DESERT HARVEST—Fall 2005
Vol. 13, No. 2

The view through the round window
by Professor Susan C. Karant-Nunn, Director

   Who can anticipate where treasures lie? In September, the Special Collections Librarian Roger Myers and I drove out to Oro Valley to the home of Margaret Molla. Mrs. Molla had invited us to inspect part of her inheritance, a 1586 edition of Lutheran teacher, deacon, and pastor Conrad Porta’s Pastorale Lutheri, a collection of Martin Luther’s writings on the education and duties of pastors. Mrs. Molla inherited this rarity from her father, Artemus Horn, who in turn received it from his father, the Rev. William Jacob Horn. An earlier ancestor had carried it in the nineteenth century from Saxony to St. Louis. Mrs. Molla recalls that her grandfather, like his own father a Lutheran clergyman, gathered neighboring pastors, all German-speakers, in his home on Sunday afternoons, to pore through this volume for instruction and inspiration. They regarded it as a wellspring of wisdom. The well-worn pages suggest that these men found what they repeatedly sought.
   How fortunate the UA Libraries are to become the repository of this ancient devotional work! Mrs. Molla providentially decided that future generations should derive the benefits of this book, and, with proper receipts, she sent it with Roger and me to its permanent new home—along with a four-volume, pre-Revoluntionary French obstetrical handbook that she had received from the estate of a physician-aunt. Division graduate students will consult Porta’s anthology during spring semester 2006, when I shall preside over a seminar on Reformation clergy and preaching. This book will transport us all back through the centuries to Porta’s (and Luther’s) Eisleben.
   Heiko Oberman’s own huge research collection similarly holds out to Arizonans the promise of its riches. Our ongoing task is to finish the work, well begun, of endowing the Oberman Chair so that our own public university can acquire for our common use an even more comprehensive body of literature to inspire us and expand our intellects. As I observed last year upon learning of an anonymous benefactor’s $300,000 challenge gift, if each recipient of this newsletter contributes $200 before December 31, 2006, we shall match and acquire the entire $300,000. I extend my hand in tribute to those of you who have already given. Like Mrs. Molla, you have seen the desirability of bestowing not just these rare books as valuable artifacts but especially their illuminating contents upon future generations.
   Do you have historic books in your home that should be preserved for posterity?

Division announces new associated faculty
Kari Boyd McBride: Early modern England, gender
by Mary Kovel, doctoral student

At the feet of visiting scholars
Professor Charles Zika, University of Melbourne
by Lizzy Ellis-Marino, master's student

   Distinguished historian, Charles Zika, a professor at the University of Melbourne, gave a lecture on October 26, entitled “Witches and Other Stereotypes: Image-Making in Early Modern Europe.” Co-sponsored by the UA Medieval, Renaissance, and Reformation Committee, the Group for Early Modern Studies, and the English Department, the talk was held in a conference room in the English Department, which was filled to capacity, with people standing in the back and sitting in the aisles.
   Professor Zika’s lecture discussed images of the diabolic, particularly images connected with witches, and how they became a sort of visual shorthand for the devil and evil. He then showed the dissemination of these images throughout Europe, which manifested themselves in anti-Catholic propaganda in Germany, illustrative woodcuts in editions of famous books, anti-Semitic propaganda across Europe, and paintings with clear political intentions.
   While some of the images Professor Zika used in his talk were quite famous, a few came from unpublished archival sources. By using a diverse selection of images, Professor Zika illuminated a pervasive visual language, and gave a new dimension to some of the famous images of witches he used. Early modern Europe was endowed with a rich language of images, many of which have lost their meaning over time. For students of the period like myself, lectures like Professor Zika’s are both fascinating and invaluable for their illumination of this forgotten avenue of communication.

At the feet of visiting scholars
Professor Carlos Eire, Yale University
by Tod Meinke, master's student

   Carlos Eire is the Riggs Professor of History and Religious Studies at Yale University, where he specializes in late medieval and early modern Europe. In his public lecture this November, entitled “Hovering Saints, Flying Witches: Writing a History of the Impossible,” he described his current research as covering “from miracles to really strange miracles.”
   Although these miracles may not make sense to many modern people, they were understood as very real events during the sixteenth century. Instead of rationalizing or refuting purported miracles, Eire addresses the effect of belief in them. For example, Catholics promoted manifestations of the miraculous as the product of extreme piety, such as the many levitations experienced by Saint Teresa of Avila. Protestants, however, associated miraculous events with “bad people” who had gained their mysterious powers from the devil. Catholics and Protestants, therefore, came to interpret miracles in complete opposition, even though both religions were believed to begin with a miraculous event.
   During the Division seminar, Professor Eire described two reasons for his decision to study history. One was the influence of his father, a reputable judge who also claimed to be the reincarnation of Louis XVI. Perhaps this quasi-royal heritage inspired his research into the “impossible,” but it nevertheless created a household where the past was celebrated and the present was a “comedown.” Since childhood, Eire has been obsessed with the notion that while time passes, space remains the same, and “most of what happens in this world does not leave a trace.”
   Eire, however, is most fascinated by the human desire to comprehend what lies beyond this world. In that quest, religious studies allows him to explore the “relationship between matter and the afterlife,” while history provides a source of events for that exploration. By combining religious studies with historical research, Professor Eire has been able to address the history of the impossible, and provide us with a better understanding of why people sometimes behaved in a manner that does not make sense to modern readers.

A Nice summer in the archives
by Julie Kang, doctoral student

   Summer is always exciting for us graduate students because we can leave course-work aside for a bit and concentrate on our languages or research interests. This past year, I think I won the unofficial contest for best summer destinations when I was able to tell my colleagues that I was headed to the Palace of the Popes in Avignon for archival research and then to Nice for an intensive language program.
   We picture the charms of the region of Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur from what we have seen in movies or artwork, and we imagine these areas from what we have read in novels. They please our senses: the smell of lavender flowers and olive trees; the taste of a regional rosé wine; the awesome sight of Roman ruins or the places that inspired Van Gogh; and relaxation at the beaches along the Mediterranean that include popular celebrity cities such as Cannes or the intriguing principality of Monaco. I certainly enjoyed absorbing the culture of the south with its regional Provençal, Italian, and French influences during my two-month stay. The highlight of my trip, however, was my work in the archives at the Département de Vaucluse.
   Imagine walking up to a fortress-castle for work everyday! As an historian, I could not help but daydream about the Avignon popes who might have walked along the very path I took during my lunch break, or the nuns who touched the letters and other documents I was interested in reading. Archival research brought tears of excitement and intimidation.
   Although I had French in the classroom, coursework did not adequately prepare me for this trip to France. The day after I arrived, I attended a soirée for the participants and attendees of the conference on the principality of Orange. The next day, I attended the conference and tried to keep up with the wonderful papers read in academic French. Thus, I was completely immersed in French while still experiencing bouts of jetlag. The organizer of the conference, Françoise Moreil of the University of Avignon, was also my advisor abroad. The next week, she met me at the archive and gave me invaluable advice: how to make sense of the archive catalogs, how to order material, and strategies of taking notes. Like Professor Moreil, the archivists and their assistants treated this first-time reader with much patience. I also had the pleasure of meeting early modern French historian,  Amanda Eurich, and American Fulbright scholar, Elizabeth Harden, both of whom offered helpful advice and encouraged me as they worked on their respective projects. For three weeks, I attempted to decipher the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century paleography that I encountered. It was hard to tell whether I was succeeding. Thus, I was relieved to hear Professor Moreil’s comments to the archivist after reviewing my transcriptions: “Elle a fait des progrès!”
   I would like to thank the Division for Late Medieval and Reformation Studies, the Department of History, and the Group for Early Modern Studies for providing financial assistance and helping make this wonderful trip possible.

Quest to conquer German
by Samantha Kuhn, doctoral student

   When I stepped off the plane in Germany for the very first time in June, little did I know what Germanic pleasures I would encounter that summer. Before my German immersion classes began at the Goethe Institute in Mannheim, I spent a leisurely four days wandering the streets of nearby Heidelberg, preparing myself for the rigors of an intensive eight-week journey that would be the start of my quest to conquer the German language. Picturesque Heidelberg, the home of the world-famous University of Heidelberg, is steeped in history and academia. Overlooking the small town with its cobblestone streets and numerous churches are the ruins of Heidelberg castle which in its glory days served as the home of the Prince Electors of the Rhenish Palatinate. Included in my visit was a trip to the labyrinthine museum of the Palatinate, a hike on the Philosophers’ Way (where the likes of Goethe and Schiller used to take walks), and a visit to the brightly graffitied students' prison, where up until the early twentieth century students at the University were locked up for committing various youthful hijinks.
   When my time in Heidelberg came to an end, I made my way to the industrial town of Mannheim, twenty minutes away. After the beauty of Heidelberg, which had remained untouched by the bombings of World War II, the grittiness of Mannheim, which had been almost completely destroyed, provided me with quite a different picture of industrial post-war Germany. Though Mannheim lacked certain charms, unlike Heidelberg it also lacked citizens who spoke fluent English, a boon for one who wished to be immersed in German.
   At the Goethe Institute on the outskirts of Mannheim, I spent five hours a day, five days a week, in class diligently studying the German language. My instructor, the stern Jutta, was not allowed to speak to us in any language save German from day one. Joining me in my studies were students from Thailand, India, Korea, Turkey, Japan, China, Mexico—and that was just in my class alone. My Deustch sprechen partner, the delightful Bora, hailed from far away Seoul and could speak no English (and I'm afraid my Korean is nonexistent). We developed our own media of hand gestures, drawn pictures, and broken, badly-pronounced German. As the summer progressed our conversations improved more and more, until finally we could hold actual conversations that went further than "Wie geht's?" (“How are you?”) I found that I could now read advertisements on buildings, understand random snatches of conversation on the S-Bahn, and make small talk with the locals at the neighborhood bar, the Cat Weazel.
   After working hard at learning the language all week long, we spent the weekends on trips outside of Mannheim to put into practice our new skills. Destinations such as Berlin, Munich, Vienna, Salzburg—and of course repeated returns to Heidelberg—proved to be interesting side trips that provided the culture and history that I yearned to know. I learned more German history on these weekend excursions than I had ever studied in my classes in the U.S. My physically being there made events, persons, and places all come together in ways that books cannot achieve. The different cultures and traditions that made up the Holy Roman Empire still persist today, constantly reminding one of the divided histories of the Germanic lands. When I left Tucson for the summer, I had only a vague idea of Germany, mixed with disparate knowledge concerning specific events. My traipsing from place to place made Germany more alive, more real to me then before.

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