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The draft programme is now available and can be downloaded here.
There is also an information sheet available here.
A list of hotels is available here. Hotels need to be booked separately from the registration process for the conference.
(Please note these documents may be updated between now and the conference.)
Registration will open very shortly, with the link posted on the Fifteenth Century Conference website.
All enquiries to: Helen.fulton@bristol.ac.uk
Traditionally, the history of medicine in early modern Italy was a field divided sharply into the study of theory and the study of practice, yet this separation was neither equal nor historically justified. Whereas serious attention was given early on to the intellectual foundations of the discipline, far less attention was directed to the consideration of how and when this body of knowledge was translated into practical expressions such as recipes, cures, procedures, and public measures (and vice-versa). A corrective to this imbalance has emerged in the past decades, with scholars adopting, for instance, patient-centered perspectives an exploration of the role of the body, emotions and gender, and the full range of formal and informal practitioners. Further opportunities for understanding the practice of medicine have arisen whenever historians of medicine have engaged with other disciplines, including art and architectural history, religious studies, environmental history, book history, and economic history.
The aim of this conference is to redress the historiographic bifurcation of studies of medical theory and studies of medical practice. We seek papers that reveal the entangled interrelationship between these two realms in a period that was characterized by the rise of empirical experimentation, as well as the growing need to incorporate novel drugs and unfamiliar diseases into the hoary paradigms of professional medicine. The following are examples of the questions that animate interest in this topic: Did physicians’ casebooks make reference to either the utility and/or limitations of medical theory? In what contexts do we encounter recipes that indicate implementation and modification of a theory, such as Galenic humoral medicine or Paracelsian iatrochemistry? What were the challenges and impact on theory and practice of the importation of new medicines through the growth in global trade? What consequences did the academic debate around the influence of Arabic writings have for medical practice? To what degree did an understanding of medical theory matter in the licensing of apothecaries? With the emergence of the printing industry, did the tension between practice and theory expand or shrink? Did prevailing medical theories facilitate or hamper the integration of new discoveries in anatomy and medical botany into the physician’s practice? To what degree was penning a theoretical treatise a catalyst to a lucrative career as a court physician? Did empiricists and quacks ever find it beneficial to adopt the language and concepts of medical theory? Did religious reforms make their impact felt differently in theory versus practice? To what degree could a prince-practitioner eschew theory yet maintain credibility in elite circles?
The conference organizers (John Henderson, Sheila Barker and Rose Byfleet) invite proposals for 25-minute unpublished papers in English or Italian that address the tensions and interplay of practice and theory in medicine, with reference to a wide range of early modern actors and contexts:
Confirmed participants: Evelyn Welch, David Gentilcore, Sandra Cavallo, Paolo Savoia, Lavinia Maddaluno, and Sharon Strocchia (pending Covid-19 university policy regulations).
To apply: please prepare a single .pdf document that contains the following items in this sequence: your name, contact information, and institutional affiliation; a one-page summary of your presentation topic; and a maximum of a one-page CV that highlights relevant publications or conference papers. Please send this to education@medici.org by 16 September 2021.
For complete information, visit https://www.medici.org/theoryandpractice/
Life in the central and late Middle Ages was characterised by high levels of mobility and migration. Shifts in political, economic, cultural and religious life encouraged and sometimes forced individuals and groups to move ‘abroad’ permanently or temporarily, to places nearby or further afield.
Organisers from the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford invite papers for their upcoming conference Identity Abroad in Central and Later Medieval Europe and the Mediterranean, to be held at Cambridge 7-8 January 2022.
The position and impact of these ‘foreigners’ in societies has been widely discussed. However, what is less considered is how they understood and (re)presented themselves. This conference aims to explore the construction, expression, and practical significance of different forms of social identity among individuals and groups living ‘abroad’ in Europe and the Mediterranean in the period from the eleventh to the fifteenth century.
The conference invites proposals for 20-minute papers from graduate and early career researchers working across all relevant disciplines in the Humanities and Social Sciences. By bringing together a variety of different perspectives, the conference not only aims to consider how ‘identity abroad’ functioned in specific contexts, but also to emphasise developments, patterns, and divergences. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
To submit a proposal, please send an abstract of up to 250 words and a short biographical note to identityabroad22@gmail.com no later than 12th September 2021.
The organisers plan to hold the conference in person in Cambridge, UK. However, this may change to reflect developments relating to Covid-19.
Registration is now open for Communities and Networks in Late Medieval Europe. Register at https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/communities-and-networks-in-late-medieval-europe-c-13001500-registration-165407840303
Historical research has witnessed a rapidly growing interest in ‘networks’ since the turn of the twenty-first century, as seen in ambitious endeavours such as the foundation of the Journal of Historical Network Research in 2017. This is due not only to the utility of networks in describing interrelations between historical actors, but also to the adoption of the concepts and methodologies associated with social network analysis (SNA).
Communities and Networks in Late Medieval Europe aims to build on and contribute to this expanding field of research by exploring how the descriptive, conceptual, and methodological tools provided by the study of networks can deepen our understanding of the complex sets of relationships between and within different types of communities in the specific context of the last two centuries of the European Middle Ages. The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were a time of great political, socio-economic, and cultural change in Europe: the period in question, therefore, offers numerous exciting opportunities (and challenges) for the application of network-based approaches to the study of community dynamics.
You can find the conference programme at https://communitiesandnetworks21.files.wordpress.com/2021/08/communities-and-networks-in-late-medieval-europe-c.-1300e280931500.pdf
You can also visit the website (https://communitiesandnetworks21.wordpress.com) and follow on Twitter at @commsandnets21.
Parish churches were a fundamental feature of the cities, towns, and villages of medieval Europe. Founded to serve the spiritual needs of local populations, these buildings quickly became epicenters of public life, accommodating functions that ranged from religious services, processions, and pageants to secular assemblies, tax collection, and alms distribution. Surviving examples, which number in the tens of thousands, are home to countless works of architecture, sculpture, stained glass, wall painting, and liturgical furniture–much of it vastly understudied. These sessions seek to explore this extensive corpus of material from a range of temporal, regional, disciplinary, theoretical, and methodological perspectives. Especially welcome are contributions that reflect on how evolving research on the art and architecture of the parish church broadens, deepens, and transforms our understanding of medieval society.
For further information, please contact Zachary Stewart (zstewart@arch.tamu.edu). Proposals should be submitted online at https://wmich.edu/medievalcongress/call. The deadline to submit is 15 September 2021.
Through a generous donation, King’s College Cambridge is able to invite applications for a four-year Research Fellowship from those who are completing or have recently completed a doctorate and who intend to pursue a research project on some aspect of the Silk Road countries, societies, and cultures of Asia from the Western borders of China to the Mediterranean Sea, as well as their relationships with China in the East and Europe in the West. The research project’s discipline may address, amongst other issues, Environmental History, Religion, Art, Maritime History, China before 1911, Ottoman Empire, and Russian Central Asia, but applicants should not feel constrained by this list.
This Research Fellowship is part of a broader programme of studies of the countries of the Silk Roads, which includes lectures, seminars and conferences, as well as graduate scholarships and further Research Fellowships. As well as pursuing their own research project, the successful candidate will be expected to play an active role in developing the programme and in organizing academic activity concerned with the countries of the Silk Road.
This post-doctoral Fellowship is intended to encourage research into the Silk Roads and the countries of the Silk Roads by enabling the successful candidate to complete a substantial research project on their own choosing. Projects may concern any aspect of the countries, societies, and cultures of the Silk Roads, from the Western borders of China to the Mediterranean Sea, and of the Silk Roads themselves, that is to studies of relationships and the movement of materials, knowledge, and technologies between China and the Mediterranean, at any period to the present day.
The ideal candidate for this Research Fellowship will have a strong background in a relevant discipline and be completing or have completed an outstanding doctoral thesis. It is not a requirement that the candidate’s doctoral studies or the work that they submit in support of their application should have concerned questions of the Silk Roads specifically, but candidates will be expected to show in their applications both how their future work relates to the work that they have already done. The successful candidate will be expected to engage broadly with the whole college community.
Graduates of any university are eligible. Candidates will usually have completed their PhD but must not have undertaken more than 3 years of postdoctoral work by 1 October 2022 (i.e. your PhD cannot have been granted before 30 September 2019).
For complete information and instructions on how to apply, visit https://www.kings.cam.ac.uk/research/research-fellowships
As the digital age has shaped our ways of viewing ourselves, society, and culture is has also reframed and revealed new perspectives on viewership and ritual. We invite proposals for an edited volume that seeks to explore the effects of this digital age on Medieval and Early modern studies. This collection of essays aims to engage in both the examination of medieval media, mediation, and technology from a theoretical framework. The second grouping of essays aims to explore how the digital humanities have shaped Medieval and Early Modern studies today.
We seek papers that explore these topics. Among others, we encourage submissions that are concerned with issues of technological and material manipulation, as well as mnemonic devices, perception, tech methodology, and pedagogy. Essays should be 5000-7000 words. Authors are responsible for securing copyrights to all images, diagrams, graphs, etc.
We welcome all aspects of Medieval and Early Modern studies (musicology, art history, history, literature, language, philosophy, science, religion, law, history of the church, etc.) Trans-European, visual culture, global medievalism, modern medievalism, and interdisciplinary approaches are particularly welcome.
Submissions: To apply, please submit two abstracts : 1 ) 400-500 words; and 2) about 100 words. a short biographical note of no more than 100 words, and your institutional affiliation (if any), to Katharine.d.Scherff@ttu.edu. Deadline extended 1 Sept 2021.
The great scholar, theologian, and church politician of the 15th century, Nikolaus von Kues (Nicholas of Cusa), was convinced that diagrams can help convey the highest and divine truth. That is why he himself had colored graphics for symbolization in the center of his De Coniecturis. During the implementation of the early printing process – a quantum leap for the distribution of the works – this dimension of meaning was lost with the reduction to black and white representation. Research, too, has so far completely overlooked their relevance. For Nikolaus, and like the panel painting of his time, color represents the penetration of space with and through light: light and dark gripping in Cusanus, and God’s recognizability and concealment in one another, were the two central axioms of his theology. The color in the diagrams is, as Jeffrey Hamburger deciphers for the first time, an invitation to the viewer to search for the same truth that the symbols exemplify.
Jeffrey F. Hamburger is the Kuno Francke Professor of German Art & Culture at Harvard University and an internationally renowned expert on sacred art of the high and late Middle Ages, in particular on the function of images in theology, mysticism and piety, as well as for manuscript illumination.
Table of Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1: Thinking Through Diagrams
Chapter 2: Color as Vector
Chapter 3: Cusan Speculation
Chapter 4: Diagrams in Action
Chapter 5: Color in De coniecturis
Chapter 6: An Orb in the Hand of God
Color Plates
Manuscript Index
Subject Index
For complete information and to purchase this title, please visit Hiersemann Verlag: https://www.hiersemann.de/color-in-cusanus-9783777221212#.
This day-long event will provide attendees with the unique opportunity to hear new information concerning the medieval wall paintings at Chalgrove Church in the presence of the paintings themselves. Aspects of the scheme’s content, dating, patronage, and connection to contemporary works will be explored by notable scholars.
Speakers:
Members of the Chalgrove Local History Group
Date: Saturday, 16th October, 2021, 10am – 5pm
Location: Church Lane, Chalgrove, Oxford OX44 7SD
Registration fee: £20 (Includes on-site lunch) | Proceeds fund the parish & their continued upkeep of the wall paintings
*Concessions for students & parish members. To receive a discount code, please email ChalgroveSymposium@gmail.com.
Questions about the event? Please email ChalgroveSymposium@gmail.com.
Follow us on Twitter & Facebook! @ChalgroveSympo1
Website for St. Mary’s, Chalgrove: https://chalgrovechurch.org/
This symposium is organized by Sommer Hallquist, Madeleine Katkov, and Bob Heath-Whyte.
Historical sites, as palimpsests of material and symbolic elements, are characterized by the re-functioning of spaces and buildings and also by the re-use of artistic materials. The session aims to analyse cases of reuse of medieval sculpture in modern contexts (roughly 15th-18th centuries) inspired not by practical and material purposes but by the need to communicate messages of high symbolic value. Papers will focus on episodes that allow to recover the “long life” of medieval sculptures over the centuries, in contexts similar or, on the contrary, completely different to the original ones and related phenomena of re-working and re-functionalization. The session is part of the activities of the two-years MemId (Memory and Identity. Reuse, rework and rearrangement of the Medieval sculpture in the Modern Age, between historical research and new technologies) project funded by the Italian Ministry for University and Research, led by Clario Di Fabio, Laura Cavazzini and Paola Vitolo, which is conducting in various regions of Italy a systematic and in-depth study of the topic, with a team of young researchers. The session will be an opportunity to discuss the topic with a wide range of international scholars of different geographical and cultural areas.
Please submit abstracts no later than 15 September through the ICMS Confex site at https://icms.confex.com/icms/2022am/cfp.cgi. Please direct all questions or concerns to paola.vitolo@unina.it
Medieval Art Research