Sensing the Sacred: An Interview with Bissera Pentcheva
Republics of Letters features an occasional series of interviews with scholars who have recently been in conversation with the medieval and early modern community at Stanford University. These interviews seek to capture ideas in motion: how current and recent work came to be conceived, how projects develop and change, and how new knowledge emerges into public view. In keeping with the journal’s aim of reflecting on the present moment in our disciplines, these dialogues invite self-awareness, retrospection, and analysis of the relevant fields.
In this interview, Bissera Pentcheva (Professor of Art and Art History, Stanford University) discusses her new research in a medieval monastery at Conques in Southern France with Jisha Menon (Professor of Theater and Performance Studies, Stanford University). Both were Fellows at the Stanford Humanities Center in 2023–24. “EnChanted Images,” a multimodal, collaborative project that has emerged out of this research, explores the visions of Sainte Foy through art, music, poetry, and dance. The interview touches upon a range of themes including medieval art, religious subjectivity, multi-sensorial explorations, and cross-disciplinary collaboration.