Call for Papers: International Conference ‘Metamorphoses and uses of the same past and formation of identities in Europe from the 14th century to the 1980s: shared, in competition, or antagonistic memories’, AGRELITA, Deadline 15 September 2022

The ERC research program AGRELITA (The Reception of Ancient Greece in pre-modern French Literature and Illustrations of Manuscripts and Printed Books (1320-1550) : How invented memories shaped the identity of European communities) is a transdisciplinary research program : literature, art history, political, cultural and social history, memory studies, European studies. It focuses on different modes of reception of Greek antiquity in the premodern era (1320-1550) and analyses how the creation of memories of ancient Greece in textual and visual cultures was exploited to support the formation of political and cultural identities at several levels (local, regional, (pre)national, transnational and European ones) in Western Europe from the 1320s to the 1550s.


The 2023 conference (Thursday, 14 September and Friday, 15 September 2023, Palais des Beaux-Arts, Lille, France) aims to broaden the reflection on these issues of the uses of the same recomposed/reinvented past to form political and cultural identities at several levels, by opening it :
-to other pasts (ancient, medieval, or modern ones)
-to a wider period of reception and exploitation of these pasts, from the 14th Century to the 1980s, and throughout Europe.


In other words, this conference aims to explore how, at the same period or at different periods, the same past is reinterpreted or even reinvented and may be used to form several political identities : the same past may be instrumentalized to strengthen the identity of a particular political entity, to federate the elements that make it up, to enforce it against other competing political powers, as well as to unite several political entities, to create shared memories, supranational and particularly European ones.


We defined the 14th Century as the starting point, because an increasingly sustained exploitation of the past is emerging during this period in political practices, literature and the arts ; stronger assertions of political and cultural identities appear – whether local, regional, or pre-national –, as well as new expressions of the idea of Europe, particularly in the context of the mobilization against the Ottomans.


We defined the 1980s as the terminus ad quem, because new relations to the past (the new ‘regime of historicity’ of ‘presentism’, F. Hartog) and to memory occurred during these years. The 1980s constitute the very beginning of a period marked by the multiplication of readings and exploitations of the past by more diverse people, hence the birth of new forms of memory rivalries and also of sharing of memories. They precede the eastward enlargement of the European construction, a movement of reinterpretation of many national histories, and at the same time the implementation of incentive policies to assert the formation of transnational memories and a European memory. They also consist in the very beginning concerning the phenomena of globalization and the creation of a worldwide memory.


Policies and uses of memory, whether they emanate from political powers, from communities, associations, and increasingly diverse people, have given rise and still give rise to numerous studies about contemporary history : how regional, national and transnational political identities interact. Exploiting the past and the memory created from it as a political tool has of course existed for centuries, with forms and means that have undergone profound changes ; many studies have also been devoted to the elaboration of memories that reinforce national identities under construction in the Modern era, as well as to expressions of the idea of Europe. The six-volume edition by S. Berger and J. K. Olick, A Cultural History of Memory (2020), has recently highlighted the evolution of different forms of memory from antiquity to the present day.


Memory studies, examining how regional, national and transnational identities interact, is a field in which we think that investigations are still to be carried out, especially concerning the precise question that we are associating with it for this conference : metamorphoses and uses of the memory of the same past by different people, considering the long period that goes from the 14th Century to the 1980s.


AGRELITA welcomes proposals from various displinary fields (literature, history, art history, archaeology, geography, philosophy, sociology, political science, anthropology, memory studies, European studies) and from various periods across the whole European geographical area. Applying multi-disciplinary approaches and crossed analysis, perspectives and concepts, AGRELITA means to offer new insight into this question.

AGRELITA invites submissions of papers that address any of the following questions:

– Dynamics of elaboration of plural memories of the same past and their links with the formation of several political and cultural identities. We aim to investigate shared, complementary, in competition, or antagonistic instrumentalization of the same past by various people, which aims to assert several political and cultural identities, reveals a wide range of strategies (process of narratives, discourses, images, spectacles, symbols, commemoration, heritage formation, museification… ) ; how they are received, recomposed and reinterpreted, sometimes even imagined ; how diverse they are ; how they reflect different values attributed to the past in memory.
– In this context, we should also consider the interactions between local, regional, (pre)national, and transnational identities as they assert through convergent or differentiated exploitations of the same past. In other words, how, confronted with the question of values which are attributed to the past, memory is modified by various people and for various audiences, in order to construct, assert, inflect and renew political and cultural identities, and how metamorphoses and uses of the same past may meet an identity renewal or change. We will examine both the competing memories of the same past and the rise, during the defined period, of transnational memories and identities, as well as whether they conciliate or not with other memories and identities. These transnational memories are then affirmed as memories shared between two or more political communities (for example, shared memories of a sovereign ; memories of wars : conflicting and then reconciled) and/or as a European memory in connection with the affirmation of the idea of Europe.
– The historical periods, events, intellectual movements, figures, and places that have given rise to differentiated or convergent appropriations by two or more political and cultural communities : memorial issues of much debated periods, events, figures, and places ; memorial issues of periods, events, figures, and places that several communities appropriate to forge shared memories and reinforce transnational identities. We are interested in essays that focus on the plurality of memorial uses of the same past through two or more case studies, to analyze how the recomposed memories of the same past make it possible to invent, reinterpret and reinforce one or more particular identities, and/or to create a transnational and particularly European memory.

SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE

Martine Benoît, Université de Lille
Stefan Berger, Ruhr-Universität Bochum
Hélène Casanova-Robin, Sorbonne Université
Gerard Delanty, University of Sussex
Sophie Duchesne, Sciences Po Bordeaux
François Hartog, École des hautes études en sciences sociales
Tuuli Lähdesmäki, University of Jyväskylä
Elena Musiani, Università degli Studi di Bologna
Cédric Passard, Sciences Po Lille, Université de Lille
Alain Schnapp, Université Panthéon-Sorbonne
Aline Sierp, University of Maastricht

Please submit a short abstract (title and around ten lines of presentation, along with a brief CV) before 15 September 2022 to Catherine Gaullier-Bougassas at the following addresses:
catherine.bougassas@univ-lille.fr
erc-agrelita@univ-lille.fr
Travel and accommodation costs will be covered according to the terms of the University of Lille.
Papers will be published. Papers are due by 15 February 2024.

For more information about the ERC AGRELITA Project, please see our academic Blog: https://agrelita.hypotheses.org/
Projet ERC Advanced Grant AGRELITA
The Reception of Ancient Greece in Pre-modern French Literature and Illustrations of Manuscripts and Printed Books (1320-1550) : How Invented Memories Shaped the Identity of European Communities
Direction : Catherine Gaullier-Bougassas

The AGRELITA project ERC n° 101018777 was launched on October 1st, 2021. It is a 5-year project (2021-2026) financed on an ERC Advanced Grant 2020 through the European Union’s Research and Innovation Programme Horizon 2020.

For more information visit: https://agrelita.hypotheses.org/1349

Job Opportunity: Associate Lectureships in Art History Pre-1800, University of St Andrews, Deadline 27 May 2022

The University of St Andrews is seeking to appoint two full-time Associate Lecturers with expertise in the history of art, architecture, urbanism or visual culture in the period before 1800. These are fixed-term posts replacing permanent members of staff on leave. We encourage applications from candidates whose work takes a transnational, cross-cultural or multidisciplinary approach.

Informal enquiries can be directed to the Head of School, Professor Linda Goddard: ljg21@st-andrews.ac.uk

Start date: 1 September 1 2022

End date: 15 January 2023

Application deadline: 27 May 2022

To apply visit: https://www.jobs.ac.uk/job/CPM132/associate-lecturer-in-art-history-pre-1800-aoac1807rxnb

Roundtable: ‘Rethinking the Legacies of 1492’, with Jerrilynn Dodds, Charlene Villaseñor Black, Giuseppe Marcocci, and Tom Nickson, Department of History of Art, University of Oxford, 30 May 2022, 4:00-6:00 BST

When: 30 May 2022, 4:00-6:00 BST

Where: Old Library, All Souls College, Oxford

A roundtable exploring events and exhibitions in the US, Spain & Italy. With Jerrilynn Dodds, Charlene Villaseñor Black, Giuseppe Marcocci, and Tom Nickson.

Chaired by Gervase Rosser.

Organised by Costanza Beltrami.

Open to all, no booking required.

Fellowship: Post-Doctoral Fellow in Byzantine Coins, Dumbarton Oaks, Deadline 15 June 2022

Dumbarton Oaks invites applications for a Post-Doctoral Fellow to work with the museum team on projects relating to cataloging, publication, and exhibition of the coin collection. The successful candidate will receive training in digital cataloging, collections management, and exhibition planning. They will catalogue the newly acquired Mansfield and Shaw collections of early Byzantine coins, describing, recording, and publishing these coins in the Online Coin Catalogue. They will also work with the Collections Manager and Registrar to accession and house the coins. Building on the work of nomisma.org the Post-Doctoral Fellow will be involved in the establishment of a federated database to catalogue and digitize Byzantine coin holdings in various collections worldwide. In partnership with the Associate Curator and the Manager of Exhibitions, they will help to create temporary exhibits of the coin collection and take part in the planning and execution of educational activities. The fellowship offers unique opportunities to build career skills in digital humanities, museum curation, and collections-based education. The Fellow will participate fully in Dumbarton Oaks’ dynamic community of scholars and programming in Byzantine Studies and will devote 20% of the fellowship time to personal research.

 Major Responsibilities

  • Work with representatives of the Numismatic Collection of the Firestone Library Collections, Princeton University, and nomisma.org to establish and implement a linked-open data platform for Byzantine coins.
  • Research and establish unique issue identifiers for Byzantine coins for the period 717–1204.
  • Aid in the accessioning and housing of the newly acquired Mansfield and Shaw collections of early Byzantine coins.
  • Catalogue the newly acquired Mansfield and Shaw collections into the Dumbarton Oaks Online Coin Catalogue.
  • Help prepare museum displays of numismatic material.
  • Take part in educational activities involving the coin collection.

Qualifications

Basic

  • PhD in History, Art History, or Archaeology with a specialization in Byzantine Studies.
  • Excellent research skills, particularly in the areas of numismatic cataloging.

Preferred

  • Experience in a museum, special collection, or comparable environment.
  • Strong computer skills including using relational databases and collection management software.

Term

This is a one-year fellowship, with the possibility of renewal for two additional years. The Post-Doctoral Fellow will have access to the outstanding resources of the institute and become part of the larger research community at Dumbarton Oaks.

The Post-Doctoral Fellow would report to the Associate Curator of Coins and Seals and the Registrar and Collections Manager.

 How to Apply

Please send a cover letter, resume/CV, and two letters of reference to FellowshipPrograms@doaks.org by June 15, 2022.

Lecture: ‘Memento mori Imagery and the Limits of the Self in Late Medieval Europe’, The Courtauld Research Forum, London and Online, 26 May 2022, 5:30 BST

When: Thursday, 26 May 2022, 5:30 – 7:00 BST

Where: Lecture Theatre 1, Vernon Square, and online via Livestream

Book here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/memento-mori-imagery-and-the-limits-of-the-self-in-late-medieval-europe-tickets-330551748177

Objects bearing memento mori themes were abundant in Europe in the decades immediately around the year 1500. The material properties of these objects – the matter from which they were formed, the apparent care or negligence with which they were fashioned, and the ways their physical condition betrays signs of heavy use or careful conservation – can point us toward a better understanding of the diversity of interests that inspired their creation and use. These motivations range from pious apprehensions about the fate of one’s soul to arguably less anxious ruminations on the nature of image-making and the role of an emerging sense of aesthetic engagement. Taken together, they encapsulate one of the central fascinations and anxieties of their age: in an era committed to the notion that deep truths could be conveyed through surface appearances and that individual identity could be captured, communicated, and preserved through static imagery, memento mori objects resisted the notion of a stable self, reminding their viewers of the anonymity that awaits us all in the grave.

About the speaker: Stephen Perkinson’s scholarship focuses on Medieval and Renaissance art of Northern Europe. He has published on topics ranging from the 13th to the 16th centuries. His 2009 study of the origins of portraiture (The Likeness of the King, Univ. of Chicago Press) was the recipient of the 2009 Morris D. Forkosch Prize for Best Book in Intellectual History. He has also collaborated extensively with art museums. Most recently, he was curator of The Ivory Mirror: The Art of Mortality in Renaissance Europe (Bowdoin College Museum of Art, 2017; catalogue distributed by Yale University Press), a major loan exhibition that shed new light on memento mori imagery and ivory carving in Northern Europe around the year 1500. Prior to that project, he produced work in conjunction with exhibitions of material from London’s Victoria and Albert Museum (Object of Devotion, 2010) and the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Set in Stone, 2006). He is also the author of essays that have appeared in The Art Bulletin, Speculum, Gesta, and elsewhere. At Bowdoin, he teaches courses that cover material ranging from the late antique world of the Mediterranean to the Renaissance in Northern Europe, and addressing the artistic traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

Organised by Dr Jessica Barker (The Courtauld) and Dr Tom Nickson (The Courtauld). 

This event is kindly supported by the ICMA. 

New Publication: ‘Urnes Stave Church and Its Global Romanesque Connections’, edited by Kirk Ambrose, Griffin Murray and Margrete Syrstad Andås

This book situates the art and architecture of the stave church of Urnes within a global perspective and aims to reinvigorate scholarly interest and debate in one of the world’s most important churches.

Urnes is the oldest and best known of the Norwegian stave churches. Despite its rich sculptural program, complex building history, fine medieval furnishings, and UNESCO World Heritage Site status, Urnes has attracted scant scholarly attention beyond Scandinavia. Broadly speaking, the church has been seen to exemplify Nordic traditions, a view manifest in the frequent use of “Urnes style” to designate the final phase of Viking art. While in no way denying or diminishing the importance of local or regional traditions, this book examines Urnes from a global perspective, considering how its art and architecture engaged international developments from across Europe, the Mediterranean, and Central Asia. In adopting this alternative approach, the articles collected in this volume offer the most current research on Urnes, published in English to reach a broad audience. The aim is to reinvigorate academic interest and debate in not only what is one of the most important churches in the world, but also in the rich cultural heritage of Northern Europe.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments – Contributors and Editors

Introduction
Kirk Ambrose, Margrete Syrstad Andås, and Griffin Murray

List of Illustrations – The Plates

Part One: Situating Urnes

Chapter 1 Urnes Stave Church: A Monument Frozen in Time?
Øystein Ekroll
Chapter 2 Urnes: Some Current Research Issues
Leif Ank er
Chapter 3 The Landscape of Urnes: Settlement, Communication, and Resources in the Viking and Early Middle Ages
Birgit Maixner

Part Two: The Eleventh-Century Church

Chapter 4 The Decoration of Buildings in the North in the Late Viking Age: A Tale of Bilingualism, Code-Switching, and Diversity?
Margrete Syrstad Andås
Chapter 4A Appendix: Alphabetical List of Fragments from Eleventh-Century. Decorated Buildings in the North
Margrete Syrstad Andås
Chapter 5 The European Significance of Urnes: An Insular Perspective on Urnes and the Urnes Style
Griffin Murray
Chapter 6 “Who is this King of Glory?”: The Religious and Political Context of the Urnes Portal and West Gable
Margrete Syrstad Andås

Part 3: The Twelfth-Century Church

Chapter 7 Soft Architecture: Textiles in the Urnes Stave Church
Ingrid Lunnan Nødseth
Chapter 8 Trueing the Capitals at Urnes
Kirk Ambrose
Chapter 9 Norse Encounters with the Mediterranean and Near Eastern Worlds in the Capitals of Urnes
Kjartan Hauglid
Chapter 10 Plants, Beasts, and a Barefoot Cleric
Elizabeth den Hartog
Chapter 11 Monstrosity, Transformation and Conversion: The Program of the Urnes Capitals in Its European Context
Thomas E . A . Dale

Bibliography
Index

More Info: https://bit.ly/3wuHtBb

Lecture: ‘Forgotten Friars: the Visual Culture of the Gesuati’, The Murray Seminars at Birkbeck, Online, 8 June 2022, 5:00 BST

Book tickets here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/forgotten-friars-the-visual-culture-of-the-gesuati-tickets-319575578157?aff=ebdsoporgprofile

Among the least known of the later medieval mendicant orders active in Italy are the Apostolic Clerics of Saint Jerome, better known as the Gesuati, founded by the Sienese merchant Giovanni Colombini and officially recognized by Pope Urban V in 1367. Until their suppression in 1668, the Gesuati were active in the life of many Italian cities, primarily in Tuscany but also as far afield as Venice and Rome, and the order is known to have commissioned altarpieces and murals from artists as varied as Sano di Pietro, Domenico Ghirlandaio, Pietro Perugino, among numerous others. In addition, they played a significant role in the provision of artistic materials, including both pigments and glass. This talk will introduce the visual culture of the Gesuati and explore a number of its contexts of production.

About the Speaker: John Osborne (Ph.D., Courtauld Institute 1979) is an art historian with broad research interests in medieval Italy and a special focus on the material culture of the cities of Rome and Venice. His most recent book, Rome in the Eighth Century: a history in art, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2020. He has held visiting fellowships at The British School at Rome; Corpus Christi College, Cambridge; the Istituto Ellenico di Studi Bizantini, Venice; and the Dumbarton Oaks Center for Byzantine Studies, Washington. He is currently Distinguished Research Professor and Dean Emeritus at Carleton University, Ottawa, as well as an Associate Fellow of the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies in Toronto, and an Honorary Research Fellow at the Courtauld.

Lecture: ‘Mass Production of Books Before Printing’, John Coffin Memorial Lecture in Palaeography, School of Advanced Study, University of London, 8 June 2022

Lecture: ‘Mass Production of Books Before Printing’

Speaker: Professor David D’Avray, FBA, Emeritus Professor of History, University College London

Address: The Chancellor’s Hall, First Floor, Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU

Event date: 8 June 2022, 6:00PM – 8:00PM

Attendance is free; registration required.

Book here: https://sas.sym-online.com/registrationforms/iesbooking_12345655/done/

For more information: https://ies.sas.ac.uk/events/john-coffin-memorial-lecture-palaeography

Contact: IESEvents@sas.ac.uk

Call for Papers: “Burials in the Mediterranean Middle Ages”, Minima Medievalia, Deadline 15 July 2022

The act of preparing the final resting place for the mortal remains of members of medieval communities is one of the practices that found many forms of material expression and countless artistic forms in the Mediterranean world. The most salient aspects of a person’s life could be recalled in evocative apparatuses, even very complex ones, in strict adherence to the burial practices of the society in which the deceased lived. But more often it is a more restrained, even anonymous, dimension that conveys the sense of pity towards the dear departed.

The next issue of Minima Medievalia will address the implications of funerary art in the Latin, Byzantine and Islamic Middle Ages. The focus will be on burial monuments, both in their concrete and immaterial dimensions. The aim is not only to census and deepen the knowledge of monumental tombs, but also to give space to those minor, violated, destroyed, fragmentary and even devoid of material consistency contexts that make up the most widespread mosaic of this phenomenon.

The volume therefore intends to address issues of various kinds related to the world of burials: the addressee (sepulchers of saints, of religious, of laymen); the types of messages conveyed by the funerary practice and the cultural values of reference; the methods of display; the forms and typologies used around the Mediterranean; the linguistic and material expressions translated through various artistic (sculpture, architecture, monumental art, painting, epigraphy) and documentary media (sources, liturgy, worship, devotion); the areas of destination and conditions of use; the role of patrons, artists, communities; and much more.

The general features of the volume can be summarised as follows:
– the topic is tombs and funerary monuments built between the 4th and 15th centuries;
– the cultural areas of reference are the Latin West, Byzantium and the Islamic world;
– the fields of investigation are architecture, sculpture, painting, epigraphy, sources, liturgy, etc;
– five main European languages are accepted (Italian, English, French, German and Spanish); any other options must be agreed with the scientific committee;
– the text must be between 5 and 25/30 pages of 2000 characters long (notes included, bibliography excluded);
– each author may include between 2 and 15 figures.

Slight deviations in length and number of figures are possible, but only if previously agreed with the editor and the scientific committee.

Submission of abstracts
In order to contribute to the volume it is necessary to send an abstract to the scientific committee, which will evaluate its content and congruence with the topic of the current issue:
– the proposal must be 300-700 words;
– the case study and the author’s thesis must be clearly described and the logical structure of the topic to be addressed must be provided;
– a minimum bibliographical reference must be included;
– photographs for reference and comparison may be provided.
Each text will be peer-reviewed.
Proposal deadline: 15 July 2022.
Please send the material to: fabio.coden@univr.it.

Volume features
Selected proposals will be included in a collective volume, edited under the patronage of the University of Verona and published by Silvana editoriale, which guarantees international distribution. For past issues of Minima Medievalia series, please visit these links:
– www.minimamedievalia.it
– Minima medievalia (academia.edu)
– https://www.silvanaeditoriale.it/libro/9788836649211

The deadline for submission of the final version is due June 2023. The volume is expected to be published at the end of the same year.

Prize: ICMA Annual Book Prize, Deadline 31 May 2022

The ICMA invites submissions for the annual prize for best single- or dual-authored book on any topic in medieval art. To be eligible for the 2022 competition, books must have been printed in 2021. No special issues of journals or anthologies or exhibition catalogues can be considered.

The competition is international and open to all ICMA members. To join or renew, click here. A statement of current membership is required with each submission.

Languages of publication: English, French, German, Italian, or Spanish

Prize: US $1,000 to a single author, or $500 each to two co-authors

Submission of books: only printed books with one or two authors are eligible for the prize. A statement of current ICMA membership must accompany each submission.

Presses and self-nominations: books must be sent directly to the jury members. Please fill out this form here. After the form is submitted, an email with addresses will be sent.

For more information, visit www.medievalart.org/book-prize.