Virtual Materiality

Join MIT Ancient & Medieval Studies Colloquium Speaker Series
Monday, November 9th @ 5:00pm on Zoom

Virtual Materiality

Presented by: Thomas F. X. Noble
The Andrew V. Tackes Professor Emeritus, University of Notre Dame 

Among the dozens of “turns” traveled by scholars in recent decades, the material turn has been prominent. In simplest terms, this turn seeks to bring the artifacts of material culture, say the discoveries of archaeologists and art historians into the realms of discourse typically dominated by those who focus on texts, on documents, on written evidence.  What I try to do in this talk is to excavate material from written texts in instances where the physical objects no longer survive.  To some extent my approach suggests alternative ways to think about what we read but I also think that tending carefully to descriptions of what no longer exists can actually expand the totality of the material record. I draw on a wide array of sources including poetry, histories, and biographies, among others.