Medieval Art Research

Job: Professor in European, Mediterranean Medieval, or Early Modern Art History, University of Hong Kong, deadline 10 December 2020

Applications are invited for appointment as Professor/Associate Professor on tenure terms or Tenure-Track Assistant Professor in European and/or Mediterranean Medieval or Early Modern Art History in the School of Humanities (Art History) (Ref.: 502323), to commence on September 1, 2021 or as soon as possible thereafter. Appointment as Assistant Professor will be made on a three-year fixed-term basis, with the possibility of renewal and consideration for tenure before the expiry of a second three-year fixed-term contract.

Applicants must have the Ph.D. degree in hand at the time of appointment. Applicants should demonstrate a commitment to rigorous and innovative research, and to high standards of teaching at both the undergraduate and graduate level.

Teaching load is three courses per year and all instruction is in English.

Find out more here.

Job: Assistant Professor of Ancient or Medieval Art and Architecture, Tufts University, deadline 15 December 2020

The Department of History of Art and Architecture at Tufts University invites applications to fill a full‐time faculty position at the rank of assistant professor, starting in September 2021 in the field of Ancient or Medieval art and architecture. Particular interest in issues of cultural heritage, digital humanities, the history of technology, premodern race-making and diasporas, and cultural exchanges/ interactions. Primary region of focus is open. Teach four courses a year, from broad undergraduate surveys to graduate seminars, and advise at both the undergraduate and MA levels.

Qualifications
Ph.D. in ancient or medieval art and architecture and evidence of scholarly potential or accomplishment required. Teaching experience and ability to engage successfully with diverse students with different pedagogies.

Find out more and apply here.

Online Book Launch: Continuous Page: Bringing Art Online in a Pandemic, 23 November 2020, 5:00 pm – 6:30 pm (GMT)

To celebrate the launch of the latest volume in the Courtauld Books Online series—Continuous Page: Scrolls and Scrolling from Papyrus to Hypertext—this roundtable discussion will reflect on art history’s recent rush online in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

As well as being joined by the book’s contributors, a panel of experts from various fields of digital art history will consider the impact of the pandemic in their different lines of work, from museums and journals to digital research projects and public history.

Together, we hope to offer a variety of solutions for crafting an intelligent and responsible digital art history in these troubled times, thinking through how in spite of the devastating lockdowns and closures of recent months, new opportunities are presenting themselves for our community to flourish online.

This is a live online event. Please register for more details. The platform and log in details will be sent to attendees at least 48 hours before the event. Please note that registration closes 30 minutes before the event start time. If you have not received the log in details or have any further queries, please contact researchforum@courtauld.ac.uk.

Organiser: Jack Hartnell – UEA / Editor, Continuous Page

New Publication: ‘Tree of Jesse Iconography in Northern Europe in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries’ by Susan L. Green

This book is the first detailed investigation to focus on the late medieval use of Tree of Jesse imagery, traditionally a representation of the genealogical tree of Christ. In northern Europe, from the mid-fifteenth to the early sixteenth centuries, it could be found across a wide range of media. Yet, as this book vividly illustrates, it had evolved beyond a simple genealogy into something more complex, which could be modified to satisfy specific religious requirements. It was also able to function on a more temporal level, reflecting not only a clerical preoccupation with a sense of communal identity, but a more general interest in displaying a family’s heritage, continuity and/or social status. It is this dynamic and polyvalent element that makes the subject so fascinating.

Introduction

Chapter One: The Tree of Jesse and the Speculum Humanae Salvationis

Chapter Two: The Tree of Jesse and Saint Anne

Chapter Three: The Tree of Jesse, the Carmelites, and other Religious Orders

Chapter Four: The Tree of Jesse and the Schöllenbach Altarpiece: A Case Study

Chapter Five: The Tree of Jesse and Antwerp Carved Altarpieces

Chapters Six: The Tree of Jesse in Northern France

Conclusion

Susan L. Green is an associate lecturer at the Courtauld Institute of Art and visiting lecturer at the New College of the Humanities, London.

ISBN 9780367664732
Published September 29, 2020 by Routledge
256 Pages

Find out more and order here.

Online Conference: Precious and Rare: Islamic Metalwork from The Courtauld, 26 November 2020, 4:00 pm – 6:00 pm (GMT)

This symposium will explore curatorial, practical and public engagement aspects of The Courtauld’s touring display of Islamic metalwork to four venues in the UK. Beginning with a keynote lecture uncovering the historic importance of the works on display, the rest of the talks will reflect on the opportunities and results achieved in each instance, alongside the challenges posed by the ongoing Covid-19 emergency. As such, the event will be of particular interest to students in the humanities and colleagues in the museum and heritage sector, from curators and collection managers to educators and public engagement professionals.

Conference Programme

Welcoming Remarks

Dr Alexandra Gerstein, McQueens Curator of Sculpture and Decorative Arts, The Courtauld &
Dr Rebecca Bridgman, Curatorial and Exhibitions Manager, Birmingham Museums Trust and Chair of the Islamic Art and Material Culture Subject Specialist Network

Keynote: Uncovering the inlays

Professor James Allan, Emeritus Professor of Eastern Art, University of Oxford

The Courtauld’s collection of inlaid Islamic metalwork is very small but consists of a group of exquisite pieces. Not only are they a joy in themselves, but they are also rich with associations, and lend themselves to small exhibitions on particular themes. These stretch from collectors, like Thomas Gambier Parry, who gathered these pieces together, to how such inlaid objects were actually made, by whom they were made (one is signed by Mahmud al-Kurdi – but who was he?), how they were traded and used (and their use varied in different cultures!), and the artistic significance of their decoration. These are some of the ‘inlays’ which we can uncover, ‘inlays’ whose themes we can draw out to enthuse and educate our audiences and visitors.

Panel of four talks

Moderated by Dr Francesca Leoni, Assistant Keeper and Curator of Islamic Art, Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford

‘Precious and Rare’: Layouts, Logistics and Lockdowns
Amy Graves (Exhibition Registrar, The Courtauld)

Islamic Metalwork in Bradford: Heritage, Culture and People
Sonja Kielty (Volunteer Co-ordinator, Libraries, Museums and Galleries, Bradford Museums and Galleries)

Cultures in Conversation: Volunteers and Community Engagement at the History of Science Museum
Federica Gigante (Curator of the Collection from the Islamic World, History of Science Museum, University of Oxford)

Curating ‘Precious and Rare’ at the Holburne Museum during the Covid-19 crisis
Sylvie Broussine (Assistant Curator, The Holburne Museum, Bath)

Discussion and Q&A

Closing remarks

Professor Sussan Babaie, Professor of the Arts of Iran and Islam, The Courtauld.

Online Lecture: ‘The Munich Talmud: a unique manuscript and its place in Jewish Book History’ with Professor Judith Olszowy-Schlanger, 25 November 2020, 6:00-7:30 pm (GMT)

Lecture from Judith Olszowy-Schlanger (Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies) about this 14th century manuscript, one of the most important and intriguing medieval Hebrew works in existence.

The Hebrew manuscript 95 of the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek of Munich (BSB Cod. Hebr. 95) or the “Munich Talmud” is without doubt one of most important and intriguing medieval Hebrew manuscripts in existence. Its 14th-century scribe accomplished a challenging feat: in a relatively small volume he copied the six orders of the Mishna, all the existing Gemara Tractates of the Babylonian Talmud, and added some more extra-canonical texts. In this lecture, we will discuss the possible origin of this manuscript, its unique material features and its unique place in the history of the founding text of Judaism, the Babylonian Talmud.

Professor Judith Olszowy-Schlanger FBA (PhD University of Cambridge, 1995) President of the Oxford Centre of Hebrew and Jewish Studies, and Fellow of Corpus Christi College, University of Oxford, and Professor of Hebrew and Judaeo-Arabic Manuscript Studies at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Paris. She has published extensively on Hebrew codicology, palaeography, diplomatics, Cairo Geniza Studies and the study of Hebrew among medieval Chrsitian Hebraists. She is the head of the international project “Books within Books: Hebrew Fragments in European Libraries”.

Find out more here.

Online Lecture: ‘How to make watermarks speak’ with Dr Sven Limbeck, 18 November 2020, 5pm (GMT)

Wednesday, 18 November, 5-6:30pm via teams organised by the Queen’s College ‘Centre for Manuscript and Text Cultures’

Dr Sven Limbeck (Deputy Director, manuscripts and special collections, Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel)

In recent years the analysis of watermarks has become a standard method in dating paper manuscripts. This was made possible by the digital provision of watermark collections – the most important resource is now the database „Wasserzeichen-Informationssystem (WZIS)“ (Watermark Information System) which is mainly based on the digitization of Gerhard Piccard’s watermark index in the Hauptstaatsarchiv Stuttgart and which has been enriched by other collections and material from current manuscript catalogue projects.

However Piccard’s dating method – developed in the 1950s and still in use today – uses watermarks to an end that lies beyond themselves. The sense and purpose of watermarks has not been adequately clarified yet. Is there a way to make watermarks speak? And if so, do we have a grammar and a dictionary to understand what they tell us? Based on the aporias of classification, order and naming of watermarks I make a plea for the iconographic analysis of watermarks. The perception of watermarks as meaningful images and the knowledge of their grammar and semantics would be a new and powerful approach to the material tradition.

Click here to view the event & find out more information here.

Online Book Launch: ‘The Illuminated World Chronicle: Tales from the Late Medieval City’ by Nina Rowe, 22 November 2020, 1pm (ET)

Join Fordham University for a conversation celebrating the publication of Nina Rowe’s new book, The Illuminated World Chronicle: Tales from the Late Medieval City (Yale UP, 2020). This multidisciplinary study examines a curious genre of illustrated book that gained popularity among the newly emergent middle class of late medieval cities. These illuminated World Chronicles, produced in the Bavarian and Austrian regions from around 1330 to 1430, were the popular histories of their day, telling tales from the Bible, ancient mythology, and the lives of emperors in animated, vernacular verse, enhanced by dynamic images.

The World Chronicle stories recast stories of the past to meet the interests of late medieval urban dwellers and include surprising narratives – the devil sneaks aboard Noah’s Ark and cons a couple into having a forbidden tryst; Achilles engages in combat like a medieval knight; and Charlemagne becomes romantically enraptured with his deceased wife. Among the lively anecdotes is a suite of episodes about Moses, which explore the patriarch’s Jewishness and marriage to an African princess.

Rowe will explore the images and texts that recount these spirited tales in a conversation with Ephraim Shoham-Steiner, an expert on urban life in Europe in the late Middle Ages.

Nina Rowe is Professor of Art History at Fordham University. Previous publications include The Jew, the Cathedral and the Medieval City: Synagoga and Ecclesia in the Thirteenth Century (Cambridge, 2011) and Manuscript Illumination in the Modern Age: Recovery and Reconstruction (co-author, 2001). Nina Rowe’s research has been supported by fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities (2016-17), the American Council of Learned Societies (2016-17), and the Metropolitan Museum of Art (2007-8). She is currently President of the International Center of Medieval Art (ICMA), 2020-23.

Ephraim Shoham-Steiner is Professor of Medieval Jewish History at the Department of Jewish History at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. He is the author of On the Margins of a Minority: Leprosy, Madness, and Disability among the Jews of Medieval Europe (2014) and Jews and Crime in Medieval Europe (Wayne State, 2020).

Nina Rowe’s book, The Illuminated World Chronicle: Tales from the Late Medieval City is available for purchase from Yale University Press with a 30% discount code: YAC89.
Due to technical difficulties, the Yale University Press website can only be used with a Firefox browser. You may also place your order by phone through Yale UP customer service at 1-800-405-1619.

Make sure to register here.

Online Lecture: ‘Defining Central Asia: Text, Monument and Landscape’, Oxford Nizami Ganjavi Centre, 20 November 2020, 2pm (GMT)

Join the Oxford Nizami Ganjavi Centre for their final webinar in the Art History and Archaeology of Central Asia: National, Regional and Global Series.

Convenors: Edmund Herzig, Akbar Khakimov, and Yusen Yu.

Defining Central Asia: Text, Monument and Landscape

Chair: Edmund Herzig (Oxford)

Staggering Identities in the Memory-Text-Landscape Triangle, Ingeborg Baldauf (Berlin)

The “Long” Silk Road(s): A Productive Paradigm or Pernicious Pretence?, Paul Wordsworth (Oxford)

Old Monuments, New Challenges, Gai Jorayev (London)

Join using this link.

ICMA Town Hall: Diversity, Medieval Art History & 2020, 20 November at 2.00pm-3.30pm (ET)

The ICMA, in response to the events of the past few months, but also cognizant of the longstanding need for the field of medieval art history to undertake a sustained campaign of reflection and self-critique, is convening a Town Hall, open to all interested members, on Friday, November 20 from 2.00pm-3.30pm ET. The Town Hall will provide an opportunity for us, both as an organization and as individuals, to discuss issues of diversity, the state of our discipline, and the needed actions and changes we envision. The Town Hall, which is organized by the newly formed IDEA (Inclusivity, Diversity, Equity, and Accessibility) Committee of the ICMA, will serve as a listening session and forum for sharing and collecting experiences, testimonials, calls to action, and proposed strategies for ICMA members. The Town Hall is intended to serve as a starting point for self-study, brainstorming, and planning as the ICMA moves to address the biases and inequities, historically entrenched and yet recently magnified, of the structures and practices of our work.

The Town Hall, which will be moderated, will consist of structured discussions among attendees. Everyone is most welcome, most enthusiastically: feel free to come to listen and observe, or to ask questions, or to share an experience or an idea. Please register for the Town Hall here.

In addition, we want to incorporate your own ideas into the planning of the Town Hall. To that end, if you feel so inclined, we encourage you to submit a question, a topic of conversation, a personal anecdote, or anything else you would like us to consider in advance of the Town Hall. Please use the Google Form linked here. The Co-Chairs of the IDEA Committee will review the submissions, which will be otherwise kept anonymous, and incorporate some of the submissions into the structure of the Town Hall. If you would like to make a submission via the Google Form we ask that you do so before the end of the day on Friday, November 13. Please note that the Google Form is optional, and it is separate from registration – you are not obligated to complete it to attend.

It is our goal that this Town Hall be a safe space for the full breadth of the ICMA membership, from established scholars to beginning graduate students, to come together to talk, listen, and learn – and, it will be the start of a longer conversation.

If you have questions about the Town Hall, please feel free to reach out to the Co-Chairs of the IDEA Committee, Andrea Achi (andrea.achi@metmuseum.org) and Joe Ackley (jackley@wesleyan.edu). It is our goal that this Town Hall be a safe space for the full breadth of the ICMA membership, from established scholars to beginning graduate students, to come together to talk, listen, and learn – and, it will be the start of a longer conversation. We do hope to see you on November 20, 2020.

All the best,

Andrea Achi and Joe Ackley, Co-Chairs, IDEA Committee

Table of Contents

Conference Programme

Defining Central Asia: Text, Monument and Landscape