Experiencing Medieval Durational Performance

Join us as 15 advanced history undergraduates do performance-as-research about medieval asceticism, investigating premodern people who wholly committed their lives to a single purpose: pilgrims (who walked long distances to special destinations), stylites (who stoically sat on the top of pillars in the desert as exemplars of humility), hermits (who were caretakers of the environment and their community), and anchorites (who permanently “buried” themselves in small huts so they could best meditate on death while still alive). Come explore a corner of our campus that students will transform into a learning laboratory where they investigate what it meant to live intentionally in the premodern world. Students will be on hand to explain the scholarly rigor of our embodied research methodologies and the premodern historical context, and they will also help facilitate any willing audience members’ participation in our performance-as-research.