LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Anthropologist Elayne Zorn will talk about Peruvian weavers and archaeologist Richard Hodges will discuss Italy’s landscape during University of Louisville lectures sponsored by U of L’s Liberal Studies Project.
Zorn’s talk on “Weaving on the Top of the World: Textiles and Culture on Taquile Island, Peru” will begin at 4 p.m. Sept. 20 in Speed Art Museum Auditorium.
A University of Central Florida associate professor of anthropology, Zorn has researched for 25 years the tourist arts, textiles and crafts of highland Peru and Bolivia. She lived nearly two years on Taquile Island on the Peruvian side of Lake Titicaca and learned to weave there; the island people are known for handwoven textiles they wear and sell to thousands of tourists who visit their island annually.
Zorn will discuss how the production and use of cloth remain central to Andean society and how Taquileans continue to practice the traditions alongside the highest navigable lake in the Americas.
Hodges’ lecture on “Villa to Village: The Making of Italy’s Medieval Landscape” will begin at 5:30 p.m. Oct. 20 in Ekstrom Library Auditorium.
Hodges, archaeology professor at University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom, oversees a Packard Humanities Institute project to renovate and develop Albanian archaeological sites.
The researcher was director of The British School at Rome from 1988 to 1995, during which time he also led large excavations of the medieval Albanian port of Butrint. His other excavations have been in the United Kingdom, Turkey and Italy, including San Vincenzo al Volturno and Montarrenti.
For more information, call Janna Tajibaeva at 502-852-2247.