CFP: Mapping Urban Changes, Dubrovnik (20-22 Sep 2017), deadline 5 September 2016

The aim of this scientific workshop is to compare and discuss methodologies of visualisation of the results achieved within the urban history research. The intention is to gather researchers from different disciplines, like art and architectural history, urban development studies, geographical history, economic, social and political history and archaeology, who would present their work. We are looking for papers dealing with the physical changes of urban tissue, its buildings or open spaces as well as those investigating the changes of the ways they were used, perceived or governed. The research could be based on archival data, literary sources, old maps and city views or examination of the physical realm. The visualisations of these results realised through analytic maps, especially those made with the use of GIS programs or improved with 3D models are most welcomed, as well as any other methodology applied. The discussion will be focused on possibilities, obstacles, limits and achievements of these methodologies in the improvement of understanding and dissemination of the research results.

The scientific workshop is organized within the project Dubrovnik: Civitas et Acta Consiliorum. Visualizing Development of the Late Medieval Urban Fabric founded by Croatian Science Foundation; see more at ducac.ipu.hr . The papers will be published as e-book at the project web pages by the beginning of the workshop.

Keywords: mapping, visualisation, urban history
Period: Medieval, Early Modern, Modern

Organizers:

Ana Plosnić Škarić and Danko Zelić, ducac project, Croatian Science Foundation

Scientific Committee: Donatella Calabi, Alessandra Ferrighi, Nada Grujić, Ana Marinković, Ana Plosnić Škarić, Danko Zelić

Location: Croatia, Dubrovnik, CAAS
Working Language: English

Abstracts Due to: 5 September 2016: in English, up to 300 words with title; with name, affiliation, address and a CV up to 150 words
Notification of paper acceptance: 25 September 2016

Full Texts Paper Submissions Due to: 31 March 2017: c. 5000 words, in English, Italian, French, German or Croatian

Call for Session Proposal: Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture

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As part of its ongoing commitment to Byzantine studies, the Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture seeks proposals for a Mary Jaharis Center sponsored session at the 52nd International Congress on Medieval Studies, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, May 11–14, 2017. We invite session proposals on any topic relevant to Byzantine studies.
Session proposals must be submitted through the Mary Jaharis Center website (http://www.maryjahariscenter.org/sponsored-sessions/52nd-international-congress-on-medieval-studies). The deadline for submission is April 25, 2016. Proposals should include:
*Title
*Session abstract (300 words)
*Intellectual justification for the proposed session (300 words)
*Proposed list of session participants (presenters and session presider)
*CV
The session organizer may act as the presider or present a paper.
Successful applicants will be notified by May 6, 2016, if their proposal has been selected for submission to the International Medieval Congress.
If the proposed session is approved, the Mary Jaharis Center will reimburse session participants (presenters and presider) up to $600 maximum for North American residents and up to $1200 maximum for those coming abroad. Funding is through reimbursement only; advance funding cannot be provided. Eligible expenses include conference registration, transportation, and food and lodging. Receipts are required for reimbursement.
Please contact Brandie Ratliff (mjcbac@hchc.edu), Director, Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture with any questions.

Call for Papers and Panels: Medieval & Early Modern Festival (17-18 June 2016, University of Kent, Canterbury)

About the Festival

The Medieval and Early Modern Studies Summer Festival, to be held at the University of Kent at Canterbury, is a two-day celebration of all research in the Medieval and Early Modern periods, including the study of religion, politics, history, art, drama, literature, and everyday culture of different nations.

The festival is designed to bring together scholars from a range of disciplines, academic schools and institutions in order to foster conversations, build a greater sense of community, and develop a research network for all masters and PhD postgraduate students and academic staff within the South-East of England.

As a discipline, medieval and early modern studies is inherently interdisciplinary. It encompasses such a length of time and breadth of subjects that scholars and students often find themselves dispersed, situated in different departments and lacking a cohesive identity or space in which to interact. The festival therefore allows many students and staff that may never otherwise encounter one another to share their research and ideas. This event is essential to the building of a strong and supportive postgraduate environment for current and prospective students across the universities.

Click here for Call for papers
Click here for Call for panels – On the Money

This event is jointly sponsored by the Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Studies at the University of Kent, the Consortium for the Humanities of the Arts South-East England, and the Eastern Arc Research Consortium.

British Museum Handling Session: Micro-architecture

In February 2015 Lloyd de Beer and Naomi Speakman kindly permitted Courtauld staff and students to examine micro-architectural objects in the British Museum.

We saw two wonderful ivories with fairly generic Gothic baldachins, along with this extraordinary 10c (?) ivory cylinder with Passion narratives. This 12c censer cover is an especially wonderful example of dozens of similar objects, and later metalwork objects included this 15c Swiss shrine and this early 14c casket with French and English heraldry. Then there was a whole group of seals, including this from Langdon Priory, this remarkable 1322 seal impression from Cottingham Abbey, and this 13c double-sided seal matrix from Scotland. Finally we looked at this very curious lead object showing the Annunciation in an  elaborate architectural setting:

badge

Amongst others, we asked the following questions in relation to these objects:

1) does the object relate to ‘real’ buildings (if so, are these necessarily contemporary, and has this assumption been used to date the object?)
2) Does the architecture carry any specific symbolic/iconographic/representational meaning?
3) Is there evidence for setting out of the architecture (compass points, lines etc), which might reveal the setting out process (and, potentially, the role of drawing)
4) Is scale especially relevant to the object?
5) Might the object feasibly transmit architectural designs (and was it produced in quantity?)?
6) Does the object shed light on relations between masons/metalworkers etc?

In preparation for the session we held a Reading Group focused on the following texts:

  • Achim Timmerman, ‘Multum in parvo: Microarchitecture in the Medieval West, c. 800-1550’, In: Richard Etlin, ed, The Cambridge History of Religious Architecture of the World (forthcoming)
  • Paul Binski, Gothic Wonder. Art, Artifice and the Decorated Style, 1290-1350 (Yale UP, 2014), 121-60.
  • Sarah M. Guérin, ‘Meaningful Spectacles: Gothic Ivories Staging the Divine’, The Art Bulletin, 95: 1, 53-77.
  • François Bucher, ‘Micro-Architecture As the ‘Idea’ of Gothic Theory and Style’, Gesta, 15: 1-2, 71-89.

British Museum Handling Session: Agnus Dei

In November 2015 Lloyd de Beer and Naomi Speakman of the British Museum treated Courtauld staff and students to another handling session, this time of a diverse range of objects with the iconography of the Agnus Dei. The session was kindly led by Irene Galandra Cooper, who is studying the Agnus Dei as part of her PhD, which forms part of the Domestic Devotions project at Cambridge: Domestic Devotions: The Place of Piety in the Italian Renaissance Home, 1400-1600.

Agnus Dei 1

Throughout the Middle Ages and Early Modern period the Agnus Dei iconography was closely associated with the wax discs made from the remains of the Paschal candles at St Peter’s, stamped with the Lamb of God, and distributed by the Papacy as gifts. This 16c print gives a sense of the near-industrial scale of this operation, while a number of Agnus Dei medallions and pendants testify to the apotropaic associations these objects soon acquired. We also looked at this niello plate medallion inscribed with the YHS, a late medieval pilgrim badge, an Agnus Dei seal impression, a reliquary case and 14c signet ring. As ever, it was the moulds that provoked particular discussion:

Agnus Dei 2

The lower of these two, apparently cast in bronze, appears to have a number of low relief moulds in which soft lead could be pressed, presumably to make brooches and badges to be pinned to clothes and hats. This record of the kinds of ephemeral objects that rarely survive raised lots of questions: who would use a mould like this, and what market does it attest to? Did these badges signal political and social affiliations, religious beliefs, or something more superficial? The wonderful fragment of a Wheel of Fortune was thought particularly intriguing.

In preparation for this session we read the following texts:

Lightbown, Chapter 22, ‘Pendants: II’, Medieval European Jewellery, Victoria & Albert Museum, 1992

Cherry, ‘Containers for Agnus Dei’, Through a Glass Brightly: Studies in Byzantine and Medieval Art and Archaeology Presented to David Buckton, ed. C. Entwistle, Oxford, 2003, 171-84

S. Bertelli, Chapter 1, The King’s body : the sacred rituals of power in medieval and early modern Europe; translated by R. Burr Litchfield, Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001.

 

Workshop Reflections: British Museum Handling Session: Becket and Pilgrimage

In January 2016 Courtauld staff and students enjoyed another chance to see some of the BM’s hidden treasures thanks to the kind help of Lloyd de Beer and Naomi Speakman of the BM. This time the theme was the cult of Thomas Becket and other objects associated with pilgrimage

Becket 2 (1)

The BM has dozens of Becket pilgrims’ badges, produced in astonishing variety and throughout the Middle Ages. Most of these examples were dredged up from the river Thames:

13c badge showing Becket’s shrine

14c badge with a bell, inscribed with Thomas’ name

Best of all, the collection includes a number of moulds that are closely linked to badges, such as this one:

Late medieval badge showing Thomas on horseback

Mould for a badge

Or this one:

Becket gloves

Mould for gloves badge

Becket 2 (2)

We also looked at representations of Becket’s murder, from this early 13c Limoges reliquary chasse to this late medieval alabaster, as well as this 15c seal matrix showing Thomas in a in ship and this magnificent 13c seal from Langdon Priory. To finish off the session we also looked at a couple of late medieval prints promoting the shrine of the Beautiful Virgin at Regensburg: one showing the original church, the other the church planned (but never built) for the site.

This was partly an exploratory session for a series of workshops and conferences planned by Lloyd de Beer (UEA/British Museum), Tom Nickson (Courtauld Institute of Art) and Emily Guerry (University of Kent) in the lead up to the anniversary of Becket’s death and translation in 2020.

In preparation for the handling session we read the following texts for a reading group the night before:

Sarah Blick, ‘Votives, Images, Interaction and Pilgrimage to the Tomb and Shrine of St. Thomas Becket, Canterbury Cathedral’, In: Sarah Blick and Laura Deborah Gelfand, eds, Push me, pull you. Imaginative, emotional, physical, and spatial interaction in late medieval and Renaissance art, Leiden, 2011, 21-58
Martina Bagnoli, Holger A. Klein, C. Griffith Mann and James Robinson, eds, Treasures of heaven: saints, relics, and devotion in medieval Europe, Cleveland, Ohio, 2010, pp. 148-61 and catalogue nos 97-102
William D. Wixom, ‘In quinto scrinio de Cupro. A Copper Reliquary Chest Attributed to Canterbury: Style, Iconography, and Patronage’, In: Elizabeth C. Parker and Mary B. Shepard, eds, The Cloisters: studies in honor of the fiftieth anniversary, New York, 1992, 195-228
Jennifer Lee, ‘Searching for Signs: Pilgrims’ Identity and Experience made visible in the Miracula Sancti Thomae Cantuariensis’, In: Sarah Blick and Laura Deborah Gelfand, eds, Push me, pull you. Imaginative, emotional, physical, and spatial interaction in late medieval and Renaissance art, Leiden, 2011, 473-491.

The Constitutions of Clarendon blog also has a useful collection of images of Becket chasse reliquaries and manuscripts

Lecture: The Arts & Science in Early Islamic Spain (15 June, Courtauld Institute of Art)

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Wednesday 15 June 2016 – 3:30 pm – 5:00 pm

Research Forum Seminar Room, The Courtauld Institute of Art, Somerset House, Strand, London, WC2R 0RN

There is a symbiotic relationship between design, art and visual culture, and the exact sciences, which is attested in early scientific objects from al-Andalus and in medieval Arabic texts. In this talk I explore the objects, spaces, and figures that illuminate this relationship, focusing on ‘Abbas Ibn Firnas (d. ca. 887), the celebrated polymath of the Cordoban Umayyad court, and on al-Andalus and its contemporaries between the 9th-11th centuries.

Glaire D. Anderson is a historian of Islamic art of the caliphal period, with a focus on the art and court culture of Umayyad Cordoba. She is the author of The Villa in Early Islamic Iberia (Ashgate, 2013), co-editor with Mariam Rosser-Owen of Revisiting al-Andalus (Brill, 2007), and recent articles on the Islamic west in architectural history, women and the arts of Cordoba, and material culture and caliphal sovereignty.

http://courtauld.ac.uk/event/the-arts-science-in-early-islamic-spain

Summer School: intensive introduction to Latin language and literature of the late antique and medieval periods, Notre Dame University, June 13-July 22

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Summer School: intensive introduction to Latin language and literature of the late antique and medieval periods, Notre Dame University, June 13-July 22, 2016
Apply now! 
This summer, the Medieval Institute at the University of Notre Dame is offering an intensive introduction to Latin language and literature of the late antique and medieval periods (please see the attached poster). In this course, students will
  • learn about developments in medieval Latin (morphology, syntax, vocabulary, orthography and pronunciation)
  • practice close reading and accurate translation of a broad and representative selection of medieval Latin texts, including Latin influenced by another language; administrative Latin; technical texts; scholastic Latin; Latin of various professions; narrative accounts; imitations of classical style; formal styles; rhymed prose; cursus; ornamented styles; rhymed and metric poetry
  • review and practice the principal constructions of classical Latin
  • overcome your anxiety about sight reading
  • be introduced to the history, areas, and tools of medieval Latin philology through active exercises
  • work very hard, and have lots of fun!
The course runs from June 13-July 22. Online registration is open now. Visit summersession.nd.edu for additional information and to register. Graduate students who take Medieval Latin are eligible to compete for the Medieval Academy’s CARA (Centers and Regional Associations) scholarships, which provide full tuition for either course taken for credit. Visit medievalacademy.org for application details.
Should you have additional questions about the course, please contact the instructor, Dr. Andrew Irving, at airving1@nd.edu. Inquiries about registration and summer courses at Notre Dame should be directed to the Summer Session Registrar.

British Museum Handling Session: Master W and Key and late-gothic architectural prints 

an00059980_001_lThanks to the assistance of Lloyd De Beer and Naomi Speakman, both in progress with individual collaborative PhDs at the British Museum, the Courtauld has organised several handling sessions for postgraduate students over the past few years – you can read a report from an earlier session here.
The March session was kindly hosted by the British Museum’s Prints and Drawings department, and focused on Master W and Key (active c. 1465–1490), an anonymous Netherlandish engraver named after the shape of his monogram. Most of the eighty-two extant works by this artist are ornament prints, but he is also known for his engravings of ships, the first known representations of this kind.
Both aspects of the Master’s production were discussed during the handling session, when we had the opportunity to analyze several prints by the artist, including:
While the ships may be connected with the ducal fleet of Charles the Bold of Burgundy, scholars have generally interpreted the architectural prints as patterns to be used by craftsmen in the workshop. Nevertheless, discussion during the session raised many questions on the cost, circulation and market of such early prints. Although a modern perspective may see the printed image as a cheap, mass-produced medium, these early architectural  examples are very complex, and often required the painstaking engraving of more than one plate, printed on multiple sheets. Would such time-consuming creations really have offered a more convenient alternative to the exchange of drawings among workshops? What other reasons may have contributed to the spread of such designs?
Although this remained an open question, consideration of prints such as Alart du Hameel’s Design for a Gothic baldachin  revealed that early architectural prints could be intentionally used to advertise their maker’s expertise in design and geometry: this print features a prominent signature, a mason’s mark, and an abbreviated ground-plan which seems to imply superior technical expertise. The same consummate skill is show in Wenzel von Olmütz’s Elevation of a Gothic Pinnacle with a Hexagonal Ground Plan, although in contrast to du Hameel, Olmütz did not sign his creation, and positioned plan and elevation one above the other, as typical of other Gothic drawings and of the Gothic design process in general.
Other treats of the handling session included Emperor Heraclius entering Jerusalem with the upright True Cross, designed by Alart du Hameel but signed ‘Bosche,’ presumably in an attempt to partake of the painter’s fame; Master ES’ figured alphabet; Albrecht Dürer’s large coloured drawing of a Gothic table fountain.
Objects for the session were selected by Dr Ursula Weekes, Dr Tom Nickson and Costanza Beltrami. We also put together a short list of suggested reading on the theme of late-Gothic architectural prints and alphabets:
Kik, Oliver, ‘From Lodge to Studio: Transmissions of Architectural Knowledge in the Southern Low Countries, 1480–1530.’ In The Notion of the Painter-Architect in Italy and the Southern Low Countries, edited by Piet Lombaerde (Turnhout, 2014)
Waters, Michael, ‘A Renaissance without Order: Ornament, Single-sheet Engravings and the Mutability of Architectural Prints,’ Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 71, no. 4 (December 2002), pp. 488-523
Kavaler, Matt, ‘Gossart as Architect,’ and the entries on The Virgin and Child with Musical Angels (p. 126) and The Malvagna Diptych (p. 136) in Maryan W. Ainsworth (ed.), Man, Myth and Sensual Pleasures: Jean Gossart’s Renaissance: The Complete Works (New Haven and London, 2010)
Boekeler, Erika, ‘Building Meaning: The First Architectural Alphabet’. In Push Me, Pull You: Art and Devotional Interaction in Late Medieval & Early Modern Europe, eds S. Blick & L. Gelfand; E.J. (Brill, 2011), pp. 149-195.

Call for Contributions: Edited Volume ‘After the Carolingians: Manuscript Illumination in the Tenth–Eleventh Centuries’

salzburgpericopes001Call for Contributions: edited volume After the Carolingians: Manuscript Illumination in the Tenth–Eleventh Centuries
Deadline: Jun 1, 2016

A great deal of research remains to be done on the substantial and
wide-ranging corpus of illuminated manuscripts produced in continental
Europe between the late ninth and late eleventh centuries. Whether
tucked away in footnotes or relegated to the status of comparanda, the
extant manuscripts from this difficult period of history — particularly
from the regions of modern-day France and Flanders — rarely receive the
focused attention they deserve. Yet many manuscripts from the tenth and
eleventh centuries have the potential to challenge our understanding of
fundamental issues of historical inquiry, including the nature of
artistic originality, various processes of transmission, the working
relationships between artists, patrons and scribes; even the essential
character and functions of illumination.

We seek papers that offer new perspectives on the culture of
illuminated books produced between c. 900 and c. 1050 outside the
established centers of art-historical focus in Anglo-Saxon England and
the Ottonian Empire. Studies of manuscripts originating beyond the
traditional geographic boundaries of the Carolingian Empire are most
welcome, as are studies that coordinate manuscripts with their physical
environment or with works of art in other media, and studies that
reflect upon relationships of “center and periphery” or questions of
regionalism, problematize the issue of artistic quality, or investigate
connections between tenth–eleventh century manuscripts and illumination
of other periods.

Papers will be collected in a volume to be published in the series
“Sense, Matter and Medium: New Approaches to Medieval Culture” (De
Gruyter). We wish also to propose a session on the topic of the volume
at the Annual Meeting of the Medieval Academy of America (Toronto,
April 6–8, 2017), which will double as a contributors’ meeting.

Submission: Please send an abstract of your proposed contribution (ca. 300 words) and let
us know whether you would be able to attend the MAA conference.
Deadline: June 1, 2016. Please contact us with any questions.

Beatrice Kitzinger (Princeton University, bkitzinger@princeton.edu)
Joshua O’Driscoll (The Morgan Library and Museum,
jodriscoll@themorgan.org)