Call for Proposals: ‘Social Sculpture in the Middle Ages’, Different Visions journal, deadline 1 October 2023

This special issue of Different Visions seeks to address the methodological unity between sensory experience, reader response, and performance studies through the paradigm of “social sculpture.” Since Joseph Beuys introduced the term “social sculpture” in the late 1960s, contemporary art historians have investigated the potentialities of bodies-as-sculpture to shape social communities and identity through performance. Beuys’ expanded definition of artistic creativity no longer limited art to the creation of tangible objects; instead, the social realm became a stage for embodied performance that actively required the participation of its audience for its completion.

This methodological approach has the potential to usher medieval studies outside the archive and into the embodied repertoire, yet social sculpture has never been explored within the context of medieval art history. For medieval art historians, social sculpture can provide a paradigm to rethink our approach to medieval materials, documents, and objects by reframing these extant materials as only one actor within the greater collage of embodied participation that shaped medieval religious, political, and social communities.

We seek to open this relatively new field of study through a diverse and interdisciplinary special issue incorporating scholars’ work across the medieval world (broadly defined). As an online, open-access journal, Different Visions accommodates dynamic and interactive media. We invite submissions that include digital content such as video and audio clips or three-dimensional models.

Paper proposals should consider the intersections between embodied action and material culture, including but not limited to:

  • Participatory objects, performance, and spectacle
  • The role of the sculpted body-in-space in structuring religious and civic ritual
  • Animated images and automata
  • The migration and performative uses of portable objects along pilgrimage, procession, and trade routes
  • The various publics of medieval social sculpture
  • The representation and/or interaction of the body with ephemeral or recyclable materials, such as votive offerings in shrine space(s) and on cult objects
  • Delimiting premodern racial and religious communities through public oaths and acts of conversion
  • Manipulation of the body in penitential and confessory settings

Different Visions believes that peer review should be an open, productive, and reciprocal process. Submissions are reviewed by the editors, and then sent to external reviewers. The first stage of the external review will be double blind. Following the first review, author and reviewer(s) are invited to communicate and collaborate during the remaining review process.

Please submit a proposal of no more than 300 words to differentvisionsjournal@gmail.com by October 1, 2023. First drafts of accepted essays of approximately 10,000 words will be due in Fall 2024.

For questions please reach out to differentvisionsjournal@gmail.com.

You may also reach out to the special issue editors:
Kris Racaniello at kris.racaniello@gmail.com
Ariela Algaze at aalgaze1@jhu.edu

Find out more here.

Conference: ‘Visualizing Drugs & Dyes. Art and Pharmacology in (Early) Medieval Worlds (600–1400)’, 4-6 Sep 2023, University of Basel

4–6 September 2023, University of Basel: Forum eikones (Rheinsprung 11) & Pharmacy Museum (Totengässlein 3) & online

Organized by: Theresa Holler (University of Basel); Hannah Baader (KHI Florenz/4A_Lab Berlin); Andrew Griebeler (Princeton University)

Plants have long shaped the material practice and imagination of pharmacy. Far more than animals or minerals, plants and their products were central to medicine in premodern epistemologies. Over centuries, images and imaginings of vegetal materia medica played a profound role in human conceptions of and interactions with the natural world. In many ways, they continue to do so. Conversely, the therapeutic efficacy of plants and their products impacted broader visual and material cultures and practices. Thus, premodern pharmacological techniques interacted with the practices of image-making, artistic processes, and art. The international conference wants to foster a dialogue between conservators, art historians, medical historians, philologists, anthropologist and literary studies.

Find out more here.

Register here for online participation.

Program

Monday, September 4, 2023
Venue: University of Basel, eikones, Rheinsprung 11, 4051 Basel

09:00–09:15 Welcome & Introduction
Theresa Holler (University of Basel), Hannah Baader (KHI Florenz/4A_Lab Berlin) and Andrew Griebeler (Princeton University)

09:15–10:00 Richard Gameson (Durham University): The Colour of Plants

10:00–10:45 William Brockbank (Bern University): Wið eagena sare ond geswelle: Treating Afflictions of the Sensory Organs with the Old English Herbarium

Coffee Break

11:00–11:45 Laurence Totelin (Cardiff University): The Enslaved Rose? Visualising Roman Healing Roses and Those Who Worked with Them

11:45–12:30 Danielle Joyner (Lawrence University): Exploring the Tangled Roots of Glass Furnaces in Medieval Herbals

Light Lunch at eikones

Venue: University of Basel, Universitätsbibliothek, Schönbeinstrasse 18-20, 4056 Basel

14:00–16:00 Site visit with Monika Studer from the Manuscript Department (for speakers only)
Kristina Domanski (University of Basel): Heilende Ordnung – Heilung in der Unordnung (D III 14)
Venue: University of Basel, eikones, Rheinsprung 11, 4051 Basel

16:00–16:30 Coffee Break

16:30–17:15 Francesco Roberg (Wissenschaftliche Bibliothek der Stadt Trier/Stadtarchiv): Metrologie als Schlüssel zum Verständnis mittelalterlicher Rezepte

17:15–18:00 Robin Reich (Seattle University): The Many Lives of (Sal) Ammoniac in the Medieval Central Mediterranean

18:00–18:30 Brigitte Buettner (Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts): Minerals as materia medica: Excavating the Visual Tradition (online)

Apéro Riche at eikones

Tuesday, September 5, 2023
Venue: Pharmacy Museum Basel University, Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Totengässlein 3, 4051 Basel

09:15–10:15 Site visit at the Pharmacy Museum with Elias Bloch (for speakers only)

Coffee Break

10:45–11:30 Maurizio Aceto (Università degli Studi del Piemonte Orientale): From Dioscorides to the Arab World: A Voyage into the Colourants Used in the Ancient Herbals

11:30–12:15 Ayman Yasin Atat (Technische Universität Braunschweig): Plants as Dyes in the Medieval Arabic Civilization; Ibn al-Bayṭār as a Case Study

12:15–13:00 Farnaz Masoumzadeh (Art University of Isfahan): Mimesis Approach in the Drug Illustrations of the Paris Kitāb al-Diryāq Based on Walter Benjamin’s Doctrine of the Similar

Light Lunch at the Pharmacy Museum

14:00–14:30 Ruiying Gao (Wake Forest University): Collecting Nature on Paper? An Early History of Materia Medical Images in China (online)

14:30–15:00 Lyla Halsted (Davidson College, Davidson, North Carolina): Therapeutic Arabic Scrolls: The Use of Saffron on Medieval Magic-Medicinal Amulets (online)

15:00–15:30 Wanessa Asfora Nadler (Universidade de Coimbra/Universidade de São Paulo) and Isamara Lara de Carvalho (Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais/Fundação Biblioteca Nacional): Madder: Arts, Crafts and Medical Literature at the Crossroads (online)

15:30–16:15 Isabelle Balmer (University of Basel) and Anina Steinmann (Stiftsarchiv St.Gallen): The Narrator Dyes. Analyzing Colour and Cure in Medieval Literature

Coffee Break

16:45–17:30 Arsenio Ferraces Rodríguez (Universidade da Coruña): Imaginario colectivo, tradición iconográfica e inercia de los editores: un nuevo nombre para la mandrágora en Isidoro de Sevilla (Etym. 17, 9, 30)

17:30–18:00 Gregory Bryda (Barnard College, Columbia University): A Mandrake Crucifix on the Wendish Borderlands of Styria (online)

Conference Dinner for Participants

Wednesday, September 6, 2023
Venue: University of Basel, eikones, Rheinsprung 11, 4051 Basel

10:00–10:45 Samuel Umoh Uwem (University of KwaZulu-Natal): Indigenous Apothecary, Folkloric Claims and Musa paradisiaca in 11th-century Precolonial Nigeria

10:45–11:30 Elisa Palomino (Smithsonian Institution Arctic Studies Center): Use of Indigenous Arctic Plants as Dyes and Tannins in the Traditional Northern Fish Skin Processing

Coffee Break

11:45–12:30 Maite Álvarez and Cathy Carpenter (J. Paul Getty Museum): Woad in Medieval Spain: Exploring the Multifaceted Role of a Prized Colorant, Curative, Protective, and Decorative Material

Light Lunch at eikones

13:30–14:15 Closing Lecture
Nancy K. Turner (J. Paul Getty Museum): Pigments and Dyes, Vision and Healing: Finding materia medica in Manuscript Illumination

14:15–14:45 Round Table Discussion

visualizing_drugsdyes_flyerDownload

New Publication: ‘Colors in Medieval Art: Theories, Matter, and Light from Suger to Grosseteste (1100–1250)’, by Alberto Virdis

Projected color saturates our world of images and screens, leading to a dissociation of color from material realities through its cultural attachment to light and the efflorescence of optics. Under these conditions, it is difficult to imagine a past where color was an eminently material, cultural, and social object. This book argues that color is and was a central “cultural object” within art history, a fact first elucidated through an examination of the debates and difficulties of color in language, theology, science, and philosophy. Following this overview of medieval aesthetical debates, the author pursues two pivotal case studies which span the twelfth and thirteenth centuries: the Basilica of Saint-Denis and the Cathedral of Lincoln, respectively connected to the figures of the abbot Suger and the bishop Robert Grosseteste. Prominent thinkers and concepteurs of sacred spaces and images, they both confronted existing theories of color and optics, and the theology of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite. The case studies both center the art of stained glass, a revolutionary medium that blurs the boundaries between color, materiality, and light. Emerging strongly throughout this beautifully illustrated volume are traces of a central Middle Ages in which color played a fundamental yet groundbreaking role at the crossroads of aesthetic, intellectual, and theological issues.

Find out more about this publication here.

Contents

  • ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  • PREFACE by Herbert L. Kessler
  • INTRODUCTION: THE ELUSIVENESS OF COLORS
    • FROM MODERN TO MEDIEVAL COLOR: METHODOLOGICAL CAVEATS AND HISTORIOGRAPHICAL APPROACHES
    • HISTORIOGRAPHICAL APPROACHES
    • THE COLOR AND LANGUAGE CONUNDRUM
    • A HISTORIOGRAPHICAL NOTE: KOLORITSGESCHICHTE VS. HISTORICAL APPROACH
      • Michel Pastoureau: Colors at the Crossroads of History and Anthropology
      • From Color to Experience and Abstraction
  • 1. SCIENCE, THEOLOGY, AND AESTHETICS
    • 1.1 COLOR AND THEORIES OF VISION
      • Plato and Aristotle
      • The Islamic World and the Spread of Aristotelian Knowledge
      • From Al-Kindī to Averroes
      • From the Early Medieval Three-Color System to Intermediate Colors: Medieval Encyclopedias and the Look on the Natural World
    • 1.2. THEOLOGICAL DEBATE AND AESTHETIC FORMULATIONS ON LIGHT AND COLORS: AN INTERTWINING DIALOGUE
      • Late Antiquity
      • Pseudo-Dionysius’ Neoplatonism and its Long Legacy
      • Matter or Light? Early Medieval Aesthetics and the Iconoclastic Controversy
      • From Bernard of Clairvaux to Robert Grosseteste: Theology, Literature, and Science
    • 1.3 TECHNICAL ART TREATISES OF THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES AND THE TWELFTH CENTURY
      • Heraclius’ De coloribus et artibus Romanorum
      • De coloribus et mixtionibus
      • Theophilus’ Schedula diversarum artium
  • 2. A KIND OF BLUE: ABBOT SUGER AND THE MATERIA SAPHIRORUM
    • 2.1. THE ABBEY OF SAINT-DENIS
      • Historical Milestones
      • The Enlargement of the Basilica at the Time of Suger (ca. 1135–1144)
      • The French Revolution and the Nineteenth Century
    • 2.2. COLOR, STAINED-GLASS WINDOWS, LITURGICAL FURNISHINGS, AND THE NEOPLATONIC METAPHYSICS OF LIGHT
      • Light and Color in Suger’s Writings
      • The Metaphysics of Light
      • What is the Materia Saphirorum
      • Saphirus as a Color Term
      • Saphirus as a Precious Stone
      • Saphirus as a Pigment
      • Anagogical Colors: From Matter to Light
    • 2.3. THE ICONOLOGY OF BLUE AT SAINT-DENIS
      • The Rise of Blue
      • A Supernatural Color?
  • 3. ROBERT GROSSETESTE’S DE COLORE AND THE CATHEDRAL OF LINCOLN
    • 3.1. ROBERT GROSSETESTE: A BIOGRAPHICAL PROFILE
      • Grosseteste’s Works
    • 3.2. LIGHT AND COLOR
      • De Luce, De Colore, De Iride, and Le Chasteu d’amur
    • 3.3. THE CATHEDRAL OF LINCOLN AND ITS STAINED-GLASS WINDOWS
      • Architecture
      • The Thirteenth-Century Stained-Glass Windows
      • The Vitae of St. Hugh of Lincoln
    • 3.4. GROSSETESTE’S TRANSLATION OF PSEUDO-DIONYSIUS
      • The Mystical Theology, Color Metaphors, and Stained-Glass Windows
  • 4. MYSTICAL COLORS: ANAGOGICAL WINDOWS IN LINCOLN AND SAINT-DENIS
  • CONCLUSIONS

Biography of author

Alberto Virdis

Alberto Virdis is a researcher in Medieval Art at the Masaryk University, Centre for Early Medieval Studies, Brno. He is currently leading a project funded by the Czech Science Foundation on the origins of stained glass art in the Early Middle Ages. His main research interests span from the history of colours in medieval art and their relation with the art of stained glass, to artistic and cultural interactions in the Mediterranean space in the High Middle Ages, with a special focus on mural paintings and studies on Medieval landscape.

New Publication: ‘Paris: The Powers that Shaped the Medieval City’, edited By Alexandra Gajewski, John McNeill

Paris: The Powers that Shaped the Medieval City considers the various forces – royal, monastic and secular – that shaped the art, architecture and topography of Paris between c. 1100 and c. 1500, a period in which Paris became one of the foremost metropolises in the West.

The individual contributions, written by an international group of scholars, cover the subject from many different angles. They encompass wide-ranging case studies that address architecture, manuscript illumination and stained glass, as well as questions of liturgy, religion and social life. Topics include the early medieval churches that preceded the current cathedral church of Notre-Dame and cultural production in the Paris area in the late 12th and early 13th centuries, as well as Paris’s chapels and bridges. There is new evidence for the source of the c. 1240 design for a celebrated window in the Sainte-Chapelle, an evaluation of the liturgical arrangements in the new shrine-choir of Saint-Denis, built 1140–44, and a valuable assessment of the properties held by the Cistercian Order in Paris in the Middle Ages. Also, the book investigates the relationships between manuscript illuminators in the 14th century and representations of Paris in manuscripts and other media up to the late 15th century.

Paris: The Powers that Shaped the Medieval City updates and enlarges our knowledge of this key city in the Middle Ages.

This book is part of the British Archaeological Association Conference Transactions. Find out more about the book here.

Contents

Preface

  1. Notre-Dame in Paris before the Gothic Period, by Dany Sandron
  2. Abbot Suger’s Paris, by Lindy Grant
  3. The Power of the Saints: Architecture and Liturgy in Abbot Suger’s Shrine-Choir at Saint-Denis in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries, by Alexandra Gajewski
  4. The King’s City: The Disciplinary ‘Sense-scape’ of Paris in the Thirteenth Century, by William Chester Jordan
  5. The Great Thirteenth-Century Chapels of Paris, by Meredith Cohen
  6. City of light: Picturing the translation of the Crown of Thorns to Paris in the Gothic glass of the Sainte-Chapelle, by Emily Guerry
  7. Jean Pucelle, Mahiet, and the Fauvel Master: Relationships between Manuscript Illuminators in Fourteenth-Century Paris, by Anna Russakoff
  8. Building Paris on its Bridges, by Jana Gajdošová
  9. Not so vast a Solitude: Cistercians in Medieval Paris, by Terryl Kinder
  10. Images of Paris in the late Middle Ages: The Great Monuments, by Raphaële Skupien

Editors Biography

Alexandra Gajewski is Reviews Editor of The Burlington Magazine and an Associate Fellow of the Institute of Historical Research, London. Her research focuses on Gothic architecture, especially in relation to the cult of relics, liturgy and questions of function. She has published on Cistercian architecture in medieval Europe, religious architecture in Burgundy, the historiography of regional architecture as well as medieval women as patrons, embroidery and the Castle of Love in ivory.

John McNeill is Secretary of the British Archaeological Association, wherein he was instrumental in establishing the Association’s International Romanesque conference series. He has published widely on Romanesque architecture and architectural sculpture in England, France and Italy.

Prize: Haboldt-Mutters Prize, Simiolus: Netherlands Quarterly for the History of Art, Deadline 31 December 2023

Simiolus is now accepting submissions for the annual Haboldt-Mutters Prize for young art historians.

REQUIREMENTS Scholars who wish to compete for this award for the best original contribution on European art prior to 1950 should be younger than 35 at the time of submission and their paper should be limited to a maximum of 20,000 words (including notes, excluding possible appendices). Their manuscripts may be written in English, Dutch, German or French. The editors of Simiolus, who form the jury, will bear the cost of translation if necessary, and publish the article in Simiolus within a year.

DEADLINE AND PRIZE The author of the winning paper, which should be handed in before the end of the year, will receive 2,000 euros.

ABOUT SIMIOLUS Simiolus is an English-language journal devoted to the history of Dutch and Flemish art of the fifteenth to seventeenth centuries, with occasional forays into more recent periods and other schools. Founded in 1966, it has grown to become an internationally recognized journal of record in its field, publishing contributions by many renowned scholars and promising young art historians. Simiolus has a broad range, featuring articles on iconography and iconology, art theory and historiography, the history of the art market and the history of collecting. Many of them have become classics of their kind.

All volumes are made available via JSTOR. The moving wall is fixed at three volumes.

WEBSITE Visit https://simiolus.nl for the style guide and additional information.

CONTACT info@simiolus.nl

Colloquium: “Secular Knowledge in Medieval Art,” XIII ARS MEDIAEVALIS COLLOQUIUM, Aguilar de Campoo (Palencia), 6-8 October 2023

A substantial part of the scientific knowledge developed in the Middle Ages was inherited from Roman (in Western Europe) and Greek (in the Byzantine and Islamic domains) culture. However, new cognitive procedures were also developed in medieval societies, among them some related to vision, astronomy or zoology. Knowledge of the secular world was translated and codified in the three domains of the Middle Ages (Latin, Greek and Arabic) through complex and varied visual devices. These ingenious images allow us to understand how the procedures of thought and memory were established. With these iconic creations, the most dynamic cultural centres sought to provide themselves with didactic and mnemonic tools to say, think or remember the universe, earthly creatures or celestial realities more efficiently. Both the European continent and the Mediterranean shores witnessed the fluid communication between different domains in order to advance in the knowledge of the created and populated space, translating, codifying or reinterpreting what others had proposed before, or else enlightening new formulas and channels to solve the questions of people who intensified their self-awareness.

PROGRAM

6 de octubre (Aguilar de Campoo: Sede Fundación Sta. Mª la Real)

Presidencia de sesión: Alejandro García Avilés (Universidad de Murcia)  

08.45 h.: Recepción de asistentes

09.15 h.: Presentación e inauguración del Coloquio

09.45 h.: Kathrin Müller (Humboldt-Universität, Berlin): Fundamental Knowledge. Personifications of the artes liberales on High Medieval Liturgical Objects

10.30 h.: Debate

10.45 h.: Pausa-café

11.15 h.: Anna Caiozzo (Université d’Orleans): Entre images scientifiques, merveilles (terrestres) de la Création et imaginaires religieux

12.00 h.: Martin Schwarz (Universität Basel): The Crucifixion Eclipse and the Illumination of Philosophy in the Vie de Saint Denis (BnF, fr. 2090)

12.45 h: Debate  

Sesión de tarde (Aguilar de Campoo: Sede Fundación Sta. Mª la Real)

Presidencia de sesión: Mª Teresa López de Guereño (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid)  

16.00 h.: Laura Fernández Fernández (Universidad Complutense de Madrid): Entre fábulas y estrellas errantes. La luna en el imaginario alfonsí

16.45 h.: Debate

17.30 h.: Visita al monasterio de Santa María la Real  

7 de octubre (Saldaña. Villa romana La Olmeda)

Presidencia de sesión: Susana Clavo Capilla (Universidad Complutense de Madrid)  

09.15 h: Desplazamiento en autobús a la villa romana La Olmeda

10.30 h.: Licia Buttà (Universitat Rovira i Virgili): La danza en los tratados morales y de cortesía y su visualización en el relato poético narrativo en la Edad Media

11.15 h.: Begoña Cayuela (Universitat de Barcelona): Del stemma al grafo y viceversa. Los diagramas de las llamadas Tablas genealógicas en la miniatura hispana medieval: origen y pervivencias.

11.35 h.: Nerea Maestu Fonseca (Universidad Complutense de Madrid): Vislumbres de cometas entre rayos y truenos: astrometeorología y teoría cometaria en la Edad Media.

11.55 h.: Debate

12.30 h.: Visita a la villa romana de La Olmeda

14.00 h.: Comida (a cargo de la organización)

16.00 h.: Visita al arte medieval de Cisneros  

8 de octubre (Aguilar de Campoo: Monasterio Sta. Mª la Real)

Presidencia de Sesión: Fernando Gutiérrez Baños (Universidad de Valladolid)  

09.30 h.: Marius Hauknes (University of Notre Dame): Representing the Origins of Human Knowledge

10.15 h.: Hanna Wimmer (Universität Hamburg): Visualising Logic in the Middle Ages

11.00 h.: Debate

11.30 h.: Descanso

12.00 h.: Rosa Rodríguez Porto (Universidad de Santiago de Compostela): Incidentiae: Tiempo, espacio y sincronía en la historiografía medieval

12.45 h.: Debate

13.00 h:  Conclusiones y perspectivas

13.15 h.: Clausura y entrega de certificados a los asistentes  

Register here: https://tienda.santamarialareal.org/es/productos/detalles/xiii-coloquio-ars-mediaevalis-saberes-seculares-en-el-arte-medieval/761

CFP: “Monastic libraries and book collections in times of crisis, c. 1000-c. 1600,” International Medieval Congress, Leeds, Deadline 12 September 2023

The proposed session(s) focuses on religious communities’ responses to crisis in relation to convent libraries and book collections. We aim to investigate what happened to medieval convent libraries and book collections in times of peril during the Middle Ages, but also the early modern period and up until our time. At certain times, these changes were detrimental and meant the original context of collections was lost. On other occasions, crises’ effects were incremental in book collections of various religious institutions.


Written documents and book collections were used to address the economic, social, political, and cultural crises that affected religious communities. The organizers aim to discuss how manuscripts and book collections were used to mitigate or reject the impact of external or internal crises, to create a narrative about these upheavals and to foster renewal. The organizers also aim to establish a broader comparative and geographical approach opening new perspectives, provoking new questions, and reformulating questions widely debated in the historiography.


Suggested topics on book collections in times of crisis from any geographic area and encompassing a wide chronological framework may include, but are not limited to:
• Dismembering and dispersion of manuscripts in times of peril. How could these collections be interpreted anew? What happened to the identity of these collections in their new surroundings? How were these ‘orphan’ collections used by their, potentially, new owners? Was there re-assembly?
• The post-medieval life and Nachleben of book collections. Dispersion and loss as a result of wars, turmoil, and ecclesiastical suppression during the modern times.
• Assembling of manuscripts as a result of crisis. Medieval and early modern recycling history of manuscripts, and how these processes inform not only medieval book culture but also religious communities’ identities and religious and cultural networks more broadly.
• Assembling versus dismembering manuscripts as a result of crisis. Analysis of the factors that led to one or the other option. Did these occur at the same time in the same community?
• Crisis, continuities, and disruptions in production of manuscripts, re-use, and function of books within religious communities.
• Interplay between manuscript production and the making of other ornamenta sacra in times of crisis.
• The role of manuscripts and book collections in the creation of crisis narratives among religious communities. Who is to blame during crisis? Entangled scales and agents involved at micro and macro levels.
• Explicitly gendered approaches to crises in religious communities. In what way religious women, including nuns and mulieres religiosae, used manuscripts and book collections.
We welcome papers from a variety of disciplines including but not limited to history, art history, material culture, codicology, cultural history, musicology, history of liturgy, anthropology, literature, gender studies with a focus on religious communities from different orders/religions, different territories, and geographical regions exploring what happened to medieval book collections (c. 1000-c. 1600) during and beyond the Middle Ages. We invite speakers to explore the impact of crisis in book collections from religious communities and these communities’ management of their libraries in times of peril.

Please submit an abstract of no more than 300 words and a short bio to Julie Beckers (julie.beckers@kuleuven.be) and Mercedes Pérez Vidal (mercedes.pvidal@uam.es) by 12 September 2023. All proposals should include your name, email address and academic affiliation, and your preferred format (in-person or virtual).

Call for Participants: “Studying East of Byzantium X: Communities” Workshop, Deadline 13 September 2023

The Mashtots Professor of Armenian Studies at Harvard University and the Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture at Hellenic College Holy Cross in Brookline, MA, are pleased to invite abstracts for the next Studying East of Byzantium workshop: Studying East of Byzantium IX: Communities.

Studying East of Byzantium IX: Communities is a three-part workshop that intends to bring together doctoral students and very recent PhDs studying the Christian East to reflect on how to reflect on the usefulness of the concept of “Community” in studying the Christian East, to share methodologies, and to discuss their research with workshop respondents, Michael Pifer, University of Michigan, and Salam Rassi, University of Edinburgh. The workshop will meet on November 17, 2023, February 9, 2024, and June 6–7, 2024, on Zoom. The timing of the workshop meetings will be determined when the participant list is finalized.

We invite all graduate students and recent PhDs working in the Christian East whose work considers, or hopes to consider, the theme of communities in their own research to apply.

Participation is limited to 10 students. The full workshop description is available on the East of Byzantium website (https://eastofbyzantium.org/upcoming-events/). Those interested in attending should submit a C.V. and 200-word abstract through the East of Byzantium website no later than September 13, 2023.

For questions, please contact East of Byzantium organizers, Christina Maranci, Mashtots Professor of Armenian Studies, Harvard University, and Brandie Ratliff, Director, Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture at contact@eastofbyzantium.org.

EAST OF BYZANTIUM is a partnership between the Mashtots Professor of Armenian Studies at Harvard University and the Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture at Hellenic College Holy Cross in Brookline, MA. It explores the cultures of the eastern frontier of the Byzantine Empire in the late antique and medieval periods.

CFP: “Virgin Mary’s relics – Prestige, Rivalry, Forgery and Reproducibility,” International Congress on Medieval Studies (Online Session), Deadline 15 September 2023

This special online session wishes to analyze the power of the Virgin Mary’s relics as triggers not only to processions and pilgrimages but also to Marian cults competition. The scientific importance of the session lies in understanding how these devotional objects could be perceived as activators of civic prestige. The possession of these relics encouraged a deep local cohesion outside the church. Therefore, how did the custody of a Marian relic interact and enhance rivalry between cities? And finally, how did the forgery and reproducibility of these relics contribute to developing the Marian cult by enhancing the creation of sacred topographies?

The session will encourage an interdisciplinary approach. Civic, political, and religious powers were deeply interconnected to control devotion to Marian relics. For this reason, these aspects will be examined in relation to the instauration of civic identity and religious authority to understand the adaptation of the Virgin’s cult to the local needs. This approach provides the groundwork for new perspectives on Medieval relics’ devotion in general. Moreover, the analysis of case studies will not only aim to highlight specific aspects and general phenomena in Late Medieval Europe but also to define identities and devotees’ experiences about relics.

Scholars are invited to submit a 300-word abstract, excluding references. Proposals should also include name, affiliation, email address, the title of the presentation, 6 keywords, a selective bibliography, and a short CV. Please send the documents to maryandthecity.imc2022@gmail.com by 15 September 2023.

CFP: “Saints in Crisis: Emotional Responses to Sanctity in the Middle Ages,” International Medieval Congress (IMC 2024), University of Leeds, Deadline 12 September 2023

They were frightened and they hit in great pain their heads and hearts– How do people react when they encounter the sanctity of saints? How do they feel? Are they in crisis – crisis for whom? Does crisis change individuals?

The proposed session focuses on the emotional responses of individuals/communities in relation to sanctity. Suggested topics on the emotional reactions of individuals/communities, from any geographic area or time period (between 300-1500), may include, but are not limited to:

  • Visual representations of emotions (behavior of the body, gestures, looks); 
  • Textual sources on emotional reactions (hagiographies, miracle stories, narratives in relation to crisis and sanctity);
  • Medical (psychological, neurological, physical, and mental) responses;
  • Liturgy and music culture;
  • Regions/areas of communities (rural, urban, monastic, ecclesiastic), emotions, and sanctity;
  • Living saints, discoveries of saints, relics – reliquaries, icons, and viewership reactions;
  • Performance, sanctity, and emotions;
  • External crisis/internal crisis, positive/negative emotional reactions, and sanctity;
  • Conversion stories/lack of conversion/otherness and emotional reactions;

Submissions from a variety of disciplines are accepted including but not limited to: history, art history, visual culture, social history, cultural history, hagiography, religious studies, cultural studies, textual studies in a transdisciplinary perspective. 

Please submit a 250- 400 word proposal (in English) for a 15-20 minute paper. Proposals should have an abstract format and be accompanied by a short CV, of no more than 800 words, including e-mail, institution, and profession. The session is planned to be in-presence. Please submit all relevant documents by 12 September 2023 to the e-mail address: znorovszkyandrea@usal.es

Contact information: Andrea-Bianka Znorovszky, University of Salamanca, Salamanca, Spain (znorovszkyandrea@usal.es)