A strange and unusual world of manuscripts.

This is a live online event. Bookers will be sent a link in advance giving access and will be able to watch at any time for 48 hours after the start time*.

Hideous, hybrid and monstrous beings have terrified and intrigued people for millennia. Though sometimes discounted as ‘merely decorative’, these monsters and monstrous human-hybrid creatures that appear in books created for Jews in the Middle Ages, have long remained mysterious.

In this illustrated lecture, Professor Marc Michael Epstein, interprets these strange creatures as they relate to ‘normal’ human figures in Jewish manuscripts and considers how they may represent notions of otherness and foreignness, whether of gender, religion or culture, both within and outside the medieval Jewish community.

*Please note, questions may only be submitted to the speaker during the live times.

Professor Marc Michael Epstein is Director of Jewish Studies at Vassar College in New York. He is a graduate of Oberlin College, received his PhD at Yale University, and did much of his graduate research at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Marc has written on various topics in visual and material culture produced by, for, and about Jews. His Skies Of Parchment, Seas of Ink: Jewish Illuminated Manuscripts was the winner of the National Jewish Book Award. His The Medieval Haggadah: Art, Narrative, and Religious Imagination was selected by the Times Literary Supplement as one of the best books of 2011. He is currently completing a new book, People of the Image: Jews & Art.

Image shelfmark: MS. Additional 15282 f. 179v

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