The Eye of the Mind
Date and Time
Location
Book talk and discussion of The Eye of the Mind: Vision, Memory, and Meditation in Seventeenth-Century Ukrainian Preaching with Maria Grazia Bartolini, Associate Professor of Slavic Philology and Linguistics at the University of Milan
Chaired by Michelle Viise, Monographs Editor at HURI Books. Books are available for purchase on the HURI Books website.
This event is organized by HURI as part of the Seminar in Ukrainian Studies public event series and HURI Books Program.
About the Book
This study explores the role of vision, memory, and meditation in the sermons produced in Ukraine during the second half of the seventeenth century. It argues that the cognitive importance that vision and memory enjoyed in medieval and early modern culture informed their centrality in these sermons. The Eye of the Mind demonstrates how preachers used verbal and visual images to encourage the meditative re-creation of biblical events in the minds of their audiences. An investigation of the mental furniture of early modern Ukrainian preachers and their audiences, this book recovers a fascinating tradition that merged word and image to build “multimedia machines” for the spiritual elevation of the faithful.
About the Author
Dr. Maria Grazia Bartolini is an Associate Professor of Slavic Philology and Linguistics at the University of Milan. Her research focuses on the religious culture of early modern Ukraine, with special attention to the intersection of preaching, memory, and visual arts in seventeenth-century Ukraine, the political and social aspects of homiletic and hagiographical texts, and the reception of Christian Neoplatonism in the East Slavic region. Her monographs include Piznai samoho sebe (Kyiv, 2017), a study of Hryhorii Skovoroda and Christian Neoplatonism, which was awarded the 2019 Ivan Franko International Prize, and The Eye of the Mind: Vision, Memory, and Meditation in Seventeenth-Century Ukrainian Preaching (HURI, 2026). Her articles on Ruthenian religious culture have received awards from the Early Slavic Studies Association and the American Association for Ukrainian Studies. Dr. Bartolini was a Visiting Associate Professor in the Department of Slavic Languages & Literatures at Harvard for the Fall 2025 term.