Patricia Phagan

Albert Bierstadt, 1830–1902. Geyser, Yellowstone Park. About 1881, 35.24 x 49.53 cm, Boston Museum of Fine Art.

November 7, 2018.

Patricia Phagan, Philip and Lynn Strauss Curator at the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, talks about her exhibition Past Time: Geology in European and American Art on view at the Art Center September 21 - December 9, 2018.

"Past Time: Geology in European and American Art looks at sketches and studies made by European and American artists from the 1770s to the 1890s who were engaged with a new, scientific emphasis on the Earth. In this arguably golden age of art and science, artists traveled and investigated the land internationally, noting Earth’s craggy features keenly in their watercolors, drawings, and oil sketches made on the spot or back in the studio. From a topographical, often strata-focused means to a later mode that evoked nature’s great transformational powers over time, this major loan exhibition explores European and American artists pursuing geological wonders."

Marc Michael Epstein

 September 16, 2015. (SEASON OPENER)

Mark Michael Epstein,  Professor of Religion on the Mackie Paschall Davis & Norman H. Davis Chair at Vassar College, discusses his new book, co-edited with Eva Frojmovic: Skies of Parchment, Seas of Ink: Jewish Illuminated Manuscripts (Princeton University Press, 2015).

“The gorgeously illustrated volume ... should challenge almost all assumptions about Jewish identity, difference, or art. Its twelve instructive chapters and 287 full-color images survey a stunning array of illustrated books made for Jews from the twelfth to the twenty-first centuries."  -- Sara Lipton, New York Review of Books

46:26 minutes

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Barbara A. Olsen

 October 1, 2014.

Barbara A. Olsen, Associate Professor of Greek and Roman Studies at Vassar College, talks about her book Women in Mycenaean Greece: The Linear B Tablets from Pylos and Knossos (Routledge 2014).

"Women in Mycenaean Greece is the first book-length study of women in the Linear B tablets from Mycenaean Greece and the only to collect and compile all the references to women in the documents of the two best attested sites of Late Bronze Age Greece - Pylos on the Greek mainland and Knossos on the island of Crete. The book offers a systematic analysis of women’s tasks, holdings, and social and economic status in the Linear B tablets dating from the 14th and 13th centuries BCE, identifying how Mycenaean women functioned in the economic institutions where they were best attested - production, property control, land tenure, and cult. Analysing all references to women in the Mycenaean documents, the book focuses on the ways in which the economic institutions of these Bronze Age palace states were gendered and effectively extends the framework for the study of women in Greek antiquity back more than 400 years."

1:01:08

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Adina Hoffman & Peter Cole

February 6, 2013.

Adina Hoffman and Peter Cole talk about their book Sacred Trash: The Lost and Found World of the Cairo Geniza, published in 2011 by Schocken.

Adina Hoffman is the author of House of Windows: Portraits from a Jerusalem Neighborhood and My Happiness Bears No Relation to Happiness: A Poet’s Life in the Palestinian Century, which was named one of the best twenty books of 2009 by the Barnes & Noble Review and one of the top ten biographies of the year by Booklist.

Peter Cole’s most recent book of poetry is Things on Which I’ve Stumbled—whose title poem revolves around the Cairo Geniza. Cole’s translations from Hebrew and Arabic include War & Love, Love & War: New and Selected Poems by Aharon Shabtai; So What: New & Selected Poems by Taha Muhammad Ali; and The Dream of the Poem: Hebrew Poetry from Muslim and Christian Spain, 950-1492, which received the National Jewish Book Award in Poetry and the American Association of Publishers’ 2008 Hawkins Award for the university press book of the year.

61:04 mins.

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Lisa Kaborycha

November 14, 2012.

Lisa Kaborycha, Director of Academic Affairs at the Medici Archive Project and Professor of History at the University of California EAP in Florence, talks about the project and its extraordinary educational and research programs. This December the Medici Archive Project will launch its BIA digital interactive platform on the Web, which will eventually provide digital access to between three and four million letters and other documents in the archives of the Medici Granducal Collection, and promises to revolutionize research in early modern studies across the disciplines.

42:02 min. 

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William Noel

SEASON FINALE
May 27, 2008.

William Noel, Curator of Manuscripts and Rare Books at the Walters Art Museum, talks about the book he co-authored with Reviel Netz entitled: The Archimedes Codex: How a Medieval Prayer Book is Revealing the true Genius of Antiquity's Greatest Scientist, and his ten-year project to uncover one of the most important documents in the history of science, the Archimedes Palimpsest.

39:24 min.

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Mark C. Amodio

December 11, 2007.

Mark Amodio, Professor of English at Vassar College, talks about his book: Writing the Oral Tradition: Poetics and Literate Culture in Medieval England, published by the University of Notre Dame Press. Hailed as "a major revision of oral theory" and "destined to reshape critical thinking about medieval poetry in English," Writing the Oral Tradition was selected as a Choice Outstanding Academic Book for 2005.

60:01 min.
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