Medieval History Talk at Columbia: Simon Teuscher

This Thursday, October 20th, Simon Teuscher (Professor of medieval history at the University of Zurich) will talk to us about his current book project. The talk will take place at 4pm in Math 520 (located on campus). Drinks and snacks will be served.

The talk will be examining how European scholars from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries reconceived kinship. Teuscher writes:

“My main interest is notions pertaining to the physiology of kinship and the bodily substances that kin share. I analyze some of  the juristic and theological commentaries to the kinship diagrams that found their way into many church-law compendia.  Here one can trace how a new understanding of kinship was formed. In the context of debates on incest in the twelfth century, scholars contended over the systematization of kinship as relation.  But the methods of measurement and visualization that they developed increasingly allowed for the use of concepts of kinship to define and delimit groups.  It was in this context that conventional physiological notions collapsed.  Up until about 1400 the commentators understood kinship as a oneness of flesh; later gaining acceptance were notions about the passing on of blood as well as its purity and admixtures.”

For more information, please contact Sarina Kürsteiner.