75th Anniversary Alumni Lecture with Professor Andrew Irving (Ph.D. ’12): “Reconsidering Uta: On the Affordances of a Liturgical Book”

What does a liturgical book do and how does it do it? The Uta Codex, a famous gospel book produced at the Abbey of Sankt Emmeram in the first third of the eleventh century named after its donor, Abbess Uta, has been called “perhaps the most important work of Western Illumination of its day” (Swarzenski 1901). Its complex illumination series and its much reworked treasure box have received extensive scholarly attention (Cohen 2000; Pfändtner & Gullath 2012). What has remained largely absent from analysis, however, is a wholistic consideration of what this astounding book and box was for. On the basis of careful material analysis this lecture will use affordance theory to re-examine the uses of the book, and explore the implications for the description and analysis of liturgical manuscripts more generally. Join us on Thursday, February 17, 2022, from 5:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. ET.

Speakers:
Professor Andrew Irving (Ph.D. ’12)

For more information visit the event website.

Watch the Youtube Live Stream here.