Saturday, October 22, 1:00-2:00pm
Members $5, Not-yet-members $9
Registration required by Friday, October 21. The Zoom link will be emailed the morning of the program.

This talk details the mystical, supernatural power that emanates from Orthodox icons. Taking the tiny depiction of the spirit of the Virgin Mary, which appears in icons of her dormition as an invitation to the ghostly realm, this presentation will catalog different iconic apparitions across traditions and genres. It will present narratives of miracle-working or havoc-wreaking icons that inspired both reverence and fear and seek to explain how and why icons carry such otherworldly energy even for those who do not believe in their religious power.

Brett Donohoe is a PhD candidate at Harvard University in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures. His dissertation, titled “The Spectral Century: The Ghosts of 19th-Century Russian Literature and Performance,” investigates ghostly figures in Russian religious and artistic culture of the medieval period and 19th century. He also studies Ukrainian and South Slavic poetry and translates from Russian and Bosnian.