The International Center of Medieval Art is co-sponsoring the reception and viewing for Medieval Academy of America’s Annual Meeting attendees at the Smith College Museum of Art on Friday 20 March 2026, beginning at 6:30pm.
Check the Annual Meeting program for further information; a bus from the UMass Hotel at 6:30 is available, but pre-registration is required.
https://maa2026.wordpress.amherst.edu/
Contact email: dvakoch@meti.org
Trans Studies, a book series published by Bloomsbury Academic, is seeking proposals for books that provide leading-edge scholarship on transgender and nonbinary topics from any discipline in the humanities, social sciences, and biological sciences. Bloomsbury’s Gender & Sexuality Studies list pioneers the publishing of innovative scholarly research from the Global South, and from marginalized gender identities and sexualities across global and transnational contexts. Bloomsbury has a longstanding commitment to publishing insightful books on LGBTQIA+ topics.
To propose a book for Trans Studies, please complete this form and submit it to General Editor Douglas Vakoch (dvakoch@meti.org) and Senior Acquisitions Editor Courtney Morales (Courtney.Morales@bloomsbury.com). Please include your CV, a list of five to seven potential reviewers you do not know personally, and a sample chapter. If you do not have a sample chapter for the book, please include a previous writing sample written in the same style that you envision for the book.
On the form, list the highest degree for each author, editor, and chapter author. Authors and editors should have already completed their PhDs. For edited volumes, all chapters should have at least one author who has already completed their PhD.
Books in this series include only original content, and no materials should be previously published.
High priorities for the series include books that provide intersectional perspectives, as well as works that examine transgender and nonbinary topics with reference to particular linguistic, national, and regional groups. We encourage authors from around the world to contribute to the series, incorporating culture-specific insights as feasible.
Contemporary and historical works are equally appropriate. Books in this series include monographs and edited volumes that target academic audiences. We value books that explore socially relevant issues and that both clarify and question the premises of fields outside of trans studies.
All books in the Trans Studies series—whether they are grounded in the humanities, social sciences, or biological sciences—reflect on the assumptions that guide the book’s specific version of trans scholarship. We especially seek works that provide innovative reformulations of the scope and practice of trans studies, including novel methodologies and theoretical concepts that challenge the status quo. We welcome books from disciplines that are underrepresented in trans studies.
All books follow the most recent guidelines for best practices in using accurate and respectful language when discussing transgender and nonbinary people and topics. Key resources to these best practices include GLAAD’s overviews of Transgender People and Nonbinary People, as well as this Glossary of Terms.
Contributors to this series come from disciplines including but not limited to anthropology, architecture, area studies, art, biology, cinema studies, classics, communication studies, cultural studies, disability studies, ecology, economics, education, environmental studies, ethics, ethnic studies, gender studies, geography, history, law, literary studies, masculinity studies, media studies, medicine, medieval studies, philosophy, political science, psychology, public policy, queer studies, religious studies, rhetoric, science and technology studies, science fiction studies, sociology, theology, trans studies, and women’s studies. Proposals grounded in other disciplines are equally welcome.
Bloomsbury Academic’s Trans Studies book series is based on a three-fold commitment to:
Provide inclusive, global representation of transgender and nonbinary topics and authors
Challenge assumptions of trans studies and other fields
Engage diverse disciplines from the humanities, social sciences, and biological sciences
For more information, visit https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/series/trans-studies/
Vienna, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Cod. 652, fol. 20v (scan 50 of 109). Hrabanus Maurus, De laude sanctae crucibus. Mainz or Fulda, 9th century (circa 830-840). Carmen figuratum with four Evangelist symbols surrounding the Lamb of God. Image via https://viewer.onb.ac.at/10048D05/.
Organisers: Michael Allman Conrad and Mildred Budny
For 2026 the RGME proposes to explore the nature of play in manuscripts across time and place. We think of manuscripts at play, as play, and in play.
With the success of our activities at the International Medieval Congress (IMC) at Leeds in 2024, we prepare for another year responding to the “Special Thematic Strand” selected for the 2026 IMC. Thus, we announce our Call for Papers here and now.
For information about the IMC and its plans for 2026, see:
International Medieval Congress at Leeds
Call for Papers for the 2026 IMC, with the Special Thematic Strand of “Temporalities”.
IMC 2026 Padlet, with poster-like announcements of Calls for Papers
For the 2026 IMC and its Special Theme, we will consider manuscripts in terms of the essence of their ‘temporalities’ (also see Temporalities) — that is, in a nutshell, “the state of existing within or having some relationship with time”, which pertains intrinsically to any physical object, just like its “spatial position”. That essence or condition, combining location with points in time, forms both centerpiece and focus-point going forward in our continuing studies of Manuscript Evidence.
Building upon the success of our activities at the annual IMC in 2024 and 2025, we propose to extend the subject of one of our Sessions at the 2025 Congress:
“Knowledge Games and Games of Knowledge”, organised by Michael Allman Conrad
Next, we seek to examine games and playful approaches of multiple kinds with regard to manuscripts. The opportunities across time range from the creation of a book to its use in the world. We observe, for example, habits of entering scribbles and sketches as spontaneous or imaginative playtime on the one hand to creating and transmitting texts about games or gaming strategies.
By their nature, whether text or image, the planarity of manuscript surfaces offers invitations for readers to engage with them playfully. This play entails a process of temporalisation, of setting manuscript elements into motion, resulting in configurations and re-configurations that are keys for deciphering hidden — or less apparent — meanings. While carmina figurata or picture poems may range among the most obvious examples, they are by no means limited to them. Such elements can include scribbles and sketches, diagrams (including game diagrams specifically), material extensions (such as volvelles and other pop-up features), acrostics, and other puzzles. We consider the performativity and dynamics at work, or play, on the pages.
We invite contributions on a wide range of materials and genres and from a variety of perspectives and any discipline, to consider case-studies, work-in-progress, or research results celebrating the roles of play in which manuscripts engage, and which they might inspire in us as readers, scholars, and beholders. Want to play? Are you game?
Papers might address, but are not limited to the following questions:
Are there any contemporary reflections on time and motion as keys for interpreting the playful elements of manuscripts, e.g., acrostics, scientific diagrams, or game diagrams (or others)? What can they tell us about the relationship of readers/spectators with time and across time?
As they are artworks and semantic devices at the same time, what may playful components tell us about how the similarities as well as differences between art and writing/reading were perceived at points of creation and use?
How did readers know how to decipher these playful elements? What part may contemporary game culture take in this understanding? What could the presence of playful elements in manuscripts indicate about the position of play and games within the broader scope of their culture?
What are possible reasons why scribes decided to include these elements exactly at this position within a manuscript? What strategies (be it either aesthetic, religious, cultural, or otherwise) may their application serve?
How does a preference for a playful element, its style and form, possibly tie into idiosyncrasies of the period?
What relationship between what can or cannot be known is expressed in the interplay between the visually hidden and virtually absent?
Please submit a title, an abstract of no more than 200 words, and a short bio by 15 September 2025 to
We particularly welcome proposals for individual papers and panels from postgraduate and early career scholars. We look forward to your responses.
Examples of dynamic constructions involving word-play upon the page include the elaborate, intricate, and beautiful picture-poems favoured among some authors, not least at in the early medieval period. We display specimens by the Carolingian author Hrabanus (or Rabanus) Maurus Magnentius (circa 780 – 856), Archbishop of Mainz (from 847). His poem De laudibus sanctae crucis (“In Praise of the Holy Cross”), which survives in multiple copies, contains a series of poems laid out as rectangular constructions in which each line contains the same number of letters as any other.
Their patterns make it possible to lay out the letters not only in horizontal lines but also in vertical rows, strictly in line with each other. Moreover, it is possible to read key portions vertically as well as horizontally. Reading vertically in a line using the initial, medial, or final letter of each line yields an acrostic, mesostic, or telestic. Such forms of cross-word puzzles can produce wonders of legibility, requiring the attention in steps of time to gain comprehension of the message as a whole. Adding images to the ensemble increases the layering of meanings, and the possibilities of wonderment through resonance.
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For more information, visit https://manuscriptevidence.org/wpme/2026-international-medieval-congress-at-leeds-call-for-papers/
Student artwork in progress. Photo by Pamela Lawton.
Snarling, prancing, prowling, and peeking out from stone and thread, animals both real and fantastical fill medieval art with energy and imagination. As part of The Met Cloisters’ commitment to serving neighbors in upper Manhattan, fifth-grade students from P.S. 48 P.O. Michael J. Buczek were invited to immerse themselves in this lively world of hybrid creatures and respond with beasts of their own invention.
During two gallery visits, students studied the curves of a dragon’s tail, the proud stance of a griffin, and the shimmer of a unicorn’s tail woven into tapestries, taking careful note of how medieval artists used line, pattern, and material. Back in the classroom, students brought their ideas to life through printmaking that required layering textures and shapes to create bold, whimsical creatures, each one stamped with the imagination of its maker.
The Met Cloisters gratefully acknowledges P.S. 48 art teacher Félix Portela, Met teaching artist Pamela Lawton, and the entire P.S. 48 community for their support of this program.
For more information, visit https://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/impressions-of-the-imagination-new-medieval-beasts-in-print
Credit: R. Hanel Photography
From January 12 to March 6, over thirty items from the 13th through 16th centuries will be on display in Aubrey R. Watzek Library. Bringing together books normally unavailable to the public with recent acquisitions by Lewis & Clark’s Watzek Library, Shaping the Soul is the first public exhibition of medieval manuscripts in Portland in nearly three decades.
Viewing a medieval manuscript is a profoundly intimate experience. Unlike today’s mass-produced publications, medieval manuscripts are unique, bespoke productions, revealing traces of both their makers and their readers. Medieval books also performed a number of roles: developing moral character through education, nurturing interiority through meditation and prayer, creating community through shared use in worship, forming the public self through legal documentation, and more. Shaping the Soul demonstrates the various ways that people understood themselves and their world through books. Highlights include a nun’s private devotional handbook, a lawyer’s manual with amusing doodles for memory aids, a grand choir book, a thirteenth-century Bible, and sumptuous books of hours.
Curated by Professor Gross (Professor of English) and Alli Sanders (BA ’26), this exhibition is made possible in part through the Manuscripts in the Curriculum initiative developed by the international art dealer Les Enluminures (Chicago, New York, and Paris). Lewis & Clark is the first liberal arts college to participate in this program. Shaping the Soul also benefits from generous loans made by Phillip J. Pirages’s Fine Books & Manuscripts (McMinnville, Oregon). These partnerships attest to the unique opportunities created by Lewis & Clark’s instruction in Special Collections and the strong reputation for research by faculty, staff, and students.
For more information, visit https://college.lclark.edu/live/news/57521-shaping-the-soul-medieval-manuscripts-exhibition
Tirant son nom du mot italien signifiant “amande”, Mandorla renvoie à une figure symbolique majeure dans l’iconographie chrétienne : celle de l’ovale lumineux formé par l’intersection de deux cercles, image de la rencontre entre le céleste et le terrestre, entre le spirituel et le corporel. L’exposition propose une relecture contemporaine de cette zone d’interpénétration des contraires, véritable matrice du sacré et de ses multiples résurgences. Pensée comme une traversée des seuils – entre les âges, les cultures, les corps et les imaginaires – Mandorla met en regard une sélection de sculptures de saintes portant leurs martyrs, provenant du Musée Krona à Uden (Pays-Bas), avec des œuvres contemporaines dans un dialogue fertile. Sculptures médiévales, dessins, photographies, installations, vidéos et objets rituels viennent ainsi célébrer le sacre de la chair, de la vie et de la nature et la résonance entre l’intime et l’universel.
Avec Gaylene Barnes, Lara Blanchard, Hildegarde de Bingen, L. Camus-Govoroff, Alexandra Duprez, Charles Fréger, Annabelle Guetatra, Balthazar Heisch, Lauren Januhowski, Kate MccGwire, Rachel Labastie, Yosra Mojtahedi, Armelle de Sainte Marie, peggy.m & Scarlett Owls, Chloé Viton.
Co-commissariat : Marie Ménestrier et Emmanuel Reiatua Cuisinier.
Pour plus de détails, consultez https://abbaye-de-maubuisson.fr/evenements/exposition-collective-mandorla-les-metamorphoses-du-sacre/
Peek at technique and learn—through handling tools and materials—how works of art were created. Stop by for hands-on demonstrations and conversations with educators, conservators, artists, and more! Demonstrations repeat every 30 minutes. For visitors of all ages.
Presented in conjunction with The Met Cloisters exhibitiion, Spectrum of Desire: Love, Sex, and Gender in the Middle Ages.
For more information, visit https://engage.metmuseum.org/events/education/workshops-and-classes/cloisters/how-did-they-do-that/fy26/how-did-they-do-that-manuscript-illumination/
Explore the ways love, sex, and gender are represented in the Medieval Art galleries at The Met.
Join Museum experts, including curators, conservators, scientists, and scholars, for a deep dive, into a selection of objects in the galleries. Hear new insights and untold stories from Met insiders and take a closer look. You’ll also have the opportunity to ask questions.
Presented in conjunction with The Met Cloisters exhibition Spectrum of Desire: Love, Sex, and Gender in the Middle Ages.
Note: Space is limited; first come, first served. Priority will be given to those who register.
For more information, visit https://engage.metmuseum.org/events/education/talks/cloisters/met-expert-talks-at-the-met-cloisters/fy26/met-expert-talks-medieval-desire/
ICMA Viewpoints Book Launch
Queer Making: On Artists and Desire in Medieval Europe by Karl Whittington
Online, 17 February 2026 at 12-1:00 pm ET
with Karl Whittington (Professor of History of Art, The Ohio State University)
Melanie Holcomb (Curator of Medieval Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art), and
Roland Betancourt (Andrew W. Mellon Professor, National Gallery of Art; Chancellor’s Professor, Department of Art History, University of California Irvine)
To watch: https://www.medievalart.org/special-online-lectures
What role does desire play in the making of art objects? Art historians typically answer this question by referring to historical evidence about an artist’s sexual identity or to particular kinds of imagery. But what about anonymous artists? Or works whose subject matter is mainstream?
We know little about the identities and personalities of most premodern artists, but this should not hold us back from thinking about their embodied experience. In this book, Karl Whittington contends that we can “queer” the works of anonymous makers by thinking about their embodied experiences creating art. Considering issues of touch, pressure, and gesture across substances such as wood, stone, ivory, wax, cloth, paint, and metal, Whittington argues for an erotics of artisanal labor, in which the actions of hand, body, and breath interact in intimate ways with materials. Whittington takes seriously the agency of materials and technical processes, arguing that they necessarily placed the bodies of artists and artisans into physical situations and psychological states that can be read through the lens of desire.
Combining historical evidence with speculative description, this evocative set of essays broadens our understanding of the motivations and experiences of premodern artists. It will appeal to scholars and students of art history, medieval studies, gender studies, queer studies, and anthropology.
To purchase, visit https://www.psupress.org/books/titles/978-0-271-10042-5.html
As the preview day of The European Fine Art Fair in Maastricht approaches on Thursday 12 March 2026, the Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum and Friends of the Museum welcome ICMA members to their museum in neighboring Aachen.
As in previous years, the team of the Suermondt-Ludwig-Museum in Aachen (Wilhelmstraße 18, 52070 Aachen) and the Friends of the Museum are delighted to invite you and your friends on Wednesday 11 March 2026 at 18.00 h (6 pm) to join us for a reception until approximately 21.45h.
This year we have the pleasure to offer you not only snacks and drinks but also an exclusive visit to our current exhibition Praymobil: Medieval Art in Motion. Michael Rief, Deputy Director of the museum and Curator of this critically acclaimed exhibition, will offer guided tours before the show closes on 15 March.
We’re looking forward to welcoming you and ask that you send a short RSVP to: info@suermond-ludwig-museum.de
CFP -- Queer Sanctity: Contemporary Visions of Medieval and Renaissance Art
due Sunday 15 March 2026
https://differentvisions.org/queer-sanctity-call-for-participation/
I'm pleased to share a CFP for a volume I'm editing: https://differentvisions.org/queer-sanctity-call-for-participation/
Different Visions is an on-line journal dedicated to innovative scholarship on medieval art, and in partnership with them, Queer Sanctity: Contemporary Visions of Medieval and Renaissance Art will be a virtual exhibition and catalogue of work from scholars at any stage of their career (from undergrads to post docs to professors, curators, artists, and more). The focus will be on LGBTQIA2+ artists working in North America (Canada, Mexico, and the US) from about the 1980s to the present who draw inspiration from medieval and Renaissance art, whether directly or indirectly. The chronological limits of medieval/Renaissance and contemporary are quite flexible, as are the queer and trans approaches that we hope to represent by the volume / virtual exhibition.
This project is taking shape beyond the bounds of a museum or gallery, since those constraints were posing challenges to embarking on the collaborative work of creating spaces to share research on the attraction, critiques, or ruptures between LGBTQIA2+ creators, premodern art, and the institutions where these works are found (be they museum, gallery, religious setting, bathhouse, bar, archive, etc.).
There has been a surge of art historical research on queerness/transness in the premodern world, as well as monographic exhibitions devoted to queer/trans contemporary artists and their individual relationships with religion, visual culture, etc. Equally rich is the bibliography on queer/trans European and Brazilian artists working in historicizing modes. With this project, we're hoping to bridge art history, curation, religious studies, and more.
Another goal is to be intentional about expanding beyond Christian histories and visual traditions (Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant, etc.) to include Jewish, Islamic, and other religions from the premodern world that create those temporal connections between past and present.
At the above link, you'll see the official CFP, as well as a video introduction I recorded. We're asking interested participants to fill out a Google Form (also linked on the CFP) with the type of contribution they might like to produce: a longer scholarly essay, a shorter object entry, a reflection piece, a video / multimedia work, an interview, etc.
One of the things I love about Different Visions is the creative flexibility we have.
We are pleased to invite PGTs and PGRs to submit proposals for a 15-minute paper, in English or Gaidhlig, for the annual Centre for Scottish and Celtic Studies (CSCS) hybrid postgraduate symposium to be held at the University of Glasgow on 28th May 2026.
Movement and the landscape are increasingly recognised for their role in shaping not only Scotland but Celtic nations of the present and Celtic cultures of the past. This interdisciplinary conference aims to foster dialogue across institutions and showcase the latest research of postgraduates across the fields of Scottish Archaeology, History, Literature, and Celtic & Gaelic Studies.
We encourage abstracts addressing themes including, but not limited to:
Scottish and Celtic diaspora: the nation beyond its borders
The role of empire and colonisation in Early Modern identities and beyond
Boundaries and points of contact
Mapping populations, landscapes, identities, languages, archaeological sites
Scotland's literary topoi
Popular memory and folklore in shaping Celtic arts, literature, media
This conference provides a supportive and friendly environment for postgraduates to share their latest research or works-in-progress with an audience of peers including Post-Docs, Eatly Career Researchers, and foremost thinkers in similar themes across a wide array of disciplines.
Prospective speakers should submit a title, abstract (100-200 words), and a brief biography (c.50 words) in English or Gaidhlig, by 2nd March 2026
Additionally, if you are a PGT and would like to attend the symposium but not present a paper, we invite you to send us a brief, one sentence summary of you research interests, or thesis title, for inclusion in a PGT research spotlight.
Please send any abstracts or questions to arts-cscs@glasgow.ac.uk.
Fortune et sa roue, Étienne Colaud, Encadrement, ca. 1530. Bibliothèque nationale de France, Français 130 fol.1v.
Fame and fortune are slippery things. They can be welcome or ironic, tangible or out of reach. In medieval and early modern thought, fortune was imagined as a capricious and unpredictable force, shaped by chance, reputation, belief, and intervention – be it divine, magical, ritual, or social. Fame could be the due of the martial hero as well as the martyred saint; but fortune could sometimes be a punishment, as when the hapless cleric in the Marian Theophilus legend sells his soul to the Devil. Luck charms, tokens, and other apotropaic magical artefacts are visible in the archaeological record, while accusations of attempts to manipulate or harness fortune appear in legal and ecclesiastical sources. Some historical and legendary figures exceed the boundaries of their time, while others wither into dust. The mysterious hand of fortune also shaped the fates of entire historical populations (both human and animal): early modern financial speculation raised some to great wealth and others to penury; the ‘discoveries’ of the New World turned societies upside down in numerous way; and environmental or climatic shifts could alter the course of rivers and coastlines, bringing famine or gluts, or be harbingers of catastrophe and destruction.
This theme invites the scholar to consider these various twists and turns of history.
Topics may include, but are not limited to:
Concepts of luck, fate, and misfortune
Fortune as a negotiable or managed resource (economic, spiritual, or social)
Games and gambling, including ludic theory
Legendary and national heroes; the infamous, the notorious, and the famously forgotten
Political hegemony – how is “luck” expressed at a societal level
Economic and financial history
Environmental and climate history
Social luck and movement across class divides
Financial bubbles and speculation (eg, The Dutch tulip bubble or the infamous South Sea bubble)
Deities and personifications of luck: Fortuna, the Wheel of Fortune.
Fortune and luck in the material sphere: lucky objects
Charms, talismans, and prayers
Theological aspects of free will
Soothsayers, oracles, and seers
Magic as a fulcrum for both good and bad luck
There is no geographic or disciplinary limitation for submissions, which can consider any aspect of the medieval or early modern world or its reception.
Full length articles should be 5000–8000 words, excluding references. Ceræ also accepts short notes, creative writing, translations, and review essays of up to 3000 words for our varia section.
Themed submissions must be submitted by 30 April 2026.
For full details on submission requirements and stylistic guidelines, please visit the Submissions section of this website.
Ceræ particularly encourages submissions from postgraduate and early career researchers, and there is a $200 AUD annual prize for the best postgraduate/ECR essay. Further information on our annual essay prize can be found here.
This volume is currently accepting submissions.
For more information, visit https://ceraejournal.com/volume-13-2026/
Non-Themed articles and varia are accepted year-round – please contact the Editors for further details.
If you are interested in submitting a book review – please contact the Review Editors.
The session seeks to explore the conceptualizations of landscape(s) of holiness in the Mediterranean viewing landscape as a participant in religious life and not only a mere background. Suggested topics, on a time frame between 300-1500, may include, but are not limited to:
Spaces and places of holiness: Churches, catacombs, and graveyards
Nature and holiness: landscapes of the wilderness
Architecture, cosmology, and environments: monasteries, churches
Political geographies of holiness: use of sacred spaces for political power, identity
Landscape in textual sources: preaching, hagiography
Images and landscapes of holiness: maps, pilgrimage routes
Affective and sensorial approaches to holy places
Rituals and landscapes of holiness in the Mediterranean
Submissions from a variety of disciplines (and sources) 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.
The language of the panel is English. Fees to be covered by participants.
Please submit a short CV and a 300-words abstract (PDF or Word.doc), in English, clearly underlying the innovative aspect of your current research - that should be at an advanced level.
Deadline: 12 March 2026
Contact email: andreabianka.znorovszky@udl.cat
Contact information: Andrea-Bianka Znorovszky, University of Lleida, Spain (andreabianka.znorovszky@udl.cat)
The British Archaeological Association will hold the ninth in its series of biennial International Romanesque conferences in Toulouse from 13-17 April, 2026.
The British Archaeological Association will hold the ninth in its biennial International Romanesque conference series on 13-17 April 2026. The theme is Transmission, Reception and Imitation in Romanesque art and architecture, 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. 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 13-15 April 2026 with the opportunity to stay on for two days of visits to Romanesque buildings in the surrounding area on 16-17 April. These will include visits to monuments and museums in Toulouse itself, and an excursion to Moissac. Booking forms and further information about the conference will be sent out later in the year.
Speakers include Dustin Aaron, Claude Andrault-Schmitt, Mañuel Castiñeiras, Kathleen Doyle, Cecily Hennessy, Wilfried Keil, Nathalie Le Luel, Javier Martínez de Aguirre, Robert Maxwell, Luigi Carlo Schiavi, Béla Zsolt Szakács, Elizabeth Valdez del Álamo, Rose Walker, and Michele Vescovi.
Conference Convenors: Quitterie Cazes and Richard Plant Conference Secretary: Kate Milburn. All enquiries about the conference should be sent to conferences@thebaa.org.
It would not be possible to mount this conference without John Osborn, and the British Archaeological Association wishes to take this opportunity to thank him for the boost to Romanesque scholarship afforded by his great generosity.
For more information, visit https://thebaa.org/events/2026-romanesque-conference/
Vor 800 Jahren erschütterte der gewaltsame Tod des Kölner Erzbischofs Engelbert von Berg das gesamte Reich und die Region, die heute als Ruhrgebiet bekannt ist. Vermeintlicher Auslöser dieses Mordes war ein Streit um die Vogtei des Essener Frauenstifts, die zu diesem Zeitpunkt Engelberts Neffe, Friedrich von Isenberg, innehatte. Die Ausstellung EINE MORD(s) GESCHICHTE vom 08.11.2025 bis 29.03.2026 im Domschatz Essen beleuchtet die Ereignisse rund um Engelberts Tod.
Dabei rücken die Macht- und Besitzstrukturen des Essener Frauenstifts in den Fokus. Warum war ausgerechnet der Besitz dieser Institution von so großem Interesse für die umliegenden Herrscher und welche Mittel und Wege nutzten die Essener Stiftsfrauen, ihn zu wahren? War die Kontrolle über den Stiftsbesitz wirklich alleiniger Auslöser für die dramatischen Ereignisse des 7. November 1225? Und welche Spuren Engelberts lassen sich eigentlich nach so langer Zeit im Essener Domschatz noch entdecken?
Es geht auf eine spannende Reise in das frühe 13. Jahrhundert. Die Ausstellung zeigt selbstbewusste und machthungrige Akteur*innen, die in die Ereignisse rund um den Mord an Engelbert verstrickt waren und betrachten bekannte und unbekannte Objekte des Essener Domschatzes im Licht der dramatischen MORD(s) GESCHICHTE.
Die informationen: https://domschatz-essen.de/der-essener-domschatz/aktuelles-und-termine/details/eine-mords-geschichte
Connue depuis l’Antiquité, souvent mentionnée et représentée au Moyen Âge, la licorne est aujourd’hui encore une créature mythique qui suscite la fascination. Elle peuple la littérature fantastique comme les univers enfantins. Elle revêt des significations variées, évocatrices de singularité ou de succès, à l’exemple du terme licorne pour désigner une start-up florissante.
L’exposition invite petits et grands à explorer l'histoire fascinante de cette créature. Elle révèle la licorne non seulement comme un animal fantastique, mais aussi comme un symbole aux multiples résonances. Organisée en huit sections, elle étudie l'iconographie de la licorne dans une perspective historique, mais aussi intellectuelle et esthétique, et incite les visiteurs à des lectures multiples.
Une exposition du Museum Barberini, Potsdam et du musée de Cluny - musée national du Moyen Âge, Paris, en collaboration avec le GrandPalaisRmn.
Consultez la page dédiée à l'événement.
Pour plus de détails, consultez https://www.musee-moyenage.fr/activites/programmation/licornes.html
Purple manuscripts represent a distinctive genre in Western bookmaking production, holding significant artistic and cultural value. Known since Late Antiquity, the purple colour imparts a high symbolic worth: a mark of imperial authority, it later became, with the advent of Christianity, a symbol of the blood of Christ, of martyrs, and of the authority of the Church. After a revival during the Carolingian era, which influenced Ottonian and Romanesque illumination, these manuscripts experienced renewed prominence during the Humanist and Renaissance periods.
This international conference, as the concluding event of the PURple Parchment LEgacy project (PRIN 2020; https://purpleproject.it), brings together scholars from various fields, time periods, and traditions of book decoration. The aim of the meeting is to offer a comprehensive and multidisciplinary overview of purple manuscripts and the use of purple in manuscript decoration. In addition to invited keynote talks, there will be an open session dedicated to more focused themes and case studies.
Proposals are invited for papers (maximum 15 minutes) addressing, but not limited to, the following research areas, covering periods from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance:
case studies on single works or small groups of manuscripts, with a particular focus on their historical-artistic context
in-depth studies of techniques and materials (dyes, writing supports, bindings, etc.)
research on written sources that contribute to the reconstruction of historical-artistic, documentary, and technical aspects
the history of purple manuscripts, with attention to their provenance and collecting histories
Submissions from PhD students, postdoctoral researchers, and early-career scholars are especially encouraged, as well as presentations of ongoing research or projects.
Proposals should be submitted in a single document (Word or PDF format) by 28 February 2026 to: convegno.purple@unito.it. Submissions should include:
Full name, email address, and current affiliation
Paper title
Abstract (maximum 2,000 characters, including spaces)
Short CV (maximum 1,000 characters, including spaces)
Proposals may be submitted in Italian, French, English, or German, and will be reviewed by the organizing committee. The outcome of the selection process will be communicated by March 2026.
The conference will take place in person in Turin. Accommodation expenses will be covered by the organization (travel expenses will be the responsibility of the participants). The conference proceedings will be published following a peer-review process
Middle Byzantine spindle whorls from the American School of Classical Studies’s Athenian Agora Excavations attached to cataloguing cards. Photo: Fotini Kondyli
The Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture is pleased to announce the final lecture in our 2025–2026 lecture series.
Over 150 Middle Byzantine spindle whorls in bone and steatite have been uncovered in the Athenian Agora Excavations, found in domestic and work spaces as well as in burials. In this lecture, I move these objects out of the artifact catalogues where they often linger and let them speak, telling the stories of the women who used them and the non-elite lives they illuminate.
By tracing the “biographies” of these tools—their birth (materials, making, design), working life (use, skill, transmission), and economic movement (exchange, display, disposal)—we can reconstruct rhythms of women’s labor and situate spinning within the urban economy of Byzantine Athens. Highly decorated surfaces, combining polished planes with incised grooves and circles, reveal a tactile aesthetic meant to be felt as much as seen. These designs, often associated with sacred or protective motifs, suggest that spindle whorls were not merely functional but active participants in religious experience and domestic protection. Decoration also connects these objects to a wider world: parallels with Islamic spindle whorls from the 9th–10th-century point to cultural exchange through textiles and luxury goods, and their appropriation for aesthetic and apotropaic purposes in Byzantine contexts.
Portable and publicly performed, spinning transformed these tools into communication objects, signaling skill, status, and adherence to social norms, while transmitting tacit knowledge across generations. Thinking through these encounters, this lecture reframes spinning as a socially and religiously meaningful, economically consequential performance at the heart of Middle Byzantine urban life.
Fotini Kondyli is Associate Professor of Byzantine Art and Archaeology at the University of Virginia. She researches spatial practices, community-building processes, the material culture of Byzantine non-elites, and cultural, economic, and political networks in the Eastern Mediterranean in the Late Byzantine period (13th-15th centuries).
Advance registration required. Register: https://maryjahariscenter.org/events/spindle-whorls-and-womens-work
Contact Brandie Ratliff (mjcbac@hchc.edu), Director, Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture with any questions.
Detail from a page in the earliest surviving manuscript of the Chronicle of Fredegar, featuring Eusebius, Jerome, a bird-like figure, and an inscription with Greek letters. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, lat. 10910, fol. 23v. Image: © BnF, Gallica (gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b10511002k/f58). Public domain
The Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture is pleased to announce the 2025–2026 edition of its annual lecture with the Harvard University Standing Committee on Medieval Studies.
How did the Byzantines perceive the Franks since the end of Antiquity, and to what extent did they recognise Frankish imperial claims at the time of Charlemagne? This lecture reassesses the sources to challenge the traditional view of general Byzantine superiority, focusing on contemporary perspectives. It examines the relationship and connections between the Franks and the empire from the Merovingian period, and how these relations evolved over time. It does so by employing three approaches: the study of connectivity, exploring interactions and infrastructures; the study of networking, tracing the processes and outcomes of these interactions; and entanglement, analysing intersecting socio-political factors. The evidence shows that Charlemagne’s recognition in 812 followed standard imperial protocols, that the dual imperial order remained conceptually viable, and that the Franks retained ties to imperial structures while gradually asserting autonomy. Elite-level networks—embassies, marriage proposals, and Greek learning—sustained a limited but enduring imperial connection, which only weakened by the Ottonian period.
Laury Sarti is Heisenberg Professor in the Department of History at the University of Bonn. Her research focuses on war as a factor of social change after the end of the Roman Empire, the legacy of Rome in the early medieval West, and physical mobility until the Late Middle Ages.
Advance registration required. Register: https://maryjahariscenter.org/events/the-frankish-kingdom-and-the-eastern-empire
Contact Brandie Ratliff (mjcbac@hchc.edu), Director, Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture, with any questions.