Samantha Kelly

Présentation

Samantha Kelly (Ph.D Northwestern University, 1998) is Professor of History and Associate Chair of the History Department at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, NJ. Her work addresses aspects of the political and religious history of the later-medieval Mediterranean, especially Italy, Ethiopian-European relations, and Ethiopian diasporic settlement. Publications include The New Solomon (2003), The ‘Cronacadi Partenope’ (2011), A Companion to Medieval Ethiopia and Eritrea (ed., 2020), and Ethiopian Pilgrims in Sixteenth-Century Rome (forthcoming), as well as numerous articles and essays. Former fellow of theAmerican Academy in Rome, the Istituto italianodi studi storici, Villa I Tatti, the Mellon Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton), sheserves on the advisory board of the book series “Medieval Societies, Religions and Cultures” at Cornell University Press and the journal Aethiopica, among others.

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Conférences

Dans le cadre du séminaire d’Étienne Anheim, Genre, corps et parenté dans le monde intellectuel à la fin du Moyen Âge,
Le rôle de la race dans la réception européenne du christianisme éthiopien à la Renaissance

• Mercredi 24 mai 2023 de 16h30 à 18h30
• Campus Condorcet Bâtiment EHESS (Salle A-25)
  2, cours des Humanités 93300 Aubervilliers

For several decades, a body of scholarship often described as “Critical Race Studies” has argued for the legitimate use of “race” as a category of analysis in early modern and medieval Europe, one constructed by the confluence of multiple factors, including religion, geography, physiognomy, culture, and status, and often with a gendered component. Yet it has rarely been discussed in the context of European-Ethiopian relations in the 15th and 16th centuries, despite intensive contacts between the two regions and the presence in Latin Europe of a notable community of Ethiopians. This talk explores the ways in which Europeans discussed and debated the racial categorization of Ethiopian Christians. On the one hand excepted from negatively racialized categories (of the Jew, Muslim, pagan, barbarian, African, Black) Ethiopian Christians were also placed within one or more of those categories by hostile observers, and always vulnerable to “demotion.” Despite the profound differences in European treatment of Ethiopian Christians in the 16th and 20th centuries, one can also perceive the legacy of Renaissance attitudes in 20th-century justifications for and practice of Ethiopian-Eritrean colonization.

Dans le cadre du séminaire de Pierre Monnet, Béatrice Delaurenti et Vincent Debiais, Histoire intellectuelle et sociale du Moyen Âge,
Transplantés de la foi. Les pèlerins éthiopiens comme éducateurs et évangélistes dans l’Europe de la Renaissance

• Mercredi 31 mai 2023 de 16h30 à 18h30
• Campus Condorcet Bâtiment EHESS (Salle A-25)
  2, cours des Humanités 93300 Aubervilliers

Though Ethiopian pilgrims in Latin Europe were almost never official envoys or tasked with any responsibility beyond their own spiritual improvement as pilgrims, many took it upon themselves to educate Latin Christians about Ethiopian culture and faith, as a series of intellectual collaborations between between 1511 and 1552 attest. This talk calls attention to the repeated and—in the face of considerable obstacles– often rather successful efforts of pilgrims not only to inform Latin Christians about Ethiopian culture, but to persuade Latin Christians of its superiority. Though much scholarship has traced Latin European efforts to effect the conversion or conformity of Ethiopian Christianity to Latin norms, some of the pilgrims’ educational undertakings can be interpreted as a reverse effort—to plant their faith among Latin Christians—and may shed light on aspects of Ethiopian religious culture and policy in the sixteenth century as well.

Présentation et discussion autour de l’ouvrage A Companion to Medieval Ethiopia and Eritrea(Brill, 2022) dirigé par Samantha Kelly. Séance présentée par Etienne Anheim et animée par Jean-Baptiste Eczet (EHESS), en présence de Samantha Kelly (Rutgers University, NJ, Etats-Unis), Claire Bosc-Tiessé (CNRS, EHESS), Marie-Laure Derat (CNRS), François-Xavier Fauvelle (Collège de France) et Anaïs Wion (CNRS),

• Vendredi 2 juin 2023 de 10h à 12h30
• Collège de France Institut des Civilisations (Salle de séminaire)
  52 rue du Cardinal-Lemoine 75005 Paris

Discussion of collected volume of 2020 and advances in research on Ethiopia from the 7th to mid-16th century since its appearance. To include comments by several contributors to the volume, including François-Xavier Fauvelle, Marie-Laure Derat, Claire Bosc-Tiessé, possibly others.

Dans le cadre du séminaire de Sylvain Piron, La connaissance obtenue par l’extase
La communauté diasporique de Santo Stefano : une pratique éthiopienne dans une implatantion romaine

• Mardi 6 juin 2023 de 10h30 à 12h30
• Campus Condorcet – Centre de colloques (Salle 3.05)
  Place du Front populaire 93300 Aubervilliers

This talk will analyze the Ethiopian pilgrim community of Santo Stefano in Rome as a diasporic or “transplant” community: on the one hand invested with its own, distinctively Ethiopian Christian elements, and on the other adapted to the particular conditions of the foreign society in which it took root. Drawing upon the extant Gǝʿǝz notices recorded by the Ethiopian pilgrims in Rome as well as European-language sources, it examines the community’s characteristically Ethiopian regulations, liturgical practice, use of space, and links to other Ethiopian hostel-monasteries in Egypt and Jerusalem, as well as the impact and role of its Roman setting, notably its oversight and financing by Vatican authorities, and the greater influence Roman norms had upon the community from the 1550s forward.

Accueil et durée du séjour

• Invitée par Étienne Anheim (AHLOMA)
• 1 mois (Mai-Juin 2023)