Bell Library Special Events

Throughout the year, the Bell Library sponsors or co-sponsors a variety of special events: lectures, conferences, performances, receptions, and other cultural activities. Check this page regularly for new links and listings! And don't forget to investigate our Exhibits and Annual Lecture pages, too.

Upcoming Events

Bell Library Holiday Open House: December 12, 2014

Please join us for cocoa, cookies, and conversation on Friday, December 12th, from 1:00 to 4:00 p.m. at the Bell Library!

Recent Events

Medieval Libraries and the Construction of Knowledge

Dr. Luke Sunderland, School of Modern Languages & Cultures at Durham University and currently a fellow at the Stanford Humanities Center, presented "Medieval Libraries and the Construction of Knowledge," on Friday afternoon, November 14, 2014, at 3:00 p.m. in 106 Folwell Hall to a group of faculty and graduate students from across the liberal arts.

"Medieval libraries are often studied as collections of books, but much less frequently as collections of ideas. Drawing inspiration from the writings of Michel Foucault, this paper will offer a synchronic reading of a particular library collection--the 1404 inventory of the Burgundian library--as a place where different modes of organizing knowledge meet. The collection is dominated by compilations, cycles, mirrors, summae, histories, and encyclopaedias, as well as by literary texts that play across the boundaries between various types of knowledge. Its key texts, then, either gather all that can be known within one tradition or provide an interface between traditions. The paper will argue that reading across the collection can there fore increase our understanding of the individual texts, the relationships between them, and the structures of knowledge that gave shape to medieval book collections."

This event was co-sponsored by the Department of French & Italian, the James Ford Bell Library, and the Center for Medieval Studies.

3rd Annual Carl Sheppard Memorial Lecture in Medieval Art History

Renata Holod, professor of Art History at the University of Pennsylvania and the Near East Curator for PENN Museum, presented the 2014 Annual Carl Sheppard Memorial Lecture in Medieval Art History: "On Regimes of Lighting: Vision & Memory in the Great Mosque of Cordoba." The talk, preceded by a reception for donors to CMS and members of the Associates of the James Ford Bell Library, was held at 7:00 p.m. on Thursday, November 20, in Elmer L. Andersen Library on the U of M west bank campus.

Professor Holod will present her newest iteration in a series of studies on the interior of the Mosque of Cordoba. Utilizing digital tools for the recreation of lighting, she will suggest a fuller experience of the interior. She argues that further variation so lighting could be used to understand more fully the aesthetic impact intended by the designers of al-Hakam's complex extension and addition of the mid-10th century CE. Only by recreating regimes of lighting in interiors can one begin to gauge aspects of historical and cultural experience in such spaces of memory.

This event was presented by the Center for Medieval Studies and co-sponsored by the James Ford Bell Library.

First Fridays at Andersen Library: November 7, 2014

First Fridays is a series of intellectually stimulating talks at Elmer L. Andersen Library. Each month's presentation is based on materials in the University of Minnesota Libraries' Archives and Special Collections. This year's theme: Power

"'If it be not a sin.... Slavery and Revolt in the New World," presented by Marguerite Ragnow, Curator, James Ford Bell Library, on November 7, 2014 at 12:00 noon in 120 Andersen Library.

The ownership of people by other people is a practice as old as human history, but in the early modern period slavery may have reached new lows. Slave ownership became predicated on race and religion, especially with respect to the exploitation and settlement of the New World. Materials drawn from the Bell Library collection will be used to illustrate the complexities of slavery, which continue to resonate in today’s society.

Of interest around town

Minneapolis Institute of Arts:
The Infinite World: Chinese Figure Painting of the Ming and Qing Dynasties (14th-19th Centuries)
The Hours of Night and Day. A Newly Discovered Cycle of Bronze Reliefs by Giovanni Casini and Pietro Cipriani

The Rose Ensemble
Consortium Carissimi

And around the world

The Ricci Institute, USF
¡Sacabuche!
Gutenberg Museum, Mainz