ADEN KUMLER, Associate Professor of Art History and of Romance Languages and Literatures, will deliver the 2019 Nuveen Lecture at The Divinity School: "Unmade by design: The Eucharist and other medieval works of art"
Professor Kumlerâs work focuses on the imbrication of art, material culture, and religion in European medieval culture. Anchored in a deep interest in how the material conditions of life shape possibilities for thought, imagination, and action and committed to a rigorously interdisciplinary tradition of Europeanist medieval studies, Kumler aims to critically engage questions and problems fundamental to the history of art and culture, writ large.
Kumler is also Associate Faculty in the Divinity School and Affiliate Faculty with the Center for Gender Studies, and Medieval Studies Program. Her research has been supported by the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, the Medieval Academy of America, The Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, and the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts.
The author of "Translating Truth: Ambitious Images and Religious Knowledge in Late Medieval France and England" (Yale University Press, 2011) and numerous essays on topics including the material production of the sacred in the Middle Ages, the crafting of Middle English lyrics in the form of objects, early medieval and late medieval experiments with abstraction, as well as the little-known medieval origins of the modern waffle.
She is currently completing a book, tentatively titled The Multiplication of the Species: Medieval Economies of Form, Substance, and Accident, that examines the formal and conceptual relationships cultivated between the Eucharistic host, coins, and seals over the course of the Middle Ages.
Kumler's teaching has been recognized with both the University of Chicago's Faculty Award for Excellence in Graduate Teaching and Mentoring and the Llewellyn John and Harriet Manchester Quantrell Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching.
John S. Nuveen was one of Chicagoâs most influential business leaders and an active civil and cultural leader with ties to many educational institutions. At the University of Chicago, he served as chairman of the Universityâs Alumni Association and as a trustee of the Baptist Theological Union, who established the Nuveen lecture in 1972 and manage an endowment that supports the University of Chicago Divinity School. Each year, a prominent member of the University's faculty is invited by the BTU and the Divinity School to deliver the lecture. Past lecturers have included Wu Hung, Janet Rowley, Jonathan Lear, and Leon Kass.
This yearâs lecture will be held on Thursday, October 17 2019, at 4:30 pm in Swift Hall's third-floor Lecture Hall. This event is free and open to the public. A reception will follow.
If you need an accommodation to attend an event, please call Suzanne Riggle at 773-702-8219.
Date: October 17, 2019
Time: 4:30 PM - 6:00 PM
