The series will look at selected examples of art and narrative which, despite their different formal properties, are best understood when studied in conjunction with one another.

The first of the lectures, The Body of Foy: Gender Studies and Iconography in a Medieval Martyr’s Cult, will be delivered on Feb. 15 by Kathleen Ashley, professor of English at the University of Southern Maine. She will explore reliquary images and hagiographical accounts of the virgin martyr Saint Foy in France between the fifth and fifteenth centuries.

“Medieval studies would benefit,” Ashley said, “from knowledge of contemporary gender and cultural theories, which seek to historicize and describe the mechanism by which gendered subjects are produced.”

The author and co-editor of a variety of essays and books on medieval literature, Ashley received a B.A., an M.A. and a Ph.D from Duke University. She has received a series of fellowships and awards for her scholarhip including a Fullbright Junior Lectureship, an Andrew Mellon Postdoctoral fellowship and grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

On March 7, Writing on the Walls: Medieval English Mural Images and Literature, is the topic of an address by David Benson, professor of English at the University of Connecticut, who will consider wallpainting in parish churches and the poetry of Chaucer in late medieval England.

The last of the lectures, The Rise of Greek Figured Art: Daily Life, Fantasy and Myth, will be delivered on March 18 by Yates Professor in Classical Archelology Emeritus Nicholas Coldstream of University College London. Coldstream will discuss near eastern iconography and the Homeric poems in ancient Greece.

The lecture series is sponsored by the Bates Faculty Committee for Classical and Medieval Studies 1995-96. For further information about the series, call 766-6077.