Faculty & Staff Lightning Research Presentations

Join the Center for Premodern Studies for seven lightning presentations (5 minutes each) by UMN faculty and staff about their research. There will be time to network and connect following the presentations.

Pat Ahearne-Kroll (Classical and Near Eastern Religions and Cultures)     Eclectic texts and diplomatic editions: What they hide and why they are problematic (it’s more than you think)

Too often, eclectic/diplomatic editions are used to reconstruct historical, intellectual, or sociological realities as if those editions were original to that time/place in question, or they are used to anchor comparisons with later writings. My project goes beyond the critiques posed by other scholars; the process of extracting and altering textual evidence and the projection that these editions reflect the “first” or “best” telling are extensions of imperial-minded activity. If we are going to kick the habit, we need a different model for how to do premodern history.

Paloma Barraza  (UMN Libraries)     Trailblazing Nuns

From Hildegard of Bingen in the 11th century, Germany, to Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz in the 17th century, New Spain, nuns across the globe expressed their polymathic feminine genius through their writings, studies, music, and more. Let's dive into why many trailblazing nuns preferred to marry Christ and live a cloistered life. 

Anna Graber (History of Science)     Tsardom of Rock: Knowing the Earth in Russia’s Mining Empire

My book manuscript examines how leaders of the mining industry in eighteenth-century Russia developed new methods of knowing and ruling Russia’s natural environment and imperial subjects to forge the modern Russian Empire. 

Howard Louthan & Amelia Spell (History)     A Global Cult of a Silent Saint

In this project we investigate the surprising emergence and growth of the cult of John Nepomuk, a Czech saint canonized in 1729. Though scholars have studied how this form of devotion rapidly spread across Central Europe, they have paid far less attention to its development as a global phenomenon. 

Hernán Matzkevich (Spanish)      Disease as an Identity Marker: Syphilis, Deviance, and Discursive Inversion in Counter-Reformation Spain

This project examines the early modern construction of syphilis as a disease linked to Indigenous peoples, Jewish communities, and other marginalized groups, and analyzes how those labeled as deviant later appropriated and inverted this discourse. By reframing syphilis as evidence of institutional corruption, these voices mobilized medical stigma to challenge the ideological foundations and coercive practices of Counter-Reformation Spain and the Inquisition.

Matthew Reznicek (Medical Humanities)     Novel Care

Re-reading the nineteenth-century novel through the politics of care allows us to see the ways in which the novel in the nineteenth century re-imagines society through the experience of care. In Ennui (1809), Mansfield Park (1814), Waverley (1814), care becomes a key fulcrum not only in re-working the individual and social politics of the novels, but also in re-envisioning the foundations of nineteenth-century Irish and British social order.

Jennie Row (French & Italian)     Reading for Sex, Race and Disability in Early Modern Images

I will examine a few classic engravings from 17th century French medical and military books, to show how we can read "against the grain" to think about disability community, sexuality/queerness, and coded race.