Call for Papers

Princeton Symposium on Athonite Collections

25-26 September 2026

Due by 20 December 2025

We are pleased to announce the CFP for the Symposium: The Athonite Collections and Their Challenges. Open Access, Traveling Exhibitions, and Digital Surrogates. The Symposium will take place in Princeton on September 25-26, 2026.

Organizers: Julia Gearhart (Visual Resources) and Maria Alessia Rossi (Index of Medieval Art)

Mount Athos holds a wealth of treasures that illuminate the expansive social network of the medieval and modern Christian world. This holy peninsula has shaped the history of Greece, the Mediterranean, Europe, and beyond.

This symposium aims to tackle the challenges of studying the Athonite collections and other such religious repositories. These are challenges that restrict scholarly inquiry and therefore limit the development of new perspectives and the full appreciation of the unique collections and the history of the communities themselves. The reservations of monastic communities over the public accessibility and display of their sacred objects are well known and understandable in view of the centuries-old traditions the monasteries are safeguarding. This symposium seeks to find new ways forward in reconciling these conflicting views, addressing questions such as: how could institutions preserve the agency of the monastic community whilst promoting accessibility and scholarship? Could openly accessible digital archives be fostered while still respecting the ownership of the living religious community?

This event is being organized in the context of the Connecting Histories: The Princeton and Mount Athos Legacy project. For this reason, most of the event and the papers will focus on Mount Athos; however, we will also consider papers that bring in comparative material from other communities that deal with similar issues, creating a conversation with the Athonite material.

For the full call for papers, visit the website: https://athoslegacy.project.princeton.edu/announcements/

Proposals for 30-minute papers (in English) should include a title, an abstract (max. 250 words) and a CV, and be sent to gearhart@princeton.edu and marossi@princeton.edu by December 20, 2025.