Registration page forthcoming.
This event will be held in English.
Organized by the Institute for Ideas and Imagination. Co-sponsored by Columbia Global Centers | Paris.
Mind-reading can sound like a magical or miraculous ability, but it can also refer to an everyday mental habit, part of how we explain to ourselves how other minds work. Oscillating between the fantastic and the mundane, mind-reading points to a horizon of interpersonal knowledge imagined to be just out of reach. In this RDV talk, Yea Jung Park sketches out a tentative cultural history of mind-reading in the medieval period, and shares a more detailed discussion of the Christian practice of “spiritual discernment” (discretio spirituum) as a productive case-study for exploring the imaginative potential of mind-reading in the later Middle Ages. Her analysis centers on examples drawn from Middle English textual culture, but will also touch on on related religious, intellectual, and literary traditions from elsewhere in western medieval Europe.
Yea Jung Park
Yea Jung Park is a medievalist and literary scholar from Seoul, South Korea. She received her PhD from Columbia in 2022, specializing in Middle English literature, and will be starting as Assistant Professor of English at Saint Louis University following her fellowship. Her research interests include religion and literature, social epistemology, gesture studies, the history of medicine, and translation.
The place
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This event will take place in the Grande Salle Ginsberg-LeClerc, built at Reid Hall in 1912 and extensively renovated in 2023 thanks to the generous support of Judith Ginsberg and Paul LeClerc.
For nearly 60 years, Columbia University students and faculty have come to study, teach, and pursue their research at Reid Hall, home to Columbia Global Centers | Paris. Nestled in the Montparnasse district, Reid Hall also hosts several other Columbia University initiatives: Columbia Undergraduate Programs, M.A. in History and Literature, GSAPP Shape of Two Cities Program, and the Institute for Ideas and Imagination. This unique combination of resources is enhanced by our global network whose mission is to expand the University's engagement the world over through educational programs, research initiatives, regional partnerships, and public events.
From graduate and undergraduate courses to webinars attracting audiences worldwide; from executive training to artist residencies, the Paris Center is a hub for scholars, students, and artists who cross both disciplinary and national boundaries alike. Through its public programs, the Center also addresses pressing global issues that are at the forefront of international education and research: agency and gender; climate and the environment; critical dialogues for just societies; encounters in the arts; and health and medical science.
The views and opinions expressed by speakers and guests do not necessarily reflect the official policies or positions of Columbia Global Centers | Paris or its affiliates.
