Early medieval literate culture, dominated by Christian monks and clerics, was focused on interpreting biblical texts and correlating them with a theological system devised in patristic times and late antiquity. Central to biblical exegesis was the fourfold method that distinguished the literal (or historical) sense of Old Testament narratives…[Read more]

In the 21st century, digital practices are transforming both archaeological practices in the field and the concept publication. The fragmentation of archaeological knowledge as digital data produces portable, sharable, remixable, and transformable publications that are less stable and less definitive than their predecessors in print. As a result,…[Read more]

Ernst Haeckel and Emil du Bois-Reymond were the most prominent champions of Darwin in Germany. This essay compares their contributions to popularizing the theory of evolution, drawing special attention to the neglected figure of du Bois-Reymond as a spokesman for a world devoid of natural purpose. It suggests that the historiography of the German…[Read more]

Tracing an early rabbinic approach to the human, this article analyzes how the Tannaim (early Palestinian Jewish sages) of the Mishnah and Tosefta (redacted ca. early 3rd century CE) set the human side by side with other species, and embedded their account within broader considerations of reproduction, zoology and species crossings. The human here…[Read more]

This article makes several claims. It argues that the genre of “pilgrim’s literature” is present in rabbinic sources, and identifies rabbinic pilgrimage itineraries. Secondly, it shows that aside from the expected melancholic post-Temple itinerary, there exist itineraries for Babylon and for biblical conquest that do a very dif…[Read more]

This article studies the relationship between love and violence in Celestina. It departs from Octavio Paz’s essay La llama doble, in particular, the difference be- tween eroticism and love, and the acknowledgement of a dark and destructive side within sexual desire. It concludes that desire is the main driving force of the plot in Celestina and t…[Read more]

In this Visual Arts Journal Invited Lecture, I conduct a reading of art education historiography through two concepts, dis-appearance and re-turn, as an attempt to think philosophical research in art education historically and historical research in art education philosophically.

‘Große Heidelberger Liederhandschrift’, ‘Ambrasser Heldenbuch’, ‘Rostocker Liederbuch’, ‘Hausbuch des Michael de Leone’, ‘Heidelberger Schicksalsbuch’, ‘Alsfelder Dirigierrolle’, ‘Bamberger mathematisches Manuskript’ …, there are many established names for medieval German manuscripts. Their proper names consist of nominal phrases and the heads…[Read more]

An interpretation of the rock art appearing in The Shaft at Lascaux and a discussion of Aurignacian Rites of Passage

An interpretation of the Red Mammoth Panel in Chauvet linking Chauvet to Lascaux in a single ritual landscape

This article introduces a new perspective, the history of vision, into the study of rabbinic literature. Specifically it examines how rabbinic visual regimes dealt with those objects and images that it designated as idols. It argues that rabbis took seeing seriously and that they developed a set of strategies to shape the viewing of problematic…[Read more]

A brief report on an MA course on Tolkien taught at Leiden University

Studies of Egyptian Late Period statuary often assume that the extant corpus is a representative sample of the artistic output of the Twenty-Sixth to Thirty-First Dynasties (c. 664–332 BCE). This assumption ignores the various human processes that affect the survival of statues after their initial dedication. In particular, the Roman practice of c…[Read more]

This essay considers the category of “Jewish law” in Jewish studies while inviting scholarly and historiographic assessment of the ways that Judaism’s link to law has come to appear as obvious. Considering that our present concepts of law are invariably linked to a geographically and temporally parochial “mythology of modern law,” the essay sounds…[Read more]

Bibliography of research on bishops in Anglo-Saxon England and Ottonian-Salian Germany in the tenth and eleventh centuries, as well as comprehensive and comparative studies of this period, as long as either of the aforementioned geographical entities is covered.

The book chapter looks at the additional information given in the twelfth century itinerary made by the Icelandic monk Nikulás of Munkaþverá and includes a German translation of the itinerary.

The book chapter analyses how bishops saw their role in succession struggles of tenth and early eleventh centuries Germany.

The book chapter looks at the role of bishops in the German royal successions of 984 and 1024.

This article shows how I have been lately combining my research in the cultural
history of the Spanish Middle Ages and Early Renaissance with the TV show Game
of Thrones for teaching purposes. I have been able to design a capstone seminar to
attract students interested in the popular medievalising TV fiction, proving them
than most of the…[Read more]

This article shows how I have been lately combining my research in the cultural
history of the Spanish Middle Ages and Early Renaissance with the TV show Game
of Thrones for teaching purposes. I have been able to design a capstone seminar to
attract students interested in the popular medievalising TV fiction, proving them
than most of the…[Read more]