Date/Time
Date(s) - 02/12/2026
3:30 pm - 4:30 pm
Location
4010 JFSB
Category(ies)
The Humanities Center welcomes Carlos Eire, Yale University, as this week’s colloquium speaker on Thursday, February 12th at 3:30 pm in 4010 JFSB. His lecture will examine rare early modern accounts of levitation, flight, and bilocation—and what they reveal about cultural definitions of the impossible. We hope you’ll join us. Refreshments will be served.
Title: “On Hovering Nuns and Flying Friars: Wild Facts and the Writing of History”
This lecture focuses on early modern accounts of levitating saints, flying witches, and people who could be in two different locations at the same time, rare miracles that are deemed absolutely impossible by modern science and our dominant culture. It also raises questions concerning why and how “impossibility” is determined by cultural contexts, and whether there is more to reality than meets the eye or can be observed by science.
