The French Center of Excellence and Department of French & Italian are pleased to announce the speakers for the Spring 2024 lecture series. The second of our speakers is Professor Anna Klosowska.
Professor Klosowska is a Professor of French, Italian, and Classical Studies at Miami University of Ohio and will present “Remarkable Objects: Islamic Art in Gothic France.” “Remarkable Objects” presents a cultural history of the French Middle Ages that is also Afro-Eurasian, paying attention to Islamic and Jewish history. Each chapter is a “biography" of a luxury object that travels to Northern France from the greater Islamic world. They include the most important Islamic artifacts at the Louvre. One is a gold encrusted basin (1320s, Syria?) glittering with miniature processions of people and animals. Another, a silk cloth with simurghs and royal Persian symbols (961, Iran) preserved in a Normandy village (1134-1910s). These exceptional objects narrate material, political, emotional and sensory histories and tell us about the remarkable lives of the people who made and owned them.
Professor Klosowska's talk will take place on Thursday, March 28 from 4:30pm-5:30pm in Thompson Library Multipurpose Room 165. Light refreshments will be served after the talk. To register, you can click here or call 614-247-4105.
If you are interested in purchasing other works of Professor Klosowska, click here.
This event is sponsored by the Department of French and Italian’s French Center of Excellence, which receives funding from French Cultural Services in the US and the Consulate General of France in Chicago. This series is also supported by the following departments and centers at Ohio State African American & African Studies, History, History of Art, Spanish & Portuguese, Germanic Languages & Literatures, Slavic & Eastern European Languages & Literatures, the Humanities Institute, and the Center for Languages, Literatures, & Cultures.
In December of 2020, the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the United States selected the Department of French and Italian at The Ohio State University to join its prestigious network of Centers of Excellence. OSU’s Center of Excellence has the goal of promoting French and Francophone culture in the Midwest and beyond.
