Postdoctoral Fellowships: University of Southern California Society of Fellows in the Humanities, 2021–2023, deadline 13 Nov 2020

The University of Southern California Society of Fellows in the Humanities invites applications for our 2021-2023 cohort of postdoctoral fellows.

The USC Society of Fellows in the Humanities supports advanced research by postdoctoral fellows and faculty members by promoting intellectual exchange and interdisciplinary approaches to research and teaching in the humanities and humanistic social sciences.

The USC Society of Fellows in the Humanities is an interdisciplinary community of postdoctoral scholars and faculty members in the humanities and humanistic social sciences. Fellows meet regularly in formal and informal settings to present and discuss advanced scholarly research. Postdoctoral fellows are affiliated with the Society as well as with a USC department of their choice, and have faculty mentors in both. Postdoctoral fellows in the humanities engage with each other as well as humanities departments, institutes, and centers at USC and in the broader Los Angeles area.

Each year the Society admits up to five postdoctoral fellows, who are appointed for two-year terms during which they pursue research and teach three courses over four semesters, with one semester for full-time research. They are expected to reside in the Los Angeles area during the academic year and to participate in the scholarly life of the Society, the host department, and the university.

Eligibility
To apply for the 2021–2023 cohort, candidates must have received their Ph.D. no earlier than July 1, 2017 and must have completed their doctoral degree by July 1, 2021. Scholars who received their doctorates from the University of Southern California are not eligible to apply. Non U.S. citizens are eligible to apply for this program. Applicants’ research and teaching must be in the humanities and humanistic social sciences.

Find out more here.

Online Lecture Series: A Material World: Devotion, The Warburg Institute

A Material World is a new events series hosted by the Warburg Institute which focuses on the reconstruction of life in the past through objects and materials, the people who made them and the people who used them. Combining public lectures, student seminars and live object-based presentations across three terms, the series brings together academics and heritage professionals from a wide range of disciplines including history, art history, cultural history, archaeology, anthropology, history of religion and museum studies. The series will discuss issues concerning historical objects, their materials, forms, and functions, as well as their conservation, presentation, display, and reconstruction. It offers a broad social perspective, being concerned not only with the highest strata of society, but also with marginalised peoples and their habits concerning the production and consumption of everyday items.

The three combined lecture-seminar sessions of 2020-21 will be on the theme of Devotion.

Photo: ©️ Gordon Plumb

Find out more information here.

Autumn 2020 Programmme

The Oxburgh Hall Finds

Thursday 26 November, 5.30pm – 7pm | Presented by Anna Forrest (National Trust)

Anna Forrest examines how the recent discoveries at Oxburgh Hall shed light on the vibrant material culture of recusant Catholics at a time of persecution. As the Oxburgh Hall project is still in its early stages, this lecture presents a key opportunity to discover how curators go about analysing objects, and start to formulate conclusions, while a project is still evolving. 

Book here.

Daily life and popular piety

Friday 27 November, 3pm – 4.30pm | Presented by Meriel Jeter (Museum of London)

Meriel Jeter, Museum of London curator and contributor to the new book, The Art of the Poor, will present some of the museum’s rich holdings of medieval pilgrims’ souvenirs in this object-based session, live from the Museum of London via Zoom. Meriel will address the manufacture and use of these objects, as well as issues involved in their conservation and curation, and how curators use material culture findings to help reconstruct aspects of life from the past.

This seminar is designed for postgraduates at MA and research level studying art history, cultural history, archaeology, anthropology, history of religion, museum studies and related fields.

Book here.

Online Research Course: European Diploma in Medieval Studies with Fédération Internationale des Instituts d’Études Mediévales, deadline 15 December 2020

Given the global Covid-19 outbreak, for the academic year 2020-2021 FIDEM has exceptionally decided to provide only a modular, online DEEM program.

Participants can choose between the Modules C (Medieval Latin I-II, Palaeography I-II, Codicology I-II, Textual Editing I-II) and D (Palaeography I-II, Codicology I-II, Textual Editing I-II, Diplomatique I-II)

All the courses will be held online in Italian, English, or French.

Classes will start on January 11, 2021 (Module C) and February 1 (Module D), and end on May 7 (Module C) and 28 (Module D).

The courses will mainly follow last year’s timetable (https://fidemweb.org/project/deem-2019-2020/), except that this academic year there will be offered lectures, exercises and personal reading-courses on extra study materials prepared by the lecturers. Both Modules are included in the Erasmus + project, and are credited 30 ECTS each.

Students coming from universities with an Erasmus + agreement with FIDEM via LUMSA (erasmuslumsa@lumsa.it) do not have to pay any enrolment fee.

Non-Erasmus + students should pay an enrolment fee of € 400.

The prerequisite for admission to these programs is a bachelor’s degree in one of the humanities.

At the end of the course a certificate of participation will be issued on request.

This certificate of participation is not equivalent to the Diploma. To receive the Diploma, the full annual program must be completed and a final essay written. The certificate of participation, however, will be accepted as partial fulfilment of the next academic year’s course for the Diploma.

Deadline for applications:  December 15, 2020

Application form: https://fidemweb.org/application-form-2020-2021-f-online/ 

General coordination is by Doctor Massimiliano Lenzi (Sapienza, Università di Roma: deem@fidemweb.org).

Find out more information here: https://fidemweb.org/

New Publication: The Illuminated World Chronicle: Tales from the Late Medieval City by Nina Rowe

A look into an enchanting, underexplored genre of illustrated manuscripts that reveals new insights into urban life in the Middle Ages

In this innovative study, Nina Rowe 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. Rowe’s appraisal of these understudied books presents a rich world of storytelling modes, offering unprecedented insight into the non-noble social strata in a transformative epoch. Beautifully illustrated and backed by abundant and accessible analyses of social, economic, and political conditions, this book highlights the engaging character of secular literature during the late medieval era and the relationship of illustrated books to a socially diverse and vibrant urban sphere.

Nina Rowe is professor of art history at Fordham University, New York.

Pre-order the book here.

Publishing November 2020220 pp.148 colour illustrations
£50.00 | €60.00 | $65.00

Online Lecture: Raphael 500: The Raphael Cartoons at the V&A, The Warburg Institute, 19 November 2020, 17:30-19:00 (GMT)

Dr Ana Debenedetti (Victoria and Albert Museum)

Ana Debenedetti talks to Warburg Deputy Director Michelle O’Malley about the V&A’s new installation of the celebrated Raphael Cartoons in the Museum’s Raphael Court.

Raphael’s work in painting, drawing, architecture and design had a profound effect on the arts, influencing not only his own time but also ours. Raphael 500 celebrates the painter’s life and marks the year of his death with a programme that considers elements of his approaches to the invention and production of works of art and looks at the way the study of Raphael widens our understanding of other Italian Renaissance artists. 

This event is also part of the Curatorial Conversations series, which brings to the Warburg curators of world-leading museums and galleries to discuss their work. The conversations, led by academics at the Warburg Institute, discuss the issues of setting the curatorial agenda and staging meaningful encounters with objects. The series is designed to draw out discussion of the discoveries made, challenges tackled and the lessons learned in installing objects in the permanent collection and putting together internationally renowned exhibitions. 

Supported by the Italian Cultural Institute in London 

FREE VIA ZOOM. PLEASE BOOK IN ADVANCE – BOOK HERE.

Find out more information here.

Online Lecture: ‘The medieval stained glass at Holy Trinity, Long Melford’, Anna Eavis, 4 Nov 2020, 5pm (GMT)

The November Lecture of the British Archaeological Association Lecture Series will be Anna Eavis, who will be presenting on ‘The medieval stained glass at Holy Trinity, Long Melford’.

Anna Eavis is Curatorial Director at English Heritage, with responsibility for the presentation of over four hundred historic sites and their collections.

The lecture will take place on Zoom on 4 November 2020 at 5pm (GMT).

Register here.

Funding: Clare College Junior Research Fellowships 2021, University of Cambridge, Deadline: 23rd November 2020

Clare College, University of Cambridge invites applications for Junior Research Fellowships in any arts and humanities discipline. It is expected that candidates will be either graduate students, in the latter stages of their research leading to a PhD, or equivalent, or post-doctoral researchers who have been awarded their PhD, or equivalent, within the last year. Candidates are expected to have completed less than five years’ full-time, post-graduate research, or part-time equivalent, by 1 October 2021.

Research Fellows carry out full-time research for 37.5 hours a week and may undertake a small amount of undergraduate teaching during term. They are members of the Governing Body and expected to participate in the governance and social life of the College.

For information on applying for a Junior Research Fellowship, please visit Information for Applicants

If you have any questions, contact the JRF Administrator at JRFadministrator@clare.cam.ac.uk

New Journal Publication: Gesta, Volume 59, Number 2 | Fall 2020

The latest issue of Gesta is now available to view online, edited by Diane J. Reilly and Susan L. Boynton. The journal is sponsored by the International Center of Medieval Art

Articles include:

Kathryn A. Smith, Found in Translation: Images Visionary and Visceral in the Welles-Ros Bible
Jonathan Andrew Turnock, The Earls of Hereford and Their Retinue: A Network of Architectural and Sculptural Patronage in Twelfth-Century England, ca. 1130–55
James Hillson, Villard de Honnecourt and Bar Tracery: Reims Cathedral and Processes of Stylistic Transmission, ca. 1210–40
Richard Gameson, Catherine Nicholson, and  Andrew Beeby, The Admiral, the Virgin, and the Spectrometer: Observations on the Coëtivy Hours (Dublin, Chester Beatty Library, MS W082)

To view the new edition of Gesta, please click here.

Exhibition: Architecture & Ornament, Sam Fogg Gallery, London, 22 October – 19 November 2020

The works of art in this exhibition provide an overview of the diversity that existed in Romanesque and Gothic architecture, which continually transformed across space and time. They range from the tenth century, when Lombard architecture and sculpture formed the so-called first Romanesque, to the late fifteenth century, when openwork spires towered over cities. The exhibition includes pieces from some of the most celebrated medieval buildings in Europe, such as the capital from Madinat al-Zahra, a palace-city complex just outside of Cordoba, built as a symbol of Umayyad power on the Iberian Peninsula. The group also includes a twelfth-century impost from Saint-Remi in Reims, one of the most important royal churches in France and the site where King Clovis was baptised in 508 by Bishop Remigius. The engineering progress of the Gothic period is represented by a 13th century gable from a buttress pinnacle of the York Minster Chapter House, a building designed to show-off technological advancements and a new kind of decorative character. Finally, the exhibition also features a tracery fragment from Canterbury Cathedral, one of England’s most renowned ecclesiastical buildings, and one of the most significant pilgrimage sites in Europe. In addition to these pieces there are many others and together they take us through architectural history that spans almost seven hundred years.

Catalogue can be found here.

Found out more information here.

Exploring the world of medieval architecture: In conversation with Zoë Opačić and Jana Gajdosova

An In Conversation with Zoë Opačić, which explored the world of medieval architecture. This interview celebrates our Architecture & Ornament exhibition, which opens on October 22nd 2020.

Online Lecture: University of Kent MEMS, Contemporary Portraiture & the Medieval Imagination, An Artist in Conversation with her Sitters: Lorna May Wadsworth, the Rt Rev & Rt Hon Dr Rowan Williams & Neil Gaiman, 29 October 2020, 6pm

The Centre for Medieval & Early Modern Studies at the University of Kent is excited to announce their up-coming seminar which is ‘Contemporary Portraiture & the Medieval Imagination, An Artist in Conversation with her Sitters’. Join portrait artist Lorna May Wadsworth with two of her former sitters the Rt Rev & Rt Hon Dr Rowan Williams & Neil Gaiman, for what will be a stimulating and fascinating conversation.

This event will take place on Zoom at 6pm on Thursday 29th October 2020.

Spaces are limited, so to avoid disappointment please register here.