Professor Boaz Huss, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, ‘“Martyr of the Word”: Imagining Abraham Abulafia in Modern Literature, Arts and Popular Culture’

Boaz Huss is the Aron Bernstein Chair in Jewish History at the Goldstein-Goren dept. of Jewish Thought at the Ben-Gurion University. He is the vice-President of the European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism. His research interests include history of Kabbalah, Western Esotericism, New Age Culture and New Religious Movements. His recent publications include The Zohar: Reception and Impact, Liverpool University Press, 2016 and Mystifying Kabbalah: Academic Scholarship, National Theology, and New Age Spirituality, Oxford University Press, 2020.

Professor Annette Volfing, Oriel College, Oxford, ‘Misdirected Visions: Doubt and Confusion in the Middle High German Sister Books’

The presentation will focus on examples of visionary experiences that do not seem to have been entirely successful, either because the nun experiencing the vision does not value the experience or because she is not able to respond appropriately to that which is revealed to her. The first group of examples concerns visions designed to dispel doubts about the Eucharist – and which may therefore be deemed to cast a slur on the strength of the recipients’ faith. The second group of examples involves visions of the Christ Child, with the reactions of the recipients being presented as overly sentimental, unintellectual, or simply confused.