Medieval Art Research

Free workshop: Books Across Cultures in the Late Medieval Low Countries, Manchester, 5th November

A half-day workshop will be held in the John Rylands Library, Manchester, on Wednesday 5 November (1.30-4.45 pm). It is aimed primarily at PhD students in relevant disciplines (history, English, modern languages), though master’s students are also welcome subject to approval from their programme director.

Books Across Cultures in the Late Medieval Low Countries aims to introduce students to:

– hands-on work with manuscript and early printed books (codicology, material bibliography, transcription, editing), using books from the library holdings;

– the importance of translation and rewriting in literary cultures of the late medieval Low Countries.

It accompanies the library exhibition Communities in Communication: Languages and Cultures in the Low Countries, 1450-1530: www.library.manchester.ac.uk/rylands/exhibitions/communitiesincommunication/). The exhibition itself forms part of an ongoing research project supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), Transcultural Critical Editing: Vernacular Poetry in the Burgundian Netherlands, 1450-1530:www.transculturalediting.eu.

The workshop is free of charge; places are available on a first-come-first-served basis. Prospective participants should send a firm expression of interest to the workshop organizer, Professor Adrian Armstrong (French, Queen Mary University of London: a.armstrong@qmul.ac.uk) by 30 September 2014, indicating their university affiliation, thesis topic or master’s programme, and languages read (French, English, Dutch, Latin – most of the materials studied will be in French). Master’s students should also ask their programme director to confirm approval. Briefing materials will be emailed to students in advance of the workshop.

CFP: Kalamazoo 2015: Slavery and the Slave Trade in Medieval Mediterranean Society

The Malta Study Center of the Hill Monastic Library will be sponsoring a session entitled “Slavery and the Slave Trade in Medieval Mediterranean Society” at the The 50th International Congress on Medieval Studies to take place on May 14-17, 2015. This session will focus on the role slavery as an economic force linking disparate religious and ethnic communities across religions and kingdoms, where the role of unpaid, forced labor provided a common economic and cultural relationship between Muslim and Christian communities controlling the Mediterranean Sea. Please send 200 word abstract and C.V. by September 15 for a 20 minute paper to Daniel K. Gullo (dgullo@csbsju.edu).

Please feel free to contact the Malta Study Center if you have any questions.
Dr. Daniel K. Gullo
Joseph S. Micallef Curator
Malta Study Center
Hill Museum & Manuscript Library
2835 Abbey Plaza • PO Box 7300
Saint John’s University
Collegeville, MN 56321-7300 USA
Phone: 320-363-3993
Fax: 320-363-3222

Postgraduate Study Course: Textos, libros y lectores: Una introducción a la cultura manuscrita de la Península Ibérica durante la Baja Edad Media (Madrid, 13-17 October 2014)

Postgraduate Study Course:
Textos, libros y lectores: Una introducción a la cultura manuscrita de la Península Ibérica durante la Baja Edad Media
Madrid, 13-17 October 2014
Deadline: 30 September

El objetivo de este curso es ofrecer una introducción al estudio de la cultura manuscrita peninsular durante la Baja Edad Media, en la que tenga cabida la producción libraria latina, hebrea, árabe y romance. Para ello, los diferentes participantes irán tejiendo una panorámica de la compleja realidad ibérica y de las particulares dinámicas que rigen la creación, transmisión y recepción de los manuscritos creados al amparo de estas tradiciones, que en ningún caso han de considerarse compartimentos estancos. Las clases se han planteado a partir de cuatro ejes fundamentales: a) una reflexión sobre los condicionantes impuestos por la circulación manuscrita de los textos y los retos que este fenómeno plantea al historiador/filólogo hoy en día, b) un breve acercamiento a la codicología partiendo de ejemplos concretos, c) cuatro catas puntuales sobre aspectos que singularizan a la producción libraria peninsular frente a otros territorios europeos (la prevalencia del romance frente al latín desde un momento muy temprano, el diálogo multicultural en torno al texto bíblico, la impronta dejada por la poesía andalusí en la lírica peninsular, y el peso de la literatura legal en el conjunto de la producción manuscrita hispánica), y d) una inmersión en el análisis de las relaciones entre texto e imágenes en el soporte manuscrito. De este modo, se pretende dar cuenta de la singular condición del manuscrito en tanto que objeto en la encrucijada entre varias disciplinas.

Organisers: Rosa Rodríguez Porto (University of York) and Javier del Barco (ILC, CCHS-CSIC)

For the full programme and to apply, see: http://www.cchs.csic.es/en/textoslibrosylectores

Call for Papers: Liturgical and Secular Drama in Medieval Europe: Text, Music, Image (c. 1000-1500), deadline 31 December 2014

Call for Papers
Liturgical and Secular Drama in Medieval Europe: Text, Music, Image (c. 1000-1500)
Green College, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada, 9-11 October 2015
Deadline: 31 December 2014

The Gregorian Institute of Canada and The University of British Columbia’s Medieval Studies Committee invite paper and session proposals for THE 43rd UBC MEDIEVAL WORKSHOP / THE 10th GIC COLLOQUIUM, a joint interdisciplinary research conference:

Liturgical and Secular Drama in Medieval Europe: Text, Music, Image (c. 1000-1500)
Taking place at Green College, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada, on October 9-11, 2015.

This conference will focus on the Medieval segment of the long history of European theatre. One objective will be to analyse aspects of the great repertoire of liturgical drama, from its supposed modest beginnings in the Gregorian liturgy of Easter, through its various
developments in Latin and the vernaculars, into liturgical, semi-liturgical and secular plays. Just as importantly we recognize the fact that European drama did not begin in the Medieval church. When one considers the secular themes appearing in semi-religious plays then in comic genres of the late Middle Ages, such as the farce, it often becomes necessary to study the direct or indirect influence of secular sources such as Latin comedies, Medieval French fabliaux, or
the troubadours’ satirical dialogues. Beyond this intertextuality, combined in many cases with musical exchanges, Medieval drama gradually acquired visual components including manuscript illuminations, props, theatrical machines, sets, and different approaches to spatial organization in relation to the audience. The transformations in drama over the period 1000-1500 are connected to evolving attitudes toward music in the church, music in theatre, spoken vs. sung plays, the place of the actor in society, religious and secular themes, interactions with other genres, and the manuscript tradition (notations, text transmission, stage directions and commentaries).

Given the diverse aspects of this conference theme, we hope to receive paper and session proposals in: historical musicology, theatre studies, history, performance studies, philosophy, religious studies, translation studies, palaeography and edition. We particularly invite contributions involving two or more of these disciplines.

Proposals for 20-minute papers or 3-paper sessions, in English or in French, should be submitted by December 31, 2014, addressed to James Blasina and Chantal Phan 2015 GIC/UBCMW, and sent by email to:
jblasina@fas.harvard.edu and chantal.phan@ubc.ca

or by mail or fax to:
Prof. Chantal Phan (Medieval Studies), FHIS, 797-1873 East Mall, VANCOUVER, BC V6T 1Z1, CANADA. Fax: (1)-604- 822-6675

Source: http://www.gregorian.ca/publicus/GIC_UBCMW%202015.pdf

CFP: Figurations of Male Beauty in Medieval Culture (Kalamazoo 2015)

Call for Papers:
Figurations of Male Beauty in Medieval Culture
Special session, 50^th International Congress on Medieval Studies
Kalamazoo, 14-17May 2015
Deadline: 15 September 2015

During the central and later Middle Ages, there existed a complex set of typologies for understanding male beauty. Although often problematized, physical beauty could be seen as a positive trait in men. Thus, male saints could be described as physically beautifully, their outward appearance reflecting their inner sanctity. Knights might be described as beautiful, either in their physical proportions or for their glittering, colorful armor and accoutrements. Youthful male beauty was seen in still other ways. Elsewhere, male beauty could be also be seen as being intertwined with pride and other sins. Despite this provocative diversity of attitudes, little has been published on the ways in which medieval people understood the complex intersection of masculinity and beauty at this time. This session hopes to offer a start toward remedying that gap. A diversity of approaches and topics is hoped for.

Please send one-page proposals to Gerry Guest (gguest@jcu.edu)

CFP: Multidisciplinary Saint Bridget: In Honor of Syon Abbey’s 600th Anniversary (Kalamazoo 2015)

Call for Papers:
Multidisciplinary Saint Bridget: In Honor of Syon Abbey’s 600th Anniversary
Co-sponsored by the Syon Abbey Society and the Hagiography Society
50th International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, 14–17 May 2015
Deadline: 15 September 2014

St Bridget giving her rule to her order — Photo: The British Museum

This year, the Syon Abbey Society and the Hagiography Society are teaming up to offer a multidisciplinary panel devoted to Saint Birgitta of Sweden (c. 1303-1373), or Saint Bridget as she was known in England. Bridget became famous during her lifetime for her divine visions, her campaigns to bring the papacy back to Rome, her political activism, and her foundation of the Order of St. Saviour (or the Bridgettine Order as it is often called). The only British Bridgettine house, Syon Abbey, was founded in 1415 and flourished alongside the growing devotional cult surrounding Bridget and her texts in England. Syon Abbey is now recognized as one of the most vibrant literary and cultural monastic centers of late medieval England, and this panel will be one of several events in the US and UK to mark the sexcentenary of its foundation.

We invite abstracts for papers exploring any aspect of Saint Bridget and her cult in England or the Continent. Papers addressing connections to Syon’s sisters, brothers, texts, history, or influence are welcome but not required. We hope to form a panel that reflects a variety of disciplinary standpoints: e.g., music, liturgy, art, iconography, architecture, theology, textuality, manuscripts, textual transmission, early print, monasticism, gender issues, socio-politico-economic contexts.

Please email short abstracts to Laura Saetveit Miles, University of Bergen (laura.miles@gmail.com) by September 15.

CFP: The Myth of Origins. The (Re-)Making of Medieval Sacral Space through Liturgical Reform (Leeds 2015)

Call for Papers for three joint sessions to be submitted for the
International Medieval Congress, Institute of Medieval Studies, Leeds 6-9 July 2015
(special thematic strand: Reform & Renewal)
The Myth of Origins. The (Re-)Making of Medieval Sacral Space through Liturgical Reform
Deadline: 10 September 2014

Organizers:
Ivan Foletti, Universities of Brno and Lausanne
Elisabetta Scirocco, Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz–Max-Planck-Institut
Sponsor: Center for Early Medieval Studies, University of Brno

The Myth of Origins. The (Re-)Making of Medieval Sacral Space through Liturgical Reform
i. The Second Vatican Council and Twentieth-Century Historiography
ii. Reformation and Counter-Reformation
iii. Gregorian Reform

Divided into three sections, this proposal aims to reflect the ways in which the sacred space of late antiquity is constructed in a retrospective manner, through the most important reforms in the two millennia of the Western Church. Following a diachronic process in reverse, from the twentieth century to the Middle Ages, the stages identified are: The Second Vatican Council; The Council of Trent and the Protestant Reformation; the so-called Gregorian Reform. All coincide with significant moments of crisis for the Latin Church. In each of these historical phases, the answer to the crisis is found in the mythical past, in the origins of the Early Church. In the liturgical field, this is realized in an attempt to restore some of the distinctive elements of the old liturgy, or elements that were presumed to be so. The changes are associated with a critical rhetorical frame, which legitimized the process by virtue of emphasizing the importance of its supposed “authentic” origins. Thus, the innovative dimension of the reform was often denied: in the words of the reformers, what was being done was not to create a new solution, but going back to original ideals, to a Church fair and immaculate.

The search for “antique” elements and the discourse that accompanied their introduction inevitably ended up building a new past, which is reflected heavily in objects and spaces of the sacred, and in the following historiography.

The proposed sessions focus on the manner in which these “denied” reforms actually build history. The sessions will follow a reverse chronology: (i.) the Second Vatican Council and its historiographical premises, which have their roots in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; (ii.) the Protestant Reformation and the Catholic Counter-Reformation; and (iii.) the so-called Gregorian Reform of the eleventh century.

Participants are invited to reflect on such issues as: the methods used by the reformers to learn about the past; the manner in which the past is reconstructed and modified (consciously and unconsciously) in the texts and monuments; the impact of the “new past” on studies and on the perception of the ancient liturgy.

Papers from a historiographical and a diachronic art historical perspective are especially welcome.

Paper proposals of no more than one page, accompanied by a short CV, can be submitted by 10 September 2014 to: ivan.foletti@gmail.com and escirocco@gmail.com.

CFP: Approaching Portraiture Across Medieval Art (Kalamazoo 2015)

Call for Papers:
Approaching Portraiture Across Medieval Art
Special Session at the 50th International Congress on Medieval Studies
Kalamazoo, 14–17 May 2015
Deadline: 15 September 2014

Organizer: Maeve Doyle, Bryn Mawr College, mkdoyle@brynmawr.edu

Figural representations of specific, contemporary people served numerous purposes in medieval societies, from commemorative and memorial functions to assertions of political power or social status, markers of ownership and use, and enactments of piety. Portraits, furthermore, proliferate across media, in stained glass, manuscript, and sculpture both monumental and miniature. This variety of historical, religious, and material contexts inflects the function of medieval portraits and their reception. While portraiture had long been considered an essentially modern genre, recent scholarship has worked to establish terms for considering portrait forms within the social, artistic,and theological contexts of the Middle Ages. In his book on royal representations in late medieval France, Stephen Perkinson situated the rise of veristic portraiture within the social and artistic concerns of the Valois court. Scholars such as Brigitte Bedos-Rezak and Alexa Sand, on the other hand, have approached the question of portraiture through medium-specific studies of personal seals and illuminated manuscripts, respectively. These studies emphasize the extent to which the creation and reception of a portrait depends upon its specific historical and material contexts. This panel seeks to explore the degree to which such focused studies can inform one another. In order to further investigation into medieval portraiture (or portraitures), this panel seeks to spotlight studies of portraiture across contexts and across media and to place them into dialog. This panel invites proposals for papers treating portraiture, loosely defined, from across medieval cultures and in any area of representation. To propose a paper for this panel, please send an abstract of no more than 300 words and the completed Participant Information Form (available online at http://www.wmich.edu/medieval/congress/submissions/#PIF ) to Maeve Doyle (mkdoyle@brynmawr.edu ) by Monday, September 15, 2014.

Call for Papers: Law, Custom and Ritual in the Medieval Mediterranean (Lincoln, July 2015)

Call for Papers:
Law, Custom and Ritual in the Medieval Mediterranean
Fourth biennial conference of the Society for the Medieval Mediterranean
University of Lincoln, 13-15 July 2015
Deadline: 18 October 2014

We are pleased to announce that the fourth biennial conference of the Society for the Medieval Mediterranean will take place at the University of Lincoln from Monday 13th July to Wednesday 15thJuly 2015. The theme of the conference is “Law, Custom and Ritual in the Medieval Mediterranean” and the keynotes will be delivered by Professor Maribel Fierro (CSIC, Madrid: “Obedience to the ruler in the Medieval Islamic West: legal and historical perspectives”) and Dr Andrew Marsham (University of Edinburgh: “Rituals of accession in early Islam: a comparative perspective”). We welcome both individual papers and panel proposals (please, fill in this form). Those who are interested in presenting at the conference might consider the following sub-themes when putting together their abstracts (but are by no means limited to them):

Roman, Canon and municipal law in the medieval Mediterranean
Lawyers: their identities, status and practice
Disputes, dispute settlement
Legal agreements (e.g. charters, treaties)
Law codes and codification
Manuscripts of law codes, charters, etc.
Legal training in the medieval Mediterranean
Ritual sites and ritual objects
Law, treaties and rituals in visual and material culture
Trading and other contractual agreements
Oath-making and oath-breaking
Outlaws, criminals and rebels
Scribal practices and legal record-keeping

We are also interested in papers that propose to take a more openly theoretical look at law, ritual and custom in our period, digital humanities approaches to the topic, and would also consider proposals that discuss the (contemporary) teaching of law, ritual and custom in the medieval Mediterranean.

Abstract: We invite 200-300 word abstracts for individual 20 minute papers relating to the conference theme. Participants are also encouraged to submit proposals for sessions of 3 papers – in this case, the session proposer should collate the three abstracts and submit them together, indicating clearly in a covering letter/ email the rationale behind the planned session. Please, fill in this form.

Deadline: Abstracts for individual papers and proposals for sessions should be emailed to the conference email address smmconference2015@gmail.com by the end of the day on Saturday 18th October 2014.

Postgraduate student bursaries: We will offer up to 10 bursaries for MA and PhD students who are interested in presenting at the Conference. The bursaries, which will cover the Conference fees, will be assigned to those proposals which best fit the theme of the Conference.

Publication: Presenters will be invited to submit their papers for publication in the Society’s journal, Al Masaq: Journal of the Medieval Mediterranean , published by Taylor and Francis. Previous conferences have resulted in the publication of special issues of the journal as well as individual articles.

Queries: Specific questions about the conference can be directed to the conference organisers, Dr Antonella Liuzzo Scorpo and Dr Jamie Wood at the conference email address smmconference2015@gmail.com.

Source: http://www.societymedievalmediterranean.com/conference-2015.php

CFP: The Eye of the Dragon: Viewing a Medieval Iconography from the Other Side (Kalamazoo 2015), deadline 15 September 2014

From the iconic heroism of Saint George to the resolute piety of Margaret of Antioch; from the arrow-shooting Bahram Gur to anonymous spear-wielding riders, slayers of dragons have received considerable art historical attention. Individual slayers, as well as the iconography itself have been extensively studied and critically contextualized to reveal multi-layered meanings and changing identities. In his study on the Islamic Rider of the Gerona Beatus, O. K. Werckmeister demonstrated how, in the context of the Reconquista, the identity of the slayer could switch from good to evil, while Oya Pancaroglu argued that in Medieval Anatolia slayer images were both products and facilitators of cross-cultural exchange. Dragons and other monsters have been under the lens of art historians, too. Michael Camille and Debra Strickland have emphasized their roles as surrogates for social types and political adversaries. In that sense, the victims of the slayers, though independent of the iconography, have also been studied. However, it is difficult to say that the perspectives of the victims have received equal attention.

This panel calls for papers that will look at the slayer iconography from the position of the slain rather than the slayer. It seeks papers that will approach the image visually and conceptually from bottom up and explore alternative and innovative interpretations. What can this switch of gaze reveal about the relationship between the dragon and the slayer? In what novel ways can we interpret the visual asymmetry between them? Would it correspond to actual social asymmetries, or to their subversion? Does the diagonal of the spear pin down and stabilize differences and antagonisms, or does it cut across and mediate between them? Especially welcome are papers that move beyond Western European examples and provide comparative perspectives.

Due date for the abstracts (approximately 250 words) is September 15, 2014.

Contact Person: Saygin Salgirli, Sabanci University: salgirli@sabanciuniv.edu