Department of English Associate Professor Birger Vanwesenbeeck participated in a workshop, “Autumn of the Middle Ages: A Century Later,” that brought together scholars from the United States and Europe to Columbia University to explore the legacy and enduring relevance of Johan Huizinga’s study “Autumn of the Middle Ages.”
The workshop, held Nov. 10, was organized in conjunction with the Flanders House and co-chaired by Peter Arnade, dean of Arts and Humanities at Hawaii University, and Martha Howell, the Miriam Champion Professor of History at Columbia.
In his paper, “Huizinga: Theorist of Lateness?” Dr. Vanwesenbeeck explores to what extent the central thesis of Huizinga’s work - that the Flemish painters of the early 15th century should be seen as the last exponents of the Middle Ages rather than the heralds of a Northern Renaissance - invites comparison to contemporary notions of “lateness” and “late stye,” a topic of much contemporary debate across the humanities.The paper drew in part on archival research completed by Vanwesenbeeck at the Huizinga archive at Leiden University in the summer of 2015, for which he received a Scaliger fellowship from Leiden.
