# VIRGINIA FOX STERN CENTER
**Source**: https://sterncenter.library.jhu.edu/lectures/
**Parent**: https://sterncenter.library.jhu.edu/
Lectures[cathy](https://sterncenter.library.jhu.edu/author/cathy/ "Posts by cathy")2026-01-30T10:01:58-05:00
# Lectures
CURRENT LECTURES
CURRENT LECTURES
[More Events @ Sheridan Libraries](https://jhu.libcal.com/calendar/events?cid=11394&t=g&d=0000-00-00&cal=11394&audience=2153&inc=0)
[More Events @ Sheridan Libraries](https://jhu.libcal.com/calendar/events?cid=11394&t=g&d=0000-00-00&cal=11394&audience=2153&inc=0)
## Spring 2026 Lecture Series
MONIKA AMSLER, University of Bern, Johns Hopkins University
### How Were Books of Encyclopedic Scope Produced in Late Antiquity? Literary Data Management and the Babylonian Talmud
Tuesday, January 27, 5:15 PM\
Brody Learning Commons, Macksey Seminar Room 2043
*Co-sponsored by the Leonard and Helen R. Stulman Program in Jewish Studies*
RICHARD CALIS, University of Utrecht
### *Grecia Illustrata:* Early Modern Visions of Ottoman Greece
Tuesday, February 10, 5:15 PM Lecture\
Brody Learning Commons, Macksey Seminar Room 2043\
FRANCESCO BRENNA, Towson University
### Tasso, Pilgrims, and Athletes: The Poetics of Play in the Renaissance
Tuesday, February 24, 5:15 PM Lecture\
Brody Learning Commons, Macksey Seminar Room 2043
*Co-sponsored by the Italian Section of the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures*
CLARISSA CHENOVICK, Florida Atlantic University
### “My heart, my mouth, mine eyes still sucking be”: Visual and Tactile Devotions to the Wounds of Christ in Early Modern English Poetry
Tuesday, March 10, 5:15 PM Lecture\
Brody Learning Commons, Macksey Seminar Room 2043
*Co-sponsored by the Department of English*
DIEGO MOLDES, Nebrija University
### Antonio de Nebrija: A Grammar, a Converso, and the Birth of an Empire
Tuesday, March 31, 5:15 PM Lecture\
Brody Learning Commons, Macksey Seminar Room 2043
*Co-sponsored by the Spanish Section of the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures*
JORAN PROOT, Cultura Fonds Library
### The Early Modern Metamorphosis of the Handpress Book in the Southern Netherlands
Tuesday, April 7, 5:15 PM Lecture\
Brody Learning Commons, Macksey Seminar Room 2043
GENE MATANKY, Harvard University, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
### Indexing Kabbalistic Knowledge: Jacob Poggetti’s Manuscript Copy of Moses Cordovero’s Pardes Rimonim at JHU
Tuesday, April 21, 5:15 PM Lecture\
Brody Learning Commons, Macksey Seminar Room 2043
*Co-sponsored by the Leonard and Helen R. Stulman Program in Jewish Studies, and the Singleton Center for the Study of Premodern Europe*
PAST LECTURES
PAST LECTURES
## Fall 2025 Lecture Series
HANNAH MCCLAIN, University of Texas at Austin
### Wards of Christ: Women and Custodial Institutions in Early Modern Italy
Tuesday, September 2, 5:15 pm\
Macksey Seminar Room 2043\
Brody Learning Commons, JHU Homewood Campus
BRENT SEALES, University of Kentucky
### On Virtually Unwrapping the Herculaneum Scrolls
Tuesday, September 9, 5:30 pm\
Macksey Seminar Room 2043\
Brody Learning Commons, JHU Homewood Campus
*Co-sponsored by the Department of Near Eastern Studies*
EVELYN HU-DEHART, Brown University & DIEGO LUIS, Johns Hopkins University
### Workshop on JHU’s Newly Acquired Cuban-Chinese Labor Archive
Thursday September 25, 3:00-5:00 pm\
Macksey Seminar Room 2043\
Brody Learning Commons, JHU Homewood Campus
*Co-sponsored by the Winston Tabb Special Collections Research Center, and the Department of History*
CONFERENCE
GREGSON DAVIS, Duke University\
JENNIFER FERRISS-HILL, University of Miami\
MARTIN W. MICHALEK, Johns Hopkins University\
K. SARA MYERS, University of Virginia\
PETER OSARIO, Harvard University\
JEFFREY ULRICH, Rutgers University
### Horatian Sketches: Poetics, Composition, and Atmosphere in Horace
Friday, October 3, 9:00 am to 5:30 pm\
Evergreen Museum & Library (4545 North Charles Street, Baltimore)
*Co-sponsored by the Department of Classics*
ANTHONY GRAFTON, Princeton University
### Joseph Scaliger and the della Scala of Verona: How the Greatest Scholar in Europe Became a Forger
Tuesday, October 14, 5:15 am\
Macksey Seminar Room 2043\
Brody Learning Commons, JHU Homewood Campus
*Co-sponsored by the Singleton Center for the Study of Premodern Europe,* *and the Alexander Grass Humanities Institute*
BRENT SEALES, University of Kentucky
### “Calculated for 30 Years”: Lefevre’s French Revolutionary Calendar
Tuesday, November 11, 5:15 pm\
Macksey Seminar Room 2043\
Brody Learning Commons, JHU Homewood Campus
## Spring 2025 Lecture Series
NICOLE HUGHES, Stanford
### Disputed Martyrs and the End of Christian Antiquity in La Florida
Tuesday, February 25, 5:15 pm\
Macksey Seminar Room 2043\
Brody Learning Commons, JHU Homewood Campus
*Co-sponsored by the Alexander Grass Humanities Institute*
SANDRO LA BARBERA, University of Trento
### *Like A Virgil:* Culex *and the Canon*
Tuesday, March 11, 5:15 pm\
Macksey Seminar Room 2043\
Brody Learning Commons, JHU Homewood Campus
EARLE HAVENS, Johns Hopkins University, and JENNIFER JARVIS, Johns Hopkins University
### Renaissance Sundials: A Paper Tool “Making Event”
Tuesday, March 25, 5:15 pm\
George Peabody Library\
Attendees learn about, assemble, and take home a 17th-century paper sundial.
*Co-sponsored by the Department of Conservation & Preservation, Sheridan Libraries, JHU*
RICHARD KAGAN, Johns Hopkins University
### Book Launch: *The Inquisition’s Inquisitor: Henry Charles Lea of Philadelphia*
Tuesday, April 8, 5:15 pm\
Macksey Seminar Room 2043\
Brody Learning Commons, JHU Homewood Campus
*Co-sponsored by the KSAS Dean’s Office and the JHU Academy*
MASTER CLASS
### Renaissance Humanist Print Culture, Washington DC (Folger Shakespeare Library, Library of Congress, National Gallery of Art, and a private rare book collection)
Friday, May 2, all day
*Co-sponsored by the Department of Classics, the Alexander Grass Humanities Institute, and the Singleton Center for the Study of Premodern Europe*
Interested faculty and graduate students must RSVP to [sterncenter@jhu.edu](mailto:sterncenter@jhu.edu) by April 14 to enroll in this Master Class.
## Fall 2024 Lecture Series
GERARD GONZÁLEZ GERMAIN, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
### Modern Books on Ancient Stones: The Development and Reception of Printed Collections of Inscriptions in the 16th Century
Tuesday, September 3, 5:15 pm\
Brody Learning Commons, JHU Homewood Campus
*Co-sponsored by the Singleton Center for the Study of Premodern Europe, and the Department of Classics, JHU*
KELSEY CHAMPAGNE, St. Mary’s College of Maryland
### Keeper of the Crèche: Religion, Economics, and Material Culture in an Early Modern Tuscan Convent
Wednesday, September 25, 5:15 pm\
Macksey Seminar Room 2043\
Brody Learning Commons, JHU Homewood Campus
*Co-sponsored by the Alexander Grass Humanities Institute, JHU*
JOSÉ MONTELONGO, Brown University
### In Search of the Intended Reader: Historical Reading Practices in Sixteenth-Century Mexico
Tuesday, October 15, 5:15 pm\
Macksey Seminar Room 2043\
Brody Learning Commons, JHU Homewood Campus
*Co-sponsored by the Program in Latin American, Caribbean, and Latinx Studies, JHU*
JARED HICKMAN, Johns Hopkins University
### Maryland as New Ireland: The Landscape, Language, and Legacy of Charles Carroll the Settler
Tuesday, November 12, 5:15 pm\
Macksey Seminar Room 2043\
Brody Learning Commons, JHU Homewood Campus
*Co-sponsored by the Department of English, JHU*
NICHOLAS JONES, Yale University
### A Provocation on the State of the Field: Cervantine Blackness
Tuesday, December 3, 5:15pm\
Macksey Seminar Room 2043\
Brody Learning Commons, JHU Homewood Campus
*Co-sponsored by the Spanish and Portuguese Section of the Department of Modern Languages & Literatures, JHU*
## Spring 2024 Lecture Series
OLIVIA WEISSER, University of Massachusetts, Boston
### Shopping for Pox Cures in Early Modern London
Tuesday, March 7, 5:15 pm
*Co-sponsored by the Department of the History of Medicine,\
and the Center for Medical Humanities and Social Medicine, JHU*
MATTEO VENIER, University of Udine
### Another Side of Italian Humanistic Literature: The 1493 Manuscript *Nova de miraculis disputatio* of Petrus Haedus at JHU
Tuesday, March 26, 5:15 pm
*Co-sponsored by the Singleton Center for the Study of\
Premodern Europe, and the Italian Section of the Department of\
Modern Languages & Literatures, JHU*
EMILY WILSON, University of Pennsylvania
### Emily Wilson on the *Iliad*
Wednesday, March 27, 5:15 pm
*Co-sponsored with the Department of Classics, JHU*
Round Table Discussants:\
ANN BLAIR (Harvard), ANTHONY GRAFTON (Princeton),\
EARLE HAVENS (JHU), WALTER STEPHENS (JHU),\
Chaired by Krieger School of Arts & Sciences Dean\
CHRISTOPHER CELENZA (JHU)
### Book Launch: Walter Stephens, *How Writing Made us Human, 3000 B.C. to Now*
Tuesday, April 2, 5:30 pm
*Co-sponsored by the Johns Hopkins University Press*
JENNIFER JARVIS (JHU) and EARLE HAVENS (JHU)
### The Terrestrial and Celestial Globe Gores of François Demongenet (1552) at JHU
Tuesday, April 16, 5:15pm: A Rare Book “Making” Event
Co-sponsored by the Department of Conservation and Preservation\
of the Sheridan Libraries, JHU
CAROL BAXTER, Trinity College, Dublin
### Networking for Success: Early Modern Nuns and Their Support Networks
Tuesday, April 30, 5:15 pm
## Fall 2023 Lecture Series
NOEL BLANCO MOURELLE, University of Chicago
### The Art of Knowing Everything. The Afterlives of Ramon Llull
Tuesday, September 5, 5:15 pm
*Co-sponsored by the Spanish Section of the Department of\
Modern Languages & Literatures*
PETER DAVIDSON, Campion Hall, Oxford
### Robert Southwell SJ, An Early Modern Catholic Poet and his Protestant Afterlives
Tuesday, October 3, 5:15 pm
*Co-sponsored by the Singleton Center for the Study of Premodern Europe,\
the Alexander Grass Humanities Institute, and the Department of Classics*
JANE STEVENSON, Campion Hall, Oxford
### Invisible Women: Female Latinists after the Renaissance
Thursday, October 5, 5:15 pm
*Co-sponsored by the Singleton Center for the Study of Premodern Europe,\
the Alexander Grass Humanities Institute, and the Department of Classics*
JAN GRAFFIUS, Stonyhurst College
### Clandestine Survivals of Medieval and Early Modern Catholic Memory in England and the Spanish Netherlands
November 7, 5:15 pm
ERIN GIFFIN, Skidmore College
### Tangible Abstractions: Holy Lengths on Textile and Paper in the Catholic Cult of Loreto
November 14, 5:15 pm
*Co-sponsored by the Department of the History of Art*
## Spring 2023 Lecture Series
LAWRENCE PRINCIPE, History of Science & Technology, JHU
### Recovering John of Rupescissa’s Liber lucis: Medieval Alchemy, Philology, and the Antichrist
Wednesday, March 1, 5:15 pm
*Panel and “Making” Event\*KAREN NÍ MHEALLAIGH, Classics, JHU\
EARLE HAVENS, Stern Center, JHU\
FILIP GEAMAN, History of Science & Technology, JHU\
JENNIFER JARVIS, Department of Conservation & Preservation, JHU
### Cosmic Visions in Early Modern Italy: Vincenzo Coronelli’s Paper Supercomputer
Wednesday, March 15, 5:15 pm
*Co-sponsored by the 2022-23 JHU Discovery Award project “Cosmic Visions: Humanistic Engagements with the James Webb Space Telescope”*
CATERINA MORDEGLIA, Literature and Philosophy, Università degli Studi di Trento
### The Scribal Fortunes of Phaedrus’ Fables: Mysterious Disappearances and Unexpected Rediscoveries of an Ancient Latin Text in the Middle Ages and Renaissance
Tuesday, March 28, 5:15 pm
*Co-sponsored by the Singleton Center for the Study of Premodern Europe*
## Fall 2022 Lecture Series
CARME FONT, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
### Cloistered Iconoclasts: Challenging Stereotypes of Early Modern Spiritual Women
Tuesday, September 27, 5:15 pm
CARME FONT, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
### Wisdom to be Found: Genealogies of Knowledge in Women’s Spiritual Writings of the Long Reformation
Tuesday, October 4, 4:00 pm
STEPHEN CLARKE, University of Liverpool
### ‘We saw churches, palaces, and pictures from morning to night’: New Manuscript Discoveries at JHU from Thomas Gray’s and Horace Walpole’s Grand Tour
Tuesday, October 11, 5:15 pm
MAXIM RIGAUX, Ghent University
### Epic Echoes in JHU’s Women of the Book Collection: Towards a Gendered Approach to Early Modern Ibero-American Epic
Tuesday, October 18, 5:15 pm
SCOTT MANDELBROTE, Peterhouse College, Cambridge
### Isaac Newton’s Lost Reading
Thursday, November 3, 5:15 pm
*Co-sponsored by the Singleton Center for the Study of Premodern Europe*
## Fall 2019 Lecture Series
PAULA FINDLEN, Stanford University
### Why Put a Museum in a Book? Ferrante Imperato’s Cabinet of Natural History in 16th-Century Naples
Thursday, September 17, 5:15 pm
*Co-sponsored by the Singleton Center for the Study of Premodern Europe*
PAULA FINDLEN, Stanford University
### Why Put a Museum in a Book? Ferrante Imperato’s Cabinet of Natural History in 16th-Century Naples
Thursday, September 17, 5:15 pm
*Co-sponsored by the Singleton Center for the Study of Premodern Europe*
JASON COHEN, Berea College
### Illustrated Initials: Letters and Questions of Scale in Early Printed Books
Thursday, October 8, 5:15 pm
*Co-sponsored by the Singleton Center for the Study of Premodern Europe*
JASON COHEN, Berea College
### Illustrated Initials: Letters and Questions of Scale in Early Printed Books
Thursday, October 8, 5:15 pm
*Co-sponsored by the Singleton Center for the Study of Premodern Europe*
SONJA DRIMMER, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
### Provisional Vision: Posters and Politics in Fifteenth-Century England
Thursday, October 22, 5:15 pm
*Co-sponsored by the Department of the History of Art,\
& the Singleton Center for the Study of Premodern Europe*
SONJA DRIMMER, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
### Provisional Vision: Posters and Politics in Fifteenth-Century England
Thursday, October 22, 5:15 pm
*Co-sponsored by the Department of the History of Art,\
& the Singleton Center for the Study of Premodern Europe*
SETH KIMMEL, Columbia University
### Early Modern Iberia, Indexed: Hernando Colón’s Cosmography
Wednesday, November 13, 5:15 pm
*Co-sponsored by the Department of the History of Science & Technology,\
and the Department of German & Romance Languages & Literatures*
SETH KIMMEL, Columbia University
### Early Modern Iberia, Indexed: Hernando Colón’s Cosmography
Wednesday, November 13, 5:15 pm
*Co-sponsored by the Department of the History of Science & Technology,\
and the Department of German & Romance Languages & Literatures*
ALISON SHELL,\
University College London
### English Recusant Drama in Manuscript and Print: The Provocative Career of William Drury
Tuesday, November 19, 5:15 pm
ALISON SHELL, University College London
### English Recusant Drama in Manuscript and Print: The Provocative Career of William Drury
Tuesday, November 19, 5:15 pm
## Spring 2019 Lecture Series
LAUREN KASSELL, Cambridge University
### Written in the Stars: Digitizing an Astrological Archive
Wednesday, February 13, 5:15 pm
*Co-Sponsored by the Singleton Center and English Department*\
[See the Cambridge University Library “Casebooks” project](https://casebooks.lib.cam.ac.uk/)
LAUREN KASSELL, Cambridge University
### Written in the Stars: Digitizing an Astrological Archive
Wednesday, February 13, 5:15 pm
*Co-Sponsored by the Singleton Center and English Department*\
[See the Cambridge University Library “Casebooks” project](https://casebooks.lib.cam.ac.uk/)
MARK CABALL, University College Dublin
### Reading Jamaica: Patrick Browne, an Early Modern Irish Botanist and Physician in the West Indies
Monday, March 25, 5:15 pm
MARK CABALL, University College Dublin
### Reading Jamaica: Patrick Browne, an Early Modern Irish Botanist and Physician in the West Indies
Monday, March 25, 5:15 pm
HANNAH MARCUS, Harvard University
### Forbidden Fruits: Books and their Censors in Early Modern Italy
Thursday, February 28, 5:15 pm
*Co-Sponsored by the Singleton Center*
HANNAH MARCUS, Harvard University
### Forbidden Fruits: Books and their Censors in Early Modern Italy
Thursday, February 28, 5:15 pm
*Co-Sponsored by the Singleton Center*
*Fifth Annual Bibliotheca Fictiva Lecture*\
FREDERIC CLARK, University of Southern California
### The First Pagan Historian: Dares Phrygius and the Forging of Troy from Isidore of Seville to Thomas Jefferson
Thursday, March 14, 5:15 pm
*Co-Sponsored by the Singleton Center and Classics Department*
*Fifth Annual Bibliotheca Fictiva Lecture*\
FREDERIC CLARK, University of Southern California
### The First Pagan Historian: Dares Phrygius and the Forging of Troy from Isidore of Seville to Thomas Jefferson
Thursday, March 14, 5:15 pm
*Co-Sponsored by the Singleton Center and Classics Department*
SUREKHA DAVIES, John Carter Brown Library
### Reading Nature and Culture: Richard Eden’s Marginalia in the Johns Hopkins Copy of Peter Martyr’s *Decades of the New World* (1533)
Wednesday, April 17, 5:15 pm
SUREKHA DAVIES, John Carter Brown Library
### Reading Nature and Culture: Richard Eden’s Marginalia in the Johns Hopkins Copy of Peter Martyr’s *Decades of the New World* (1533)
Wednesday, April 17, 5:15 pm
## Fall 2018 Lecture Series
STEPHEN CLARKE, University of Liverpool
### “The Most Delicious Places I Ever Beheld”: Italy and Architecture in John Evelyn’s Grand Tour Diary, 1644-46
Thursday, September 13, 5:15 pm
STEPHEN CLARKE, University of Liverpool
### “The Most Delicious Places I Ever Beheld”: Italy and Architecture in John Evelyn’s Grand Tour Diary, 1644-46
Thursday, September 13, 5:15 pm
MAUDE VANHAELEN, University of Warwick
### Plato in the Place of Aristotle: The Teaching of Platonic Dialogues in 16th-century Universities
Tuesday, September 18, 5:15 pm
*Co-Sponsored with the Department of German and\
Romance Languages and Literatures*
MAUDE VANHAELEN, University of Warwick
### Plato in the Place of Aristotle: The Teaching of Platonic Dialogues in 16th-century Universities
Tuesday, September 18, 5:15 pm
*Co-Sponsored with the Department of German and\
Romance Languages and Literatures*
HEATHER BAMFORD, George Washington University
### Cultures of the Fragment: Intention, Reading, and Meaning in the Early Modern Iberian Manuscript
Thursday, October 18, 5:15 pm
HEATHER BAMFORD, George Washington University
### Cultures of the Fragment: Intention, Reading, and Meaning in the Early Modern Iberian Manuscript
Thursday, October 18, 5:15 pm
GABRIELE FERRARIO, Johns Hopkins University
### Alchemy in Motion: The Trilingual Tradition of an Alchemical Recipe Book
Wednesday, November 14, 5:15 pm
*Co-sponsored by the Department of the History of Science and Technology*
GABRIELE FERRARIO, Johns Hopkins University
### Alchemy in Motion: The Trilingual Tradition of an Alchemical Recipe Book
Wednesday, November 14, 5:15 pm
*Co-sponsored by the Department of the History of Science and Technology*
## Spring 2018 Lecture Series
MARK RANKIN, James Madison University
### Racking and Reading: Richard Topcliffe and the Book Culture of the Elizabethan Catholic Underground
Wednesday, February 21, 5:15 pm
MARK RANKIN, James Madison University
### Racking and Reading: Richard Topcliffe and the Book Culture of the Elizabethan Catholic Underground
Wednesday, February 21, 5:15 pm
GAVIN SCHWARTZ-LEEPER, University of Warwick
### Richard Grafton and John Stow: Plagiarism, Popular History, and the Book in 16th-Century England
Wednesday, April 4, 5:15 pm
GAVIN SCHWARTZ-LEEPER, University of Warwick
### Richard Grafton and John Stow: Plagiarism, Popular History, and the Book in 16th-Century England
Wednesday, April 4, 5:15 pm
*4th Annual Bibliotheca Fictiva Lecture on the History of Literary Forgery*\
THOMAS HENDRICKSON, Stanford University
### Forgery and the Rise of the Book in Classical Antiquity
Friday, April 6, 3:00 pm
*4th Annual Bibliotheca Fictiva Lecture on the History of Literary Forgery*\
THOMAS HENDRICKSON, Stanford University
### Forgery and the Rise of the Book in Classical Antiquity
Friday, April 6, 3:00 pm
JOSHUA SMITH, Department of Classics, Johns Hopkins University
### Homer’s Ocean: Concepts of Influence in Ancient Criticism
Tuesday, April 24, 5:15 pm
JOSHUA SMITH, Department of Classics, Johns Hopkins University
### Homer’s Ocean: Concepts of Influence in Ancient Criticism
Tuesday, April 24, 5:15 pm