Parish churches were a fundamental feature of the cities, towns, and villages of medieval Europe. Founded to serve the spiritual needs of local populations, these buildings quickly became epicenters of public life, accommodating functions that ranged from religious services, processions, and pageants to secular assemblies, tax collection, and alms distribution. Surviving examples, which number in the tens of thousands, are home to countless works of architecture, sculpture, stained glass, wall painting, and liturgical furniture–much of it vastly understudied. These sessions seek to explore this extensive corpus of material from a range of temporal, regional, disciplinary, theoretical, and methodological perspectives. Especially welcome are contributions that reflect on how evolving research on the art and architecture of the parish church broadens, deepens, and transforms our understanding of medieval society.
For further information, please contact Zachary Stewart (zstewart@arch.tamu.edu). Proposals should be submitted online at https://wmich.edu/medievalcongress/call. The deadline to submit is 15 September 2021.
Medieval Art Research 