Kate Franklin

About this event

This talk examines medieval concerns over the power of earth to conceal and reveal, to hold and relinquish, to transform and to consecrate the human body. Medieval knowledge-making of and with relics-the vibrant matter of saintly bodies- make up early forms of what we now identify as archaeological modes of knowledge, of invoking the earth and its revelations as evidence and exemplars in arguments over history, place and power. These resonances between soil, stones, and buried bodies will frame reflections on reliquary knowledge in medieval and early modern Armenia. At the heart of these reflections is the wondrously immaculate and yet epistemically leaky corpse of the virgin Saint Hripsime, martyred at the turn of the 4th century AD. Professor Kate Franklin, will examine the journey this body takes through time, cloaked in shrouds and soil, and her vibrant agency within the mattering of Armenian history as well as the troublesome presaging of archaeological affects.