CFP: Memorializing the Middle Classes (Edited volume)

CFP: Memorializing the Middle Classes (Edited volume)
Deadline: 30 June 2014

Building on the session “Memorials for Merchants: The Funerary Culture of Late Medieval Europe’s New Elite” (College Art Association Annual Meeting, 2014), this edited volume offers papers that investigate the habits and strategies of patrons of commemorative art ca. 1300-1700, while considering what relationship, if any, existed between patronal strategies and choices and location in societal hierarchy. The rising fortunes of merchants, lawyers, and other professionals allowed middle-class patrons to commission private tombs in numbers not seen since Roman times.

While historians and anthropologists have looked broadly at European commemorative practices of the later Middles Ages and Renaissance, art historians have tended to focus on individual patrons, monuments, artists, or institutions. Memorializing the Middle Classes begins with an overview of Roman, Early Christian, and Byzantine precedent, offering a long view of continental commemorative culture. Essays by an international group of scholars follow to provide comparative analysis of the socio-cultural significance of memorialization both within particular cities and regions and across Europe. Papers that explore issues of social networks, the privatization of communal spaces, individual and corporate identities, personal and public memories, the relationships between the living and the dead, and other questions regarding commemoration, the use of space, and the patronage and reception of tombs and other memorials.

To submit a proposal, please send the following to
annecleader@gmail.com no later than 30 June 2014:

• author’s name/affiliation
• chapter title (15 words max.)
• abstract (300 words max.)
• selected bibliography
• estimated number of illustrations and type (photo, chart/graph, map)
• or a working list of illustrations
• scholars (including contact information) who could serve as a peer reviewer for the book proposal
• list of books that complement/compete with proposed volume and the target audience for your essay
• cv
• short biography in prose (100 words max.)

Please direct all questions to the editor, Anne Leader, at annecleader@gmail.com