Medieval Art Research

Fellowship: 2021–2022 Metropolitan Museum of Art Fellowship in History of Art and Visual Culture, Deadline: November 6 2020

Fellowships at the Met are awarded to scholars in the fields of art history, archaeology, museum education, conservation, and related sciences, as well as scholars in other disciplines, whose dynamic and interdisciplinary projects require close study of objects in The Met collection. Fellowships at The Met are an opportunity for scholars from around the world to use the Museum as a place for exchange, research, and professional advancement.

Fellows are fully integrated into the life of the Museum and are given unique access to the inner workings of The Met through a rich program of tours, roundtable discussions, and workshops. Fellows are given a workspace and access to libraries, collections, research facilities, labs, and the time and space to think.

Met fellowships are awarded to junior scholars, postdoctoral and senior academics, and museum professionals for independent study or research.

All fellows, with the one exception of Theodore Rousseau Fellows, must be in residence at The Met during the fellowship period. Fellowships are 12 months in length, beginning on September 1 following the application deadline and ending August 31 of the following calendar year.

Eligibility

PhD candidates, postdoctoral researchers, and senior scholars are eligible to apply.
Predoctoral fellows are those applicants who are currently working on their PhD; senior fellows are those who hold a PhD on the date of application and/or are well-established scholars.
Applicants submit a specific research proposal that makes use of the Museum’s collection and/or resources, and accepted fellows spend the majority of their time working on that project.

See the link below for more information and application guidance:

https://www.metmuseum.org/about-the-met/fellowships

Online Conference: Jewish Romance in the Middle Ages: Literature, Piety, and Cultural Translation, October 25, 2020 – 11:00am to 2:00pm (EST)

In the late Middle Ages, Jewish authors engaged with non-Jewish, vernacular literature to create new texts for Jewish audiences in a style that resembles medieval romance. Drawing on the popular vernacular stories of King Arthur, Alexander the Great, and heroic knights, some Jewish authors employed a variety of techniques to make these texts appropriate for Jewish audiences, including references to biblical events or replacement of non-Jewish words with ones relating to the practice of Judaism. Other Jewish authors, however, avoided biblical or pious language when crafting their new versions, putting into question the common assumption of an inextricable link between medieval Jewish piety and culture.

The contribution of medieval Jews and their participation in the narration and transmission of courtly non-religious literature has been largely overlooked in the past. Only in the past few decades have scholars focused on texts that can be considered part of a corpus of Jewish romance.
This conference brings together scholars working on medieval Jewish literature from varied perspectives to enable a cross-disciplinary, trans-institutional, and international dialogue that aims to highlight understudied voices in medieval literature and their significance. This approach allows conversations between Jewish texts globally, rather than traditional distinctions between geographical regions. Our participants have affiliations in diverse university departments, including German Studies, Spanish and Portuguese Studies, English, and Medieval Studies, in addition to Jewish Studies. Their papers explore not only the role of cultural transmission and literary creativity in these Jewish texts but also the idea of narrative universality more broadly.

More information can be found here. This event is free, but you must register in advance.

Virtual Tour: Center for the Study of Material & Visual Cultures of Religion, Mosque of Christ of the Light, Toledo with Dr Tom Nickson

MAVCOR – the Center for the Study of Material & Visual Cultures of Religion – is delighted to announce the first in a series of virtual tours of buildings around the world.

The tour of the remarkable mosque of Christ of the Light in Toledo, Spain, is freely accessible at https://mavcor.yale.edu/material-objects/giga-project/christ-light-mosque-toledo. Users can explore the building in three dimensions, with additional texts, images and commentaries by Dr Tom Nickson.

For images of the site, click here.

New Publication: Bridging the Past – Life in Medieval and Post-Medieval Southwark: Excavations along the route of Thameslink Borough Viaduct and at London Bridge Station by Amelia Fairman, Steven Teague and Jonathan Butler

Excavations for the Thameslink project at Borough Viaduct and London Bridge Station have provided important new insights into the development of Southwark from the Saxon period up to the 19th century. The landscape of islands and waterways that characterised Roman Southwark was transformed through the 1st and 2nd millennia AD, as new areas were reclaimed for settlement. Lower-lying zones nonetheless remained prone to flooding through much of the medieval period, and the management of drainage channels was clearly a significant concern. A substantial ditch at Borough Market may have related to Southwark’s Saxon burh defences, and other late Saxon features lay within the probable limits of the burh. Occupation evidence in the form of building foundations and pits increased in the medieval period and into the post-medieval period. Dynamic development over time of the network of property boundaries, streets and alleys was revealed. Substantial assemblages of artefacts and environmental remains were retrieved, revealing differences in living standards between wealthier and poorer households. Southwark was historically a focus for craft and industry, and evidence was recovered for a range of occupations including bone working, tanning, leather working, pin making and clay pipe making. The large collections of timbers reused in the revetments of channels beneath London Bridge Station provide evidence of woodworking techniques used in timber-framed housing from the 12th century to the 18th century, and also include numerous fragments of medieval and post-medieval boats. Evidence relating to institutions such as almshouses and St Thomas’s Hospital was also encountered.

New Publication: The Matter of Piety – Zoutleeuw’s Church of Saint Leonard and Religious Material Culture in the Low Countries (c. 1450-1620) by Ruben Suykerbuyk

Studies in Netherlandish Art and Cultural History, Volume: 16

The Matter of Piety provides the first in-depth study of Zoutleeuw’s exceptionally well-preserved pilgrimage church in a comparative perspective, and revaluates religious art and material culture in Netherlandish piety from the late Middle Ages through the crisis of iconoclasm and the Reformation to Catholic restoration. Analyzing the changing functions, outlooks, and meanings of devotional objects – monumental sacrament houses, cult statues and altarpieces, and small votive offerings or relics – Ruben Suykerbuyk revises dominant narratives about Catholic culture and patronage in the Low Countries. Rather than being a paralyzing force, the Reformation incited engaged counterinitiatives, and the vitality of late medieval devotion served as the fertile ground from which the Counter-Reformation organically grew under Protestant impulses.

To download the PDF, or to purchase a Hardback copy, please follow the link below:

https://brill.com/view/title/54729

Online Seminar: ‘Merchants and Diaspora Round Table’, Miri Rubin (QMUL), Serena Ferente (KCL) and Kate Franklin (Birkbeck), Thursday 15th October 17.30

_{Image: Master of the Dresden Prayer Book (Flemish, active about 1480 – 1515) The Temperate and the Intemperate, about 1475–1480, Tempera colors and ink on parchment. The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, Ms. 43, recto.}

The IHR European History 1150-1550 seminar cycle for 2020 presents a lecture titled ‘Merchants and Diaspora Round Table’ for its second week. To attend the seminar, please book via this link.

‘Our seminar is now 15 years old and is as buoyant as ever. It schedules research-based papers and occasional themed panels for discussion of the later centuries of the medieval period spanning continental Europe and the British Isles. Our programme reflects the broad array of approaches and sources used by innovative scholars who come to us from UK universities and abroad. The seminar is convened by historians from the University of London’s and other London research institutes, and attracts academics at all stages of their careers, visitors on sabbaticals, scholars from libraries and archives, and interested members of the public. We treasure our doctoral students, who have the opportunity to present their advanced research at dedicated sessions. On occasion we combine with other seminars in planning joint sessions, reflecting our convergent interest. The presentations are followed by lively discussion, drinks in the IHR Common Room, and an informal and convivial supper.’

Miri Rubin’s research has ranged across the period 1100-1600, through the exploration of themes in the religious culture of Europe. Her latest book, ‘Cities of Strangers: Making Lives in Medieval Europe was published in March at Cambridge University Press.

Serena Ferente’s primary research interests lie in the political history of late medieval and Renaissance Italy. She has published widely on parties, partisan identities and supra-regional political networks in fifteenth-century Italy, with a particular focus on city-states and actors resisting processes of state-building. She is currently working on the Genoese diaspora in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea.

Kate Franklin has been working on collaborative projects in the Republic of Armenia for a decade, exploring the ways that local politics and Silk Road culture were tangled together in landscape and space-time. Her work at the moment at the moment is concerned with world-making as a locus of politics, with material culture as a mediator of spatio-temporal distances, and with the interpenetration of literary and ‘real’ landscapes in archaeological work.

For further information, please email enquiries to ihr.events@sas.ac.uk

Fellowship: Swenson Family Fellowships in Eastern Christian Manuscript Studies, HMML, Winter/Spring 2021, Deadline: October 15 2020

The purpose of the Swenson Family Fellowships in Eastern Christian Manuscript Studies for Junior Scholars is to support residencies at HMML for graduate students or postdoctoral scholars with demonstrated expertise in the languages and cultures of Eastern Christianity. Awardees must be undertaking research on some aspect of Eastern Christian studies requiring use of the digital or microfilm manuscript collections at HMML. The program is specifically designed to aid new scholars in establishing themselves through research focused on manuscripts available through HMML. Postdoctoral scholars are understood to be those who at the time of application are within three years of being awarded a doctoral degree.

Awards will range from $2,500 – $5,000, based on project proposal and length of residency (two to six weeks). Funds may be applied toward travel to and from Collegeville, housing and meals at Saint John’s University, and costs related to duplication of HMML’s microfilm or digital resources. The Fellowship may be supplemented by other sources of funding but may not be held simultaneously with another HMML fellowship. Holders of the Fellowship must wait at least two years before applying again.

Applications must be submitted by October 15 for residencies between January and June of the following year.

The Swenson Family Fellowship in Eastern Christian Manuscript Studies, established in 2012, will be awarded semi-annually. The Fellowship was established by Dr. Gregory T. and Jeannette Swenson, with their son Nicholas Swenson.

For more information, see the link below:

https://hmml.org/research/swenson/

Virtual Exhibition: Les Enluminures at Frieze Viewing Room – October 9 – 16, 2020

Les Enluminures have collaborated with Frieze to create a virtual showcase of selected medieval and early modern manuscripts and jewellery.

Their public statement is detailed below:

‘Les Enluminures is delighted to participate in Frieze Viewing Room, which opens to the general public at 12pm BST this Friday October 9. Our Viewing Room will showcase a curated selection of illuminated manuscripts, leaves and historic jewelry.

Frieze Viewing Room is a new mobile app and web-based platform, giving collectors the opportunity to explore and acquire art from the world’s leading galleries. This edition showcases galleries selected to participate in Frieze London & Frieze Masters 2020.

In addition, we are thrilled thatSir Norman Rosenthal (Independent Curator), has selected one of our artworks for a special display called Forever within the Frieze Masters section of Frieze Viewing Room. This specially curated group of thirty-six artworks will explore the premise that great art is forever, selecting works that have stood – and in the curator’s mind will stand- the test of time.’

To register, please follow this link: https://viewingroom.frieze.com/?_ga=2.83279764.369259909.1602256998-1461121774.1602256998

Inbox

Call for Papers: International Conference – Handbook on the Later Crusades, deadline: 1 November 2020

[Image – Crusaders at the walls of Antioch, from the Histoire d’Outremer, Bruges, c. 1479–c.1480, Royal MS 15 E I, f. 101v ]

In the last decades, research on the “Later Crusades” has increased significantly. As a result of this a new consensus among researchers has been reached which considers that the crusading movement did not stop after the year 1400. Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe continued to be profoundly influenced by crusading desires across denominational boundaries and through all levels of society. The impact became certainly less “visible” as the centuries after 1400 no longer saw the dispatch of large international armies that had the specific goal of liberating Jerusalem. Yet, apart from the still manifold military activities, the crusading discourse retained a powerful influence and it profoundly shaped not only the European but also the Muslim societies that responded with their own (re-)conceptualization of a holy or just war.

This conference is intended to help in the preparation of a “Handbook on the Later Crusades” which will summarize the findings of the last three decades and serve especially for teaching at universities. We wish to prepare the Handbook with six larger chapters, which each containing 4-5 specific subchapters of 20-25 pages in English. The structure is as follows:

I. Spaces
II. Actors
III. Crusading plans IV. Reception
V. The Muslim World VI. Events

We invite experts on specific themes within this array to submit an application for a subchapter. A subchapter for the Handbook should have its “individualistic” tones but mostly it ought to be a presentation of the current state of research and thus be based on secondary literature. It should give a reader without specialist knowledge an insight into the topic and an orientation.

We would like to especially encourage proposals and applications that would treat topics from the Muslim world, whose manifold reception of and reaction to the movement of the later crusades should be presented in substantial complexity within the forthcoming Handbook. Contributions can range from historiography, literature, works of art etc. We would particularly welcome interdisciplinary contributions and submissions treating art or music history, literature studies or the history of ideas.

A two-day conference about the Handbook is to be held in Frankfurt am Main (Germany) on July 13-14, 2021. The keynote lecture about ‘Defining and delimiting the Later Crusades’ will be given by Norman Housley on the evening of July 13.

Each participant will be asked to send a five-page working summary of their chapter that shall be enlarged after the conference to the final subchapter for the Handbook. These preliminary texts will then be sent to all participants and intensely debated at the conference. The objective is to finish these chapters until the end of 2021 and then publish the Handbook soon after. If the conference cannot take place due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it will be changed to an online-event and presumably spread over several days.

Deadline and details:

This call for papers is now open for those researchers who are interested to participate in the conference. They are invited to submit their proposals with a title, an abstract (no more than 500 words) and a brief bio (maximum of 15 lines) before November 1, 2020 to: Dr. Magnus RESSEL (ressel@em.uni-frankfurt.de) or Dr. Emir O. FILIPOVIC (emirofilipovic@gmail.com).

Reimbursement of expenses:

CA1829 might be able to reimburse travel and accommodation expenses to a limited number of researchers not yet affiliated to the Action. Applications should be submitted along with the proposals.

More information: please, see https://is-le.eu/

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Online Course: London Art History Society presents – Early Christian Rome with John McNeill, 11 – 25 November 2020

Begins: Wednesday 11 November 2020 – Wednesday 25 November 2020 (11am-12pm)

Programme
Imperial capital until the early fourth century and home to the papacy, Rome was the city where Octavian was proclaimed Augustus and SS Peter and Paul were martyred. This online study event considers how Rome became a Christian city. The very earliest Christian art and architecture emerged, almost imperceptibly, out of the allusive religious art of the eastern Mediterranean. Its forms often amounted to no more than simple signs and inscriptions, and its monuments were almost invisible to view – an ordinary house front, an underground burial chamber. Constantine’s granting of a legal personality to the Church in 313 changed that. Henceforth, a public monumental Christian art and architecture was possible, and was actively embraced as vast ecclesiastical building projects transformed the city. This online study event is arranged as three one-hour lectures, which respectively discuss the emergence of Christian imagery in the catacombs between c.250 and c.400 AD, the development of ecclesiastical building types such as basilicas, baptisteries and martyria, and the birth of Christian narrative art.

Lectures:
Wednesday 11 November 2020, 11am-12pm
The Catacombs: Planning and Painting

Wednesday 18 November 2020, 11am-12pm
Architecture in Rome from Constantine to Pope Honorius I (625-38)

Wednesday 25 November 2020, 11am-12pm
Monumental Imagery: Apse mosaics and the emergence of Narrative Painting c.350-c.650

John McNeill lectures for the Department of Continuing Education at Oxford University and is a Vice-President of the London Art History Society. He is the Honorary Secretary of the British Archaeological Association, for whom he has edited and contributed to volumes on English medieval cloisters, chantries and Romanesque material culture. He has a longstanding interest in Rome and early Christian culture

*You must be a member of the London Art History Society*

Please note that you will need to be familiar with Zoom in order to participate – we do not have the capacity to provide any back-up or advice on the use of Zoom. We recommend that you log on to Zoom 15 minutes before the start time of the event even if you are familiar with the app since the process can take some time if a lot of participants are logging on at the same time. You will receive an email first thing on the day of each lecture with details of how to join the event. If you do not receive it please check your spam/junk mail folder.

Find out more here.