Online Lecture: Dr Zsuzsanna Gulácsi, ‘Sideways-Oriented Images of Manichaean and Armenian Liturgical Books’, East of Byzantium Lecture, 29 January 2021, 3pm (EST)

East Central Asian Manichaean sources discovered at Kocho from the Uygur era of Manichaean history (755-1024 CE) constitute prominent examples of Silk Road art and text. Despite the closeness of Chinese culture and the dominant presence of Buddhism in the region during this era, Manichaean books maintain a distinctly “West Asiatic” character. In order to further explore the latter, this study assesses the codicological similarities between Manichaean manuscripts from East Central Asia (that were written in Parthia, Middle Persian, Sogdian, and Uygur languages) and the earliest Eastern Christian and Islamic manuscripts from Syro-Mesopotamia (that were written in Syrian, Armenian, Arabic, and Persian languages between the 5th and 11th centuries). The two groups compare favorably based on a variety of codicological criteria. These similarities point beyond the mid 3rd-century Syro-Mesopotamian roots of Uygur-era Manichaean book culture and indicate that there was a continued contact between the Manichaean communities in East Central Asia and their Mesopotamian homeland well into the medieval period.

Zsuzsanna Gulácsi is professor of art history, Asian studies, and comparative religious studies at Northern Arizona University. She is a historian of religious art, specializing in the contextualized art historical study of pan-Asiatic religions that adapted their arts to a variety of cultures as they spread throughout the continent. Her research has been supported by the National Humanities Center, the Japan Society for the Promotion of Scholarship, the American Council of Learned Societies, the American Philosophical Society, the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, and most recently the Getty Foundation. Her many publications include Manichaean Art in Berlin Collections (Brepols, 2001), Medieval Manichaean Book Art: A Codicological Study of Iranian and Turkic Illuminated Book Fragments (Brill, 2005), Mani’s Pictures: The Didactic Images of the Manichaeans from Sasanian Mesopotamia to Uygar Central Asia and Tang-Ming China (Brill, 2016), and the edited volume Language, Society, and Religion in the World of the Turks: Festschrift for Larry Clark at Seventy-Five (Brepols, 2018).

This lecture will take place live on ZOOM, followed by a question and answer period. Please register to receive the Zoom link. An email with the relevant Zoom information will be sent 1–2 hours ahead of the lecture. Registration closes at 10:00 AM (EST) on January 29, 2021. REGISTER FOR LECTURE

EAST OF BYZANTIUM is a partnership between the Arthur H. Dadian and Ara Oztemel Chair of Armenian Art at Tufts University and the Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture at Hellenic College Holy Cross in Brookline, MA. It explores the cultures of the eastern frontier of the Byzantine Empire in the late antique and medieval periods.

CFP: Reviving the Trinity: New Perspectives on 15th-Century Scottish Culture (27th March 2021), deadline 1 February 2021

This collaborative, interdisciplinary project looks again at the Trinity Altarpiece by Hugo van der Goes, Trinity Collegiate Church, and Trinity Hospital as emblems of Scotland’s inventive and ambitious cultural milieu, and its active, outward looking engagement with Europe and beyond. The network will re-examine the Trinity, and establish its cultural relevance today. Taking innovative approaches to materialities, geographies, and the wider artistic, intellectual, and cultural networks that connect them during the reigns of James II, III and IV, and the regency of Queen Mary of Guelders, it seeks to identify contemporary networks and reassess the significance of knowledge exchange.

With the Trinity Altarpiece c.1476, Trinity Collegiate Church and Trinity Hospital as central points of reference, the project will open scholarly debates on all aspects of 15th-century Scotland.

In the first of a series of events we invite academic colleagues and students, and those working in the heritage sector, museums and galleries to submit papers for a Virtual Symposium on 27th March 2021.

We welcome twenty minute papers which focus on any aspects of the Trinity – altarpiece, church, or hospital or which take them as a point of departure. Topics could include art, politics, trade, architecture, diplomacy, material and court culture, the idea of a Scottish Renaissance, gender, medicine and botany, heraldry, music, religion, and related networks.

Papers may be pre-recorded and submitted in advance or delivered live but virtually. The symposium will consist of live (virtual) and pre-recorded papers, live virtual discussion, and a virtual drinks reception. Please submit proposals of c.300 words with your preference for live or pre-recorded, to Trinitynetwork@gmail.com by 1st February 2021. We will notify accepted proposals by 8th February.

We expect to curate a selection of papers from the symposium, which demonstrate the breadth of the topic and yet make a coherent volume, into a book proposal.

Find out more information here.

Job: Research Associate in Hebrew Manuscripts, John Rylands Library, Manchester, deadline 25 January 2021

More information can be found here.

Applications are invited for the post of Research Associate in Hebrew Manuscripts, to produce an online catalogue, compliant with current cataloguing and metadata standards and to promote The University of Manchester Library’s Hebrew collection. The post is part-time and fixed term from 1 March 2021 to 30 June 2022.

The Library’s Hebrew collection is internationally renowned and is one of the top four collections in the UK, ranking alongside Oxford, Cambridge and the British Library. The manuscript collection of c.600 codices, scrolls and other texts in Hebrew script is highly diverse, covering all aspects of Jewish diaspora in Europe and the Middle East.

You should hold a Ph.D. in Jewish studies or a related area, ideally dealing with Jewish book culture, possess an excellent command of Hebrew and have extensive experience of cataloguing manuscripts in Hebrew script. Knowledge of other languages written in Hebrew (e.g. Judaeo-Arabic) will be a distinct advantage. In addition, applicants should be highly motivated and enthusiastic, have excellent interpersonal and organisational skills, and be able to work independently to meet strict deadlines.

As an equal opportunities employer we welcome applicants from all sections of the community regardless of age, sex, gender (or gender identity), ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation and transgender status.  All appointments will be made on merit.

Happy to talk flexible working.

Blended working arrangements may be considered    
    
Please note that we are unable to respond to enquiries, accept CVs or applications from Recruitment Agencies.

Enquiries about the vacancy, shortlisting and interviews:
Name: Professor Philip Alexander
Email: Philip.alexander@manchester.ac.uk 

General enquiries:
Email: hrservices@manchester.ac.uk

Technical support:
Email: universityofmanchester@helpmeapply.co.uk
Tel: 0161 850 2004

This vacancy will close for applications at midnight on the closing date.

Please see the link below for the Further Particulars document which contains the person specification criteria.


Job reference: HUM-016115
Location: John Rylands Library, Deansgate, Manchester
Closing date (DD/MM/YYYY): 25/01/2021
Salary: £32,816 to £40,322 per annum, pro rata (according to relevant experience)
Employment type: Fixed Term		Faculty/Organisation: Humanities
School/ Directorate: University of Manchester Library Research & Learning Services
Hours per week: 0.9 Fte
Contract Duration: Available from 1 March 2021 until 30 June 2022

Workshop: 16th Annual Marco Manuscript Workshop, 5-6 February, 2021

The Marco Institute for Medieval and Renaissance Studies at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, invites you to join their annual manuscript workshop. The 2021 workshop will take place online via Zoom.

This year’s workshop will consider some of the recent challenges that researchers have faced with the suspension of travel, the closing of libraries and universities, and the quarantine restrictions that have kept so many of us in our homes. How can our field, which has always emphasized the importance of physical place and tactile artifacts, work successfully in isolation and at a distance? What does it mean for us when our work takes place in an incorporeal world of light and numbers rather than ink and flesh, in matrices of data rather than dusty rooms? We will explore the advantages and disadvantages of this “immaterial culture,” and think about how our work is shaped by access or lack of access to manuscripts, texts, catalogues, and objects. 

In addition to the two-day schedule of talks, participants will also have the option to attend a bonus digital mapping event. Participants will use the time outside of the regularly scheduled workshop program to map locales named in three manuscript versions of a 15th century Italian geographic treatise, Goro Dati’s La Sfera. 

To register, please visit the Marco Institute’s website. Registration is required.

The Marco Institute is an internationally acclaimed center for the study of the history and culture of the period from roughly 300 to 1700 C.E. With our rich schedule of lectures, workshops, and symposia; multiple fellowship opportunities for faculty and graduate students; graduate certificate and Summer Latin Program; and undergraduate major and minor, we pursue the research and teaching of the early periods at the highest levels.

Image: BL Harley MS 647 f. 13v

Online Lecture: Dr Tom Nickson, ‘(Im)material Devotions: Light and lighting devices in devotional practice’, Warburg Institute, 9 February 2021, 17:30 – 19:00 (GMT)

Dr Tom Nickson (Courtauld Institute) examines the role of candles, lamps and natural light in shaping devotional spaces and experiences. Drawing on written, visual and archaeological evidence, he will consider the role of different lighting devices in a range of spaces, from mosques to royal chapels and parish churches, showing how light and lighting were central to experiences of material and devotional cultures at all levels of society. 

This event is part of the A Material World: Devotion events series, which brings together academics and heritage professionals from a wide range of disciplines to discuss issues concerning historical devotional materials, their conservation, presentation, display, and reconstruction.

Organisers: Rembrandt Duits (Acting Curator, The Photographic Collection, The Warburg Institute) and Louisa McKenzie (PhD student, The Warburg Institute).

This lecture will take place online via Zoom. Sign up for you place here.

New Publication: ‘The Portal of Glory: Architecture, Matter, and Vision’ Edited by Francisco Prado-Vilar

To celebrate the start of the Santiago de Compostela Jubilee Year (Xacobeo 2021), the Complutense Foundation publishes an open-access digital edition of the book ‘The Portal of Glory: Architecture, Matter, and Vision,’ which is the first publication of the A. W. Mellon Program for the study and conservation of the Portal of Glory. 

The essays in this volume explore the constellation of images and creative processes that originate at the intersection between built architecture and imagined architecture, offering a unique vision of the Portal of Glory in its material reality, its constructive techniques, its scenographic design, its symbolic dimensions, and its phenomenological effects. In their totality, and in their individual contributions, the articles reveal yet-unknown aspects of Master Mateo’s intervention in the cathedral of Santiago, from the time he took over the direction of the works around 1168 to the moment of the temple’s consecration in 1211 – a long period that also witnessed the construction of two additional related projects: the magnificent stone choir, and the west façade. The book offers complete new architectural and digital reconstructions of both the stone choir and the west façade, with the restitution of all the displaced sculptures to their original locations and the analysis of the “avant-garde” enveloping scenography they were part of.

You can read the book here: https://issuu.com/fundacioncomplutense/docs/el_portico_de_la_gloria_b_150

Online Lecture: ‘Living legends: the art of adventure in English manuscripts c. 1240-1340’ with Amy Jeffs, BAA Lecture, 3 February 2021, 5:00 PM (GMT)

The British Archaeological Association’s February Lecture will be by Dr Amy Jeffs who will be presenting ‘Living legends: the art of adventure in English manuscripts c. 1240-1340’.

The lecture will be taking place on Zoom on 3 February 2021, 5:00 PM (GMT). Register here.

CFP: ‘Recovery and Renewal’, Thirteenth Century Virtual Conference 2021 (6-8 September 2021), deadline 14 February 2021

We are writing about this year’s Thirteenth Century Conference, which will run between 6 and 8 September 2021. We have taken the decision to go ahead with the conference, but in virtual form. Our reasoning for taking an early decision on this is that we would rather plan for a virtual conference from the outset than plan for an in-person event and be forced to re-arrange it at the last minute. Taking this decision early means that we can optimise the format and, we hope, run a really good conference, with potentially the opportunity for more people than usual to join us. If it does turn out to be possible to meet in person, we will explore creating a hybrid conference in which we have both in-person and virtual delegates.

In the virtual format, we feel the conference should run across 1.5 days in the period 6-8 September: we think that we’ve all found that full days in front of the screen are both tiring and make it hard to concentrate, and that shorter sessions would therefore be a good

starting point. The plan is that papers will be submitted ahead of time and sent out to delegates before the conference either as text papers or pre-recorded videos, so that papers are not presented ‘live’ online, but rather read/watched in advance. The sessions will then consist of structured discussions of the papers.

The theme of the 2021 conference will be ‘Recovery and Renewal’. We are keen to see flexibility and creativity in proposed papers, and we are happy to receive ideas for longer texts of 7-8,000 words, or shorter texts (2-4,000 words), or video presentations of up to 45 minutes.

Please also feel free also to make joint proposals for multi-paper sessions, and we will, as usual, look to put together sessions with linked papers. We want to assemble at least one round table discussion of 3+ papers, for example.

Please send submissions to ams88@cam.ac.uk by 14 February 2021. If you are not interested in submitting a paper, but you would be interested in chairing a session, please let us know. We will consider all papers/contributions on the basis of merit and their connection to the theme and the other proposals that we receive.

Lecture Series: London Society of Medieval Studies 2021 Seminar Series, 17:30pm (GMT) via Zoom

The London Society of Medieval Studies is delighted to announce the programme for this coming semester.

Tuesday 12th January 2021

Gabrielle Storey (Independent Scholar): Co-Rulership and Competition: The Exercise of Queenly Power in the 12th and 13th Centuries

Tuesday 23rd February 2021

Michael Barbezat (Australian Catholic University): Ghosts and the Imagination: Talking to the Dead in Medieval Commentaries on the Raising of Samuel

Tuesday 9th March 2021

Tom Lambert (University of Cambridge) & Sam Leggett (University of Cambridge): Food and Kingship in Early Medieval Europe

Tuesday 23rd March 2021

Maeve O’Donnell (University of Bristol): Visualising the Old Hispanic Rite in 11th Century Northern Iberia

Also available at https://www.history.ac.uk/seminars/london-society-medieval-studies  

As with last term, our seminars will be held online via Zoom. Please register beforehand through the LSMS landing page above. All seminars will begin at the usual time of 17:30, aside from Michael Barbezat’s on 23 February, who will be joining us from Australia and so the session will begin at 10:00 GMT. 

Online Lecture: ‘Capturing expertise: Romanesque sculpture between Spain and France’, with Rose Walker, Murray Research Seminar at Birkbeck, 23 February 2021, 16:50-18:30 (GMT)

This paper will pursue the concept of artistic expertise as a commodity in the first half of the twelfth century in northern Iberia and southern France. Consequently it will also cast doubt on the idea of the unfettered itinerant craftsman. The proposed exchange of expertise will be situated within wider systems of trade and captivity both across and within confessional divides. Literature supplies an image, conjured in the Pseudo-Turpin, of a statue made by the Prophet Muhammad, beautifully carved with Saracenic work but containing a legion of demons. In this vein Romanesque sculpture at Oloron-Sainte-Marie has been viewed both as a response to pagan works and through a triumphalist lens. Here the twin chained atlantes on the trumeau, and the cast of the shackled figure from Sainte-Foy at Morlaàs, will be the object of a different interpretation. It will be argued that these figures – and some other atlantes – embody a playful response to the complex status of craftsmen.

Rose Walker is an Honorary Research Fellow at The Courtauld; this research is part of a project on twelfth-century Iberia funded by a Leverhulme Emeritus Research Fellowship.

Register via the official event page here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/capturing-expertise-romanesque-sculpture-between-spain-and-france-tickets-132807678341