Call for Papers: ‘Public Space & Community’, Late Antique & Medieval Postgraduate Society, University of Edinburgh, Autumn 2020 Seminar Series, deadline 21 September 2020

The Late Antique and Medieval Postgraduate Society (LAMPS) invites postgraduate students to present their research at our weekly Monday seminars.

LAMPS aims to provide an engaging forum for cross-disciplinary discussion that focuses on the Late Antique and Medieval periods in Europe, the Mediterranean, and beyond. We welcome proposals on the study of these time periods as well as topics pertaining to the reception and perception of the Late Antique and Medieval periods from later sources. Postgraduate students from all disciplines and at any stage of their research are welcome to submit papers.

For the Autumn 2020 semester, LAMPS requests that submissions explore the theme of Public Space and Community. Submissions can explore any idea relating to the theme, whether literal or metaphorical. Possible paper topics include, but are certainly not limited to:

  • Designing communal space
  • lntersectional spaces
  • The inheritance and use of space by post-imperial communities
  • Outliers and alienation
  • Law and order in the public eye
  • Monastic or religious communities
  • Green space
  • Courtly Communities
  • The physical space as a tool for projection of power

Presentations should be around 20 minutes in length and are accompanied by 10 to 15 minutes of discussion and questions. If you are interested in applying, please send a 250-word abstract along with your details and a brief introductory statement about yourself to lampsedinburgh@gmail.com by  21 September 2020.

Speakers will be asked to submit a brief summary of their presentation to LAMPS in order that it may be published as a blog post on our website.

Lectures will take place on Mondays at 6: 15 pm via Blackboard Collaborate, but are subject to change depending on developing social distancing guidance. Please also let us know about any potential scheduling conflicts!

Online Course: Los manuscritos iluminados: historia, producción y descripción, 21 September – 2 October 2020

Please note that this course will be in Spanish.

Illuminated Manuscripts: History, Production and identification.

The course is designed as an introductory to the study of Illuminated Manuscripts from both theoretical and practical viewpoints. The relationship between text and image(s), the history of manuscripts production or the materials and techniques used by scribes and illuminators would be some of the topics of the course. Students will be introduced to the main developments in the history of the illuminated book and to the range of different types illuminated manuscripts: liturgical books, bibles, university books, private books of devotion and so on. Furthermore, they will develop a critical approach to the questions of patronage, function, audience, ownership and production as well as issues of style, meaning and literacy.  The course examines books made in Western Europe between the 4th and 16th centuries.

Furthermore, the course aims to develop the students approaches to databases and internet resources to study illuminated manuscripts providing them key tools to search and identify Digital Medieval Manuscripts. By the end of the course, students will be prepare to describe, present and catalogue medieval manuscripts using manuscript terminology.

The course is organized in 6 modules, divided in two weeks (3 by week). 5 hours by week.

The language of the course is Spanish.

More information can be found here.

Instructor: Dr. Marta Pavón Ramírez

Original Spanish Call for Applicants:

Online Course: Los manuscritos iluminados: historia, producción y descripción.

El curso es una introducción al estudio de los Manuscritos iluminados desde un punto de vista teórico y práctico. La relación texto e imagen, el ámbito de producción de los manuscritos, los materiales y técnicas utilizados por copistas e iluminadores así como sus métodos de trabajo, son algunos de los temas propuestos así como un recorrido por la historia de la miniatura, desde la antiguedad tardía hasta el Renacimiento, analizando en profundidad algunos manuscritos especialmente significativos.

Esta propuesta formativa busca dar a conocer las principales base de datos en línea y recursos en internet relativos al estudio de los manuscritos iluminados dando las claves para la localización e identificación de manuscritos digitalizados. Por último, abordaremos la descripción y catalogación de manuscritos, al igual que el uso de una terminología adecuada, instrumentos esenciales para elaborar políticas de conservación y difusión de nuestro rico patrimonio histórico y bibliográfico, tanto a nivel de usuario como de profesional de la información.

More information can be found here.

Call for Participants: Medieval WaterWorks: A Roundtable, Leeds IMC 2021, deadline 18 September 2020

The last decade has seen a burgeoning critical interest in the study of water in the Middle Ages. Scholars from a range of disciplines have begun to recognise that water is not merely a catalogue of interesting tropes; it is a means or method of communication, a disruptive and radical force, and a vehicle for thinking across time, space, disciplines and languages. It carries us down diverse paths and creates unexpected intersections between people, places and things.

Our intention with this roundtable is to create a laboratory for testing the theoretical and methodological potential of water. Whilst we have lined up some speakers already, we are looking for additional participants to join us in reflecting upon how we can formulate a critical, inclusive, global and interdisciplinary water studies. Our roundtable is open to anyone interested in the study of medieval water, broadly conceived and from across disciplines, and we are particularly interested to hear from early career, minority and precarious scholars.

If you’re interested in participating, please email a short expression of interest to Hetta.howes@city.ac.uk and Bethany.whalley@bristol.ac.uk by 18th September 2020. We warmly welcome creative interpretations, and would especially like to see images, objects or poems which capture your approach to water studies, accompanied by a few lines of explanation.

CFP: Eating Like Orientals in the Medieval Western Imagination, International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo 2021, deadline 15 September 2020

In the early stage of the COVID-19 outbreak, a common practice for many western media was to revisit an old orientalist habit to equate eastern culinary customs to primitiveness, eagerly reporting on Chinese “omnivorous markets” and “culinary adventurism” as a likely cause of the pandemic. Western disdain for extremely omnivorous eastern eating habits is not new to medievalists, nor is it a distinctively modern phenomenon. Such disdain for “oriental” eating habits focuses on the purportedly unclean, unethical, underdeveloped ways of eating *everything*, including whatever is tabooed for a Latin Christian to eat. As Kim Phillips observes, many European traveller-narrators contemptuously comment on the unusual and extreme eating habits of eastern people, being disturbed while yet somewhat fascinated by such exotic eccentricity, whose viewpoints resonate closely with the popular modern perspective on Chinese people as “unnervingly omnivorous.”

This session invites reflections on medieval representations of “exotic” eating habits and their resonance in our time of pandemic, taking into consideration the recent epidemic of orientalist sentiments, assumptions, judgments against *not* “eating like white people,” in today’s terms.

Potential topics include, but are not limited to:

  • Representations of ‘exotic’ food culture
  • Medieval discourses of consumption and edibility
  • Christian food ethics and regulations
  • Religious food practices
  • Biopolitics of race and food
  • Food as medicine, medicine as food

Please submit a 250-word abstract for a 15-20 minute paper by September 15, 2020, using the submission portal (https://icms.confex.com/icms/2021am/cfp.cgi). For further information and questions, please email the contact person for the session, Soojung Choe (schoe@gradcenter.cuny.edu)

Recorded Webinar: Race, Racism, and Teaching the Middle Ages

On 20 July 2020, The Medieval Academy of America hosted the webinar Race, Racism, and Teaching in the Middle Ages. In the wake of recent events and ongoing racially motivated violence, there have been many institutional responses to raise awareness of race and racism in the U.S. and beyond.

This webinar focused on pedagogy and concrete strategies for teaching race and racism in their medieval forms and as they appear in medieval studies. Participants discussed what they do in the classroom and library to approach this complex topic with the goal of engendering ideas and texts that can be put in place as soon as the Fall 2020 academic term.

The webinar was recorded and can be viewed on the Academy’s website here.

The Medieval Academy of America, founded in 1925, is the largest organization in the United States promoting excellence in the field of medieval studies. The Academy publishes the quarterly journal Speculum; awards prizes, grants, and fellowships; and supports research, publication, and teaching in medieval art, archaeology, history, law, literature, music, philosophy, religion, science, social and economic institutions, and all other aspects of the Middle Ages.

Host Conference Institution: 21st Annual Vagantes Conference 2022, deadline 27 September 2020

The Vagantes Conference on Medieval Studies is now accepting applications for our 2022 host institution. The conference is an interdisciplinary graduate student conference focusing on the Middle Ages. It is entirely organized and run by graduate students. Vagantes is a unique opportunity to showcase the Medieval Studies community at your institution, as well as to gain valuable professional development experience in planning and organizing the event, and to meet and interact with top medievalist graduate students.

Applications will be accepted until Sunday, September 27th 2020 and will be reviewed by the Vagantes Board of Directors.

Applications will be discussed at the Annual International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, MI, at which point the Board may have additional questions for the applicants before reaching a decision.

E-mail submissions are required.

Find out more information here.

To apply to host the 21st Vagantes Conference on Medieval Studies, fill out the form below and send it to the Vagantes Board of Directors (vagantesboard@gmail.com). A digital copy of this form is accessible here.

  1. Name of university (may be a joint application with more than one university).
  2. Name of departments, institutes, and student organizations to be involved.
  3. Statement of interest that addresses the following questions:
    1. Why would your school be a good place to host Vagantes?
    2. What resources does your school have available (student interest, funding possibilities, museums, libraries, special collections, etc.)?
    3. Why would your school be a good venue for an international conference (accessibility, accommodations, transportation options, etc.)?
  4. The costs associated with hosting Vagantes have varied over the years, but on average have required an investment of about $10,000. How does your institution plan to raise this sum? Please name the chief source of funding you plan to rely upon to pay for the conference.
  5. Names and institutional affiliations of five graduate students who, by signing, will undertake the serious commitment of time to organize the conference. Please indicate and provide the email address for one of the students who would become the official host representative and immediately take up a three-year position on the Vagantes Board of Directors. You may appoint two students to this post if desired.
  6. Name of a faculty advisor who has agreed to be involved with Vagantes.
  7. Certify that you agree to the conditions listed below.

Applicants must agree to the following conditions:

  1. The conference will be free and registration will be open to the general public.
  2. The conference will run from a Thursday-Saturday in or around March.
  3. The conference will include a keynote by a faculty member from your school on the opening day and a final keynote by a faculty member from the future host school.
  4. The conference will conclude with a final banquet.
  5. Your school will send a faculty member to serve as a keynote at the current host school. You will provide the current host school organizers with the speaker’s name and contact information no later than November 15.
  6. Three graduate students from your school must agree to serve as abstract submission readers in November in the year the conference is hosted and in the following year. The abstract submission review committee is comprised of members from the past host institution, current host, and future host institution.
  7. The host institution representative from your school must agree to serve a three-year term on the Vagantes Board of Directors.
    1. Year 1: the position of Future Host Institution Representative on the Vagantes Board of Directors begins as soon as the new host institution is named (c. June). Conference preparations begin.
    2. Year 2: the position becomes Current Host Institution Representative in May and continues for one year. Conference preparations continue; hosting the event occurs in or around March.
    3. Year 3: in May the Current Host Institution Representative becomes the new Chair of the Vagantes Board of Directors and serves in that capacity until the following May. The Chair is primarily an advisory role. The Chair ensures a smooth transition to the new host institution and supervises the operations of the Vagantes Conference on Medieval Studies and its governing body.
  8. The host school will feature the Vagantes Conference on Medieval Studies seal logo on the conference program and other print and electronic marketing materials.

The Future Host Institution Representative or his/her designee should plan to attend the Board of Directors Meeting at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 2021 (a virtual meeting is possible). Students from the future host institution will be strongly encouraged to present papers at the 2021 conference at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Future Host
TBD, March TBD, 2022

Online Lecture: The Lost Archive: Traces of a Caliphate in a Cairo Synagogue (Wednesday, 9 September, 2020, 12:30pm EST)

Tune in on Wednesday, 9 September at 12:30pm EST for a new lecture is the series Islam in Africa: Material Histories, sponsored by Silsila at New York University. Marina Rustow (Princeton University) will present The Lost Archive: Traces of a Caliphate in a Cairo Synagogue.

The lost archive of the Fatimid caliphate (909–1171) survived in an unexpected place: the storage room, or geniza, of a synagogue in Cairo, recycled as scrap paper and deposited there by medieval Jews. Neglected in favor of Hebrew-script texts from the Cairo Geniza, the hundreds of Fatimid state fragments invite us to reconsider the longstanding but mistaken consensus that before 1500 the dynasties of the Islamic Middle East produced few documents, and preserved even fewer. 

This lecture will consider the life cycle of Fatimid decrees and how they made their way from chancery officials to ordinary scribes—a trajectory that provides a window onto preindustrial archiving practices and documentary ecologies.

Registration for the lecture is required. Please register here.


Marina Rustow is Professor of Near Eastern Studies and Professor of History at Princeton University, where she holds the Khedouri A. Zilkha Chair in Jewish Civilization in the Near East and directs the Princeton Geniza Lab, which brings students and specialists together to decipher and digitize medieval documentary sources in Hebrew and Arabic script. She is the author of Heresy and the Politics of Community: The Jews of the Fatimid Caliphate (Cornell UP, 2008), and of The Lost Archive: Traces of a Caliphate in a Cairo Synagogue (Princeton UP, 2020). Her current research interests include the Indian Ocean trade, the material culture of medieval Cairo, and taxation and fiscality in Fatimid Egypt.

Silsila: Center for Material Histories is an NYU center dedicated to material histories of the Islamicate world. Each semester we hold a thematic series of lectures and workshops, which are open to the public. Details of the Center can be found here.

Above image credit: From Zakarīyā b. Muḥammad al-Qazwīnī, ʿAjāʾib al-makhlūqāt wa-gharāʾib al-mawjūdāt (The wonders of creation and the marvels of existence), Wāsiṭ, 1280 CE. (Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, Cod.arab. 464, fol. 36r).

Online Lecture: The Ringsaker Altarpiece, 21 September 2020, 9:15-16:15 (GMT+2), register by 14 September 2020

The Ringsaker Altarpiece – a masterpiece from Antwerpen 

On September 21, 2020, NIKU welcomes you to a webinar on the altarpiece in Ringsaker, Norway. This is the only known Antwerp altarpiece in Norway.

The altarpiece has been in Ringsaker church since around year 1530, and is still there today. Even though different Antwerp altarpieces have many similarities, the one in Ringsaker has many unique aspects worth exploring.

Program

The full day webinar will include presentations by concervators and art historians from Norway, Denmark, Belgium and The United States, that all have worked on the Ringsaker altarpiece or other Antwerp altarpieces.

A preliminary program can be found here.

Organizers

The webinar is a collaboration between The Norwegian Institute for Cultural Heritage Research and The Department of Archaeology, Conservation and History, University of Oslo. The organizers are paintings conservator Tone Olstad, and art historian Ragnhild M. Bø, which have led the project «Image, Imitation, Indulgence: Netherlandish Altarpieces and Devotional Practices in Denmark-Norway, c.1480-1550»

Register for the webinar here by September 14.

Exhibition: Precious and Rare: Islamic Metalwork from The Courtauld Gallery, Multiple UK Venues 2020-2021

The Courtauld announces rescheduled dates for its UK tour of Islamic metalwork

The Courtauld Gallery is pleased to announce rescheduled dates for its Precious and Rare touring exhibition of ten remarkable pieces of Islamic metalwork dating from the 13th to the 16th centuries.

The UK tour opened at Royal Truro Museum, Cornwall, in autumn 2019 and then travelled to Cartwright Hall Art Gallery, Bradford earlier this year before being temporarily closed in March due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Precious and Rare: Islamic Metalwork from The Courtauld Gallery is due to reopen in Bradford on 28 August and will then travel to the History of Science Museum, Oxford, in October 2020. The final date of the tour will be at the Holburne Museum, Bath, in January 2021, where the objects will be displayed as part of a small, stand-alone exhibition. This national tour is in partnership with the Specialist Subject Network for Islamic Art and Material Culture and supported by Art Fund.

The Courtauld’s Islamic metalwork collection includes some of the finest examples of this intricate craft from modern-day Iraq, Iran, Syria, Egypt and Turkey. The temporary closure of The Courtauld Gallery for a major transformation project has created the opportunity for The Courtauld to share these precious pieces from its collection with museums around the country. The tour also complements The Courtauld’s National Partners Programme which provides unique opportunities for audiences across the UK to engage with The Courtauld’s collection – including in Belfast, Braintree, Coventry, Hull, Preston and Wolverhampton. The Gallery is scheduled to reopen in Somerset House, central London, in 2021.

The Courtauld Gallery’s small but renowned collection of Islamic metalwork was formed by one of the great Victorian art collectors, Thomas Gambier Parry (1816- 1888), to complement his collection of precious medieval and early Renaissance paintings and decorative arts, with which they are normally displayed. Many of the best pieces in the collection have been on permanent display in The Courtauld Gallery since their bequest in 1966, and only a few pieces have ever been on loan before. The metalwork has been cleaned and conserved for the first time since the bequest was made, over fifty years ago.

The most spectacular piece in the collection is the Courtauld Bag, made in Mosul, present-day northern Iraq, for a noble lady of the Persian-Mongol court, around 1300 – 1330. It is recognised as one of the finest pieces of Islamic inlaid metalwork in existence, and is the only surviving object of its kind.

Led by Dr Alexandra Gerstein, The Courtauld Gallery’s curator of sculpture and decorative arts, the touring exhibition will allow museum partners the opportunity to both study and showcase the stories behind these rare works. Dr Gerstein said: “We are thrilled to continue working with our three remaining partners on the Precious and Rare touring exhibition, and that The Courtauld has partnered with such a range of notable organisations. The exhibition provides an opportunity for people across the country to experience and enjoy some of the most treasured art works from The Courtauld’s collection, and to find out more about their fascinating history.”

This important and little-known area of The Courtauld Gallery’s collection offers an opportunity for visitors around the country to learn more about a fascinating area of the arts of Islam. To support this, Dr Sussan Babaie, Reader in the Arts of Iran and Islam at The Courtauld, best known for her extensive research on Persian and Islamic art and architecture of the early modern period, is working with each tour partner to deliver a talk or event for local audiences. Sensory Experience in Islamic Arts, delivered virtually in collaboration with Cartwright Hall Art Gallery in June can still be viewed online.

The Courtauld Research Forum will also host a symposium event in partnership with The Oxford Research Centre for the Humanities (TORCH) in November. More details to be announced soon.

Tour Dates:

More information can be found here.

Webinar: Medieval Freelancing 101, Resources for Independent Scholars

The Medieval Academy of America announces a new webinar series that provides advice for independent scholars and those considering or in the process of pivoting to career paths beyond traditional academe. The series is sponsored jointly by the MAA Committee for Professional Development and CARA (Committee on Center and Regional Associations).

Medievalists employed beyond the professoriate have much to bring to the discussion. Some have built careers in para-academic activities as professional proofreaders, indexers, editors, and translators, while others have gone further afield to work in online publishing, tourism, or publicly oriented scholarship. This two-webinar series will turn to our colleagues to empower fellow medievalists to seek out new employment opportunities using the skills we all share. Both webinars will run for 90 minutes and will include time for questions from the audience.

This series will take place in September. Both webinars are free and open to the public, but pre-registration is required. Click the links below to register. The webinars will be recorded and posted to the MAA YouTube channel.

Session 1: Para-academic Work, September 8, 1–2:30 EDT

Moderator:

Kavita Mudan Finn (PhD Literature, 2010) Independent Scholar; Senior Editor, The Public Medievalist

Register for Session 1

Session 2: Working Beyond Academia, September 22, 1–2:30 EDT

Moderator:

Sarah Celentano (PhD Art History, 2016), Museum Administration (Development and Fundraising)

Register for Session 2

About the Medieval Academy of America

The Medieval Academy of America, founded in 1925, is the largest organization in the United States promoting excellence in the field of medieval studies. The Academy publishes the quarterly journal Speculum; awards prizes, grants, and fellowships; and supports research, publication, and teaching in medieval art, archaeology, history, law, literature, music, philosophy, religion, science, social and economic institutions, and all other aspects of the Middle Ages.