2018 RSA Conference in New orleans, LA

2017 RSA Conference in Chicago, IL

Thursday, March 30, 8:30 - 12pm, Palmer House Hilton, Seventh Floor, Clark 1

Nicholas of Cusa and Early Modern Reform I

Sponsor: American Cusanus Society
Organizers: Simon Burton, Uniwersytet Warszawski
Joshua Hollmann, Concordia College, New York
Chair: Jason Aleksander, National University
Respondent: Peter Casarella, University of Notre Dame

Simon Burton, Uniwersytet Warszawski
Towards an Alternative Mathesis Universalis: Comenius, Cusanus, and Universal Reform

Eric M. Parker, McGill University
The “Quintessence of Sextus Empiricus?” Lord Brooke, Peter Sterry, and the Coincidence of Opposites

Nicholas of Cusa and Early Modern Reform II

Sponsor: American Cusanus Society
Organizers: Simon Burton, Uniwersytet Warszawski
Joshua Hollmann, Concordia College, New York
Chair: Rita George-Tvrtkovic´, Benedictine University

Il Kim, Auburn University
Reform of Space for Prayer: Ecclesia primitiva in Nicholas of Cusa and Leon Battista Alberti

Joshua Hollmann, Concordia College, New York
The Centrality of Christ and Coincidence of Opposites in Nicholas of Cusa and Martin Luther

Alberto Clerici, Università degli Studi Niccolò Cusano
Nicholas of Cusa and Paolo Sarpi: The Revival of Conciliarism in Early Modern Venice

Friday, March 30, 8:30 - 12pm, Palmer House Hilton, Third Floor, Logan Room

Point and Line in Renaissance Thought I

Sponsor: American Cusanus Society
Organizers: David C. Albertson, University of Southern California;
Arielle Saiber, Bowdoin College
Chair: David C. Albertson, University of Southern California
Respondent: Arielle Saiber, Bowdoin College

Carla J. Mazzio, University at Buffalo, SUNY
Being Punctual: Time, Space, and Embodied Mathematics in Early Modernity

Luisa Brotto, Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa
Punctum and minimum in Giordano Bruno’s Philosophy

Point and Line in Renaissance Thought II

Rebecca Zorach, Northwestern University
Figure, Form, and Image in Renaissance Natural History

Paula Pico Estrada, Universidad Nacional de San Martín
The Helix and the Circle in Cusanus’s De ludo globi (1463)

Related sessions:

Saturday, April 1, 8:30 - 12pm, Palmer House Hilton, Seventh Floor, Sandburg 3

(Mis)Using the Council? Pushing Secular Interests at the Council of Basel (1431–49)

Organizers: Ursula A. Giessmann, Universität zu Köln;
Thomas Woelki, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
Chair: Johannes Helmrath, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

Kristina Odenweller, University of Freiburg
The Serenissima vs. the Council? Venice and Her Political Role on the Council of Basel

Thomas Woelki, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
The Council’s Warlords: Milanese Appropriations of the Conciliar Authority

Ursula A. Giessmann, Universität zu Köln
Solving the Schism of Basel: Interests, Reasoning, Practice

2016 RSA Conference in Boston, MA

Virtue and Idolatry in Nicholas of Cusa

Thursday, March 31, 1:30 to 3:00pm, Park Plaza, Fourth Floor, Brandeis Room

Organizer: David C. Albertson, University of Southern California
Chair: Donald F. Duclow, Gwynedd-Mercy University

Grace, Salvation, and Trinitarian Metaphysics: Nicholas of Cusa on the Theological Virtues

Simon Burton, Uniwersytet Warszawski

From Affectus to Caritas: Love of Neighbor and the Mind’s Goal in Nicholas of Cusa

Paula Pico Estrada, Universidad Nacional de San Martín

Nicholas of Cusa on Idolatry

Iris Wikstrom, Åbo Akademi University

New Debates on Nicholas of Cusa's Theology

Thu, March 31, 3:30 to 5:00pm, Park Plaza, Fourth Floor, Brandeis Room

Organizer: David C. Albertson, University of Southern California
Chair: David C. Albertson, University of Southern California

Cusanus’s Path toward His Final Vision of God: Seeing God in Positive Theology

Il Kim, Pratt Institute

Christ and Cosmos: The Theology of Providence in Nicholas of Cusa

Joshua Hollmann, McGill University

Nicholas of Cusa’s Paradoxes and Nonclassical Logic: Reconstructing the Philosophical Method of De docta ignorantia

Eugen Russo, Università degli Studi di Salerno

Roundtable: Nicholas of Cusa and Christian Pythagoreanism in the Renaissance: Responses to David Albertson’s Mathematical Theologies

Thu, March 31, 5:30 to 7:00pm, Park Plaza, Fourth Floor, Brandeis Room

Organizer: Jason Aleksander, Saint Xavier University
Chair: John Monfasani, SUNY, University at Albany

Discussants:

David C. Albertson, University of Southern California

Stephen Gersh, University of Notre Dame

Thomas Leinkauf, University of Munster

Denis J. J. Robichaud, University of Notre Dame

Maria Cecilia Rusconi, Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas

Church Reform and Heresy in the Renaissance

Fri, April 1, 8:30 to 10:00am, Park Plaza, Fourth Floor, Emerson Room

Organizer: David C. Albertson, University of Southern California
Chair: Thomas M. Izbicki, Rutgers University

Conforming to the Image: Clerical Reform in Thomas à Kempis and Nicholas of Cusa’s Sermons

Richard Serina, Concordia Seminary

Breaking Faith with Heretics? A Late Sixteenth-Century Discussion on the Safe Conduct of Hussites

Alberto Clerici, Università degli Studi Niccolò Cusano

Respondent: Ian Levy, Providence College

Historiography of Renaissance Philosophy: Ernst Cassirer and Wallace Ferguson

Sat, April 2, 1:30 to 3:00pm, Park Plaza, Fourth Floor, Charles River Room

Co-sponsored by the Society for Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy

Organizer: Donald F. Duclow, Gwynedd-Mercy University
Chair: Donald F. Duclow, Gwynedd-Mercy University

Ernst Cassirer and Renaissance Cultural Studies: The Figure of Nicholas of Cusa

Michael Edward Moore, University of Iowa

American Scholars and the Renaissance: Philosophy, Humanism, and the Middle Ages

John Monfasani, SUNY, University at Albany

Respondent: Francesco Borghesi, University of Sydney

2015 RSA Conference in Berlin, Germany

Twin Renaissances: Twelfth-Century Platonism in the Long Quattrocento

Thursday, March 26, 2015; 8:30-10:00am

Organizer: David C. Albertson, University of Southern California
Chair: Jason Aleksander, Saint Xavier University

Dante Alighieri, Nicholas of Cusa, and Twelfth-Century Platonism

Nancy Hudson Shaffer, California University of Pennsylvania

Thierry of Chartres’s Tricausality and Nicholas of Cusa’s Trinitarian Speculation in De docta ignorantia

Felix Resch, Catholic University of Paris

New Research on Nicholas of Cusa: Ancient Sources, Novel Readings

Friday, March 27, 2015; 1:15–2:45pm

Organizer: David C. Albertson, University of Southern California
Chair: Inigo Bocken, Radboud University Nijmegen

Nicholas of Cusa as Antiquarian: Cribratio alkorani (1461) and Christian Antiquarianism at the Papal Court

Il Kim, Pratt Institute

The Meaning of Nicholas of Cusa’s Scripta Mathematica

Federica De Felice, Università degli Studi G. D’Annunzio, Chieti-Pescara

“Our Substance is God’s Coin”: Cusanus on Minting, Defiling, and Restoring the Imago Dei

Donald F. Duclow, Gwynedd Mercy University

Nicholas of Cusa and the Question of Church Reform

Friday, March 27, 2015; 3:00-4:30pm

Organizer: Walter Euler, Institut für Cusanus-Forschung
Chair: Thomas Leinkauf, Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster

The Principles of Church Reform according to Nicholas of Cusa

Walter Euler, Institut für Cusanus-Forschung

Nikolaus von Kues als Reformbischof: Legitimitätspotentiale spätmittelalterlicher Kirchenreform

Thomas Woelki, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin

Nikolaus von Kues und die Konflikte mit den Frauenklöstern in Südtirol

Alexandra Geissler, Universität Trier

2014 RSA Conference in New York, NY

Nicholas of Cusa and the Visual Arts I
Saturday, March 29, 2014; 3:00 to 4:30pm

Respondent: Il Kim, Pratt Institute
Organizer and Chair: David C. Albertson, University of Southern California

Cusanus and Art: On Human Productivity
Thomas Leinkauf, Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster

The Heritage of Cusanus’s New Anthropology and Its Impact on Visual Culture in Fifteenth-Century Germany and Flanders
Elena Filippi, Alanus Hochschule für Kunst und Gesellschaft Alfter, Bonn

Nicholas of Cusa and the Visual Arts II
Saturday, March 29, 2014; 4:45 to 6:15pm

Organizer: David C. Albertson, University of Southern California
Chair: Donald F. Duclow, Gwynedd-Mercy College

The Metaphor of Light and the Light of Metaphor in Cusanus
Clyde Lee Miller, SUNY, Stony Brook University

Cusanus’s Neoplatonism and Philippine Baroque Churches
Jovino de Guzman Miroy, Ateneo de Manila University

Cusanus and Iconoclasm: The Aesthetics of Linearity
David C. Albertson, University of Southern California

2013 RSA Conference in San Diego, CA

Instruments of the Mind I (Co-Sponsored with International Charles de Bovelles Society)
Friday, April 5, 2013; 2:00 to 3:30pm

Organizer and Respondent: David C. Albertson, University of Southern California
Chairs: Thomas M. Izbicki, Rutgers University and Richard Oosterhoff, University of Notre Dame

Images as Instruments for Understanding the Ineffable Nature of God in Henry Suso’s Exemplar
Ingrid Falque, Leiden University

Renaissance Philosophers as “Hijackers” of Technological Innovation: The Cases of Nicholas of Cusa, Marsilio Ficino, and Charles de Bovelles
Tamara Albertini, University of Hawaii, Manoa

Instruments of the Mind II (Co-Sponsored with International Charles de Bovelles Society)
Friday, April 5, 2013; 3:45 to 5:15pm

Organizers: David C. Albertson, University of Southern California and Thomas M. Izbicki, Rutgers University
Chair: David C. Albertson, University of Southern California

Instrument as Marvel and Model: A Jewish Ring in Christian Natural Theology
Richard Oosterhoff, University of Notre Dame

Rethinking Spheres, Re: Thinking with Spheres: Astronomical Instruments and Cognition in the Renaissance
Adam Mosley, University of Wales, Swansea

Paduan Thomism and Francis Bacon’s “Contentious Learning”
Matthew T. Gaetano, Hillsdale College
Respondent: Amir Alexander, University of California, Los Angeles

2012 RSA Conference in Washington, DC

Abuse of Power and Its Consequences in Two Early Modern Cultures
Thursday, March 22, 3 PM

Organizer: Thomas M. Izbicki, Rutgers University
Chair: John Monfasani, SUNY, University at Albany

Political Assassinations in Premodern Islam
Bettina Koch, Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University

Abuse of Power in a Quaestio of Bartolus de Saxoferrato
Thomas M. Izbicki, Rutgers University

John of Salisbury’s Theory of Tyrannicide in Early Modern Europe
Cary J. Nederman, Texas A&M University

Perspectives on Nicholas of Cusa I
Saturday, March 24, 2 PM

Organizer: Thomas M. Izbicki, Rutgers University
Chair: Thomas Leinkauf, Westfälische Wilhelms

Cusanus Depicted as St. Martin: The Saint Jerome Altarpiece in the Cathedral of Pienza
Il Kim, Pratt Institute

Reading the Qur’an with Nicholas of Cusa: His Heuristic Approach to Islam
Joshua Hollmann, McGill University

The Problem of Temporality in Nicholas of Cusa’s De pace fidei
Jason Aleksander, Saint Xavier University

Perspectives on Nicholas of Cusa II
Saturday, March 24, 3:45 PM

Chair and Organizer: Thomas M. Izbicki, Rutgers University

Cusanus and Ficino on Immortality
Iris Wikstrom, Aabo Academy University

Looking at Aristotle with Nicholas of Cusa
Clyde Lee Miller, SUNY, Stony Brook University

Cusanus on Value: Minting Coins in God’s Image
Donald F. Duclow, Gwynedd-Mercy College

2011 RSA Conference in Montreal, Canada

Perspectives on Nicholas of Cusa I
Friday, March 25, 2 PM

Session Organizer: Thomas Izbicki, Rutgers University
Chair: Thomas Izbicki, Rutgers University

Cardinal Bessarion’s Greek and Latin Sources in the Plato-Aristotle Controversy of the Fifteenth Century and Nicholas of Cusa’s Relation to the Controversy
John Monfasani, State University of New York, Albany

Nicholas of Cusa between the Middle Ages and Modernity: The Historiographical Positions behind the Discussion
Catalina M. Cubillos, Universidad de Navarra

Perspectives on Nicholas of Cusa II
Friday, March 25, 3:45 PM

Session Organizer: Thomas Izbicki, Rutgers University
Chair: Thomas Izbicki, Rutgers University

“Credere enim non capitur nisi in vivo intellectu”: The Intellective Mystical Theology of Nicolaus Cusanus
K. Meredith Ziebart, Universität Freiburg

Blinded by the Sun: Platonic Influences on the Coincidentia Oppositorum in Nicholas of Cusa’s Apologia doctae ignorantiae
Joshua Hollmann, McGill University

Mystical Visuality and Mathematical Icons: The Project of Theologia Geometrica, 1400–1600
David Albertson, University of Southern California

2010 RSA Conference in Venice, Italy

Perspectives on Nicholas of Cusa I
Friday, April 9, 9 AM

Session Organizer: Thomas Izbicki, Rutgers University
Chair: Donald F. Duclow, Gwynedd-Mercy College

Cusanus, Platonism, and the Russian Philosophical Tradition
Oleg Ernestovich Dushin, Saint-Petersburg State University

Nicholas of Cusa and Neoplatonism: An Early Renaissance Man’s Debt to the Greeks
Nancy Hudson Shaffer, California University of Pennsylvania

Time, History, and Providence in the Philosophy of Nicholas of Cusa
Jason Aleksander, Saint Xavier University

Perspectives on Nicholas of Cusa II
Friday, April 9, 11 AM

Organizer & Chair: Thomas Izbicki, Rutgers University

Cusanus’s Critique of the Koran in the Light of His Sources
Marica Costigliolo, Universita degli Studi di Genova

Cusanus’s Clock, Time, and Eternity
Donald F. Duclow, Gwynedd-Mercy College

Plurality as a Challenge to Rationality: Cusanus’s Striving for Concordance and Peace
Markus Riedenauer, International Theological Institute, Vienna

2009 RSA Conference in Los Angeles, CA

Perspectives on Nicholas Cusa I
Friday, March 20, 1 PM

Organizer: Thomas Izbicki, Rutgers University, New Brunswick
Chair: Donald Duclow, Gwynedd-Mercy College

Aristotle in the Works of Cusanus
K. Meredith Ziebart, Universität Freiburg

Inquisitio Pythagorica: Nicolaus Cusanus on the Meaning of the Medieval Quadrivium
David C. Albertson, University of Southern California

The “Wall of Paradise”: A Metaphor of Perspective
Charles H. Carman, State University of New York, Buffalo

Perspectives on Nicholas Cusa II
Friday, March 20, 2:45 PM

Organizer & Chair: Thomas Izbicki, Rutgers University, New Brunswick

Concordance and Difference: A Possible Political Reading of Nicholas of Cusa’s De conciecturis
Jovino Miroy, Ateneo de Manila University

Cusanus Looks at Aristotle
Clyde Lee Miller, State University of New York, Stony Brook

“Ut scias sapentiam esse non in arte oratoria”: Nicholas of Cusa’s Ambivalence toward Rhetoric
Matthieu van der Meer, State University of New York, Binghamton

2008 RSA Conference in Chicago, IL

Perspectives on Nicholas Cusa I
Sunday, April 5, 8:45 AM

Organizer: Thomas Izbicki, Rutgers University, New Brunswick
Chair: Timothy Kircher, Guilford College

Christiformitas in Cusanus’s Preaching in Rome
Thomas Izbicki, Rutgers University, New Brunswick

What Is Nicholas of Cusa’s Relationship to the Fourteenth Century?
Sarah M. Powrie, University of Notre Dame

On the Infinite and the Indefinite: Nicholas of Cusa and Descartes
Sophie Berman, St. Francis College

Perspectives on Nicholas Cusa II
Sunday, April 5, 10:30 AM

Organizer & Chair: Thomas Izbicki, Rutgers University, New Brunswick

Does Nicholas of Cusa Modify His Negative Theology around 1460?
Clyde Lee Miller, SUNY, Stony Brook University

Nicholas of Cusa Reading Meister Eckhart
Elizabeth Brient, The University of Georgia

2007 RSA Conference in Miami, FL

Pinturicchio and the Piccolomini Library in Siena
Thursday, March 22, 2 PM

Organizer & Chair: Thomas Izbicki, The Johns Hopkins University

“Reject Aeneas, hold fast to Pius”? The Rhetoric of Virtue in the Piccolomini Library Frescoes
Kim E. Butler, American University

Fu da Francesco Piccolomini, Cardinale, chiamato a Siena a dipignere la libreria
Paul Gareth Gwynne, The American University of Rome

Pius II and Papal Authority in the Frescoes of the Piccolomini Library
Emily O’Brien, Simon Fraser University

Perspectives on Nicholas of Cusa
Thursday, March 22, 3:45 PM

Organizer & Chair: Thomas Izbicki, The Johns Hopkins University

Kant’s Concept of Universal History as a Reiteration of Nicholas of Cusa’s Philosophia perennis
Jason R. Aleksander, Vanderbilt University

Nicholas of Cusa and Meaning in Non-Linear Depictions of Sacred Space in Renaissance Painting
Charles H. Carman, State University of New York, Buffalo

Perspicere Deum: Cusanus and the European Art of Fifteenth-Century
Cesare Catà, University of Macerata

2006 RSA Conference in San Francisco, CA

Panel Title: Perspectives on Nicholas of Cusa I
Thursday, March 23, 8:45 AM

Organizer and Chair: Thomas Izbicki, The Johns Hopkins University

Allies and Opponents: Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini and Nicholas of Cusa
Emily O’Brien, Harvard University

Giovanni Pico della Mirandola and Nicholas of Cusa
Francesco Borghesi, Columbia University

Nicholas of Cusa and Contemporary Political Thought: Encounters of Pluralism and the Coincidence of Opposites
Paulina Ochoa Espejo, The Johns Hopkins University

Panel Title: Perspectives on Nicholas of Cusa II
Thursday, March 23, 10:30 AM

Organizer: Thomas Izbicki, The Johns Hopkins University
Chair: Clyde Lee Miller, State University of New York, Stony Brook

Cusanus on the Perfection of Time in the Intellect
Elizabeth Brient, The University of Georgia

Nicholas of Cusa and the Problem of the Finitude of Language
Tamara Albertini, University of Hawaii, Manoa

Sight and Insight in Early Modern Image Interpretation: Tension and Resolution
Charles H. Carman, State University of New York, Buffalo

Panel Title: Perspectives on Nicholas of Cusa III
Thursday, March 23, 2 PM