the initial information was mentioned by Ms. Rachel Pollack). This findings are typical of public buildings and not of residential homes.

Therefore, it seems that we have at least two church buildings from the Byzantine period. The first one from end of the Byzantine period, and the second church that was rebuilt after the Persian conquest in 614 CE.

In future visits to the site, Professor Darawsha hopes to discover the remainder of the church – although she thinks it probable that the nave has already been destroyed by illegal excavation in 1980s – and to confirm beyond a doubt that this is in fact the church built on top the well of the Virgin Mary.

The 2015 excavations were sponsored by the University Hartford (CT) and the Greek Orthodox Council in Nazareth (Israel), and directed by Richard Freund (University of Hartford, CT), Maha Darawsha (University of Connecticut), and Shalom Yanklevitz (University of Haifa, Israel). Assisting staff members were geophysicists Harry M. Jol (University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire) and Paul Bauman (Worley Parsons Company, Canada), surveyor Philip Reeder (Duquesne University, PA), field photographer Bennett Greenspan, and Michal Artzy (University of Haifa’s Hatter Laboratory, Recanati Institute for Maritime Studies, Israel).