Description: The story of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem typically begins with the preaching of the crusades and the movement of large armies east. But there is another beginning to which we might also attend-that of establishing settlement and rule-and in so doing emphasize a different, less martial and less hostile, component of this kingdom. Indeed, it is this sense of beginning that most marks Frankish material culture, announcing as it does relationships to legendary regional figures, facilitating as it does new rituals, and relying as it does on novel artistic formulas. Together, such characteristics reveal the peculiar concerns of the Frankish population, which needed above all to unify members with diverse origins and root them to this place. Lisa Mahoney (DePaul University) will discuss works charged with this task, showing that even as kings were crowned and chronicles were written, it was material culture that played the most important role in the invention of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem.

Dr. Lisa Mahoney specializes in the twelfth and thirteenth century artistic production of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem (Crusader art) and of France. She has edited a volume with Daniel Weiss called France and the Holy Land: Frankish Culture at the End of the Crusades and has published articles treating the role of cultural exchange in the construction and proclamation of identity in the eastern Mediterranean. Her current book project focuses on issues of identity as they appear within the pages of a thirteenth-century illuminated history that was made in Acre, a port city of modern day Israel. These projects have been supported by National Endowment of the Humanities, Andrew W. Mellon, and Samuel H. Kress fellowships.

General Information:
All lectures are held on Sunday afternoons at 3:00 p.m. in Sabin Hall Room G90 on the UWM Campus (3413 North Downer, corner of Newport and Downer Avenues). On Sundays, parking is available in the Klotsche Center surface lot directly north of Sabin or on nearby streets.

All lectures are free and open to the public and followed by refreshments. They are co-sponsored by the Departments of Anthropology, Foreign Languages and Literature-Classics, and Art History at UW-Milwaukee.