Seminar News

Liturgy of Empire examines the European reception of the neo-Mozarabic rite created under the patronage of the Archbishop of Toledo, Francisco Jimenez de Cisneros (1495-1517), in relation to the history of the Mozarabs of Toledo, the development of bibliophilia and libraries, the scholarly study of medieval liturgy, and the crusading ideology of Spanish expansionism in the Mediterranean.

During the emergence of Spain’s global empire, the editions of the Mozarabic rite entered collections throughout Europe. The provenance of the copies (studied here for the first time) reveals their mediation of knowledge about Iberian history and the political contexts for their acquisition.

Summer Hart: What inspired you to take on the question, “Why Care?”

Rachel Adams: This book grew somewhat organically out of my previous one, Raising Henry, which was a memoir about the first years of life with a son with Down syndrome. I continued to think about how I love both of my children dearly but have also felt at times angry, frustrated, and resistant. Why did I love them most tenderly when they were asleep? Why did care feel so unnatural and obligatory? Why didn’t other women seem to share my frustrations? I started to realize how much of our story was about the struggles and rewards of caregiving, and that individual experiences were embedded in larger structures of history, politics, community. I found literary and visual narratives that expressed the complexity of my feelings—say the writing of Kate Chopin, Adrienne Rich, or Toni Morrison or the photography of Sally Mann—but did not find my experiences echoed in the social worlds I inhabit. I wanted to explore the personal and social forces that generate our complicated feelings about care giving and receiving, and write frankly about the realities of human frailty we often deny or repress until they are forced upon us.

Love, Money, Duty studies the stories we tell about care from birth to death, the most intimate bonds of mother and child to the forms of care afforded by institutions like hospitals and group homes, and even care robots!

SH: Your book’s cover is quite evocative. Why did you choose this particular artwork?

RA: The art on the cover is a sculpture called Umbilical by the artist Janine Antoni. She took a spoon from the family silver collection and cast the imprint of her mouth at the bowl and of her mother’s hand at the handle. I love how the title of the sculpture evokes the biological connection between a fetus and the maternal body, but its form has more to do with the more mediated relationship between a child and a maternal figure. I see it as suggesting that care is both a social practice and a physiological necessity, an intimate bodily relationship that is also always mediated by culture. I appreciate that Antoni focuses on the spoon, which is typically the first utensil used in feeding but has also become a potent metaphor for the limited energy possessed by some people who are ill or disabled. It made me think of  Christine Miserandino’s viral 2003 essay, “Spoon Theory,” although the sculpture predates it.  But now the concept of “spoons” as energy adds resonance to an artwork that has everything to do with embodiment, sustenance, and the uneven distribution of dependency and care. To me, it’s a great condensation of the meanings attached to care in this book: a form of embodied labor that is at once fundamental and mediated, a relation that can be intimate and sustaining, but also a source of oppression and constraint.

SH: Do you have a pile of books on the floor by your bed that you try hard not to spill coffee on? If so, what books are in your pile?

RA: This is always my favorite question! I’ve just finished Beautiful Mystery by the anthropologist Danilyn Rutherford, a new memoir about life with a multiply-disabled, nonverbal daughter. It is moving and wise and as beautiful as its title. At the other end of the emotional spectrum, next week I will teach Joan Didion’s brilliant Slouching toward Bethlehem, so that’s there too. Of course there is the book I’m currently reading, When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamin Labatut, and the one I hope to read next, Susan Choi’s Flashlight.