Hutchins Center: Christian Africa/Medieval Africa, 300-1600 CE - Two-Day Symposium

Date: 

Thursday, November 2, 2017 (All day) to Friday, November 3, 2017 (All day)

Location: 

CGIS S020 (1730 Cambridge Street) and the Barker Center's Thompson Room (12 Quincy Street)

A two-day symposium exploring the long, rich, and complex history of Christian beliefs, institutions, and communities in Africa between Late Antiquity and the seventeenth century CE, bringing together an international group of researchers in medieval studies, African studies, Byzantine studies, archeology, book history, and the history of religion.

Keynote address on Thursday, 2 November (5:00 pm) in CGIS S020 by Stephen Davis, Professor of Religious Studies and History at Yale University and director of the Yale Monastic Archeology Project. Reception to follow. On Friday, 3 November, presentations in Barker Center 110 by Suzanne Blier (Harvard University), Elizabeth Bolman (Case Western Reserve University), Marie-Laure Derat (CNRS Paris), Cécile Fromont (University of Chicago), Samantha Kelly (Rutgers University), Judith McKenzie (Oxford University), Mai Musié (Oxford University), Giovanni Ruffini (Fairfield University), John Thornton (Boston University), and Alexandros Tsakos (University of Bergen), with responses by Christopher Ehret (UCLA) and Helen Evans (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York).

Co-sponsored by the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research, the Committee on Medieval Studies, the Center for African Studies, the Department of African and African American Studies, the Center for the Study of World Religions, and the Harvard University Provostial Fund for the Arts and Humanities.