Medieval Art Research

PhD Funding: PhD Fellowship History of the Book, University of Turin, deadline 26 June 2020

A special fellowship is being given to a student holding a university degree from outside Italy who is willing to pursue a PhD program in History of the Book conceived as part of a research program on Legal Texts and/or Law books produced between Medieval and Early Modern age. All kind of perspectives can form the focus of the research: any aspects relating to the book as object or any author/texts. The student will be provided with a special tool for the recording of the data collected during the research. Training in the use of the tool is part of the program. The original deadline for applying (June 4th) has been extended to June 26th.

For information: https://en.unito.it/postdegree/phd/archaeological-historical-and-historical-artistic-sciences

Or write to: mariaalessandra.panzanellifratoni@unito.it.

Job: Teaching Associate in the History of England Before the Norman Conquest (Fixed Term), University of Cambridge, deadline 21 July 2020

Department/ Location: Faculty of English, CAMBRIDGE

Salary: £30,942-£40,322

Published: 22 June 2020

Closing Date: 21 July 2020

The Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic wishes to appoint a Teaching Associate in the History of England Before the Norman Conquest from 1 September 2020.

The Teaching Associate will be expected to teach, examine, and supervise dissertations on topics related to the History of England Before the Norman Conquest, at both undergraduate and MPhil levels, and to contribute to other departmental teaching and examining as appropriate. Applicants should have a good first degree and a doctorate in a relevant subject area. It is expected that applicants will have experience of successfully delivering and developing teaching at University level, including lectures, seminars and small group teaching, and the ability to work as part of a team.

Two references are required, and applicants should ask their referees to send their reports to appointments@english.cam.ac.uk by the closing date.

Informal enquiries about the post may be directed to Dr Richard Dance, Head of Department (hod@asnc.cam.ac.uk). Enquiries concerning the appointments procedure and related matters may be made to Vicky Aldred (appointments@english.cam.ac.uk).

The closing date is midnight GMT on Tuesday 21 July and Interviews are planned for late July/early August 2020. It is expected that the interview will be conducted virtually either by Microsoft Teams or Zoom.

The funds for this post are available for 12 months in the first instance.

Click the ‘Apply’ button below to register an account with our recruitment system (if you have not already) and apply online.

Please quote reference GG23238 on your application and in any correspondence about this vacancy.

The University actively supports equality, diversity and inclusion and encourages applications from all sections of society.

The University has a responsibility to ensure that all employees are eligible to live and work in the UK.

Further information

Further Information

CFP: Gender and Death in the late middle ages and early modernity, Renaissance Society of America 67th Annual Meeting, deadline 1 August 2020

This is a session for the Renaissance Society of America 67th Annual Meeting in Dublin, Ireland on 7–10 April 2021.

Call for proposals on how the category of gender survived, disappeared or was transformed in contact with death in the late medieval and early modern period.

Proposal of how the differentiation based on the categories male/female was maintained, effaced or subsumed within other contemporary categories when dealing with dead bodies, their cult, conservation, etc. Discussions of how Laqueur’s one-sex model is supported or undermined by social practices that compensated for the dead bodies’ lack of agency to “perform” or “do gender.”

Studies of wills, funeral procedures, burials, relics, anatomical dissection, representations of death and afterlife etc. are some of the documents and practices that can be analyzed in the proposal.

Send 200 word proposal by August 1 2020 to Enrique Fernandez, enrique_fernandez@umanitoba.ca

University of Manitoba

Seminars: Online talks and lectures from The Churches Conservation Trust, every Thursday throughout June and July 2020

The Churches Conservation Trust’s lectures are all free to get involved with and we Livestream them via our Facebook page, this allows you to really engage with the talk and to submit your questions live. These lectures are recorded and will be available to watch afterward. Scroll down to find a list of previous lectures.

Find out more here.

Upcoming Lectures

Thursday 25th June at 1pm – Uncommon Prayer – The Tudor Chapel Royal and the High Church tradition, talk by Revd Canon Anthony Howe

In the 16th century, the Chapel Royal was both at the heart of the Ecclesiastical Establishment as the personal chapel of the Supreme Governor, but at the same time very much outside it, even for a time, maintaining, along with the Royal Colleges of Westminster and Windsor, a form of liturgy that appealed to foreign dignitaries and appalled native puritans in equal measure. This became increasingly important as, under the new Scottish monarch of the joint kingdoms, the Chapel’s influence broadened beyond that of the Court, to the national church, providing a gold standard for how reformed catholic worship ought to be. Despite its huge influence, the Chapel Royal remains something of an enigmatic institution which deserves to be better understood. Canon Anthony Howe, who as one of the Chaplains is a member of the current Chapel Royal will introduce some of the paradoxes that have been part of its life since the reformation, and how it played such a huge part in what became the great religious debate that divided the nations to the point of Civil War.

The Revd Canon Anthony Howe was born in Suffolk and educated in Ipswich, at the same school as Thomas Wolsey. He graduated in Music at The Queen’s College, Oxford before being ordained. Prior to becoming Chaplain in September 2015, he served curacies in Newbury and Barnsley and was for nine years the Vicar of Staincliffe in West Yorkshire. As Chaplain of Hampton Court Palace’s Chapel Royal he is responsible for serving HM The Queen in the Chapels Royal, alongside undertaking services for residents and staff of the palace. His ministry will also extend to palace visitors and regular worshipers.

Thursday 2nd July at 1pm – The Business of Saints, talk by Dr Emma J. Wells

Give me my scallop-shell of quiet, My staff of faith…My scrip of joy…And thus I’ll take my pilgrimage.

These lines used by John Bunyan in The Pilgrim’s Progress, reveal, quite clearly, the importance of pilgrimage and journeying to visit the relics of saints throughout history. Affecting all walks of life from the lowly peasant to gregarious monarch, these were not only arduous journeys but metaphors for the progress of life from birth to death and from earth to heaven. In this talk, we will discover how the saints came to be such an important aspect of the parish church—and thus how pilgrims and their peregrinations impacted the buildings’ development and evolution over time.

This talk is given by Dr Emma J. Wells. Dr Emma is an Ecclesiastical and Architectural Historian specialising in the late medieval and reformation parish church/cathedral, the senses, pilgrimage, saints as well as built heritage more generally. She is the Programme Director of the PGDip in Parish Church Studies in partnership with the CCT at the University of York. Her book, Heaven On Earth: The Lives & Legacies of the World’s Greatest Cathedrals, is to be published by Head of Zeus in Autumn 2021.

Thursday 9th July at 1pm – Martin Travers and Back to Baroque, talk by Michael Yelton

Martin Travers (1886-1948) was one of the leading church furnishers and stained glass artists of his generation.

His personal life was complicated but he managed to attract a primarily Anglo-Catholic clientele, particularly in the years after the First World War (when church furnishers were busy as never before or since) even though he was married to a divorcée and had lost his faith (or most of it) during the First World War. He also designed a very large number of memorials to those lost during the War when he himself had been a conscientious objector.

As time went on, his work broadened and the Back to Baroque Movement, which had begun about 1911 as an attempt to make the Church of England look less Anglican and more like the Counter-Reformation, ran its course. Perhaps because of his personal life and his association with Anglican Papalists, he did not receive the prestigious commissions which his talent merited. Then, shortly before his death he was commissioned by HM the Queen to design an altar set for Jersey to commemorate its liberation. He was also asked to prepare a scheme for the enormous east window in the lady chapel of Ely Cathedral, but his design, which would have crowned his career, was shamefully rejected.

Michael Yelton, until he retired earlier this year, was a Circuit Judge in East Anglia. Prior to taking up that appointment he was in practice at the Bar for 25 years and also taught law for some time at Corpus Christi College. He has written extensively on modern Anglo-Catholic history and architecture and on other subjects and organises the Anglo-Catholic History Society’s publication programme and its trips and walks to places of interest. He has visited virtually every piece of work by Travers in this country and some of the few abroad. He has written a comprehensive book on him, entitled Martin Travers: His Life and Work, which was published by Spire Books in 2016.

Thursday 16th July at 1pm – The Ringing Isle: An introduction to bells in Britain, talk by Gareth Davies

An introductory canter across the centuries, exploring aspects of church bells and bellringing? How did Britain come to have ‘bells so many and so tuneable’ (Thomas Fuller, 1640)? What purposes did they serve? What powers were they believed to have? And how are they faring today?

Gareth Davies is a postgraduate researcher in history at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge. He is currently completing a thesis on the ‘business of bellringing’ – exploring the relative importance of profit and pleasure to ringers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. He has been a bellringer himself for over forty years, and his nearest church with bells is in the care of the Churches Conservation Trust. He currently serves as a member of the History and Archives group on the Central Council of Church Bellringers.

Thursday 23rd July at 1pm – Uncovering the Parish Church’s Naughty Bits, talk by Dr Emma J. Wells

Gazing at the inside or outside of an historic church, your eyes are likely to encounter strange beasts, frolicking figures and twisted foliage staring back at you from doorways, windows, friezes, corbel tables, roof bosses and stained glass – although plenty are just hidden enough to fool the eye. What are these strange images? Hidden messages and tongue-in-cheek depictions were actually widespread throughout medieval churches. Was the period simply rife with satire or did these etchings and carvings hold deeper meanings? Here, we will explore some of the most curious examples.

Previous Lectures

Our lectures are all free to watch and enjoy, we even record them for you to enjoy at a future date or if you can’t join us live. Do consider making a donation here of whatever amount you feel comfortable making if you are enjoying these talks.

Thursday 18th June at 1pm – Contextualising Carved Cadaver Memorials in England, talk by Dr Christina Welch

This talk explores the carved cadaver memorials in England. It places them in their theological and vernacular religious context, as well as providing a little information on where they sit in relation to images of the dead in medieval culture, and their connection to the body. It also touches on how they may have been sculpted. A few of the examples will be explored in some detail and the two at Winchester Cathedral will conclude the talk. There’ll be lots of images and the talk will take an inter-disciplinary approach to a very unusual form of English mortuary art.

This talk is given by Dr Christina Welch, Senior Fellow in the Department of Theology, Religion and Philosophy at The University of Winchester. Dr Christina is a leading authority on late medieval carved cadavers, she recently developed a dedicated website exploring those found in England, Wales and Scotland dating from c. 1425 to 1558, as well as carved cadavers found in Ireland. Find out more about late medieval carved cadavers. Dr Christina is also the Programme Leader for the MA in Death, Religion and Culture at The University of Winchester.

Watch the lecture here

Friday 29th May at 1pm – Oak Apple Day – Celebrating the only Saint to have been canonised by The Church of England, talk by Fr Charles Card-Reynolds

Do you know much about Oak Apple Day which takes place on 29th May each year? Did you know that King Charles I is a saint? Through this fascinating talk, explore the history of the day along with why King Charles the Martyr is regarded as such and what he did to earn this title.

This talk will is given by Fr Charles Card-Reynolds, Chaplain to The Society of King Charles the Martry and Parish Priest at St Bartholomew’s on Stamford Hill

Watch the talk here

Thursday 4th June at 1pm – Did Henry VIII really “break” the Church?, talk by Dr Emma J. Wells

When we think of the pre-Reformation parish church, prior to King Henry VIII’s supposed “stripping of the altars”, the image conjured is often of an arena of visual delights; filled to the brim with all the smells and bells of traditional Catholicism—a highly sensory type of worship that offered attractions to the eyes and ears, above all. This stands in sharp contrast to the often austere, suppressed perspective of sixteenth-century Protestantism, with its focus on the Word of God through text, prayer-books, and vernacular scripture. We tend to think of the post-Reformation parish church as an austere devotional environment, devoid of the images, relics, incense, music, vestments, tastes, and textures of late-medieval religion. But, how true is this picture? And was Henry VIII, who we love to blame for the changing of our church in the sixteenth century, really the perpetrator? This lecture will unravel the reality of his role—and who might actually be responsible.

Watch the lecture here

Thursday 11th June, 1pm – Images on the Edge – churches, manuscripts, and the world of Chaucer’s Japes, talk by Professor Paul Binski

Medieval England was famous for its marginal art – bizarre, funny and playful images crowd the borders of illuminated manuscripts and peek out at us in parish churches. But what were they for? Did they have deeper political meanings or were they there to amuse?

This talk is given by Professor Paul Binski FBA. He is Professor of the History of Medieval Art at Cambridge University. He has written and lectured extensively on the art and architecture of Western Europe in the Gothic period. After achieving his PhD in History of Art from Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge in 1984, he stayed on as a Research fellow until 1987. He has since taught at Princeton, Yale, Manchester, but returned to a post at Cambridge in 1995.

His publications include Gothic Wonder: Art, Artifice and the Decorated Style 1290-1350 (2014), which won 2016 the Historians of British Art Book Award for Exemplary Scholarship on the Period before 1800; and Westminster Abbey and the Plantagenets (1995) which won the Longman-History Today Award.

He is a Fellow of the British Academy, the Society of Antiquaries, and of Caius College, Cambridge. He gave the Paul Mellon Lectures, 2002-2003, at the National Gallery, London and Yale University. He was Associate Editor of the periodical Art History, 1992-1997, and is presently serving as a Foreign Advisor for the International Center of Medieval Art, The Cloisters, New York. An enthusiastic musician, organist and harpsichordist, in his spare he chairs a charity devoted to propagating performance knowledge of organ music, the Cambridge Academy of Organ Studies.

Watch the lecture here

New Publication: Architecture of the Islamic West: North Africa and the Iberian Peninsula, 700–1800, by Jonathan M. Bloom

An authoritative survey situating some of the Western world’s most renowned buildings within a millennium of Islamic history.

Some of the most outstanding examples of world architecture, such as the Mosque of Córdoba, the ceiling of the Cappella Palatina in Palermo, the Giralda tower in Seville, and the Alhambra Palace in Granada, belong to the Western Islamic tradition. This architectural style flourished for over a thousand years along the southern and western shores of the Mediterranean—between Tunisia and Spain—from the 8th century through the 19th, blending new ideas with local building practices from across the region.

Jonathan M. Bloom’s Architecture of the Islamic West introduces readers to the full scope of this vibrant tradition, presenting both famous and little-known buildings in six countries in North Africa and southern Europe. It is richly illustrated with photographs, specially commissioned architectural plans, and historical documents. The result is a personally guided tour of Islamic architecture led by one of the finest scholars in the field and a powerful testament to Muslim cultural achievement.

Jonathan M. Bloom was the Norma Jean Calderwood University Professor of Islamic and Asian Art at Boston College and the Hamad bin Khalifa Endowed Chair of Islamic Art at Virginia Commonwealth University.

You can pre-order here.

Fellowships: Paris x Rome Fellowship, Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max-Planck-Institut für Kunstgeschichte and the German Center for Art History – Institute of the Max Weber Foundation (DFK Paris), deadline 15 July 2020

The Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max-Planck-Institut für Kunstgeschichte and the German Center for Art History – Institute of the Max Weber Foundation (DFK Paris) annually offer six-month research grants, allowing fellows to spend three months in each of the archives and/or libraries of Rome and Paris, exchange ideas with the institutes’ researchers, and investigate transnational, art-historical perspectives in France and Italy.

The Paris x Rome Fellowship is embedded in the respective research activities of both institutes and actively participates in them: at the Bibliotheca Hertziana, the fellowship ties in with the Rome Contemporary initiative and research group, examining the art of the modern and contemporary period in Rome; at the DFK Paris with the epistemological debate on art relations during the cold war.

Pre-docs and post-docs in art history and neighboring disciplines are invited to apply. The Paris x Rome Fellowship includes reimbursement of travel costs, a monthly stipend of at least 1.700€/ month, and access to the resources as well as integration into the research initiatives of both institutes. The application with curriculum vitae, list of publications, project description with bibliographic references and work plan in individual PDF files can be written in German, French, Italian or English. Competency in French and Italian is required. The Paris x Rome fellowship is an in-residence program.

Le Centre allemand d’histoire de l’art (DFK Paris) – institut de la fondation Max Weber – et la Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max-Planck-Institut für Kunstgeschichte – proposent conjointement une bourse de recherche de six mois pour l’année 2021. Celle-ci doit permettre d’effectuer des séjours de recherche respectifs de trois mois dans des fonds d’archives ou de bibliothèques à Paris et à Rome, d’échanger avec les scientifiques des deux instituts et de se familiariser avec les approches transnationales de l’histoire de l’art en France et en Italie. La bourse Paris x Rome s’inscrit dans les axes de recherches majeurs des deux instituts et dans leur programme d’activités scientifiques : ainsi, à la Bibliotheca Hertziana, elle se rattache à l’initiative Rome Contemporary et à son groupe de recherche qui étudie l’art moderne et contemporain à Rome ; au DFK Paris, elle est reliée à l’analyse épistémologique des relations artistiques pendant la guerre froide. Les doctorants et postdoctorants en histoire de l’art et d’autres disciplines voisines sont invités à postuler.

La bourse Paris x Rome inclut le remboursement des frais de voyage, une aide financière pour couvrir le coût de la vie d’un montant d’au moins 1.700 € mensuel, ainsi que l’utilisation des ressources des instituts et l’intégration dans leurs projets de recherche.

Les dossiers de candidature devront comprendre un CV, une liste des publications, une description du projet avec bibliographie et un plan de travail comme PDFs séparés. Ils pourront être rédigés en allemand, français, italien ou anglais. De bonnes connaissances en italien et en français sont requises. La bourse s’accompagne d’une obligation de résidence sur les lieux des instituts.
Les candidatures peuvent être téléchargée jusqu’au 15 juillet 2020 sur le site suivant: https://recruitment.biblhertz.it

Prof. Thomas Kirchner
Direktor Deutsches Forum für Kunstschichte
Hôtel Lully
45, rue des Petits Champs
F-75001 Paris

Prof. Dr. Tristan Weddigen
Direktor Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max-Planck-Institut für Kunstgeschichte
Via Gregoriana 28
IT-00187 Rom

Paris x Rome Fellows

Débora Alcaine (2020)
Projekt: Porter-Camnitzer’s studios: print as resistance (1964–1978)

Vincenza Benedettino (2019/2020)
Projekt: Werner Haftmann Leiter der Neuen Nationalgalerie in Berlin. Wechselausstellungen und Ankaufspolitik (1967 – 1974)

Elena Blázquez (2019)
Projekt: Der Bildungs- und Berufsweg der spanischen Regisseurin Helena Lumbreras in Italien während der sechziger Jahre

All the information can be found here.

CFP: ‘Lexicographic Studies of Arts’ Session at The Renaissance Society of America Annual Meeting 2021, deadline July 15 2020

This panel aims to bring together coordinators of digital projects – completed or in progress – around the lexicon and the scientific edition of texts of artistic or technical literature, with researchers who have adopted this terminological approach to analyze in an innovative way well known or unpublished texts, related to the production, the practice of the arts and interpretative theories derived from practice and which marked the history of taste. The papers will aim to provoke discussions about the method, contributions and perspectives of the lexicographic approach in the artistic field, in an interdisciplinary logic, in order to federate language historians, digital humanities specialists and art historians.

The use of digital textual analysis tools has marked a profound renewal of studies on artistic lexicography in different languages, which has led to the creation and the putting online of numerous databases that have made available and usable wide sets of texts related to art. Digitization, indexing and marking simplify the search for occurrences in large corpora and make it possible to study translations, the treatment of literary motifs and the lexicological characteristics of texts, which are in this way made available to the scientific community.

Submission Guidelines

Interested participants should send an abstract (200 words) and CV to Anna Sconza (anna.sconza@sorbonne-nouvelle.fr) and Margherita Quaglino (margherita.quaglino@unito.it), by July 15, 2020

For more information, click here.

Research Workshops: Venice Virtual Summer Camp on Digital and Public Humanities, 6-10 July 2020

Venice Virtual Summer Camp on Digital and Public Humanities, Online, July 6 – 10, 2020

It was with great disappointment that we had to cancel the first Venice Summer School in Digital and Public Humanities due to the coronavirus emergency. All the more, we are now happy to announce the first Venice Virtual Summer Camp on Digital and Public Humanities to take place from 6 – 10 July 2020. It is a condensed version of the original training programme, transformed and adapted to the online modality and the circumstances of the Covid-19 pandemic. As a positive side effect, a large number of seminars and presentations can now be offered without registration and free of charge as open events. Other training sessions are restricted to a number of participants and places have been reserved for the successful applicants of the originally planned Summer School in Venice.

The virtual summer camp is organised by the Venice Centre for Digital and Public Humanities 1 and includes four different thematic strands:
(1) Digital Textual Scholarship,
(2) Digital and Public History,
(3) Digital and Public Art History,
(4) Digital Archaeology and its Public.

Classes will be delivered by the colleagues from the centre and other expert scholars from internationally renowned institutions. We are most grateful to everyone being actively involved in the realisation of an outstanding programme, and especially to our keynote speakers Elena Pierazzo (University of Tours) and Fabio Vitali (University of Bologna).

For more information, see the Virtual Summer Camp Website: https://vedph.github.io/summercamp

Contact: vedph@unive.it

Dr. Barbara Tramelli
Digital Art Historian
Venice Centre for Digital and Public Humanities
Ca’ Foscari University, Venice

Job: Digital Humanities Scientist, Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max Planck Institute for Art History, Rome

The Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max Planck Institute for Art History in Rome is a leading center for research in the history of art. As part of its recent expansion into digital and computational research in the humanities, it is looking to recruit a:

Digital Humanities Scientist

The full-time post will be offered for an initial period of two years, with the prospect of becoming a permanent position.

The role includes

creating and developing new digital research projects, international collaborations and grant proposals
leading the digital components of research projects across the institute
actively participating in methodological discussions of the digital humanities in international conferences and in the institute’s own scientific programming
managing the implementation of new, forward-looking technical solutions for the digital humanities
identifying and developing technical methods and tools for digital scholarship
training and consulting early-career researchers

The ideal candidate will have

a PhD (or equivalent research experience), preferably in computer science, digital humanities, art history, visual studies or a related discipline
strong interdisciplinary research interests, i.e. an excellent technical background and a deep understanding of research questions in the humanities
experience in the development and management of research projects
a high degree of organisational, team-working and communication skills
excellent written and verbal English; some knowledge of German and/or Italian is welcome

We offer

a highly competitive salary
payment according to the German labour agreement for public services (TVöD EG 14) in foreign countries if conditions are met for eligibility
relocation or expatriate allowances if conditions are met for eligibility
flexible working hours and partial remote working possibilities
a wide choice of training and career development programs offered by the Max Planck Society
excellent experience and development opportunities for an academic career, including within the Max Planck Society
a collaborative working environment at the heart of the Bibliotheca Hertziana’s DH Lab; which includes a large-scale digitization project, other Scientists and Postdoctoral Fellows in the Digital Humanities, and full-time DH specialists in the Publications Department, the Library, and the Photographic Collection
a well-equipped workplace in the historic center of Rome, within easy reach of the train station and airport
the opportunity to take part in international research projects and collaborations, e.g. through participation in the Consortium for Open Research Data in the Humanities and the Digital Visual Studies research project hosted by the University of Zurich

The Max Planck Society is committed to gender balance and seeks to increase the number of women in areas where they are underrepresented and hence encourages women to apply. It is also committed to increasing the number of employees with disabilities and therefore encourages applications from qualified candidates with disabilities.

The call will remain open until filled. To apply for the position, please upload and submit your application via the institute’s recruitment portal. Please include the following in your application:

your CV
a cover letter, describing your motivation and personal qualifications
a description of your past and future research interests
samples of your research work and/or publications
names and full contact details of two referees

For administrative queries, please contact Mrs. Brigitte Secchi, Head of Administration, at secchi@biblhertz.it. For academic-related queries, please contact Leonardo Impett, Ph.D., Digital Humanities Scientist, at impett@biblhertz.it.

All the information can be found here.

Call for Submissions: Rutgers Art Review, deadline 15 October 2020

Rutgers Art Review, a journal of graduate research in art history, hereby invites all current graduate students, as well as professionals who have completed their doctoral degrees within the past year, to submit papers for its 38^th edition.

Submissions are due to rutgersartreview@gmail.com by October 15 October 2020.

Find out more here.