Embodying Histories: Embodied Epistemology as Rigorous Historical Method

Book tickets

Event details

Historians are deeply invested in texts, written archives, and historical methods, claiming they allow scholars to be as objective as possible when analyzing the past. This commitment is particularly heightened for scholars of Religious Studies, who seek to distinguish themselves from the biased, committed religious practitioners who used to regularly write religious history before 1950. But the devotional repertoire that historical people embodied and practiced was felt and lived, and often not written down--and it should not be ignored by historians of religion.  In her most recent work, medievalist Lauren Mancia proposes that historians cannot solely rely on texts to understand premodern monks and nuns--scholars must also explore these histories through embodiment and performance. Come learn about the scholarly stakes, pitfalls, and histories of this kind of work, especially as it pertains to the particular context of 1000-year-old Christian monastic communities; together, we'll even try out Mancia's proposed method, reperforming some medieval monastic actions together.

During this session, Lauren Mancia will discuss her 2025 Cambridge Element monograph Embodied Epistemology as Rigorous Historical Method. Attendees are invited (though not required) to explore the publication in advance of the session. For those who do not have access through an institution, there is an option to request a copy direct from the author when registering for the session.

Embodying Histories is funded by the Baermann's Body project and hosted in collaboration with the University of York's Historical Practice Research Network and School of Arts and Creative Technologies, and the Performance and Embodiment cluster at the Orpheus Instituut Gent.

The seminars are free and open to anyone to attend. They will comprise a mixture of presentation and discussion.

About the speaker

Lauren Mancia

Lauren Mancia is Professor of History at Brooklyn College, CUNY and Professor of Medieval Studies at The CUNY Graduate Center. A scholar of medieval monastic devotion in the eleventh- and twelfth-centuries, she is the author of Emotional Monasticism: Affective Piety in the Eleventh-Century Monastery of John of Fécamp (2019); Meditation and Prayer in the Eleventh- and Twelfth-Century Monastery: Struggling Towards God (2023); and Embodied Epistemology as Rigorous Historical Method (2025).