“Fotografare Bisanzio” addresses a hitherto unexplored topic, namely Italian archives that hold photographic images relating to the art of Byzantium and the Mediterranean East. As early as the end of the 19th century such collections were started by institutions and individual scholars in the wake of research, missions, and archaeological campaigns. This invaluable heritage offers unique testimony to the afterlife of monuments, the integrity of which has often been altered or lost due to restoration work, natural disasters, and wars. From page to page, from photograph to photograph, the reader is taken on an itinerary that moves across a vast geographical latitude, in the footsteps of prominent Italian and foreign scholars: from the Balkans to Anatolia, from Caucasus to Syria, from Egypt to Italy. In addition to presenting visual repositories of great historical importance, the book draws attention to a more general theme of pressing topicality: the fate of documents on physical supports in the digital age and the need to safeguard them as irreplaceable treasures of cultural memory.
CFP: ‘Faites vos jeux: game and space in texts and of texts’, Universities of Udine and Trieste, 22-23 March 2023, deadline: 30 September 2022
The XXXVI PhD cycle of the course in Language and Literary Studies of the University of Udine and University of Trieste (Italy) is pleased to announce the doctoral conference “Faites vos jeux: game and space in texts and of texts”, which will take place on March 22-24, 2023 in Udine (on-site).
During the three-day conference participants will reflect and analyse how the concepts of ‘play/game’ and ‘space’ interact and contribute to constructing meanings in literary, linguistic, philological and medieval studies.
The conference is interdisciplinary and includes all periods, but a significant strand is dedicated to philology and medieval studies (see below).
Deadline for submission: September 30, 2022.
Communication of acceptance: November 16, 2022
More information (and the whole version of the CfP) can be found at https://sites.google.com/view/giocoudine2023.
- Strand 3: Philology and medieval studies:
- Lexicon and semantics of ‘play’ and ‘game’ (plega vs gamen in Old English or ludus vs iocus in Latin);
- Game representation in the space of medieval texts: for instance, Alcuin’s propositiones or
- ‘mathematical games’; the swimming contest between Breca and Beowulf; game and competition in Hemings þáttr Áslákssonar;
- Texts as spaces where authors play with the meaning as well as with the ‘visible’ and/or phonic aspect of language (kenningar or heiti, runic acrostics and cryptography, anagrams, wordplays, puns, alliteration, rhyme, formulas, and other rhetorical-stylistic aspects);
- ‘Intellectual’ games in the space of texts: riddles and enigmas;
- Aspects of textual criticism, such as the interplay between authors and copyists in text transmission;
- Playing beyond the borders of texts: medievalism (‘Neo-medievalism’ or Middle Ages in Popular Culture, for instance the roleplay Dungeons & Dragons, the imaginary Middle Ages in Game of Thrones, the riddle-game between Bilbo and Gollum in The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien), Digital Humanities (see, for instance, the paper by Karen Arthur titled Playing the Editing Game with an Electronic Sir Gawain and the Green Knight).
Lecture: ‘“So shall the king greatly desire thy beauty”: on the sculptures of knights and ladies at Santa María la Mayor de Toro (Zamora)’, with Marina Aurora Garzón Fernández, Courtauld Institute of Art, 23rd November, 5pm-6.30pm GMT
During the second half of the 12th century sculptures of knights and ladies started populating churches across the Iberian North. Particularly interesting is the case of Santa María la Mayor de Toro (Zamora) because it features three capitals carved in successive construction stages that can be linked to different traditions. First, in the apse, a victorious knight facing a lady, similar to scenes found in Lleida, León and Santillana del Mar, could be read as a representation of Psalm 44. Later, a capital with a knight and a lady in a farewell embrace was sculpted at the transept, an iconography that can be traced back to a cycle of the Song of Songs from the portal of San Pedro de Villanueva (Asturias). Finally, decades later, another victorious knight with lady was carved at the tower quoting the earlier sculptures. Traditionally interpreted as images of the fight against evil, a reading of these scenes based on Psalm 44 and the Song of Songs, biblical passages alluding to the marriage between Christ and the Church, offers a new perspective on the sculpture program of Santa María la Mayor de Toro.
Marina Aurora Garzón Fernández studied Art History at the University of Santiago de Compostela (2011) where she earned a Masters in Medieval Studies (2013) and obtained her Phd in Medieval Studies (2019) with the thesis “Santa María la Mayor de Toro (Zamora): Church and City (1157-1312)” focusing on the study of Visual Culture in Leon and Castile during the 12th and 13th century. She is currently pursuing her post-doctoral project about paper-cut calligraphy in the Middle Ages at the CRC 933 “Material Text Cultures” at the University of Heidelberg.
Organised by Dr Tom Nickson (The Courtauld).
CFP: ‘Art Binds Communities in Medieval Europe’, IMC Leeds 2023, deadline 22 September 2022
“L’opera non sta mai da sola, è sempre un rapporto” (The artwork never stays alone, it is always a relationship). This enlightening sentence by the Italian art historian Roberto Longhi (1950) emphasizes how every artwork is embedded in a network of relationships with other artworks and the social context where it is placed.
Since Joachim Wollash (1965), medieval historians have already formulated the category of “Verbände” (associations) or “Verbandsbildung” (creation of associations) for monastic orders. However, art historians can helpfully extend this concept to the relationships between artworks and demonstrate how they materially express and reinforce networks (“Verbände”) not only within monastic orders but in all kinds of communities, both religious and lay.
We aim to organise two sessions intended to investigate how entanglements among medieval artworks, here understood broadly (book illuminations, paintings, sculptures, buildings, etc…) channelled existing social networks within communities, e.g., monastic, and mendicant orders, lay confraternities, guilds and foreigners sharing the same homeland.
Papers will focus on cases that analyse the production, organization, and decoration of either sacred spaces or objects in different areas of Medieval Europe as vehicle for relationships, for reflection of the attachment of people to places and culture, and for the creation of a new shared history that transcends differences.
Papers on any topic regarding these issues in Christian western and eastern areas c. 300–1500 (Late Antiquity to International Gothic) are welcome. The fields where these themes may be addressed may include, but are not limited to:
– Spatial networks, architecture, and liturgical installations
– Patronage
– Artistic practices
– Circulation of objects, models, and artists
– Iconographic and/or stylistic entanglements
Please send an abstract of no more than 250 words along with your short CV and the information below (required by IMC) by 22 September 2022 to Gianluca del Monaco (gianluca.delmonaco2@unibo.it), Fabio Massaccesi (fabio.massaccesi3@unibo.it), and Maddalena Vaccaro (mavaccaro@unisa.it).
Information to include with abstract and short CV:
• Full name
• Email address
• Postal address
• Telephone number
• Affiliation details (department, institution)
• Title (e.g. Dr, Ms, Mr, Mx, Professor etc)
Organized by: Gianluca del Monaco (Università di Bologna), Fabio Massaccesi (Università di Bologna), Maddalena Vaccaro (Università degli Studi di Salerno).
Deadlines Extended! CFP: ‘Premodern Parchment’ and ‘Concertina-Fold Books Across Premodern Cultures’, IMC Leeds 2023, deadline 23 September 2022
Call for papers: ‘Premodern Parchment’
Parchment is a familiar medium to medievalists. Animal skin, specially prepared, and employed primarily as a substrate for written communication, it is a substance that many researchers across fields of study regularly scrutinise and handle. There is now no shortage of scholarship that refers to parchment’s experiential qualities—its varied textures, smell, even sound—and its symbolic, especially Christological, significance as skin when bound in books. We seek proposals for papers that build on and move beyond this work, focusing on aspects of the medium that have been somewhat taken for granted including its (quasi) two-dimensionality, sidedness, relative opacity, colour and pliability; and/or delving into the uses of parchment outside the codical context. Our aim is to better understand the perceived possibilities and limitations of parchment in the premodern world and the qualities for which it was valued.
We plan for the session to be in-person and for papers to be 15–20 minutes long. Proposals from individuals in the academic, museum and library sectors; at any stage of their careers and from all disciplines and fields are welcome. If interested, please send an abstract of no more than 250 words along with your CV and the information below (required by IMC) by 23 September 2022 to Megan McNamee: mmcnamee@ed.ac.uk.
- Full name
- Email address
- Postal address
- Telephone number
- Affiliation details (department, institution)
- Title (e.g. Dr, Ms, Mr, Mx, Professor etc)
Call for papers: ‘Concertina-Fold Books Across Premodern Cultures’
Accordion, concertina, pleated, screenfold—scholars use a variety of terms to describe the zig-zag- or ‘fan’-fold book format. Although not identical in structure, books of this type share at least one common feature: they (appear to) comprise a continuous, oblong surface broken by creases. Most are bound in such a way that they can be flipped through like a codex; some can be fully or partially extended to reveal multiple ‘pages’ at once. Just how and even what information was articulated across the surfaces of concertinas, the extent to which the different folded states were meaningfully exploited by premodern people—these are among the questions to be explored in this session.
We seek papers that consider the contents and mechanics of concertinas in various cultural contexts. By taking a comparative approach, we aim to identify commonalities that may signal formal imperatives whilst sharpening our understanding of particularities preserved in different traditions. Proposals by individuals in the academic, museum and library sectors; at any stage of their careers; and from any discipline and field of study are welcome.
Please send an abstract of no more than 250 words along with your CV and the information below (required by IMC) by 23 September 2022 to Megan McNamee: mmcnamee@ed.ac.uk. Information to include with abstract and short CV:
- Full name
- Email address
- Postal address
- Telephone number
- Affiliation details (department, institution)
- Title (e.g. Dr, Ms, Mr, Mx, Professor etc)
Organised by Sarah Griffin, Lambeth Palace Library and Megan McNamee, University of Edinburgh
New Publication: The Mineral and the Visual: Precious Stones in Medieval Secular Culture by Brigitte Buettner
Opulent jeweled objects ranked among the most highly valued works of art in the European Middle Ages. At the same time, precious stones prompted sophisticated reflections on the power of nature and the experience of mineralized beings. Beyond a visual regime that put a premium on brilliant materiality, how can we account for the ubiquity of gems in medieval thought?
In The Mineral and the Visual, art historian Brigitte Buettner examines the social roles, cultural meanings, and active agency of precious stones in secular medieval art. Exploring the layered roles played by gems in aesthetic, ideological, intellectual, and economic practices, Buettner focuses on three significant categories of art: the jeweled crown, the pictorialized lapidary, and the illustrated travel account. The global gem trade brought coveted jewels from the Indies to goldsmiths’ workshops in Paris, fashionable bodies in London, and the crowns of kings across Europe, and Buettner shows that Europe’s literal and metaphorical enrichment was predicated on the importation of gems and ideas from Byzantium, the Islamic world, Persia, and India.
Original, transhistorical, and cross-disciplinary, The Mineral and the Visual engages important methodological questions about the work of culture in its material dimension. It will be especially useful to scholars and students interested in medieval art history, material culture, and medieval history.
Brigitte Buettner is Louise I. Doyle ’34 Professor of Art at Smith College. She is the author of Boccaccio’s “Des cleres et nobles femmes”: Systems of Signification in an Illuminated Manuscript.
You can find The Mineral and the Visual: Precious Stones in Medieval Secular Culture on the Penn State University Press web site at this URL: https://www.psupress.org/books/titles/978-0-271-09250-8.html
Take 30% off with code NR22 when you order through psupress.org
Lecture series: British Library Panizzi Lectures – Drawing Conclusions: Diagrams in Medieval Art and Thought with Jeffrey Hamburger
The British Library is delighted to announce the 2022 Panizzi Lecture series which will be given by Jeffrey Hamburger on Drawing Conclusions: Diagrams in Medieval Art and Thought.
Diagrams constitute an omnipresent feature of medieval art and thought. From Antiquity onwards, the forms and procedures of geometric reasoning held a privileged place in the pursuit of truth, the understanding of which remained closely linked to ideals of beauty and perfection.
Drawing on the collections of the British Library, whose holdings provide virtually comprehensive coverage of all ramifications of the diagrammatic tradition, this series of lectures examines the practical, theoretical and aesthetic dimensions of medieval diagrams as matrices of meaning and patterns of thought informing diverse areas of medieval culture.
The lectures will be held in person at the British Library and also live streamed, thanks to the generosity of Jonathan A. Hill, Bookseller.
- Lecture 1 : 24th October 2022. Maps of the Mind: Diagrams Medieval and Modern.
- Lecture 2 : 27th October 2022. The Codex in the Classroom: Practical Dimensions of Medieval Diagrams.
- Lecture 3: 1st November 2022. Poetry, Play, Persuasion: The Diagrammatic Imagination in Medieval Art and Thought. Followed by a drinks reception.
Booking is free but required for both in person and online attendance.
For more information and for bookings click here.
2022 Series Introduction – Drawing Conclusions: Diagrams in Medieval Art and Thought
Diagrams constitute an omnipresent feature of medieval art and thought. From Antiquity onwards, the forms and procedures of geometric reasoning held a privileged place in the pursuit of truth, the understanding of which remained closely linked to ideals of beauty and perfection.Drawing on the collections of the British Library, whose holdings provide virtually comprehensive coverage of all ramifications of the diagrammatic tradition, this series of lectures examines the practical, theoretical and aesthetic dimensions of medieval diagrams as matrices of meaning and patterns of thought informing diverse areas of medieval culture.
Jeffrey F. Hamburger’s research focuses on the art of the High and later Middle Ages. He is the Kuno Francke Professor of German Art & Culture at Harvard University. Beginning with his dissertation on the Rothschild Canticles (Yale, 1987), his scholarship has focused on the art of female monasticism, culminating in an international exhibition Krone und Schleier (Crown and Veil), 2005. Professor Hamburger holds a B.A. and Ph.D. in Art History from Yale University. He previously held teaching positions at Oberlin College, University of Toronto and has been a guest professor in Zurich, Paris, Oxford and Fribourg.
CFP: ‘Centers and Peripheries: The Global Premodern’, Medieval and Renaissance Studies Center at Texas Tech University, deadline September 30 2022
The Medieval and Renaissance Studies Center at Texas Tech University invites proposals for papers and sessions for an international conference on “Centers and Peripheries: The Global Premodern.” Recent decades have seen the study of the premodern past expand to include diverse geographies, peoples, objects, and texts, revealing parallels and interconnections across the globe, and challenging people to re-think how the more distant past continues to inform the present. These developments have challenged the assumed centrality of Europe and Western cultural norms in narratives of the premodern past by foregrounding interconnection and exchange with constituencies historically viewed as peripheral or subaltern.
Featuring keynote speakers Jonathan Hsy (George Washington University) and Ulinka Rublack (University of Cambridge), this conference will gather scholars in person from across disciplines and across the world to reconsider the spatial and temporal borders of the premodern past (here understood broadly as the period before approximately 1800 CE). The Medieval and Renaissance Studies Center encourages scholars working on premodern topics in any geographical domain, from any disciplinary perspective, to submit proposals for full panels or individual papers.
Papers are invited on topics including but not limited to:
• the movement of people, things, and ideas across premodern spaces
• intersections of race, ethnicity, gender, and dis/ability
• race and religions
• health and the human body
• borders & border-crossings
• materiality & material culture
• travel: pilgrimages or crusades in literature and/or history
• environmental & animal studies
• translation studies
• manuscript studies
• mapping
• public premodern studies: making the distant past speak to the present
For individual papers, please submit a 200-word abstract with name and professional affiliation. For full panels, please submit a 300-word abstract that describes the scope and aims of the complete panel and identifies the titles of the individual papers that constitute the panel, along with names and professional affiliations for each panel participant. Full panel submissions must include at least three papers and no more than four. Panels with four papers must limit papers to 15-minutes.
Submissions should be directed to: mrsc@ttu.edu. We particularly welcome submissions from graduate students, early career scholars, and postgraduate students, as well as collaborative abstract submissions. Please direct any questions to Jacob Baum, Interim Director, TTU Medieval and Renaissance Studies Center [email: jacob.m.baum@ttu.edu.]
The deadline for submissions is September 30, 2022. Acceptance notices will be sent no later than 15 November 2022.
Public Lecture Course with the Paul Mellon Centre: Britain and the World in the Middle Ages: Image and Reality
In the Middle Ages, the ‘British Isles’ were far from insular. These islands were, in fact, places of exchange, where art, ideas, rare materials and people came together from all over the world. This course examines Britain’s sense of place in that world, as well as its actual place in the world – in other words, image, and reality. Each of the course’s lectures considers one of five critical themes in Britain’s global experience and imagination, through the exploration of works of medieval art. This series was convened by Jessica Berenbeim (University of Cambridge) and Lloyd de Beer (British Museum).
Watch all the lectures on the Paul Mellon Centre website here.
CFP: ‘Unfolding the Past: The Materiality and Temporality of Medieval Southern Italy (I & II)’, International Congress on Medieval Studies 2023, deadline 15 September 2022
Southern Italy offers a vast and diverse collection of historical evidence. Since Antiquity, the region has been hosting civilizations committed to a thorough preservation of memory in the forms of both historic narratives and the material legacy of the past. During the Middle Ages, the splitting in separated cultural entities in contrast with each other, prompted the reclamation of the past for specific political agendas.
For instance, Norman rulers reinstalled cults from Paleo-Christian times, displaying a variety of material evidence, such as allegedly recovered bodily remains or supposed burial sites of early martyrs. Manifold are the examples on the architectural scale, such as Naples’s gothic Duomo: its pillars include juxtaposed marble columns likely taken from the early Cathedral complex, thus materially folding Christian Antiquity onto the present and hence strengthening the local episcopal authority fostered by the new Angevin rulers.
This double session aims at collecting study-cases of re-temporalized Past in Medieval Southern Italy. We are primarily interested in material evidence of conceptualizations of time, i.e. embodied by architecture and other works of art, by the use of spolia in various contexts, by collections of objects from different strata of time, by the mise-en-scène of relics and traces, etc. Instead of projecting intellectual constructs such as Antiquarianism back into the past we are interested in the immanence of history in the process of constructing the present. We propose to further explore the range of practices dealing with the folding and unfolding of time in the political and social reality of Medieval cultures.
Paper proposals must include:
• Author’s name, affiliation, and contact information
• Paper Title (15 words max)
• Abstract (300 words max)
• Short description (50 words)
Please submit abstracts no later than September 15, 2022, at the Confex submissions portal https://wmich.edu/medievalcongress/submissions#papers
Session Organizers: Antonino Tranchina, Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max Planck Institute for Art History in Rome, Antonino.Tranchina@biblhertz.it, and Adrian Bremenkamp, Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max Planck Institute for Art History in Rome, Adrian.Bremenkamp@biblhertz.it
Sessions Sponsored by the Italian Art Society https://www.italianartsociety.org
Please note: As this is a sponsored panel, all speakers must be (or become) members of the Italian Art Society in 2023. Please note that there are free one-year sospesi memberships available for eligible speakers in IAS sponsored sessions. Information can be found on our website here: https://www.italianartsociety.org/join/
The IAS offers several types of conference travel grants which help support graduate students and junior scholars, as well as scholars who are traveling internationally to present in IAS- Sponsored sessions. Applications for these grants are announced and opened in the late fall.
More information on the various conference travel grants be found on our website: https://www.italianartsociety.org/grants-opportunities/travel-grants/
Medieval Art Research 