Online Lecture: Dialogue in Homilies and Hymns on the Annunciation: The Dynamics of a Divine Encounter (March 1, 2023)

The Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture is pleased to announce the next lecture in its 2022–2023 lecture series.

Wednesday, March 1, 2023 | 12:00 PM EST | Zoom
Dialogue in Homilies and Hymns on the Annunciation: The Dynamics of a Divine Encounter
Mary Cunningham, University of Nottingham

The story of the Annunciation of the archangel Gabriel to the Virgin Mary is first recounted in the Gospel of Luke 1: 26-38. The event was formally adopted as a major feast in the Eastern Church, celebrated on 25 March (nine months before Christmas) in 560, during the reign of the Emperor Justinian. Homilies and hymns on the Annunciation were composed long before this date, however, not always in association with the feast. These texts build on Luke’s narrative, describing Mary as the ‘Second Eve’ who overturned the disobedience of her first ancestor by consenting to God’s will and conceiving Christ, the Son of God. They celebrate the event as the inauguration of the new dispensation, which will bring salvation to humanity and the rest of creation. Further elaboration, which appears especially in homilies – but later also in hymns – on the Annunciation, can be seen in the invention of dialogues between Gabriel and Mary or Mary and Joseph. These serve not only to convey the doctrine of the incarnation to audiences, but also to illustrate the Virgin’s human condition. She expresses shock and doubt at her first encounter with the archangel, but gradually accepts his message of salvation. This lecture will examine variations in liturgical writers’ handling of the issues of free will, gender, and Marian devotion in Byzantine homilies and hymns on the Annunciation. It will be illustrated by images of the scene, including in icons, manuscript illustrations, and monumental art.

Mary B. Cunningham is Honorary Associate Professor of Historical Theology at the University of Nottingham. Her latest monograph is The Virgin Mary in Byzantium, c. 400-1000. Hymns, Homilies, and Hagiography (Cambridge University Press, 2021).

Advance registration required at https://maryjahariscenter.org/events/dialogue-in-homilies-and-hymns-on-the-annunciation

Contact Brandie Ratliff (mjcbac@hchc.edu), Director, Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture with any questions.

For more information, or to register, click here.

Funding Opportunity: The Servane de Layre-Mathéus Grant Fund of the American Friends of Chartres (Deadline: 31 March 2023)

The American Friends of Chartres is accepting proposals from current graduate students and
emerging scholars for its annual research grant for the study of Chartres. The American Friends
of Chartres will provide a stipend of $2,000.00 and will facilitate lodging, as well as access to the
cathedral, the Centre International du Vitrail, the municipal library, archival collections and
related resources.
The grant will help to support a research project requiring on-site research in Chartres that
promises to advance knowledge and understanding of the cathedral of Notre-Dame de Chartres
or its historical contexts in the medieval to early modern period. Topics in the fields of art
history, history, or related disciplines might include architecture, stained glass, sculpture, urban
development, economy, religious practices, manuscripts, or the cathedral treasury, among
others.
Applicants should currently be pursuing a Ph.D. or have received the degree within the last six
years. Following the research project, the grantee is asked to provide a synopsis of the research
and conclusions, which will be publicized through the cultural activities and website of the
American Friends of Chartres. Questions about the grant may be addressed to
ChartresResearchGrant@gmail.com.
Applicants should supply:
A description of up to 500 words of the proposed project, including:

  • questions to be researched and their importance to scholarship on the art, culture, or
    history of Chartres;
  • requirements for access to monuments, works of art, and archival resources;
  • projected length of time and tentative dates to be spent in Chartres;
  • expectations for publication of conclusions, whether alone or as part of a larger project,
    including a Ph.D. dissertation, article, or book.
    A current Curriculum Vitae
    Names and contact information of two references
    Please send application materials as e-mail attachments in Word or PDF format to
    ChartresResearchGrant@gmail.com
    DEADLINE FOR APPLICATIONS: March 31, 2023

The Servane de Layre-Mathéus Fund for Research on Chartres Cathedral
The American Friends of Chartres has established a special fund honoring the memory of
Servane de Layre-Mathéus (1939-2020), co-founder of Chartres–Sanctuaire du Monde, of the
Centre International du Vitrail, and of American Friends of Chartres. Servane dedicated much of
her life to the preservation of Notre-Dame de Chartres Cathedral, and to the pursuit and
transmission of knowledge of medieval art, culture, and spirituality. In recognition of her
contributions, she was made chevalier of the Légion d’honneur, officier des Arts et des Lettres,
and officier de l’ordre national du

Call for Articles: Fenestella 4/2023 (Deadline: June 30, 2023)

A Call for Articles for the Issue 4/2023 of Fenestella is now open.

Fenestella is a scholarly and peer-reviewed open access journal. It is published by Milano University Press on OJS.
Fenestella publishes scholarly papers on medieval art and architecture, between Late Antiquity and c. 1400, covering the Latin West, the Byzantine East and medieval Islam. The journal aims to consider medieval artefacts from within, as if seen through a fenestella confessionis, to throw light on iconography, function and liturgical practice and space.
Fenestella supports basic research. Papers on wide-ranging themes, critical reviews and studies of micro-topics are all welcome, as long as they contribute to the international debate. Fenestella accepts submissions in Italian, English, French, German and Spanish.

This issue has no specific topic.
Deadline: 30 JUNE 2023
Register here to make a submission: https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/fenestella

Info: redazione.fenestella@unimi.it

Online Seminar: ‘The library of the Marquis of Santillana (d. 1458) and the cultural networks of the European Renaissance’, with Rosa M. Rodríguez Porto, Zurbarán Centre-ARTES Research Seminar, 20 February 2023, 18.00 (GMT)

This talk will focus on an analysis of the books collected by Íñigo López de Mendoza, Marquis of Santillana, one of the most prominent figures of early Castilian Humanism. Although the relevance of his library was already acknowledged in a pioneering study by Mario Schiff in 1905, art historians have tended to pay more attention to the manuscripts produced for Santillana in Castile. And yet, the books he acquired or commissioned in France and, most notably, Italy, allow us to reconstruct the dense network of political, family and cultural connections behind his eclectic patronage, and to understand how his leading role in the introduction of new visual languages in Castile granted him a towering position among the other Castilian magnates. 

Biography: Rosa M. Rodríguez Porto is Ramón y Cajal Fellow at the University of Santiago de Compostela and Adjunct Associate Professor at the Faculty of Humanities of the University of Southern Denmark. She has extensively worked on late medieval book illumination, on medieval Iberian courtly art and on the Classical tradition in the Middle Ages. Her latest publication is “La biblioteca del Marqués de Santillana”, for the catalogue of the exhibition El Marqués de Santillana: Imágenes y letras at the Museo Nacional del Prado and the Biblioteca Nacional de España, from 4 and 5 Oct 2022 to 8 January 2023.

The event is part of the Research Seminar series organised by the Zurbarán Centre with the ARTES Iberian and Latin American Visual Culture Group. The series provides an open forum for engaging with innovative research and exhibition projects relating to the visual arts in the Hispanic world.

To join the seminar, please click on this zoom link (or copy and paste it into your browser ):

https://durhamuniversity.zoom.us/j/93702971057?pwd=TW9raVNlM1pxaHFkdGFueURvaWVrZz09

Meeting ID: 937 0297 1057
Passcode: 612894

More information can be found here.

Feature image: Cicerón De officiis, Biblioteca Nacional de España MS Res. 23

PhD Position: Portraying Medieval Women: The Materiality of Female Images and Art Patronage in the Latin East (12th-15th centuries). University of Fribourg. (Deadline: February 20th, 2023)

Description:

The SNSF PRIMA Project Portraying Medieval Women: The Materiality of Female Images and Art Patronage in the Latin East (12th–15th centuries) (https://data.snf.ch/grants/grant/208477), hosted at the Chair of Medieval Art History at the University of Fribourg, offers a four-year doctoral position focused on female representations and patronage in Southern Italy under Latin rule (12th–15th century). Her/his dissertation will be dedicated in the compilation of a comprehensive catalogue of the extant material in the assigned territories

The most important task of the PhD researcher will be the carrying out of original research and the completion of her/his dissertation. Moreover, she/he is expected to actively participate in all the project’s research activities and scientific events, such as workshops, conferences and research trips.

Qualifications :

  • MA in Art History with specialization in Medieval or Byzantine Art
  • Proficiency in Italian
  • Very good language skills in English
  • Good command of French and/or German

Contact Information

Asst. Prof. Rafca Nasr, rafca.nasr@unifr.ch

For more information please click here.

Call for Papers: The Middle Ages in Modern Games Twitter Conference: Fantasy and Apocalypse (Deadline: 9 April 2023)

The Public Medievalist and the Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Research at the University of Winchester present The Fourth Middle Ages in Modern Games Twitter Conference (@MidAgesModGames, #MAMG23) on 6 to 9 June 2023. The central themes of this year’s event are ‘Fantasy’ and ‘Apocalypse’.

Fantasy and Apocalypse are closely tied to medievalist games. Pseudo-medieval worlds are by far the most common setting for fantasy games from Dungeons and Dragons to World of Warcraft. Meanwhile, many games with apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic settings such as Fallout and Torment: Tides of Numenera make use of medieval tropes to build their worlds. These settings are clearly removed from the Middle Ages, but are nevertheless fundamentally medieval and can strongly influence modern perceptions of the period.

This conference considers the Medieval and Medievalism in Modern Games. We invite ‘papers’ (comprising a thread of 12 Tweets) and sessions of 3 to 5 papers which address any aspects of the medieval period or medievalism in any and all forms of modern games. We particularly welcome papers addressing the central conference themes of ‘Fantasy’ and ‘Apocalypse’. The conference will be conducted remotely and there will be no registration fee. To promote accessibility and inclusivity, the event runs asynchronously across time zones. Topics may include (but are not restricted to):

  • The End of the World in Medievalist Games
  • Fantasy Games beyond Western Europe
  • Post-Apocalyptic Feudalism
  • Medieval and Fantasy Mechanics in Sci-Fi Worlds
  • Magic and Technology
  • Gender and Sexuality in Fantasy and Apocalyptic Worlds
  • ‘Historical Accuracy’ in Fantasy Games
  • Boundaries between Fantasy and Medievalism
  • Constructing and Portraying Nuanced Fantasy Races
  • Building Pseudo-Medieval Worlds
  • Literary and Audio-Visual Influences
  • Teaching through Fantasy and Apocalyptic Games
  • Heterogeneity and Diversity in Fantasy Games
  • Chronological and Genre limits of Medievalism

We encourage submissions from medievalists, and games scholars and developers at any point in their career— especially those from Postgraduate Students, Early Career Researchers and members of any groups under-represented within the academy and industry. We welcome pieces addressing any region globally, and within a broad definition of ‘medieval’ and ‘medievalism’.

Please send abstracts of no more than 200 words, brief biographies, and indications of time zone and availability as attachments in Word to Robert.Houghton@Winchester.ac.uk by Friday 9 April.

Call for Papers: Conques at the Crossroads of Histories: Interdisciplinary Perspectives (Deadline: 15 February 2023)

The aim of this conference is to collectively rethink the cultural, material, and performative history of Conques-en-Rouergue. Despite being a site of major importance with a millennium of accumulated history, premodern Conques has often been the object of sectorial studies: specialists in architecture have been interested in the abbey church, historians of visual culture in the sculpted tympanum, historians of material culture in the goldsmith’s objects or in the treasure, and historians in the practical documents or in the hagiography. Musicologists have studied associated songs and liturgical performances. Philologists or literary historians have studied the famous Liber miraculorum sancte fidis, the Cançon de santa Fe and other texts related to the cult of the saint in Conques.

Beyond the premodern, the history of Conques in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries has been an object of study only for divergent fields: religious history, history of heritage and conservation, and histories of the construction of a national or European narrative. Fields such as environmental sciences, topography or historical geography have yet to be integrated in a more organic way into the history of this site. These various approaches have too rarely interacted, leaving comprehensive knowledge of this site incomplete and marred by a web of disconnected historiographies.

With this call for papers, we would like to rectify this disciplinary divide by inviting researchers to Conques to rethink the site together, through a living, organic debate that goes beyond linguistic and national borders. We welcome contributors from all disciplines but ask that their contributions be conceived in such a way that they can be understood and integrated by researchers from divergent backgrounds, which may require explication of disciplinary givens. Multi-voiced papers prepared by researchers from different disciplinary and linguistic backgrounds are particularly welcome. The expected disciplines are not limited to those mentioned above, on the contrary, participants specialized in environmental science, biology, archaeogenetics or other disciplines are warmly invited.

The symposium will be held at the Centre Européen of Conques from October 11 to 13, 2023. The organization will cover the costs of accommodation and meals, and at least part of the travel expenses (depending on actual costs). This conference is conducted within the framework of the MSCA-Rise project Conques in the Global World (https://conques.eu/).

Researchers wishing to contribute are invited to send their proposal, including a title, an abstract (about 200 words) and a short biography, to adrien.palladino@phil.muni.cz before February 15, 2023.

Online Lecture: Responding Icons and Miraculous Images? Is There a Theology for Mosaics? by Liz James, 9 February 2023, 12:00pm EST

Mosaic, Church of the Nativity, Bethlehem. Photo: Liz James

The Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture is pleased to announce the next lecture in its 2022–2023 lecture series.

The ‘theology of icons’ is well-discussed in Byzantine Studies: the role that religious images played in Byzantine life; the relationships between the icon, the worshipper and the divine; debates about the representation of the divine. How do these ideas play out with mosaics however, which are not easy to understand as live lines of communication with the divine in the same way that icons (when understood as panel paintings) are? How can we think about mosaics as icons, or is this the wrong question?

Liz James is a Professor of Art History at the University of Sussex

Advance registration required at https://maryjahariscenter.org/events/responding-icons-and-miraculous-images

This lecture is co-sponsored by the Harvard University Standing Committee on Medieval Studies. Contact Brandie Ratliff (mjcbac@hchc.edu), Director, Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture with any questions.

Call for Papers – Cultures of Skin: Skin in Literature and Culture, Past, Present, Future (Deadline: 1 February 2023)

This conference brings together scholars working on literary and cultural representations of skin, across historical periods and transnational contexts, to create new dialogues on the cultural meanings of skin from the past through to the present day, and consider the current and future state of the field(s) of skin studies.

Building on an earlier set of enquiries that initiated skin studies in the early 2000s – with key works including Claudia Benthien’s Skin: On the Cultural Border Between Self and the World (1999); Sara Ahmed and Jackie Stacey’s Thinking through the Skin (2001); and Steven Connor’s The Book of Skin (2004) – in recent years there has been renewed interest in examining the cultural representations of skin within a variety of cultural texts and media. Scholars have worked across historical and contemporary time periods, engaging with key concepts around identity and embodiment, agency and performativity, temporality and spatiality, and in relation to discourses of race, class, gender, and sexuality, health and illness. Literary and cultural scholarship has been instrumental in advancing theoretical and methodological approaches to the skin as historically variable and culturally constituted, building up a rich picture of “cultures of skin” from the past to the present day. This represents an exciting moment to consider the state of skin studies now, and to anticipate future directions for the field.

In this conference we seek to establish international dialogue among scholars working on a range of contexts and concepts around the skin, to consider thematic and conceptual avenues as well as methodological and theoretical approaches to the skin. We invite scholars working on literary and cultural representations of skin, from any historical period or national/cultural perspective, to submit abstracts on themes including but by no means limited to:

  • skin as text, texts as skin
  • skin and/as the self, skin and identity
  • skin texture, porosity, permeability
  • skin colour and race
  • skin as thing/material object and in relation to the material world
  • animal/nonhuman skins
  • skin care and cosmetics throughout history
  • technologies of the skin, future skin
  • skin as a medium of artistic representation/performance
  • skin damage and modification – wounding, scarring, tattoos
  • skin in relation to health and illness
  • the geographies of skin moving through space
  • methodological and theoretical approaches to studying and working on skin
  • state of the field reflections, the future of skin studies

Abstracts of 250-300 words should be submitted by 1st February 2023 by emailing culturalskinstudies@gmail.com. Decisions will be communicated by early March. The conference is being planned on a hybrid basis, with in-person attendance at the University of Surrey (Guildford, UK) accompanied by virtual attendance options. We gratefully acknowledge funding support from the British Academy.

Organised by Dr Charlotte Mathieson (Surrey) and Dr Nicole Nyffenegger (Bern), co-convenors of the Cultural Skin Studies network: for more information and to join our mailing list or quarterly online reading group, please visit https://www.culturalskinstudies.com

News: Access to the Index of Medieval Art Database Will Become Free on 1 July 2023

Jongleurs from the Silos Beatus, 1091–1109 (London, British Library, MS Add. 11695), fol. 86r.

We’re very pleased to announce that as of July 1, 2023, a paid subscription will no longer be required for access to the Index of Medieval Art database. This transition was made possible by a generous grant from the Samuel H. Kress Foundation and the support of the Index’s parent department of Art & Archaeology at Princeton University.

Currently, the Index of Medieval Art database, accessed at this link https://theindex.princeton.edu/, can be browsed through its open access lists, as well as searched with keywords. Researchers can learn more about our coverage through the browse function on the database, including over twenty thousand unique terms for iconographic subjects in medieval art, and plan to attend one of our upcoming info sessions.

Stay up to date with our news by following us on social media at Facebook and Twitter: @imaprinceton. Index staff also remain available for researcher questions via our online form at https://ima.princeton.edu/research-inquiries/.

Please read more about our momentous shift to online open access in a recent blog post written by director Pamela Patton, “Access to the Index of Medieval Art Database Will Become Free on July 1, 2023.” The Index of Medieval Art (blog). January 12, 2023. Thank you for your ongoing support and interest in our activities!