We are pleased to announce the Call for Papers for the 22nd Vagantes Conference on Medieval Studies, which will be held at Harvard University from March 16–18, 2023!
Vagantes offers an excellent opportunity for junior scholars to share their research. We invite abstracts from current graduate students and recent MA graduates in all disciplines who are working on any topic related to the long Middle Ages. Abstracts of 300 words and a 1-page CV are due by November 28, 2022 to vagantesboard@gmail.com.
CFP: ‘Relics and Reliquaries in Iberia, c. 1000-1400: Stories, Spaces, and Identities’, IMC Leeds 2023, deadline 23 September 2022
The American Academy of Research Historians of Medieval Spain (AARHMS) is pleased to announce the organization of a panel at the 2023 International Medieval Congress in Leeds entitled “Relics and Reliquaries in Iberia, c. 1000-1400: Stories, Places, and Identities”.
This panel, within the world’s leading annual gathering of medieval experts, intends to unravel the overlooked entanglements of relics and reliquaries in the lives of medieval individuals from different social strata. Reliquaries have traditionally been seen by art historians in modern times as mere objects with an aesthetic value – described, categorized, and compared. Yet, reliquaries offer a window into the mindsets of their original audiences. The reading of the saint’s texts, the materiality of the object, and the public performance of both content and container across city streets shaped the lives of vast segments of pious medieval populations and evoked different feelings and socio-political ideologies within given contexts.
Medieval Iberia is largely and remarkably absent from recent reference works on the subject, the objects in general not being extensively studied in Spanish universities as outsiders to the grander art historical canon. The complexities of medieval Iberia in terms of art, conflicting religions, and dynamic territorial realities make the study of relics and reliquaries particularly appealing and prone to major inroads.
Papers on any topic regarding the cult of saints, their material culture, and the socio-religious history of Spain and Portugal c. 1000-1400 are welcome. Topics emphasizing overlooked gender and sexuality issues, multi-religious settings, hybridity, and violence, as well as health and disease, will be particularly appreciated.
Please send an abstract of fewer than 300 words, along with a short bio, to Dr. Jesús Rodríguez Viejo (AARHMS) to j.rodriguez.viejo@rug.nl before September 23, 2022.
CFP: ‘Mnemosyne: Forgetting, Remembering, and Rediscovering Classical Antiquity’, Warburg Institute Postgraduate Symposium, deadline 25 November 2022
The Warburg Institute, in collaboration with the Institute of Classical Studies, is hosting its fourth Postgraduate Symposium, Mnemosyne: Forgetting, Remembering, and Rediscovering Classical Antiquity. This is an in-person event for postgraduate students and early-career researchers held in central London.
The Symposium aims to explore the role of memory in the survival of classical culture across the centuries. Themes include:
- arts and heritage
- psychological and religious narratives
- sites of preservation and transmission
We invite papers from the fields of art history, history of ideas, cultural history, psychology and psychoanalysis, and related disciplines.
Call for Papers Deadline: Friday 25 November 2022
Conference dates: Thursday-Friday 4-5 May 2023
Please send paper proposals to mnemosyneconference@gmail.com. You can find more information in the attached flyer and through the symposium website: https://mnemosyneconferenc.wixsite.com/mnemosyne-conference
CFP: ‘Contested Boundaries: Blurring the Sacred and the Secular in Late Medieval Visual Culture’, International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo 2023, deadline 15 September 2022
As Joanna Cannon has argued: “The secular and the sacred were overlapping spheres; to suggest a clear contrast between secular and sacred would thus be an anachronism.” Bearing in mind Cannon’s assertion, this session seeks papers that investigate how late medieval visual culture blurs the border between the sacred and the secular throughout the late medieval global world (ca. 1250-1500). During this period, the creation of and haptic engagement with sacred and secular architectural spaces and objects in various media operated in a state of flux. Such variability and fluidity were dependent on the socio-political context of the production, circulation, and reception of such objects and spaces, and were critically shaped by contemporary ontological and hermeneutic questions of their very nature and interpretation.
This session seeks papers that address any of the following questions: How did the uses of objects and their significance shift as they moved from space to space, from court to court, from family member to family member, from collector to collector? How did the interpretation of and engagement with spaces change as both people and objects moved through them? In what ways did wealth (or lack of it), gender, race, and ethnicity impact the audiences’ ability to access and engage with particular objects and spaces?
Possible themes and subjects include but are not limited to:
• Cloisters, cathedral spaces, civic buildings
• Altarpieces, cassone and furniture, quotidian domestic objects
• Portable books, jewelry, clothing
Keywords: sacred, secular, production, circulation, engagement, interpretation
Organizers:
Gabriela Chitwood (Ph.D. Candidate, University of Oregon) gchitwoo@uorgeon.edu, (she/her/hers)
Shannah Rose (Ph.D. Candidate, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University) (she/her/hers), shannah.rose@nyu.edu
Presider:
Nina Gonzalbez (Ph.D. Candidate, Florida State University) nmg03e@fsu.edu, (she/her/hers)
Submissions are due by September 15, and those wishing to submit a proposal must upload at: https://wmich.edu/medievalcongress/submissions.
New Publication: ‘Germigny-l’Exempt ou les Trois Deniers de Gaspard’ by Emmanuel Legeard
The primary aim of this book is to situate the art and architecture of the French medieval church of Germigny-l’Exempt within the global historical context of the formation of France in the 12th and 13th centuries. A study of the architecture and iconographic programs of Notre-Dame de Germigny-l’Exempt had never been carried out before despite the church’s quite astonishing, twelfth-century clocher-porche, and its original inner portal borrowing heavily from Saint-Gilles du Gard, Laon and the royal portals of French cathedrals. Language: French
Link (publisher): https://www.editions-harmattan.fr/livre-germigny_l_exempt_ou_em_les_trois_deniers_de_gaspard_em_emmanuel_legeard-9782140278112-74061.html
Conference: ‘The Role of the Senses in Medieval Liturgies and Rituals’, Università di Padova, 21-23 September 2022
Padua, 21-23 September 2022 | Palazzo Bo – Aula Nievo
To attend online please register at the following link: https://forms.gle/S6tMjNQnCxoxWpHc6
Conference programme
21 September 2022
9:00
Opening and Welcome:
Jacopo Bonetto, Head of the Department of Cultural Heritage, Università di Padova
Introduction:
Zuleika Murat, PI of the ERC SenSArt Project, Università di Padova
9:30
Session 1, (Chair: Zuleika Mura)
Holly Flora, Tulane University, The “Meditationes Vitae Christi” and Sight and Sound in Female Religious Experiences
Valentina Baradel, Università di Padova, “Un bien petit livret d’oroisons”: Sight, Sound, and Touch in the “Hours of Jeanne d’Evreux”
Martina Bordone, Università di Firenze, Through Body or Eyes: Experiencing Devotional Books in Late Medieval Italy
11.00-11.30
Coffee break
11:30
Laura Slater, University of Cambridge, Liturgical Music and Lay Devotion: Stimulating the Spiritual Senses
Leah R. Clark, University of Oxford, Sensing Devotion: Objects and their Sensorial Practices in the Collections of Eleonora d’Aragona, Duchess of Ferrara
12.30
Discussion
14.30
Session 2, (Chair: Valentina Baradel)
Francesc Massip and Alba Knijff Massip, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Universitat de Barcelona, With the Five Senses: Spectacular Devices for Engaging the Audience in the Middle Ages
Carla M. Bino, Università Cattolica di Milano, Moving Movements: The Relationship Between Animated Crucifixes and the Faithful in 14th Century Umbria
Sara Carreño, Università di Padova, Bodily Interactions and Sensorial Engagement in the Performative Rites of Late Medieval Santiago de Compostela
16.00-16:30
Coffee break
16:30
Gillian Hurst, University of Bristol, The Sensorium at Syon Abbey as Explored through Five Processionals: Phenomenology and the Expansion of the Sensorial Canon
Marta Simões and Joana Antunes, Universidade de Coimbra, Clad in Black / Bedecked with Flowers: Lent and Holy Week in Portuguese Medieval Churches
17.30
Discussion
22 September 2022
9:00
Session 3 (Chair: Salvador Ryan)
Frederick Paxton, Connecticut College, Engaging the Senses in the Death Ritual at Cluny
Florence Chave-Mahir, Independent Scholar, Exorcism in the Middle Ages: a Performance for All Senses
Sarah Hamilton, University of Exeter, Rites for Travellers
10.30-11.00
Coffee break
11.30
Micol Long, Università di Padova, Performances of Contrition and Compassion? An Inquiry Into the Development of a Medieval Ritual of Confession in the 13th Century
Ninon Dubourg, Université de Liège, The “Blind”, the “Deaf” and the “Dumb”: Liturgical Practices of Sensory and Mentally Disabled People
João Luís Inglês Fontes, Universidade NOVA de Lisboa, Liturgy and Religious Experience in Eremitical Communities: The Testimony of Male and Female Communities of Poor Life (Portugal, 14th-16th Centuries)
12:30
Discussion
14.30
Session 4 (Chair: Micol Long)
Zuleika Murat, Università di Padova, Children in Medieval Christianity: Embodiment and the Senses in Liturgies, Rituals, and Prayers
Juliette Day, Helsingfors Universitet-University of Oxford, Blackfriars Hall, The Sensory Impoverishment of Chrismation in the Late Middle Ages
15.30-15.45
Coffee break
15.45
Ariana Sider, University of Toronto, Materiality, Sensory Experience, and Community in Late-Medieval Tournaisien Wills
Serena Franzon, Independent Scholar, Praying with the Senses: Sensory Engagement in Relation to Medieval Devotional Jewelry
16.45
Discussion
23 September 2022
9:00
Session 5 (Chair: João Luís Inglês Fontes)
Brianne Dolce, University of Oxford, Listening and Understanding in the “Acta Synodi Atrebatensis”
Eugeen Schreurs and Wendy Wauters, Koninklijk
Conservatorium Antwerpen, KU Leuven, Experiencing and Interpreting the Soundscape of the Late Medieval Church of Our Lady in Antwerp
10.15-10.45
Coffee break
10.45
Henry Parkes, University of Nottingham, Sound and Vision in the Fleury Night Office
Giovanni Varelli, University of Oxford, Sonorities and
Topographies of Medieval Liturgical Processions
Matteo Cesarotto and Lorenzo Barletta E.C., Université de Tours / CESR, Eremo di Monte Rua (Padua), “Et nullam omnino operis Dei partem cantando persolvant”: Music and the Camaldolese Hermits Liturgy
12.15
Discussion
14.30
Session 6 (Chair: Sara Carreño)
Hólmfríður Sveinsdóttir, Universitetet i Oslo, Experiencing Miraculous Healing in Medieval Norway. Case Studies from the Museum of Cultural History
Elliott Wise, Brigham Young University, Epiphanies of Flesh and Light: Framing the Elevation with the Chasuble of the Golden Fleece
Katalin Suba, Eötvös Loránd Tudományegyetem, The Crucifixion Scene on the Hungarian Coronation Mantle and its Liturgical Allusions
16.00
Discussion
16.45
Conclusions
16.45
Discussion
This conference is sponsored by the ERC StG Project “The Sensuous Appeal of the Holy: Sensory Agency of Sacred Art and Somatised Spiritual Experiences in Medieval Europe (12th-15th century) – SenSArt”.
This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No 950248).
Organising Committee
- Zuleika Murat, Università di Padova
- Valentina Baradel, Università di Padova
- Sara Carreño, Università di Padova
Scientific Committee:
- Valentina Baradel, Università di Padova
- Sara Carreño, Università di Padova
- Matteo Cesarotto, Université de Tours / Centre d’études
- supérieures de la Renaissance (CESR)
- João Luís Inglês Fontes, Universidade NOVA de Lisboa
- Zuleika Murat, Università di Padova
- Salvador Ryan, St Patrick’s Pontifical University, Maynooth
Conference: ‘Book Ornament and Luxury Critique’, Institute of Art History, Zurich, 16-17 September 2022
The research group “Textures of Sacred Scripture. Materials and Semantics of Sacred Book Ornament” is organizing a two-day international conference on “Book Ornament and Luxury Critique”. The conference, funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation, will take place at the Institute of Art History at the University of Zurich from 16 to 17 September 2022.
Registration is required by 12.09.2022: thomas.rainer@uzh.ch. A Zoom link will be provided for participants who cannot attend in person.
When, how, and under what circumstances might book ornament be understood as offensive, and which strategies were employed to avoid such critique or to create books that are ostentatiously ascetic? Since antiquity, philological correctness was opposed to ornament in the rhetorical discourse, which associated an overtly rich language with overblown luxury and female adornment. Already in Roman literature, this gendered discourse was projected onto the material artifacts of writing, a tradition that influenced the varied discussions about the materiality of sacred books and their status in Christian, Islamic and Jewish book cultures from Late Antiquity until the end of the Middle Ages and beyond. In all three religious traditions, this critical discourse about scriptures, script and ornament established connections “between ornamenting bodies, buildings and language, in which fancy forms are rejected in favor of plain, and embellishment opposed to simplicity in a dialect of truth and falsity” (F. B. Flood, in: Clothing Sacred Scriptures, ed. D. Ganz/B. Schellewald, Berlin/Boston 2019, 52). The conference will explore the entire range of such critique of book ornament in Christian, Islamic and Jewish book cultures, and analyzes their specific contexts and semantics, as well as the spaces of negotiation, in which artists, commissioners and users could react to critical allegations without simply obeying them.
Find out more about the conference information here.
Conference Programme
16 September 2022
| 09:00-09:30 | Introduction David Ganz (UZH) |
| 09:30-10:20 | Striving for Authenticity: The Rabbinic Conception of a Kosher Torah Scroll as a Matter of Purity and Holiness Annett Martini (FU Berlin) |
| 10:50-11:40 | Gender, Luxury Critique and the Make-Up of Sacred Scripture in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages Thomas Rainer (UZH) |
| 11:40-12:30 | Distract or Engage? The Ornamented Qur’an in the Hands of Its Beholder Alya Karame (Orient-Institut Beirut) |
| 14:00-14:50 | Notis ornare libellos: Manuscript Illumination as a Sumptuary Art in the Middle Ages Stefanos Kroustallis (ESCRBC, Madrid) |
| 14:50-15:40 | Liturgical Luxury as the Devil’s Bait: Church Ornaments as Objects of Temptation in Western European Manuscript Painting c. 1025-1275 Sommer Hallquist (University of Cambridge) |
| 16:00-16:50 | Material Semantics of Monastic Reform: Austerity and Ostentation in Twelfth-century Cistercian Bookbindings Nancy K. Turner (J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles) |
17 September 2022
| 09:00-09:50 | Mind the Gap: Silentium in Insular Gospels and Book-Shrines Heather Pulliam (University of Edinburgh) |
| 09:50-10:40 | Between the Text and the Image: Micrography, Its Critique and Actual Practices in Medieval Ashkenaz Ilona Steimann (Hochschule für Jüdische Studien Heidelberg) |
| 11:00-11:50 | Semantic Interpretation of the Decorations and Layouts of the Paris Kitāb al-Diryāq in Light of Cultural Graphology Farnaz Masoumzadeh (Art University of Isfahan – AUI) |
| 11:50-12:40 | Non-Gilded Islamic Devotional Manuscripts: Towards a History of Non-Luxury Materiality in the Islamic World Nadirah Mansour (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston) |
| Afternoon | Excursion to the Zentralbibliothek Zürich (ZB) and visit to the workplace of the luxury critics and leaders of the Zurich reformation Huldrych Zwingli and Heinrich Bullinger |
Lecture Series: British Archaeological Association Programme of Meetings 2022-2023
The British Archaeological Association holds regular monthly lectures on the first Wednesday of each month between October and May in the rooms of the Society of Antiquaries of London, Burlington House, Piccadilly, London W1J 0BE.
The lectures are open to all and provide an opportunity for professionals, students and independent scholars to present research that falls within the BAA’s areas of interest. We aim to cover both British and European topics that are susceptible to art-historical, archaeological, architectural, and historiographical investigation between the Roman period and the 19th century, but with a bias towards the medieval period.
Tea is served from 4.30 p.m. and the Chair is taken at 5.00 p.m.
Find out more information here.
5 October 2022
‘”An Open and Shut Case”: Displaying Medieval Art in Private Collections’
Dr Paul Williamson, Keeper Emeritus, Victoria and Albert Museum
2 November 2022
‘The Chantry Chapels of Cardinal Beaufort and Bishop Waynflete in Winchester Cathedral’
Jane Stewart, Courtauld Institute of Art
7 December 2022
‘The Abbey of Santa Maria a Mare, San Nicola di Tremiti: an important early Romanesque monument all but lost at sea’
Dr Francis Woodman, Cambridge University
4 January 2023
‘Opicinus de Canistris (1296–c. 1352) and Diagrams of Time in the Late Middle Ages’
Dr Sarah Griffin, Lambeth Palace Library
1 February 2023
‘The Sources of Viking Wealth: new results from lead isotope analysis of Viking silver hoards’
Dr Jane Kershaw, Oxford University
1 March 2023
‘Digging for Medieval Seals: does gender matter?’
Dr Jitske Jasperse, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin
5 April 2023
‘Intertextuality and Romanitas: Twelfth-Century Responses to Roman Antiquities’
Dr William Kynan Wilson, The Open University
3 May 2023
‘The Cosmati Mosaics at Westminster: Art, Politics, and Exchanges with Rome in the Age of Gothic’
Professor Paul Binski (Cambridge University) and Professor Claudia Bolgia (Università di Udine)
Franklin Research Grants, deadlines October 3 2022 & December 1 2022
The Franklin program is particularly designed to help meet the costs of travel to libraries and archives for research purposes; the purchase of microfilm, photocopies, or equivalent research materials; the costs associated with fieldwork; or laboratory research expenses.
Franklin grants are made for noncommercial research. They are not intended to meet the expenses of attending conferences or the costs of publication. The Society does not pay overhead or indirect costs to any institution, and grant funds are not to be used to pay income tax on the award. Grants will not be made to replace salary during a leave of absence or earnings from summer teaching; pay living expenses while working at home; cover the costs of consultants or research assistants; or purchase permanent equipment such as computers, cameras, tape recorders, or laboratory apparatus.
Award: up to $6,000
Contact: Linda Musumeci, Director of Grants and Fellowships, American Philosophical Society, 104 S. 5th Street, Philadelphia, PA 19106
Deadlines
For applications and two letters of support:
October 3, 2022, for a January 2023 decision for work beginning February 2023 through January 2024
December 1, 2022, for a March 2023 decision for work beginning April 2023 through January 2024
Note that end dates will be considered flexible/negotiable due to COVID-19 travel restrictions and closures.
Find out more information here.
CFP: ‘The Concertina-Fold Book, Across Premodern Cultures’, IMC Leeds 2023, deadline 12 September 2022
CFP Leeds, International Medieval Congress, 3–6 July 2023
‘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 12 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
Link to PDF of announcement:https://www.academia.edu/85424453/CFP_IMC_Leeds_2023_The_Concertina_Fold_Book_Across_Premodern_Cultures?source=swp_share
Medieval Art Research 