Materials, Matter, and Materiality in the Middle Ages

(4 Credits)

The theme of the colloquium, materiality, is concerned with the tangible stuff of medieval lives, with those materials -animal parts, vegetable fibers, metal, stones, clay, wood, that were used and processed into finished objects -comestibles, clothing, homes and monuments, artifacts and ornaments, images and the media of written and visual communication. As they emerged from raw materials, things affected social relations and cultural perception, enabling action and provoking reaction. We will consider, for example, the effects of pageantry, with its elaborate display of culinary, heraldic, and sartorial splendor, in asserting and maintaining chivalric claims to dominance. We will examine recent archeological findings to understand the ways accessories to clothing enabled peasants to resist and re-fashion the identities imposed upon them by medieval elites.