W. R. Laird read a paper on “The Name of the Rose and Medieval History” at the conference “Umberto Eco, the Middle Ages, and The Name of the Rose: A Tribute” held at the University of California in Los Angeles on 26-27 January 2017. Eco, who died this past year, was a world-renowned medievalist and best-selling novelist; besides The Name of the Rose (a murder mystery set in a medieval monastery), he wrote Foucault’s Pendulum, The Island of the Day Before, Baudolino, The Prague Cemetery, and most recently Numero Zero. Participants included several of Eco’s closest friends and scholars expert in his work on medieval aesthetics and semiotics. The conference was organized by Massimo Ciavolella, who now teaches at UCLA but who formerly taught at Carleton University. Professor Laird is currently offering a course in medieval intellectual history designed around The Name of the Rose.