This is the program for the 2024 International symposium on Miracles, Wonders, Science, and Faith.
Zoom link for both days: Link
Program. Conference 2024
22nd International Symposium 2024: Miracles, Wonders, Science, and Faith in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Age
Date: May 3-4, 2024. Time: 9:00 A.M. – 5:30 P.M. each day
Location: University of Arizona, Richard A. Harvill Building 305, northeast corner of 2nd St. and Olive Rd., 1103 E. Second St. When you get off the Streetcar coming from downtown (west), get off at the Olive Rd. Station, and the building is right across. Our meeting room is on the 2nd floor, accessible by stairs, a ramp, and an elevator in the back.
Contact: Prof. Albrecht Classen, aclassen@arizona.edu, or call 520 621-1395 (in my office or via my smartphone, you could reach me also via FB or Whatsapp). Our main office number in the Dept. of German Studies is: 520 621-7385
Online: please enter through the zoom link (no password required)
This is open to anyone, so just enter, but please make sure to mute yourself until you want to speak. You can always raise your hand electronically, or leave a note in the chat. I will then read it out aloud.
PLEASE MAKE SURE TO LIMIT YOUR SPEAKING TIME TO 20 MINUTES; YOU WILL THEN HAVE 10 MINUTES FOR Q & A. Each question to the speakers: 1 min., please.
SCHEDULE/Program:
Thursday, May 2: 7:00 -9:00 p.m., Social gathering in the hospitality suite no. 135 in the hotel Ramada by Wyndham Tucson (formerly: Riverpark Inn), 777 W. Cushing St, Tucson, Arizona 85745, tel.: +1-520-239-2300, or: 1-800 854-9517. There is a streetcar station right outside. If you catch bus #25 from the airport, it takes you to downtown, Ronstadt Center. From there, walk to E. Congress, which is next to the bus depot, and wait for the streetcar. There is only one line. Get off right after the Interstate underpass, at Cushing Street.
Friday, May 3: 8:15 a.m. meeting in the hotel lobby, we’ll take the Sun Link streetcar to the campus, getting off at Olive Rd. station (2nd St., which is already on campus) and walk just across to our building, Richard A. Harvill Buildg, room 305.
Welcome and Introduction: 9:00-9:15 a.m.: Albrecht Classen
9:15-9:45 a.m.: Quan Gan, The University of Texas at Austin, TX: Two Modes of Episcopal Authority and an Early Capetian Synthesis: Miracles in Reims, Sens, and the Royal Court
9:50-10:20 a.m.: Emanuele Piazza, Department of Educational Sciences – University of Catania: False Miracles, False Doctors, and the Potentia of Saints in the Gaul of Gregory of Tours (via zoom)
10:20-10:35 a.m.: Coffee break (outside of the room)
10:40-11:10 a.m.: Sajedeh Hosseini, University of Arizona: The Alchemy of Turning Dust to Gold (Rūmī)
11:15-11:45 a.m.: Asmaa Ahmed Youssef Etman, Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research, Higher Institute of Languages, Egypt: Religious Miracles and The Historical and Philosophical Experience of Transcendence in Abū’l-ʿAlāʾ al-Maʿarrī’s The Epistle of Forgiveness (Risālat al-Ghufrān) (1033 C.E.) (via zoom)
11:50 a.m.-12:20 p.m.: Connie L. Scarborough, Professor Emerita, Texas Tech University: The Ultimate Miracle: Revival of the Dead (via zoom)
12:25-1:30 p.m.: Lunch Break, at Panera (at 845 N Park Ave Suite 125), ca. 10 min. away on foot
1:35-2:05 p.m.: NOT DELIVERED. Najlaa Aldeeb, Swansea University, Wales, UK, and Batterjee Medical College, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia: The Miracle of Solomon’s Throne: A Comparative Study of Al-Thaʿlabi’s Qiṣaṣ al-Anbiyāʾ and the City of Brass
2:10-2:40 p.m.: Carlee Arnett, University of California, Davis: Conceptual Blend: The Horse as Supernatural Figure in Old Icelandic Sagas
2:45-3:15 p.m.: NOT DELIVERED: Nada Tayem: Indiana University of Pennsylvania: “The Adventures of Bulukiya” and “The Adventures of Sinbad”: When Miraculous Meet the Scientific in Medieval Arabic Folktales (perhaps via zoom)
3:15-3:30 p.m. Coffee break
3:35-4:05 p.m.: Warren Tormey, English Department, Middle Tennessee State University: Langland’s Piers Plowman: Everyday Realities, Transcendent Visions (via zoom)
4:10-4:40 p.m.: Daniel F. Pigg, The University of Tennessee at Martin: Margery Kempe and Miracles: Guarding Understanding and Interpretation of Experience
4:45-5:15 p.m.: Birgit Wiedl, Institute for Jewish History in Austria, St. Pölten, Austria: New Believers, Catalysts, and Perpetrators: the Role(s) of Jews in Christian Miracle Legends
6:30-7:30 p.m., dinner at La Yaquesita, 500 N 4th Ave, so very close (southeast corner) of the stop for the streetcar; located at the corner of 4th Ave. and 6th St., tel.: (520) 622-1924
7:30 p.m., departure with the Sun Link streetcar back to the hotel (going west, until Cushing Street station)
Ca. 8:00 p.m.: social gathering in suite 134
Saturday, May 4, 2024
Meet in the lobby, 8:15 a.m.
Departure with the Sun Link streetcar at 8:20 a.m.
9:00-9:30 a.m.: Fidel Fajardo-Acosta, Creighton University, NE: Miracle of Miracles: Improbable Choices and Impossible Outcomes in Dante’s Paradiso
9:35-10:05 a.m.: Gianni Izzo, University of Arizona: A Guidebook for Prayer Medicines: Ibn Fahd al-Ḥillī’s (d. 841/1437–1438) Provision for the Supplicant
10:10-10:40 a.m.: Doaa Omran, Dept. of English, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque: Fertility Miracles: A Comparative Study of Sayyidah Nafisah and Christian Women Saints
10:45-11:00: Coffee break
11:05-11:20 a.m.: Albrecht Classen, The University of Arizona: Miracle Accounts as Reflections of Everyday Life Culture: Caesarius of Heisterbach’s Dialogus Miraculorum
11:25-11:55 a.m.: Carlo Alessandro Bonifacio, Adam Mickiewicz University – Poznań (Poland): Discerning the Spirit, Discerning the Body: Divine Inspiration, Demonic Deceiving, and Illness in the Liber of Angela of Foligno and in the Free Spirit Movement
12:00 a.m.-12:30 p.m.: Luis A. Anchondo, Southeast New Mexico College, Carlsbad, NM: Miracles and Faith in Cervantes’s Don Quijote
12:35-1:25 p.m. Lunch break, food delivered by Beyond Bread. Outside of our building
1:30-2:00 p.m.: David Tomíček, John Evangelista Purkyně University in Ústí nad Labem, Czech Republic: Natural Wonders and Therapeutic Application of Their Effects in Bohemian Sources of the Late Middle Ages and Early Modern Period
2:05-2:35 p.m.: Anita Obermeier, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque: The Miracle of the Immaculate Conception in the Middle English Joseph of Arimathie and Osbern Bokenham’s St. Anne’s Legend
2:40-3:10 p.m.: Jane Beal, La Verne University, CA: The Vision, the Saint, and the Lamb: Miraculous Revelation in the Middle English Pearl (via zoom)
3:15-3:30 p.m.: Coffee break
3:35-4:05 p.m.: Chiara Benati, University of Genoa, Italy (in person), and Marialuisa Caparrini, University of Ferrara, Italy (via zoom): Where Has God Gone in the Vernacular Renderings of Lanfranc’s Chirurgia magna?
4:10-4:40 p.m.: William Mahan, Northern Arizona University: “Miraculous Light” – Divine Omens and the Human Mind in the Medieval and Early Modern World
4:45-5:15 p.m.: Thomas Willard, The University of Arizona: The Status of Alchemy and Alchemical Gold in Seventeenth-Century Europe
5:20-5:50 p.m.: Zoom presentation of the short film “The Holy Life of the Blessed Saint Onion,” by LESA, Sharon King and Curt Steindler
6:10 p.m. Departure for dinner, we walk to Main Gate (University Avenue) to Sinbad Café (south side, near Starbucks, a little set-in, shady area): 810 E University Blvd, Tucson, AZ 85719; Menu: sinbadsaz.com Phone: (520) 623-4010
6:20-7:30 p.m. Dinner (make your own selection and enjoy it; they do not, however, serve alcoholic drinks).
7:45 p.m.: Departure for hotel, with streetcar
8:15-10:15 p.m.: Social gathering in the hospitality suite, business meeting, planning for the volume to be published. Then, good-bye!
Sunday, May 5: free day; I’ll be happy to be there for you and show you around a little, time permitting and availability of seats in my car (max. 3).
PLEASE MAKE SURE TO LIMIT YOUR SPEAKING TIME TO 20 MINUTES; YOU WILL THEN HAVE 10 MINUTES FOR Q & A