{"id":2497,"date":"2025-09-23T11:37:39","date_gmt":"2025-09-23T15:37:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/english\/?page_id=2497"},"modified":"2025-10-07T10:58:06","modified_gmt":"2025-10-07T14:58:06","slug":"fall-2025-carleton-lecture","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/english\/fall-2025-carleton-lecture\/","title":{"rendered":"Fall 2025 Carleton Lecture"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Dr. D. Vance Smith<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Professor of English, Princeton University<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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\"D.<\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Kantorowicz\u2019s African Bodies:<\/strong> Anthropology, Sovereignty, Homophobia<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Wednesday, October 8, 12-1pm<\/strong><\/h6>\n\n\n\n
Commons 221\/222<\/strong><\/strong><\/h6>\n\n\n\n
Or via livestream here: <\/strong>https:\/\/bates.zoom.us\/j\/97320631051<\/a><\/h6>\n\n\n\n
Prior to the lecture, there will be refreshments available beginning at 11:30 pm. Attendees are also welcome to bring up their lunch trays from Commons Dining or bring your own lunch from home.<\/h6>\n\n\n\n
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Ernst Kantorowicz helped shaped the way we think of political theology, the charisma of the leader, sovereignty, kingship in Shakespeare, even corporations. He is often regarded as a quintessential European, and not always in a good way: Goring and Hitler both liked his first book (which horrified Kantorowicz). Yet in important ways Africa influenced him personally and intellectually\u2014and vice versa. Ethnography\u2019s complicity in colonialism owed much to the way Kantorowicz helped ethnographers think about power\u2014and to construct modern power in post-independent nations. The phenomenon of the \u201cpresident for life\u201d and his sacralized body is rooted in this legacy beginning with Kanto\u2014and in the way African leaders use homophobia as an instrument of power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr. D. Vance Smith is a scholar whose work focuses on African and decolonial literature and theory, the history of anthropology, ecocriticism, and medieval philosophy and literature, and their intersections. His 2020 book Arts of Dying: Literature and Finitude in Medieval England<\/em> (University of Chicago Press, 2002) is the third book in a series examining the medieval limit experience\u2014the philosophy and literature of beginnings, middles, and ends. The first, The Book of the Incipit<\/em>, concerns beginnings, and the second, Arts of Possession<\/em>, examines the concept of dwelling in medieval romance and economic theory and practice. His most recent book, Atlas\u2019s Bones: The African Foundations of Europe, <\/em>will be published by the University of Chicago Press in November. Atlas\u2019s Bones<\/em> is an intellectual history about 1) the classical and medieval production of knowledges in Africa, and 2) the imposition of medieval structures of knowledge and governance on African colonies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Dr. Smith’s upcoming publication,<\/em> Atlas\u2019s Bones: The African Foundations of Europe (University of Chicago, 2025)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n


<\/a>Formally known as the Emily Carroll \u201999 Carleton English Guest Lecture,<\/em><\/strong> this college event is <\/em><\/strong>funded by the King Family Charitable Lead Trust in honor of the positive experiences of Emily Carleton \u201999 at Bates College, and also her graduation from the institution. This fund will, at the discretion of the English department, support guest lecturers on campus for the benefit of Bates students and faculty.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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