Marc Michael Epstein will explored issues of temporality (the way in which the passing of time is indicated or implied) in illuminated manuscripts made for Jews in the fourteenth century. What happens when, viewing images as a frozen snapshots in time, we consider the potentially politically subversive implications of the implied action that will ensue in the moment after the one that is frozen in the frame? What can we learn from such considerations about the political and theological views of the constellation of patrons, rabbinic advisors, scribes, designers, illustrators and illuminators who collaborated to produce these beautiful and iconographically complex masterpieces?
Maurice Amado Lecture in Sephardic Studies
Marc Epstein (Vassar College)
Moderator: Sarah Abrevaya Stein (UCLA)
About the Speaker: Marc Michael Epstein Professor on the Mattie M. Paschall (1899) & Norman Davis Chair in Religion and Visual Culture at Vassar College was Vassar’s first Director of Jewish Studies. He has written on various topics in visual and material culture produced by, for, and about Jews. His 2011 book, The Medieval Haggadah: Art, Narrative, and Religious Imagination (Yale University Press) was selected by the TLS as one of the best books of the year. His 2015 Skies of Parchment, Seas of Ink: Jewish Manuscript Illumination (Princeton University Press) was the winner of the National Jewish Book Award. During the ’80s, Epstein was Director of the Hebrew Books and Manuscripts division of Sotheby’s Judaica department, and continues to serve as consultant to various libraries, auction houses, museums and private collectors throughout the world.
Sponsored by the
UCLA Alan D. Leve Center for Jewish Studies
Cosponsored by the
UCLA Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies
UCLA Department of History
UCLA Department of Art History
Additional Funding by the
Viterbi Program in Mediterranean Jewish Studies
