Lecture: Dr. Emily Selove, “The Donkey King: Asinine Symbology in Magic and Art”

Join us for the third annual Lecture on the History of Art & Design in Honor of Barbara Crawford Glasrud.
Program

6:00 p.m. – Doors Open
6:30 p.m. – The Donkey King: Asinine Symbology in Magic and Art, Dr. Emily Selove
7:30 p.m. – Reception (light refreshments provided)

Emily Selove (PhD 2012, UCLA) is a Medieval Arabic Language and Literature associate professor at the University of Exeter. She also convenes the University of Exeter’s Centre for Magic and Esotericism. Her most recent publication is a short monograph for the Cambridge Elements Series: The Donkey King: Asinine Symbology in Ancient and Medieval Magic. She was the PI of a Leverhulme-funded research project, “A Sorcerer’s Handbook” (2019-2022), which will create an edition and translation of Sirāj al-Dīn al-Sakkākī’s (d. 1229) magic handbook, Kitāb al-Shāmil wa-baḥr al-kāmil (The Book of the Complete). Her early research focused on the figure of the uninvited guest (or “party-crasher”) in medieval Arabic literature, and especially on the 11th-century work Ḥikāyat Abī l-Qāsim. Her translation of another 11th-century book of party-crashing is titled Selections from the Art of Party-Crashing in Medieval Iraq. She also co-authored a textbook to introduce beginning students to the city of medieval Baghdad, Baghdad, at the Centre of a World: 8th-13th Century. She has created a collection of cartoons titled Popeye and Curly: 120 Days in Medieval Baghdad to accompany this textbook.