Professor of History John Eldevik recently presented the inaugural Institute Alumni Lecture at the Austrian Academy of Science's Institute for Medieval Research in Vienna.
The talk, based on his forthcoming book, Reading Prester John: Cultural Fantasy and its Manuscript Contexts, argued that the manuscript reception and transmission of the famous Letter of Prester John holds important clues about his origins in twelfth-century Bavaria. During his stay as a guest scholar at the Institute during his fall 2012 leave, Eldevik began the research that would form the basis of the book.
