Lectures: October and November

Dean's Lecture

Bogaç Ergene, Assoc. Professor of History
Tuesday, October 7, at 5:00pm
Waterman Memorial Lounge
Title: Corruption, Ottoman Style

Synopsis: We know corruption when we see it. Or do we? Professor Ergene will address how early-modern Ottoman state and society defined political and administrative corruption and perceived the practices (i.e., “bribery,” “nepotism,” “extortion”) associated with it. The discussion will provide clues about how the Ottomans differentiated legitimate and illegitimate forms of government. Professor Ergene will also argue that a historically-situated understanding of the topic is crucial to grasp the prevalent attitudes towards corruption in modern Middle East.

Bogaç A. Ergene (Ph.D., Ohio State University, 2001) is Associate Professor of History at UVM. In the Spring Semester of 2014, he was the Aga Khan Distinguished Professor in Islamic Humanities at Brown University. Professor Ergene is the author of Local Court, Provincial Society and Justice in the Ottoman Empire: Legal Practice and Dispute Resolution in Çankiri and Kastamonu (1652-1744) (Brill, 2003) and editor of Judicial Practice: Institutions and Agents in the Islamic World (Brill, 2009). He also published numerous articles in major history, law, and economic history journals. Ergene’s research has received support in the past from many institutions, including the American Council of Learned Societies, Social Sciences Research Council, and American Research Institute in Turkey.

The Dean’s Lecture Series was established in 1991 as a way to recognize and honor colleagues in the College of Arts and Sciences who have consistently demonstrated the ability to translate their professional knowledge and skill into exciting classroom experiences for their students — faculty who meet the challenge of being both excellent teachers and highly respected professionals in their own discipline. The Award is a celebration of the unusually high quality of our faculty and has become an important and treasured event each semester.

A recording of the lecture will be made available at the online media blog http://blog.uvm.edu/compute-cas-media/ and eventually at the College of Arts and Sciences website.

Full Professor Lecture

Sean Field, Professor of History
Tuesday, November 4, at 5:00pm 
Waterman Memorial Lounge

Title:  On the Importance of Medieval Manuscript Research to the Universitas Viridis Montis

Synopsis: The lecture will trace the past, present, and future of Dr. Field’s work at UVM, which is driven by an intense engagement with unique medieval manuscripts and a desire to fully understand what they tell us about issues such as power, dissent, and religious ideology that concern the modern world as much as the medieval.

Professor Field received his A.B. from the University of Michigan in 1992 and his M.A. and Ph.D. from Northwestern University in 1997 and 2002. In 2003 he joined the UVM faculty, where he teaches medieval European history and specializes in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century topics. Field's current research centers on the intersection of sanctity, heresy, political power, and religious institutions at and around the French royal court. His most recent books include The Sanctity of Louis IX:  Early Lives of Saint Louis by Geoffrey of Beaulieu and William of Chartres (edited and translated with Larry F. Field and M. Cecilia Gaposchkin) (Cornell, 2014);   Marguerite Porete et le Miroir des simples âmes:  Perspectives historiques, philosophiques, et littéraires (as editor with Robert E. Lerner and Sylvain Piron) (Vrin, 2013); The Rules of Isabelle of France:  An English Translation with Introductory Study (Franciscan Institute Publications, 2013), and The Beguine, the Angel, and the Inquisitor: The Trial of Marguerite Porete and Guiard of Cressonessart (Notre Dame, 2012). 

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Please note: All lecture speakers, topics, start times, and locations are subject to change.