UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. — The Penn State Department of Art History will host an upcoming Dickson Memorial Lecture, "Transgender Monks, Ethiopian Eunuchs: The Intersectionality of Gender and Race in Byzantium,” by Roland Betancourt, assistant professor of art history at the University of California, Irvine, at 6 p.m. on Jan. 23 at the Palmer Museum of Art's Palmer Lipton Auditorium on the University Park campus.
“From the fifth to the ninth century, there are a series of saints’ Lives composed in the Greek-speaking Mediterranean that detail the lives of individuals assigned female at birth, who for a variety of reasons choose to live most their lives as monks, usually presenting as male and passing as eunuchs within monastic communities,” Betancourt explained. “This talk takes these lives and their popularity in later centuries as a starting point to consider the role of transgender and non-binary figures across the late-antique and Byzantine world, covering the Greek, Coptic and Syriac traditions. Weaving together saints’ lives, rhetorical treatises, letters and medical textbooks, this talk focuses on the host of bodily and medical practices deployed in the Byzantine world to alter or affirm a person’s gender identity. Through these lessons this talk will lead into a discussion of the intersectionality of racial and gender difference in Byzantium."
Betancourt received his doctorate in 2014 from Yale University. He is co-editor of the volume "Byzantium/Modernism: The Byzantine as Method in Modernity," and editor of special issues of postmedieval and West 86th. He has presented extensively at conferences, and his published work has appeared and is forthcoming in Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies, Gesta, Dumbarton Oaks Papers, Orientalia Christiana Periodica, Word & Image, and others. His current research and methodology focus on both Byzantine and contemporary discourses on the ontological valences of the image and its temporality.
“Roland is a brilliant, young powerhouse, which is why I wanted to bring him here,” said Evan Pugh Professor of Art History Anthony Cutler. “He asks questions about meaning and the relationships between the Byzantine and the modern that will transform the field.”
The Dickson Memorial Lecture Series in Art History was established in 2011. This lecture series is made possible by an endowment created by the late Mary Neilly of State College. Neilly graduated from Penn State in 1947 with a degree in journalism. Two years later, when she was managing editor for the Penn State Alumni Association, she took an art history course from Harold E. Dickson. She never forgot this course and its extraordinary professor. By creating an endowed lectureship in art history for visiting scholars she established a very worthy memorial to an exceptional teacher and scholar, Dickson.
Dickson was one of the founders of the department. He graduated from Penn State College in 1922, with a degree in architectural engineering. He earned an master's and doctorate in fine arts from Harvard University. While he was pursuing his graduate degrees at Harvard, he was teaching at Penn State, beginning in 1923 with the title of “instructor of watercolor.” The art history program began at Penn State as a one-credit “Art Appreciation” course, which developed into a very popular single course, and eventually a department. Dickson was a highly respected and productive scholar in the field of American art and architecture. He played an instrumental role in finding the funding and selecting Henry Varnum Poor to paint the land-grant frescoes in Old Main.
The annual Dickson Memorial Lecture Series in Art History brings leading scholars in art history to Penn State to share their latest research and meet with students. Often the topics of the lectures relate to courses that are currently being taught.
For more information, visit the Department of Art History online at https://arthistory.psu.edu.