Yale Bulletin and Calendar

February 14, 2003|Volume 31, Number 18

Terry Lectures examine human quest to exorcise 'demons'

"Exorcism and Enlightenment" is the theme of this year's Dwight H. Terry Lectures, which will be presented by H.C. Erik Midelfort, the C. Julian Bishko Professor of History and Religious Studies at the University of Virginia.

Midelfort, who is a visiting professor in Yale's Department of History this term, is the first historian to be invited to present the Terry Lectures in many years.

The Terry Lectures on "Exorcism and Enlightenment" will include four talks. In the series, subtitled "Johann Joseph Gassner and the Demons of 18th-Century Germany," Midelfort will examine the meaning of a key moment in Western civilization's quest for an under-standing of the self and for mastery over the evils that bedevil every individual and society.

The lectures, which are free and open to the public, will take place on four Tuesdays at 4:30 p.m. in the Luce Hall lecture hall, 34 Hillhouse Ave. The individual talk titles are: Feb. 18 -- "The Experience of Demons and Exorcism"; Feb. 25 -- "Healing: Gassner's Patients and Their Reports"; March 25 -- "Interpretation: Enlightened and Traditional Biblical Views of Demons and Exorcism"; and April 1 -- "Conversation and Ridicule: The Structure of Enlightened Controversy."

The Terry Lectureship brings to Yale speakers to discuss religion and its application to human welfare in the light of scientific knowledge and philosophical insights. The lectureship was established in 1905 by a gift from Dwight Harrington Terry of Bridgeport, Connecticut.

While researching the past, Midelfort has continually focused on the larger questions that are the concern of the Terry Lectures, including what history can offer to current debates on the relationship between faith and reason. His recent work in the complex history of psychiatry, folly, madness and mental hospitals, has resulted in several articles and two books: "Mad Princes of Renaissance Germany" and "A History of Madness in 16th-Century Germany," which won the 16th Century Studies Conference's Roland Bainton Prize for best book of the year in 1994 and 1999, respectively. The latter book also won Phi Beta Kappa's Ralph Waldo Emerson Award.

In addition to research, Midelfort has translated works from German into English such as Bernd Moeller's "Imperial Cities and the Reformation" (with Mark U. Edwards), Peter Blickle's "The Revolution of 1525" (with Thomas A. Brady) and Wolfgang Behringer's "Shaman of Oberstdorf. Chonrad Stoeckhlin and the Phantoms of the Night."

Midelfort earned both a B.A. (1964) and Ph.D. (1970) from Yale. He has taught at the University of Virginia since 1970. He has also taught at Stanford, Bern, Stuttgart, and Harvard universities, and most recently was Visiting Scholar at Wolfson College, Oxford, England.

Further information about the Terry Lectureship is available online at www.yale.edu/terrylecture.

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