November
5, 2004
Harvard
Medievalist to Deliver Dean Lecture
Michael
McCormick (right), Francis Goelet Professor of History at Harvard
University. |
Michael McCormick, Francis Goelet Professor of History
at Harvard University, will give this year’s Ruth J. Dean lecture Wednesday,
November 10. The lecture, titled “Molecular Middle Ages: Medieval History
and Archaeology in the Twenty-First Century,” will focus on new interdisciplinary
approaches to the study of the past, involving archaeology, history, and the
natural sciences.
“Medievalists are just beginning to be aware of the implications of the
revolutions now occurring in the life sciences for the knowledge of the past.
Ancient DNA has proven to be remarkably tough, and, even though it is usually
no longer completely intact, enough can survive to open
up new windows to the past,” McCor-mick said in a recent interview with
the Harvard University Gazette.
McCormick has received numerous honors, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and
a $1.5 million Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Distinguished Achievement Award, which
is funding his present research.
Margaret Switten, Class of 1926 Professor of Medieval and Eighteenth-Century
French Language and Literature, said, “The emphasis placed in this lecture
on unusual links between disciplines not only reveals what medievalists are up
to but also meshes well with the current interest in interdisciplinary paths
to learning here at Mount Holyoke.”
The Ruth J. Dean lecture series was established by the French department in 1967
upon the retirement of Professor Ruth J. Dean, who taught at Mount Holyoke for
33 years. The lecture, free of charge and open to the public, will take place
at 8 pm in the Morrison Room in the Willits -Hallowell Center. A reception for
Professor McCormick will follow.
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