14:00
King's College London
November 12
Strand Campus Room: Council RoomStrand, London, WC2R 2LS
Kathy Lavezzo is Professor of English at the University of Iowa. She has authored, edited and co-edited five books: Angels on the Edge of the World: Geography, Literature and English Community, 1000-1534 (Cornell University Press, 2006), which highlights the role of mappae mundi in emerging ideas of English national identity; The Accommodated Jew: English Antisemitism from Bede to Milton (Cornell University Press, 2018) was listed by Book Riot, the largest independent literary site in North America, in its list of 100 Must-Read Books about the Middle Ages and 50 Must-Read Books about Tudor England.
Her new book, Bad Medievalism and the Modernity Problem (Fordham University Press, 2025), takes as its starting point her discovery that Cultural Studies pioneer Stuart Hall initially planned on becoming a medievalist but was dissuaded from that path by none other than J.R.R. Tolkien. It argues that the surprising Hall-Tolkien connection enables a reassessment of received ideas of the medieval-modern divide, by revealing striking connections between the present and past.