Tag Archives: interdisciplinary

CFP: Pilgrimage and the Senses, University of Oxford, 7 June 2019

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Deadline for submissions: 20 January 2019 

Keynote Speaker: Professor Kathryn Rudy (University of St. Andrews)

With the release of its inaugural issue in 2006, The Senses and Society journal proclaimed a “sensual revolution” in the humanities and social sciences. The ensuing decade has seen a boom in sensory studies, resulting in research networks, museum exhibitions, and a wealth of publications. This interdisciplinary conference hosted at the University of Oxford aims to shed light on how sensory perception shapes and is shaped by the experience of pilgrimage across cultures, faith traditions, and throughout history.

Pilgrimages present an intriguing paradox. Grounded in physical experiences—a journey (real or imagined), encounters with sites and/or relics, and commemorative tokens—they also simultaneously demand a devotional focus on the metaphysical. A ubiquitous and long-lasting devotional practice, pilgrimage is a useful lens through which to examine how humans encounter the sacred through the tools of perception available to us. Focusing on the ways in which pilgrimage engages the senses will contribute to our knowledge of how people have historically understood both religious experience and their bodies as vehicles of devotional participation. We call on speakers to grapple with the challenges of understanding the sensory experience of spiritual phenomena, while bearing in mind that understandings of the senses can vary according to specific cultural contexts. While the five senses are a natural starting point, we are open to including papers that deal with “sense” in a more general way, such as senses of time and place.

Sample topics may include (but are not limited to):

  • the role of beholding (places, relics, miracles, mementos) in the pilgrimage experience
  • haptic encounters with relics
  • ways in which pilgrims are seen: wearing specific clothing and/or badges, public acts (or affects) of devotion, how pilgrims are depicted or described
  • pilgrims’ auditory expressions: wailing/crying, chanting, singing, reciting prayers
  • bathing and purification in preparation for devotions
  • food as a ritual element or means of experiencing cultures along a pilgrimage route
  • the place of music on the pilgrimage route and/or at pilgrimage destinations
  • pain as a facet of the pilgrimage journey
  • the sensory spectacle—visual, auditory, olfactory—of pilgrimage processions
  • devotional objects that require handling, such as prayer beads and prayer wheels
  • psychosomatic sensory experiences as a means of engaging with the divine
  • the evocation of sensory participation through works of art and/or written accounts

The organisers invite 20-minute papers from any discipline on topics related to the themes outlined above, especially in the fields of anthropology, archaeology, art history, history, literature, musicology, religious studies, sociology, and theology. We welcome submissions relating to aspects of pilgrimage of any faith or historical period. Doctoral students and early career researchers are particularly encouraged to apply.

Please submit a title, abstract (max. 250 words), and brief bio to pilgrimagesenses2019@gmail.com by January 20th. Successful applicants will be notified by February 5th. All submissions and papers must be in English.

Click here for more information

CFP: Medieval and Early Modern Spaces and Places: Experiencing the Court,Trinity Laban Conservatoire, London, April 3 – 04, 2019

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mem20poster_experiencing20the20courtDeadline: Nov 15, 2018

Medieval and Early Modern Spaces and Places: Experiencing the Court, 2019

The early modern court adopted and developed exemplary cultural practices where objects and spaces became central to propagating power as well as places for exchange with other powers. This combination of images, objects, and sounds confronted the senses, making a powerful and distinctive impression of the resident family and the region they represented: flickering candlelight on glass and gold vessels adorned credenze (sideboards); musical instruments announced royal entries or provided entertainment; brightly coloured tapestries covered the palace walls along with paintings of biblical or mythological stories; cabinets displayed antiquities or rarities; perfume burners permeated the air; while the smells and tastes of rare delicacies at the centre of dining tables made for a multi-sensory spectacle.

This year the Open University’s Spaces & Places conference will address the theme of ‘Experiencing the Court’ by exploring the senses and the lived experiences of courtly life, whether based in a particular residence or defined by the travels of an itinerant ruler. This annual conference is fundamentally interdisciplinary: literary, musical, architectural, artistic and religious spaces will be the subjects of enquiry, not as discrete or separate entities, but ones which overlapped, came into contact with one another, and at times were in conflict.

The conference will examine life at court and will consider the following questions:

–    How can approaching the court in terms of the senses provide new methodologies for understanding each institution?
–    How were medieval and early modern courtly spaces adapted and transformed through the movement of material and immaterial things?
–    Which particular aspects of political, social and economic infrastructures enabled the exchange of objects and ideas?

Papers that address new methodologies, the digital humanities, object-centred enquiries, cross-cultural comparisons, or new theoretical perspectives are particularly welcome.

Please send a 150 word abstract along with a short biography to Leah Clark (leah.clark@open.ac.uk) and Helen Coffey (Helen.coffey@open.ac.uk) by 15 November 2018.

The conference will take place at the Open University’s partner institution Trinity Laban Conservatoire on 3 and 4 April 2019.  As Trinity Laban’s King Charles Court was once the site of Greenwich Palace, it is a fitting venue for a conference exploring court life.

For updated information visit our website: http://www.open.ac.uk/arts/research/medieval-and-early-modern-research/spaces-places

Conference: The Right Moment. A Symposium on Kairotic Energies, Brussels, 18-19 October 2018

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church-of-the-holy-nativity-631The Greek term kairós expresses an idea of ‘grasping the right moment’, which travelled through art, literature, and philosophy. And even today, it is central to debates over, for example, time management. Combining perspectives from classical reception studies and iconology, this ongoing project at KU Leuven (2017-2021) is about the reception of kairós in the visual medium from antiquity to the Renaissance. How was the notion of kairós visualized in images throughout time, from antiquity to the early modern era? And more specifically, how did text and image work together to transform the notion of kairós in various contexts?

The attending speakers from Belgium, Germany, France, Israel, Croatia, The Netherlands, Romania, The United Kingdom, The United States, and Switzerland have not only been selected on the basis of their interdisciplinary skills in the field; but equally because of their distinctive contribution to the method of iconology and visual anthropology.

Many among them are key influencers on, among other things, the importance of the Humanities in terms of peace process work, ecology, and the relationship between Eastern and Western civilizations.

Barbara Baert – Kunstwetenschappen KU Leuven – www.illuminare.be

PROGRAM

Thursday, 18 October

08.30-09.00 Registration

09.00-09.15 Welcome speech by Pierre Van Moerbeke,
Executive director of Francqui Foundation

09.15-09.30 Welcome speech by Luc Sels, Rector of KU
Leuven

09.30-10.00 Introduction by Barbara Baert

10.00-10.30 Coffee break

Part I
10.30-11.30 Giotto, the Eye and the Gaze – Victor Stoichita
Respondent: Herman Parret

11.30-12.30 Time in the Context of Ecclesia/Synagoga – Miri Rubin
Respondent: Inigo Bocken

12.30-14.00 Lunch

Part II
14.00-15.00 Epochal Madness: Notes on the Present Moment – W. J. T. Mitchell
Respondent: Stéphane Symons

15.00-16.00 The Manic Moment – Davide Stimilli
Respondent: Hedwig Schwall

16.00-16.30 Coffee break

16.30-17.30 The Silence of Lifta – Avinoam Shalem
Respondent: Amr Ryad

17.30-18.15 Presentation of the new series Recollection: Experimental Reflections on Texts, Images and Ideas – Veerle De Laet (Leuven University Press) & Ellen Harlizius-Klück

Friday 19 October

08.30-09.00 Welcome & coffee

Part III
09.00-10.00 The Nativity Church in Bethlehem as Kairotic
Space – Bianca Kühnel
Respondent: Marina Vicelja-Matijašic

10.00-11.00 L’occasion de la grâce dans le martyre – Pierre Antoine Fabre
Respondent: Ralph Dekoninck

11.00-11.30 Coffee break

11.30-12.30 A Dialogue of Early Buddhism, Hinduism and
Jainism on the Varieties of Auspicious Moments – Eugen Ciurtin
Respondent: Reimund Bieringer

12.30-14.00 Lunch

Part IV
14.00-15.00 Generating Synchronicity: Bodily and Affective
Techniques – Elisabeth Hsu
Respondent: Philippe Van Cauteren

15.00-16.00 The Moment of the Dangerous Women – Catherine Harper
Respondent: Ann-Sophie Lehmann

16.00-16.30 Coffee break

16.30-17.30 Concluding remarks – Han Lamers & Bart Verschaffel

17.30-18.00 Book presentations: Paul Peeters (Peeters Publishers) & Illuminare – Centre for the Study of Medieval Art

18.00-19.30 Farewell drinks

Contact and registration: stephanie.heremans@kuleuven.be
Registration deadline: 30 September 2018

Publication: “The Idea of the Gothic Cathedral. Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Meanings of the Medieval Edifice in the Modern Period” By Stephanie a. Glaser (ed.)

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RITUS_9The essays in this book focus on various social, political, cultural, and aesthetic meanings ascribed to Gothic cathedrals in Europe in the post-medieval period.

Central to many medieval ritual traditions both sacred and secular, the Gothic cathedral holds a privileged place within the European cultural imagination and experience. Due to the burgeoning historical interest in the medieval past, in connection with the medieval revival in literature, visual arts, and architecture that began in the late seventeenth century and culminated in the nineteenth, the Gothic cathedral took centre stage in numerous ideological discourses. These discourses imposed contemporary political and aesthetic connotations upon the cathedral that were often far removed from its original meaning and ritual use.

This volume presents interdisciplinary perspectives on the resignification of the Gothic cathedral in the post-medieval period. Its contributors, literary scholars and historians of art and architecture, investigate the dynamics of national and cultural movements that turned Gothic cathedrals into symbols of the modern nation-state, highlight the political uses of the edifice in literature and the arts, and underscore the importance of subjectivity in literary and visual representations of Gothic architecture. Contributing to scholarship in historiography, cultural history, intermedial and interdisciplinary studies, as well as traditional disciplines, the volume resonates with wider perspectives, especially relating to the reuse of artefacts to serve particular ideological ends.

 

Table of Contents

Introduction: The Medieval Edifice in the Modern Period — STEPHANIE A. GLASER

Part I — The Cathedral and the Nation

The Moorish-Gothic Cathedral: Invention, Reality, or Weapon? — MATILDE MATEO

Acting Medieval, Thinking Modern, Feeling German — MICHAEL J. LEWIS

L’Histoire d’une cathédrale: Viollet-le-Duc’s Nationalist Pedagogy — ELIZABETH EMERY

The Gothic Cathedral and Historiographies of Space — KEVIN D. MURPHY

Part II — The Cathedral between Art and Politics

The Anarchist Cathedral — MAYLIS CURIE

L’Imaginaire de la cathédrale à l’épreuve de la Grande Guerre — JOËLLE PRUNGNAUD

Church, Nation, and ‘The Stones of France’ — RONALD R. BERNIER

Part III — The Cathedral in the Arts

Patterns of Behaviour  Architectural Representation in the Romantic Period — KLAUS NIEHR

Frozen Music and Symphonies in Stone. Gothic Architecture and the Musical Analogy: Intersecting Trajectories in German and French Thought from the Eighteenth through the Nineteenth Centuries — STEPHANIE A. GLASER

Délires opiomanes et gothicomanes de Thomas De Quincey à Wilfred Sätty — JEAN-MICHEL LENIAUD

The Cathedral as Time Machine: Art, Architecture, and Religion — RICHARD UTZ

Select Bibliography

Index

Prize: Nachwuchspreis des Mediaevistenverbandes (Deadline 30/06/2018)

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hb_12-130-1Der Mediävistenverband, der über 1100 Mitglieder aus den unterschiedlichsten Disziplinen mediävistischer Forschung repräsentiert, schreibt zweijährlich einen Nachwuchspreis aus, der mit 2000 € dotiert ist und im März 2019 im Rahmen des Symposiums des Mediävistenverbandes in Tübingen feierlich verliehen wird.

Ausgezeichnet wird eine hervorragende mediävistische Dissertation von interdisziplinärer Bedeutung, die sowohl in der Verbindung unterschiedlicher disziplinärer Ansätze liegen kann als auch in der Anschlussfähigkeit einer disziplinär ausgerichteten Arbeit für mehrere andere Disziplinen. Die Arbeit kann aus allen Fächern der Mittelalterforschung kommen. Die Prüfungen im Promotionsverfahren dürfen am Ende der Bewerbungsfrist nicht mehr als 24 Monate zurückliegen.

Die Bewerbungsunterlagen umfassen:
– eine zweiseitige Zusammenfassung der Arbeit in deutscher oder englischer Sprache, in der auch die interdisziplinäre Bedeutung in einer der oben genannten Perspektiven dargelegt wird, sowie
– vollständige Kopien der Gutachten aus dem Promotionsverfahren. Bewerber/innen aus Ländern, in denen im Promotionsverfahren keine schriftlichen Gutachten erstellt werden, werden gebeten, sich für einen möglichen Ersatz direkt mit dem Präsidenten des Mediävistenverbandes, Prof. Dr. Wolfram Drews, in Verbindung zu setzen (w.drews@uni-muenster.de). Continue reading →

CFP: Force, Resistance, and Mercy: Medieval Violence and Nonviolence, 30th Annual Medieval Studies Symposium, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, April 6-7, 2018

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5487225791_f2f9dd3b91CFP: Force, Resistance, and Mercy: Medieval Violence and Nonviolence, 30th Annual Medieval Studies Symposium, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, April 6-7, 2018
Deadline: 24 November 2017.

Keynote: Elizabeth Allen, University of California, Irvine

The Medieval Studies Institute of Indiana University invites proposals for its 30th Annual Medieval Studies Symposium, April 6-7, 2018, in Bloomington, Indiana

Iron maidens, the Inquisition, the Crusades, witch burnings: these images of violence, both fact and fiction, are profoundly connected to the Middle Ages. Yet if in many popular conceptions, the medieval world is associated with brutality and suffering, the period also offers unique formulations of mercy, compassion, and the power of resistance. In exploring both medieval violence or nonviolence, this symposium seeks to examine specific structures of power and brutality but also to complicate the narrative of the violent Middle Ages.

We invite papers on any medieval discipline or region that engage issues of medieval violence and nonviolence: What functions did violence serve in the Middle Ages? How might acts of physical and rhetorical violence against othered groups (gendered, religious, cultural, racial, nonhuman) reflect larger concerns or anxieties within medieval culture? Is there a medieval aesthetic of violence? How does medieval music, art, theology, and literature glorify or critique brutality and/or suffering? How do medieval texts understand the uses and effects of verbal violence? How might medieval violence operate in a metaphorical sense, as violence done to texts or to the material past? What does nonviolence look like in the Middle Ages? Given the functions and pervasiveness of violence, what are some ways in which it is resisted and negotiated? What alternatives do medieval people or institutions offer to violence? How might medieval understandings of mercy or love act as a counter to violence? We also encourage papers on modern representations of the Middle Ages that consider to what extent and to what ends these medievalisms employ violence and nonviolence.

We are also excited to announce that graduate students whose papers have been accepted for the symposium are invited to submit their papers by March 2, 2018 to be considered for the IU Medieval Studies Symposium Paper Prize. Papers will be evaluated by a panel of IU medieval faculty. The prize of $250 will be awarded before the symposium to help defray the cost of travel, and the winner will be noted in the program.

Please submit 200 word abstracts or complete sessions proposals to IUMestSymposium@gmail.com by November 24, 2017.

Deadline 15 November: The Courtauld Institute of Art’s 23rd Annual Medieval Postgraduate Colloquium: Collecting (in) the Middle Ages, 16 February 2018

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Call for papers: The Courtauld Institute of Art’s 23rd Annual Medieval Postgraduate Colloquium: Collecting (in) the Middle Ages, The Courtauld Institute of Art, 16 February 2017
Deadline: 15 November 2017

The Courtauld Institute of Art’s 23rd Annual Medieval Postgraduate Colloquium invites speakers to consider the nature of medieval collections, the context of their creation and fruition, and their legacy — or disappearance — in the present.

Inspired by objects such as a cedar box chest once kept in the Holy of Holies of the Lateran, this colloquium seeks to explore a diverse set of topics surrounding medieval practices of collecting. This wooden box may seem simple, but once opened it reveals a priceless collection: fragments of rock and wood from the Holy Land, each labelled with its precise place of origin by a sixth-century hand. Here and there, stones have fallen out, leaving imprints in the soil. The wooden relic chest is an object of small size and almost no material value, but has nevertheless been treasured for centuries by one of the largest and most powerful institutions of the medieval world.

The study of medieval collecting raises a variety of questions. How and why were objects collected, practically and conceptually? What was their expected time-span and what enabled their survival? How have medieval collections impacted modern scholarship, and how do modern collecting and display practices influence our interpretation of the past?

Applicants to the colloquium are encouraged to explore these issues from a diverse range of methodologies, analysing objects from the 6th to the 16th century and from a wide-ranging geographical span. Possible areas of discussion might include:

  • Collecting through time: How do we define the medieval collection/collector? How did medieval objects take on new meanings in medieval collections, ie. in the case of spolia? How has scholarship on medieval art been influenced by varying collecting practices and curatorial strategies across time?
  • Collecting in space: can the idea of the ‘collection’ be expanded to include objects, places and spaces spread across different geographical locales? Could objects or spaces communicate their commonality across a distance? How did pilgrimage routes, travel narratives and travel guides conceptualize their surroundings and weave a thread through geographical and historical difference?
  • Collectors, intermediaries, and craftsmen: how did institutions and single collectors acquire and expand their collections? For example, did they rely on a merchant network to acquire foreign objects or new relics? Did they collect newly commissioned objects, and display them in purpose-built spaces?
  • Collections and Legacies: how did inheritance impact the notion of collecting, looking forwards as well backwards? How did the meaning of objects change as they were passed down through families and dynasties? What happened to collections when familial lines ended? How did individuals link themselves to courts or dynasties through collections?
  • Accessibility: When, how and why were collections visible? Were there different levels of accessibility and interaction and who was allowed to ‘access all areas’? How were restricted collections advertised and open collections protected? And did objects themselves interact with each other, for example in specific displays or assemblages?
  • Organising Collections: What were the systems for assembling a collection, and for how they were curated? How did purpose-built spaces impact the growth of collections, and vice-versa? What were the roles of documents in collections, and how have medieval recording practices influenced modern views of the medieval collection?

The Medieval Postgraduate Colloquium offers an opportunity for research students at all levels from universities across the UK and abroad to present, discuss and promote their research. To apply, please send a proposal of up to 250 words for a 20 minute paper, together with a CV, to costanza.beltrami@courtauld.ac.uk and maggie.crosland@courtauld.ac.uk no later than 15 November 2017.

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