ACMRS Public Programs

Distinguished
Lecture Series in Medieval
and Renaissance Studies

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Spring 2004
Gary Tomlinson

Tuesday, March 30, 2004

7:15 PM, Lattie F. Coor Hall, room L1 - 74
Free and open to the public.
RSVP for the reception immediately following the lecture.

The Distinguished Lecturer in Renaissance Studies for Spring 2004 is Gary Tomlinson, Annenberg Professor in the Humanities, University of Pennsylvania Department of Music. Professor Tomlinson is the author of several books, essays, and reviews, including Music in Renaissance Magic: Toward a Historiography of Others (Chicago, 1993), Metaphysical Song: An Essay on Opera (Princeton, 1999) and The Singing of the New World (in preparation). He was a MacArthur Fellow from 1988 - 1993 and a Guggenheim Fellow from 1983 - 1984. In addition, he has been a visiting professor at Duke University, the University of Florida and Princeton University.

Professor Tomlinson's lecture will follow the dedication of the "Seated King" statue, which is a gift to ACMRS from Jeri and Charles Garbaccio of Demarest, New Jersey, in honor of Florence E. Nelson of Scottsdale and in memory of Renee Kra, former Managing Editor of Radiocarbon at the University of Arizona.

The lecture, titled Inca Singing at Cuzco, April 1535, is a fascinating, all but unique eyewitness account of an Inca festival in April 1535. It offers unparalleled insight into the powers the Incas envisaged for their singing. To understand its import, however, we must relate it to many other things: to expressive modes different than song, to the structures of Inca rulership, to the landscape and cosmos, and finally to the forms of Inca divinity. This lecture will take off from the so-called Inti Raimi of 1535 on an exploration of all these topics, affirming finally powers of Inca singing unsuspected by the early-modern European imagination. This lecture is co-sponsored by the ASU School of Music, the Center for Latin American Studies, and the Department of Anthropology.

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