Call for Papers: MARGIN Graduate Student Symposium-Apocalypse and Revelation, Deadline: 18th April 2021

MARGIN are thrilled to announce their upcoming Graduate Student Symposium on this year’s theme, Apocalypse and Revelation on May 19/20!


They are seeking submissions that touch on this theme in the Medieval and Early Modern periods, as well as their reception in later periods. Given the contemporary interest in the apocalyptic — whether political, spiritual, or medical — they are looking for papers that speak to feeling, dread, or even longing for apocalypse and/or its power to reveal in the Medieval and Early Modern periods. From the Greek ἀποκάλυψις, an apocalypse is at root a “revelation,” and this year, they hope to explore how the relationship between the contemporary vision of apocalypse and revelation, divine or otherwise, intersect, coexist, and complicate one another. Speakers are invited to address this topic from a diversity of perspectives and methodologies.

Graduate students at all levels and in any discipline are encouraged to submit abstracts for conference papers of 15 minutes. Please submit an abstract of no more than 125 words along with a short bio to nyumargin@gmail.com no later than April 18. Graduate students doing work on non-Western material are highly encouraged to submit. All panels will be held virtually over Zoom.

Submissions may focus on topics including, but not limited to:

  • Christian, religious eschatologies
  • Upheaval, destruction & disaster
  • Plague and its consequences
  • Medieval and Early Modern iconography
  • Prophetic or historicist visions
  • Epistolary and/or prophetic modes of literature
  • Allegories of spiritual paths
  • Struggle between Christians and non-Christians
  • Pseudonymity and symbolic imagery
  • Christian and/or Jewish cosmologies
  • Unveilings, revolutions
  • The year 1000
  • Apocalypticism as driving social and political change

Job: Junior Professorship for Christian Archeology and Byzantine Art History, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, 9 May 2021

Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz invites applications for a Junior Professorship for Christian Archeology and Byzantine Art History. The position will be a joint appointment between the Institute for Art History and Musicology in the Department of History and Cultural Studies and the Römisch-Germanischen Zentralmuseums (RGZM).

Applicants whose research focuses on the material culture of the Eastern Mediterranean are welcome to apply. Knowledge of Greek is required. Competencies in iconography, art history, and historical cultural studies are also desirable. The willingness and ability to teach in German and English is required.

You can find the job advert here.

New Publication: Art and Material Culture in the Byzantine and Islamic Worlds – Studies in Honour of Erica Cruikshank Dodd , edited by Evanthia Baboula and Lesley Jessop

Dedicated to Erica Cruikshank Dodd, Art and Material Culture in the Byzantine and Islamic Worlds offers new perspectives on the Christian and Muslim communities of the east Mediterranean from medieval to contemporary times. The contributors examine how people from diverse religious backgrounds adapted to their changing political landscapes and show that artistic patronage, consumption, and practices are interwoven with constructed narratives. The essays consider material and textual evidence for painted media, architecture, and the creative process in Byzantium, Crusader-era polities, the Ottoman empire, and the modern Middle East, thus demonstrating the importance of the past in understanding the present. 

Contributors: Evanthia Baboula, Lesley Jessop, Anthony Cutler, Jaroslav Folda, John Osborne, Glenn Peers, Annemarie Weyl Carr, Mat Immerzeel, Bas Snelders, Angela Andersen, May Farhat, Marcus Milwright, Rico Franses.

Table of Contents:

Erica Cruikshank Dodd Passion, Serendipity, Curiosity, and the Making of an Art Historian
  Lesley Jessop

Bibliography of Erica Cruikshank Dodd
Note on Transliteration and Dates
List of Illustrations
Contributors

Introduction: Diversity and Identity in the Medieval Mediterranean and Beyond
  Evanthia Baboula and Lesley Jessop

1 The Anaphoric Icon Observations on Some Byzantine Metapictures
  Anthony Cutler

2 Two Icons of the Virgin and Child Hodegetria from St. Catherine’s Monastery on Mount Sinai Byzantine or Crusader?
  Jaroslav Folda

3 The Thirteenth-Century Expansion of the Narthex of San Marco, Venice A Space for Dead Doges?
  John Osborne

4 The Refectory of the Monastery of St. Mary in the Valley of Jehoshaphat, Jerusalem Crusader Painting at Crossroads
  Glenn Peers

5 Orthodox Monasteries under Lusignan Rule Relations with Others, Relations with Their Own
  Annemarie Weyl Carr

6 Church Embellishment in Medieval Egypt, Syria, and Cyprus Patronage and Identity
  Mat Immerzeel and Bas Snelders

7 The Tale of the Shared Church in Diyarbakir Narrative Traditions of the Co-Use of Places of Prayer by Muslims and Christians
  Angela Andersen

8 Beirut’s Great ʿUmari Mosque History, Memory and Post-War Reconstruction
  May Farhat

9 The Traditional Crafts of the Middle East and Central Asia in the Writings of European and North American Travellers
  Marcus Milwright

10 To Not Know God Geometrical Abstraction and Visual Theology in Islamic Art
  Rico Franses

Conference: The Virgin as Auctoritas: The Authority of the Virgin Mary and Female Moral-Doctrinal Authority in the Middle Ages, 15th April 2021, 9:30am

ORGANIZED BY Francesca Dell’Acqua, Università degli studi di Salerno

This session aims at exploring a fundamental issue: female authority through the lens of visual/material culture. It involves prominently the Virgin Mary – as well as figures of female authority in the medieval world – because in the late decades of the 20th century, feminist thinkers pointed at the ‘negative model’ offered by the Virgin Mary since for centuries she had been branded by the Catholic Church as a role model for modesty, submission and virginity. However, between late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, the Virgin Mary emerged as Queen of Heaven through preaching and liturgical texts, visual arts and public assemblies – that is, the ‘mass media’ of that time. Mary was pictured as a very strong, authoritative figure, rather than weak and compliant.

Already during late Antiquity, Mary was commonly perceived as the mighty protector and spiritual stronghold of capital cities in the Mediterranean. Between the 8th and the 11th centuries, the role of royal women came to the fore, especially in Byzantium and in Ottonian Germany. Very striking is also the case of a number of major Italian city-states between the 12th and the 15th centuries where the Virgin Mary came to be identified with political and economic supremacy.

In sum, these sessions can help understand what bearing the figure of the humble Virgin Mary eventually had on female leadership, and also how female leadership evolved or not.

MORNING PROGRAMME 

Chair: Francesca Dell’Acqua

09.30 – 09.45 GMT
Welcome
 
10.00 – 11.15 GMT
Introduction and Papers 1 and 2
Photios and the Image of the Mother of God in Hagia Sophia, Constantinople  Mary B. Cunningham (University of Nottingham)

The Theotokos and the Widow of Zarepta: women’s authority as widows and prophets  Barbara Crostini (University College Stockholm)
 
11.15 – 11.45 GMT
Refreshment Break

11.45 – 12.50 GMT
Papers 3 and 4
Elevation of Mary’s Authority in Late Antiquity: Her Depiction on the Jewelled Throne and the Footstool  Ernesto Mainoldi (FiTMU – Università degli Studi di Salerno) and Natalia Teteriatnikov (Independent Scholar)

The Coronation of the Virgin as the Queen of City-States  Kayoko Ichikawa (Japan Society for the Promotion of Science / University of Fribourg)

AFTERNOON PROGRAMME 

Chair: Mary B. Cunningham
 
14.30 – 15.35 GMT
Papers 5 and 6
Icons of Authority: new light on the competition between images and relics in Trecento Rome; Name of speaker(s): Claudia Bolgia  (Università di Udine)

“All glory is in the King’s Daughter”: depictions of the Virgin as Empress in the late Byzantine world; Name of speaker(s): Andrei Dumitrescu (National University of Arts, Bucharest)
 
15.40 – 16.10 GMT
Refreshment Break
 
16.10 – 17.25 GMT
Papers 7 and 8 and closing comments
Sainte Foy and the Medieval Imaginary of Female Sacred Power  Bissera V. Pentcheva (Stanford University)

Female Authority, Ecclesiology, and Micro-Architecture in Scandinavian Medieval Art  Kristin B. Aavitsland (MF Centre for the Advanced Study of Religion (MF CASR), MF Norwegian School of Theology, Religion and Society, Oslo, Norway)

Speakers & Abstracts

Photios and the Image of the Mother of God in Hagia Sophia, Constantinople

Mary B Cunningham (University of Nottingham)

The sermon on the inauguration of the mosaic image of the Virgin Mary in the apse of Hagia Sophia, which Photios delivered from the ambo on 29 March 867, portrays its subject as a powerful and influential figure. As James and Webb have argued, Photios believes that the mosaic image reveals the nature, indeed the essence, of the Virgin. He describes her as a loving mother, who ‘fondly turns her eyes on her begotten Child in the affection of her heart’, but also as ‘detached and imperturbable’ in her contemplation of her divine offspring. This is thus a strong and silent kind of power: Mary, according to Photios, enables Christians to approach and venerate their divine Creator. She also symbolises ‘the guarantee of incarnation and salvation’. Although Photios refrains from describing the Virgin herself as ‘Wisdom’ (an epithet that was assigned to Christ, according to early Christian and Byzantine tradition), she is closely associated with this, and all other, aspects of divinity as a result of her birth-giving and nurturing of the Son and Word of God. The 9th-century preacher also juxtaposes the Virgin Mary with the Church in one section of his homily, describing the latter as the Bride of Christ (cf. Song 4–6). The association of such imagery with the majestic pose of the Virgin in the apse of Hagia Sophia is implicit but supported by a liturgical tradition of typology and metaphor that was frequently applied to the Theotokos. Mary’s power thus consists in her role as mediator between heaven and earth – a role that could once again be depicted in an image that helped to draw Christians closer to their God.

The Theotokos and the Widow of Zarepta: The authority of women as widows and prophets

Barbara Crostini (University College Stockholm)

In his 1939 study of the frescoes (Les Peintures de la synagogue de Doura-Europos, 245-256 après J.-C., Rome : Pontificio Istituto Biblico), Robert Du Mesnil du Buisson remarked in passing that the sequence of the miracle of the widow of Zarepta on the West wall of the synagogue at Dura presents this woman in a stance that was later replicated in images of the Virgin and child. The posture of the woman, standing with the baby sitting on the left arm, her hips adjusted sideways to balance the weight, and the right arm open to the side, is uncannily similar to later representations of the Virgin. Starting from this visual suggestion, and given the programmatic importance of these paintings for the development of Byzantine art, I examine the prophetic value of the widow’s testimony. Within the synagogue’s pictorial programme, she can be shown to proclaim the coming of the true Messiah, thus offering a template for understanding the Virgin’s role as ‘showing the way’ to Christ. Although the Virgin is not normally thought of as a widow, her husbandless stance makes her fit into this category where, according to early Christian practice, women enjoyed a particularly high regard and were given special privileges in the community. Combining this marital status with the prophetic license also accorded to women in special circumstances, the Virgin can stand as a fully approved authority in witnessing Christ to the world.

Elevation of Mary’s Authority in Late Antiquity: Her depiction on the jewelled throne and the footstool

Ernesto Mainoldi (FiTMU – Università degli Studi di Salerno) and Natalia Teteriatnikov (Independent Scholar)

Before the 6th century, wall paintings and artefacts in Byzantium and in the West depicted Mary with Christ Child seated on a plain chair or a backless stool. Starting from the first half of the 6th century, however, her representations with the Child changed. From this time onward, she was presented in frescoes, mosaics and artefacts seated on a jewelled throne or standing alone on a jewelled footstool as seen in the apse decorations of the Church of Panagia Kanakariá, Lythrankomi (520–30) or of the Panagia Angeloktistos, Kiti (second half of the 6th century), both in Cyprus. This change in iconography has not, however, been sufficiently investigated. This paper examines visual evidence as well as exegetical and homiletic literature which can explain the specifics of her depiction on a chair or on a footstool. This alone, however, cannot explain why the jewelled throne and footstool replaced the plain ones. The evaluation of iconography and social status of imperial thrones as well as the rising cult of the Virgin and her relics in Constantinople and the theology associated with it in the 5th and 6th centuries will contribute to further understanding the need to visually and socially elevate Mary’s image, as a legitimate authority in religious and social life.

The Coronation of the Virgin as the Queen of City-States

Kayoko Ichikawa (Japan Society for the Promotion of Science / University of Fribourg)

This paper will explore how the iconography and the political symbolism of the Coronation of the Virgin as the ultimate civic guarantor emerged, developed and circulated in northern Europe and the Mediterranean by tracing the origin of the relevant ideas in the early Christian period and their continuous evolution in the medieval period. Visual examples, including a few from the eastern side of the Mediterranean, will demonstrate the dynamics of the religious and political interactions between popes, emperors, kings, religious communities and civic authorities in the Mediterranean world extending to the north of the Alps. They appeared in a wide geographical area favoured by various communities who supported the ideal of a reform movement designating Mary as their leader. It will be argued that the association of the imagery of the Coronation of the Virgin with the autonomy of cities under her direct rulership probably emerged in northern Europe in the early 13th century, and the efficacy of this visual rhetoric was introduced to Italy by intellectuals who travelled north. Most notably in Siena after the miraculous intercession of the Virgin in the Battle of Montaperti in 1260, she was actually called the ruler (gubernatrix) in civic documents and praised as the most powerful queen with great lordship by the confraternity of the laudesi in their hymns (laude) sung before her image. It will be emphasised that the Dominicans played an important role in the dissemination of this Marian imagery and the notion of her authority in the context of ecumenical leadership.

Icons of Authority: New light on the competition between images and relics in Trecento Rome

Claudia Bolgia (Università di Udine)

Contrary to the idea of 20th-century feminist thinkers that the Catholic Church has traditionally used the Virgin Mary as a role model for modesty, submission and virginity, this paper explores how different images of the Virgin Mary were deployed to embody competing authorities in Trecento Rome, certainly including Church authority (but not limited to it). Whilst scholars have generally noted the alternating fortunes of a number of Marian images in Trecento Rome, none have so far fully uncovered the underlying motivations nor the competing claims for primacy with bust-reliquaries of traditional male saints. The discovery of hitherto unknown documentary evidence combined with a fresh analysis of different icons following recent cleaning campaigns will serve to identify these motivations and claims, whilst addressing a number of corollaries, namely: why, amongst the many icons of Rome, did certain of them rise to great popularity, whilst others almost suddenly disappeared? What spiritual and/or political forces lay behind such alternating fortunes? When, by whom and through which artistic and visual channel was the authority of the images promoted? How did the claim of attribution to St Luke fit into this revised picture?

Whilst confirming that images of the Virgin Mary were indeed a powerful expression of auctoritas in the Middle Ages, this paper demonstrates how the different powers fighting over the leadership of the Urbs had the need for different types of Marian images, each with their own specific histories (be these real or invented), to best embody their political strategies and idea of authority.

‘All Glory is in the King’s Daughter’: Depictions of the Virgin as Empress in the late Byzantine world

Andrei Dumitrescu (National University of Arts, Bucharest)

This paper examines the depictions of the Mother of God as Queen in the late Byzantine visual production, aiming to offer some new insights on the development of their iconographic articulation and theological content. Frequently placed alongside the figures Christ as ‘Emperor of emperors’ and King David, in a typological exegesis of Psalm 44/45, the earliest monumental versions of the Marian motif were encountered in the mid-14th-century Macedonian churches. Previous studies tend to interpret the depiction of the Theotokos with imperial insignia as an undeniable innovation, attributing its emergence in late Byzantine painting to a Western influence or to the agency of certain pre-eminent figures of the 14th-century Balkans. I intend to re-evaluate these conclusions in order to integrate the representations of the Virgin as Empress in a broader tradition of illustrating Psalm 44/45, taking into consideration some unexplored connections between wall paintings and manuscripts.

Sainte Foy and the Medieval Imaginary of Female Sacred Power

Bissera V. Pentcheva (Stanford University)

The small Carolingian foundation of the early 9th century at Conques took almost two centuries to transform into a centre of power, closely linked with the Gregorian reform movement and Reconquista of the Iberian peninsula at the turn of the 11th and early 12th centuries. This paper explores the liturgical rite, more specifically the music, poetry and prayers of Sainte Foy and how they codify the authority of the saint as stemming from her virginity, martyrdom and fidelitas to Christ. She is portrayed as second only to the Virgin Mary in the countless miracles she performs and in the efficacy of her prayer. The imagery expounded in the music and poetry will be put in conversation with the depictions of the saint in the sculpture, the miniatures and the treasury arts at Conques. At the core of this analysis will be the distinction between Mary’s power as the Mother of God versus Sainte Foy’s as the fidelis/druda/lover of Christ.

Female Authority, Ecclesiology and Micro-Architecture in Scandinavian Medieval Art

Kristin B. Aavitsland (MF Centre for the Advanced Study of Religion (MF CASR), MF Norwegian School of Theology, Religion and Society, Oslo, Norway)

In order to assess the spiritual – and political – authority of the Virgin Mary in medieval Scandinavia, this paper offers a close reading of one of the most spectacular monuments of Scandinavian medieval art, the so-called golden altar from Lisbjerg Church in Denmark. This sumptuous piece of ecclesiastical art, now a highlight of the National Museum in Copenhagen, is dated to the early 12th century and exhibits a carefully composed complex of gilt images, Latin verse inscriptions, variegated ornaments and detailed micro-architecture. The Lisbjerg altar frontal has as its centre the regal figure of the Virgin Mary, enthroned with her Child as sedes sapitentiae, the throne of wisdom, with female saints and virtue personifications surrounding her as a court of ladies-in-waiting. The paper aims to show how the altar’s iconography, inscriptions and architectural commonplaces together produce a ceremonial space in which the authority of the Virgin is solemnly represented. The connection between the altar’s micro-architecture and 12th-century Mariology is especially investigated. Furthermore, the paper intends to demonstrate how the altar’s dense fabric of visualised theological and liturgical meaning centres on the Virgin as Mother of God and prototype of the Church. This serves as a pretext for discussing the ideological and political implications of these visualised ideas in 12th century Denmark – a period of ecclesiastical consolidation in the Scandinavian kingdoms, realms that embraced Christianity at a later stage than most of Europe.

CFP: Materiality in the Medieval and Early Modern Worlds – Worlds Within Things: Ways of Knowing and Narrating (Special Issue of The Medieval History Journal), Deadline: 15th April 2021

Special Issue of The Medieval History Journal: Materiality in the Medieval and Early Modern Worlds – Worlds Within Things: Ways of Knowing and Narrating

Over the past twenty years a renewed interest in material culture, materialism, and materiality has shaped the practice of history in new ways moving the  discipline “beyond  words” to consider the worlds within things. Attention to the dynamics of materials and production have expanded ways of knowing the past and begun to reshape the kinds of narratives that historians craft. Objects and things can be said to constitute an additional archival repertoire, but they also require their own ways of reading, methods of analysis, and theoretical orientations, especially as we integrate materiality into the robust ways of writing history that have traditionally relied upon the written record. Most historians agree, it is not possible to offer a materialist reading in the absence of written sources. Yet, how do the two work together?  

This special issue is dedicated to exploring the following related questions: What does materiality’s methodology entail? What modes of investigation and  narration are deployed in a material analysis? How does a material focus shape and change the historian’s possibilities for narrative and argument? How does materiality give new voice and visibility to marginal social groups, make visible the movements of peoples and things long overlooked or simply not present in narrative texts or documentary sources? In what ways has materiality shaped an understanding of processes of memory and remembrance, emotional   encoding, haptic encounters, and mental narratives that are difficult to express through words? How does the study of objects and things in the medieval and the early modern epochs open new ways of writing about and conceptualizing a broader and more connected world? The essays gathered in this special issue will contribute to an understanding of materiality that seeks to facilitate a more convergent understanding of our medieval and early modern pasts. 

Possible themes include:

  • material memories and ways of knowing the past
  • material systems of values and use
  • material biographies and traditional chronologies
  • materiality, climate and periodization
  • haptic encounters and evocation
  • emotional frameworks of things
  • ritual uses of objects and things, objects as gifts
  • material archives and assemblages
  • ideological and knowledge systems
  • communications and networks of things
  • subjects, objects, and the ethics of materiality
  • global and trans-cultural connections

Abstracts written in English should be submitted by 15 April 2021; full papers should be submitted by 1 October 2021.

CFP: ICMA Sponsored Session Proposals (CAA Annual Conference, 16th-19th February 2022, Chicago), Deadline 15th April 2021

Chicago, 16-19 February 2022
Call for ICMA Sponsored Session Proposals
due 15 April 2021

The International Center of Medieval Art (ICMA) seeks proposals for sessions to be held under the organization’s sponsorship in 2020 at the annual meeting of the College Art Association. Session organizers and speakers must be ICMA members.  
 
Proposals must include the following in one single Doc or PDF with the organizer’s name in the title: 

  • Session abstract
  • CV of the organizer(s)
  • Session organizers may also include a list of potential speakers


Please upload all session proposals as a single DOC or PDF by 15 April 2021 here.

The organizer(s) will have until 30 April 2021 to upload their approved proposals on the CAA website here.

For inquiries, contact the Chair of the ICMA Programs and Lectures Committee: Bryan C. Keene, Riverside City College, USA, bryan.keene@rcc.edu

Post-Doctoral Fellowship: Demarginalizing Medieval Africa: Images, Texts, and Identity in Early Solomonic Ethiopia (1270-1527), University of Hamburg, Deadline: April 15th 2021

Responsibilities

Duties include academic services in the project named above. Research associates may also pursue independent research and further academic qualifications.

Specific Duties

The applicant shall conduct research on the manuscript and literary culture of Ethiopia in the frame of the project “Demarginalizing medieval Africa: Images, texts, and identity in early Solomonic Ethiopia (1270-1527)”. The project intends to shed new light on the art, history, and culture of the Ethiopian Empire during a period going from the rise of a new dynasty which claimed to descend from the biblical King Solomon in 1270 to its near collapse in 1527, through a series of collaborations with libraries and institutions across the world, and to set up a platform for exchange between scholars working on the history of manuscript illumination – with a particular focus on the Oriental Orthodox traditions of the Armenian, Coptic, and the Syriac worlds – and on the Christian arts of Ethiopia and Eritrea. Visit https://www.aai.uni-hamburg.de/en/ethiostudies/research/demargin.html for more details on the project.

Requirements

A university degree in a relevant field. PhD degree is an advantage; applicants close to completion of their PhD are also welcome to apply. Essentials skills are:

  • Good working knowledge of English and German
  • An excellent knowledge of Classical Ethiopic
  • Exceptional organisational skills.

Desirable skills are:

  • Knowledge of other Semitic Languages (esp. Arabic)
  • Knowledge of further European languages (Italian, French)
  • A record of, or demonstrable potential for, excellent scholarship
  • A significant grasp of the history of the manuscript culture of Ethiopia and Eritrea
  • Familiarity with TEI XML or a willingness to quickly learn the workflow to encode in XML
  • Good teamworking skills and
  • The ability to work effectively with institutions and communities

For further information, click here.

PhD Funding: MPhil or PhD in Medieval and Early Modern Studies at Institute for Religion and Critical Inquiry and PhD Scholarships for Religious Mobilities, Australian Catholic University, Melbourne, Deadline: 26th April 2021

The Medieval and Early Modern Studies (MEMS) Program of the Institute for Religion and Critical Inquiry at ACU in Melbourne invites applications for six competitive PhD scholarships in connection with its new research project ‘Religious Mobilities: Medieval and Early Modern Europe and the World.’ A major new international research collaboration with partners in Leuven, London, Princeton, Stanford, and Toronto, ‘Religious Mobilities’ seeks to investigate the multiple and intersecting roles that religion has played in relation to mobility in this critical period for the formation of a globalised world. 

ACU’s MEMS program is a dynamic, supportive, internationally engaged research community based at ACU’s Melbourne Campus, with activities also on ACU’s Rome Campus. MPhil and PhD students in ACU’s MEMS program are fully immersed in the intellectual life of the program, work closely with supervisors, draw extensively on the talents of the MEMS team, participate in the program’s seminars, workshops, and special lectures, contribute to our international collaborations, and pursue research opportunities with our international partners and in relevant archives. 

Two scholarships will be offered in each of the project’s three strands:

  1. Pathways of Power focuses on organistions and structures, and on their capacity to cultivate, manage, and restrict mobility.
  2. Mobile Matter focuses on materials and objects of religion as they moved across the medieval and early modern world.
  3. Crossroads of Communication focuses on the nature of pre-modern communication in religious contexts. 

Successful applicants to these PhD scholarships will possess a prior academic record that demonstrates foundational knowledge of the sources, methods, and languages relevant to the geography and chronology of the proposed project and the aptitude to contribute to the intellectual life of our team. Applicants are asked to propose a well-defined research project that engages the theme of mobility and the links or entanglements between Europe and the wider world, within one of three project strands.

Applicants must meet the eligibility requirements of ACU’s PhD program.

For further information relating to the PhD funding on offer, please click here.

New Publication: Trans and Genderqueer Subjects in Medieval Hagiography, edited by Alicia Spencer-Hall and Blake Gutt

This edited volume presents an interdisciplinary examination of trans and genderqueer subjects in medieval hagiography. Scholarship has productively combined analysis of medieval literary texts with modern queer theory yet, too often, questions of gender are explored almost exclusively through a prism of sexuality, rather than gender identity. This volume moves beyond such limitations, foregrounding the richness of hagiography as a genre integrally resistant to limiting binaristic categories, including rigid gender binaries. The collection showcases scholarship by emerging trans and genderqueer authors, as well as the work of established researchers. Working at the vanguard of historical trans studies, these scholars demonstrate the vital and vitally political nature of their work as medievalists. Trans and Genderqueer Subjects in Medieval Hagiography enables the recreation of a lineage linking modern trans and genderqueer individuals to their medieval ancestors, providing models of queer identity where much scholarship has insisted there were none, and re-establishing the place of non-normative gender in history. For an overview of the collection, please see the Table of Contents below.

The volume also includes a detailed ‘Trans and Genderqueer Studies Terminology, Language, and Usage Guide’, produced by trans and genderqueer medievalists and their allies, designed to assist (medievalist) scholars who are interested in incorporating trans and genderqueer readings into their own work.

The volume ‘Introduction’ and ‘Usage Guide’ are available to download for free from the https://www.aup.nl/en/book/9789462988248/trans-and-genderqueer-subjects-in-medieval-hagiography/

If you’d like to purchase a copy of the book, then you can get 20% off the list price till 6 June with the code ‘Pub_TGMH’. The code is valid for the hardback and eBook on the Amsterdam University Press website (customers based in UK/Europe/Rest of World) and for the hardback on the BTPS website (customers based in US/Canada). 

If you would like to review the collection, please contact Lucia Dove (l.dove@aup.nl) at the Press directly. 

Editors:

Alicia Spencer-Hall is an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at Queen Mary University of London (UK). Her research interests include medieval hagiography, disability, gender, digital culture, and film and media studies. 

Blake Gutt is a postdoctoral scholar with the Michigan Society of Fellows (University of Michigan, USA). He specializes in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century French, Occitan and Catalan literature, and modern queer and trans theory.

Contents:

‘Introduction’, Alicia Spencer-Hall and Blake Gutt

Following the Traces: Reassessing the Status Quo, Reinscribing Trans and Genderqueer Realities

1. ‘Assigned Female at Death: Joseph of Schönau and the Disruption of Medieval Gender Binaries’, Martha G. Newman

2. ‘Inherited Futures and Queer Privilege: Capgrave’s Life of St Katherine’, Caitlyn McLoughlin

3. ‘Juana de la Cruz: Gender-Transcendent Prophetess’, Kevin C.A. Elphick

4. ‘Non-Standard Masculinity and Sainthood in Niketas David’s Life of Patriarch Ignatios’, Felix Szabo

Peripheral Vision(s): Objects, Images, and Identities

5. ‘Gender-Querying Christ’s Wounds: A Non-Binary Interpretation of Christ’s Body in Late Medieval Imagery’, Sophie Sexon

6. ‘Illuminating Queer Gender Identity in the Manuscripts of the Vie de sainte Eufrosine’, Vanessa Wright

7. ‘The Queerly Departed: Narratives of Veneration in the Burials of Late Iron Age Scandinavia’, Lee Colwill

Genre, Gender, and Trans Textualities

8. ‘St Eufrosine‘s Invitation to Gender Transgression’, Amy V. Ogden

9. ‘Holy Queer and Holy Cure: Sanctity, Disability, and Transgender Embodiment in Tristan de Nanteuil‘, Blake Gutt

10. ‘The Authentic Lives of Transgender Saints: imago Dei and imitatio Christi in the Life of Saint Marinos the Monk’, M.W. Bychowski

Epilogue: ‘Beyond Binaries: A Reflection on The (Trans) Gender(s) of Saints’, Mathilde van Dijk

Appendix: ‘Trans and Genderqueer Studies Terminology, Language, and Usage Guide’

Online Lecture Cycle: ‘Potentiale der Goldschmiedekunst’, Institute for European Art History, Heidelberg University, 22nd April-26 June 2021, 6pm (CEST)

The University of Heidelberg is holding a lecture cycle online relating to Goldsmiths from the medieval to modern worlds. Between April and May, these lectures will be held online via Zoom. Register here via the homepage of the Institute for European Art History. The cycle has been organised by Prof. Dr. Rebecca Müller, PD Dr.Tobias Frese

Details of the conference are below in German:

Die Kunst der Goldschmiede war von herausragender Bedeutung für die Stiftungspraxis und die Repräsentation weltlicher Fürsten und des hohen Klerus. In Liturgie und Reliquienverehrung dienten die Objekte mit ihrem kostbaren und potentiell semantisch aufgeladenen Material und vielschichtigen Bildprogrammen als Medien des Heils und gehörten als Kelch, Patene und Altarkreuz zu den vasa sacra; als Krone vermittelten sie ein oft sakral konnotiertes Herrschertum; am Tisch des Fürsten kommentierten sie höfische Ideale und waren Ausweis von Reichtum. Als Schatzobjekte wurden sie verschenkt, geraubt, thesauriert, umgearbeitet, verpfändet und eingeschmolzen, um Material für Neues zu liefern.
Umwertungen in der Materialhierarchie in Neuzeit und Moderne haben Edelmetalle als Material einer als autonom verstandenen Kunst abgewertet, und gerade der Gebrauch der Objekte hat im Zuge ihrer Musealisierung zu der problematischen Kategorisierung als ‚Kunstgewerbe‘, ‚decorative arts‘, ‚arts mineurs‘ etc. geführt. Entgegen dem ursprünglich hohen Stellenwert spielten sie in der kunsthistorischen Forschung eine untergeordnete Rolle, prägende Fachdiskurse kamen ohne sie aus. Seitdem das Material auch „gebrauchter“ Kunst und künstlerische Techniken große Beachtung erfahren, die Mobilität von Künstlern und Werken im Fokus stehen und Objektbiographien erforscht werden, steht auch die Untersuchung der Goldschmiedekunst unter neuen Vorzeichen.
Die Vortragsreihe stellt aktuelle Ansätze und Projekte vor, die Potentiale der Goldschmiedekunst in unterschiedlichen kulturellen Kontexten bis in die Frühe Neuzeit hinein neu ausloten: Als häufig transkulturelle und vielfach veränderte Objekte, als Komposita aus Materialien, deren naturwissenschaftliche Analyse ebenso zum Verständnis beitragen kann wie ein materialikonologischer Ansatz, als wirkmächtige Dinge mit spezifischen Programmen, Inschriften, Materialien, Formen.

22.04.2021      
Franz Kirchweger und Martina Griesser, Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien 
“dy guldene Krone mit gulden Cruce”. Aktuelle Forschungen zur Wiener Reichskrone

06.05.2021
Heike Schlie, Universität Salzburg
Technikikonologie und die heilsgeschichtliche Typologie der Artefakte: Zum Klosterneuburger Goldschmiedewerk des Nikolaus von Verdun

20.05.2021       
Beate Fricke, Universität Bern
Craft as Flotsam – Objekte aus Niello und Texte über Niello erzählen verschiedene Geschichten

27.05.2021   
Philippe Cordez, Deutsches Forum für Kunstgeschichte Paris
Musik und Jugend im Königreich Frankreich. Der satirische Roman de Fauvel und der vergoldete Brunnen in Cleveland (Paris, um 1320)