Job: Visiting Assistant Professor in Art History, Oklahoma State University

The Department of Art, Graphic Design and Art History at Oklahoma State University seeks a Visiting Assistant Professor in Art History for the 2021-2022 academic year as a sabbatical replacement. The preferred area of specialization is in the art of the pre-modern and/or early-modern Mediterranean world (classical, medieval, and/or early modern). An interest in global interactions between Europe and other regions is also welcome (such as the Atlantic world, Africa, the Middle East, or South Asia). This is a non-tenure track position, and the teaching load is 4/4. This position is contingent upon available funding.

Ph.D. preferred but A.B.D. candidates will be considered. The ideal candidate will have teaching experience beyond a teaching assistantship. Teaching assignment will consist of lower division surveys for majors and non-majors as well as courses in the area of specialty.

Application should include cover letter, CV, teaching philosophy statement, diversity statement, and a list of three references. To apply, please visit the OSU jobs page.

Call for Papers: From Fragment to Whole: Interpreting Medieval Manuscript Fragments (Deadline 31st May 2021)

From Fragment to Whole: Interpreting Medieval Manuscript Fragments, University of Bristol, September 16 (online)–17 (in person), 2021

This conference, hosted by the Centre for Medieval Studies, is devoted to the study of manuscript fragments, and what these fragments can tell us about lost books, medieval and post-medieval book history, and textual history. Research questions may include, but are not limited to:

  • What different does the manuscript fragment make to the textual tradition of the text it contains?
  • What can manuscript fragments tell us about the lost literature of the Middle Ages and about changing tastes?
  • How can we use the evidence from manuscript fragments to piece together the lost book from which it derives snd what do means do we have at our disposal to do so?
  • How should we catalogue and preserve manuscript fragments?
  • What do manuscript fragments tell us about the history of manuscript fragmentation and its agents (e.g. early printers, book collectors, auctioneers, book vandals)?

We invite papers that address these questions on a basis of a particular case (or particular cases) as well as papers on broader methodological issues involved in the explication and contextualization of manuscript fragments.

Please send a brief abstract to cms-publicity@bristol.ac.uk by 31st May 2021, indicating interest in an online or in person event. Further information about the conference will be made available at http://www.bristol.ac.uk/medieval.

Online Study Day: People, Place, and the City (University of Southampton Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Culture, 26th May 2021)

The Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Culture (University of Southampton) is delighted to announce that it will be hosting an online study day – People, Place and the City – on Wednesday 26 May 2021. The study day will combine three exciting events: an academic conference, a round table discussion and the Reuter Lecture 2021. You are warmly invited to each of these events. Please note that each event has a separate registration link. Interested attendees should register for their events of choice by 21st May 2021 at 12 pm GMT.

Below are the descriptions for each event and their corresponding link to register. The complete programme for the day can be found here.

CONFERENCE: 9.30-15.45 (Wednesday 26 May)

People, Place and the City: This interdisciplinary conference, which will include nine papers delivered by postgraduate students, early-career and more established scholars, is dedicated to the urban world and, more particularly, to the forces and dynamics that shaped urban spaces, cultures and identities in pre-modern societies (c. 500- c. 1700).

Register on Eventbrite

ROUND TABLE: 16:15-17:35 (Wednesday 26 May)

“Our majestic city walls stand strong over 600 years on”: Southampton’s Past in the Present: Inspired by Southampton’s 2025 UK City of Culture Bid, this Round Table will invite four panellists to address questions regarding the importance of Southampton’s cultural heritage, its development or promotion, and its role in forging the identity or identities of twentieth-century Southampton.

Our four panellists are:

·         Dr Cheryl Butler (former Head of Culture at Eastleigh Borough Council)

·         Matt Garner (BA MCIfA, Freelance Archaeologist)

·         Dr Maria Newbery (Curator of Maritime & Local History Collections at Southampton City Council’s museums)

·         Dr Andy Russel (Archaeology Unit Manager at Southampton City Council)

The session will be chaired by Dr Rémy Ambühl, Director of the CMRC.

Register on Eventbrite

REUTER LECTURE 2021: 18:00-19:30 (Wednesday 26 May)

‘Making places: heritage, renewal and site-specific medievalism’.: Professor Catherine Clarke, Chair in the History of People, Place and Community at the Institute of Historical Research will deliver this year’s Reuter lecture, which will draw on research into medieval towns to open up wide-reaching questions about place-making, uses of heritage, and urban renewal today. Touching on a range of projects, including work on medieval Swansea, the St Thomas Way heritage route, creative partnerships at Alderley Edge, Cheshire, and a new AHRC research scoping study, ‘Towns and the Cultural Economies of Recovery’, the lecture will explore what happens when we bring inter-disciplinary research into dialogue with place. What kinds of stories can research into the medieval past help us to tell about our historic environments in the present? How can innovative and creative methodologies enlarge our understanding of the public realm? And what could it mean to do ‘site-specific medievalism’?

The Reuter lecture will be chaired by Professor Nicky Marsh, Associate Dean for Research and Enterprise of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at the University of Southampton.

Register on Eventbrite

Job: Lecturer in Early Modern World History Education, Kings College London, deadline 18 May 2021

King’s College London is seeking a Lecturer in Early Modern World History Education for a twelve month term beginning 1st September 2021, at the university’s Strand campus. The deadline to apply is 18th May 2021. An application for the role can be found at jobs.ac.uk.

Below is the job description and key responsibilities as stated in the posting:

Job description

The Department of History seeks to appoint a Lecturer (Education) in Early Modern World History, tenable for 12 months full-time from 1 September 2021, to cover for Professor Francisco Bethencourt during a period of leave.

The post-holder will specialize in Early Modern History; preference will be given to applicants with expertise in the history of religion both in Europe and beyond. Your responsibilities will include teaching the module 7AAH2023 Divided by Faith? The Age of Religious Violence in Early Modern Europe. You will also teach on the modules 4AAH0001 Historical Skills, Sources and Approaches, 4AAH1004 Power, Culture and Belief in Europe 1500-1800 and either 6AAH4005 Nations or 6AAH4012 Authority, as well as making contributions to the MA in Early Modern History. You will also be expected to contribute to the administration and pastoral provision of the Department of History.

Applications are welcome from candidates with expertise in Early Modern History and the ability to teach the modules outlined above. Candidates should have submitted a PhD by the date of appointment.

We particularly welcome applications from black and minority ethnic candidates as they are under-represented in the Department of History. All applications from members of groups with protected characteristics that have been marginalized on any grounds enumerated under the Equality Act are welcomed.

This post will be offered on a fixed-term contract for 12 months

This is a full-time post – 100% full time equivalent

Key responsibilities

  • Deliver team-taught and specialized teaching at all levels of UG curriculum
  • Contribute to MA teaching and supervision
  • Contribute to administrative and pastoral provision in the Department of History
  • Conduct research on Early Modern History

The above list of responsibilities may not be exhaustive, and the post holder will be required to undertake such tasks and responsibilities as may reasonably be expected within the scope and grading of the post.

New Publication: ‘Beyond Words: New Research on Manuscripts in Boston Collections’, edited by Jeffrey F. Hamburger, Lisa Fagin Davis, Anne-Marie Eze, Nancy Netzer, and William P. Stoneman

Introduction

In the fall of 2016 an international scholarly conference accompanied the exhibition Beyond Words: Illuminated Manuscripts in Boston Collections. The speakers were chosen because of their expertise and because they were known to have research underway pertaining to important manuscripts in the exhibition. The aim of both exhibition and conference was to provide a broad overview of the history of patronage and book production over the course of the High and late Middle Ages, to the extent that the eclectic holdings of Boston-area institutions permitted. Most of the papers delivered at the conference have been collected as essays in this abundantly illustrated volume which, while still linked to the exhibition, now has an independent purpose.

Just as the essays cover a wide range of topics, all relating to the history of the book, but also, inter alia, to the history of law, liturgy, literature, and libraries as well as to devotion, theology, and art, so too the approaches adopted by the contributors are as varied as the materials they study, ranging from paleography, codicology, and provenance research to painstaking reconstructions of historical patterns of patronage and the interpretative strategies of authors and artists. What results is not simply a wealth of fascinating insights into individual illuminated books, their makers, and their readers, but also an indication of how much remains to be learned about the materials to which the exhibition served as no more than an introduction.

Table of Contents

List of Figures • vii
Contributors • xxvi
Abbreviations • xxx

Introduction • JEFFREY F. HAMBURGER • xxxi

Monastic Manuscripts
1 • Gilbert de la Porrée: The Man and His Manuscripts • PATRICIA STIRNEMANN • 1
2 • Writing Culture and Society over the longue durée: The Charters of Sawley Abbey, from Medieval Yorkshire to Present-Day Harvard, Houghton Library • BRIGITTE MIRIAM BEDOS-REZAK • 13
3 • Boston Public Library MS q Med. 86 in the Context of Manuscript Production in Delft • KATHRYN M. RUDY • 35

Courtly Culture and Patronage
4 • Jean Bourdichon’s Boston Hours and the Miniature-as-Object • NICHOLAS HERMAN • 59
5 • Rereading Boccaccio in Étienne Chevalier’s Les cents nouvelles (Houghton Library, MS Richardson 31) • ANNE D. HEDEMAN • 77
6 • Picturing and Collecting Virgil in Mid-Fifteenth Century France • CHRISTINE SEIDEL • 99
7 • Vicarious Entertainment for the Mature Aristocrat and Bibliophile Louis of Gruuthuse (Houghton Library, MSS Typ 129 and 130) • SCOT McKENDRICK • 115
8 • Court Patronage in Renaissance Italy: Hercules in Illuminated Manuscripts Given as Diplomatic Gifts • FEDERICA TONIOLO • 137

Princes, Patricians, Prelates, and Pontiffs
9 • Illumination in Rome and L’Aquila during the Schism and in Florence during the Council: Artists and Patrons of the Calderini Pontifical (Harvard, Houghton Library, MS Typ 1) • FRANCESCA MANZARI • 153
10 • Niccolò da Ferrara’s Polistorio (Houghton Library, MS Typ 329): New Proposals on Don Simone Camaldolese and Mantuan Artistic Culture on the Eve of the Renaissance • ADA LABRIOLA • 177
11 • Cristoforo Cortese and the Donato Master: Venetian Liturgical Manuscripts in American Collections • LILIAN ARMSTRONG • 195
12 • Illuminating Law and Order in Venice • HELENA K. SZÉPE • 213

Illuminating History
13 • Kings as Kin: Picturing the English Monarchy in Houghton Library, MS Typ 11 • ALIXE BOVEY • 237
14 • The Shapes of History: Houghton Library, MS Richardson 35 and Chronicles of England in Codex and Roll • SONJA DRIMMER • 253
15 • Hannibal’s Journey: Ancient History, Material Philology, Medieval Illumination • JESSICA BERENBEIM • 269

Manuscripts in the Modern Era
16 • Medieval Manuscripts from the Collection of Captain Jack Ball • PETER KIDD • 283

Notes • 301
Index of Manuscripts • 351
General Index • 355

For information on how to order, please visit the Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies’ website.

Online Lecture: The Drawing Compass as a Tool of Creation in Premodern Europe, The Warburg Institute, 10th-11th June 2021, 5:30-7pm (BST)

 ‘Circular Thinking’ is an online lecture, short papers and panel discussion devoted to the drawing compass, an essential tool of premodern makers that came to represent divine Creation. Although now associated primarily with architecture, the compass was a transmedial instrument, integral to a range of artisanal operations, yet evidence of its use is relatively thin. Called circinus in Latin for the action of ‘going round’, circles and arcs were rarely its final output, but intermediary guides often lost in the making process or intentionally erased. Compass work can thus be classed as ‘invisible labour’— work that contributes to the making of an object, but remains difficult to detect in its finished form. It is also dynamic labour that defies easy description in traditional print media, a problem compounded by a general lack of familiarity with the tool today. Through discussion and the close study of historical evidence, ‘Circular Thinking’ seeks to impart a more precise understanding of the compass’s varied uses—in the measurement, scaling, copying, the generation of diverse shapes in two and three dimensions—and, with this, its symbolic force. 

This event is hosted by the Warburg Institute and made possible by generous funding by the Leverhulme Trust. Programme details below. 

To book go to: https://warburg.sas.ac.uk/events/event/24358

‘CIRCULAR THINKING’ LECTURE (online)
Thursday, 10 June 5:30–7:00pm BST

Professor Robert Bork, University of Iowa
Circles Below the Surface: The Role of the Compass in Premodern Creativity

Circular forms appear overtly in many famous works of art and architecture, from the age of Stonehenge onward, but these visible circles are hardly the only ones that mattered to premodern artists, craftsmen and designers. The drawing compass was one of their most valuable and frequently employed tools since its use in combination with the straightedge permitted the establishment of precise geometrical order without any need for carefully calibrated rulers or measuring rods. The layout and proportions of many premodern artefacts—and even many modern ones—thus become comprehensible only when the role of the compass in the creative process is taken into account. This talk demonstrates this principle using diverse examples ranging in date from the early Middle Ages to the twentieth century, including several in London collections: the Lindisfarne Gospels, a design drawing for the great Gothic tower of Ulm Minster and a painting by the Renaissance artist Piero di Cosimo.

‘CIRCULAR THINKING’ SHORT PAPERS & PANEL DISCUSSION (online)
Friday, 11 June, 5:30–7:00pm BST

Panelists will each present a case study of compass use in premodern Europe. These short presentations will be followed by discussion and general Q&A.

Speakers
Dr. Sarah Griffin, Winchester College
Constructing the Calendars in the Diagrams of Opicinus de Canistris (1296-c. 1352)

Professor Jean-Marie Guillouët, University of Burgundy, Dijon 
Testimony of Construction Practices in Some Late Medieval Compass Traceries

Dr. Stephen Johnston, History of Science Museum, University of Oxford
Drawing and the Design Process in Mathew Baker’s Fragments of Ancient English Shipwrightry

Professor Robert Bork will join the group for discussion and Q&A

Moderator
Dr. Megan C. McNamee, University of Edinburgh

New Journal Issue: Religion and the Arts, Volume 25-1-2 (2021)

Launched by Boston College in late 1996, Religion and the Arts has rapidly developed into a major international journal in this important interdisciplinary field. Religion and the Arts promotes the development of discourses for exploring the religious dimensions of the verbal, visual and performing arts. The journal has attracted international acclaim for its approach and its excellent quality and range of interest. 

Religion and the Arts publishes: 
● interpretations that develop new approaches to the religious and spiritual aspects of works of art 
● discussions on the role of religion in cultural studies 
● critical overviews of the state of scholarship in particular areas 
● reviews, interviews, comment, debate, and surveys of recent developments 

For more information on Boston College and the journal Religion and the Arts, please click here. 

Conference: (In)sights regarding Medieval Art. A tribute to Herbert L. Kessler, Aguilar de Campoo (Spain) and Online, October 21st – 23rd 2021

For the last eleven years, we have organised the international colloquium Ars Mediaevalis in Aguilar de Campoo (Palencia, Castile, Spain), the headquarters of the Fundación Santa María la Real. Each edition has proposed a cross-cutting argument that, in accordance with current methodological approaches, has allowed us to analyse and understand relevant aspects of Medieval Art. The results of these colloquia are published year after year – once the mandatory peer-reviews are received- in the journal Codex Aqvilarensis. Revista de Arte Medieval, whose contents are open-access in full. 

In organising the successive editions of Ars Mediaevalis, as well as in preparing the corresponding issue of Codex Aqvilarensis, we have been privileged to have the expertise and friendship of Herbert L. Kessler, who is acknowledged as one of the most eminent and inspiring scholars in the Historiography of Medieval Art in recent decades. This year 2021 Professor Kessler will be 80 years old. On this occasion, we would like to celebrate his anniversary with a tribute in the form of a special edition of the Ars Mediaevalis colloquium, with the participation of some relevant international scholars who have forged a long and fertile relationship with Professor Kessler. The holding of this academic meeting by Spanish academic institutions will be a unique opportunity, with an unquestionable relevance in the landscape of international medievalism.

For more information, please click here.

This conference will take place in person and online. The conference will be held at Aguilar de Campoo (Spain).

Online Lecture: Representing Dante’s Steps in Illuminated Manuscripts of the Divine Comedy, Lucy Donkin, Murray Seminar at Birkbeck, 30th June 4.45pm for 5pm (BST)

In the Divine Comedy, at the entrance to Purgatory, Dante encounters three steps made from stone of different colours and textures. These have attracted attention since the earliest commentaries on the poem, and are often seen as alluding to interior states, especially associated with penance. This paper understands the steps and their interpretation to reflect the wider expressive potential of corporeal contact with the surface of the ground. Exploring how they were depicted in illuminated manuscripts, it draws comparisons with ecclesiastical pavement decoration and the treatment of the ground in rites of passage, as well as with the ground trodden by Christ, saints, and personifications of the virtues, as depicted in Italian art of the period. It also relates the steps to other passages in the Divine Comedy that reference church interiors and to the terrain walked by Dante elsewhere in the poem.

Lucy Donkin is a Senior Lecturer in History and History of Art at the University of Bristol. Her research explores medieval perceptions of place, especially the definition, decoration and depiction of holy ground, and the symbolic movement of soil. Her book Standing on Holy Ground in the Middle Ages will be published by Cornell University Press later this year.

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/representing-dantes-steps-in-illuminated-manuscripts-of-the-divine-comedy-tickets-151612457943?ref=eios

Online Symposium: Medieval Travel – Harlaxton Medieval Symposium 2021

Convenors: CAROLINE BARRON (c.barron@rhul.ac.uk) and MARTHA CARLIN (carlin@uwm.edu)

Register on Eventbrite here.

For a timetable of sessions, speakers, and papers, click here. 

Registration fee: £15 (students £10) for the five full days.

For registrants with a password from Eventbrite: click here for full conference information and materials.

For registrants with a password (which can be found in your confirmation email from Eventbrite), click here for full conference information and materials:  Medieval Travel registrants’ area

Provisional timetable:

Monday, 26 July:

2.30 – 4.00 PM            Session 1A      Travel Writing 

Welcome:  Martha Carlin

Martha Driver:  Mandeville in the Twenty-First Century

Nicholas Orme: William Worcester: Traveller and Collector

5.00 – 6.30 PM            Session 1B       Images and Travel

Lynda Dennison: Travelling Artists and Travelling Books         

Nicholas Rogers: Visual Souvenirs of the Emperor Sigismund’s Visit to England in 1416

8.00 – 9.30 PM            Session 1C       Pamela Tudor-Craig Memorial Lecture

Julia Boffey: Richard Arnold’s Book

Tuesday, 27 July:

2.30 – 4.00 PM            Session 2A      Maps

Alfred Hiatt: Maps and Travel

David Harrison: A Road Map of Medieval England

5.00 – 6.30 PM            Session 2B       Sources for Travel (panel)

Robert Swanson: Visitation and Church Court Records

Joel Rosenthal: Proofs of Age

Joanna Mattingly: Churchwardens’ Accounts

David Harrap: Travel Coffers 

Anthony Gross: Three Travel Objects

8.00 – 9.30 PM            Session 2C       Student posters I

Wednesday, 28 July:

2.30 – 4.00 PM            Session 3A      Inns

Martha Carlin: Inns, Horses, and Stabling

Laura Wright: Inn Clusters in London in the Fifteenth Century

5.00 – 6.30 PM            Session 3B       Entertainment and Travel

Simon Polson: Travelling Minstrels 

Alexandra Johnston: Travelling Entertainers and Their Patrons: York, 1446-9

8.00 – 9.30 PM            Session 3C       Student posters II

Thursday, 29 July:

2.30 – 4.00 PM            Session 4A      Travel and the Body

Carole Rawcliffe: ‘Do not stop at Famagusta’: Travel and Health in the Later Middle Ages

Kelcey Wilson-Lee: Travel and Childbirth

5.00 – 6.30 PM            Session 4B       Women Travellers

Anthony Bale: Margery Kempe and the Female Traveller in the Later Middle Ages

Bart Lambert and Josh Ravenhill: Travelled Women in the Capital: Opportunities for Immigrant Women in London during the Later Middle Ages

8.00 – 9.30 PM            Session 4C       Poster Judging & Book Launch            

Judging of student posters 

Launch of Harlaxton Medieval Symposia volume(s) 

Friday, 30 July:

2:30 – 4:00 PM            Session 5A      Travel Wonders

Alan Thacker: Travels of St Wulfram

Shayne Legassie: Botanical Wonder and Medieval Travel

5:00 – 6:30 PM            Session 5B       Travel and the Exotic

Melanie Taylor: In Search of the Exotic: Visual Evidence of Knowledge and Trade in Simians, Birds, and Wingless Dragons

Kate Franklin: From Marvels to Motels: Imagined and Infrastructural Worlds of the Silk Road Travel

Final words: Caroline Barron