Aug
29
3:00 PM15:00

Church Monuments Society Symposium 2025: Tombs of the Aristocracy, Chichester, 29-31 August 2025

Church Monuments Society Symposium 2025

Tombs of the Aristocracy

29th August 2025 — 31st August 2025

West Dean College, West Dean, Chichester, West Sussex PO18 0QZ

We are delighted to invite you to the next Church Monuments Society symposium, which will be held at West Dean College from Friday 29th to Sunday 31st August 2025.

Our theme, Tombs of the Aristocracy, is inspired by the magnificent tombs of the Fitzalans and Howards (Earls and Dukes of Norfolk) in Arundel and Chichester but covers so much more (see the provisional programme below). The event will include expert lectures and two excursions, with both residential and non-residential options for attending. Please download the relevant booking form from below, which can be emailed to us (instructions on the form).

The symposium is open to anyone. The final deadline for bookings is 30th June 2025. Those aged under 30, and/or registered on full- or part-time degree courses, are eligible for a special reduced rate, but these are strictly limited and available on a first-come, first-served basis. See the booking forms for more details and conditions.

Non-residential attendees have the option to pay for the evening meal and lecture on Friday, and the extra meal on Saturday evening. Sunday-only attendees are able to attend the evening lecture (but not the evening meal) on Saturday with their Sunday-only ticket because, due to extra speakers filling the programme, Saturday now has a fuller programme of talks. 

For more information and the booking forms, visit https://churchmonumentssociety.org/events/symposium-2025-tombs-of-the-aristocracy

Provisional Programme (detailed timings to be confirmed nearer the time)

Friday 29th August: West Dean College

  • Registration (time TBC but after 3pm)

  • Hot buffet dinner (private room) with President’s Welcome

  • After dinner lecture: Dr Dirk Breiding on commonalities and differences in iconography between English and Continental aristocratic tombs

Saturday 30th August: West Dean College lectures and excursion to Chichester Cathedral

  • Brian & Moira Gittos, ‘Beaufort’s pride’: the Tomb of John, 1st Duke of Somerset at Wimborne Minster

  • Dr Keith Dowen, All’Antica or Alla Moderna? The Monuments of Erasmo and Giantonio di Narni in Padua

  • Mid-morning refreshments

  • Sophia Dumoulin, ‘meete for my degree and callinge’: The Monument to Frances Sidney, Countess of Sussex, in Westminster Abbey

  • Pat Poppy, Fashion, status or timeless: clothing in 17th century church monuments.

  • Buffet lunch at West Dean

  • Visit to Chichester Cathedral

  • Optional evening buffet meal (self-service)

  • After dinner lecture: Dr Roger Bowdler, Humility in the Grave: outdoor aristocratic monuments over the centuries

Sunday 31st August: West Dean College lectures and excursion to Fitzalan Chapel, Arundel

  • Dr David Carrington, The Church Monuments Society in Action: progress report on the Getty-funded North Yorkshire monument conservation publication

  • Dr Adam White, John, Lord Lumley, the last of his line

  • Mid-morning refreshments

  • Dr Tobias Capwell, The French Connection: Refining the Stylistic Attribution of Armour Represented on Certain English Effigies c. 1435-1450

  • Buffet lunch at West Dean

  • Visit to Fitzalan Chapel, with talks

We look forward to seeing you at this exciting event!

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Aug
31
12:00 AM00:00

Call for Papers for Panel: New Approaches to Medieval Office Liturgy, IMC Leeds 2026

Call for Papers for Panel

NEW APPROACHES TO MEDIEVAL OFFICE LITURGY

Leeds International Medieval Congress (6-9 July 2026)

Thematic Focus: ‘Temporalities’

Due by 31 August 2025

The past decades have seen exciting developments in medieval liturgical scholarship, moving beyond analysis of texts to examining liturgical practices as diverse, lived, localised, and contested devotional frameworks. Perhaps nowhere is this more apparent than in the study of the Divine Office or Liturgy of the Hours: the cycle of daily prayers structured around the eight canonical hours (Matins, Lauds, Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers, and Compline) central to the spiritual, intellectual, temporal and communal life of the medieval Christian world.

This panel invites proposals for 15-20 minute papers on any aspect of Medieval Office Liturgy, especially those that address new perspectives, methodologies, or understudied sources.

Topics may include (but are not limited to):

  • Office Manuscripts

  • Intersections with visual and material culture

  • Lay experiences of the Divine Office

  • Liturgical Reform

  • Performance Practices and/or Prescriptions

  • The Liturgy of the Hours in Medieval Literature

  • Temporality and the Canonical Hours

  • Saints lives, cults and offices

Please send an abstract of up to 250 words and short biography including your affiliation(s) to Rhiannon Warren (rlow2@cam.ac.uk) by the 31st of August 2025

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Aug
31
9:00 AM09:00

Church Monuments Society Symposium 2025: Tombs of the Aristocracy, Chichester, 29-31 August 2025

Church Monuments Society Symposium 2025

Tombs of the Aristocracy

29th August 2025 — 31st August 2025

West Dean College, West Dean, Chichester, West Sussex PO18 0QZ

We are delighted to invite you to the next Church Monuments Society symposium, which will be held at West Dean College from Friday 29th to Sunday 31st August 2025.

Our theme, Tombs of the Aristocracy, is inspired by the magnificent tombs of the Fitzalans and Howards (Earls and Dukes of Norfolk) in Arundel and Chichester but covers so much more (see the provisional programme below). The event will include expert lectures and two excursions, with both residential and non-residential options for attending. Please download the relevant booking form from below, which can be emailed to us (instructions on the form).

The symposium is open to anyone. The final deadline for bookings is 30th June 2025. Those aged under 30, and/or registered on full- or part-time degree courses, are eligible for a special reduced rate, but these are strictly limited and available on a first-come, first-served basis. See the booking forms for more details and conditions.

Non-residential attendees have the option to pay for the evening meal and lecture on Friday, and the extra meal on Saturday evening. Sunday-only attendees are able to attend the evening lecture (but not the evening meal) on Saturday with their Sunday-only ticket because, due to extra speakers filling the programme, Saturday now has a fuller programme of talks. 

For more information and the booking forms, visit https://churchmonumentssociety.org/events/symposium-2025-tombs-of-the-aristocracy

Provisional Programme (detailed timings to be confirmed nearer the time)

Friday 29th August: West Dean College

  • Registration (time TBC but after 3pm)

  • Hot buffet dinner (private room) with President’s Welcome

  • After dinner lecture: Dr Dirk Breiding on commonalities and differences in iconography between English and Continental aristocratic tombs

Saturday 30th August: West Dean College lectures and excursion to Chichester Cathedral

  • Brian & Moira Gittos, ‘Beaufort’s pride’: the Tomb of John, 1st Duke of Somerset at Wimborne Minster

  • Dr Keith Dowen, All’Antica or Alla Moderna? The Monuments of Erasmo and Giantonio di Narni in Padua

  • Mid-morning refreshments

  • Sophia Dumoulin, ‘meete for my degree and callinge’: The Monument to Frances Sidney, Countess of Sussex, in Westminster Abbey

  • Pat Poppy, Fashion, status or timeless: clothing in 17th century church monuments.

  • Buffet lunch at West Dean

  • Visit to Chichester Cathedral

  • Optional evening buffet meal (self-service)

  • After dinner lecture: Dr Roger Bowdler, Humility in the Grave: outdoor aristocratic monuments over the centuries

Sunday 31st August: West Dean College lectures and excursion to Fitzalan Chapel, Arundel

  • Dr David Carrington, The Church Monuments Society in Action: progress report on the Getty-funded North Yorkshire monument conservation publication

  • Dr Adam White, John, Lord Lumley, the last of his line

  • Mid-morning refreshments

  • Dr Tobias Capwell, The French Connection: Refining the Stylistic Attribution of Armour Represented on Certain English Effigies c. 1435-1450

  • Buffet lunch at West Dean

  • Visit to Fitzalan Chapel, with talks

We look forward to seeing you at this exciting event!

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Sep
1
12:00 AM00:00

Call for Papers: Performing Magic in the Pre-Modern North (13-14 Nov. 2025, Zoom)

Call for Papers

Fifth Conference

Performing Magic in the Pre-Modern North

13-14 November 2025, Zoom

Due by 1 September 2025

Building upon the success of our previous conferences, where we have explored diverse aspects of pre-modern magic in the North, this year’s conference will focus on the lived, communal, and practical expressions of folk magic. Rather than elite or learned magical traditions, we invite discussions on the everyday magical practices embedded in vernacular culture.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

  • The roles of cunning folk, healers, midwives, and local magical practitioners 

  • Household and agricultural magic, charms, and protective rites

  • The use of spoken spells, songs, and folk incantations in practical magic

  • Magical objects, amulets, and everyday ritual tools in folk traditions

  • The transmission and evolution of folk magical knowledge across generations

We also accept abstracts that fall under our general theme of magic in the pre-modern North. As always, we are especially interested in interdisciplinary approaches and methodologies.

The language of the conference will be in English and the entire event will take place online to allow for accessibility. Papers should not exceed 20 minutes and will be followed by 10 minutes of discussion and the opportunity for questions.

We encourage students, early career, established, and independent scholars to participate. If you wish to present a paper, please email an abstract of 250-300 words alongside a short personal biography that includes pronouns, name, area of study and institutional affiliation (if relevant) to performingmagicinthenorth@gmail.com by 1 September 2025.

For more information and to submit your abstract, visit https://performingmagicinthepremodernnorthconference.wordpress.com/upcoming-conferences/

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Sep
1
12:00 AM00:00

Call for Papers Extended: Transculturality and Medieval Art in Dialogue: Negotiating New Identities, Madrid (7-8 Oct. 2025)

Call for Papers Extended

XVIII Jornadas Internacionales Complutenses de Arte Medieval

Transculturality and Medieval Art in Dialogue: Negotiating New Identities

7-8 October 2025 Madrid, Spain

Due by 1 September 2025

Places:

  • Universidad Complutense de Madrid Facultad de Geografía e Historia

  • Museo Arqueológico Nacional

  • Casa Árabe

Architecture, objects, and material culture, as structuring agents of human relationships, play a key role in discovering the potential of understanding medieval art through the paradigm of transculturality. This method examines the negotiation of fluid artistic identities shaped by the mobility of people, circulation of objects, and transmission of ideas across diverse social, geographical, and religious contexts. The materiality of transcultural objects has rendered them repositories of memory, bearing witness to historical encounters across cultures. Their various recontextualization, restaging, and differing forms of appreciation have made them subject to manipulation, reuse, and re-signification, even after their integration into private collections or museums. Addressing these themes allows for a broader reflection from educational and museum studies. By examining intersections of gender, class, and ethnicity, the eighteenth edition of the Complutense International Conference on Medieval Art aims to uncover microhistories that offer a more nuanced understanding of otherness in the Middle Ages.

Invited speakers: María Elena Díez Jorge (UGR), Manuel Castiñeiras González (UAB), Beatriz Campderá Gutiérrez (MAN), Licia Buttà (URV), Raúl Estangüi Gómez (CSIC), Elvira Martín Contreras (CSIC), Alicia Miguélez Cavero (UNL), Theodora Konstantellou (DOaks), Ravinder Binning (DOaks), Julie Marquer (UdL), Herbert González Zymla (UCM), Víctor Rabasco García (ULE), María Puértolas Clavero (Museo Diocesano BarbastroMonzón), Julia Perratore (MMA), Helena Lahoz Kopiske (MAN)

Themes may include, but are not limited to: Transcultural narratives and artistic exchanges at historical or historiographical margins Processes shaping perceptions of otherness Itinerancy, performativity, and gendered dimensions of objects Ambivalence of terminology and problems of approaching sources and documents New museum narratives The relationship between art historical knowledge and tourism Proposals for papers up to 15 minutes in duration and posters should be send by 1 September 2025. Send title, abstract of not more than 250 words, and short author bio (not more than 10 lines) to: jornadas.transculturalidad@ucm.es.

Papers should be in Spanish, English, French or Italian. Decisions on acceptance will be made by the End of July. Papers, communications, and posters will be presented during the conference sessions. Posters would be printed by the conference organizers and displayed in the Facultad de Geografía e Historia and the Facultad de Comercio y Turismo of the UCM. After peer review, the various contributions will be published in a monograph.

For more information, visit https://www.ucm.es/intersections/jornadas-transculturalidad

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Sep
1
12:00 AM00:00

Call for Applications: Prize for Research on South Netherlandish Art 1400-1800

Call for Applications

Prize for Research on South Netherlandish Art 1400-1800

Due 1 September 2025

The Burlington Magazine and the University of Cambridge are happy to announce the launch of a new annual prize.

Established to inspire the development and publication of innovative object-based scholarship, the winning entrant will receive a prize of £1,000, with publication in The Burlington Magazine’s annual issue dedicated to Northern European Art, plus a one year print and digital subscription.

We seek previously unpublished essays of 1000–1500 words from early career scholars worldwide.

This is defined as within 15 years of their most recent post-graduate degree. Submissions should be in English and should include candidate’s CV, all as a single PDF.

Preference will be given to object-related scholarship such as is published inThe Burlington Magazine.

Deadline for applications: Monday 1st September 2025

Submissions and queries should be directed to: burlingtonprize@aha.cam.ac.uk

For more information, visit https://www.burlington.org.uk/jobs-noticeboard/academic-noticeboard

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Sep
2
10:00 AM10:00

Exhibition Opening: Medieval | Renaissance: A Dialogue on Early Italian Painting, McMullen Museum of Art, Boston College, 2 Sept. 2025 - 7 December 2025

Upcoming Exhibition

Medieval | Renaissance: A Dialogue on Early Italian Painting

Daley Family Gallery, McMullen Museum of Art, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA

September 2, 2025–December 7, 2025

Umbria or Marche, Croce dipinta, ca. 1295. Tempera and metals on panel. The Frascione Collection.

The closing centuries of the Middle Ages in Italy witnessed profound transformations in the art of painting. New techniques gave way to an expanded repertoire of formats and artistic styles; patronage systems and workshop practices evolved in tandem with reassessments of the merit of authorship; and long-standardized criteria for value and authenticity in representation were steadily redefined. These paradigm-shifting developments—exemplified in Early Italian painting—ramified into the academic study and connoisseurship of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, creating a blurry line between the Medieval period and early modernity that has proven difficult to shake.

Medieval | Renaissance foregrounds this distinction, exhibiting nineteen rarely shown works from the Frascione Collection in Florence, founded in 1893. Featuring devotional icons, altarpiece panels, narrative scenes, and portraits from the late thirteenth through early sixteenth centuries, the exhibition charts innovations in the craft and conceptualization of painting in Italy after 1300. These paintings represent a liminal epoch between the later Middle Ages and the Early Renaissance, whose works and artists are shared—even “claimed”—by two divergent art historical fields, “Medieval” and “Renaissance,” with their own cultures, questions, and interpretive methods.

Curated by John Lansdowne and Stephanie C. Leone, specialists in Medieval and Renaissance art, respectively, the exhibition invites viewers to contemplate the works through two distinct art historical lenses and from either side of a long-standing and long-debated disciplinary divide.

Organized by the McMullen Museum, Medieval | Renaissance has been underwritten by Boston College with major support from the Patrons of the McMullen Museum.

For more information, visit https://mcmullenmuseum.bc.edu/exhibitions/medieval-renaissance/

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Sep
2
10:00 AM10:00

Exhibition Opening: Going Places: Travel in the Middle Ages, Getty Center, Los Angeles

Exhibition Opening

Going Places: Travel in the Middle Ages

Museum North Pavillion, Plaza Level, Getty Center, Los Angeles, California

2 September 2025 - 30 November 2025

Barlaam, Carrying a Shoulder Pack, Crosses a River (detail) from Barlaam and Josephat, 1469, follower of Hans Schilling. Ink, colored washes, and tempera colors. Getty Museum, Ms. Ludwig XV 9 (83.MR.179), fol. 38v

Free exhibition.

In medieval art, the act of movement from one place to another was conceptualized in a variety of imaginative forms. Featuring manuscripts from the Getty’s collection, this exhibition explores the reasons for travel, different modes of medieval travel, and examples of typical travelers. Illustrations often accurately documented the realities of travel and prompted viewers to travel virtually through their imaginations. The exhibition showcases the wide variety of contexts for medieval movement, from religious travel to diplomacy, trade, exploration, and exploitation.

This exhibition is presented in English and Spanish. Esta exhibición se presenta en inglés y en español.

For more information, visit https://www.getty.edu/exhibitions/going-places/

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Sep
3
to Sep 5

Conference: Good Governance and the Built Environment of Late Medieval Cities (ca. 1200–1700), Royal Library of Belgium, 3-5 Sept. 2025

Conference

Good Governance and the Built Environment of Late Medieval Cities (ca. 1200–1700)

Royal Library of Belgium, Kunstberg (Monts des arts) 28, 1000 Brussel (Salle Panorama)

3-5 September 2025

Join the Royal Library of Brussels to discuss and explore how the built environment of late medieval cities was conceptualized and physically shaped in relation to ideals of good governance. The conference covers a broad historical period (1200–1700) and includes urban centers ranging from Northwestern Europe to the Middle East.

Attendance is free of charge, but registration is required. Please register via this form.

Find out more information on the Governing and Building website.

Conference Programme

Wednesday 3 September 2025

13:00 Welcome

13:30-15:15 Session 1: Governing and Building the City: An Introduction (Session chair: Jan Dumolyn)

  • Nele De Raedt (UCLouvain) – Good Governance and the Built Environment: Central Themes and Questions

  • Philip Muijtjens (UCLouvain) – A Curriculum for a City? The Library in the Palazzo Comunale of Pistoia (1458-1461)

  • Minne De Boodt (KU Leuven/UCLouvain) – Building Brussels in Time of Political Transformation: Dialogues on Good Governance and the Built Environment (1400-1466)

15:45-17:00 Session 2: Governing Ideals and the Built Environment (Session chair : Jelle Haemers)

  • Niklas Groschinski (Oxford University) – Leisure Spaces, Sensorial Pleasure, and Public Health in Premodern City Planning

  • Julien Régibeau (ULiège) – Order and Architecture: Policing the City of Liège during the Chiroux–Grignoux Conflict

Thursday 4 September 2025

09:00-10:15 Session 3: Municipal Authorities and the Design, Instrumentalization and Regulation of the Built Environment (Session chair: Chris Fletcher)

  • Frans Camphuijsen & Nathan van Kleij (Amsterdam University) – A Matter of Morals: Stone Fines, Good Governance and the Urban Fabric in Late Medieval Towns

  • Anna Pomierny-Wąsińska (University of Warsaw) – Just Measures: Surveyors, Space, and Urban (Good) Governance in Late Medieval Florence

10:45-12:30 Session 4: The Endowment of Semi-Public Organisations (Session chair: David Napolitano)

  • Angela Isoldi (Radboud University) – Spatial and Social Networks: Endowments Shaping the Urban Fabric in Mamlūk Cairo (1250-1517)

  • Theodora Giovanazzi (Swiss Federal Technology Institute Lausanne) – Governing through Housing: The Scuole Grandi and Urban Welfare in 16th-Century Venice

  • Emine Öztaner (Ibn Haldun University) – Nurbanu Sultan’s “Waqf Neighborhood” in Üsküdar: Constructing, Populating and Governing Ma‘mûre (16th and 17thCenturies)

13:30-15:00 Visit to collections of the KBR

15:00-16:45 Session 5: Collaborating Social Groups (Session chair: Minne De Boodt)

  • Merlijn Hurx (KU Leuven) – “Civic” and “Royal” Meat Halls in the Low Countries in the 15th and 16th Century

  • Emmanuel Joly (UCLouvain/IRPA) – The Prince and the Canons: Collaboration and Decision-Making in the remodelling of Liège’s Built Environment in the First Half of the 16th Century

  • Giuliana Mosca (Independent Scholar) – “In grande honore de la cità”: Government, Urban Space, and Architecture in 15th-century Perugia

Friday 5 September 2025

09:00-10:15 Session 6: The Representation of Governance (Session chair: Philip Muijtjens)

  • Elizabeth Den Hartog (Leiden University) – Local Lords on the Façade of Veere’s Town Hall (Netherlands). The Lords of Veere and their Relations with the Habsburg Regime in the Late 15th and Early 16th Centuries

  • Susan Tipton (Independent Scholar) – Good governance and the Built Environment: The Great Map of Augsburg (1626) and the Renewal of Civic Architecture in the Imperial City around 1600

10:45-12:00 Session 7: Ideal of Good Governance and Architectural Theory (Session chair: Nele De Raedt)

  • Miara Fraikin (KU Leuven) – “Building on the Foundations of Piety”: Architecture and Female Governance in 16th-Century France and the Low Countries.

  • Mats Dijkdrent (UCLouvain) – Engelbert of Admont as an Architectural Theorist: Ideas on Morally Good Architecture in 14th-Century Mirror Literature

13:30-15:00 Final discussion

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Sep
4
to Sep 5

International Online Conference: Islamic Medieval Wall Paintings: towards an Interdisciplinary Approach

International Online Conference

Islamic Medieval Wall Paintings: towards an Interdisciplinary Approach

September 4-5, 2025 

Conference Programme Times are provided in Central European Summer Time (UTC/GMT +2 hours)

Conference language: English

Conference Organizers: Dr. Ana Marija Grbanovic (Centre for Heritage Conservation Studies and Technologies (KDWT), University of Bamberg) and Dr. Agnieszka Lic (Institute of Mediterranean and Oriental Cultures, Polish Academy of Sciences)

This conference is related to the Iranian Medieval Wall Paintings project funded by the German Research Foundation - the DFG, at University of Bamberg’s Centre for Heritage Conservation Studies and Technologies – the KDWT (Applicant: Dr. Ana Marija Grbanovic).

For more information and to register, visit https://www.uni-bamberg.de/forensische-organik/imwp-tagung/

Conference Program

Day 1 – September 4, 2025

09.00-9.30: Opening of the Conference

  • Welcome and Greetings, Housekeeping Information

9.30-10.30: Keynote

  • Prof. Dr. Markus Ritter, ‘Space Painting in Medieval Islamic Art and Abbasid Raqqa’

10.30-11.00: Break

11.00-12.30: Podium Discussion 1: Research and Conservation of wall paintings for a sustainable future

  • Moderator: Franziska Prell, M.A. and Leander Pallas, M. A.

  • Dr. Habil. Dobrochna Zielińska, ‘Technology of medieval Nubian wall paintings. An insight into a culture through the materiality of an image’

  • Franziska Kabelitz, M. A., ‘Aspects of Sustainability in Exhibition Management (tbc)’ 

  • Dr. Melina Perdikopoulou, ‘Layers of Memory: Preserving Ottoman Wall Paintings in Greece’

  • Speaker tbc, ‘Title tbc’

12.30-13.00: Break

13.00-15.00: Panel 1: Setting the Ground: Conservation, Preservation and Production Technologies of Wall Paintings

  • Chair: Dr. Ana Marija Grbanovic

  • Prof. Dr.-Ing. May al-Ibrashy and Amina Karam, M.A., ‘The painted wood interior of al-Imam al-Shafi’i Dome in Historic Cairo: Discoveries and Observations from the Conservation Project’ 

  • Dr. Yury Karev, ‘Self-image of the ruler: Qarakhanids and their contemporary Turcic dynastic rivals (Wall paintings of Samarkand/Afrasiab)’ 

  • Dr. Melina Perdikopoulou, ‘The Wall Paintings of Alaca Imaret in Thessaloniki: A Comparative Approach to 15th-Century Ottoman Painting’

  • Dr. Giovanna De Palma, ‘The conservation of Qusayr ‘Amra wall paintings: methodologies and discoveries’ 

15.00-15.30: Break

15.30 – 17.00: Panel 2: Cutting Edge Research of Wall Paintings in the Islamic West

  • Chair: Dr. Peter Tamas Nagy

  • Assoc. Prof. Dr. Victor Garcia Rabasco, ‘Abbadid Seville and the development of the Caliphate’s artistic language’ 

  • Assoc. Prof. Dr. Umberto Bongianino, ‘Wall painting in the Islamic West and the aesthetic of naqsh’

  • Walid Akef, M.A., ‘Islamic Mural Paintings: Propaganda and Power in the Age of Chivalry and Crusades’ 

17.00-17.30: Break

17.30-18.30: Special Session: Innovative Approaches to Research of Wall Paintings in Christian Nubia

  • Chair: Dr. Agnieszka Lic

  • Prof. Dr. Karel Christian Innemée, ‘Costumes of Authority, Images of Authority. Christian wall paintings of Medieval Nubia’

  • Dr. Agnieszka Jacobson-Cielecka, ‘From mural to costume: The reconstruction process of medieval robes’

Day 2 – September 5, 2025

9.00-11.00: Panel 3: Archaeology of Islamic Wall Paintings in the Middle East

  • Chair: Dr. Agnieszka Lic

  • Dr. Thomas Leisten, ‘An Umayyad Painters’ Studio at Work: Design and Execution of Frescos at Balis, Syria’ 

  • Dr. Julie Bonnéric and Solène Mathieu, ‘The Wall Paintings of the House of Hearts: Interpreting Archaeological Fragments from a Byzantine and Umayyad Urban Residence in Jerash, Northern Jordan’ 

  • Dr. Ignacio Arce, ‘Umayyad Mural Paintings: from architectural decoration to narratives of power: some case studies from Qasr Hallabat/ Hammam as Sarrah, Qusayr Amra and Khirbat al Mafjar’

  • Ass. Prof. Dr. Tawfiq Da’adli, ‘Khirbat al-Mafjar frescoes reconstruction – which pieces found their way in and why others were left out?’

11.00-11.30: Break

11.30-13.00: Podium Discussion 2: DEIA and gender-sensitive research of wall paintings: perspectives for societal cohesion

  • Moderator: Dr. Mareike Spychala

  • Cornelia Thielmann, M. A., ‘Gender-sensitive studies for architectural cultural heritage preservation’ 

  • Dr. Ana Marija Grbanovic, ‘Intersectionality analysis for preservation of endangered monuments with wall paintings in Ottoman Baroque South-eastern Europe’ 

  • Prof. Dr. Konstantinos Giakoumis, ‘Visual Artworks and Blind or Visually Impaired Persons: New Concepts for Independent Accessibility of Orthodox Icons’ 

  • Dr. Jeanine Linz, ‘Gender sensitive research and gender dimension in proposals’ 

13.00-14.00: Break

14.00-16.00: Panel 4: Research and Preservation of Persianate Islamic Medieval Wall Paintings

  • Chair: tbc

  • Dr. Hamed Sayyadshahri, Ass. Prof. Dr. Mohammad Mortazavi and Dr. Mozhgan Mousazadeh, ‘A review on the Conservation of Historical Wall Paintings in Khurasan, Iran: An Ethical Discussion’ 

  • Ass. Prof. Dr. Amir Hossein Karimy and Ass. Prof. Dr. Parviz Holakooei, ‘Gilding and glittering in wall decorations from the 12th to the 17th century Iran’

  • Dr. Ana Marija Grbanovic, ‘Medieval wall paintings in Iran: a trans-regional phenomenon?’ 

  • Mohammad Mahdi Amini Qomi and Mohammad Mahdi Mohammadi Iraqi, ‘Art historical research of damaged wall paintings at the Gunbad-i Azadan mosque near Isfahan’

16.00-16.30: Break

16.30-18.00: Podium Discussion 3: Role of digitization in research of wall paintings: challenges and perspectives

  • Moderator: Dr. John Hindmarch

  • Dr. Ines Konczak-Nagel, ‘Buddhist Murals of Kucha on the Northern Silk Road’

  • Dr. Erik Radisch, ‘Buddhist Murals of Kucha on the Northern Silk Road’ 

  • Dr. Ivana Lemcool, ‘Digitizing Fresco Paintings in the Balkan Area- Issues and Perspectives in Digital Preservation of Monumental Heritage in Multi-faith Environments’

18.00-18.30: Break

18.30-20.00: Special Session: AI, ML new technologies and ethical aspects for research of wall paintings

  • Moderator: Dr. Julian Hauser

  • Prof. Dr. Markus Rickert, ‘AI application in different domains: from production to agriculture to … cultural heritage?’

  • Dr. Tomasz Michalik, ‘Eye-tracking as a tool to support informed presentations of wall paintings’ 

20.00-21.00: Conference Closing Discussion

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Sep
4
4:00 PM16:00

Opening Reception: Medieval Art from the Wyvern Collection: Global Networks and Creative Connections, Bowdoin College Museum of Art

Opening Reception

Medieval Art from the Wyvern Collection: Global Networks and Creative Connections

Bowdoin College Museum of Art

245 Maine Street, Brunswick, ME 04011, United States, Bowdoin College Museum of Art

Thursday, September 4, 2025 4:00-6:00pm EDT

Join us for a reception to celebrate the exhibition opening of Medieval Art from the Wyvern Collection: Global Networks and Creative Connections. This exhibition brings together works of premodern art from the Wyvern Collection (London, United Kingdom) with the collections of the Bowdoin College Museum of Art to explore the deep ties that linked Asia, the Near East, North Africa, and Europe from the fifth through the fifteenth centuries. 

For this event, please enjoy the opportunity to enter the museum through its historic entrance on the Main Quad. The museum’s contemporary glass-pavilion entrance, with an elevator, will also be available.

Free and open to the public; no registration required. Presented by the Bowdoin College Museum of Art.

Bowdoin College is committed to providing an accessible and welcoming environment. Please contact the Events Office (events@bowdoin.edu or 207-725-3433) with any questions regarding the accessibility of this event and/or to request accommodations. Please note: some accommodations require advance notice and may require documentation of a disabling condition. 

For more information, visit https://calendar.bowdoin.edu/event/opening-reception-medieval-art-from-the-wyvern-collection-global-networks-and-creative-connections

To register, visit https://bowdoin.campusgroups.com/BCMA/rsvp?id=1952571

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Sep
7
12:00 AM00:00

Call for Papers: Reception and Public Uses of the Middle Ages Culture, Thought, and Politics (Valladolid, Spain, 27-28 Nov. 2025)

Call for papers

Congreso internacional/ International Conference

Recepción y usos públicos de la Edad Media Cultura, pensamiento y política

Reception and Public Uses of the Middle Ages Culture, Thought, and Politics

Universidad de Valladolid, Spain, 27-28 November 2025

Due by 7 September 2025

The past, that «strange country», as David Lowenthal defined it, has always been subject to multiple treatments in order to make it intelligible and useful for a given present. In this respect, the period historically constructed and defined as the Middle Ages has been no exception. Defamed by humanists and the enlightened authors as a symbol of obscurantism and barbarism, mythologised by Romanticism as the setting for fantastic fables and legends, depositary of ancestral essences for nineteenth-century nationalisms, resituated in its historical agency by much of modern medievalism and again deformed in today's media, the multiform images projected on the Middle Ages have varied enormously depending on the historical context. This conference aims to study the different and ever-changing uses of the Middle Ages by historiography, the intellectuality, politics, the press and literature, among other social and cultural agents, from the Modern Age onwards.

For this reason, we welcome proposals that are interested in one or more of these aspects of the different images constructed about the period. For example, for its own denomination and chronological limits as a historical period, which have not innocently contributed in a decisive way to the consolidation of a certain vision of it. Also because of the very configuration and professionalisation of medievalism as a discipline and its attempts to banish some of the myths surrounding the period. Along the same line, from the point of view of the history of historiography, this conference is interested in the image of the time that was constructed by scholars and historians of the Enlightenment and the nineteenth century. On the other hand, the medieval period has been an important supplier of myths, clichés and all kinds of arguments to modern nationalist, political and religious movements for the justification of territorial, ideological and social ambitions of many different kinds, an aspect on which we also seek to receive proposals. At the same time, it has served as inspiration for various artistic and intellectual currents, feeding the conceptual renovation in different fields and the plurality of views on the period. Similarly, we seek to understand how cultural artifacts such as novels, films, series or video games have been inspired by the Middle Ages to set their stories, thus conveying a certain image of the period, issues that have been highlighted in recent years by some works in this regard. Finally, we would also like to draw attention to more recent phenomena: the distortion ―linked to the rise of pseudohistory and amplified by digital media, social networks or artificial intelligence― of visions of the Middle Ages, which threatens to impoverish historical knowledge in favour of simplified and digestible formats.

Therefore, the aim of this conference is to promote historiographical reflection on all these different uses, narratives, representations and visions produced about the Middle Ages, in order to understand how these images of the period have been constructed. We encourage the submission of proposals for papers on any of the thematic lines aforementioned above by filling in the form with an abstract (max. 500 words) and a brief CV (max. 250 words) which can be found on the conference website. Abstracts proposals will be accepted in Spanish, English, French, and Portuguese. The interval for submitting proposals is between 15 May and 7 September 2025.

The scientific committee of the congress will evaluate the proposals received and will communicate the decision on their acceptance by 15 September. Then, between 16 September and 1 October, participants will have to formalise their registration through the conference website. The registration fee is €60 for general participants and €50 reduced for students and unemployed. Every person can only submit one communication, alone or in co-authorship. The organising committee is currently considering how to publish the different contributions, aspect on which we hope to provide more information in the upcoming months.

For those interested, attendance will be free, and those who wish to receive a certificate of participation will be able to do so upon registration for a fee of €15.

For more information, click here.

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Sep
8
12:00 AM00:00

Call for Future Host Institution: 26th Vagantes Conference on Medieval Studies 2027

Call for Future Host Institution

26th Vagantes Conference on Medieval Studies, 2027

Due by 8 September 2025

We are now soliciting applications for the Host Institution of Vagantes 2027!

Vagantes is an interdisciplinary conference focusing on the Middle Ages that is entirely organized and run by graduate students. This is a unique opportunity to showcase the Medieval Studies community at your institution, and to gain valuable professional development experience in planning and organizing the event. It is also an excellent opportunity to meet and network with other graduate students interested in medieval studies! Since 2002, Vagantes has been hosted by twenty-two different universities in the US and Canada. Is your institution next?

Applications should be submitted via email to vagantesboard@gmail.com and will be reviewed by the Vagantes Board of Directors. Submissions are due Monday, 8 September 2025.

You can access the application template, view past applications and programs, and learn more here: http://vagantesconference.org/hosting-vagantes/.

Please reach out to vagantesboard@gmail.com with any questions!

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Sep
10
12:00 AM00:00

Call for Papers for Panel: Performing Faith in Romance Epics and Chivalric Romances, ICMS Kalamazoo 2026

Call for Papers for Panel

Société Rencesvals - American-Canadian Branch

Performing Faith in Romance Epics and Chivalric Romances

International Congress on Medieval Studies

Kalamazoo, May 14-16, 2026

Due by 10 September 2025

The Société Rencesvals (American-Canadian Branch) is pleased to offer a sponsored session titled "Performing Faith in Romance Epics and Chivalric Romances." We are particularly interested in papers that explore how such texts present the practices and ideas of medieval religion across a wide and interdisciplinary spectrum.

Romance-epics and chivalric romances not only shed light on the societies (local, regional, and global) in which they were produced, also inform us of those who kept them at the forefront of their national backbone. These texts are sites of religious performance in which devotional prayers and rituals, as well as discussions of spiritual matters (like conversion and apostasy), are brought to the forefront. This session aims to consider how these poets understood and presented the performance of their faith-and of the non-Catholic faiths that their subjects (and perhaps they themselves) encountered.

We invite submissions that explore the representation of performed religion in Romance language epics, especially papers that examine the theme from a non-Catholic perspective or that reflect interdisciplinary and comparative approaches including (but certainly not limited to) history, art history, literature, and material culture in relation to the study of epics and chivalric romances in Romance languages.

Please, submit your 250-word abstract to this link by September 10, 2025. Scholars interested in participating, especially those who may not benefit from standard forms of academic funding, are welcome to apply to our grant program. See our webpage for further information.

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Sep
10
4:00 PM16:00

Conference: Zwischen Himmel und Erde – Musik im Kloster, Fachtage Kloster Kultur, Stiftsbibliothek St. Gallen, 10-13 September 2025

Conference

Fachtage Kloster Kultur

Zwischen Himmel und Erde – Musik im Kloster

 10–13 September 2025, Stiftsbibliothek St. Gallen

Stiftsbibliothek St. Gallen, Cod. Sang. 542, S. 403 (e-codices)

Die Themen Musik und Kloster sind in der Kulturgeschichte untrennbar miteinander verbunden. Der sakralen Musik kommt viele Jahrhunderte lang eine weitaus größere Bedeutung gegenüber der profanen Musik zu, sie ist gleichbedeutend mit einer direkten Aussprache mit Gott.

Die vierte Veranstaltung der Fachtage Klosterkultur thematisiert die Funktion und Bedeutung von Musik im Kloster. Sowohl die Musikpraxis als auch das musikalische Schaffen durch Ordensleute nimmt die Tagung in den Blick, ebenso Fragen zur Erforschung und zu Austauschbeziehungen klösterlicher Musik.

Die Zahl der Teilnehmenden ist begrenzt. Es wird eine Tagungsgebühr von CHF 140,00 erhoben, darin enthalten ist die Tagungsverpflegung (gemäss Programm). Für die Teilnahme an der Exkursion werden zusätzlich CHF 50,00 erhoben.

Weitere Informationen finden Sie uter https://www.fachtage-klosterkultur.org/de/fachtage-2025/

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Sep
11
9:00 AM09:00

Conference: Körper und Herrschaft, in Gotha, Germany, 11-13 Sept. 2025

Conference

Körper und Herrschaft

Referentialität, Räume und Transformationen von Körperlichkeit in politischen Settings im Übergang von Spätmittelalter und Früher Neuzeit

Forschungszentrum Gotha, Germany

11-13 September 2025

Abb.: What makes the King? William Makepeace Thackeray, The Paris Sketchbook, aus dem Exemplar der Forschungsbibliothek Gotha, um 1880.

A conference on "Körper und Herrschaft" (Body and Domination) is being held by the Gotha Research Centre at the University of Erfurt under the direction of Dr Benjamin Steiner and Dr Anja Rathmann-Lutz (Tübingen) from 11 to 13 September 2025 at the "Landschaftshaus" in Gotha.

Body history is more relevant than ever: Recent debates about the health of candidates in US presidential elections, for example, impressively demonstrate the extent to which physical appearance, vitality and health still influence political settings today. This is by no means a purely modern phenomenon. Even in pre-modern societies, the physical constitution of rulers played a central role in legitimising political power.

Despite its historical relevance, corporeality as a condition of political rule remained underexposed for a long time – even in research. Particularly in medieval and early modern monarchies, however, specific expectations were placed on the physical conditions of rulers in order to stabilise political orders or ensure dynastic continuity.

The conference in Gotha is now dedicated to the question of how bodies can be methodically and historically analysed in political contexts. How visible or invisible is the "mere" body behind the façade of staging, ritual and symbolism? What repercussions do political spaces, institutions and techniques of rule have on the bodies of those in power – and vice versa? And can specific transformations in the relationship between body and rule be recognised in the transition from the late Middle Ages to the early modern period?

Speakers have been invited who deal with corporeality in the context of rule from different perspectives - be it in the context of dynastic systems, medical-historical questions, individual biographies of rulers or with regard to comparative approaches that transcend epochs or regions.

The event is sponsored by the Fritz Thyssen Foundation.

Contact: PD Dr. Benjamin Steiner Inhaber der Vertretungsprofessur für Wissenskulturen der Europäischen Neuzeit (Faculty of Philosophy)

For more information, visit https://www.uni-erfurt.de/en/forschungszentrum-gotha/ueber-uns/news/news/newsdetail/koerper-und-herrschaft

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Sep
12
12:00 AM00:00

Call for Papers For a Session: Stilled Lives: Living Materials and their Architectural Afterlives in Premodern Buildings, European Architectural History Network Conference

Call for Papers For a Session

9th Biennial Conference of the European Architectural History Network Conference

Stilled Lives: Living Materials and their Architectural Afterlives in Premodern Buildings

17–21 June 2026, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark 

Due 12 September 2025

‘Although plants have no sense of touch, they nevertheless suffer when they are cut […] for their roots function as a mouth, to receive food; and the bark as skin; and the wood as flesh; and the knots or branches as arms with their nerves and veins’ writes Vincenzo Scamozzi discussing the use of wood as a building material in his The Idea of Universal Architecture (Venice, 1615), citing Aristotle. Scamozzi’s reflection about natural suffering surrendering to human necessity embodies a collision of ecological consciousness and anthropocentric values that also animates modern debates around natural and cultural heritage. 

In addition to wood, coral, palms, reeds, bark, and turf (as in Scandinavian ‘sod roofs’) have long been used in architecture for their strength, flexibility, and insulating properties. In pre-modern epistemologies, even stone was seen as ‘alive’ and endowed with human qualities (Scamozzi’s pietra viva). Central to pre-modern building practices, yet side-lined in stories of architecture (with some exceptions, e. g. Payne 2013), living building materials offer a new angle to rethink the discipline from the perspective of the more-than-human, the cyclical, and the living. 

Ecocritical and post-anthropocentric studies have challenged the long-established dualism between nature and culture. Proposing new ways of understanding such relations, from “vibrant matter” (Bennet 2010) to “naturalism” and “animism” (Descola 2005), such research urges a reconsideration of the historical entanglements between human and nonhuman dimensions. This panel wishes to engage with these debates by foregrounding the architectural traces of such interconnection: where life becomes form, and ecosystems are refigured as structures. Building as a form of human manipulation participated in a process of material as well as conceptual conversion: it turned animate, ecologically embedded life-forms into static, structural components of human spaces. Architectural structures thus emerge as hybrid entities, natureculture bodies that resonate with memories of the former lives of their natural materials.  

We invite papers exploring these and related questions across all geographic areas during the premodern period (from antiquity to ca. 1750). Papers may investigate the architectural “afterlife” of living materials, with particular attention to how such transformations were understood, represented, or ritualized in historical contexts. What were the ecological, spiritual, or symbolic implications of turning the natural environment into the built “environment”? How did premodern societies conceptualize or mediate the shift from life to lifelessness, from ecological actor to architectural object? And how might examining these material histories illuminate broader understandings of human-nature entanglements in the premodern world?

We particularly encourage contributions considering multiple materials or contexts from a micro-historical or comparative perspective. Further topics may include:

  • The architectural use and symbolic transformation of wood, coral, leather, bone, shell, stone or other once-living (or understood-to-be-living) substances;

  • Reuse and recycling of organic matter in construction practices, including its material decay; 

  • The environmental impact of organic material extraction, production, and exchange;

  • Cosmologies, ontologies, and ecologies underlying material choices;

  • Theoretical approaches to material vitality, decay, and transformation.

Abstracts of no more than 300 words should be submitted directly to the chairs along with the applicant’s name, email address, professional affiliation, address, telephone number and a short curriculum vitae (maximum one page). The deadline for submission is 12 September 2025. 

Sessions will consist of 4-5 papers, with time for dialogue and questions at the end. Presentations should be limited to 15–20 minutes each. 

Contact Information:

Costanza Beltrami, Department of Culture and Aesthetics, Stockholm University - costanza.beltrami@arthistory.su.se

Saida Bondini, University of Zurich / Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut - Saida.Bondini@khi.fi.it

Contact Email: costanza.beltrami@arthistory.su.se

URL: https://konferencer.au.dk/eahn26/call-for-papers-1

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Sep
12
12:00 AM00:00

Call for Papers: Disability Studies in Byzantium: Toward Inclusive Futures, IMC Leeds 2026

Call for Papers

Disability Studies in Byzantium: Toward Inclusive Futures

Leeds International Medieval Congress, 6–9 July 2026

Due by 12 September 2026

Organisers: Yorgos Makris (University of British Columbia), Maroula Perisanidi (University of Leeds), and Maria Alessia Rossi (Princeton University)

Disability Studies offers powerful tools for interrogating embodiment, normativity and lived experience, all of which can be traced in the textual, material and visual record of Byzantium. Despite this potential, the field has only just begun to be explored. This panel seeks to highlight the richness of Byzantine evidence and to showcase how productive disability-focused approaches can be.

Disability in Byzantium was neither fixed nor uniform. This panel foregrounds the historical and cultural specificity of how disabled bodies were perceived, represented, and regulated across time. By tracing these shifting understandings—in texts, art, and archaeology—we also engage the broader theme of temporality, asking how disability in Byzantium shaped and was shaped by change over time, whether at the scale of history or individual lives.

We welcome proposals from all disciplines within Byzantine studies, including but not limited to history, art history, theology, archaeology, philology, and manuscript studies.
Possible topics include, but are not limited to:
● Disability and social status
● Disability and gender
● Disability and the lifecycle
● Disability, pain, suffering, and violence
● Disability, gain, pleasure, and aesthetics

Please send proposals for 20-minute papers (in English), including a title, an abstract (max. 250 words) and a brief CV (max. 2 pages) to marossi@princeton.edu by September 12, 2025. Include “Disability Studies in Byzantium: Proposal” in the email subject line.

For a PDF of the Call for Papers, click here.

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Sep
12
12:00 AM00:00

Call for Papers for Panel: Moving in the Medieval Apse, IMC Leeds 2026, Due by 12 Sept. 2025

Call for Papers for Panel

Moving in the Medieval Apse

International Medieval Congress (IMC 2026)

University of Leeds, July 6-9, 2026

Due by 12 September 2025

The medieval apse – adorned with its altar/piece, reliquaries, liturgical objects, or religious scenes – becomes a place of permanent movement(s) by bridging the spiritual to the corporal, the immaterial to the material, and the divine to the mortal. As these movements occur in time, one’s relation with the divine is changed, shaped, or negotiated.

The proposed session focuses on movements of devotional objects, images, and texts in the medieval apse. Suggested topics on movements in the medieval apse, from any geographic area or time period ,(between 300-1500), may include, but are not limited to:

  • Altarpieces: change in iconography, composition, materials

  • Reliquaries: multiplication of, change in materials, form or function

  • Liturgical objects: crosses, books, votive offerings

  • Frescoes, paintings, statues: composition, iconography, materials

  • Liturgy, feasts, music cultures, ritual in relation to objects

Submissions from a variety of disciplines are accepted including but not limited to: history, art history, visual culture, social history, cultural history, hagiography, religious studies, cultural studies, textual studies in a transdisciplinary perspective.

Please submit a 250- 400 word proposal (in English) for a 15-20 minute paper. Proposals should have an abstract format and be accompanied by a short CV, of no more than 800 words, including e-mail, institution, and profession. The session is planned to be in-presence. Please submit all relevant documents by 12 September 2025, to the e-mail address: andreabianka.znorovszky@udl.cat

Contact information: Andrea-Bianka Znorovszky, University of Lleida, Lleida, Spain (andreabianka.znorovszky@udl.cat)

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Sep
12
12:00 AM00:00

Call for Papers for the Session: Troubling Desires: Queer and Trans Approaches to Medieval Art, 6th Swiss Congress for Art History (Geneva, 7-9 Sept. 2026)

CALL FOR PAPERS FOR THE SESSION

Troubling Desires: Queer and Trans Approaches to Medieval Art

6th SWISS CONGRESS FOR ART HISTORY
7 – 9 SEPTEMBER 2026, UNIVERSITY OF GENEVA, UNI MAIL

Due: 12 September 2025

Over the past several years, gender and sexuality studies have been casting new light on the history of medieval art. Madeline Caviness has shown that medieval theories of gender and sexuality have the potential to reconfigure the modern linking of (binary) gender and (homo/hetero) sexuality, paving the way for a recognition of the fluidity of identities across time. Robert Mills has identified and studied a visual culture of the medieval concept of “sodomy” (Mills 2015). Roland Betancourt has considered the ways that several Byzantine manuscripts demand an intersectional approach through the lens of trans and queer theories (Betancourt 2020). Leah DeVun has in turn analyzed images of animals that question the binarity of gender in medieval thought (DeVun 2020). Ostensibly well-known images have been enriched with new interpretations, and previously unpublished sources have been brought to light. In response to and as a continuation of this research, various exhibition projects on these topics and methods are emerging, including Spectrum of Desire: Love, Sex, and Gender in the Middle Ages (The Met Cloisters, October 2025 – March 2026).

This session aims to foster exchanges between those who work on gender and sexuality in the field of medieval art history. It is premised on the idea that the tools required to study premodern sexuality and gender in and as related to the visual arts are not necessarily those that have been so central to modern and contemporary histories of these topics. As such, this session aims to present a series of case studies that offer new approaches to works of art and explore medieval configurations of sexuality and gender that are distinct from and complementary to contemporary studies in this field.

Head of section : Clovis Maillet, HEAD – Genève ; Nancy Thebaut, University of Oxford ; Pauline Guex, Centre Maurice Chalumeau en sciences des sexualités de l’Université de Genève (CMCSS)

Congress details & practical information: https://www.vkks.ch/fr/activites/congres

For more information: https://rmblf.be/2025/07/30/appel-a-contribution-desirer-et-troubler-approches-queer-et-trans-en-art-medieval-troubling-desires-queer-and-trans-approaches-to-medieval-art/


APPEL À COMMUNICATIONS POUR LA SECTION

Désirer et troubler : approches queer et trans en art médiéval

6e CONGRÈS SUISSE EN HISTOIRE DE L’ART
7 – 9 SEPTEMBRE 2026, UNIVERSITÉ DE GENÈVE, UNI MAIL

Délai de soumission des propositions : 12 septembre 2025

Depuis plusieurs années, les études sur les sexualités et le genre posent un nouveau regard sur l’histoire de l’art médiéval. Madeline Caviness a montré que les spécificités des agencements du genre et des sexualités dans les théories médiévales ont le potentiel de reconfigurer la construction moderne de l’entrelacement entre genre (binaire) et sexualité (homo/hetero), en ouvrant la voie à des fluidités et pénétrabilités complexes. Robert Mills a donné au concept médiéval de « sodomie » une véritable culture visuelle (Mills 2015). Sous la plume de Roland Betancourt, plusieurs manuscrits byzantins ont pu dévoiler ce qu’ils apportent à la conceptualisation de l’intersectionnalité trans (Betancourt 2020). Analysées par Leah DeVun, certaines pages des bestiaires médiévaux interrogent la non-binarité des genres dans la pensée médiévale (DeVun 2020). Des corpus connus s’enrichissent de nouvelles interprétations, et des sources inédites s’en trouvent révélées. À la lumière de ces recherches, des projets d’exposition voient le jour, tels que Spectrum of Desire: Love, Sex, and Gender in the Middle Ages (The Met Cloisters, cur. Melanie Holcomb et Nancy Thebaut, oct. 2025 – mars 2026).

Cette section vise à créer des échanges au sein des recherches sur les sexualités et le genre dans le domaine de l’histoire de l’art médiéval. Elle se fonde sur l’idée que l’étude des agencements prémodernes en termes de sexualité et de genre n’est pas un décalque de ce que les études contemporaines ont produit comme élaboration théorique. De ce fait, cette section tend à présenter des dossiers singuliers qui permettent de renouveler l’approche des oeuvres, ainsi qu’à penser et explorer des configurations originales de l’articulation sexualité/genre, distinctes et complémentaires des études contemporaines en la matière.

Dir. de section : Clovis Maillet, HEAD – Genève ; Nancy Thebaut, University of Oxford ; Pauline Guex, Centre Maurice Chalumeau en sciences des sexualités de l’Université de Genève (CMCSS)

Détails du congrès & informations pratiques: https://www.vkks.ch/fr/activites/congres

Pour plus d’information: https://rmblf.be/2025/07/30/appel-a-contribution-desirer-et-troubler-approches-queer-et-trans-en-art-medieval-troubling-desires-queer-and-trans-approaches-to-medieval-art/

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Sep
12
10:30 AM10:30

Exhibition Opening: Sing a New Song: The Psalms in Medieval Art and Life, The Morgan Library & Museum, New York City, 12 Sept. 2025 - 4 Jan. 2026

Exhibition Opening

Sing a New Song: The Psalms in Medieval Art and Life

The Morgan Library & Museum, New York City, NY

September 12, 2025 through January 4, 2026

Chanting Clerics, from the Windmill Psalter, England, London, late thirteenth century. The Morgan Library & Museum, MS M.102, fol. 100r (det). 

Traditionally ascribed to King David, the Hebrew Book of Psalms is a collection of sacred poems that constitute the longest and most popular book of the Bible. These poems include expressions of lament and loss, petitions and confessions, as well as exclamations of joy and thanksgiving— universal themes that speak to what it means to be human.

Sing a New Song traces the impact of the Psalms on men and women in medieval Europe from the sixth to the sixteenth century. It encompasses daily practices and performance, as well as the creation of Psalters (Books of Psalms), among the most richly ornamented manuscripts ever made. Stressing the integration of the Psalms in medieval life, topics range from children saying their prayers to people preparing to die.

The beginning of the exhibition is devoted to the Psalms’ origins, with special emphasis on David as composer. The following two sections show how Psalms permeated the intellectual culture of medieval Europe through translations into Latin and the vernacular. Children used Psalters to learn to read, patrons commissioned versions in their native languages, and theologians, glossing the Psalms, authored the most influential interpretive writings of the Middle Ages. The next section is dedicated to the medieval Psalter. More than any other text, Psalms informed the language of the liturgy, and the Psalter served effectively as the prayer book of the Church. Priests, monks, and nuns were required to pray all 150 Psalms weekly. Lay people across Europe, imitating these practices, fueled a demand for Psalters —often gloriously illuminated. Another section examines performance of the Psalms within the monastery, the church, and the private home. The final section examines the apotropaic function of Psalm texts, the use of Psalms as penitential atonement, and how Psalms comforted the dying.

For more information, visit https://www.themorgan.org/exhibitions/sing-a-new-song

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Sep
13
12:00 AM00:00

Call for Papers: Contesting the Sacred: Profanation, Theft, and Claims over Religious Images, ICMS Kalamazoo 2026, Due by 13 Sept. 2025

Call for Papers for Special Session

Contesting the Sacred: Profanation, Theft, and Claims over Religious Images

61st International Congress on Medieval Studies

Western Michigan University, May 14-16, 2026

Online Event

Due by 13 September 2025

This session investigates the complex dynamics involving sacred images and relics in the medieval period, focusing on profanation, theft, and disputes over ownership that reshaped their spiritual, social, and cultural significance. It examines acts of contestation that challenged established hierarchies and redefined sacrality. The panel will explore how medieval communities negotiated power, devotion, and identity through their relationships with sacred objects, with particular emphasis on the intertwined role of images and relics in religious life and social contexts.

Interdisciplinary contributions are encouraged, particularly in art history and anthropology. Through in-depth case studies covering various media, geographic areas, and historical periods, participants will analyze both symbolic meanings and practical implications of possession and contestation. The session will explore the social, legal, and theological frameworks that shaped late medieval perceptions of ownership, sacrality, and profanation, highlighting their role in conflicts and negotiations surrounding sacred objects.

This session aims to provide a nuanced understanding of how medieval societies engaged with sacred images and relics beyond veneration. It will highlight the cultural, devotional, and political tensions underpinning these interactions, offering new perspectives on authority, piety, and subversion within the medieval religious landscape.

Scholars are invited to submit a 300-word abstract, excluding references. Proposals should also include name, affiliation, email address, the title of the presentation, 6 keywords, a selective bibliography, and a short CV. Please send the documents to kalamazoocallforpapers@gmail.com by September 13, 2025.

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Sep
13
9:00 AM09:00

Conference: Zwischen Himmel und Erde – Musik im Kloster, Fachtage Kloster Kultur, Stiftsbibliothek St. Gallen, 10-13 September 2025

Conference

Fachtage Kloster Kultur

Zwischen Himmel und Erde – Musik im Kloster

 10–13 September 2025, Stiftsbibliothek St. Gallen

Stiftsbibliothek St. Gallen, Cod. Sang. 542, S. 403 (e-codices)

Die Themen Musik und Kloster sind in der Kulturgeschichte untrennbar miteinander verbunden. Der sakralen Musik kommt viele Jahrhunderte lang eine weitaus größere Bedeutung gegenüber der profanen Musik zu, sie ist gleichbedeutend mit einer direkten Aussprache mit Gott.

Die vierte Veranstaltung der Fachtage Klosterkultur thematisiert die Funktion und Bedeutung von Musik im Kloster. Sowohl die Musikpraxis als auch das musikalische Schaffen durch Ordensleute nimmt die Tagung in den Blick, ebenso Fragen zur Erforschung und zu Austauschbeziehungen klösterlicher Musik.

Die Zahl der Teilnehmenden ist begrenzt. Es wird eine Tagungsgebühr von CHF 140,00 erhoben, darin enthalten ist die Tagungsverpflegung (gemäss Programm). Für die Teilnahme an der Exkursion werden zusätzlich CHF 50,00 erhoben.

Weitere Informationen finden Sie uter https://www.fachtage-klosterkultur.org/de/fachtage-2025/

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Sep
13
9:00 AM09:00

Conference: Körper und Herrschaft, in Gotha, Germany, 11-13 Sept. 2025

Conference

Körper und Herrschaft

Referentialität, Räume und Transformationen von Körperlichkeit in politischen Settings im Übergang von Spätmittelalter und Früher Neuzeit

Forschungszentrum Gotha, Germany

11-13 September 2025

Abb.: What makes the King? William Makepeace Thackeray, The Paris Sketchbook, aus dem Exemplar der Forschungsbibliothek Gotha, um 1880.

A conference on "Körper und Herrschaft" (Body and Domination) is being held by the Gotha Research Centre at the University of Erfurt under the direction of Dr Benjamin Steiner and Dr Anja Rathmann-Lutz (Tübingen) from 11 to 13 September 2025 at the "Landschaftshaus" in Gotha.

Body history is more relevant than ever: Recent debates about the health of candidates in US presidential elections, for example, impressively demonstrate the extent to which physical appearance, vitality and health still influence political settings today. This is by no means a purely modern phenomenon. Even in pre-modern societies, the physical constitution of rulers played a central role in legitimising political power.

Despite its historical relevance, corporeality as a condition of political rule remained underexposed for a long time – even in research. Particularly in medieval and early modern monarchies, however, specific expectations were placed on the physical conditions of rulers in order to stabilise political orders or ensure dynastic continuity.

The conference in Gotha is now dedicated to the question of how bodies can be methodically and historically analysed in political contexts. How visible or invisible is the "mere" body behind the façade of staging, ritual and symbolism? What repercussions do political spaces, institutions and techniques of rule have on the bodies of those in power – and vice versa? And can specific transformations in the relationship between body and rule be recognised in the transition from the late Middle Ages to the early modern period?

Speakers have been invited who deal with corporeality in the context of rule from different perspectives - be it in the context of dynastic systems, medical-historical questions, individual biographies of rulers or with regard to comparative approaches that transcend epochs or regions.

The event is sponsored by the Fritz Thyssen Foundation.

Contact: PD Dr. Benjamin Steiner Inhaber der Vertretungsprofessur für Wissenskulturen der Europäischen Neuzeit (Faculty of Philosophy)

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Sep
13
7:00 PM19:00

Call for Papers for Session: The Middle Ages in the Modern Classroom, IMC Leeds 2026, Due by 14 Sept. 2025 Midnight BST

Call for Papers for Session

The Middle Ages in the Modern Classroom

International Medieval Congress, Leeds, 6-9 July 2026

Due by 14 September 2025, 12:00AM BST

(13 September 2025, 7:00PM ET)

Despite the modern era’s fascination with the Middle Ages, teaching the medieval past to modern students remains a challenge. How do we, as teachers, academics, and educators share the love and enthusiasm we have for the period with our students?

This session invites proposals that explore how medieval material is taught in the contemporary classroom, at all levels of education.

  • Pedagogical Approaches – innovative methods for engaging students with medieval content

  • Digital Tools – use of digital tools, technologies and platforms in the classroom

  • Making the Medieval Relevant – dispelling the ‘Dark Ages’ and other misconceptions

  • Modes of Assessment – finding new ways to evaluate learning

  • Teaching Medievalism – use, abuse, and appropriation of the Middle Ages in modern politics and culture

  • Accessibility and Inclusion – creating inclusive learning spaces and teaching the Middle Ages with sensitivity to contemporary race, gender, disability and identity politics

  • Decolonising and Diversifying the Curriculum – strategies for incorporating the Middle Ages into diverse curricula, as well as challenging Eurocentric perspectives

  • And anything else relating to teaching the Middle Ages!

Please submit abstracts of up to 200 words by midnight 14 September (BST) to m.k.d.cobb@leeds.ac.uk and r.gillibrand@leeds.ac.uk. Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions or queries

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Sep
14
12:00 AM00:00

Call for Papers for Panel Series: The Materiality of the Late Medieval Book: Production, Reading, and Transition, IMC Leeds 2026, Due by 14 September 2025

Call for Papers for Panel Series

The Materiality of the Late Medieval Book: Production, Reading, and Transition

International Medieval Congress, Leeds, 6-9 July 2026

Due By 14 September 2025

We invite proposals for papers for a series of panels at the International Medieval Congress (IMC), to be held in Leeds, 6–9 July 2026. This session series will explore the materiality of the late medieval book between c. 1350 and 1540, with a particular emphasis on approaches that take the physical object as the foundation of scholarly inquiry. This strand aims to foreground the book as a material artefact – not simply as a vehicle for text or image, but as a made, handled, and interpreted object. We seek contributions that begin with codicological, palaeographical, artifactual, or structural features of books – bindings, layouts, quire structures, scripts, substrates, wear patterns, or added matter – and use these material traces to investigate broader questions of cultural practice, intellectual history, devotional life, or reading habits.

Papers may address, but are not limited to:

  • Material production: physical construction of books, use of specific materials (parchment, paper, pigments), regional or institutional practices

  • Reading and handling: how physical features shaped reading practices and reader interaction; evidence of use such as marginalia, damage, repairs, signs of wear, and ownership traces; and the repurposing, circulation, or afterlives of books

  • Transitions and continuities: how the rise of print engages with manuscript materiality – including hybrid books, printed texts with manuscript additions, and conservative or experimental formats that blur traditional boundaries

  • Methodologies: new approaches to studying the physical book as evidence and object

We particularly welcome work grounded in close analysis of specific manuscripts, printed books, or fragments.

Please send an abstract of no more than 250 words, along with your name, institutional affiliation, and a brief biographical note (max. 100 words), to Janne van der Loop, (jannevanderloop@uni-mainz.de) by 14 September 2025.

Selected papers will form part of a multi-session strand proposal for IMC 2026. Applicants will be notified of the outcome around 20 September 2025. For questions or further information, please contact Janne van der Loop (jannevanderloop@uni-mainz.de) or Ad Putter (A.D.Putter@bristol.ac.uk)

We look forward to papers that place the material form of the late medieval book at the centre of scholarly interpretation.

Sponsored by REBPAF and Mainzer Buch Wissenshaft

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Sep
14
12:00 AM00:00

Call for Papers for Panel: Multidisciplinary Approaches to the Study of Medieval Roofing Systems from Europe to the Christian East, IMC Leeds 2026

Call for Papers for Panel

Multidisciplinary Approaches to the Study of Medieval Roofing Systems from Europe to the Christian East

INTERNATIONAL MEDIEVAL CONGRESS (IMC)

Leeds, 6-9 July 2026

Due by 14 September 2025

Sponsor: @ Archaeological Research Unit, UCY - Ερευνητική Μονάδα Αρχαιολογίας, ΠΚ of the Πανεπιστήμιο Κύπρου | University Of Cyprus

Organizers: Angelo Passuello and Michalis Olympios (Univ. of Cyprus)

One of the most important structural elements in the formulation of the architectural language of sacred space in the Middle Ages was the creation of varied roofing systems (wooden roofs, stone vaults, domes). It is the roofs that decisively conditioned the internal spatiality and assumed a primary importance also in formulating the external form of the churches, because the entire construction is based on the shape that the roof will have.

Roofing systems, therefore, have an enormous potential for the study of sacred spaces: if these structures are studied with an interdisciplinary approach they can be compared, contextualised and better understood

The aim of this session is to delve deeper into some case studies from Europe to the Christian East in a multidisciplinary perspective, integrating seamlessly elements of the history of architecture and restorations, archaeometry, archaeology, and art history. Although these methods are native to different disciplines, they constitute indispensable and complementary approaches for a holistic analysis of medieval roofing systems.

Potential topics include, but need not be limited to, the following:

  • The structure of roofing systems and the construction phases of individual buildings

  • Analysis of groups of buildings: contextualization and regional or international comparison of building ensembles

  • Dating and structural analysis of timber roof frameworks

  • Stereotomy and construction techniques of vaulted stone structures

  • Nineteenth- and twentieth century restoration campaigns

This session forms part of the activities of the CaMeRoofs (Cataloguing Medieval Roofs) project, coordinated by the University of Cyprus and funded by the European Commission under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions.

If you are interested in participating, please send an abstract of max. 200 words, 2-4 relevant index terms (https://www.imc.leeds.ac.uk/imc-index-terms/), a short bio with full affiliation details (department, institution, email address) to: passuello.angelo@ucy.ac.cy

Deadline: 14 September 2025

This is planned as a hybrid session. Please make sure to indicate whether you intend to participate in person or online

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Sep
14
12:00 AM00:00

Call for Papers for Session: Birgitta of Sweden and her Legacy, IMC Leeds (6-9 July 2026)

Call for Papers for Session

Birgitta of Sweden and her Legacy

International Medieval Congress, Leeds, UK

6 July 2026 - 9 July 2026

Due by 14 September 2025

Revelationes caelestes, Lübeck: Bartholomaeus Ghotan, before 1492, f. 288v (München, BSB, 2 Inc.c.a. 2689)

No medieval conference without Birgitta, right? For International Medieval Congress - University of Leeds, we invite papers investigating all aspects of time in the life, works, and afterlife of Birgitta of Sweden, as well as the history of the Birgittine Order.

Possible themes:

  • Times in Birgitta's works (depictions of past and contemporary historical events, sacred history, or visions)

  • Birgittine piety in connection with time

  • The novelty of Birgitta's work and teaching

  • The afterlife of Birgitta (canonisation, veneration, criticism, or postmedieval representations)

  • Innovations and changes in the Birgittine monasteries

  • Relationships of Birgittine monasteries to Birgitta

We are deliberately aiming broadly now and will narrow the session(s) depending on your suggestions.

Please send an abstract of around 200 words and a brief biography by 14 September 2025 to Iliana Kandzha (ilk@hum.ku.dk) and Barbara Müller (barbara.mueller@uni-hamburg.de). We will let you know by the end of September; if relevant, the bursary application deadline is 15 October.

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Sep
15
12:00 AM00:00

Call for Papers: Timely Tusks: New Approaches to Global Medieval Ivories, ICMS Kalamazoo (14-16 May 2025)

Call for Papers

Timely Tusks: New Approaches to Global Medieval Ivories

61st International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo (May 14 - 16, 2026)

Due by 15 September 2025

1997 was a landmark year for the study of Gothic ivories, with the exhibition Images in Ivory at the Detroit Museum of Art and a plenary talk and two sessions at Kalamazoo. Thirty years later, the field has seen an explosion of scholarship and approaches, making for a timely revisit. The proposed session welcomes papers that examine ivory from 500-1500 - from anywhere and of any type. Topics might include the trade and market in raw materials, the organization and processes of production, the use and handling of various object types, issues of iconography, and post-medieval collecting, reception and treatment.

For more information and to submit, visit: https://wmich.edu/medievalcongress/call

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Sep
15
12:00 AM00:00

Call for Papers for Session: A Sensory History of Devotion in the Late Medieval Meditteranean World, ICMS Kalamazoo 2026

Call for Papers for Session

A Sensory History of Devotion in the Late Medieval Meditteranean World

International Congress on Medieval Studies, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, MI

14-16 May 2026

Due by 15 September 2025

This panel invites papers on Christian devotional practices in the late medieval Mediterranean that foreground the senses. How did touch, sight, sound, smell, and taste shape how people encountered the divine? We welcome papers on themes such as material culture, gendered piety, cross-cultural devotional exchange, institutional attempts to regulate sensory worship, and the politics of embodied spirituality. Scholars working with diverse Christian communities and sources—from relics to processions, from tears to incense—are encouraged to apply. Together, we aim to explore how sensory experience made the sacred tangible between 1300 and 1550.

This session is organised by Clair Becker (PhD Student, University of Rochester), Emmarae Stein (PhD Student, University of Rochester), Vittoria Magnoler (PhD Student, University of Genoa, EHESS), and sponsored by Hagiography Society.

This session is hybrid. Abstracts of no more than 300 words should be submitted via the Confex proposal portal by 15 September 2025. Organizers will not be able to add abstracts to their sessions manually. If you have any technical questions about using Confex, please contact icms@confex.com. Apply via the International Congress on Medieval Studies website: https://wmich.edu/medievalcongress/call

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Sep
15
12:00 AM00:00

Call for Papers for Session(s): Session in Honor of William “Bill” Clark, ICMS Kalamazoo 2026

Call for Papers for Session(s)

Session in Honor of William “Bill” Clark

61st International Congress on Medieval Studies

Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, Michigan - May 14-16, 2026

Due 15 September 2025

AVISTA invites paper proposals for Session(s) in Honor of William “Bill” Clark, which will be in-person sessions at the 61st International Congress on Medieval Studies at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, Michigan (May 14-16, 2026). Paper proposals will be accepted through the Confex proposal portal through September 15, 2025.

We invite papers celebrating the life and work of William “Bill” Clark, Gothic architectural historian and founding member of AVISTA. In addition to his significant contributions on the historiography and methodology for medieval art history, Bill Clark wrote extensively on twelfth- and thirteenth-century architecture and sculpture at sites including the Abbey of Saint Denis, Notre Dame in Paris, and the cathedrals of Laon and Reims. Papers responding to Bill’s research or reflecting on Bill’s legacy as mentor, professor, and collaborator are welcome.

For more information, visit https://www.avista.org/opportunities-cfp.

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Sep
15
12:00 AM00:00

Call for Papers: Metropolitan Museum Journal

Call for Papers

Metropolitan Museum Journal

Sponsored by the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Due By 15 September 2025

The Editorial Board of the peer-reviewed Metropolitan Museum Journal invites submissions of original research on works in the Museum’s collection. Beginning with Volume 52 (2017), there will be two sections: Full-length Articles and Research Notes. Full-length Articles contribute extensive and thoroughly argued scholarship. Research Notes typically present a concise, neatly bounded aspect of ongoing study, such as the presentation of a new acquisition or attribution, or a specific, resonant finding from technical analysis. All texts must take works of art in the collection as the point of departure.

We look forward to receiving your submission, whether a first-time investigation or a critical reassessment from the Museum's vast holdings.

To be considered for the following year’s volume, the complete article must be submitted by September 15.

Click here for more information.

Click here to view inspiration from the Collection

View the Journal here

View the instructions for authors 

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Sep
15
12:00 AM00:00

Call for Papers: Boundaries, Crossings, and Crossroads in the Medieval Iberian Worlds (500-1600), Fordham University, New York City (27 Feb.- 1 Mar. 2026)

Call for Papers

44th Annual Medieval Studies Conference

Boundaries, Crossings, and Crossroads in the Medieval Iberian Worlds (500-1600)

February 27-March 1, 2026

Lincoln Center Campus, Fordham University, New York City

Due by September 15, 2025

We are excited to announce that the Center for Medieval Studies at Fordham University will host its 44th Annual Medieval Studies Conference on February 27-March 1, 2026 at Fordham's Lincoln Center campus in New York City on "Boundaries, Crossings, and Crossroads in the Medieval Iberian Worlds (500-1600)." The conference is hosted by Fordham's Center for Medieval Studies with additional support from el taller @ KJCC at New York University.

Plenary Speakers:

Thomas Burman (University of Notre Dame)

María Judith Feliciano (CSIC, Madrid)

Anita Savo (Boston University)


Please see the website for the call for papers: https://mvstconference.ace.fordham.edu/iberianworlds/

Those interested in presenting should submit a 250-word abstract and CV to medievals@fordham.edu by September 15, 2025. Registration will be waived for conference speakers.

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Sep
15
12:00 AM00:00

Call for Papers for Session: Denying and undermining sainthood in the Middle Ages, IMC Leeds 2026

Call for Papers for Session

Denying and undermining sainthood in the Middle Ages

International Medieval Congress, Leeds, 6-9 July 2026)

Due by 15 September 2025

Ever since Christianity began recognising sainthood, there has also been a parallel phenomenon of its denial. The uncovering of a false martyr’s tomb by St. Martin, and the Dominican inquisitor’s campaign against the cult of Guinefort, the holy greyhound, are among the most well-known examples of such interventions.

The session will discuss the phenomenon of denying and undermining sainthood in Latin Christianity throughout the Middle Ages, its various manifestations and aspects. Potential themes may include, but are not limited to:

- undermining sainthood and refusal to recognise a cult by official church authorities

- questioning sainthood as part of the canonisation process

- refusal to worship approved saints and lack of worship of figures eligible for sainthood

- undermining and diminishing the sanctity of holy patrons by competing ecclesiastical institutions, social groups, political communities, etc.

- questioning sainthood as an element of religious conflicts and a part of heterodox groups’ doctrine and teaching

- questioning the authenticity of relics and sceptical discourse towards the cult of relics

- destroying images of saints and artistic expressions of denying sainthood

To propose a paper

Please submit a paper title and abstract (max 200 words) with your name, email address and academic affiliation to Grzegorz Pac (gl.pac@uw.edu.pl) by 15 September 2025

The session is organised as part of the project RECOGNISING SAINTS in the High Middle Ages: Local and Papal Formalisation of Cults Reconsidered, funded by the National Science Centre, Poland, and hosted by the Faculty of History, University of Warsaw.

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Sep
15
12:00 AM00:00

Call for Papers for Sponsored Session: Music and the Visual Arts, ICMS Kalamazoo 2026

Call for Papers for Sponsored Session

Music and the Visual Arts

Sponsored by Musicology at Kalamazoo

International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, MI May 14-16, 2026

Due 15 September 2025

This session focuses on the connections between medieval music and the visual arts. Scholars may adopt a wide range of approaches and methodologies drawn from musicology, art history, and elsewhere. We welcome papers that either consider specific and direct relationships (e.g., art that depicts musicians or instruments; marginalia in music books; music that describes handicrafts) or papers that investigate more abstract connections between sound and sight (e.g., philosophical/epistemological approaches). This session offers a space for cross-disciplinary discussion among art historians, musicologists, and others with the aim of enriching our understanding of the medieval period.

Abstracts are due on September 15, 2025, and may be submitted at this website.

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Sep
15
12:00 AM00:00

Call for Papers for Panels: New Research on the Art and Architecture of Medieval Parish Churches (1: in person) and (2: virtual), ICMS Kalamazoo 2026

Call for Papers for Panels

New Research on the Art and Architecture of Medieval Parish Churches (1: in person) and (2: virtual)

International Congress on Medieval Studies

Kalamazoo, MI
May 14-16, 2026

Due 15 September 2025

Scholars are invited to propose presentations on any aspect of the art and architecture of the medieval parish church. Possible research questions include, but are not limited to: How did the architecture, art, or visual culture of the parish define the medieval worship experience? How did individual churches change over time—and what can these changes reveal about each parish community? How can in-depth study of a local parish church expand or contradict broader national narratives? What new methodologies can twenty-first century scholars use to tell the story of the medieval parish?

To submit a proposal for the in-person session: https://icms.confex.com/icms/2026/prelim.cgi/Session/7517.

To submit a proposal for the virtual session: https://icms.confex.com/icms/2026/prelim.cgi/Session/7653.

Proposals should consist of a title, an abstract (300 words or less), and a short description (50 words or less) which may be made public if the proposal is accepted. Please also include the author's name, affiliation and contact information.

For general information on the International Congress on Medieval Studies CFP process, see https://wmich.edu/medievalcongress/call.

For questions related to this panel, contact the session presider, Catherine E. Hundley: chundley[at]wesleyseminary.edu.

Proposals are due September 15, 2025.

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Sep
15
12:00 AM00:00

Call for Papers for International Conference: Entangled Seascapes: More-Than-Human Histories Across Oceanic Worlds (Academia Belgica, Rome, 22-23 Jan. 2026)

Call for Papers

International Conference

ENTANGLED SEASCAPES: MORE-THAN-HUMAN HISTORIES ACROSS OCEANIC WORLDS

Academia Belgica, Rome, 22-23 January 2026

Due by 15 September 2025

This conference seeks to bring together scholars working on pre-modern and early modern oceanic worlds: from the Indian Ocean, South China Sea, and the Pacific to the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. Framed within the emerging field of blue humanities and building on posthumanist and decolonial perspectives, the conference explores the sea not as a passive space between empires or cultures, but as an active, more-than-human agent, one that shapes and is shaped by human and nonhuman actors. By focusing on more-than-human histories and material entanglements, we aim to challenge dominant land-based narratives of civilisation, encounters, and sovereignties.

Key themes

  • Oceanic materialities: boats, corals, shells, and sea-assemblages

  • Sea deities, spirits, and cosmologies in art, architecture, and ritual

  • Oral and literary traditions: the sea as danger, promise, or divine force

  • Archaeologies of marginal maritime communities (fisherfolk, pirates, boatbuilders, islanders, sea-nomads)

  • Indigenous, subaltern, and local knowledge systems connected to seafaring and/or oceanic life

  • More-than-human entanglements in past seascapes: marine animals, currents, winds, tides, and reefs

Research questions

  • How have seascapes shaped and been shaped by human and nonhuman actors in pre-modern and early modern worlds?

  • By shifting the focus from terrestrial centres to oceanic edges, what alternative historical narratives emerge, particularly those informed by non-elite perspectives and lived experiences of the sea?

  • How can oceanic entanglements prompt a rethinking of material culture, human-environment relations, and historical agency by exploring not only the practical uses of the sea but also the cognitive and affective dimensions of maritime experience in the past?

An optional field visit to a museum relevant to the themes of the conference will be organised on Saturday, 24 January 2026. Further details will be announced in due course.

Abstracts

The conference is intended to be multidisciplinary, and we welcome contributions from historians, archaeologists, anthropologists, human geographers and any scholars interested in seascapes, more-than-human thinking and related theoretical approaches.

Participants will be given a 45-minute slot, with 30 minutes for their paper, followed by 15 minutes for Q&As.

In order to be considered, please submit a proposed paper title along with a short abstract (approximately 350 words) no later than 15 September 2025 to Matthew Cobb m.cobb@uwtsd.ac.uk and Daniela De Simone daniela.desimone@ugent.be. Notifications of acceptance will be sent by 15 October 2025.

To support the organisation of the conference, a fee of €80 will be kindly requested from the accepted participants.

Publication plans

Selected participants will be asked to submit an extended abstract (1,500-2,000 words) by 5 January 2026. This should detail your theoretical framework and include five key references.

The extended abstracts will be circulated among conference participants in advance to facilitate informed discussion. Beyond the conference event itself, our intention is for revised versions of these papers to be submitted for a journal special issue.

Keynote

The keynote lecture will be delivered by Professor Serpil Oppermann, Director of the Environmental Humanities Center at Cappadocia University, and author of Blue Humanities: Storied Waterscapes in the Anthropocene (Cambridge University Press, 2023).

Entangled Seascapes is intended not only as a forum for presenting original research, but also as a collaborative space for scholarly exchange and long-term network-building among researchers working on oceanic and more-than-human histories from across the worlds.

Convenors:

Matthew Cobb, University of Wales Trinity Saint David

Daniela De Simone, Ghent University

Organising Committee:

Academia Belgica

Annalisa Bocchetti, "L'Orientale," University of Naples

Matthew Cobb, University of Wales Trinity Saint David

Daniela De Simone, Ghent University

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Sep
15
12:00 AM00:00

Call for Papers for Session: The Beast and the Sovereign: Zoopolitics in the Middle Ages, IMC Leeds 2026

Call for Papers for Session

The Beast and the Sovereign: Zoopolitics in the Middle Ages

International Medieval Congress, Leeds, 6-9 July 2026

Due by 15 September 2025

Throughout the Middle Ages, relations of power and notions of political authority were often framed as or compared to relations between human and nonhuman animals. Medieval zoopolitics in its various manifestations and aspects emerged from the tension between the cultural and natural orders, between the human and animal community. The session will discuss the nonhuman dimensions, practices, and ideas about authority, rulership, and politics throughout the Middle Ages found both in fact and in fiction. Potential themes may include, but are not limited to:

  • animal metaphors and zoomorphism of rulers and rulership

  • rulers’ command over nature as their entitlement to authority over humans

  • hybrid and liminal nature of rulership

  • taming and domestication of wild rulers

  • naturalization of power and legitimacy

  • treatment and comparison of one’s subjects to animals and beasts

  • dehumanization and animalization of one’s enemies

  • animal fables and anthropomorphism of animals as reflections on the nature of power

To propose a paper:

Please submit a paper title and abstract (max 200 words) with your name, email address and academic affiliation to Wojtek Jezierski, Department of Historical Studies, University of Gothenburg, Sweden (wojtek.jezierski@gu.se) by 15 September 2025.

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Sep
15
12:00 AM00:00

Call for Papers for Session: Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out: Psychedelic Approaches to Medieval Objects, ICMS Kalamazoo 2026

Call for Papers for Session

Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out: Psychedelic Approaches to Medieval Objects

International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, May 14-16, 2026

Due By Monday, September 15th, 2025

Psychedelic art, an outgrowth of mid-century counterculture, features numerous motifs that may resonate with medievalists. Surreal imagery, animation, bright colors, and the cross-pollination of disparate media all conspire to evoke a hallucinogenic or heightened response in the viewer. We invite proposals for 20-minute papers considering medieval material culture through a psychedelic lens, or vice versa. A sampling of topics may include devotional objects and visionary or mystical encounters; medievalism in 1960s fashion and design; artistic representations of or, artifacts associated with, psychoactive plant and fungi cultivation; or the synesthetic/multisensory impact of objects.

Please keep in mind that this is an in-person session, which means that only people who plan to attend the International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo next May (May 14 - 16, 2026) will be able to participate.

All proposals should be submitted as abstracts no longer than 300 words to the ICMS Confex site: https://icms.confex.com/icms/2026/prelim.cgi/Session/7248

Please contact Sophie Durbin (sophiekhdurbin@gmail.com) or Clara Poteet (clara.poteet@yale.edu) with questions. 

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Sep
15
12:00 AM00:00

Call for Papers: Buboes, Orificies, and Horns: Non-Normative Bodies, ICMS Kalamazoo 2026

Call for Papers

Buboes, Orificies, and Horns: Non-Normative Bodies

61st International Congress on Medieval Studies

Western Michigan University, May 14-16, 2026

Due by 15 September 2025

This panel examines medieval conceptualisations and representations of (non-)normative bodies, and aims to better understand the demarcations between the human and non-human, the abled and disabled, the white and non-white/racialised, the gender conforming and gender non-conforming body. We welcome interdisciplinary approaches, including art history, literary criticism, disability studies, critical race studies, and gender studies. We adopt a broad definition of the ‘medieval world,’ and invite contributions on material from all geographic regions and time periods between ca. 500-1500, as well as the later re-appropriation of medieval material. Contributions that study the intersection of two or more bodily markers are encouraged.

We welcome papers from researchers, curators, conservators, librarians, and graduate students working on medieval bodies. This session will be held in person. Abstracts of no more than 300 words should be submitted via the Confex proposal portal by 15 September 2025.

For more information or questions, please contact the organisers, Imke Vet (imke.vet@yale.edu) and Se Jin Park (sejin.park@yale.edu).

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Sep
18
11:30 AM11:30

Conference: Medieval-Renaissance Conference XXXVIII, University of Virginia College At Wise, 18-20 Sept. 2025

Conference

Center for Medieval-Renaissance Studies of the University of Virginia’s College at Wise

Medieval-Renaissance Conference XXXVIII

September 18-20, 2025

Founded in 1986 by Professors Richard H. Peake and the late Jack Mahony, both of the Department of Language and Literature, the Medieval-Renaissance Conference began as a way of promoting scholarly activity on campus and providing visibility for the College in the larger academic community. The first conference was a success, hosting twelve speakers from mainly area colleges. Welcoming papers on all areas of medieval and renaissance studies, including literature, history, philosophy, art and music, the conference has enjoyed steady growth and increased national presence, with speakers representing institutions across the country – and the occasional international speaker. By the late 1990s it had grown to a gathering of thirty or forty presentations per year, growth that continues the legacy of Professors Peake and Mahony and confirms the value of an academic conference at the College. In spite of this growth, the conference remains small enough to foster a sense of academic community, generating lively discussions and feedback not always achievable at larger conferences. We also work to maintain an open, informal and friendly setting for participants. Many younger scholars, presenting their first academic paper, find their experience with the conference encouraging and helpful to their academic growth.

Sponsored by the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, the University of Virginia’s College at Wise Medieval-Renaissance Conference promotes scholarly discussion in all disciplines of Medieval and Renaissance studies. The conference welcomes proposals for papers and panels on Medieval or Renaissance literature, language, history, philosophy, science, pedagogy, and the arts.  Abstracts for papers should be 300 or fewer words.  Proposals for panels should include: a) title of the panel; b) names and institutional affiliations of the chair and all panelists; c) a 200-250 word description of the panel).  A branch campus of the University of Virginia, the University of Virginia’s College at Wise is a public four-year liberal arts college located in the scenic Appalachian Mountains of Southwest Virginia. 

Keynote Address

Frederick de Armas, University of Chicago
Cervantes’ Architectures: Windows, Holes, Corners and Fissures

For more information and to register, visit https://www.uvawise.edu/academics/departments/language-literature/medieval-renaissance-conference

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Sep
18
12:30 PM12:30

Online Lecture: Ancient India: sacred stone, British Museum

Online Lecture

British Museum

Ancient India
sacred stone

18 September 2025, 17.30–18.30 BST (12:30–13:30 ET)

Join award-winning earth scientist Dr Anjana Khatwa in conversation with Dr Sushma Jansari, curator of the Ancient India: living traditions exhibition, as they discuss the sacredness of rock.

Rock is an often-invisible aspect of our natural world – a backdrop to our busy lives that exists silently, unseen and unrecognised. But for thousands of years on the Indian subcontinent, it has been seen as sacred – imbued with the spirit of Ma Dharti, Mother Earth.

The 21 incarnations of Ma Dharti take shape in wondrous forms, from Parvati, goddess of the Himalaya mountains, to a small rocky outcrop in a temple worshipped as the goddess Shitala. Even the red quartz pebbles found in the Narmada River in India are considered sacred, seen as representations of Lord Shiva. These belief systems align with other cultures across the world – where animacy, life and spirit is present even in inanimate aspects of the natural world. In this talk, Khatwa reframes our relationship with the geological landscape by drawing together science, Indigenous knowledge and wisdom from global majority cultures.

This event is part of the Art History Festival 2025 organised by the Association for Art History. It's also part of the public programme supporting the exhibition Ancient India: living traditions (open until 19 October).

For more information and to book tickets, visit https://www.britishmuseum.org/events/ancient-india-sacred-stone

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Sep
19
12:00 AM00:00

Call for Papers for Session: Agencies and Temporalities in Complex Artefacts from Religious Communities (c. 1000-1600), IMC Leeds 2026

Call for Papers for Session

AGENCIES AND TEMPORALITIES IN COMPLEX ARTEFACTS FROM RELIGIOUS COMMUNITIES (C. 1000–1600)

International Medieval Congress, Leeds, 6-9 July 2026

Special Thematic Strand: TEMPORALITIES

Deadline for proposals: 19 September 2025

Reliquary panel from the Benedictine Convent of St George at Prague Castle (I). The Meuse or Rhine region, 1280-1300, Bohemia after 1300, additions after 1330 and circa 1800; oak wood, gilded silver, gilded copper, niello, parchment, fabric, rock crystal, pearls, gemstones. Prague, The Royal Canononny of Premonstratensians at Strahov, Inv. No. 1310.

The proposed session(s) will focus on the multifaceted relationship between time, matter, and religious practice. More specifically, the sessions will examine medieval multi-material and multimedia artefacts that challenge our conception of a “finished” object. The materialities and meanings of these complex artefacts have evolved throughout their lives and afterlives. They must therefore be understood as “works in progress” or organic entities that hold multiple narratives, identities, agencies and temporalities.
These sessions will focus on complex artefacts that have received little scholarly attention or have been misinterpreted due to discipline-bound approaches from a single perspective, overlooking their fluid or hybrid nature. The analysis will encompass reliquaries and other ornamenta sacra, devotional diptychs or triptychs, manuscripts as written artefacts, etc., from religious communities in a global perspective.
We welcome proposals for 20-minute papers in English from a variety of disciplines, including art history, material culture, archaeology, history, cultural history, anthropology, gender studies, musicology, literary studies, theology and the history of emotions. Contributions that facilitate a broader interdisciplinary, transdisciplinary or transregional approach to the study of materiality and religious practice are particularly encouraged.

Suggested topics may include, but are not limited to, the following:

  • Case studies of complex written and material artefacts resulting from the assembly of different elements that have been incorrectly labelled and studied. Particular attention will be given to objects from communities that have not been well integrated into mainstream scholarship, such as communities of hermits, non-cloistered religious women and communities belonging to understudied orders and territories.

  • Embodied agencies. How complex artefacts resulting from the assembly of different elements, materials and media functioned as new media, shaping and reshaping the relationship between humans and matter, between individuals and communities.

  • Objects embodying overlapping, nonlinear or anachronic temporalities. The interactive relationship between things and humans created an individual and communal sense of time that was not strictly linear.

  • The potential of multi-material objects to display fluid religious identities, transcending binary divisions and boundaries that have defined religious life and practice.

  • Textual materialities and temporalities. How inventories (and other sources containing 'textual things', i.e. descriptions of objects) facilitate the fluid and non-linear temporality of objects.

Please submit an abstract (max. 300 words) and a short biography (max. 150 words) to mercedes.pvidal@uam.es by 19 September. All proposals should include your name, email address, academic affiliation and preferred presentation format (in-person or virtual).

Speakers will be informed by 23 September.

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Sep
19
12:00 AM00:00

Call for Papers for Session: The Spatial Turn in Medieval Studies, IMC Leeds 2026

Call for Papers For Session

The Spatial Turn in Medieval Studies

International Medieval Congress, Leeds 6-9 July 2026

Deadline: 19 September 2026

Space offers a valuable lens through which to rethink the practices in which religious rituals, material objects and written narratives, such as hagiography and historiography, were embedded. Scholars working within the spatial turn have emphasized that the location and physical spatial contexts of events are inseparable from the way in which they unfolded and the outcomes they produced. Space, both physically and socially constructed, plays a critical role in shaping human experiences, alongside other historical and social factors. This session explores how spatial configurations impacted medieval ways of knowing, by examining how space was conceptualized, structured, and transformed. In doing so, it aims to shed light on the ways in which spatial experience shaped the perceptions and actions of those who occupied it.

Potential topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

Digital reconstruction of medieval objects in their historical space

  • Performative actions within the context of their space in which they were performed

  • Medieval liturgy and its spatial dimensions and signs for meaning-making

  • Space and locations and its influence on medieval audiences

  • Descriptions of the use of space in medieval written narrative sources

  • Spatial dimensions in medieval manuscripts and its effect on its reader

  • Depictions of space in medieval visual images and artworks

  • The influence of space and location on the practices surrounding material (ritual) objects

If you are interested in joining these sessions, please send an abstract of max. 250 words, a short bio with affiliation details (institution, department, email address) and an indication if you are joining online or in-person, to Anne Sieberichs (Utrecht University) a.p.sieberichs@uu.nl and Imke Vet (Yale University) imke.vet@yale.edu.
Deadline: 19 September 2025

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Sep
20
12:00 AM00:00

Call for Papers: Leeds 2026: Funerary Art, Memory, and Contexts in Medieval Iberia: Bishops and Cathedrals

Call for Papers

IMC Leeds, 6-9 July 2026

Funerary Art, Memory, and Contexts in Medieval Iberia: Bishops and Cathedrals

Due by 20 September 2025

Studies on cultural memory are revolutionising ongoing scholarly debates in Premodern art history and heritage. The Middle Ages in Spain offer countless examples of overlooked figures, settings, and sources barely studied from this point of view in the country. Bishops were at the centre of this phenomenon. They were prolific patrons of the arts, and many cathedrals were prime settings and unparalleled repositories of both written testimony and spaces of belief and performance. The death of a famed bishop became a window into a carefully conceptualised world of ritual, visual, and textual remembrance, planned often years in advance and with implications far beyond this individual figure.

This IMC panel, part of the project FUNART (University of León / PIs: Prof. María Dolores Teijeira Marcos & Prof. Jose Alberto Morais Morán), aims to bring together scholars from all different career stages to analyse the intrinsic relationship between art and memory in regards to bishops, their patronage, and cathedrals in Iberia, c. 1000-1500.

Please, send a paper proposal of no more than 500 words, alongside a short bio, to Dr. Jesús Rodríguez Viejo (j.rodriguez.viejo@rug.nl) before September 20, 2025.

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Sep
20
9:00 AM09:00

Conference: Medieval-Renaissance Conference XXXVIII, University of Virginia College At Wise, 18-20 Sept. 2025

Conference

Center for Medieval-Renaissance Studies of the University of Virginia’s College at Wise

Medieval-Renaissance Conference XXXVIII

September 18-20, 2025

Founded in 1986 by Professors Richard H. Peake and the late Jack Mahony, both of the Department of Language and Literature, the Medieval-Renaissance Conference began as a way of promoting scholarly activity on campus and providing visibility for the College in the larger academic community. The first conference was a success, hosting twelve speakers from mainly area colleges. Welcoming papers on all areas of medieval and renaissance studies, including literature, history, philosophy, art and music, the conference has enjoyed steady growth and increased national presence, with speakers representing institutions across the country – and the occasional international speaker. By the late 1990s it had grown to a gathering of thirty or forty presentations per year, growth that continues the legacy of Professors Peake and Mahony and confirms the value of an academic conference at the College. In spite of this growth, the conference remains small enough to foster a sense of academic community, generating lively discussions and feedback not always achievable at larger conferences. We also work to maintain an open, informal and friendly setting for participants. Many younger scholars, presenting their first academic paper, find their experience with the conference encouraging and helpful to their academic growth.

Sponsored by the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, the University of Virginia’s College at Wise Medieval-Renaissance Conference promotes scholarly discussion in all disciplines of Medieval and Renaissance studies. The conference welcomes proposals for papers and panels on Medieval or Renaissance literature, language, history, philosophy, science, pedagogy, and the arts.  Abstracts for papers should be 300 or fewer words.  Proposals for panels should include: a) title of the panel; b) names and institutional affiliations of the chair and all panelists; c) a 200-250 word description of the panel).  A branch campus of the University of Virginia, the University of Virginia’s College at Wise is a public four-year liberal arts college located in the scenic Appalachian Mountains of Southwest Virginia. 

Keynote Address

Frederick de Armas, University of Chicago
Cervantes’ Architectures: Windows, Holes, Corners and Fissures

For more information and to register, visit https://www.uvawise.edu/academics/departments/language-literature/medieval-renaissance-conference

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Sep
20
9:00 AM09:00

Conference: Boccaccio 650: 1375-2025, Newberry Library, Chicago, 18-20 Sept. 2025

Conference

Center for Renaissance Studies

Boccaccio 650: 1375-2025

Organized by the American Boccaccio Association

Newberry Library, Chicago, IL September 18–20, 2025

Portrait of Boccaccio from Il Decamerone di messer Giovanni Boccaccio, Venice: 1547 (Wing ZP 535 .G4)

Join us for the sixth triennial conference of the American Boccaccio Association.

The year 2025 marks the 650th anniversary of the death of Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375), author of the Decameron and foundational author of the European narrative prose tradition. To commemorate this milestone, the American Boccaccio Association (est. 1974) and the Newberry Library, in collaboration with the Istituto Italiano di Cultura of Chicago will celebrate the Certaldese author with a series of scholarly events.

For more information, visit https://www.newberry.org/calendar/boccaccio-650-1375-2025

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Sep
21
12:00 AM00:00

Call for Participants for Workshop: Studying East of Byzantium XII: Spaces (24 Oct., 2025, 13 Feb., 2026, & 3-5 June 2026), On Zoom

Call for Participants for Workshop

Studying East of Byzantium XII: Spaces

24 October 2025, 13 February 2026, and 4–5 June 2026

On Zoom

Due 21 September 2025

The Mashtots Professor of Armenian Studies at Harvard University and the Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture at Hellenic College Holy Cross in Brookline, MA, are pleased to invite abstracts for the next Studying East of Byzantium workshop: Studying East of Byzantium XII: Spaces.

Studying East of Byzantium XII: Spaces is a three-part workshop that intends to bring together doctoral students and very recent PhDs studying the Christian East to reflect on the usefulness of the concept of Spaces” in studying the Christian East, to share methodologies, and to discuss their research with workshop respondents, Darlene Brooks Hedstrom, Brandeis University, and Timothy Greenwood, University of St. Andrews. The workshop will meet on 24 October 2025, 13 February 2026, and 4–5 June 2026 on Zoom. The timing of the workshop meetings will be determined when the participant list is finalized.

We invite all graduate students and recent PhDs working in the Christian East whose work considers, or hopes to consider, the theme of spaces in their own research to apply.

Participation is limited to 10 students. The full workshop description is available on the East of Byzantium website (https://eastofbyzantium.org/upcoming-events/studying-east-of-byzantium-xii-spaces/). Those interested in attending should submit a C.V. and 200-word abstract through the East of Byzantium website no later than 21 September 2025.

For questions, please contact East of Byzantium organizers, Christina Maranci, Mashtots Professor of Armenian Studies, Harvard University, and Brandie Ratliff, Director, Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture, at contact@eastofbyzantium.org.

EAST OF BYZANTIUM is a partnership between the Mashtots Professor of Armenian Studies at Harvard University and the Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture at Hellenic College Holy Cross in Brookline, MA. It explores the cultures of the eastern frontier of the Byzantine Empire in the late antique and medieval periods.

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Sep
24
10:00 AM10:00

Exhibition Opening: Gothicisms, Musée du Louvre Lens, France, September 24, 2025–January 26, 2026

Exhibition Opening

Gothicisms

Musée du Louvre Lens, Lens, France

September 24, 2025–January 26, 2026

From the birth of the cathedrals to the Goth counterculture and fantasy, Gothic art truly has traversed the centuries. In ground-breaking fashion, the Louvre-Lens is presenting its first ever panorama of Gothic art from the 12th to the 21st century, from its emergence through to the neo-Gothic style and right up to the “Goths” of today. 

Gothic art is closely associated with the age of the cathedral builders. As the first pan-European movement, it inspired exceptional artistic forms endowed with unparalleled expressive force. Sculptures, art objects, graphic arts, painting, photography, installations and furniture are gathered here in a journey through some 200 works of art. Together they reveal the recurrences and continuity of these Gothic languages, which blossomed during medieval times, came to life again in the 18th and 19th centuries, and still inspire us now. But where does the word Gothic come from? Why is this colourful art today associated with a dark aesthetic of black, night and the fantastic? How can this endlessly recurring attraction be explained? This chronological journey is interspersed with forays into specific topics, touching on the Gothic script, music, film and literature. It is an immersion into history and into society’s collective imagination to understand the origins and singularity of the Gothic movement: unique, multifaceted and very much alive today.  

Exhibition curators:
General curator: Annabelle Ténèze, director of the Louvre-Lens
Scientific curator: Florian Meunier, chief heritage curator at the Department of Art Objects, Musée du Louvre
Scientific advisor: Dominique de Font-Réaulx, general heritage curator, specialising in the 19th century, special advisor to the President-Director of the Musée du Louvre
Associate curator: Hélène Bouillon, general heritage curator
Assisted by Caroline Tureck, head of publications and documentation at the Louvre-Lens
Scenography: Mathis Boucher, scenographer, Louvre-Lens

This project was made possible thanks to the support of the Musée de Cluny – Musée national du Moyen Âge, Cité de l’architecture et du Patrimoine, Bibliothèque nationale de France and the Musée des Arts décoratifs de Strasbourg.

For more information, visit https://www.louvrelens.fr/en/exhibition/gothicisms-2/

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Sep
28
2:00 PM14:00

Lecture: Virtue and Adornment in Byzantium: Beautiful Bodies in the Christian East, Alicia Walker, At The Cleveland Museum of Art

The Dr. John and Helen Collis Lecture

Virtue and Adornment in Byzantium: Beautiful Bodies in the Christian East

Alicia Walker

Professor of History of Art and Director of the Graduate Group in Classics, Archaeology, and History of Art at Bryn Mawr College

Gartner Auditorium, Suzanne and Paul Westlake Performing Arts Center, The Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio

Sunday, September 28, 2025, 2:00–3:00 p.m

Nereid (Sea-Nymph) from a Hanging (detail), late 300s–400s CE. Byzantine Empire (Egypt).

Free; Ticket Required - To book, click here.

Join Alicia Walker as she explores attitudes toward women and adornment in the Byzantine world. Walker discusses how jewelry and clothing decorated with Christian signs offered women ways to ornament the body while still conforming to religious values that censured personal embellishment and promoted modest piety. At the same time, Byzantine society remained connected to pre-Christian cultural traditions, allowing for Greco-Roman goddesses and other female mythological characters to persist as models for the cultivation of physical beauty and allure. Walker shows how Byzantine women navigated these diverse possibilities, displaying moral virtue and social refinement—but also captivating charm—through their dress and adornment.

For more information, visit https://www.clevelandart.org/events/virtue-and-adornment-byzantium-beautiful-bodies-christian-east

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Sep
29
12:00 AM00:00

Call for Papers: Baltic Bloodbaths. The Use of Political Violence in the Baltic Sea Region 1400–1600, Stockholm University (23-24 Apr. 2026)

Call for Papers

Baltic Bloodbaths. The Use of Political Violence in the Baltic Sea Region 1400–1600

Stockholm University, 23-24 April 2026

Due 29 September 2025

A workshop in 2021 discussed international perspectives on the Stockholm Bloodbath, an important event in the history of the Nordic countries. However, it asks for a follow-up, in order to understand the events in a broader perspective, focusing the use of political violence in the Baltic Sea Region in late medieval, early modern times.

In 2021, we organized a workshop on occasion of the 500th commemoration of the Stockholm Bloodbath in November 1520 (one year late due to Covid). The workshop aimed at presenting new research on the historical events, in particular focusing the international consequences (which previously had not received proper attention in the Danish and Swedish research). We also focused on the aftermath of the event. The workshop has been published, the anthology appeared just a few weeks ago. For more information, see https://www.aup.nl/en/book/9789463724197/the-stockholm-bloodbath-of-1520.

Whereas the workshop was able to present new sources and perspectives, we think that one vital aspect of the picture is still missing. The Stockholm Bloodbath of November 1520 takes up an iconic status in Sweden and Scandinavia as a decisive turning point in Scandinavian history. Therefore, it has mostly be researched as a singular event, despite different other bloodbaths taking place in Sweden and other realms in the Baltic Sea Region between 1400 and 1600.

With the present conference, we intend to broaden the perspective by applying a comparative approach to the use of political violence in the Baltic Sea Region from roughly 1400–1600. We are especially interested in comparative approaches on acts of political violence, both within a certain realm as well as between different realms. How where these acts of violence legitimized in their times? How are they explained by contemporary and modern historians? What is the role of religious dissent, dynastic conflicts and social uprisings? How can violence be explained as a political instrument?

Papers should be 20 minutes long and in English. The number of presenters is limited to 20. We hope to be able to cover travel and accommodation expenses for all invited speakers.

Are you interested in participating in the conference, please send a paper proposal, no later than 29 September 2025 to the conference secretary at sekreterare@medeltid.su.se.

Contact: heiko.droste@historia.su.se and kurt.villads.jensen@historia.su.se

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Sep
30
12:00 AM00:00

Call for Papers: A History of Textile Cleanliness: Washing and Perfuming Fabrics from the Medieval to the Modern Period (Bern, 28-29 May 2026)

Call for Papers

A History of Textile Cleanliness: Washing and Perfuming Fabrics from the Medieval to the Modern Period

Institute of Art History, University of Bern, Switzerland, 28-29 May 2026

Due by 30 September 2025

Two Japanese Women Posing with Laundry, 1870s, silver print photograph from glass negative with applied colour, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2005.100.505.1 (39b)

International conference organized by Moïra Dato (University of Bern) and Érika Wicky (Université Grenoble-Alpes / LARHRA).

Scientific committee: Olivier David (Institut Lavoisier / Paris Saclay), Aziza Gril-Mariotte (Musée des Tissus, Lyon / Université Aix), Raphaël Morera (CNRS-EHESS), Corinne Mühlemann (University of Bern), Helen Wyld (National Museum Scotland).

In 2024, the Sleeping Beauties exhibition at the MET (New York) engaged visitors in the museum experience by recreating the displayed dresses’ scents – identified through chromatographic analysis – to illuminate their history and relationship to bodily senses. The analyses and interpretations published in the catalogue reveal not only the presence of perfumes but also traces of cosmetics, sebum, polluted air, and wine, among other aromas. While the poetic resonance of these sensory traces may evoke the ephemeral existence of these garments, their scents have not always been perceived as desirable. On the contrary, the history of textiles and clothing is deeply intertwined with practices of washing, stain removal, deodorisation, and perfuming, all of which were designed to ensure their longevity and reusability. This international conference seeks to explore these practices and their significance in textile history.

The historical study of textile cleaning has emerged at the intersection of cultural history, material culture studies, sensory studies, economic history, and archaeology. While textile production, trade, and consumption have been well-documented, research into the maintenance and cleaning of textiles – both as part of everyday domestic practices and in the care of symbolically significant textiles (such as liturgical garments and ceremonial fabrics) – has only recently gained scholarly attention.

Studies on hygiene underlined the role of textiles in approaches to and conceptions of bodily cleanliness, especially through the relationship between undergarments and the body. As noted by Georges Vigarello in his book Le propre et le sale, white clothing has long been associated with personal hygiene. Researchers have particularly focused on the laundering of linens and their symbolic role as indicators of health, moral, and spiritual virtues (Vigarello, 1985; Roche, 1989). Subsequently, the study of cleanliness and the purity of linens has been extended to colonial contexts, where these notions were intertwined with concepts of race and whiteness while also highlighting regional differences in perceptions of cleanliness and body care (Brown, 2009; White, 2012). Concepts connected to health, bodily hygiene, and clean textiles are also closely linked with questions of smells and techniques for scenting fabrics, an area that has been explored by historians and art historians specializing in the senses (Dospěl Williams, 2019; Schlinzig, 2021).

The inception and evolution of cleaning materials and technologies, from the use of soap to spot-removal recipes and chemical innovations, have also attracted the interest of historians (Leed, 2006). For example, some studies have shown how cleaning methods were adapted based on fibre type and colour stability, as well as how the manufacturing of undergarments itself was conditioned by their future washing (North, 2020). These practices of cleanliness have also been addressed through the lens of social actors, particularly in relation to gendered labour. The work of laundresses, who are rarely documented in written records, has been discussed as a form of embodied knowledge and skills (Morera and Le Roux, 2018; Robinson, 2021). Advertising imagery has also served to explore the dynamic between collective perceptions of clean laundry and its commercial dimensions (Kelley 2010).

Building upon this previous research, this international conference seeks to explore textile cleaning from a global perspective and its interplay with hygiene, olfaction, social opinion, aesthetic preferences, quality expectations, ecological issues, and economic imperatives, all of which are inherent to fabrics. The conference aims to investigate these various practices and their part in the everyday experience of life in the past. Who were the people involved in the daily or extraordinary cleaning of fabrics, and which ingredients and tools were used? What knowledge about textiles and their care was shared at the time, and how was it transmitted? How did these practices evolve during the 18th and 19th centuries, a period of intense development in chemistry and industrial science?

The question of care and cleaning becomes even more significant when considering the many lives of textile objects. Cleaning and maintenance certainly varied not only by fabric type but also by purpose and context of use. Household linens and work clothes were used to the last thread – mended, transformed and repurposed. More expensive and refined garments and textile decorations were used more sparingly; some were eventually passed down – and even preserved until today. This aspect prompts an exploration of the wide variety of textiles and the differing care practices for under and outer garments, furnishings, and domestic fabrics. Were undergarments the primary focus of cleaning routines? How were sartorial and furnishing fabrics with complex patterning techniques and precious materials (from silk to metal threads) cared for? How was the shape of specific garments, such as ruffs, maintained through washing? How did the intended use of a textile – ranging from menstrual cloths to ceremonial gowns – influence the choice of cleaning methods? Additionally, given that fabric itself was often used as a cleaning tool, what were the interactions between textiles of varying value?

Conceived as a bodily experience, the cleanliness of fabrics carries significant implications tied to the senses. Indeed, integrating sensory studies with the history of cleanliness enables an exploration not only of the sensory experiences associated with washing or wearing clean linen or clothes but also of the sensory knowledge that developed around it. Thus, it becomes possible to examine which notions of pleasantness or discomfort were associated with textile washing or with specific practices such as drying laundry outdoors. How were the smells associated with cleanliness and the thresholds of sensory perception defined? How was the temperature of the washing water evaluated? In what ways were textural changes in fabric during washing assessed? Moreover, attention to sensorial experiences invites us to consider the significant tradition of perfuming laundry, whether placing sachets in linen drawers or sewing them into the hems of garments.

This conference will encompass geographical regions from the Atlantic world to Europe, Africa, the Islamic world and Asia. Adopting this approach raises numerous questions about cultural differences as well as the circulation of cleaning practices and techniques. It enables an examination of the differences and evolutions in conceptions of hygiene and their relationship to textiles across countries and cultures. Moreover, it highlights how these practices were influenced by factors such as available resources, climate, and social norms, shaping distinct traditions of textile care across different societies. Similarly, a longue durée perspective (from the medieval to the modern period) provides an opportunity to explore both changes and continuities in cleaning habits, shaped by advancements in technologies, evolving medical theories, socio-philosophical morals, and shifts in cosmetic and aesthetic preferences. This approach invites us to map out conceptions of cleanliness and identify thresholds of sensitivity: What is considered clean? What criteria are applied in making this assessment? When do clothes become unwearable? What scents are associated with cleanliness? In this regard, the study of representations – such as those found in art and fiction – can offer valuable insights into historical perceptions of cleanliness and its limits.

The conference will take place at the University of Bern’s Department of History of Textile Arts (Institute of Art History) on 28-29 May 2026. We invite proposals from all researchers, particularly doctoral students and early career scholars, on topics ranging from the medieval to the modern period and across all geographical regions. Proposals (300 words), along with a short biography (150 words max), should be sent to Moïra Dato (moira.dato@unibe.ch) and Érika Wicky (erika.wicky@univ-grenoble-alpes.fr) by 30 September 2025.

For a PDF of the Call for Papers and the Select Bibliography, click here.

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Oct
1
12:00 AM00:00

Call for Papers: New College Conference on Medieval and Renaissance Studies (Sarasota, Florida, 5-7 Mar. 2026), Due by 1 Oct. 2025

Call for Papers

New College Conference on Medieval and Renaissance Studies

Sarasota, Florida, 5-7 March 2026

Due by 1 October 2025

The twenty-third biennial New College Conference on Medieval and Renaissance Studies will take place 5–7 March 2026 in Sarasota, Florida.  The program committee invites 250-word abstracts of proposed twenty-minute papers on topics in European and Mediterranean history, literature, art, music and religion from the fourth to the seventeenth centuries. Planned sessions are welcome (see guidelines below), and interdisciplinary work is particularly appropriate to the conference’s broad historical and disciplinary scope. The deadline for all abstracts is 1 October 2025

Junior scholars whose abstracts are accepted are encouraged to submit their papers for consideration for the Snyder Prize (named in honor of conference founder Lee Snyder), which carries an honorarium of $400.

The Conference is held on the campus of New College of Florida, the honors college of the Florida state system. The college, located on Sarasota Bay, is adjacent to the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, which will offer tours arranged for conference participants. Sarasota is noted for its beautiful public beaches, theater, food, art and music. Average temperatures in March are a pleasant high of 77f (25c) and a low of 57f (14c).

More information will be posted here on the conference website as it becomes available, including plenary speakers, conference events, and area attractions. Click here for a downloadable PDF of this CFP.

For more information, click here.

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Oct
1
12:00 AM00:00

Call for Papers for International Conference: 'Instrumenta altaris': Ritual Artefacts and Their Images for Medieval Liturgy, Madrid (20-22 Jan. 2026)

Call for Papers

CONGRESO INTERNACIONAL

'Instrumenta altaris': Los objetos rituales y sus imágenes para la liturgia medieval/Ritual Artefacts and Their Images for Medieval Liturgy

Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Campus de Madrid

20-22 January 2026

Quintana Organized by Project Thesauri Rituum

Due 1 October 2025

In the Middle Ages, Christian liturgy was far more than a sequence of prayers and ceremonies: it structured religious practice, shaped sacred space, and gave material form to the expression of faith. Objects, vestments, and books played a central role in this framework, endowed with a visual, tactile, and symbolic language that embodied the theology of the sacred. The International Conference Instrumenta altaris: Ritual Artefacts and Their Images for Medieval Liturgy seeks to refocus attention on the material dimension that, throughout the medieval centuries, rendered the invisible visible and preserved —often in fragmentary form— a tangible legacy of devotion.

For several decades, medieval art historiography has moved towards a reassessment of what was once pejoratively labelled as “minor arts”, no longer regarded as decorative appendices to the dominant monumental tradition, but as essential components for understanding the spaces, gestures, and imagery that shaped Christian liturgy. This shift owes much to the work of scholars such as Colum Hourihane, Eric Palazzo, Cécile Voyer, Klaus Gereon Beuckers, and Elisabeth Crouzet-Pavan, who have drawn attention to the luxurious, performative, and sensory dimensions of medieval liturgical art.

Organised by the research project Thesauri Rituum at Rey Juan Carlos University (Madrid), this conference focuses on three main categories of liturgical artefacts: ritual objects —sacred vessels, reliquaries, crosses, censers— whose craftsmanship reveals a theology of materials; sacred vestments, textiles that not only clothed liturgical ministers but transformed them into figures of transcendence endowed with graces bestowed through ordination; and liturgical books, often illuminated manuscripts, which contained not merely the order of prayer but a spiritual choreography of Christian time. These elements were not autonomous but interdependent, belonging to a practice in which art was not simply contemplated, but activated and handled within liturgical performance —something difficult to reconstruct solely from written sources.

The International Conference Instrumenta altaris: Ritual Artefacts and Their Images for Medieval Liturgy is therefore also an invitation to reconsider the status of medieval art through the vitality of liturgical practice. It calls for a dialogue between form and function, between aesthetics and rituality, between the history of images and the presence of objects. This approach reflects a historiographical sensibility that no longer accepts the nineteenth-century hierarchy between the “major arts” and objects of worship, but instead pays renewed attention to those voices excluded from traditional academic classifications. For in the Middle Ages, the sacred was not confined to grandeur; it was equally revealed in the refinement of the minute and in the quiet eloquence of material signs that accompanied each rite, gesture, and ceremony.

Key Dates Summary

Deadline for presentation proposal submissions: October 1, 2025

Notification of acceptance: November 1, 2025
Early registration deadline: November 15, 2025 *
Congress dates: January 20-22, 2026

For more information on the preferred thematic lines, abstract guidelines, and travel grant information, click here.

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Oct
1
12:00 AM00:00

Call for Applications: Dr. Günther Findel-Stiftung / Rolf und Ursula Schneider-Stiftung, Doctorl Fellowship

Call for Applications

Doctoral Fellowship

Dr. Günther Findel-Stiftung / Rolf und Ursula Schneider-Stiftung

Annual application deadlines: April 1 and October 1

Thanks to the initiatives by private foundations (Dr. Günther Findel-Stiftung/Rolf und Ursula Schneider-Stiftung) fellowships programmes for doctoral candidates have been established at the Herzog August Bibliothek. These programmes are open to applicants from Germany and abroad and from all disciplines.

Applicants may apply for a fellowship of between 2 and 10 months, if research on their dissertation topic necessitates the use of the Wolfenbüttel holdings. The fellowship is € 1.300 per month. Fellowship holders are housed in library accommodation for the duration of the fellowship and pay the rent from their fellowship. There is also an allowance of € 100 per month to cover costs of copying, reproductions etc. Candidates can apply for a travel allowance if no funds are available to them from other sources.

Candidates who already hold fellowships (eg. state or college awards or grants from Graduiertenkollegs) or are employed can apply for a rent subsidy (€ 550) to help finance their stay in Wolfenbüttel.

New: Thanks to generous financial support by the Anna Vorwerk-Stiftung, the monthly fellowship will be increased by € 150 per month until further notice.

Please request an application form, which details all the documents that need to be submitted, at ed.bah@gnuhcsrof. Reviewers will be appointed to evaluate the applications. The Board of Trustees of the foundations will decide on the award.

Application deadlines: October 1st or April 1st. The Board holds its selection meetings in February and July. Successful applicants can take up the award from April 1st or October 1st onwards each year.

If you send your applications by mail, please submit only unstapled documents and no folders.

You can find more information about the foundation here

Fellowship Programme Expanded: Footnote Fund

Former holders of fellowships from the foundations can apply for further financial support. The Footnote Fund supports scholars who are either at the final stage of their doctorate or are working on the revision for the publication and wish to return to the library for a short stay – for example, should they need to review or add further source material. The fellowship is € 500 for Germans and € 750 for international applicants.

New: Thanks to generous financial support by the Anna Vorwerk-Stiftung, the fellowship will be increased by € 100 until further notice.

Please request an application form at ed.bah@gnuhcsrof.

This expansion to the doctoral programme was made possible thanks to the generous response to an appeal for financial support launched on the occasion of the anniversary of the Dr. Günther Findel-Stiftung in 2013. Further contributions are of course welcome.

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Oct
1
12:00 AM00:00

Call for Papers: Bound for Devotion: The Prayer Book as Object and Practice, 1300–1800, Leiden University (1-3 July 2026)

Call for Papers

Bound for Devotion: The Prayer Book as Object and Practice, 1300–1800

Leiden University, Netherlands

1-3 July 2026

Due By 1 October 2025

Detail from Getijden van onser liever vrouwen (Paris: Wolfgang Hopyl, 10 September 1500), Brussels, KBR, INC A 2.188 (RP)

Prayer was central to religious life in the late medieval and early modern period. Despite growing scholarly interest in religious texts, devotional practices, and spirituality, prayer and prayer books remain comparatively understudied. Prayer could take on a multitude of forms and occur in a range of spaces, from public to secluded and private; from monastic, liturgical prayer to short, indulgenced invocations and meditative prayers that evoked a rich scala of emotions and mental images.

To pray, devotees – whether clerical or lay – often took a book to hand. Prayer books played a vital role during many moments in a person’s life in the performance of prayer and prayer-related practices. While the act of prayer is inherently transient, the books held or touched by late medieval and early modern devotees form codified and material evidence of the practices in which they engaged. Still extant in large numbers and containing a vast variety of textual and visual materials, these books – through both content and appearance – reflect the diversity of prayer practices as well as developments in book production. Taking the book as the central artefact for the study of prayer allows for an analysis that encompasses all aspects and components of prayer books, along with the actors involved in their production and use. This, in turn, enables us to chart the ‘cultural ecosystem’ in which prayer books were produced, circulated, and used.

This three-day international conference, hosted at Leiden University by the PRAYER project (ERC Starting Grant), with keynotes by Walter S. Melion (Emory University) and Kathryn M. Rudy (University of St Andrews), aims to bring together researchers working on books that were (intended to be) used in any form of prayer practice in the late medieval and early modern era (up to the eighteenth century). This conference aims to shed new light on prayer across late medieval and early modern Europe by exploring the broader ecosystem of prayer books. This includes a wide range of interactions between the material book, texts and images disseminated through it (and their connections to other types of objects, such as rosaries, small pipe clay figures, and single-sheet prints), the devotions inspired by these texts and images, the producers and buyers/readers of the books, and the communities they belonged to.

For further information on possible formats and topics for proposals, click here for a PDF of the entire Call for Papers.

Please submit an abstract (max. 300 words) and short biography (max. 100 words) to prayer@hum.leidenuniv.nl by 1 October 2025. We aim to inform our speakers by 1 November 2025.

A selection of revised contributions, pending double peer-review, will be published in an edited volume in Brill’s series 'Intersections: Interdisciplinary Studies in Early Modern Culture' (https://brill.com/display/serial/INTE).

Organizing Committee: Anna Dlabačová, Irene Van Eldere, Susanne de Jong, and Lieke Smits

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Oct
2
4:30 PM16:30

Department of Art & Archaeology Lecture Series: Like the Dawn of Creation: Byzantine Fragments in the Queer Imagination, Roland Betancourt, at Princeton University

Department of Art & Archaeology Lecture Series

Like the Dawn of Creation: Byzantine Fragments in the Queer Imagination

Roland Betancourt

University of California, Irvine

Thursday, October 2, 2025, 4:30 pm – 6:00 pm

East Pyne Building 010, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ

Film still of Suddenly, Last Summer (1959). Courtesy of the Victoria & Albert Museum. 

This talk explores how Byzantium operates as a queer cipher in modern culture, appearing as an adjectival modifier, “the Byzantine,” rather than as a distinct historical referent. Analyzing Gore Vidal’s 1959 adaptation of Tennessee Williams’s Suddenly, Last Summer, I demonstrate how Byzantine references encode queer identity through the film’s absent protagonist, whose unspeakable sexuality mirrors Byzantium’s own unintelligibility. Drawing on extensive archival research, I show how “the Byzantine” articulated coded queerness for these writers and artists. My talk proposes reimagining Byzantine art history through modes of “queer fragmentation,” recognizing Byzantine elements across temporal boundaries. 

Roland Betancourt is currently the Andrew W. Mellon Professor at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery of Art and Chancellor’s Professor, Department of Art History, at the University of California, Irvine. His book, Byzantine Intersectionality: Sexuality, Gender, and Race in the Middle Ages, won the Jerome E. Singerman Prize from the Medieval Academy of America. His next book is Disneyland and the Rise of Automation (Princeton University Press, 2026). 

For more information, visit https://artandarchaeology.princeton.edu/whats/events/dawn-creation-byzantine-fragments-queer-imagination

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Oct
5
12:00 AM00:00

Call for Papers: The Living Goddess Traditions, Journal of Bengali Studies Vol 8 No 1

Call for Papers

Journal of Bengali Studies Vol 8 No 1

The Living Goddess Traditions

Due by 05 October 2025

Journal of Bengali Studies (ISSN 2277 9426), an online, open access, interdisciplinary, double-blind peer-reviewed academic journal to study the history and culture of the Bengali people, is glad to announce the Call for Papers for its upcoming issue (Vol. 8 No. 1) on the theme of the Living Goddess Traditions. Bengal has been the hub of various goddess traditions and this issue will study the past memory and the present phenomenon of such goddess cults.

The Living Goddess Traditions

Archaic Goddess cults existed in different parts of our planet since our Homind pasts (e.g. Venus of Berekhat Ram, Venus of Tan Tan), and they can be found in the stone age of Homo sapiens as well (e.g. Venus of Hohle Fels), down to the copper age (various ancient civilizations including the Harappans). But following the descent of the iron age, goddess cults seemed to have receded in most parts of the world, while mighty cults of powerful male Gods replaced or eclipsed the Goddesses.

Today, the Bengali-speaking Hindus remain the only large community on earth, who celebrate their thriving Goddess traditions, where the Goddess is not relegated to the curiosity of a museum, or does not play a secondary fiddle to some other almighty male Gods, like certain other parts of South Asia (i.e. north India or south India), but where the Supreme Goddess is very much at the core of the contemporary experience of a large people (numbering 10 crore or more, and it is only for political reasons we desist from calling the Bengali-speaking Hindus a nation on their own).

The theme of this upcoming issue of Journal of Bengali Studies attempts to trace the existing, living traditions of the Goddess cults of Bengal back to the hoary antiquities of its (mostly forgotten) past, and aims to map the trajectory of the evolution of such Goddess cults from past to present. This issue intends to interrogate the possible connections of Bengal’s history and prehistory with a largely rootless present, which, in spite of all the modern, colonial, communist and communal upheavals, still manages to celebrate the Goddess cults which form one of the most important markers, if not the most important marker of Bengali identity.

So, we invite articles which will inspect the existing popular cults and religious practices of the worship of the various goddesses amidst the backdrop of the kernels of history which form the foundations to such living goddess traditions.

The topics for contribution will include the following (but will not be limited to the same):

  • Goddess and goddesses: The supreme Creatrix and the many manifestations of attendant goddesses.

  • Goddess and Tantra.

  • The Folk Goddess Cults: From antiquity to contemporaneity.

  • Goddess Kālī: Primeval Invocations (the Dark Goddess of the Night), Medieval Inventions (Kṛṣṇānanda Āgambāgīśa etc), Modern Inferences (from early modern Ramprasad & Kamalakanta to the twentieth century devotional songs of Pannalal Bhattacharya).

  • Goddess Durgā: Autumnal invocation of Goddess Ūṣā in Ṛgveda, Buffalo Sacrifice of Harappa, Chandraketugarh Goddesses, Post-Gupta Period and Śrī Śrī Caṇḍī, Pala Period Goddess Cults, Medieval Bengal and Caṇḍīmangala, Contemporary Durgā Pujo of public and private dispensations (Bonedi/elite and Baroari/collective). Festivity, Economics, Heritage and Popular Culture.

  • Goddess Tārā: The rise of the Great Goddess in Buddhist Tantra and Hindu Tantra to modern day Tarapith of Birbhum.

  • Pala Period Goddess Vajrayoginī and the contemporary Goddess Chinnamastā.

  • Sena cataloguing of the Ten Mahāvidyās in Bṛhaddharmapurāṇa and their lasting legacies of Tantric Goddess worship to this day. The other Mahāvidyās in the Goddess pantheon beyond Daśamahāvidyā.

  • Local Guardian Goddesses like Mṛṇmayī of Mallabhum, Kalyāṇeśvarī of Shikharbhum, Sarvamangalā of Bardhaman: Past lores and lived traditions.

  • Goddess Viśālākṣī: Local variations in iconology, ritual, styles of worship in the past lores and lived traditions.

  • Goddesses Lakṣmī and Sarasvatī: The evolution of their cults from antiquity to modernity within the domestic sphere, within the public sphere, respectively as the disburser of wealth and as the disseminator of knowledge, with reference to their iconographies and archaeomythologies.

  • Suggested Yakṣī cults and Chandraketugarh: The latent trajectory from the ancient to the medieval to the modern ages.

  • Śākta Rāsa (of Nabadwip and elsewhere).

  • Antiquarian Goddess Cults like the Bird Goddess and the Snake Goddess and their sublimations into various existing goddess cults like Mahāvidyā Bagalā and Goddess Manasā/Mahāvidyā Tvaritā).

  • The curious continuity of the early medieval Goddess Cāmuṇḍā/Carcikā to various lived traditions of Goddesses Petkati and Kankāleśvarī.

  • The lived traditions of Kuladevī or the Clan Goddess or the Family Deity: Past narratives and present practices.

  • The continuous serendipity of the discoveries of ancient and medieval goddess idols from obscure corners of Bengal: How the past communicates with the present.

  • The Śakti pīīthas of Bengal: Lores from the past, and lived traditions of the present.

  • Eponymous Guardian Goddesses of Settlements and the simultaneously rooted but floating identities of Bengali space (e.g. Kālī and Kalighat, Jessore and Yaśoreśvarī).

  • The lived traditions of Goddess worshippers: accomplished Sādhakas like Bamakhyapa of Tarapith, and their lasting legacies.

  • Evolution of Sākta theologies: Past moorings and contemporary traditions.

  • Last but not the least, the various non-Śākta worship of the Goddess in Bengal (including but not limited to the Vaiṣṇava worship of Kātyāyanī Durgā started by Nityananda Prabhu, or the Chinese Kali worship).

The minimum word limit of articles would be 3000 words, and maximum word limit would be 15000 words. Writers need to follow MLA format. Articles complete with bibliography and author’s bio-note should be submitted as email attachments in docx form by 05 October 2025 for this upcoming issue (expected to be published on the occasion of Kalipujo).

For any query, feel free to email shoptodina@gmail.com and/or whatsapp/telegram 9717468046. The editorial board of JBS remains the sole and final authority on the decisions regarding the publication or non-publication of any submitted article in original or modified forms.

Editor: Dr Rituparna Koley

Check out our past issues at https://bengalistudies.blogspot.com and www.bengalistudies.com

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Oct
7
9:30 AM09:30

New Exhibition: Le Moyen Âge du 19e siècle: Créations et faux dans les arts précieux; Musée de Cluny, Paris, France, 7 Oct. 2025 to 11 Jan. 2026

Upcoming Exhibition

Le Moyen Âge du 19e siècle: Créations et faux dans les arts précieux

Musée de Cluny, Paris, France

Du 7 octobre 2025 au 11 janvier 2026

 Après les événements révolutionnaires, le 19e siècle redécouvre le Moyen Âge, tout en le réinterprétant. Ce siècle, qui cultiva une rêverie romantique et connut d’importants progrès technologiques et la constitution de grandes collections, s’est inspiré du Moyen Âge en produisant des copies, des pastiches, des oeuvres composites et des faux. L’exposition permet des confrontations, mettant en regard certains objets médiévaux avec leurs "résonances" du 19e siècle.

Le propos est centré sur les arts précieux, dans leur acception médiévale : pièces d’orfèvrerie et d’émaillerie, ivoires, tissus précieux. Ces domaines ont en effet connu au 19e siècle un foisonnement de redécouvertes techniques. Ces phénomènes culturels et artistiques émergent dès les années 1820-1830 jusqu’à la veille de la Première Guerre mondiale, soit pendant un siècle environ. Collectionneurs, ateliers de création et de restauration, mais aussi faussaires, en sont les principaux acteurs, autour d’un marché de l’art en pleine expansion, focalisé sur Paris, qui apparaît alors comme la capitale des arts précieux.

Retrouvez toutes les dates des visites guidées de l'exposition ici

Tarif(s) :

  • Droit d'entrée plein tarif : 12€

  • Droit d'entrée tarif réduit : 10€

Pour plus d’informations, visitez https://www.musee-moyenage.fr/activites/programmation/le-moyen-age-du-19e-siecle.html

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Oct
11
to Oct 12

Society for Church Archaeology Annual Conference 2025: Church Archaeology in 2025, Lincoln, UK

Society for Church Archaeology Annual Conference 2025

Church Archaeology in 2025

11-12 October 2025

Lincoln, Barbican Creative Hub Saturday 11th October 2025

Walking Tour of Lincoln City Centre Churches on Sunday 12th October

The Society for Church Archaeology is pleased to announce its annual conference for 2025, on the theme of ‘Church Archaeology in 2025’. Church archaeology is an increasingly broad field of study, with traditional methods being complemented by new approaches and audiences. Advances in archaeological techniques present new opportunities for studying both upstanding and buried remains, whilst the transformation of ecclesiastical buildings in the 21st century is supported by a wealth of methodologies both in terms of investigating the past and presenting this to a range of audiences. The theme for this year’s annual conference reflects this diversity and the conference programme appears below.

Our keynote will be given by Professor David Stocker, who will also be leading the walking tour the following day. Price includes entry to Lincoln cathedral. The conference venue is the Barbican Creative Hub, located directly opposite Lincoln Railway Centre and near to Lincoln Central Bus Station. We are excited to be one of the first events in this brand new venue (opening autumn 2025).

For enquiries about the conference and bookings: churcharchconference@gmail.com

For further details please see: https://www.churcharchaeology.org/current-conference. A list of accommodation is available through Visit Lincoln and can be found here: https://www.visitlincoln.com/accommodation/

To make a booking:

  1. Our preferred booking method is through Eventbrite. We can accept online payments through our Eventbrite page or visit https://www.churcharchaeology.org/currentconference

  2. However, if you are unable to book via Eventbrite AND you are paying by cheque, you may use the printed booking form. We are unable to accept online payments via the printed booking form. Please use our Eventbrite booking form for online payments.

  3. Eventbrite online payments will close on Friday 3 October 2025.

  4. All cheque payments need to be received by Friday 13 September 2025. You can notify churcharchconference@gmail.com to expect a printed booking if you wish, but we cannot confirm your place(s) until we have received the form and cheque.

  5. Booking will close earlier if all places have been allocated prior to the aforementioned dates.

  6. Bookings are registered on a first-come, first-served basis.

For the complete program and abstracts of the papers, click here.

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Oct
15
5:00 PM17:00

Call for Applications: AVISTA Graduate Student Research Grant

Call for Applications

AVISTA Graduate Student Research Grant

Due by 15 October 2025, 5:00pm ET

Our application for the Graduate Student Research Grant for the study of art and architecture across borders in the medieval world is open!

This grant of $750 is intended to support an early-stage graduate student’s research on the theme of art that crosses the borders or peripheries of the medieval world. Funds should support research and/or dissemination of scholarship, which may include expenses for conference travel, site visits, or archive visits. The award includes a one-year gift membership to AVISTA.

We are grateful to Robert E. Jamison, Professor Emeritus of Mathematics, Clemson University, for underwriting this grant.

The deadline for submitting your application is October 15, 2025, 5:00pm ET.
For the full application instructions and guidelines please see the link here: https://www.avista.org/opportunities-prizes-and-grants

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Oct
17
to Oct 18

Conference: Medieval + Monsters: MAM, MAMA, and IMA Joint Conference with The Newberry Library, Dominican University & The Newberry Library, 17-18 Oct. 2025 (In-Person & Online)

ConFerence

Medieval + Monsters: 
MAM, MAMA, and IMA Joint Conference with The Newberry Library

October 17 & 18, 2025

Dominican University, River Forest, IL & the Newberry Library, Chicago, IL

In-Person & Online

Two workshops will be offered at the Newberry on Saturday, October 18. Registration is limited to 20 participants; please sign up for a workshop on the registration form. Learn more.

Les Enluminures have invited Saturday participants of our Medieval + Monsters Conference for a brief tour and introduction to their manuscripts. Learn more.

For more information about the conference, visit https://www.dom.edu/medieval-monsters-conference

To register for the conference visit, https://www.dom.edu/medieval-monsters-conference-registration-form

Please note: Registration for the Conference includes the Keynote Speech.

To register only for the keynote by author Maria Dahvana Headley, click here.

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Oct
19
10:00 AM10:00

Exhibition Closing: Ancient India: living traditions, British Museum, 22 May - 19 Oct. 2025

Exhibition

Ancient India
living traditions

British Museum

22 May – 19 October 2025

Volcanic stone Ganesha from Java, Indonesia, about AD 1000-1200.

Where does the image of the beloved and playful Hindu god Ganesha, with his elephant head and rounded belly, originate? What inspired depictions of the serene Buddha and Jain enlightened teachers?

Reaching back more than 2,000 years, this new exhibition explores the origins of Hindu, Jain and Buddhist sacred art in the ancient and powerful nature spirits of India, and the spread of this art beyond the subcontinent.  

One of the first major exhibitions in the world to look at the early devotional art of India from a multi-faith, contemporary and global perspective, it will highlight the inspiration behind now-familiar depictions of the deities and enlightened teachers of these world religions – and how they were shared across the Indian Ocean to Southeast Asia and along the Silk Roads to East Asia.  

Colourful, multi-sensory and atmospheric, this exhibition was developed in collaboration with an advisory community panel of practising Hindus, Buddhists and Jains. These living religious traditions and their sacred art are now integral to the daily lives of almost two billion people around the world including in the UK. Key loans from our community partners help to tell this contemporary story.    

The exhibition will showcase more than 180 objects – including sculptures, paintings, drawings and manuscripts – from the South Asian collection at the British Museum as well as generous loans from national and international partners. It will highlight provenance, examining the stories, from creation to acquisition by museums, of every object in the show.  

From the symbolic footprints which preceded portrayals of the Buddha in human form to the cosmic serpents incorporated into Hindu art and the nature spirits who attend Jain enlightened teachers, this compelling exhibition tells the ancient stories behind these living traditions.  

For more information, visit https://www.britishmuseum.org/exhibitions/ancient-india-living-traditions

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Oct
19
11:00 AM11:00

Exhibition Closing: Knights, Pointe-à-Callière, Old Montréal, 22 May 2025 - 19 October 2025

Exhibition Closing

Knights

Pointe-à-Callière, Old Montréal (Québec), Canada

May 22nd, 2025 — October 19th, 2025

n exceptional collection introducing you to the world of chivalry

They have left their mark on history, literature, and legends... And still today, knights, their legacy, and their traditions remain a source of endless fascination.

The Knights exhibition brings these legendary figures back to life through an exceptional selection of objects, including the collection of European weaponry and armour from the Stibbert Museum in Florence, Italy. Complete suits of armour, helmets, swords, shields—most of the pieces on display are true masterpieces, bearing witness to the expertise of the era’s artisans.

From battlefields to royal courts, the exhibition explores the various aspects of the knights’ life—their training, their equipment, their code of honour, their role in military actions and in the societies of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.

Having become symbols of bravery and honour around the 12th century, knights were prominent figures in feudal society, putting their status on display at tournaments and within the court. The exhibition invites visitors to experience “castle life” by exploring such themes as courtly love, a woman’s place in this masculine world, leisure activities, and religious aspects.

A true immersion into the world of knights, with some 250 objects on display.

A unique experiential zone

The Knights exhibition features an area designed to give all visitors a chance to experience the knighthood by trying on pieces of equipment, gauging the weight of armour, wielding a sword, and taking on a few challenges worthy of the greatest tournaments! Interactive stations will also allow you to follow the journey of a young knight and design your own coat of arms.

A famous copy of the Mona Lisa at the Museum!

A truly exceptional piece will be on display in the exhibition: a copy of the Mona Lisa, created between 1600 and 1625. Remarkably faithful to Leonardo da Vinci’s original work, this painting is one of the jewels of the Stibbert Museum’s collection. It offers a rare opportunity to view and admire a reproduction of such high quality.

The Knights exhibition is produced by Pointe-à-Callière, Montréal’s Archaeology and History Complex, in collaboration with the Stibbert Museum and Contemporanea Progetti.

Form ore information, visit https://pacmusee.qc.ca/en/exhibitions/detail/knights/

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Oct
24
8:30 AM08:30

Conference: Beauty and Faith: Part One: Imperfect Beauty: Visions of Fractured Faith, Salmagundi Club & The MET Cloisters, New York City, 24-26 October 2025

Conference

Beauty and Faith: Part One: Imperfect Beauty: Visions of Fractured Faith

24-26 October, 2025

Salmagundi Club along with a special visit to the Met Cloisters, New York City

Visual Theology’s third event is a major two-part conference, the first of which will take place in New York City, 24-26 October 2025 at the Salmagundi Club along with a special visit to the Met Cloisters, New York City. The second part will take place in the UK, 8-10 May 2026. (Further details forthcoming.)

Part One: Imperfect Beauty: Visions of Fractured Faith will use the history and material culture of the Met Cloisters as a starting point for conversations about the space between brokenness and beauty, and to consider how art, in its many forms, can replant, remake, and reaffirm Christian truth, even when the results demonstrate synchronic anxieties between the past and the present, and faith and fragmentation. 

Keynotes: Julia Yost (First Things, NYC) and Dr. Tracy Chapman Hamilton (Sweet Briar College), and artists Anthony Visco and Maya Brodsky 

For more information about the conference and booking, visit https://www.visualtheology.org.uk/beauty-and-faith-part-one/

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Oct
24
10:00 AM10:00

Exhibition Closing: Words on the Wave: Ireland and St. Gallen in Early Medieval Europe, National Museum of Ireland, Archaeology, Dublin, Until 24 October 2025

Exhibition Closing

Words on the Wave: Ireland and St. Gallen in Early Medieval Europe

National Museum of Ireland

Archaeology, Kildare St, Dublin 2 D02 FH48

30th May 2025 until 24th October 2025

Detail showing St Matthew applying a scribal knife or scraper to a page and dipping his pen in an inkwell (Cod. Sang. 1395, p. 418). © Stiftsbibliothek, St. Gallen

Experience the magic of metal, stone and manuscript art from Ireland’s Golden Age in this unique exhibition of early medieval treasures at the National Museum of Ireland, Kildare St. Explore extraordinary journeys of people, books and ideas between medieval Ireland and Europe. Immerse yourself in precious manuscripts from the Abbey of St Gall, Switzerland — some returning to Ireland for the first time in 1000 years — alongside spectacular objects from the Irish world from which they emerged.

For more information on the exhibition, click here.

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Oct
25
12:00 AM00:00

Call for Papers for Virtual Conference: Confound the Time: Reception in Medieval & Early Modern Studies, 24-25 January 2026

Call for Papers

Virtual Conference

Confound the Time: Reception in Medieval & Early Modern Studies

24-25 January 2026

Due 25 October 2025

Confound the Time welcomes papers that investigate the ways in which texts, objects, and images from the medieval and early modern periods re-envision and reconstruct the past or imagine and anticipate the future. We also welcome papers that explore the ways in which medieval and early modern artifacts, history, and culture are reimagined and reconstructed in later periods.

As part of our commitment to accessibility, Confound the Time will be entirely virtual and have no registration fee. Graduate students and early career scholars are especially encouraged to submit.

Topics for individual papers may include:

  • Medieval and early modern reception of classical mythology/culture

  • Early modern reception of medieval literature/culture

  • The Pre-Raphaelites and other neo-medievalist movements

  • Contemporary video games, graphic novels, television shows, and/or films with medieval or early modern settings, characters, and cultures

  • Dungeons and Dragons and/or other role-playing or tabletop games

  • Manuscript Studies/Book History

  • Time/The Times

  • Gender and Sexuality

  • Nationalism and Race

Papers that address these subjects are encouraged, but any paper that centers on medieval or early modern studies will be considered.

Paper submissions should include:

  • An abstract of approximately 250 words

  • A 2-3 sentence third-person bio

Please send all application materials to confoundthetime@gmail.com.

The deadline for all abstract submissions is October 25th, 2025. Questions can be directed to Drs. Audrey Gradzewicz (U of Wisconsin-Madison) and Audrey Saxton (Bethany College, KS).

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Oct
26
10:30 AM10:30

Conference: Beauty and Faith: Part One: Imperfect Beauty: Visions of Fractured Faith, Salmagundi Club & The MET Cloisters, New York City, 24-26 October 2025

Conference

Beauty and Faith: Part One: Imperfect Beauty: Visions of Fractured Faith

24-26 October, 2025

Salmagundi Club along with a special visit to the Met Cloisters, New York City

Visual Theology’s third event is a major two-part conference, the first of which will take place in New York City, 24-26 October 2025 at the Salmagundi Club along with a special visit to the Met Cloisters, New York City. The second part will take place in the UK, 8-10 May 2026. (Further details forthcoming.)

Part One: Imperfect Beauty: Visions of Fractured Faith will use the history and material culture of the Met Cloisters as a starting point for conversations about the space between brokenness and beauty, and to consider how art, in its many forms, can replant, remake, and reaffirm Christian truth, even when the results demonstrate synchronic anxieties between the past and the present, and faith and fragmentation. 

Keynotes: Julia Yost (First Things, NYC) and Dr. Tracy Chapman Hamilton (Sweet Briar College), and artists Anthony Visco and Maya Brodsky 

For more information about the conference and booking, visit https://www.visualtheology.org.uk/beauty-and-faith-part-one/

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Nov
3
12:00 AM00:00

Call for Applications: John W. Baldwin Post-Doctoral Fellowship, UCLA CMRS Center for Early Global Studies, Due 3 Nov. 2025

Call for Applications

UCLA CMRS Center for Early Global Studies

John W. Baldwin Post-Doctoral Fellowship

Due 3 November 2025

The UCLA CMRS Center for Early Global Studies is pleased to announce it is accepting applications for the John W. Baldwin Post-Doctoral Fellowship. It is a two-year position beginning July 1, 2026, for recent Ph.D. recipients whose work focuses on European medieval studies within a global comparative context. The application deadline is November 3, 2025.

Full position details and application link: https://recruit.apo.ucla.edu/JPF10513

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Nov
6
6:00 PM18:00

New Exhibition Talk: Spectrum of Desire: Medieval Art, Eroticism, and the Museum, Melanie Holcomb, The MET Cloisters

New Exhibition

Spectrum of Desire: Medieval Art, Eroticism, and the Museum

Melanie Holcomb, Co-Curator

Nancy Thebaut, Co-Curator

The Met Cloisters, New York, NY

October 17, 2025–March 29, 2026

Thursday, November 6, 2025, 6pm

Aquamanile in the Form of Phyllis and Aristotle, Netherlandish, late 14th or early 15th century. Copper alloy, 12 ¾ x 7 x 15½ in. (32.5 x 17.9 x 39.3 cm). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Robert Lehman Collection, 1975 (1975.1.1416)

On October 16, 2025, a landmark exhibition called Spectrum of Desire: Love, Sex, and Gender in the Middle Ages will open at The Met Cloisters. Visitors to this institution, or to the medieval galleries of museums in general, tend to associate the Middle Ages with images that uphold traditional beliefs and hierarchies – paintings and sculptures celebrating Christ and the Virgin, tapestries and other precious objects exalting royal authority, for instance. The Spectrum of Desire will upend such expectations. The exhibition will explore how medieval objects reveal and structure the performance of gender, understandings of the body, and erotic encounters, both physical and spiritual. Featuring approximately fifty objects, most of which are from the museum’s permanent collection, it will offer new readings of otherwise familiar objects in which gender, sexuality, relationships, and bodies are central themes. Although firmly grounded in the Middle Ages, the exhibition will also encourage modern audiences to reflect on the ways that gender, sex, and desire structure their own lives and identities today. In this talk, Curator Melanie Holcomb will speak on the goals of the exhibition and discuss specific works in the show, demonstrating how asking new questions about the past can reveal sometimes surprising answers about the present.

For more information about the exhibition, visit https://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/spectrum-of-desire-love-sex-and-gender-in-the-middle-ages

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Nov
30
10:00 AM10:00

Exhibition Closing: Going Places: Travel in the Middle Ages, Getty Center, Los Angeles, 2 Sept. - 30 Nov. 2025

Exhibition Closing

Going Places: Travel in the Middle Ages

Museum North Pavillion, Plaza Level, Getty Center, Los Angeles, California

2 September 2025 - 30 November 2025

Barlaam, Carrying a Shoulder Pack, Crosses a River (detail) from Barlaam and Josephat, 1469, follower of Hans Schilling. Ink, colored washes, and tempera colors. Getty Museum, Ms. Ludwig XV 9 (83.MR.179), fol. 38v

Free exhibition.

In medieval art, the act of movement from one place to another was conceptualized in a variety of imaginative forms. Featuring manuscripts from the Getty’s collection, this exhibition explores the reasons for travel, different modes of medieval travel, and examples of typical travelers. Illustrations often accurately documented the realities of travel and prompted viewers to travel virtually through their imaginations. The exhibition showcases the wide variety of contexts for medieval movement, from religious travel to diplomacy, trade, exploration, and exploitation.

This exhibition is presented in English and Spanish. Esta exhibición se presenta en inglés y en español.

For more information, visit https://www.getty.edu/exhibitions/going-places/

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Dec
5
5:00 PM17:00

Keynote for Index of Medieval Art Conference: Art as Proof: Statues and High Relief as Ideological Statements at the Time of the Image Controversy, c.750–850?, Francesca Dell’Acqua

Weitzmann Lecture—Keynote for Dec. 6 Index of Medieval Art Conference

Art as Proof: Statues and High Relief as Ideological Statements at the Time of the Image Controversy, c.750–850?

Francesca Dell’Acqua

Università di Salerno – DISPAC

Princeton University, Princeton, NJ

Friday, December 5, 2025, 5:00 pm – 6:00 pm

Virgin Mary, ’effigiem . . . in statum’, gilt silver, embossed, commissioned by Pope Paul I (757–67), artistic impression; ©Matilde Grimaldi for Francesca Dell’Acqua, 2025.

At a synod convened by Emperor Louis the Pious in Paris in November 825, Frankish clerics debated the correct use of images in churches. After carefully considering texts and the traditions of the Church, they confirmed the long-attested view that the Incarnation (the pivotal Christian doctrine that God took on human form in Jesus Christ) legitimizes images. They also established that images should neither be worshiped nor destroyed. In fact, images could be used to instruct people about religion and morals and to elevate the mind to spiritual things. In this lecture I shall limit myself to considering the presence of high-relief and three-dimensional images in repoussé metalwork or other media in western churches before and after the Paris Synod, in the period of the image controversy (c.720s–850). Generally lost, high-relief and three-dimensional images are recorded in written sources.

High-relief and three-dimensional images from Rome, Gaul/Francia, England, and Langobardia have occasionally been mentioned in studies on early medieval art, either to retrace the re-birth of three-dimensional statuary or to discuss image worship. They have also been occasionally construed as attestations of iconophilia, that is an attitude in favor of sacred images. Whether this kind of image might have functioned as an ideological statement should be evaluated not only by considering the specific circumstances in which they were situated, but also the broader body of evidence offered by written sources and material culture between the fourth and the ninth centuries in various regions of the West. I set out to do this in my paper.

For more information, visit https://artandarchaeology.princeton.edu/whats/events/art-proof-statues-and-high-relief-ideological-statements-time-image-controversy-c750

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Dec
6
9:00 AM09:00

Index of Medieval Art Conference: Art and Proof in the Ninth Century

Save the Date

Index of Medieval Art conference

Art and Proof in the Ninth Century

6 December 2025

Hrabanus Maurus, In honorem sanctae crucis, Fulda or Mainz, 820–840. Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Cod. 652, fol. 17v, det.

Please save the date for the next Index of Medieval Art conference, “Art and Proof in the Ninth Century.” Organized by Professors Beatrice Kitzinger and Charlie Barber in collaboration with the Index and co-sponsored by the Department of Art & Archaeology, the conference will follow on the department’s 2025 Kurt Weitzmann Memorial Lecture by Francesca dell’Acqua (Università di Salerno) on December 5, which will double as the conference keynote.

The springing point of the conference is December 825, when the city of Paris witnessed a synod devoted to the discussion of the status of images in the Carolingian world. This meeting, convened in response to flare-ups of the “image question” in Constantinople and Rome, set forth a Latin Christian understanding of images that would remain dominant in early and high Medieval Europe. The dossier affirmed the value of images as mnemonics and devotional aids but ultimately re-asserted the primacy of verbal media in the religious sphere. However, as the conference speakers will show, artistic evidence itself suggests that ninth-century approaches to the role of images complicated and exceeded those prescribed for them by the bishops at Paris.

Prof. dell’Acqua’s lecture will directly address the Roman–Frankish context in which the Paris synod unfolded. The papers that follow will dramatically expand the lens through which we view the central questions by considering the notion of proof in the ninth century through a much wider lens, reaching from the British Isles to Japan and from Georgia to Egypt and representing a wide range of languages and religious communities. Key themes include: the terminology surrounding images and their uses; questions of representation, semiotics, authenticity and truth; propositions that need proving and their modes of proof; the functions and status of images in society, and how these are secured; how occasions for image discussion reflect on local circumstances and priorities; ways in which discussing the validity of images intersects with politics, diplomacy, or self-fashioning; whether the notion of proof in relation to images, which emerged from a specific Christian and European moment, resonates in other contexts; and whether a more global perspective provides different valences for the concept of “proof” through artwork.

Scheduled speakers

Francesca Dell’Acqua [Weitzmann Lecture, Dec. 5, 2025] Associate Professor, Università di Salerno

Andrea Achi, Associate Curator, Metropolitan Museum of Art

Nourane Ben Azzouna, Associate Curator, Metropolitan Museum of Art

Anouk Busset, Lecturer, Université de Lausanne                   

Zsuzsanna Gulacsi, Professor, Northern Arizona University

Rachel Saunders, Assistant Professor, Princeton University

Alexei Sivertsev, Professor, DePaul University

Erik Thunø, Professor, Rutgers University                     

Anca Vasiliu, [Respondent] Director of Research, CNRS, Sorbonne Université

The conference schedule and other details will be posted in the fall. We hope you can join us!

For more information, visit https://ima.princeton.edu/2025/06/17/save-the-date-for-the-next-index-conference-art-and-proof-in-the-ninth-century-dec-6-2025/

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Dec
7
12:00 PM12:00

Exhibition Closing: Medieval | Renaissance: A Dialogue on Early Italian Painting, McMullen Museum of Art, Boston College, 2 Sept. 2025 - 7 December 2025

Exhibition Closing

Medieval | Renaissance: A Dialogue on Early Italian Painting

Daley Family Gallery, McMullen Museum of Art, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA

September 2, 2025–December 7, 2025

Umbria or Marche, Croce dipinta, ca. 1295. Tempera and metals on panel. The Frascione Collection.

The closing centuries of the Middle Ages in Italy witnessed profound transformations in the art of painting. New techniques gave way to an expanded repertoire of formats and artistic styles; patronage systems and workshop practices evolved in tandem with reassessments of the merit of authorship; and long-standardized criteria for value and authenticity in representation were steadily redefined. These paradigm-shifting developments—exemplified in Early Italian painting—ramified into the academic study and connoisseurship of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, creating a blurry line between the Medieval period and early modernity that has proven difficult to shake.

Medieval | Renaissance foregrounds this distinction, exhibiting nineteen rarely shown works from the Frascione Collection in Florence, founded in 1893. Featuring devotional icons, altarpiece panels, narrative scenes, and portraits from the late thirteenth through early sixteenth centuries, the exhibition charts innovations in the craft and conceptualization of painting in Italy after 1300. These paintings represent a liminal epoch between the later Middle Ages and the Early Renaissance, whose works and artists are shared—even “claimed”—by two divergent art historical fields, “Medieval” and “Renaissance,” with their own cultures, questions, and interpretive methods.

Curated by John Lansdowne and Stephanie C. Leone, specialists in Medieval and Renaissance art, respectively, the exhibition invites viewers to contemplate the works through two distinct art historical lenses and from either side of a long-standing and long-debated disciplinary divide.

Organized by the McMullen Museum, Medieval | Renaissance has been underwritten by Boston College with major support from the Patrons of the McMullen Museum.

For more information, visit https://mcmullenmuseum.bc.edu/exhibitions/medieval-renaissance/

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Dec
15
12:00 AM00:00

Call for Applications: Dorothy F. Glass Travel Award, Italian Art Society

Call for Applications

Italian Art Society

Dorothy F. Glass Travel Award

Due 15 December 2025

The Italian Art Society (IAS) welcomes applications for the Dorothy F. Glass Travel Award. The award of $1000 is meant to support an emerging or unaffiliated scholar traveling abroad to study, or to present on, the arts of the Italian Middle Ages. Preference will be given to scholars of sculpture, the major subject of Glass’s work. Recipients must be members of the Italian Art Society at the time of application and upon receipt of the award, and must not have received an IAS award in the previous two years. IAS officers are not eligible to apply. Deadline: December 15, 2025 Please email Dr. Silvia Bottinelli, Chair of the IAS Awards Committee, at awards@italianartsociety.org if you have any questions.

For more information, visist https://www.italianartsociety.org/grants-opportunities/travel-grants/dorothy-f-glass-icms-travel-award/

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Jan
4
10:30 AM10:30

Exhibition Closing: Sing a New Song: The Psalms in Medieval Art and Life, The Morgan Library & Museum, New York City, 12 Sept. 2025 - 4 Jan. 2026

Exhibition Closing

Sing a New Song: The Psalms in Medieval Art and Life

The Morgan Library & Museum, New York City, NY

September 12, 2025 through January 4, 2026

Chanting Clerics, from the Windmill Psalter, England, London, late thirteenth century. The Morgan Library & Museum, MS M.102, fol. 100r (det). 

Traditionally ascribed to King David, the Hebrew Book of Psalms is a collection of sacred poems that constitute the longest and most popular book of the Bible. These poems include expressions of lament and loss, petitions and confessions, as well as exclamations of joy and thanksgiving— universal themes that speak to what it means to be human.

Sing a New Song traces the impact of the Psalms on men and women in medieval Europe from the sixth to the sixteenth century. It encompasses daily practices and performance, as well as the creation of Psalters (Books of Psalms), among the most richly ornamented manuscripts ever made. Stressing the integration of the Psalms in medieval life, topics range from children saying their prayers to people preparing to die.

The beginning of the exhibition is devoted to the Psalms’ origins, with special emphasis on David as composer. The following two sections show how Psalms permeated the intellectual culture of medieval Europe through translations into Latin and the vernacular. Children used Psalters to learn to read, patrons commissioned versions in their native languages, and theologians, glossing the Psalms, authored the most influential interpretive writings of the Middle Ages. The next section is dedicated to the medieval Psalter. More than any other text, Psalms informed the language of the liturgy, and the Psalter served effectively as the prayer book of the Church. Priests, monks, and nuns were required to pray all 150 Psalms weekly. Lay people across Europe, imitating these practices, fueled a demand for Psalters —often gloriously illuminated. Another section examines performance of the Psalms within the monastery, the church, and the private home. The final section examines the apotropaic function of Psalm texts, the use of Psalms as penitential atonement, and how Psalms comforted the dying.

For more information, visit https://www.themorgan.org/exhibitions/sing-a-new-song

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Jan
11
9:30 AM09:30

Closing Exhibition: Le Moyen Âge du 19e siècle: Créations et faux dans les arts précieux; Musée de Cluny, Paris, France, 7 Oct. 2025 to 11 Jan. 2026

Closing Exhibition

Le Moyen Âge du 19e siècle: Créations et faux dans les arts précieux

Musée de Cluny, Paris, France

Du 7 octobre 2025 au 11 janvier 2026

Après les événements révolutionnaires, le 19e siècle redécouvre le Moyen Âge, tout en le réinterprétant. Ce siècle, qui cultiva une rêverie romantique et connut d’importants progrès technologiques et la constitution de grandes collections, s’est inspiré du Moyen Âge en produisant des copies, des pastiches, des oeuvres composites et des faux. L’exposition permet des confrontations, mettant en regard certains objets médiévaux avec leurs "résonances" du 19e siècle.

Le propos est centré sur les arts précieux, dans leur acception médiévale : pièces d’orfèvrerie et d’émaillerie, ivoires, tissus précieux. Ces domaines ont en effet connu au 19e siècle un foisonnement de redécouvertes techniques. Ces phénomènes culturels et artistiques émergent dès les années 1820-1830 jusqu’à la veille de la Première Guerre mondiale, soit pendant un siècle environ. Collectionneurs, ateliers de création et de restauration, mais aussi faussaires, en sont les principaux acteurs, autour d’un marché de l’art en pleine expansion, focalisé sur Paris, qui apparaît alors comme la capitale des arts précieux.

Retrouvez toutes les dates des visites guidées de l'exposition ici

Tarif(s) :

  • Droit d'entrée plein tarif : 12€

  • Droit d'entrée tarif réduit : 10€

Pour plus d’informations, visitez https://www.musee-moyenage.fr/activites/programmation/le-moyen-age-du-19e-siecle.html

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Jan
26
10:00 AM10:00

Exhibition Closing: Gothicisms, Musée du Louvre Lens, France, September 24, 2025–January 26, 2026

Exhibition Closing

Gothicisms

Musée du Louvre Lens, Lens, France

September 24, 2025–January 26, 2026

From the birth of the cathedrals to the Goth counterculture and fantasy, Gothic art truly has traversed the centuries. In ground-breaking fashion, the Louvre-Lens is presenting its first ever panorama of Gothic art from the 12th to the 21st century, from its emergence through to the neo-Gothic style and right up to the “Goths” of today. 

Gothic art is closely associated with the age of the cathedral builders. As the first pan-European movement, it inspired exceptional artistic forms endowed with unparalleled expressive force. Sculptures, art objects, graphic arts, painting, photography, installations and furniture are gathered here in a journey through some 200 works of art. Together they reveal the recurrences and continuity of these Gothic languages, which blossomed during medieval times, came to life again in the 18th and 19th centuries, and still inspire us now. But where does the word Gothic come from? Why is this colourful art today associated with a dark aesthetic of black, night and the fantastic? How can this endlessly recurring attraction be explained? This chronological journey is interspersed with forays into specific topics, touching on the Gothic script, music, film and literature. It is an immersion into history and into society’s collective imagination to understand the origins and singularity of the Gothic movement: unique, multifaceted and very much alive today.  

Exhibition curators:
General curator: Annabelle Ténèze, director of the Louvre-Lens
Scientific curator: Florian Meunier, chief heritage curator at the Department of Art Objects, Musée du Louvre
Scientific advisor: Dominique de Font-Réaulx, general heritage curator, specialising in the 19th century, special advisor to the President-Director of the Musée du Louvre
Associate curator: Hélène Bouillon, general heritage curator
Assisted by Caroline Tureck, head of publications and documentation at the Louvre-Lens
Scenography: Mathis Boucher, scenographer, Louvre-Lens

This project was made possible thanks to the support of the Musée de Cluny – Musée national du Moyen Âge, Cité de l’architecture et du Patrimoine, Bibliothèque nationale de France and the Musée des Arts décoratifs de Strasbourg.

For more information, visit https://www.louvrelens.fr/en/exhibition/gothicisms-2/

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Feb
20
12:00 AM00:00

Call for Papers for Journal: Church Archaeology, Vol. 2026, Due 20 Feb. 2026

Call for Papers for Journal

Church Archaeology

Deadline 20 February 2026

The SCA’s peer-reviewed journal Church Archaeology is seeking submissions for its Vol. 26 (2026) issue. We welcome and provide initial editorial feedback on main research articles, shorter articles, news pieces, and book reviews about all kind of ecclesiastical places of worship, their burial grounds, and material culture.

For a PDF of the Call for Papers, click here.

For more information on the journal, visit https://www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/journal/churcharch

Contact: editorchurcharchaeology@outlook.com

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Feb
22
10:00 AM10:00

Exhibition Closing: Paws on Parchment, The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, August 06, 2025–February 22, 2026

Exhibition closing

Paws on Parchment

Centre Street Building, Level 3, Medieval Gallery

The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, MD

August 06, 2025–February 22, 2026

Flanders, Prayer Book, late 15th-century. Acquired by Henry Walters.

Cat lovers unite! The Walters is celebrating our feline friends with this paws-itively adorable exhibition. Paws on Parchment explores how medieval people thought about, engaged with, and admired cats through the animals’ presence in manuscripts from the period. Centuries before cat memes took over the internet, the antics of fanciful felines were already popular in the margins of medieval manuscripts. These furry animals delighted readers back then just as they amuse us today.

Cats played an important role in the medieval era. Like today, cats were considered beloved pets whose behavior amused and exasperated their owners. However, felines also served an important function as hunters that protected valuable books and textiles, food stores, and even people from disease-carrying rodents and other vermin. Cats also carried deep symbolic and moral meaning in this period.

In Paws on Parchment, visitors will enjoy medieval depictions of cats preserved in the pages of manuscripts from across the world, including a 15th-century “keyboard cat.” Most notably, visitors can see real pawprints left by a cat walking across the pages of a Flemish manuscript as the ink dried in the 1470s. A handful of these “pawprint” manuscripts are known around the world, and this is the first time the Walters’ example will ever be shown.

Curator: Lynley Anne Herbert, Robert and Nancy Hall Curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts

For more information, visit https://thewalters.org/exhibitions/paws/

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Aug
29
12:00 AM00:00

Call for Papers for ICMA-Sponsored Panel: 'The Archival Art Historian', College Art Association Conference, Chicago (18-21 Feb. 2026)

Call for Papers

ICMA-Sponsored Panel

The Archival Art Historian

College Art Association Conference, Chicago (18-21 February 2026)

Due by 29 August 2025

Art historians of the medieval past are often required to conduct research within varied archives that were not designed for art historical research: libraries, historical museums, private collections, cathedral crypts, parish churches or graveyards. Databases such as the Digital Index for Medieval Art, the Warburg Institute’s Iconographic Database and the ICMA Image Database are gradually revolutionising the study of medieval art. However, art historians of the medieval past must still frequently contend with generations of afterlives, layers of bureaucracy and confounding archival systems which rarely prioritise the visual. Working within these spaces presents both challenges and exciting opportunities for original interventions. This panel invites papers that reflect on the experience of conducting art historical research in archives that were not designed with art historians in mind.

This session aims to foster a productive discussion about the intricacies of art historical research and the position of archives therein. The 90-minute session will consist of five 10-minute presentations, followed by a round table discussion and Q&A. We therefore invite 10-minute presentations that reflect on: a single archival encounter, object, institution or methodological problem.

Papers should raise issues which may form the basis of a generative broader conversation between panellists and with the audience. Possible topics may include: discussion of working with unillustrated catalogues, the challenges of studying material that is still ‘active’ in a working context or the complexities which surround the creation of digital archives. We welcome papers which consider medieval archives and objects from across periods and geographies and we define ‘archive’ in the broadest possible terms, to include both digital and physical collections.

Submission guidelines
Please submit a 250-word abstract by Friday 29 August 2025, via CAA’s dedicated submission portal on the conference website.

To submit an abstract and for more information, visit https://caa.confex.com/caa/2026/webprogrampreliminary/Session16076.html

This panel is sponsored by the International Center of Medieval Art (ICMA). If your paper is accepted and you are not already a member of the ICMA, you will be required to join by February 2026. Some funding to assist with the cost of attending the conference may be available to speakers through the ICMA Kress Travel Grant Fund.

Contributing panellists will have the opportunity to submit their paper for publication in a special issue of the open-access journal Different Visions, titled ‘Points of Friction’, and co-edited by Dr Millie Horton-Insch (hortonim@tcd.ie) and Dr Lauren Rozenberg (l.rozenberg@uea.ac.uk).

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Aug
29
12:00 AM00:00

Call for Abstracts for Journal: “The So What” of Medieval Collections

Call for Abstracts

peer-reviewed, open access journal

“The So What” of Medieval Collections

Due by 29 August 2025

One of the hardest questions academics, educators, and cultural workers must answer is: why does teaching the public about the past matter? This question becomes even sharper for those who steward the past in physical form: rare manuscripts, fragmented psalters, pilgrim badges, weaponry, and bestiaries—often thousands of miles and hundreds of years removed from their origin. What are these medieval materials doing in U.S. institutions? And how can they still be impactful to modern viewers?

As The So What (TSW), a peer-reviewed, open access journal, continues its mission to interrogate why the study of the Middle Ages matters—especially in public-facing spaces—we invite contributions that explore the role of libraries, museums, and similar cultural institutions in honestly and inclusively shaping the stories we tell about the past.

We are particularly interested in how medieval collections in the United States complicate, challenge, or reinforce current political projects that seek to rewrite history not in the service of truth, but of nationalism, exclusion, and power.

In an era when government officials increasingly question the value of public libraries and museums—defunding them, questioning their “neutrality,” or attempting to erase marginalized histories—we want to ask: What is the “so what” of public medieval collections in the U.S.?

We invite museum professionals, librarians, archivists, curators, educators, and public historians to contribute pieces that explore:

● Why U.S.-based medieval collections matter to the public today

● How these collections challenge or reinforce white supremacist narratives of a "pure" or "Christian" past

● The material and ethical questions of acquiring, maintaining, and displaying medieval objects far from their origin

● How to teach with and through medieval collections in community-centered, inclusive ways

● Creative or multimedia responses to working with medieval collections in public institutions

● Examples of public programming, exhibitions, or curriculum that connect medieval objects with today’s urgent issues

We welcome short, accessible essays, lesson plans, annotated exhibition materials, creative or multimedia pieces, and reflections on the work of public medievalism. All submissions will undergo anonymous peer and editorial review.

Abstracts (500 words or less) due by 08/29/25. Issue would come out fall 2026 or early 2027. Send abstracts and questions to mlsheble@gmail.com

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Aug
27
2:00 PM14:00

ICMA Pop-Up: Les Très Riches Heures du duc de Berry

ICMA Pop-Up
Les Très Riches Heures du duc de Berry
Wednesday 27 August 2025, 14:00
Château de Chantilly
In-person

REGISTER HERE

ICMA members are invited to visit the exhibition Les Très Riches Heures du duc de Berry with other ICMA members. Exhibition curator Matthieu Deldicque, will give a 10 minute introduction. Afterwards, members are invited to a nearby café for an apéro.

Attendees are responsible for the their own ticket to the exhibition and for transportation to the Jeu de Paume at Château de Chantilly.

______

Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry is the most famous manuscript in the world. Described as the ‘Mona Lisa’ of manuscripts, this collection of offices and prayers made especially for the Duke of Berry, brother of King Charles V of France, is a testament to the splendour and artistic refinement of the late Middle Ages.

Produced throughout the 15th century, this exceptional work was illuminated by the Limbourg brothers, distinguished artists affiliated with the courts of Burgundy and Berry, whose work profoundly transformed the course of art history. Consisting of 121 miniatures, Les Très Riches Heures capture the imagination with their depictions of historic castles, noble scenes and seasonal work in the fields that have shaped our perception of the Middle Ages.

To celebrate the restoration of this masterpiece, which has only been shown to the public twice since the end of the 19th century, an international exhibition has been set up, featuring almost 150 exhibits from all over the world. The exhibition provides visitors with an insight into each stage of the creation of the Très Riches Heures over almost a century and explains why the manuscript is still so popular.

The exhibition focuses particularly on the figure of Jean de Berry, his lavish patronage and his taste for books. For the first time since the prince’s death in 1416, all his books of hours known to date have been collected in one place. Manuscripts, sculptures, paintings and valuable works of art provide a comprehensive overview of the context behind the creation and dissemination of the Duke’s most ambitious work.

For more information about the exhibition, click HERE.

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Aug
10
12:00 PM12:00

Exhibition Closing: Taught by the Pen: The World of Islamic Manuscripts, Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, New Haven, CT

Exhibition Closing

Taught by the Pen: The World of Islamic Manuscripts

Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Yale University, New Haven, CT

Monday, February 24, 2025 to Sunday, August 10, 2025

The Qur’an declares that God taught humanity the use of the pen. Taking this commandment to heart, Muslim scholars systematically organized and extended almost every field of knowledge in astonishing new ways. For over a thousand years, this pursuit of knowledge set in motion exchanges with other artistic, religious, and scholarly communities. Through themes such as literature, religion, and science, this exhibition reveals that Islamic civilization has never been a homogeneous phenomenon: ideas and artistic practices always circulated between and among Muslims, Jews, Christians, and other faith communities. 

Yale Library’s collection of manuscripts produced in the Islamic world is among the largest and oldest in the United States. Taught by the Pen: The World of Islamic Manuscripts celebrates Islamic civilization and its interconnected artistic, religious, and scholarly traditions. Through 150 items from the 9th to the 20th centuries, visitors are invited to engage with the intellectual and aesthetic values and practices of the many peoples and communities encompassed by Islamic civilization. The exhibition sheds light on how these manuscripts—and the ideas they contain—were transmitted and disseminated. Gallery guests will encounter diverse books, from lavishly illuminated Qur’ans, elegant calligraphy albums, and delicately illustrated epics and chronicles to well-thumbed prayer books, beloved poetry collections, detailed maps, learned science and mathematics volumes, and more. The papers, inks, and bindings that transmit these ideas and genres reveal a continuity of artistic traditions and new innovations in works from the Middle East to North Africa, Europe, Central Asia, South and Southeast Asia, and North America.

This exhibition is co-curated by Roberta L. Dougherty, Yale Library’s librarian for Middle East studies, Özgen Felek, a lector of Ottoman in the department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, and Agnieszka Rec, curator at the Beinecke Library.  

For more information, visit https://beinecke.library.yale.edu/taughtbythepen

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Aug
10
12:00 AM00:00

Call for Papers for Panel: Across Seas, Across Cultures: The Transmission of Female Saint Cults from East to West, Renaissance Society of America Conference 2026 (San Francisco)

Call for Papers for Panel

 Across Seas, Across Cultures: The Transmission of Female Saint Cults from East to West

72nd Annual Meeting of the Renaissance Society of America Conference

San Francisco, 19-21 August 2026

Due by 10 August 2025

Organizer

Ioanna Christoforaki, Academy of Athens

Abstract Submission

Please submit paper title, abstract and CV to ichristoforaki@yahoo.co.uk

Session Proposal

This panel invites papers that explore the cross-cultural transmission, reception, and reinvention of female saint cults from the Christian East to the Latin West in the centuries leading up to and following the Crusades, with particular attention to their resonance during the Renaissance (1300-1500 C.E.). During this period of intensified contact between East and West—through crusades, pilgrimage, trade, and manuscript circulation—the cults of women, such as Catherine of Alexandria, Thecla, Barbara, Pelagia, Marina/Margaret of Antioch and others, were reimagined to suit the spiritual, political, and cultural needs of Latin Christendom.

The panel seeks to explore how these Eastern-origin saints were integrated into the devotional, artistic, and intellectual frameworks of Renaissance Europe, and how their stories were reshaped through translation, visual culture, and localized liturgical practice. We are particularly interested in papers that interrogate the interplay between gender, sanctity, and cross-cultural exchange in the construction of saintly authority during this transformative period. We seek contributions that examine how these cults were transmitted, adapted, and appropriated across cultural, linguistic, and theological divides. Interdisciplinary approaches are particularly welcome. 

Topics may include, but are not limited to:

  • The role of the Crusades, pilgrimage and holy sites in the movement of relics and saint cults from East to West

  • The role of Crusader memory and pilgrimage in sustaining or reshaping devotion

  • Visual representations of these saints in Renaissance Italy, Iberia, or Northern Europe

  • Theological or political uses of female saintly models in the context of ecclesiastical reform or royal patronage

  • Gendered readings of martyrdom, asceticism, and virginity across cultures

  • Monastic, mendicant, or courtly promotion of Eastern female saints

  • Gender, virginity, and martyrdom in cross-cultural saint narratives

  • Eastern case studies of individual saints and their cultic journeys

  • Political and theological motivations behind the promotion of Eastern female saints

  • Comparative East–West perspectives on virginity, martyrdom, and asceticism

Submission Guidelines

Proposals should include:

  • Paper Title (15-word maximum)

  • Abstract (150–200 words)

  • Curriculum Vitae (in .pdf or .doc format, maximum 2 pages)

  • PhD or other terminal degree completion date (past or expected)

  • Primary discipline

Please send submissions to ichristoforaki@yahoo.co.uk or christof@academyofathens.gr by August 10, 2025. Papers should be no longer than 20 minutes and must be delivered in English. Presenters must be RSA members at the time of the conference.

For questions or informal inquiries, please contact the panel organizer at ichristoforaki@yahoo.co.uk or christof@academyofathens.gr.

We welcome proposals from scholars across disciplines focused but not limited to art history, history, literary studies, theology, and manuscript studies. Graduate students and early-career researchers are especially encouraged to apply.

Note

Speakers must be RSA members at the time of the conference.

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Jul
31
12:00 AM00:00

Call for Applications: North of Byzantium Assistant Editor

Call for Applications

North of Byzantium

Assistant Editor

North of Byzantium and Mapping Eastern Europe Projects During 2025-2026 Academic Year

Due By 31 July 2025

We are seeking an Assistant Editor to work with us on our North of Byzantium and Mapping Eastern Europe projects for the 2025/2026 academic year. The successful candidate should be a graduate student pursuing an MA or a PhD degree in a European or North American institution in a relevant field. English fluency and research skills are required. Priority will be given to students who have an interest in the region. This is a remote position with regular Zoom meetings and opportunities for mentorship. Duties include updating website content, uploading recent scholarship, and editing text for the North of Byzantium and Mapping Eastern Europe projects. The role carries a $700 honorarium. Interested candidates should submit a one-page statement of interest and a 2-page CV (including details about their main research project and mentors) to northofbyzantium@gmail.com by July 31, 2025. Please include in the subject heading “Application for NoB Assistant Editor”.

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Jul
31
12:00 AM00:00

Call for Papers: British Archaeological Association Postgraduate Conference (Online, 27 Nov. 2025)

Call for Papers

British Archaeological Association Postgraduate Conference

Online, 27 November 2025

Due by 31 July 2025

The BAA invites proposals by postgraduate and early career researchers in the field of medieval art history, architecture and archaeology. Papers can be on any aspect of the medieval period, from antiquity to the Later Middle Ages, across all geographical regions.

Send proposals of about 250 words for a 20 minute paper along with CV, to postgradconf@thebaa.org by 31 July 2025.

The conference will take place online on Thursday 27 November, with potentially a second day on Friday 28 November

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Jul
31
12:00 AM00:00

Call for Submissions: North of Byzantium Essay Prize

Call for Submissions

North of Byzantium

Essay Prize

Due by 31 July 2025

The inaugural NoB Essay Prize will be awarded in 2025 to a PhD candidate for an original research essay that focuses on an aspect of the visual culture of Eastern Europe between the 13th and 17th centuries. The essay could address an image, object, or monument from a region of the Balkans, the Carpathians, or further north, contextualizing it historically and addressing its layered meanings and functions. The submission could be an entirely new piece of research or drawn from the candidate’s course-work or an already published article. The research essay, in the range of 1500-2000 words, should be submitted in English along with a 2-page CV (including details about thesis title and doctoral mentors). The winning submission will receive $250 and the opportunity to be revised and published as a contribution on the Mapping Eastern Europe website. Submit your research essay to northofbyzantium@gmail.com by July 31, 2025 with the subject heading “2025 NoB Essay Prize.”

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Jul
27
10:00 AM10:00

Exhibition Closing: From the Vault: Collecting Tapestries at the Worcester Art Museum

Exhibition Closing

From the Vault: Collecting Tapestries at the Worcester Art Museum

Gallery 223, Worcester Art Museum, Massachusetts

May 3, 2025–July 27, 2025

Colijn de Coter, The Last Judgment, about 1500, wool and silk tapestry, Museum Purchase, 1935.2

Tapestries: intricately designed, meticulously crafted, and often staggering in size. Delve into the history of tapestries as an art form, the methods by which they were created, the fascinating stories that brought them to the Worcester Art Museum, and their important role as a source of artistic creativity and innovation across disparate cultures and time periods. From the Vault features nearly 30 works—rarely on view due to their sensitivity to light—including 12 large-format tapestries and tapestry fragments spanning Antiquity to the present day.

Among the works on view is the massive, remarkably detailed 16th-century Flemish Last Judgment tapestry. One of the most significant Renaissance tapestries in America, it measures over 12 feet tall and more than 26 feet wide and will be on view for the first time in nearly a decade. Another highlight, Jean Lurçat’s Harvest Time (1937), marks a revival of tapestries as a medium for modern expression through its bold forms and vivid colors. This exhibition also marks the museum debut of dream disk (2024), a new acquisition by LA-based artist Diedrick Brackens (b. 1989), who is known for his intricate textile art that explores themes of identity, race, and queerness through the narratives he weaves.

This exhibition is curated by Delaney Keenan, Assistant Curator of European Art, in collaboration with Claire C. Whitner, the Museum’s Director of Curatorial Affairs and James A. Welu Curator of European Art.

For more information on the exhibition, click here.

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Jul
25
9:00 AM09:00

Conference: Annual BAA Conference 2025: Leicester and Leicestershire: Roman and Medieval Architecture and Art, 21-25 July 2025

Conference

Annual BAA Conference 2025: Leicester and Leicestershire: Roman and Medieval Architecture and Art

Monday 21 July to Friday 25 July 2025

In 2025, the BAA will hold its summer conference in Leicester, which it last visited in 1900. While the built city has experienced great and destructive change since the turn of the twentieth century, there remains a lot of interesting Roman and medieval material to explore. The hinterland of Leicestershire, with south Derbyshire, also preserves a distinctive and fascinating architectural inheritance, particularly in its medieval churches. There are nationally important survivals from all artistic periods, from the collection of Anglo-Saxon sculpture at Breedon on the Hill to the Decorated Gothic style. Timber building is represented along with stone. Leicester itself has significant Roman remains. City and country alike were rich in religious houses. There are also significant survivals in stained glass, wall painting and other arts.

For more information about the conference, click here for the conference website.

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Jul
21
12:30 PM12:30

Conference: Annual BAA Conference 2025: Leicester and Leicestershire: Roman and Medieval Architecture and Art, 21-25 July 2025

Conference

Annual BAA Conference 2025: Leicester and Leicestershire: Roman and Medieval Architecture and Art

Monday 21 July to Friday 25 July 2025

In 2025, the BAA will hold its summer conference in Leicester, which it last visited in 1900. While the built city has experienced great and destructive change since the turn of the twentieth century, there remains a lot of interesting Roman and medieval material to explore. The hinterland of Leicestershire, with south Derbyshire, also preserves a distinctive and fascinating architectural inheritance, particularly in its medieval churches. There are nationally important survivals from all artistic periods, from the collection of Anglo-Saxon sculpture at Breedon on the Hill to the Decorated Gothic style. Timber building is represented along with stone. Leicester itself has significant Roman remains. City and country alike were rich in religious houses. There are also significant survivals in stained glass, wall painting and other arts.

For more information about the conference, click here for the conference website.

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Jul
20
9:30 AM09:30

Exhibition Closing: Summon the Chimeras: Medieval Heritage in Contemporary Art, Musée de Cluny, Paris, France

Exhibition Closing

Summon the Chimeras: Medieval heritage in contemporary art

Musée de Cluny, Paris, France

25 March 2025 - 20 July 2025

This exhibition presents a number of artworks from the Fonds régional d’art contemporain Île-de-France (Île-de-France Regional Contemporary Art Fund), by artists working in the realm of the fantastical, carrying on the legacy of the medieval predilection for the hybrid and outlandish figures that inhabit our imaginations, tinged with the sense of heroic fantasy that is a frequent gateway to the Middle Ages – an often-romanticised era.

Moving through the museum, these chimeras are scattered among the museum’s own artworks, offering their interpretations of western medieval art and perpetuating its sources and their meanings: those of a predominantly Christian world imbued with spirituality, in which the visible and invisible are intertwined.

These contemporary artworks create a dialogue with medieval architecture and sculpture, in that their forms and patterns share the same wondrous, natural, botanical and animal inspirations. Many are also rooted in the history of decorative arts and religious ornaments; by revisiting the shapes of drinking horns, aquamaniles or reliquaries, for example, they refresh our imaginations of ancient customs and uses. The world that interests these contemporary artists is, first and foremost, a time that precedes the humanism of the Renaissance and the rationalism of the Enlightenment; a time whose everyday workings they strive to perceive. Directly echoing the historical artefacts showcased in the museum, these artworks help us explore the social conventions and activities of a world unto itself.

The same ancient traditions, legends and texts that fuelled the inspiration of medieval artists can be found in Jacopo Belloni’s “Green Man”, Corentin Darré’s drinking horns, Frederik Exner’s frogs and Xolo Cuintle’s “Soft Acanthus”, all of which speak to the pervasive animal and botanical motifs that permeate artworks of the past. Youri Johnson and Marion Verboom perpetuate certain votive practices by imagining contemporary forms of devotion, in which the same taste for the affective seems to forge a link between the eras, and enables us to grasp the internalisation of faith. The religious sphere generates artistic creation, and the works of Diego Giacometti and Alison Flora help us to understand the supernatural or divine power invoked therein. Finally, Erik Dietman and Richard Fauguet create echoes of items used in everyday and aristocratic life, while Lou le Forban does the same for popular and festive artefacts.

We thereby come to understand the historical transformations or legacies from which the artists, who are themselves visitors to the museum, draw inspiration in order to communicate the richness of a history that continues to fuel our imaginations and everyday customs, via the tastes and practices that emerged or took hold during the medieval era.

The exhibition is being held as part of the Berserk & Pyrrhia, art contemporain et art médiéval (“Berserk & Pyrrhia, Contemporary and Medieval Art”) programme, curated by Céline Poulin, director of the Frac Île-de-France.

Séverine Lepape, director of the Musée de Cluny, thanks the Frac, the artists and the Musée de Cluny team for putting this exhibition together.

For more information, visit https://www.musee-moyenage.fr/en/activities/exhibitions/medieval-and-contemporary-art.html

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Jul
20
12:00 AM00:00

Call for Papers: Polyptychs' fortune and misfortune. Provenance, reconstruction, restitution, Lucca (Oct. 7-9, 2025)

Call for Papers

Polyptychs' fortune and misfortune. Provenance, reconstruction, restitution

Lucca (October 7-9 2025)

Due by July 20th 2025

This conference explores the themes of dispersion and unity in the context of artistic production, encompassing both the materiality of works and their contextual significance and reception. The altarpiece is selected as a case study to examine these questions across different centuries, geographical areas, and artistic techniques.

Selected papers will address the dismantling of altarpieces over time, the dispersion of their components, and the possibilities for their reconstruction. Contributions are invited that explore the methods of reuniting dispersed elements – whether physically or digitally – as well as the conservation challenges involved. The dismantling of altarpieces is indicative of intricate historical dynamics, encompassing shifts in artistic taste, fluctuations in market demand, and evolving practices in preservation and art management. Furthermore, it invites a reconsideration of the epistemology of art history.

The reconstruction of dismantled polyptychs necessitates an interdisciplinary approach, underscoring the need for collective reflection on the epistemological foundations of art history. Addressing the disintegrating unity of these objects necessitates multifaceted research, encompassing domains such as conservation and restoration practices, as well as the global geography of art. History of art exhibitions and artworks restitution offers opportunities for the temporary reconstitution of these fragmented works, further enriching the discussion.

Submissions that engage with epistemological questions alongside data-driven research in areas such as technical art history, connoisseurship, iconographic analysis, provenance studies, museum studies, collecting history and restitution are invited.

The organizers will provide accommodation for two nights. Participants will be responsible for covering their own travel and meal expenses.

Contributors are requested to submit an abstract in Italian, English or French (maximum 300 words) and a brief CV by July 20th 2025 to: giulia.puma@univ-cotedazur.fr, ilaria.andreoli@inha.fr, emanuele.pellegrini@imtlucca.it 

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Jul
15
12:00 AM00:00

Call for Papers: XVIII Jornadas Internacionales Complutenses de Arte Medieval, Transculturality and Medieval Art in Dialogue: Negotiating New Identities (Madrid, 7-8 Oct. 2025)

Call for Papers

XVIII Jornadas Internacionales Complutenses de Arte Medieval

Transculturality and Medieval Art in Dialogue: Negotiating New Identities

7-8 October 2025 Madrid, Spain

Due by 15 July 2025

Places:

  • Universidad Complutense de Madrid Facultad de Geografía e Historia

  • Museo Arqueológico Nacional

  • Casa Árabe

Architecture, objects, and material culture, as structuring agents of human relationships, play a key role in discovering the potential of understanding medieval art through the paradigm of transculturality. This method examines the negotiation of fluid artistic identities shaped by the mobility of people, circulation of objects, and transmission of ideas across diverse social, geographical, and religious contexts. The materiality of transcultural objects has rendered them repositories of memory, bearing witness to historical encounters across cultures. Their various recontextualization, restaging, and differing forms of appreciation have made them subject to manipulation, reuse, and re-signification, even after their integration into private collections or museums. Addressing these themes allows for a broader reflection from educational and museum studies. By examining intersections of gender, class, and ethnicity, the eighteenth edition of the Complutense International Conference on Medieval Art aims to uncover microhistories that offer a more nuanced understanding of otherness in the Middle Ages.

Invited speakers: María Elena Díez Jorge (UGR), Manuel Castiñeiras González (UAB), Beatriz Campderá Gutiérrez (MAN), Licia Buttà (URV), Raúl Estangüi Gómez (CSIC), Elvira Martín Contreras (CSIC), Alicia Miguélez Cavero (UNL), Theodora Konstantellou (DOaks), Ravinder Binning (DOaks), Julie Marquer (UdL), Herbert González Zymla (UCM), Víctor Rabasco García (ULE), María Puértolas Clavero (Museo Diocesano BarbastroMonzón), Julia Perratore (MMA), Helena Lahoz Kopiske (MAN)

Themes may include, but are not limited to: Transcultural narratives and artistic exchanges at historical or historiographical margins Processes shaping perceptions of otherness Itinerancy, performativity, and gendered dimensions of objects Ambivalence of terminology and problems of approaching sources and documents New museum narratives The relationship between art historical knowledge and tourism Proposals for papers up to 15 minutes in duration and posters should be send by 15 July 2025. Send title, abstract of not more than 250 words, and short author bio (not more than 10 lines) to: jornadas.transculturalidad@ucm.es.

Papers should be in Spanish, English, French or Italian. Decisions on acceptance will be made by the End of July. Papers, communications, and posters will be presented during the conference sessions. Posters would be printed by the conference organizers and displayed in the Facultad de Geografía e Historia and the Facultad de Comercio y Turismo of the UCM. After peer review, the various contributions will be published in a monograph.

For a PDF of the Call for Papers, click here.

For more information, visit https://www.ucm.es/intersections/jornadas-transculturalidad

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Jul
13
12:00 AM00:00

Call for Papers Extended: Cultural Syncretism in the Literary Traditions of the European Middle Ages (Bologna, 10-12 Dec. 2025), Due by 13 July 2025

Call for Papers Extended

CULTURAL SYNCRETISM IN THE LITERARY TRADITIONS OF THE EUROPEAN MIDDLE AGES: ENCOUNTERS BETWEEN GERMANIC REALITIES AND OTHER CULTURES

Italian Association of Germanic Philology/Associazione Italiana di Filologia Germanica

Alma Mater Studiorum - University of Bologna, December 10th - 12th 2025

Due by 13 July 2025

The deadline for the doctoral conference organized by the Italian Association of Germanic Philology "Associazione Italiana di Filologia Germanica" has been extended (July 13) and we are looking forward to receiving your proposals. We remind you that selected speakers will have the opportunity to submit their papers for publication, following a process of double-blind peer review.

For a PDF of the call for Papers, click here, or or use the QR code in the poster; feel free to contact us at convegnophd@aifg.it for inquiries.

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Jul
9
7:00 PM19:00

IMC Leeds 2025: ICMA Reception

ICMA Reception 
International Medieval Congress, Leeds
The Dry Dock
Wednesday 9 July 2025, 19:30-21:30

Student Meet and Greet, 19:00
Reception, 19:30


All are welcome! Invite a colleague! 
Please register HERE, to help us know how many to expect (non-committal)


Join fellow ICMA members for a special off-site reception at The Dry Dock on Wednesday 9 July 2025 from 19:30-21:30. Students are invited to join early at 19:00 to meet other student colleagues. Complimentary drinks and small bites will be provided. Food is available for purchase.

The Dry Dock is about a 10 minute walk from the University of Leeds campus, en route to central Leeds. 

The Dry Dock
Woodhouse Lane
Leeds LS2 3AX


https://www.socialpubandkitchen.co.uk/dry-dock-leeds

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Jul
9
4:30 PM16:30

IMC Leeds 2025: Viewing the Invisible: Multi-Sensory Approaches to the Divine in East and West II (ICMA Sponsored Session)

ICMA Sponsored Session
International Medieval Congress, Leeds
Viewing the Invisible: Multi-Sensory Approaches to the Divine in East and West II

Wednesday 9 July 2025, 16.30-18.00
Esther Simpson Building, Room 2.12
Session 1302


Organiser & Moderator: Ioanna Christoforaki, Research Centre for Byzantine & Post-Byzantine Art, Academy of Athens
 
Hierotopy and Singers 'on the Step': The Effect of Greek Liturgical Singing on Siculo-Norman Domes Joseph Williams, School of Architecture, Planning & Preservation,University of Maryland

Beyond Vision: Christians, Muslims, and Miracles at the Monastery of Our Lady of Saydnaya, 12th-13th Centuries
Pelia Werth, Krieger School of Arts & Sciences, Johns Hopkins University

Unveiling the Sacred: The Late Medieval Practice of Covering Altarpieces and Devotional Images
Ralf van Bühren, Facoltà di Comunicazione Sociale Istituzionale,Pontificia Università della Santa Croce, Roma

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Jul
9
2:15 PM14:15

IMC Leeds 2025: Viewing the Invisible: Multi-Sensory Approaches to the Divine in East and West I (ICMA Sponsored Session)

ICMA Sponsored Session
International Medieval Congress, Leeds
Viewing the Invisible: Multi-Sensory Approaches to the Divine in East and West I

Wednesday 9 July 2025, 14.15-15.45
Esther Simpson Building, Room 2.12
Session 1202


Organiser & Moderator: Ioanna Christoforaki, Research Centre for Byzantine & Post-Byzantine Art, Academy of Athens
 
Multi-Sensory Experiences of Water and Water Motifs in Early Byzantium
Evan Freeman, Department of Global Humanities / Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) Centre for Hellenic Studies, Simon Fraser University, British Columbia

Liturgical Visions in the Life of Nephon (Bibliotheca Hagiographica Graeca 1371z)
Vasileios Marinis, Yale Divinity School, Yale University

Looking at Relics, Seeking the Sacred
Cynthia Hahn, Department of Art & Art History, Hunter College, New York

Smelling the Divine: Multi-Sensory Devotion within the Cult of St Demetrios
Lucie Schwarz, Department of Art History, University of Pennsylvania

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Jul
5
9:30 AM09:30

Exhibition Closing: Dark Ages? Jewelry from the Visigoth, Ostrogoth and Frankish Kingdoms, Sam Fogg, London

Exhibition

Dark Ages? Jewelry from the Visigoth, Ostrogoth and Frankish Kingdoms

Sam Fogg, London, England

5 June - 4 July 2025

A belt buckle with garnet loop and saltire cross, c. 540-560, Visigothic Spain

Dark Ages? invites you to reconsider the narrative of decline often associated with the 5th to 7th centuries. Featuring intricately crafted belt buckles and brooches from the Visigothic, Merovingian, and Ostrogothic Kingdoms, the exhibition reveals a world rich in artistry and cultural vitality. Adorned with red garnets, vibrant glass inlays, and sumptuous gilding, these ornate objects challenge the notion of a cultural void and instead showcase an era of remarkable craftsmanship and aesthetic sophistication.

For more information, visit https://www.samfogg.com/exhibitions/63/.

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Jul
5
9:00 AM09:00

Conference: Medieval Communities, IMS Paris's 18th Annual Symposium, 3-5 July 2025

Conference

IMS Paris's 18th Annual Symposium

Medieval Communities

3-5 July 2025

Join us for a symposium convening an international group of scholars in the heart of Paris. We will hear 25 papers centered around the broad theme of community. Our keynote speakers this year are Sharon Farmer (University of California, Santa Barbara) and Cécile Voyer (Center for Advanced Studies in Medieval Civilization, University of Poitiers).

Registration to attend is still open.

For registration, a preliminary program, and more information, visit https://www.imsparis.org/en/.

For more than two decades the IMS-Paris has promoted interdisciplinary intellectual exchange among international scholars of medieval studies and colleagues in France.

A bilingual non-profit association founded in Paris in 2003 by Meredith Cohen (UCLA) and Danielle Johnson (Wells College, Paris), the IMS-Paris has grown to count a dynamic group of art and architectural historians, historians, musicologists, and literary scholars from all over the world among its members.

We organize a number of activities throughout the year to benefit medievalists who are carrying out research in France, and to help French academics gain visibility at international conferences in Europe and the Americas.

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Jul
3
8:30 AM08:30

Conference: Medieval Communities, IMS Paris's 18th Annual Symposium, 3-5 July 2025

Conference

IMS Paris's 18th Annual Symposium

Medieval Communities

3-5 July 2025

Join us for a symposium convening an international group of scholars in the heart of Paris. We will hear 25 papers centered around the broad theme of community. Our keynote speakers this year are Sharon Farmer (University of California, Santa Barbara) and Cécile Voyer (Center for Advanced Studies in Medieval Civilization, University of Poitiers).

Registration to attend is still open.

For registration, a preliminary program, and more information, visit https://www.imsparis.org/en/.

For more than two decades the IMS-Paris has promoted interdisciplinary intellectual exchange among international scholars of medieval studies and colleagues in France.

A bilingual non-profit association founded in Paris in 2003 by Meredith Cohen (UCLA) and Danielle Johnson (Wells College, Paris), the IMS-Paris has grown to count a dynamic group of art and architectural historians, historians, musicologists, and literary scholars from all over the world among its members.

We organize a number of activities throughout the year to benefit medievalists who are carrying out research in France, and to help French academics gain visibility at international conferences in Europe and the Americas.

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Jun
30
12:00 AM00:00

Call for Papers: 2026 Romanesque Conference, British Archaeological Association (13 – 17 Apr 2026, Toulouse)

Call for Papers

British Archaeological Association

2026 Romanesque Conference

13 – 17 Apr 2026, Hôtel d'Assézat in Toulouse, France

Due By 30 June 2025

The British Archaeological Association will hold the ninth in its series of biennial International Romanesque conferences in Toulouse from 13-17 April, 2026.

The theme of the conference is Romanesque: Transmission, Reception, Imitation and the aim is to examine not only the ways in which techniques, iconographic motifs and styles moved around Romanesque Europe but also the ways and reasons they were adopted, and particularly how they were transformed in their new environment. Some aspects of the question are well-researched: the movement of artists or masons, patronal activity and monastic affiliation are obvious examples, and perhaps in need of critical re-examination. We do not, however, wish to repeat the themes of Romanesque: Patrons and Processes too much. We would also be interested in papers which deal with why certain motifs or approaches fail to take root and, indeed, transmission and reception across time. Other factors, the pre-existing artistic background, liturgical concerns, economic and social factors or transcultural exchanges will also have played a part.

The conference will be held at the Hôtel d’Assézat in Toulouse from 13-17 April 2026 with the opportunity to stay on for two days of visits to Romanesque buildings in the surrounding area on 16-17 April.

Proposals for papers of up to 30 minutes in duration should be sent to Quitterie Cazes and Richard Plant on romanesque2026@thebaa.org by 30 June, 2025. Papers should be in English.

Decisions on acceptance will be made by the end of July.

For a PDF of the Call for Papers, click here.

For more information, click here.

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Jun
30
12:00 AM00:00

Call for Papers Extended: Contemporary Approaches to Archaeology, Speaking Archaeology ECR Conference (Online, 15-18 Aug. 2025)

Call for Papers Extended

Speaking Archaeology ECR Conference

Contemporary Approaches to Archaeology

Due By 30 June 2025

We are pleased to invite graduate and early career researchers to share their work with the archaeological community. We welcome papers from across all geographical and chronological contexts to be presented at the Speaking Archaeologically Early Career Researchers Conference from 15th to 18th August 2025. Abstracts should not exceed 250 words and must be submitted by 30th June 2025 to speakingarch@gmail.com along with a brief biographical statement.

THEMES MAY INCLUDE, BUT ARE NOT LIMITED TO:

  • Digital Archaeology

  • Managing Museum Collections

  • Public Archaeology

  • Decolonisation

  • Prehistory

  • Ethnoarchaeology and Oral Traditions in
    Archaeological Research

  • Bioarchaeology

  • Conservation Approaches to Built Heritage

  • New Perspectives in Epigraphic and

  • Numismatic Research

Please submit your abstracts using the google form link: https://lnkd.in/guC3TYNH

The conference will be held online on Microsoft Teams and would include traditional paper presentations. Presenters will also have the opportunity to publish their work in the ISSN approved Speaking Archaeologically Journal.

Registration Fees:

  • International: £20

  • Researchers based in India: Rs. 800

Please contact us at speakingarch@gmail.com in case of any questions!

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Jun
30
12:00 AM00:00

Call for Applications: Pasold Research Fund Grants, Raine Grants to assist individual staff working in UK museums

Call for Applications

Pasold Research Fund Grants

Raine Grants to assist individual staff working in UK museums

up to £500

Due 30 June 2025

Pasold research grants are awarded to fund high quality research, relating to all branches of textile history including the history of dress and fashion.

Applications are encouraged for projects where there will be a lasting outcome in the form of a publication or an exhibition or similar. This includes conservation related projects, leading to publications, but excludes the purchase or repair of objects and the purchase of hardware (eg cameras or computing equipment or computer software).

Applications will also be considered where preliminary work is needed for the preparation of a more substantial grant application to one of the major funding bodies.

Applications may be made to fund conference attendance – these applications may come from individuals or from conference organisers seeking funding for a named applicant.

However, it is important to provide an abstract of the paper and details of the nature of the conference and its significance. Where a conference organiser is seeking support for a named delegate details of the conference, a CV of the delegate and title and abstract of the paper are required.

All successful grant applicants, where appropriate, will be encouraged to consider submitting the outcome of their research to Textile History.

Publication would of course be subject to editorial refereeing and decision. Grants in aid of publicationfor a contribution towards illustrations, will be considered where a clear case is made explaining the absence of funding from other sources and the way in which the illustrative material is essential to the analysis and quality of the research output. Where funding is sought to complete or to part-finance a commissioned work and/or a work to be published under the auspices of a university, museum, gallery or similar, please specify the necessity, the case for, and the role of, the additional external funding.

APPLICATIONS

Application forms should be submitted electronically to: histart-pasold@york.ac.uk


If you have further queries as to whether you are eligible or about the type of support do please contact the Pasold Research Fund's Director, Dr Bethan Bide at histart-pasold@york.ac.uk or bethan.bide@york.ac.uk.

For more information about this and other grants, visit https://www.pasold.co.uk/important-information

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Jun
27
12:00 AM00:00

Call for Job Applications: Associate Curator and Study Center Manager, The Icon Museum and Study Center, Clinton, MA

Call for Job Applications

Associate Curator and Study Center Manager

The Icon Museum and Study Center, Clinton, MA

Due 27 June 2025

The Icon Museum and Study Center, founded in 2006 by the American entrepreneur Gordon Lankton, welcomes approximately 6,000 visitors annually. It houses the most comprehensive collection of historic Russian icons in the United States, along with a growing collection of Greek, Veneto-Cretan, and Ethiopian icons. The Museum’s mission is “to illuminate the art of the sacred icon for a global audience.” It offers galleries where visitors can engage with the history, beauty and spiritual depth of icons. The Museum’s Study Center promotes object-based learning and multidisciplinary research, with a commitment to sharing new insights into Eastern Christian art with wide audiences in the United States and abroad through a range of academic and public programs.

Position overview

We are seeking a dynamic Associate Curator and Study Center Manager to join our dedicated team of eight staff members. The ideal candidate is a collaborative professional with strong organizational, communication, and writing skills, and is capable of working to the highest museum standards.

The candidate will be responsible for organizing and managing two exhibitions per year at the IM+SC, as well as for implementing and managing the Study Center’s programs and activities in close coordination with the Study Center Committee. 

For more information and to submit your application, visit https://www.iconmuseum.org/employment/.

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Jun
23
9:00 AM09:00

Conference: Un art mamlouk: évolutions et questions d’attributions, Musée du Louvre, Paris

Conference

Un art mamlouk: évolutions et questions d’attributions

Musée du Louvre, Paris

23 June 2025, 9am-5.30pm (CEST)

Plateau, Égypte ou Syrie, fin du XVe siècle, Paris, musée du Louvre, département des Arts de l’Islam, dépôt du musée de Cluny – Musée national du Moyen Âge, CL 2392 © 2024 Musée du Louvre, Dist. GrandPalaisRmn / Raphaël Chipault

Conçue en parallèle de l’exposition Mamlouks 1250-1517, cette journée d’études propose une relecture de l’art mamlouk à travers une approche interdisciplinaire et transrégionale, mobilisant l’histoire de l’art, l’archéologie et les analyses techniques. Elle vise à renouveler la compréhension des productions du sultanat mamlouk en s’appuyant sur des études de cas précis, enrichies par des apports méthodologiques récents et l’accès à de nouvelles sources.

Les interventions porteront sur une diversité de médiums – métal, verre, ivoire, textile, céramique – et interrogeront les critères d’attribution, les dynamiques d’atelier ainsi que les logiques de circulation des formes, des techniques et des objets. Les processus de création et l’évolution stylistique y seront abordés en recontextualisant les productions dans leur cadre sociopolitique, celui de l’Égypte et de la Syrie médiévales. Plusieurs communications examineront les notions de frontières stylistiques, d’hybridation et de réception, notamment entre traditions mamloukes et mongoles.

La rencontre se conclura par une présentation exceptionnelle consacrée au patrimoine architectural mamlouk de Gaza, aujourd’hui gravement endommagé ou détruit.

Organisée par le département des Arts de l’Islam du musée du Louvre et l’Université Lumière Lyon 2 / CIHAM

Lundi 23 juin 2025, de 9h à 17h30, Centre Dominique-Vivant Denon (Musée du Louvre, entrée Porte des Arts, face au Pont des Arts)

Sur inscription : programmation-centre-vivant-denon@louvre.fr 

See the programme here.

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Jun
22
10:00 AM10:00

Exhibition Closing: Siena: The Rise of Painting, 1300 ‒1350, The National Gallery, London

Exhibition Closing

Siena: The Rise of Painting, 1300 ‒1350

Ground Floor Galleries, The National Gallery, london

Until 22 June 2025

Step into Siena. It’s the beginning of the 14th century in central Italy. A golden moment for art, a catalyst of change. Artists Duccio, Simone Martini and the brothers Pietro and Ambrogio Lorenzetti are forging a new way of painting.

They paint with a drama that no one has seen before. Faces show emotion. Bodies move in space. Stories flow across panels in colourful scenes.

We bring to life a vibrant city of artists collaborating, learning and looking. After centuries of separation, we reunite scenes that once formed part of Duccio’s monumental 'Maestà' altarpiece. Panels from Simone Martini’s glittering Orsini polyptych come together for the first time in living memory.

This local artistic phenomenon made waves internationally. Gilded glass, illuminated manuscripts, ivory Madonnas, rugs and silks show Siena’s creative energy spilling over between painters, metalworkers, weavers and carvers across Europe.

With over a hundred exhibits made by artisans working in Siena, Naples, Avignon and beyond, see some of Europe's earliest, most exquisite and most significant artworks.

The exhibition was organised by the National Gallery and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

For more information, visit https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/exhibitions/siena-the-rise-of-painting

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Jun
22
10:00 AM10:00

Exhibition Closing: Text & SpiritIlluminated Manuscripts from the Museum Collection and Their Digitization, Museum Angewandte Kunst, Frankfurt, Germany

Exhibition Closing

Text & SpiritIlluminated Manuscripts from the Museum Collection and Their Digitization

Museum Angewandte Kunst, Frankfurt, Germany

13 March – 22 June 2025

For the first time, the Museum Angewandte Kunst is showcasing its complete collection of late medieval illuminated manuscripts in the Text & Spirit exhibition. These include books and fragments decorated with exquisite illuminations and ornaments in gold, lapis lazuli or purple. What use are books of hours from the Middle Ages to us today though? Text & Spirit sheds light on various parallels between then and now, drawing a comparison between the books of hours and today’s smartphones.

The digital copies of the illuminated manuscripts and the cuttings can be found here in the digital collection.

For more information about the digitization project and the exhibition, click here.

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Jun
21
12:00 AM00:00

Call for Members: London Society for Medieval Studies Steering Committee, Due by 21 June 2025

Call for Members

London Society for Medieval Studies Steering Committee

Due by 21 June 2025

BNF, MS Francais 134, f. 169r

The London Society for Medieval Studies (LSMS) is seeking new members to join its steering committee for the 2025/26 academic year. Founded in 1970/1, the LSMS is one of the longest running seminar series at the Institute of Historical Research, University of London. Organised by postgraduates and early career academics, our regular Tuesday seminars seek to foster knowledge of, and dialogue about, the Middle Ages among both scholars and the wider public in London.

We welcome expressions of interest from postgraduates (both MA and PhD) and early career academics specialising in any area of medieval studies, including (but not limited to) the arts, literature, archaeology, economy, and history of the Middle Ages. Our conception of "the medieval" is global, c. 500 - c. 1500.

This is a fantastic opportunity for those in the early stages of their academic careers to join an established forum for the dissemination and discussion of new research, and to gain experience of organising academic events, working collaboratively as part of a committee, chairing sessions, and networking with senior academics. Committee members are normally expected to serve for at least one academic year, and to commit to attending events in London during term time.

If you are interested in joining the LSMS, please send a short biography (of around 150 words), including details of your previous and current education/position and academic interests, to londonsocformedievalstudies@gmail.com. If you would like any further information, please contact us on the same email address. The LSMS only has a limited number of committee spaces available, so we encourage interested parties to get in touch as soon as possible and before the 21st of June.

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Jun
20
9:00 AM09:00

Conference: Siena: The Rise of Painting, 1300-1350, The National Gallery

Conference

Siena: The Rise of Painting, 1300-1350

Friday, 20 June 2025

Pigott Theatre, The National Gallery

Please note event will start at 9.30am - 5.45 pm. Doors open at 9:00am

Image: Detail of Simone Martini, Saint Luke (detail), about 1326-30, J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles

This international conference, hosted onsite and online, will focus on the painters, objects and themes of the National Gallery’s exhibition Siena: The Rise of Painting, 1300‒1350, held in collaboration with The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Across four sessions, papers will discuss the remarkable achievements of Siena’s artists and the significance of Sienese painting in the wider world during the late Middle Ages.

With papers from some of the leading international scholars of Sienese art, this conference will explore the innovations and impact of the city’s leading painters of the 14th century – Duccio di Buoninsegna, Pietro and Ambrogio Lorenzetti, and Simone Martini. Speakers from the USA, Europe and the UK will present papers offering new insights into the function of paintings made in Siena, their intellectual and devotional contexts, and the reconstruction of dispersed altarpieces. Papers will also consider the connections between Siena and the wider world. In addition, the conference provides the opportunity for new technical research on Duccio’s monumental 'Maestà' to be presented for the first time, alongside other recent findings from scientific investigations of trecento Sienese objects.

Downloadable full conference programme forthcoming.

Speakers

  • Professor Anne Derbes (Professor Emerita, Hood College)

  • Dominic Ferrante (Robert Simon Fine Art)

  • Dr Vera-Simone Schulz (Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz & Leuphana University Lüneburg)

  • Dr Machtelt Brüggen Israëls (University of Amsterdam)

  • Professor Diana Norman (Professor Emerita, Open University)

  • Dr Carl Strehlke (Emeritus Curator, Philadelphia Museum of Art)

  • Dr Helen Howard (The National Gallery)

  • Dr Jo Dillon (The Fitzwilliam Museum of Art)

  • Dr Lucy Wrapson (Hamilton Kerr Institute)

  • Speakers from the Opificio delle Pietre Dure, Florence

  • Professor Jeffrey Hamburger (Harvard University)

  • Professor Sonia Chiodo (Università di Firenze)

  • Dr Elisa Camporeale (Independent Scholar)

For more information about the event and to purchase tickets, visit https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/events/siena-the-rise-of-painting-1300-1350-conference-20-06-2025

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