CFP: Medieval Ars Memoriae in Italy: Theory, Technique, and Practices at International Congress on Medieval Studies Kalamazoo 2021, deadline 15 September 2020

Posted byRoisin AstellPosted inCall for PapersTags:, , , , , , ,

Organized by: Elisabeth Trischler and Leon Jacobowitz Efron

Sponsor: Italians and ltalianists at Kalamazoo

From the pseudo-Ciceronian Ad Herennium to Pietro da Ravenna’s Phoenix, the vibrant intellectual climate of the Italian peninsula was the core of many important contributions to Europe’s mnemonic traditions, bridging not only Eastern and Western cultures but also adapting the classical tradition to its own epoch. This panel aims to explore the variety of memory techniques developed and practiced in Italy during the medieval period. Medieval memory has become a key topic of discussion amongst contemporary scholars from many disciplines, our panel will therefore accept papers from a variety of fields, including but not limited to: art, history, literature, philosophy, and theology.

Potential paper topics include but are not limited to:

  • the use of ars memoriae in Italian literature
  • the differences between theory and praxis
  • the influence or rejection of classical authors illustrations as pedagogical tools and/or their absence
  • Ars memoriae and the sermo modernus
  • the practice in relation to different audiences
  • real and imagined architectural spaces and ars memorae
  • the roles of affect and sensorial play
  • art and mnemonics: from manuscript decoration to cloister frescoes

We welcome proposals for 20-minute papers on (but not limited to) the above-mentioned topics. In order to submit an abstract please find the paper session here, by 15 September 2020.

Published by Roisin Astell

Roisin Astell received a First Class Honours in History of Art at the University of York (2014), under the supervision of Dr Emanuele Lugli. After spending a year learning French in Paris, Roisin then completed an MSt. in Medieval Studies at the University of Oxford (2016), where she was supervised by Professor Gervase Rosser and Professor Martin Kauffmann. In 2017, Roisin was awarded a CHASE AHRC studentship as a doctoral candidate at the University of Kent’s Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Studies, under the supervision of Dr Emily Guerry.

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