Medieval Art Research

CFP: Gender and Transgression in the Middle Ages (26-28 April 2016)

Deadline: 12 February 2016

We are pleased to announce the call for papers for Gender and Transgression in the Middle Ages 2016, an interdisciplinary conference hosted by the University of St Andrews Institute of Mediaeval Studies (SAIMS). Entering into its eighth year, this conference welcomes participation from postgraduate, postdoctoral and early career researchers interested in one or both of our focal themes of gender studies or more general ideas of transgression in the mediaeval period.

This year’s conference will have two keynote presentations by Dr Stuart Airlie (University of Glasgow) and Professor Caroline Humfress (University of St Andrews). Other speakers include Dr Huw Grange, Dr Rachel Moss and Dr Liana Saif.

We invite proposals for papers of approximately 20 minutes that engage with the themes of gender and/or transgression from various disciplinary standpoints, such as historical, linguistic, literary, archaeological, art historical, or others. This year, the conference will prioritise comparative approaches to the themes of gender and transgression across different time periods and, in particular, different regions. Thus, we strongly encourage abstracts which focus not only on western Christendom, but also the Byzantine Empire and the Islamic world. We also welcome proposals which contain a strong comparative element.

Possible topics may include, but are by no means limited to:

– Emotional history

– Legal Studies: women in the courtroom, gendered crimes, law breaking and law making

– Orthodoxy and Heresy: transgressing orthodox thought, portrayals of religious ‘outsiders’, monasticism, lay religion, mysticism

– Moral transgression

– Homosexuality and sexual deviancy

– Masculinity and/or femininity in the Middle Ages: ideas of gender norms and their application within current historiography

– New approaches and theories: social network theory, use of the digital humanities

Those wishing to participate should please submit an abstract of approximately 250

words to genderandtransgression@st-andrews.ac.uk by 12 February 2016. Please attach your abstract to your email as a Microsoft Word or PDF file and include your name, home institution and stage of your postgraduate or postdoctoral career.

Registration for the conference will be £15. This will cover tea, coffee, lunch and two wine receptions. All delegates are also warmly invited to the conference meal on Thursday 28 April. Further details can be found at http://genderandtransgression.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk as they become available.

Please also follow us on Twitter @standgt and find us on Facebook!

CFP: International Postgraduate Workshop on Medieval Religious Architecture (28th September – 3rd October 2016)

Deadline: 29th of April 2016

After the success of the first workshop in 2015, we are glad to announce that in this year the second International Postgraduate Workshop on Medieval Religious Architecture will take place, again made
possible with the generous support of the Elisabeth und Helmut Uhl Stiftung.

This call for applications addresses postgraduate students as well as recent post-docs of multiple disciplines, whose work focuses on the period between the 9th and 14th century. For them, the workshop strives
to be a platform for the discussion of their research projects related to architecture, mobile and immobile furnishing, as well as questions of use. We encourage architectural and art historians as well as theologians, historians, archeologists or building researchers to apply.

Here, young scholars will receive the chance for a free,
institutionally independent discourse. This discourse, toggling aspects
of each participant´s current research, can evolve in a frame of
multidisciplinary objectives and cognitive interests. The detailed
discussion of questions relating to the content of the research
projects will be complimented by personal encounter and conversation
matter of organization and future career possibilities. The appropriate
space is created by the Buchnerhof, erected 2013 as remarkable creation
of contemporary architecture high above the Etsch-valley in the
mountains of Southern Tyrol.

The workshop will take place between the 28.09. and the 03.10.2016,
there will be 12 participants. Applications of doctoral candidates as
well as post-docs, in German or English, are possible and welcome. We
would kindly ask for the submission of applications until the 29th of
April 2016.

Applications should include a short curriculum vitae and an abstract of
the applicant’s current research project (in pdf format respectively),
including the following:
– PhD topic, a short summary of the main research question, applied
methodology
– Supervisor and scheduled deadline for the completion
– Current progress and issues to be presented/ discussed during the
workshop

In order to prepare a fruitful exchange of ideas, all participants will
receive the abstracts of the other contributions before the workshop.
Each contributor will dispose of one hour of time in total, which can
be allocated to the presentation of the topic and the subsequent
discussion at his/her own discretion.

The estate is located in the mountains, 50 minutes walking distance
from the village of Leifers. The foundation will organize a transport
of the luggage from the train station in Leifers and ensures the
highest possible independence of the event through covering the
expenses of accommodation and meals. Further information on the
foundation can be found here: http://eh-uhl-stiftung.org/

The organizers will be glad to support participants in organizing their
journey (e.g. through car-sharing). Limited travel subsidies will be
available.

After the workshop, a field-trip of several day´s duration to the
medieval churches of the surroundings is intended, during which the
discussion and exchange can be continued and intensified. Expenses for
this field trip will have to be covered by the participants and will
amount to approx. 35 € per night. Applicants are kindly asked to state
in their application, if interested in participating in the field-trip.

Applications should be sent until 29th of April 2016 to:
mittelalterliche-Sakralarchitektur@web.de

‘The Matter of Objects’: Medieval and Renaissance Materiality in Contemporary Conversation (26th May 2016)

‘The Matter of Objects’: Medieval and Renaissance Materiality in Contemporary Conversation

Queen Mary University of London 26^th May 2016

Deadline for Proposals: 15th February 2016.

Following the ‘Material Turn(s)’ of the last few decades the place of objects and their materiality has received invigorated attention within humanities research. Yet, approaches to the material often remain stifled by the abstract ways in which they are approached. In the words of social anthropologist Tim Ingold, the engagement of historians with the material is ‘not with the tangible stuff of craftsmen and manufacturers but with the abstract ruminations of philosophers and theorists.’

This project, culminating in a temporary exhibition, aims to juxtapose Medieval and Renaissance objects with contemporary artistic responses in order to challenge traditional narratives of the role of objects in academic research. Taking current humanities research as the launch pad for investigation the event aims to create an open space for conversation between researcher and practitioner. Proposed Medieval and Renaissance objects, and their narratives, will serve as inspiration for artists to create a response piece. The contemporary response will be displayed during an exhibition at Queen Mary, University of London, where a launch event will encourage artists and researchers to come together to discuss their processes of deconstruction, interpretation and creation.

The exhibition will be accompanied by short but critical introductions to each piece, from historian and artist, with room for questions and thought. By creating a space for dialogue with practitioners who approach and experience their knowledge of the material from a different angle, we might open the way for reinvigorated readings of objects from the past. To allow a greater reach and extend the life of the project the temporary exhibition will be supported by an online exhibition that will serve as an on going discussion space.

We are seeking proposals from doctoral or early career researchers in history/art history/literary studies who work on Medieval, Renaissance or Early Modern period and would be prepared to write a synopsis of their research project (accessible to a general audience) and select an object that can serve as a gateway into their research. If your research does not generally use objects (but you have an object in mind) we would still like to hear from you, as we are keen to hear about less traditional integration of objects into histories of the period.

Please contact us if you have further questions and send proposals of 250 words, including an image of your chosen object, its location, dimensions, and material (as far as they are known) and a brief biography to: matterofobjects@gmail.com by 15^th February 2016.

The event is supported by the Centre for Renaissance and Early Modern Studies at Queen Mary University of London.

CFP: Imperialis Ecclesia (Rome, 30 Jun-1 Jul 16)

Bibliotheca Hertziana, Max Planck Institute for Art History, Rome, June
30 – July 1, 2016
Deadline: Feb 15, 2016

“Imperialis Ecclesia”: Frederick II Hohenstaufen and sacred architecture between Italy and Germany
International Conference
organised by Francesco Gangemi and Tanja Michalsky

Art under Frederick II is commonly held to be mainly a secular phenomenon, a product of imperial authority in open conflict with the Church. In fact, the activity of Frederick as a builder of castles is well known, while religious buildings are doubtless a secondary aspect
of his patronage. As a consequence, the artistic evidence related to the emperor and belonging to the sacred sphere is among the most disregarded and controversial aspects of his reign. Paradoxically, the sacred character of the sovereign has long been the subject of debate in research on the imperial ideology of Frederick.
Many historical, philosophical and philological studies – from
Kantorowicz’s messianic interpretation to Abulafia’s demystification
and to more recent contributions – have developed around the concept of
an «imperialis Ecclesia» (according to Pier della Vigna) as a
fundamental theme in the historiography on Frederick.
Religious buildings are neglected in these studies, both because of the
difficulty in identifying sacred architecture explicitly related to the
emperor and because of the emperor’s assumed indifference to religious
patronage. Despite the reticence to acknowledge a Frederician sacred
art, however, it is indisputable that a medieval sovereign needed
temples in order to represent his own authority and as an instrument of
ideological and political propaganda.

This conference aims to define the role of Frederick II for the sacred
architecture of his time in Italy and Germany. For that matter it
investigates the dialectic between the two countries as a reflection of
his dual identity – Holy Roman Emperor and King of Sicily – and
considers his Norman and Hohenstaufen heritage.
The primary purpose of the symposium is to define Frederick’s concern
for religious buildings, their functions in the representation of the
imperial power or vice versa the possibility that this function was not
fulfilled, by discussing their historical and political contexts. At
the same time, we want to discuss the role of Frederick and the
Hohenstaufen with respect to the spread of Gothic style in Italy and
Germany against the background of the great changes that took place in
architecture and sculpture during the first half of the 13th century.

Especially encouraged are presentations that refer to the following
themes:
– the sacred character of the emperor in Frederick’s imago publica and
the contexts where it was eventually manifested
– the religious buildings commissioned by Frederick, the buildings that
attracted his interest, and those that were influenced by his
political, artistic and territorial strategies
– the manifestation of imperial power in the church: the use of its
space for liturgy, coronation ceremonies, burials, and assertions of
the sovereign’s presence
– the relationship between church and palace: palatine chapels and
churches used by the Emperor
– the foundations belonging to religious orders supported by Frederick
II, such as the Teutonic Order and the Cistercians
– Frederick’s policy concerning sacred art in comparison to his Norman
and Hohenstaufen predecessors

Proposals for talks should be sent in the form of an abstract (max 1
page) with a brief CV by February, 15th, 2016 to gangemi@biblhertz.it

CFP: Mutual Imaginings of Europe and the Middle East 800-1700 (3rd December 2016)

Beyond Borders:
Mutual Imaginings of Europe and the Middle East (800-1700)
Barnard College’s 25th Biannual Medieval and Renaissance Studies Conference
Saturday, December 3, 2016
Call for Papers
Recent scholarship is challenging the stark border between Europe and the Middle East during the long period between 800-1700. Rather than thinking of these areas in isolation, scholars are revealing the depth of their mutual influence. Trade, war, migration, and scholarly exchange connected Europe and the Middle East in ways both cooperative and adversarial. The distant world was not only an object of aggression, but also, inextricably, of fantasy and longing. Jewish, Muslim, and Christian thinkers looked to each other to understand their own cultural histories and to imagine their futures. Bringing together art historians, literary scholars, historians, scholars of the history of science, and scholars of religious thought, this interdisciplinary conference will explore the real and imaginary cultural interchanges between Europe and the Middle East during their formative periods. The conference will feature plenary lectures by Professors Nancy Bisaha of Vassar College, and Nabil Matar of the University of Minnesota.
This conference is being organized by Professors Rachel Eisendrath, Najam Haider, and Laurie Postlewate of Barnard College.
Please send an abstract (with title) of approximately 200 words and CV to lpostlew@barnard.edu<mailto:lpostlew@barnard.edu>. Presentations should be 20 minutes. Deadline: April 10, 2016.

Medieval conference double bill at The Courtauld (19-20 Feb 2016)

Many of our readers will be interested in this double bill of conferences at The Courtauld Institute of Art next month: the annual colloquium, followed by a conference in honour of the late Richard K. Morris.

The annual postgraduate colloquium is in its 21st year, and allows current research students both at The Courtauld and beyond to present their research. This year’s conference on Friday 19th February investigates the theme of viewership. Entry is free, but please register your place and read more at the official webpage.

Medieval-image[1] Programme:
09.30 – 10.00 Registration
10.00 – 10.10 Welcome
Session 1: Viewership: More than ‘seeing’
10.10 – 10.30 Miguel Ayres de Campos (The Courtauld Institute of Art): Seen / unseen: on the
mirabilis as visual object
10.30 – 10.50 Laura Stefanescu (University of Sheffield): Heavenly Music in the Garden of Love: Sound, Emotion and Devotional Practice
10.50 – 11.10 Sophie Kelly (University of Kent): ‘Seeing’ the Trinity Through the Late Medieval
Illuminated Book
11.10 – 11.30 Discussion
11.30 – 12.00 TEA / COFFEE BREAK (provided in Seminar room 1)
Session 2: Whence the Viewer?
12.00 – 12.20 Anna Konya (Central European University, Budapest): Decorating the Sanctuary. The Iconography, Function and Reception of Eucharistic Imagery in the Late Gothic Wall
Paintings of Transylvania
12.20 – 12.40 Lydia Hansell (The Courtauld Institute of Art): Witnessing the Nativity
12.40 – 13.00 Krisztina Ilko (University of Cambridge): Desire to see: the medieval viewer and the hagioscope
13.00 – 13.20 Discussion
13.20 – 14.30 LUNCH (not provided)
Session 3: The Many Medieval Viewers
14.30 – 14.50 Anya Burgon (University of Cambridge): Viewing the Mill in Medieval Art c.1100-1250
14.50 – 15.10 Emily Savage (University of St Andrews): Apocalyptic Heroines and Villainesses:
Expanding Traditional Visual Narratives for the Medieval Female Viewer
15.10 – 15.30 Petr Jan Vinš & Lucie Kodišová (Charles University, Prague): Portable Altar – From a Status Symbol to a Forgotten Curiosity
15.30 – 15.50 Discussion
15.50 – 16.20 BREAK (the student café will be available for those who wish to buy tea/coffee, cakes)
Session 4: Viewing the Past: Medieval vs Modern Perspectives
16.20 – 16.40 Ann Adams (The Courtauld Institute of Art): An assertion of honour, but to whom? The cenotaph of Philippe Pot, Chevalier de l’Ordre de la Toison d’Or et de Saint-Michel
16.40 – 17.00 Stephanie A. Azzarello (University of Cambridge): Music of the Spheres: Seeing and Hearing the Choir Books of San Michele and San Mattia on Murano
17.00 – 17.20 Imogen Tedbury (The Courtauld Institute of Art): (Re)constructing the medieval fresco: Lorenzetti chapter house fresco fragments from Siena to London
17.20 – 17.50 Discussion
17.50 – 18.00 Closing remarks: Joanna Cannon (The Courtauld Institute of Art)
18.00 RECEPTION

Richard-K.-Morris-at-Kenilworth-Castle-655x1024[1] The next day, Saturday 20th February, the same lecture theatre will host a memorial conference for Richard “Mouldings” Morris, who died last year. The programme features Morris’ colleagues and students, as well as early-career researchers influenced by his methods. The conference is organised by the British Archaeological Association along with the The Ancient Monuments Society, and tickets are £16 (£11 concessions), and are available on The Courtauld’s site. The BAA also has a number of free places available for students, please contact Richard Plant for more information.

Programme:
09.15 – 09.45 REGISTRATION
09.45 – 10.00 Welcome
SESSION I: Introduction and Approaches to Reconstruction
10.00 – 10.30 Nicola Coldstream (Independent scholar): Richard Morris and the rescue of Decorated
10.30 – 11.00 Linda Monckton (Historic England): Fact and fiction and the late medieval shrine of St Amphibalus
11.00 -11.30 Miriam Gill (Leicester University): The painted scheme of the Warwick Chapel,
Tewkesbury Abbey
11.30 – 12.00 TEA/COFFEE BREAK (provided)
SESSION II: Conception
12.00 – 12.30 James Alexander Cameron (The Courtauld Institute of Art): Modes of modo et forma in the fourteenth-century English parish church
12.30 – 13.00 James Hillson (University of York): St. Stephen’s Chapel, Westminster and St
Augustine’s Abbey, Bristol: iterative design, prolonged construction and innovation
during the 1290s-1340s
13.00 – 13.30 Peter Draper (Birkbeck College): The Bhojpur Line Drawings: some medieval Indian plans, elevations and moulding profiles from the 11th century
13.30 – 14.30 LUNCH (provided for the speakers only)
SESSION III: Workshops and the Archaeology of Buildings
14.30 – 15.00 Lucy Wrapson (Hamilton Kerr Institute): Workshop identities and moulding profiles on East Anglian rood screens
15.00 – 15.30 Jenny Alexander (Warwick University): Ciphers on walls: are these marks apotropaic?
15.30 – 16.00 Jackie Hall (cathedral archaeologist, Peterborough): Building an icon: the west front of Peterborough Cathedral
16.00 – 16.30 TEA/COFFEE BREAK (provided)
SESSION IV: Commemoration
16.30 – 17.00 Andrew Budge (Birkbeck College): St Mary’s Warwick: a visual record of family
history?
17.00 – 17.30 Richard Marks (Cambridge University): Wills and windows: documenting fenestration in late medieval England
17.30 – 17.40 Appreciation
17.40 – 18.00 Concluding remarks
18.30 RECEPTION

All are welcome, and we hope to see you at as many papers as possible.

Annual Hammer Art History Lecture: “Art and Papal Politics in Twelfth-Century Rome” (UCLA January 28, 2016)

UCLA Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies

Annual Hammer Art History Lecture: “Art and Papal Politics in Twelfth-Century Rome”

Dale Kinney (Eugenia Chase Guild Professor Emeritus in the Humanities and Research Professor, Bryn Mawr College)

Art and architecture were important vehicles of communication for medieval patrons, including popes. In this lecture, Professor Kinney presents a range of papal images thought to convey political messages, some of which caused international scandals in their own day while others are mentioned only for being pretty. Professor Kinney explores both the twelfth-century context of this art as well as the twentieth-century context that encouraged political interpretations over doctrinal or devotional ones.

Advance registration not required. No fee. Limited seating.

The annual Hammer Art History Lecture is made possible by the Armand Hammer Endowment for the UCLA Center for Medieval & Renaissance Studies.

Thursday, January 28, 2016 at 5:00 PM in Royce 314

CFP: Imaging Utopia – New Perspectives on Northern Renaissance Art (11-13 January 2017)

Illuminare – Centre for the Study of Medieval Art (University of Leuven), Belgium, 11-13 January 2017

Deadline: Friday, April 1, 2016

INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE

The twentieth symposium for the Study of Underdrawing and Technology in Painting will be held in Leuven in the context of the major exhibition In Search of Utopia. In 1516, Thomas More (1478- 1535), humanist, statesman and ambassador of Henry VIII of England, published his book Utopia at the renowned printing house established by Dirk Martens in the university city of Leuven. To mark the quincentenary of this milestone in Europe’s intellectual and cultural history the city of Leuven and University of Leuven are mounting In Search of Utopia.

The conference will focus on sixteenth-century Northern art, with special emphasis on painting, sculpture, manuscripts and mixed media, from a variety of approaches. We have extended the original, more technical scope of the symposium to include art historical and iconological perspectives as to reveal the multifarious nature of the sixteenth century. After successful editions on Rogier van der Weyden and Jan van Eyck among others, this symposium will focus on the period in-between the ‘Flemish Primitives’ and Pieter Bruegel the Elder. The latter will be the topic of the XXIst edition hosted by KIK-IRPA (Brussels) in 2018.

The symposium calls for papers on art-technical research on Northern Renaissance art based on innovative imaging and analytical techniques (Imaging Utopia, Utopian Imaging). Contributions that explore artist or workshop practice in painting, illumination, sculpture and mixed media objects are welcome. The aim of the conference is to consider how new imaging and analytical techniques can contribute to a better understanding of the arts during this highly dynamic period. Special attention will be paid to mixed media in sixteenth-century art by focussing on the Mechelen Enclosed Garden research and conservation project. In honour of this project, Mechelen will be the venue of the first day of the conference. We also aim to contextualize the artistic impact of intellectual shifts and expanding worldviews that emerged during the first decades of the sixteenth century (Humanism, Visual Culture and the Pursuit of Knowledge). This shift not only occurred in the minds of the humanists and intelligentsia, but can also be seen in the visual culture of this period. Poor life conditions and political instability engendered the desire to search for ideal places and perfect social circumstances. These phantasms had complex and multi-layered repercussions on the visual arts, such as the popular representations of ‘pleasant places’, loci amoeni (Locus Amoenus). However, these internal desires also resulted in ‘external’ expressions: the physical search for paradise on earth, such as the exploratory expeditions to the New World (Terra Incognita). These new horizons shaped the artistic representation of the ‘other’ and the ‘unknown’. At the same time, the artistic search to redeem these deeply-rooted desires produced visual antitypes of this kind of Utopian thinking, resulting in the most horrific scenes in which reality and fantasy are no longer antonyms (Dystopia).

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

New perspectives on technical art history and the Northern Renaissance

New imaging and analytical tools and techniques applied on Northern Renaissance art
The challenges of exploring, preserving and imaging sixteenth-century mixed media, with special emphasis on the Enclosed Gardens
Visual Digital Humanities and Northern Renaissance art

New perspectives on Utopian thinking and the art of the Northern Renaissance

Major intellectual, scientific and religious shifts in the sixteenth century and their repercussions on visual culture and society
The (re)creation of earthly and heavenly paradises in Northern Renaissance art
The search for ‘untouched’ places in the New World
Critical evaluations of representations of the ‘other’ and the ‘unknown’ in the visual arts
Visual antitypes of Utopian artistic expressions

The partners of the XXth symposium are Illuminare – Centre for the Study of Medieval Art (University of Leuven), Erfgoed Mechelen (Museums & Heritage Mechelen) Université catholique de Louvain (UCL), KIK-IRPA (Brussels) and the Flemish Research Centre for the Arts in the Burgundian Netherlands (Musea Brugge).

We welcome 20-minute papers that engage with these varied, but interconnected topics of research and, equally important, explore recent technological research methods, fresh methodologies and theoretical frameworks. We wish to encourage an integrated approach of technical art history, art history and iconology. The official language of the conference is English. Proposals of no more than 300 words and a brief CV should be submitted to illuminare@arts.kuleuven.be before Friday, April 1, 2016.

The proceedings of the conference will be published by Peeters Publishers.

For more information, please visit the conference website:

https://imagingutopia.wordpress.com/

Seminar Series: Murray Seminars at Birkbeck, Spring 2016

This term promises an interesting and varied programme. Our speakers are:

Zuleika Murat, sharing discoveries about Guariento and the Tomb of Doge Giovanni Dolfin in Santi Giovanni e Paolo, Venice (Wednesday 20^th January)
Tom Nickson, looking at the significance of light and its subsequent obscuration in gothic buildings (Wednesday, 10^th February)
Paula Nuttall, on dance and low-life subjects in drawings by Verrocchio (Monday, 7^th March)

All of this term’s seminars are held at 5pm in the Keynes Library at Birkbeck’s School of Arts (Room 114, 43, Gordon Sq., London, WC1H OPD). A break at 5.50pm is followed by discussion and refreshments. We look forward to seeing you there.

Details of individual events can be found at http://www.bbk.ac.uk/events-calendar

CFP: Discipline and Excess (Cambridge Friday, April 15, 2016)

DISCIPLINE AND EXCESS

A Graduate and Early Career Conference, Faculty of English, University of Cambridge

Friday, April 15, 2016

CFP Deadline: 1st February 2016

We invite paper proposals for Discipline and Excess, a conference which seeks to consider questions relating to boundaries and their transgression until 1750. The theme invites diverse interpretations of “discipline”—moral, religious, cultural, aesthetic, generic, geographic—in papers which explore the realms of penance and perfection, challenge the orderliness implicit in systems of knowledge, or examine the nature of punishment and retribution.

The conference is aimed at early career scholars and graduate students from a range of academic fields. Discipline and Excess is organized by the M.Phil programs in Medieval, Renaissance, and 18th-Century Literature at the Faculty of English. Our external respondent will be Dr. Helen Barr, Associate Professor at the University of Oxford.

Papers should be a maximum of 20 minutes. Please email 250-word abstracts (text only, no attachments) by 1st February 2016 to disciplineandexcess2016@gmail.com.

Possible topics may include:

Crime and Punishment

Bounds of the Mind

Feast and Fast

Disciplining the Body

Exceeding the Page

Intertextuality

Sin, Play, Transgression

Rhetorical Limits

Disciplinary Boundaries

Material

CFP Discipline and Excess Cambridge April 2016-2