Papers and lectures

Upcoming:

TUCEMEMS Studia Generalia lecture series, Autumn 2025. Turku City Library. Lectures are held in Finnish.

27th of October, 18:00
Anni Hella & Jutta Laitila: Pyhää, pahaa vai polttopuuta? Metsän monet merkitykset klassisessa ja kristillisessä antiikissa. [In English: Holy, Wicked or Firewood? The many meanings of forests in Classical and Christian Antiquity]

To the people living in Antiquity and Late Antiquity forests were practical resources as well as symbolic spaces. The lecture looks into how forests were used during Antiquity, and what sorts of meanings Classical and Christian authors gave to trees and forests. Was forest a place of holiness or something to be feared and controlled?

8th of December, 18:00
Teemu Immonen: Metsän reunalla: Ihminen, luonto ja muutos keskiajan lämpimällä kaudella. [In English: At the edge of the forest. Human, nature and change in the Medieval Warm Period]

The Medieval Warm Period (c. 950–1250) brought warmer winters and longer growing seasons, but also major societal changes. This lecture will examine how forests were seen both as physical barriers and landscapes of the mind in a period during which forest clearing, expansion of agriculture and changes in spirituality moulded the human relationship with nature. The lecture will examine the interaction between nature and culture in a pre-industrial world, through the lenses of texts written in Southern Italian monasteries.

Past:

2025:

Anni Hella: Nature, humanity and orthodoxy: Creation in John of Damascus’ thought. Conference: When God created the heavens and the earth. Nature in hexaemeral literature beyond Basil and Ambrose. 24–25 June 2025, Center for Byzantine Studies University of Silesia, Katowice, Poland.

Human/Nature – Entanglements in Cultural History. Conference of the International Society for Cultural History, 16–19 June 2025 – University of Lapland.

  • Session organized by the project: Sacred Forests: Religious Perspectives on Human-Nature Relationships Across Time. Chair: Ned Schoolman & Teemu Immonen.
    • Karel Sima: From Spirits to Witches to Fairies: Transformations of Mushrooms in Religious and Secularized Cultural Traditions of Europe
    • Brandon Wilding: The Death of Gods, the Birth of Man: The Cultural and Religious History of Driftwood in the Medieval Iceland Identity
    • Emma Bentley: Dionysus’ Forests: From Mount Cithaeron to the Tragic Stage
    • Jaya Sharma: Sacred Spaces and Ecological Realities: The Human-Forest Dynamic in Valmiki’s Ramayana and Ranendra’s Global Gaon ke Devta
    • Inkeri Suutari: Enlightenment and sacred interconnectedness – Esoteric take on forest in Finnish contemporary art
    • Rahilya Geybullayeva: From ”Alma” to ”Alma Mater”: A Journey Through Linguistic, Historical, and Cultural Contexts
  • Project’s own session: Talking About Forests: Medieval Discourses and Practices in Southern Italy. Chair: Outi Kaltio & Teemu Immonen.
    • Teemu Immonen: Concepts of Desert and Forest in the Hagiography of Montecassino during the High Middle Ages
    • Anni Hella: Interplay between Intellectual and Practical Engagements with Forests in the Monastery of Grottaferrata
    • Ned Schoolman: Cultural and Ecological Inflection Points: Drivers of Long-term Landscape Change in Early Medieval Italy

2024:

Teemu Immonen: Puhetta puista – sydänkeskiajan metsänraivaus teksteissä [In English: Talk of the trees – Forest clearing of the High Middle Ages in Texts]. Dies Medievales, Helsinki 9.3.2024.

Anni Hella: Ihminen luonnossa, luonto ihmisessä – luontosuhde Bysantissa [In English: Human in nature, nature in human – Relation to Nature in Byzantium].Dies Medievales, Helsinki 9.3.2024.

2023:

Teemu Immonen & Anni Hella: Changing views of the forest in the High Middle Ages. Round table “Marvels of the Premodern Forest” University of Turku 8.12.2023. Immonen and Hella presented the Puhetta metsistä project idea. Ned Schoolman participated to the discussion as a commentator.