Medieval Art Research

CFP: Vagantes 2015 Medieval Graduate Student Conference (University of Florida, February 2015)

Call for Papers:
Vagantes 2015 Medieval Graduate Student Conference
Gainesville University, Florida, February 19-21, 2015
Deadline: 3 November 2014

Vagantes, North America’s largest graduate student conference for medieval studies, is seeking submissions for its 2015 meeting at the University of Florida, February 19-21.

Since its founding in 2002, Vagantes has nurtured a lively community of junior scholars from across the disciplines. Every conference features thirty papers on any aspect of medieval studies, allowing for exciting interdisciplinary conversation and the creation of new professional relationships between future colleagues. Vagantes travels to a new university every year, highlighting the unique resources of the host institution through keynote lectures, exhibitions, and special events. Out of consideration for graduate students’ limited budgets, Vagantes never charges a registration fee.

The 2015 conference will feature exciting keynotes. Dr. Linda Neagley, of Rice University, will open the conference with: ‘Architectural counterpoint: Juxtaposition & opposition as a visual strategy in the Late Middle Ages.’ Dr. Nina Caputo of the University of Florida will close with a discussion of the unique challenge of transforming medieval history into a graphic novel. The conference will also feature an exhibition of medieval bestiaries: ‘The Beast in the Book,’ presented by Dr. Rebecca Jefferson of the Isser and Rae Price Library of Judaica, and a roundtable session with University of Florida faculty on teaching the middle ages from a global perspective.

Several travel awards will be granted to the best papers in Jewish, Byzantine, and women’s studies. See the Vagantes website for further details: www.vagantesconference.org/travel-awards.

Graduate students in all disciplines are invited to submit a 300-word abstract on any medieval topic along with a 1-2 page C.V. to organizers@vagantesconference.org by November 3, 2014.

For further information, please visit the conference website.

CFP: Nunneries in Medieval Europe: New Historiographical and Methodological Approaches (Kalamazoo 2015)

Call for Papers:
Nunneries in Medieval Europe: New Historiographical and Methodological Approaches
Special Sessions at the 50th International Congress on Medieval Studies
Kalamazoo,Michigan, 14-17 May 2015
Deadline: 15 September 2014

Although in the last two decades a large amount of research has pointed out different significant issues regarding female monasticism in Europe, partly overcoming the previous lack of studies, many of them still rely on preconceptions, with a lack of both critical reading and revision and a gender perspective.

In these sessions we aim to address different issues of recent scholarship on female monasticism, questioning some oversimplified and idealised interpretations given by traditional historiography, and redefining some particular points. We will cover a wide timeframe, from the High to the Late Middle Ages (950-1500ca), and this will allow us to consider the evolution and changes in spirituality and liturgy, the gender roles, the relationships of nunneries with their environment, and the consequences of all this in art and architecture.

The greater regulation of monasticism and Treaties and Councils of Central and Late Middle Ages involved outstanding alterations in the roles of religious women, as they tried to undermine women authority and independence, imposing a more strict control over the administration and religious life. Likewise, the reform of the religious orders at the end of the Middle Ages insisted also in these restrictions. Nevertheless, we will discuss how religious women managed to overcome this gender limitations, and affirmed their authority taking control over the administration, legislation, liturgy, relationship with the environment and also the artistic production and commission.

Papers dealing with all these issues are welcome.

Please send your title and abstract (250 words), together with a short CV, to Mercedes Pérez Vidal mercedespvidal@gmail.com and/or Laura Cayrol Bernardo laura.cayrolbernardo@ehess.fr by September 15, 2014.

CFP: Sharing the Holy Land: Perceptions of Shared Sacred Spaces (London, June 12-13 & Leeds, July 6-9, 2015)

Call for Papers:
Sharing the Holy Land: Perceptions of Shared Sacred Spaces
International Medieval Congress, University of Leeds, 6-9 July 2015
Deadline: 12 September 2014

A symposium, Sharing the Holy Land: Perceptions of Shared Sacred Space in the Medieval and Early Modern Eastern Mediterranean will be held at The Warburg Institute, in London on 12-13 June 2015, featuring keynote speakers, Prof. Bernard Hamilton, Prof. Benjamin Kedar, and Prof. Ora Limor. See http://warburg.sas.ac.uk/events/colloquia-2014-15/sharing-the-holy-land/ for information.

Following on this, three sessions are being organized for the International Medieval Conference to be held at Leeds on 6-9 July, 2015. The three sessions seek to address how both Western pilgrims, and the indigenous Christian, Jewish, and Muslim Levantine populations perceived the sharing of religious shrines with other faiths. Of particular interest is how this sharing was described and explained in contemporary accounts and how this influenced the knowledge of other faiths among the Semitic religions. These sessions will focus on the period from c.1000 to c.1500, addressing the changing political context in the Levant and its influence on the sharing of sacred space.

Please send proposals for papers (title & 100 words abstract) to Jan Vandeburie at sharingtheholyland2015@gmail.com before 12 September 2014.

Lecture Series: British Archaeological Association Annual Lecture Series, London, Autumn 2014

1 October 2014*
Friary biographies, urban fabric and the excavation legacy in England and Wales
Deirdre O’Sullivan, School of Archaeology and Ancient History, University of Leicester

The lecture will be preceded by the Association’s Annual General Meeting. It will be followed by a reception to launch the latest publication in the BAA Conference Transactions series – Medieval Art, Architecture and Archaeology in Cracow and Lesser Poland.

5 November 2014
Please note: Teas will be served and the meeting will take place at the Linnean Society in Burlington House

Reginald Tayolor essay medal lecture
The Function and Iconography of the Minstrels’ Gallery at Exeter Cathedral
Dr Gabriel Byng, Cathedral and Church Buildings Division, Church of England

3 December 2014*
‘Barbarous rude things.’ Paintings in the collection of the Society of Antiquaries of London: some new observations
Bernard Nurse FSA, Dr Pamela Tudor-Craig FSA and Dr Jill A Franklin FSA

Workshop: Catastrofi e ricostruzioni nei centri storici italiani (Florence, 15 September 2014)

Workshop:
Catastrofi e ricostruzioni nei centri storici italiani
Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut
15 September 2014

organised by Carmen Belmonte, Elisabetta Scirocco and Gerhard Wolf

Le recenti catastrofi sismiche in Abruzzo e in Emilia hanno ancora una volta mostrato la vulnerabilità del patrimonio monumentale italiano. Nonostante gli interventi istituzionali, il lavoro e l’attività scientifica dei professionisti impegnati sul campo, molteplici sono, a distanza di anni, le questioni irrisolte relative alla ricostruzione di centri storici danneggiati, ma non per questo annientati dal sisma.
L’emergenza da catastrofe è stata più volte affrontata in Italia nell’ultimo secolo. Ma quali sono stati nel passato e quali sono oggi i principi e le linee guida da adottare nella ricostruzione?

Il Workshop del KHI, a conclusione dello Studienkurs dedicato a L’Aquila, allargherà la prospettiva di indagine ad altri centri storici colpiti da catastrofi naturali. Il coinvolgimento di studiosi impegnati in difesa del patrimonio culturale italiano offrirà un’occasione di confronto sui temi legati alla tutela e alla conservazione, e di riflessione sull’impegno civile e sulla responsabilità etica dello storico dell’arte in situazioni di emergenza.

PROGRAMMA
Lunedì 15 settembre

15:00
Gerhard Wolf
Introduzione

15:10
Carmen Belmonte – Elisabetta Scirocco
L’Aquila. Dal progetto all’esperienza dello ‘Studienkurs’

15:30
Cristiana Pasqualetti
Fare storia dell’arte all’Aquila prima e dopo il sisma

16:00
Valentina Valerio
Istantaneità e lunga durata: danni sismici e ricostruzioni nell’Italia dei terremoti

16:30 Pausa

17:00
Tomaso Montanari
Com’era e dov’era: perché?

17:30
Marco Ciatti
L’OPD e i danni da castastrofi al patrimonio culturale: problemi, esperienze e risultati

18:15
Salvatore Settis
Conclusioni

For further information, see http://www.khi.fi.it/aktuelles/veranstaltungen/veranstaltungen/veranstaltung542/index.html

Call for Papers: Holy Heroes of Reform: Saints and their Roles in Medieval Reformation Movements, from Late Antiquity to the Protestant Reformation (Leeds 2015)

Call for Papers:
Holy Heroes of Reform : Saints and their Roles in Medieval Reformation Movements, from Late Antiquity to the Protestant Reformation
International Medieval Congress, University of Leeds, 6-9 July 2015
Deadline: 15 September 2014

Whether involved in local reformations of monastic houses, larger-scale regional reformations such as the Anglo-Saxon Benedictine Reform and the Cistercian movement, or the global Protestant Reformation, throughout the medieval period saints played a variety of roles as monastic and ecclesiastical institutions cleaned house. This session seeks papers that will explore the myriad ways in which saints – including ex- and would-be saints – might be implicated in the many reform movements of the Middle Ages. Papers from a wide array of disciplines, including art history, music history, literary studies, economic history, etc will be considered, and researchers taking an interdisciplinary or cross-cultural approach will be particularly welcome.

Papers should be 20 minutes in length, delivered in English. Proposals including abstracts of about 250 words and a CV should be sent by 15 September to Kathryn Gerry ; email is preferred: kbgerry@gmail.com but hard copy proposals will also be accepted : Kathryn Gerry, Assistant Professor of Art History, Memphis College of Art, Gibson Hall, 1930 Poplar Ave, Memphis TN 38104, USA. Informal enquiries are also welcome.

Call for Essays: Melusine’s Footprint: Tracing the Legacy of a Medieval Myth (edited volume)

Deadline: 6 January 2015

While the late 14th c French prose romance by Jean d’Arras arguably remains the earliest and most-translated version of the story of Melusine—in which he envisions her as a foundress of the powerful Lusignan family—the figure of the fairy woman cursed with a half-human, half-serpent form traveled widely through the legends of medieval and early modern Europe. From Thüring von Ringoltingen’s German iteration of 1456, which gave rise to the popular chapbook, and related folktales that brought Melusine decisively to the European medieval imaginary, Melusine’s variants surface in countries and centuries beyond. One finds her entwined in the ancestry of several noble houses across Europe; a Melisende ruled as Queen of Jerusalem; and the philosopher Paracelsus writes of melusines as water sprites in search of a soul by means of human marriage. Regal serpent women proliferate in carvings and paintings decorating churches, castles, villas, and public buildings throughout Europe, and a cri de Mélusine, in the story the signal of her castle’s changing fortunes, entered the language as a common phrase. Today one finds Melusine in film, novels, comic books, the Starbucks logo, and as a character in the video game Final Fantasy. In short, the figure of Melusine, often compared to ancient goddesses and other fantastic creatures with serpentine forms, was and remains a powerful, multivalent symbol condensing the fears, myths, and cultural fantasies of a historical period into a potent visual image.

We seek to assemble a volume of essays that examine the impact and legacy of the figure of Melusine in art, history, literature, and fields beyond. We envision a collection that charts the evolution of and investigates the many representative instances of this figure over time and space, with analyses that give consideration, in whole or in part, to the following questions:

What particular valence does the figure of the half-serpent Melusine hold for the time, place, and media in which she appears? How has the figure changed over time, and what forces have contributed to these changes?
How does the particular venue in which Melusine appears articulate a cultural approach to and embodiment of female power and its exercise?
How do the various installations of Melusine deal with the transgressiveness of her hybrid form, and the transformations which are an integral part of her story?
What about this figure resonates across time and space, and what meanings herald a particular historical moment?
What can Melusine teach us about reading history (or art, or indeed any sort of cultural artifact) and remaining open to the ways in which readers continually recreate meaning each time a story is retold?

While any and all analyses that focus on Melusine will be given full consideration, essays that approach Melusines outside the work of Jean d’Arras are particularly welcome. We invite methodologies that are historically researched or theoretically grounded as well as descriptive in nature. Please send a proposal, including a short list of projected sources, of 500-800 words along with a very brief CV to Misty Urban atmru4@cornell.edu by January 6, 2015. Final essays of 6-25 pages will be expected by December 31, 2015.

Conference: Out of the Margins: New Ideas on the Boundaries of Medieval Studies, University of Cambridge, 19-20 September 2014

DAY 1:
Friday, 19th September 2014
Room GR 06/07, Ground Floor, English Faculty, 9 West Road, Cambridge

8.30 – 9.00 Registration

9.00 – 10.00 Plenary Session

The Peripheral Centre: Writing Literary History on the ‘Celtic Fringe’
Dr Máire Ní Mhaonaigh (Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic, University of Cambridge)

10.00 – 11.00 Authoritative Margins: The Battle for Ideas

“Margins toward the centre”: Bernard Silvestris and the Exegesis of Natura
Dr Jason Baxter, Assistant Professor, University of Notre Dame & Wyoming Catholic College

From Margins to Frames: The Transmission of Visual Formulas in Byzantine Post-iconoclastic Illuminated Books
Dr Giovanni Gasbarri, Postdoctoral Researcher, Sapienza University, Rome

11.00 – 11.30 Tea/ Coffee will be served in the Social Space

11.30 – 1.00 Transgressive Margins: Are they Subversive?

The Margin and Its Commonplaces: Art History, Medieval Marginalia, and the Allure of Transgression
Dr Joana Antunes, Lecturer, University of Coimbra

Mouth as Margin: Orality and Oral-Figuration in English Romanesque Sculpture
Caroline Novak, MA Candidate, York University, Toronto

An ‘Other’ No More? Performative Utterances and the Containment of False Conversion in Chaucer’s ‘Second Nun’s Tale’ and ‘Man of Law’s Tale’
Danielle Sottosanti, PhD Candidate, Fordham University

1.00 – 2.00 Lunch (please list any dietary requirements on your registration form)

2.00 – 3.30 Reading the Margins: Status and Resonance for Interpreters

What is a Medieval Paratext?
Charlotte Cooper, DPhil Candidate, University of Oxford

Seeking the Sacred within the Secular: A Study of the Aspremont-Kievraing Psalter’s Marginalia
Katherine Sedovic, DPhil Candidate, University of Oxford

The Castle of Perseverance’s Stage Plan as a Medieval Concordance Diagram
Elisabeth Trischler, MA Candidate, University of Leeds

3.30 – 4.00 Tea/ Coffee will be served in the Social Space

4.00 – 5.45 Neo-medievalism: The Relationship of the Medieval to the Modern

Greek-style Bindings for Western Collectors: Books on the Edge of Cultural Identity
Anna Gialdini, PhD Candidate, University of the Arts, London

Place, Placement, and Paratextuality in Petrarch’s Avignon
Dr Jennifer Rushworth, Junior Research Fellow, University of Oxford

Swimming With the Mainstream: Some Folkloric Thoughts on the Medieval Mermaid
Dr Seana Kozar, Research Associate, University of Bristol

CGI, Borders and Spaces Between
Dr Lesley Coote, Lecturer, University of Hull

All participants are invited for drinks at: The Anchor Pub Silver Street, CB3 9EL
An informal dinner follows drinks

DAY 2:
Saturday 20th September 2014
Room GR 06/07, Ground Floor, English Faculty, 9 West Road, Cambridge

9.00 – 10.00 Plenary Session

“Chaucer at the Edge: Middle English and the Rhetorical Tradition”
Professor Helen Cooper Faculty of English, University of Cambridge

10.00 – 11.15 Performing the Margins

Just Left of Centre: How Images and Music in the Gradual of Gisela von Kerssenbrock Gave the Nuns of Rulle a Central Role in the Margins
Stephanie Azzarello, PhD Candidate, University of Cambridge

Women in the Margins: Women Singing the Mass in 10th Century Essen
Ekaterina Chernyakova, PhD Candidate, University of Cambridge

Pragmatic Addiciones to a Liturgical Reference Text
Dr Matthew Salisbury, Lecturer, University of Oxford

11.15 – 11.45 Tea/ Coffee will be served in the Social Space

11.45 – 1.00 Women on the Margins: Rethinking Roles

Weaving from the Margins: Self-Image and the Work of Sisters in a Late Medieval Dominican Convent
D. Esther Kim, MA Candidate, University of Leeds

Slippages and Stoppages: Saint Thais and the Problem of Female Embodiment in ‘Ancrene Wisse’
Madeleine Pepe, MPhil Candidate, University of Cambridge

Were women on the margins? Eucharistic Praxis and Female Piety in Medieval Irish Vernacular Hagiography
Julianne Pigott, PhD Candidate, University of Cambridge

1.00 – 2.00 Lunch (please list any dietary requirements on your registration form)

2.00 – 3.30 Geographic and Social Margins: Peoples on the Edge

Comic Narrative and Community Order in ‘The Tale of Colkelbie Sow Pars Prima’
Caitlin Flynn, PhD Candidate, University of St Andrews

Sounds of Silence or Noisy Nonsense? Edgy Laughter in Medieval Scotland
Florence Hazrat, PhD Candidate, University of St Andrews

Saint Maurice and the Other Crusaders: Africa During the Crusades
Adam Simmons, MA Candidate, Kings College London

3.30 – 4.00 Tea/ Coffee will be served in the Social Space

4.00 – 5.00 Making Margins: The Work of Scribes

Into the Margins: Addition and Emendation in the Black Book of Carmarthen
Myriah Williams, PhD Candidate, University of Cambridge

The Lady and the Dog: St Edith of Wilton and the Prancing Quadruped on Folio 49 Verso of MS Vercelli, Biblioteca Capitolare, CX VII
Professor Richard North, University College London

5.00 – 6.00 Plenary Session

“Stylistic Effects and Bodily Health: A more than Marginal Connection”
Professor Mary Carruthers, NYU and All Souls College, University of Oxford

10th Anniversary Marginalia Conference Dinner at: The Michaelhouse Café, Trinity Street, CB2 1SU. Drinks in the Chancel from 6.30 for Dinner at 7.30.

This conference celebrates the tenth anniversary of Marginalia, the journal of the graduate-led Medieval Reading Group at the University of Cambridge. We are generously supported by the Cambridge Faculty of English, St. John’s College, Cambridge, and an AHRC conference grant. To learn more, please visit our website at www.marginalia.co.uk and our conference website www.outofthemargins.co.uk, find us on Facebook at facebook.com/outofthemargins or follow us on Twitter: @ootmargins.

For more information on how to register, see also www.outofthemargins.co.uk

CFP: Mediterranean Studies Association (Athens, May 27-30, 2015)

Call for Papers:
Eighteenth Annual International Congress of the Mediterranean Studies
University of Athens, 27-30 May 2015)
1 February 2015

The Eighteenth Annual International Congress of the Mediterranean Studies Association will be held on May 27-30, 2015, at the School of Theology, University of Athens, in Athens, Greece. Proposals are now being solicited for individual paper presentations, panel discussions, and complete sessions on all subjects related to the Mediterranean region and Mediterranean cultures around the world from all historical periods. The official languages of the Congress are English and Greek. But complete sessions in any Mediterranean language are welcome.

Following an optional walking tour of Athens, the Congress will open with a plenary session and reception on the evening of Wednesday, May 27. Over the next three days, 150-200 scholarly papers will be delivered before an international audience of scholars, academics, and experts in a wide range of fields. A number of special events are being planned for Congress participants that will highlight the unique cultural aspects of Athens.

Sponsors of the congress include the Mediterranean Studies Association, the University of Athens, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, University of Kansas, Utah State University, and the Institute for Mediterranean Studies, Busan University of Foreign Studies, Korea.

Guidelines for Submission of Proposals

1. You may submit a proposal for an individual paper presentation, a complete session, or a round table panel on any Mediterranean topic and theme. The typical session will include 3 or 4 papers, each lasting twenty minutes, a chair, and (optionally) a commentator. (For examples of paper, roundtable panels, and session topics, and the range of subjects, see the programs from previous congresses.)

2. Submit a 150-word abstract in English for each paper, and a one-page CV for each participant, including chairs and commentators, as well as each participant’s name, email, regular address, and phone number. Proposals for complete sessions or roundtables need to include the chair’s name. Only ONE paper proposal per person will be accepted.

3. Deadline: The deadline for submissions is February 1, 2015. We will, however, continue to accept late submissions on a case by case basis after this deadline.

4. If you are giving your paper in a language other than English, please let us know and give us the title of your paper in that language as well as in English.

5. The MSA does not allow papers to be read in absentia.

6. Proposals for papers and/or sessions must be submitted through the MSA website: https://www.mediterraneanstudies.org/

Membership and Congress Registration: All accepted participants must be 2015 members of the MSA as well as register for the Congress no later than February 1, 2015. Late registrations will be available until March 31, 2015. Please be advised that those who have not registered by April 1, 2015, will be removed from the program.

Publications: After the congress, you are encouraged to submit your revised, expanded paper for consideration for publication in the Association’s double-blind, peer-reviewed journal, Mediterranean Studies, published by Penn State University Press.

If you have questions, please contact Ben and Louise Taggie at medstudiesassn@umassd.edu, and Geraldo Sousa at Sousa@ku.edu

Call for Papers: A Companion to Seals in the Middle Ages (Brill’s Companions to Medieval Sources)

Decoding Medieval Sources (Brill’s Companions to Medieval Sources)
A Companion to Seals in the Middle Ages

Medieval seals were material and visual statements of identity, power, agency, and legitimacy that could operate locally or traverse great geographic expanses to assert individual or corporate authority. The importance of the seal in medieval culture cannot be underestimated. This inter-disciplinary, edited volume seeks essays analyzing seal design, production, meaning, usage and reception in the Middle Ages. As a whole, the volume will critically engage with the historiography of seals as well as highlight new approaches to understanding seals across time and space with emphasis on Europe, the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem and Byzantium c. 1100-1500. Essays therefore must include historiographical, regional and thematic explorations of medieval seals. Scholars from a range of disciplines, such as but not limited to History, Art History,Numismatics, Archaeology, Cultural and Visual Studies, are invited to contribute new and innovative examinations of select seals or seal types in context. Essays should appeal to the specialist as well as students of medieval history. Submissions are especially welcome from scholars whose work locates seals within broader developments in medieval social codes and visual or material culture.

Topics of Interest:
The Production of Seals
Ownership, Access and Usage
Authority, Ritual and the Practice of Sealing
Seals and their Documents
Sign Theory and Seals
Heraldry and Seals
The Body and the Seal
Gendering the Seal
Identity (individual or corporate) and the Seal
Seals and Foundations or Networks
Place and the Seal
The Seal and Visual Culture

Please submit a 250-word abstract for an article-length study and a CV to Laura Whatley (whatlel@ferris.edu)
and Charlotte Bauer (bauersmi@illinois.edu) by October 31, 2014. The essays in the volume will be in
English, but Brill can fund some translations of contributions from continental scholars.