Join us for a talk with Christina Van Dyke (Barnard) on the influence of medieval contemplatives on self-knowledge. We live in a world of chaos, in the face of which we are urged to "self-care," as though a bubble bath or a quiet cup of tea can make everything better. There's a better option than panic, resignation, and/or denial, however, that comes from people from a surprisingly similar situation: medieval contemplatives of the later Middle Ages. Writing in a time when waves of plague made social, political, and religious upheavals even more tumultuous, these contemplatives (who include well-known figures like Meister Eckhart, Catherine of Siena, and Julian of Norwich as well as lesser-known figures such as Hadewijch, Bonaventure, and Mechthild of Magdeburg) offer advice that is both practical and transcendent, simultaneously applicable to everyday life and highly aspirational. As we'll see, although contemplatives in this tradition disagree about where self-knowledge will ultimately take us, they agree that we won't get anywhere without it. If you want to live a deep and meaningful life, introspection is the only place to start.