Fellowships: Six RECEPTIO postdoctoral fellowships in codicology, 2022-2023 (deadline 1 February 2022)

RECEPTIO, the Research Centre for European Philological Tradition (Lugano/London), announces six fellowships for its training course for codicologists who are looking to work in auction houses and antiquarian bookshops.

RECEPTIO is the only research centre in Europe that combines codicological and philological research with the labour market, training codicologists to work for auction houses and antiquarian bookshops. Every semester we launch a competition for six scholarships to attend this unique course. The Institute’s diverse research areas and student body form an innovative, cosmopolitan and enriching academic environment, providing students with the skills and networks needed to pursue an exciting career.

There is no age limit, but applicants should have obtained their PhD no more than ten years from the date of the appointment. Researchers who have obtained their PhD more than ten years ago, but are active in the field of codicology or philology, are invited to apply on the basis of their Curriculum Vitae and will be tested for admission through a motivational interview. Candidates with a Master’s degree who have a strong interest in the object of study will be tested for admission through a motivational interview, too.

Admission decisions are based on the quality of the overall application file. The grant consists of €4,000 for each academic year and can be renewed on the basis of the results obtained.

For more information visit: https://www.receptio.eu/codicologia

Our selection committees give priority consideration to academic achievement and motivation. Academic achievement is documented using transcripts and recommendations. Motivation factors should be clarified in the cover letter/statement of purpose. The evaluation committees will take into consideration the difficulties encountered by many students around the world in the spring 2020 semester, due to the COVID-19 health crisis. The main language of the course is Italian, but a very good command of English is required to follow the seminars (seminars are also held in French and Spanish).

Deadline: 1 February 2022

Application via the website: https://www.receptio.eu/programmes

Exhibition: ‘Gold’, British Library, London, 20 May – 2 October 2022

The British Library has announced a new exhibition, Gold, which will run from 20 May to 2 October 2022.

Gold has long held the power to dazzle and ignite feelings of wonder. This new exhibition will take visitors on a journey to over 20 countries to discover how gold has been used to embellish and enhance the written word across cultures, faiths and through time.

Showcasing some of the most luxurious illuminated manuscripts, gold-tooled books, sacred texts and scrolls from the British Library’s collection, objects on display will include the Harley Golden Gospels, the Lotus Sutra and a treaty in Malayalam, beautifully inscribed on a long strip of gold. Through these stunning objects, Gold will examine the masterful techniques used to handle such a precious metal and tell the stories of those who owned these extraordinary books.

Tickets will go on sale in February 2022. 

The exhibition is supported by The Goldhammer Foundation and the American Trust for the British Library, with thanks to The Finnis Scott Foundation and the Owen Family Trust.

Photo: The Queen Mary Psalter, English, early 14th century, copyright British Library

CFP: ‘Ritual: Practice, Performance, Perception,’ Cerae Volume 9, deadline 30 April 2022

Rituals pervade human life. From small or mundane rituals like brushing our teeth or making one’s daily coffee, to grand ceremonies that mark important life stages, rituals are everywhere. This has prompted reflection on what rituals are, on what can be considered as ritual. Ceræ: An Australasian Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies invites essays that analyse rituals of all kinds: public and private, communal and solitary, secular and religious, rapidly changing and long-lasting. It also welcomes theoretically- or methodologically-focused contributions.

Authors may address, but are not limited to:

  • Royal rituals: coronations, births, or marriage consummations etc.
  • How rituals can be used as an element of identity and alterity
  • Subversive and subverted ritual: witchcraft trials, historical (mis)perceptions of Jewish rites etc.
  • Sacred landscapes and rituals focused on/in the natural world
  • Ritual as a medium for memory and memorialisation
  • Sacrifices, magic, religious rites and their intercultural reception
  • Medieval and early modern political rituals such as guild processions
  • Ritual represented in medievalism, including film, fantasy, literature, and art

We invite submissions encompassing all aspects of the late classical, medieval, and early modern world. There are no geographical restrictions. As an interdisciplinary journal, Ceræ encourages submissions from archaeology, art history, historical ecology, literature, linguistics, intellectual history, musicology, politics, social studies, and beyond.

Full length articles should be 5000-8000 words, excluding references. Ceræ also accepts short notices of up to 3000 words. Themed submissions must be submitted by 30 April 2022. For submission instructions, please visit our page on submission guidelines.

We also accept non-themed submissions throughout the year. Ceræ particularly encourages submissions from postgraduate and early career researchers, and offers a $200 (AUD) annual prize for the best postgraduate/ECR essay. Further information on our annual essay prize can be found here.

Featured image: The Trier Adventus Ivory, photo by Ann Münchow

Scholarship: British Archaeological Association 2022 Ochs Scholarship, deadline 1 February 2022

The Ochs Scholarships are awarded annually by the British Archaeological Association for research projects which fall within the Association’s fields of interest. These are defined as the study of archaeology, art and architecture from the Roman period until the nineteenth century, principally within Europe, though the core interests of the BAA are Roman to 16th century. We only entertain applications that cover the 17th to 20th centuries that are of an historiographical, conservationist or antiquarian nature. The scholarships are intended to provide post-graduate students striving to write up theses with late stage funding, and help independent researchers complete projects. Applicants should either be UK citizens, registered at a UK University, or undertaking work on material in the UK. Only one of these criteria is necessary, but there should be a connection with the UK.

Applications are thus invited from students who are completing theses for post-graduate degrees and who are facing financial hardship. It must be demonstrated that the award of an Ochs scholarship will enable a thesis to be completed satisfactorily within the period of the Scholarship. Applications where a substantial amount of fieldwork remains to be done are unlikely to succeed.

Applications for research projects conducted either privately or at post-doctoral level are not eligible. The Association is launching a separate fund to cover these. For further details please contact the Hon. Secretary as below.

In preparing the application, all information should be typed. Additional information may be attached on a separate sheet or in a covering letter. Scholarships are awarded annually in April on the recommendation of a Scholarship Committee. The committee reach a decision primarily on the basis of the application (plus any supporting documents), though committee members will take account of remarks made by the applicant’s referees.

Applications should give a detailed account of proposed expenditure, which may include a reasonable level of subsistence. Allowance may not be made for any imputed salary, nor do awards cover the costs of books or equipment such as computers. For post-graduate students allowable expenditure includes supervision and examination fees, as well as thesis-binding costs. While bearing in mind that scholarships up to the value of £5,000 are available, we ask applicants not to ask for more than the minimum they require, as this may enable the Scholarship Committee to make an additional award.

Applicants should supply the names and contact details of two referees, one of whom in the case of degree candidates should be the main supervisor and ask their referees to forward references (either by post or as email attachments) to the Hon. Secretary by 21 February. The scholarship is tenable for one year and may be taken up at any time between April and October 2022, so only work which is capable of submission by October 2023 will be considered by the Scholarship Committee. The award is payable in three instalments; half on acceptance of the Scholarship, one quarter at the half-way stage, and one quarter on submission (or publication if a non-degree research project). Arrangements will be made to pay the first instalment on a date agreeable to the successful candidate.

Members of the Scholarship Committee will not discuss applications with candidates once they have been submitted, nor offer feedback; it is the role of the applicant’s sponsors and supervisors to advise them on the tone and content of applications. However, the Hon. Secretary is happy to advise on procedure prior to the submission of an application. While all applications are regarded as confidential, the Association will publish the names of the successful applicants and the title of the work for which their Scholarship was awarded.

Application forms may be downloaded from the BAA website, or obtained by sending a stamped addressed envelope to John McNeill (Hon. Secretary, BAA), 18 Stanley Road, Oxford OX4 1QZ. Completed applications, together with any covering letter or enclosures, should be returned to John McNeill not later than 1 February, 2022, either by post – or as email attachments to jsmcneill@btinternet.com

BAA Ochs application formDownload

Online lecture: ‘The Medieval Wall Paintings of Pickering Church’ by Dr Kate Giles, hosted by The Society for Church Archaeology, 6 January 2022, 7pm GMT

The Society for Church Archaeology is delighted to welcome Dr Kate Giles, who will deliver an online lecture ‘The medieval wall paintings of Pickering church (North Yorkshire): discovery, restoration and meaning’.

In this free online lecture, Dr Kate Giles (Centre for the Study of Christianity & Culture and the Department of Archaeology, University of York) will share her research on the remarkable series of wall paintings in Pickering church, N. Yorks. Long thought to be an example of Victorian over-restoration, Kate will make the case for a reappraisal of these paintings as a means not just of telling the story of hundreds, if not thousands of England’s medieval churches, but also as a potentially unique survival of a hidden scheme of meanings, which form the subject of her forthcoming monograph, to be published by Shaun Tyas in 2022.

The lecture will be hosted through Zoom and will take place on Thursday 6th January 2021 from 19:00 to 20:00 GMT.

Register for this event here.

Open Access Journal: ‘Fenestella. Inside Medieval Art’ – Issue 2-2021.

Fenestella is a scholarly and peer-reviewed open access journal. It is published by Milano University Press, and powered by OJS 3. Issue 2 – 2021 was published on December 28th and can be viewed here: https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/fenestella/issue/view/1760

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, in order to throw light on iconography, function and liturgical practice and space. Fenestella supports original research, favouring an inter- and trans-disciplinary approach arising from the horizon and methodology of art history. Papers on wide-ranging themes, critical reviews and studies of micro-topics are all welcome, as long as they contribute to debate at an international level.

Fenestella accepts papers in Italian, English, French, German and Spanish, with abstracts in English. Submissions that satisfy a preliminary review by the editorial staff are then peer-reviewed by anonymous reviewers. After final acceptance and copyediting each article is given a DOI number, to be immediately published and indexed. Articles published during a calendar year are collected in an annual issue. Each article is freely accessible and shareable according to the license CC BY SA 4.0.

The editorial board is also currently accepting submission for Issue 3/2022. Submission Deadline: 30 June 2022. Submission guidelines can be found here.

Online Lecture: ‘The Martial Maid’: Armored Women in the European Imaginary’, 8 Jan 2022 @ 2PM EST

‘The Martial Maid’: Armored Women in the European Imaginary – online lecture by Dr. Chassica (Chaz) Kirchhoff, Assistant Curator of European Sculpture and Decorative Arts. Saturday, Jan. 8, 2022 • 2:00 pm — 3:00 pm EST

Armor is a category of material and visual culture that was inextricably linked to constructions and performances of masculinity in late medieval and early modern Europe. But what did it mean to depict or describe a female body encased in such a symbolic carapace of steel? Moreover, how could the act of donning armor transform a real woman in the eyes of her contemporaries and for posterity? Presented in conjunction with the Toledo Museum of Art’s current exhibition, The Age of Armor: Treasures from the Higgins Armory Collection at the Worcester Art Museum, this talk will explore stories, images, and texts created between the late fourteenth and the early seventeenth century, when plate armor was central to martial identity and experience. These case studies offer lenses through which to examine the persistent allure of the armored female body for both historical and contemporary readers and viewers.

The Age of Armor: Treasures from the Higgins Armory Collection at the Worcester Art Museum is sponsored locally by presenting sponsors Taylor Cadillac and Susan and Tom Palmer, as well as 2021 Exhibition Program sponsor ProMedica, with additional support from the McLoughlin Family Foundation, the Ohio Arts Council, and the TMA Ambassadors. More information can be read here.

This event is free and open to the public. Join the lecture on January 8 at 2 pm EST here: https://toledomuseum-org.zoom.us/j/85429818796

Lecture: Leah R. Clark, Fit for the Gods: Chinese Porcelain in Duke Alfonso d’Este’s camerini (The Murray Seminars, Birkbeck) 12 Jan 2022

Wed 12th January 2022, 5:00 PM, GMT

A research paper exploring the intersections between Renaissance ‘fine art’ and material culture.

Giovanni Bellini’s Feast of the Gods is well known as one of the earliest representations of Chinese porcelain in Italy. Painted for one of the famed camerini of Duke Alfonso d’Este of Ferrara and later repainted by a compatriot, Titian, and the Ferrarese Dosso Dossi, it is often assumed that Bellini copied Chinese porcelain he had seen in his native city of Venice. Yet this talk will consider instead how Bellini may have been referencing the large porcelain collection held by the Este, housed in spaces such as the previously unknown Stanza delle Porcellane. A narrow art historical focus on the paintings destined for the camerini and their literary interpretation and programme has ignored the role of material culture (including porcelain) across the rooms. An emphasis on materials and their transformative qualities was a theme running throughout the paintings, but also in the objects of display, and in the larger interests of Duke Alfonso. Looking at the material, sensorial, and pictorial conditions of the camerini thus allows us to explore broader understandings of disegno. The inclusion of porcelain in Giovanni Bellini’s Feast of the Gods is not simply a representation of Alfonso’s porcelain collections and his interests, but rather, sets up a complex relationship between reality and fiction and the metaphoric capabilities of material culture.

To register for this lecture, please visit this site: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/fit-for-the-gods-chinese-porcelain-in-duke-alfonso-destes-camerini-tickets-227624439827

Conference: Power, Patronage, and Production: Book Arts from Central Europe (ca. 800–1500) in American Collections, 13-15 January 2022

Princeton University Department of Art & Archaeology Conference, January 13–15, 2022

From October 15, 2021–January 23, 2022, the Pierpont Morgan Library & Museum in New York hosts an exhibition ten years in the making: Imperial Splendor: The Art of the Book in the Holy Roman Empire, 800–1500. The exhibition presents material that has never before been gathered together, treating topics including visual rhetorics of power in book media, the production and patronage of manuscripts, the relationship between vernacular and Classical languages, and the position of imperial cities in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

The Princeton conference, Power, Patronage, and Production: Book Arts from Central Europe (ca. 800–1500) in American Collections expands the purview of the exhibition. The papers encompass material written in Czech, German, Hebrew, and Latin, made for both religious and non-religious contexts in the ninth, twelfth, and fifteenth centuries. Most of the focal material is very little published; some papers present new looks at superstar examples based on cutting-edge findings. Themes include the networked relationships among centers of production, the representation of male and female patrons, early print culture, and the role of books in key developments for liturgy, private devotion, chronicle writing, and the law.

The conference will run in hybrid form. We cordially invite attendance on Zoom by all interested in the conference proceedings. To register for the Zoom, please click here.

In-person attendance is contingent on space; due to current campus public health policy, registration will be limited to Princeton University ID holders and visitors sponsored by the Department of Art & Archaeology. Please register your interest if you wish to attend in person; priority will be given to students.

For conference program questions: Beatrice Kitzinger bkitzinger@princeton.edu. For Zoom or any registration questions: Mo Chen mochen@princeton.edu.

The full schedule can be viewed here: https://bookarts.princeton.edu/schedule/

 Call for papers: ‘”God is in the Details” – The Art of Detail in the Middle Ages’, 27th Annual Medieval Postgraduate Colloquium, The Courtauld Institute of Art, (deadline: 13 February 2022)

For Aby Warburg, God was in the details; for others they were the devil. From manuscript  miniatures to carved altarpieces or richly decorated muqarnas , detail was highly valued in  the Middle Ages. In different circumstances the deployment of detail displays, disguises  and depends upon the materiality of objects, embedded in the woven structure of textiles,  the techniques of Islamic metal inlay, and the varied receptivity to carved decoration of  ivory, marble, alabaster and boxwood. The production of detail was demanding, often  requiring fine materials, masterful skill, hours of time and technical innovation. Small  things, then, as well as large, could speak to the sophistication and power of patrons, but  did details also communicate in more subtle ways? Details could disrupt well-established  iconographies and half-conceal subversive subtexts, or present subtle suggestions which  only the most perceptive viewers would appreciate. Did details also affect scalar  relationships between viewer and object, pointing beyond the material dimensions of the  ordinary world? The production and reception of details are central to this colloquium.  

The reception of detail also leads us to consider its place in the practice of art history. Close  observation of apparently insignificant details lay at the heart of the connoisseurial,  attribution-focused art history of the nineteenth century. More recently scholars have  examined the cultural significance of detail, from Necipoğlu’s explication of the  ‘scrutinizing gaze’ in Islamic art to Gell’s notion of ‘cognitive stickiness’. Others have  closely engaged with detail in relation to craft, from Margaret Graves’ theory of the ‘intellect  of the hand’ to Paul Binski’s explorations of the ‘human “poetics” of materials’. Gigapixel  reproductions and microscopic analysis are also shaping art history today, a field which is  ever more prone to specialization and micro-histories. But does this pursuit of detail distort  the original viewing experience, or scholars’ capacity to frame questions in broad terms?  Are there ways of reconstructing more historicised experiences of detail, through historical  theories of vision and philosophies of the unseen? The Courtauld’s Medieval Postgraduate  Colloquium offers the opportunity to delve into detail, in all its complex material, cultural  and academic dimensions. 

Speakers may consider the following, understood in the broadest geographical terms: 

Material and Craft

  • How were objects of great detail produced?
  • How did materials affect the kinds of detail included?
  • What was the role of detail in the celebration of skilled craftsmanship in the Middle Ages?

Meaning and Messages 

  • How was detail used to express subversive ideas or messages for specific people or groups?
  • Was detail valued differently depending on viewers’ social, economic, religious backgrounds?
  • How was the inclusion of details negotiated between patron, artist, architect, and craftsman?
  • How might detail serve to prompt meditation or contemplation?

Perception and Reception 

  • Who had access to details, and in what conditions? 
  • How does the 21st-century viewer gauge the importance of relatively small or subtle details in a medieval work?
  • What do primary sources—including medieval theories of vision and philosophies of the unseen—reveal about the value of detail?
  • How does the close scrutiny of detail affect the viewer’s experience of an object or building? 

Technology and Methodology 

  • How did medieval technological advances change the ability to create and see detail?  
  • How does modern technology enhance or impair our ability to see and interpret detail in medieval art and architecture?
  • Can art historians lose sight of the entire object, or even broader art-historical issues, by focusing too closely on specific details and ‘micro-histories’? 

This colloquium offers an opportunity for research students at all levels from universities across the United Kingdom and abroad to present, discuss and promote their research. We would also welcome unorthodox proposals, including short, ‘micro’ papers, and especially demonstrations of technologies related to the art-historical analysis of detail. 

To apply, please send a proposal of up to 250 words for a 20-minute paper, or an alternative presentation, together with a CV to medievalcolloquium@courtauld.ac.uk no later than 13 February 2022. Please also state your preferences and constraints for presenting in person or remotely. Contributions may be available towards the cost of travel & accommodation.