New Publication: ‘Eikón/Imago: Imago, ius, religio: Religious Images in Illustrated Legal Manuscripts and Printed Books (9th-20th Centuries)’, ed. Maria Alessandra Bilotta and Gianluca del Monaco

The IUS ILLUMINATUM research team is pleased to announce the publication of the monographic number 12 (2023) of the open access journal “Eikon/Imago” published by the Complutense University of Madrid, on the theme: “Imago, ius, religio. Religious Images in Illustrated Legal Manuscripts and Printed Books (9th-20th Centuries)”, edited by Maria Alessandra Bilotta (IEM-NOVA/FCSH) and Gianluca del Monaco (Alma mater studiorum – Università di Bologna) as “Special Guest Editors”.


The monographic issue is the result of a collaboration of the IUS ILLUMINATUM research team (https://iusilluminata.fcsh.unl.pt) of the Institute for Medieval Studies (IEM) of the NOVA University of Lisbon with the CAPIRE Research Group (Collective for Multidisciplinary Analysis of European religious iconography) of the Complutense University of Madrid.


Some of the scientific results of the research conducted by the IUS ILLUMINATUM research team are published in the monographic issue.


Here is the link from where to download all the contributions published in the journal: https://revistas.ucm.es/index.php/EIKO/issue/view/4005

Job: Special Projects Assistant, Medieval Academy of America, deadline 15 May 2023

Special Projects Assistant
Medieval Academy of America
15 hours/wk (hybrid)
$30/hr (no benefits)

The Medieval Academy of America, an educational non-profit organization incorporated as a 501(c)3 in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, seeks a Special Projects Assistant to work with the Executive Director, the Editor of Speculum, and other administrative and Speculum staff on various projects, both in the Boston office and remotely. The position is offered for 15 hours per week at $30 per hour, without medical or retirement benefits. Interest in and knowledge about the Middle Ages is ideal, but there are no degree or foreign-language requirements. While many of the position’s responsibilities can be accomplished remotely, easy access to the MAA’s downtown Boston office is necessary as the job will often entail working onsite in collaboration with other staff members.

Responsibilities will include (but will not be limited to):

Remote:

  • processing and assembling grant application dossiers (throughout the year) using the MAA’s backend content management system (YourMembership) as well as Adobe, Excel, and Word;
  • assisting with logistical support for the Annual Meeting and the International Congress on Medieval Studies (as necessary);
  • other administrative tasks as assigned by the Executive

Onsite:

  • processing and shipping books submitted for prize consideration (annually in November);
  • managing mass mailings (approximately four times per year);
  • Digitizing MAA archival material (on an ad hoc basis);
  • Assisting the Speculum mailing operation by recording and organizing incoming books submitted for review and mailing copies to reviewers (approx. 1.5 hours/wk).

To apply, please forward a CV and cover letter stating experience, qualifications, and interest to Executive Director Lisa Fagin Davis LFD@TheMedievalAcademy.org by MAY 15. Position to begin on or around June 15.

Find out more here.

Call for Papers: Arabic Pasts 2023, 6-7 October 2023 (Deadline 12 May 2023)

Co-hosted by the Aga Khan University, Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations and SOAS, University of London

This annual exploratory and informal workshop offers the opportunity to reflect on methodologies, research agendas, and case studies for investigating history writing in Arabic in the Middle East, North Africa, and beyond in any period from the seventh century to the present.

We are interested in papers that consider the practical and conceptual challenges of working on history writing in Arabic. Papers might elucidate the following sorts of questions:

How did adherents of different confessional or juristic traditions, men and women, and members of different social classes within societies that became “Islamic” imagine the shape and meaning of their specific societies’ own pasts, and their relation to the universal history of the Islamic community? Which ways of writing, remembering, or commemorating did they develop?

How can we broaden our scope beyond just textual historiography?

How can marginalised communities and varieties of Arabic be given due attention?

How can works of fiction contribute to our understanding of the past?

How can we explore the past algorithmically? Can digital methods enhance our understanding of the past? Can they also limit or even alter it? Which new digital tools are being developed? What seem to be particularly promising approaches? What is lacking?

In what ways do educational institutions, museums, media organisations and proponents of heritage use history writing to shape loyalties and senses of belonging in society?

How is the past used in creative arts, re-enactment, games, and augmented reality?

Contributions are invited from scholars at all career levels, addressing any period and any part of the Middle East and North Africa, broadly defined. This year we anticipate running the workshop from the Aga Khan Centre in London, with the possibility to have an online component featuring participants who are unable to travel to the UK. As in past years, there is a small budget to provide some travel assistance for scholars outside of London.

Arabic Pasts is co-organized by Hugh Kennedy (SOAS), James McDougall (Oxford), Lorenz Nigst (AKU-ISMC), and Sarah Bowen Savant (AKU-ISMC).

Please submit an abstract of 300 words or less in word document by Friday, 12 May 2023 to ArabicPastsConf@aku.edu.

Hybrid Symposium: Consortium Medievalists: ‘Sensory Experiences Across Medieval Communities’, Fordham University, New York, Saturday 6 May 2023

The Consortium Medievalists is excited to invite you to our 2023 symposium, Sensory Experiences Across Medieval Communities, on May 6! Find the flyer below for the full list of panels, talks, and performances. This year’s symposium will be held hybridly at Fordham University Lincoln Center Campus, and via Zoom.  Please R.S.V.P here.


Questions may be directed to consortium.medievalists@gmail.com, and more information may be found on our website, 

www.consortiummedievalists.com

Lecture: ‘Reflections on the Cushion Capital’ with Dr Richard Plant, Corpus of Romanesque Sculpture in Britain and Ireland (CRSBI) Annual Lecture, Courtauld Institute of Art, Vernon Square Campus, 24th April 2023, 6.30pm-8.30pm (BST)

The cushion capital, in its simple form a cubing of the sphere, is a feature found in a number of areas of Europe. While the focus of this talk will be on England, the early development of this feature in the Holy Roman Empire will be addressed, as well as its broader geographical distribution, to parts of Italy as well as the British Isles. The means and reasons for this spread will be considered, as well as the question of the date of the first appearance of the capital in the British Isles. The way in which the capital was modified, through the addition of carving, stucco or paint, and the transformation of the capital into scalloped capitals and other variants will form the concluding part of the talk.

Dr Richard Plant is an architectural historian and lecturer specialising primarily in the Middle Ages He has taught at a number of institutions, and was Deputy Academic Director at Christie’s Education. He has published on English and German medieval architecture, and co-edited a number of volumes in the British Archaeological Association’s Romanesque series.

The Corpus of Romanesque Sculpture in Britain and Ireland is an internationally recognised project engaged in recording all the Romanesque sculpture produced and still surviving in these islands, making scholarly descriptions and photographs freely available on the web. It was founded as the initiative of former Courtauld Deputy Director George Zarnecki with the help and support of former Director Peter Lasko, its first chairman. It is supported by The British Academy.  Find out more: https://www.crsbi.ac.uk

Organised by the Corpus of Romanesque Sculpture in Britain and Ireland, and by Dr Xavier Dectot, Dr Ron Baxter, and Dr Rose Walker. 

Find out more here and book your ticket using this link.

Hybrid Lecture: ‘Maintenance Work & the Long Life of Materials in Medieval Art’ with Dr Jessica Barker, University of York, King’s Manor, Tuesday 9 May 2023, 5.30pm (BST)

Find out more here.

Dr Jessica Barker (The Courtauld Institute)

Historians have rarely worried about the maintenance of things and materials, leaving this apparently mundane problem to conservators. This overlooks the simple fact that, just as we are surrounded by objects that are scuffed, scratched, dirty, or worn, so people in the past were required to confront the gradual material deterioration of the things they encountered in their everyday life.

Works of art are not necessarily any less subject to the processes of physical decay than more prosaic objects, although their pristine presentation in museums today masks such material vulnerability.

Then, as now, slowing this process of deterioration could only be achieved through protective measures and regular maintenance. But whereas today this work typically takes place in the relative seclusion of the conservation studio, in the Middle Ages maintenance work often occurred in full public view, within the space of the church and sometimes even integrated into religious rituals.

In this lecture Dr Jessica Barker (The Courtauld Institute) will explore an extraordinarily detailed set of maintenance instructions set down by an early sixteenth-century English bishop which offer a remarkable window onto the practicalities of historical conservation procedures, as well as metaphysical ideas about the transience of the material world.

Drawing out some of the key themes from this maintenance program (its ritual performance, its analogies with medicine, its philosophical stakes) and placing them in dialogue with surviving artworks, Dr Barker argue that maintenance work offers an instructive new perspective from which to consider the material turn, as well as a deeper point of connection between history, art history and conservation.

Further information about our speaker Dr Jessica Barker

Registration details

Location: Philip Rahtz Lecture Theatre, K/133, King’s Manor

Admission: Hybrid event – free lecture via eventbrite ticket or zoom registration.

Email: cms-office@york.ac.uk

Job: Full Professor of History of Art and Architecture (500-1500), Radboud University, deadline 2 May 2023

Are you an innovative, experienced and inspiring scholar in the field of the history of art and architecture between 500-1500? Do your research and teaching explore cross-cultural connections and expand or complicate the geographical and cultural boundaries of the ‘medieval’? As a full professor at Radboud University, you will join and lead a diverse group of dedicated scholars, shape the field of art and architectural history, and flourish in a friendly and vibrant academic community.

We warmly invite you to browse our vacancy and apply! You would preferably begin employment between 1 September 2023 and 1 January 2024.

Find out more and apply here.

Colloquium: Revisiting the Cloisters Cross: A One-day Colloquium, Courtauld Institute of Art, Vernon Square, London, Friday 12th May 2023, 10.30am-6.30pm (BST)

The Cloisters Cross is widely recognised as a masterpiece of late Romanesque art. Carved of walrus ivory, it appeared after World War II in a private collection and was subsequently acquired by the Metropolitan Museum in New York. The earliest scholarly publications identified it as English, and that probably remains the majority opinion. However, over the years, other attributions have been suggested. What has become clear in the process is that the Cross merits study in the broad intellectual and artistic context of northern Europe, from the Ile de France up to Scandinavia, and England across to Germany.

This one-day colloquium, jointly held by the British Archaeological Association and The Courtauld, will review and extend the debates about the origins and history of the Cloisters Cross. Speakers include Charles T. Little, Sabrina Harcourt-Smith, Robyn Barrow, Miri Rubin, Neil Stratford, Cecily Hennessy and Sandy Heslop.

Organised by Cecily Hennessy and Sandy Heslop on behalf of the British Archaeological Association.

Registration cost includes lunch and refreshment

More information can be found here.

Purchase your tickets here.

Programme

10.30 to 11.00 Coffee and registration (Reception and Research Forum Seminar Room)

11.00-11.10 Welcome: John McNeill and Tom Nickson (Lecture Theatre 2) 

11.10-12.40 Session 1, Chair: Lloyd de Beer

Charles T. Little: ‘Through a glass darkly’: Seventy Years of Understanding and Misunderstanding the Cloisters Cross

Sabrina Harcourt-Smith: Reflections on the Cloisters Cross in a preaching context

12.40—1.40 Lunch (provided – Research Forum Seminar Room)

1.40-3.20 Session 2, Chair: Jessica Barker

Robyn Barrow: Split Tooth: The Cloisters Cross and the Walrus Tusk

Neil Stratford: The British Museum and the Cloisters Cross

Miri Rubin: ‘Synagoga, agnus dei’ and the Cloisters Cross

3.20-3.40 Tea break (Research Forum Seminar Room)

3.40-5.10 Session 3: Chair: Richard Plant

Cecily Hennessy: The Cloisters Cross and the Sphere of Henry the Lion and Matilda of England

Sandy Heslop: The Oslo Corpus and the Cloisters Cross Revisited

5.10-5:40 Final Discussion

5.40-6.30 Drinks (Research Forum Seminar Room – generously supported by Sam Fogg)

Online Lecture: ‘Chôra and the Creation of Sacred Space in Byzantine Architecture’ with Jelena Bogdanović, Thursday 30 March 2023, 12pm (EDT)

Thursday, March 30, 2023 | 12:00 PM EDT | Zoom

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

Can we talk about Byzantine architecture beyond buildings? What is at stake?

This presentation engages with the scholarly opportunities for theoretical considerations of sacred architecture in light of Byzantine intellectual and creative practices. Primarily focusing on principles of architectural design, sacred space is highlighted here not as an abstract category nor as a specific sacred place or location but rather as a combination of the two. As such, sacred space points to a historical and evocative locale and associated events; yet it remains inseparable from its essential qualities. By revisiting the architectural design of Byzantine churches, this talk will demonstrate the meaningful relations between created sacred space and the faithful, between physical objects in space, and the significance of non-material aspects of built structures in communicating the vitality of architectural form as a kind of participatory icon of space. Especially important is the philosophically and architecturally suggestive concept of chôra (χώρα) and its cognate hypodochē (υποδοχή), originally introduced by Plato in his instrumental text Timaeus. This presentation will analyze the relevance of chôra and hypodochē for understanding the modes of creation of sacred space and religious architecture in the late antique and Byzantine Mediterranean.

Jelena Bogdanović (Ph.D. Princeton University) is an Associate Professor of History of Art and Architecture and Classical and Mediterranean Studies at Vanderbilt University. She studies cross-cultural and religious themes in the architecture of the Balkans and Mediterranean.

Advance registration required at https://maryjahariscenter.org/events/chora-and-the-creation-of-sacred-space

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

Online Lecture: ‘Divine King or Sacrilegious Upstart? The Portrait of Emperor Yǝkunno Amlak in Gännätä Maryam’ with Jacopo Gnisci, Tuesday 21 March 2023,12:00pm (EDT)

East of Byzantium is pleased to announce the next lecture in its 2022–2023 lecture series.

In the third quarter of the thirteenth century Yǝkunno Amlak led a rebellion against the Zagwes – a line of Christian rulers who had been in control of most of the Empire of Ethiopia since at least the first half of the twelfth century. He initiated a line that would rule the country until the twentieth century: the Solomonic dynasty. Apart from these general facts, we know relatively little about the life of the first emperor of this dynasty. In this paper I hope to further our understanding of Yǝkunno Amlak’s reign and visual strategies by focusing on his only known contemporary portrait in the church of Gännätä Maryam. By analysing this image in its wider setting, I aim to shed some light on its socio-political background and reflect on the reactions it might have triggered.

Jacopo Gnisci is a Lecturer in the Art and Visual Cultures of the Global South at University College London and a Visiting Scholar in the Department of Africa, Oceania, and the America at the British Museum. He is the co-Principal Investigator of the projects Demarginalizing medieval Africa: Images, texts, and identity in early Solomonic Ethiopia (1270-1527) (AHRC Grant Ref. no. AH/V002910/1; DFG Projektnummer 448410109) and Material Migrations: Mamluk Metalwork across Afro-Eurasia (Gerda Henkel Stiftung).

Advance registration required. Register: https://eastofbyzantium.org/upcoming-events/

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

An East of Byzantium lecture. EAST OF BYZANTIUM is a partnership between the Mashtots Professor of Armenian Studies at Harvard University and the Mary Jaharis Center that explores the cultures of the eastern frontier of the Byzantine empire in the late antique and medieval periods.