“I’ve Got a Thing,” the first season of The Premodern Podcast, is a series of conversations about the objects, documents, and stories that premodernists just can’t stop thinking about. In this episode, Jennifer Awes Freeman traces the shapes and forms of the Good Shepherd motif and explains why people in the past had very different ideas about this common pastoral image.

Dr. Jennifer Awes Freeman is Associate Professor and Program Director of Theology and the Arts at United Theological Seminary of the Twin Cities as well as a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of Art History at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities. Her recent book, The Good Shepherd: Image, Meaning, and Power (2021), traces the visual and textual depictions of the Good Shepherd motif from ancient Mesopotamia to late medieval Europe. She is interviewed by Elijah Wallace, a graduate student in History, at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities.

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Our theme music is “Dangerous Diamonds” by Rogue Valley written by Chris Koza.

Our intermission music is "Summer is icumen in" by Anya Badaldavood.

This episode was produced by Moinak Choudhury.

Transcript by Karen Soto

The conversations on this podcast represent the framing and views of individual scholars which are not necessarily shared by the Center for Premodern Studies, the University of Minnesota, and their staff and affiliates.