Bibliographical Society of America Fellowships, due 1 Dec 2018

Date/Deadline: 1 December 2018

To support the mission of the Society to foster the study of books and other textual artifacts in traditional and emerging formats, and in keeping with the value which the Society places on the field of bibliography as a critical interpretative framework for understanding such artifacts, the BSA funds a number of fellowships designed to promote bibliographical inquiry and research.

Bibliographical projects may range chronologically from clay tablets and papyrus rolls to contemporary literary texts and born-digital materials. Topics relating to books and manuscripts in any field and of any period are eligible for consideration as long as they include analysis of the physical object – that is, the handwritten, printed, or other textual artifact – as historical evidence.

Projects may include establishing a text or studying the history of book or manuscript production, publication, distribution, collecting, or reading. Fellowship awards may be used to fund travel to collections and other expenses associated with research into the topic for which the award was made.

Applicants should read the fellowships title and descriptions below to assess the general suitability of their projects to BSA’s program. Please note that individuals who have not received BSA fellowships in the previous five years will be given preference and that projects in enumerative bibliography (i.e., the preparation of lists) are not supported.

The fellowship committee will match proposed projects to suitable fellowships, and the awards will be announced at the annual meeting of the Society on January 24, 2019. All fellowships require a project report within one year of receipt of the award, and copies of any publications resulting from the project are to be sent to the BSA.

http://bibsocamer.org/awards/fellowships/

SCRIPTO Conference Erlangen - Libraries in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Period, due 1 Oct 2018

SCRIPTO Conference Erlangen - Libraries in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Period

Erlangen (Bamberg, Neustadt a.d.A.), 5th to 7th December 2018

Libraries are not only places where books are stored. They are also complex institutions which form nerve centers for communication networks. This also applies to the Middle Ages and the early modern period. Between Late Antiquity and early modernity, libraries did not change only in terms of their content. Their organization and function likewise changed dramatically. With the introduction of the printing press, furthermore, they had to confront a revolution in media. Led by internationally recognized specialists, the SCRIPTO conference at Erlangen will trace the development of library science from the Carolingians to the humanists and pay particular attention to the actors involved and their networks. The conference does not aim at completeness, but proposes to present various, important types of libraries from the eighth to the sixteenth century in their making.

The conference begins on the evening of 5 December with a guest lecture and a presentation of early medieval manuscripts in the original. On Thursday, 6 December, established experts will give introductions to the libraries of the mendicant orders (Luciano Cinelli), court libraries (Vanina Kopp), Cistercian libraries (Thomas Falmagne, Michele C. Ferrari), as well as the libraries of the humanists and intellectual elite of the early modern period (Nikolaus Henkel, Outi Merisalo). From the holdings of the University Library at Erlangen, select manuscripts from the Cistercian monastery of Heilsbronn (Franconia) will be shown in their original.

On Friday, 7 December, SCRIPTO participants will have two special sessions. In Neustadt an der Aisch Prof. Dr. Michele C. Ferrari will present medieval and early modern parish libraries, before the group visits the local, late medieval library at the Church of St. Johannes in situ. The group will then proceed to the Staatsbibliothek Bamberg (Bettina Wagner), where they will consider not only the library preserved there of the Augustinian canons from Neunkirchen am Brand (Susanne Rischpler), but also the Bamberger Stiftsbibliothek (Stefan Knoch), founded in 1007 by Emperor Henry II. Select masterworks of scribal and book art will be shown in the original.

Those applicants accepted for the course will be charged €145 (Please note that accommodation is not included). Further information (including the application form) may be obtained online:

www.scripto.mittellatein.phil.fau.de

Please submit your applications before 1st October 2018.

Position available: ASCSA Assistant Director, due 31 October 2018

ASSISTANT DIRECTOR OF THE SCHOOL
(POSITION IN ATHENS)
Deadline: October 31, 2018

Term: A full-time (12 months) position beginning July 1, 2019 for three years, with the possibility of renewal for a final fourth year.
 
Compensation: Salary commensurate with experience; benefits include room and board at the School.

Qualifications: Candidates must have earned the PhD from a North American university no more than three years prior to the application and must have spent a minimum of a year as a Member of the ASCSA. An active agenda for research and publication, knowledge of Greece and Modern Greek, and teaching experience are expected.

Duties: 

• To help the Director in the administration of School business and to stand in for the Director when needed. Reports to the Director of the School.
• To assist with the academic program under the direction of the Mellon Professor by lecturing, leading short trips or offering mini-seminars/workshops on area(s) of expertise.
• To serve as a contact and resource person for all members of the School and to live in Loring Hall.
• To help with the planning of the Summer Session by suggesting itineraries, speakers, and generally offering support to the Summer Session Directors, but not making actual arrangements.
• To be a visible presence in the Athenian social and academic scene by attending functions as an official of the School.
• To pursue research on a project.

Application:
The Assistant Director will be appointed by the ASCSA Managing Committee (through the Personnel Committee) in consultation with the Director of the School and the Andrew W. Mellon Professor. Please submit letter of application, curriculum vitae, and research project description (up to three pages in length) online at:

https://ascsa.submittable.com/submit/115282/assistant-director-of-the-school-application-form

Three letters of recommendation are required. After you submit your online application, your recommenders will receive an automatic email with instructions about how to upload confidential reference letters. Final candidates may be interviewed at the annual meeting of the AIA in San Diego, California, in January. 

The appointment will be announced by mid-February, 2019.   

2018 Byzantine Studies Conference, 4-7 Oct 2018, San Antonio

2018 Byzantine Studies Conference/BSC
Thursday, October 4, 2018 to Sunday, October 7, 2018

The University of Texas at San Antonio/The Historic Menger Hotel, San Antonio

Conference Website: https://www.bsc2018.com/
Preliminary Program: https://www.bsc2018.com/schedule/

The Byzantine Studies Association of North America welcomes interested colleagues and students to attend the 2018 Byzantine Studies Conference in San Antonio, Texas, October 4-7, 2018.  Papers from a wide range of disciplines will be presented, including those connecting Byzantium and neighboring Christian Medieval traditions with Islamic art, architecture, and culture. 

Please consider joining us!

Upcoming exhibition in NYC: Agents of Faith: Votive Objects in Time and Place, September 14, 2018 – January 6, 2019

Agents of Faith: Votive Objects in Time and Place
September 14, 2018 – January 6, 2019

The Bard Graduate Center Gallery
18 West 86th Street
New York, NY 10024

Tuesday, Friday–Sunday: 11 am–5 pm
Wednesday, Thursday: 11 am–8 pm

https://www.bgc.bard.edu/gallery/exhibitions/81/agents-of-faith-votive-objects

Faith is common to all human societies. By focusing on the material artifacts produced with the intention of being offered as acts of faith, Agents of Faith: Votive Objects in Time and Place, on view at Bard Graduate Center in New York City from September 14, 2018 through January 6, 2019, will provide a perspective on why humans across the globe create these material objects.

Examining votive objects—often created to fulfill a vow or as a pledge and placed at a sacred space or site of communal memory—Agents of Faith: Votive Objects in Time and Place will look at the things humans choose to offer in their votive transactions and will strive to uncover the most intimate moments in the lives of humans, revealing how our dreams and hopes, as well as our fears and anxieties, find form in votive offerings.

A portion of the exhibition will center on the creation of the votive object from its moment of inception through its construction and memorialization. The place of ephemeral objects, such as food and candles, will also be examined.

Encompassing exquisite works of art as well as those of humble origin crafted from modest material, more than 300 objects dating from 2000 BC to the twenty-first century will be on display. Powerful works from sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas, representing the majority of world religions, will expose the global nature of votive practices and the profoundly personal nature behind their creation.

Featured works include more than one hundred votive objects from the Bavarian National Museum in Munich, which are unique to the folklore of European culture; a rare ancient anatomical votive from the Louvre; one of the earliest dated votive panel paintings from the Musée des Arts décoratifs, Paris, and loans from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Contemporary religious and secular objects will include rare votive paintings made by Mexican migrant workers from the Durand-Arias Collection and objects left at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC, such as army-issue woolen gloves, food rations, and a Harley-Davidson motorcycle. 

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Agents of Faith: Votive Objects in Time and Place is curated by Ittai Weinryb, Associate Professor, Bard Graduate Center, with Marianne Lamonaca, Chief Curator, and Caroline Hannah, Associate Curator, Bard Graduate Center Gallery.

A richly illustrated catalogue edited by Ittai Weinryb and published by Bard Graduate Center Gallery and Yale University Press will accompany the exhibition. Essays will explore a wide spectrum of themes, time periods, and cultures. In addition to Weinryb, authors include Sheila Blair, Suzanne Preston Blier, Jaś Elsner, Diana Fane, John Guy, Fredrika Jacobs, Mitchell Merback, David Morgan, Verity Platt, Mechtild Widrich, and Christopher S. Wood. It will be available in the Gallery and at store.bgc.bard.edu.

Upcoming exhibition in Chicago: Caravans of Gold, Fragments in Time: Art, Culture, and Exchange across Medieval Saharan Africa, January 26, 2019 - July 21, 2019

Caravans of Gold, Fragments in Time: Art, Culture, and Exchange across Medieval Saharan Africa

قوافل من ذهب، شذرات من التاريخ: فن، ثقافة، وتبادل عبر الصحراء الكبرى خلال القرون الوسطى

January 26, 2019 - July 21, 2019

Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University

Caravans of Gold, Fragments in Time challenges the widely held bias of a timeless Africa that is cut off from the dynamics of world history. This will be the first major exhibition to take stock of the material culture of early trans-Saharan trade and to offer strong evidence of the central but little-recognized role Africa played in medieval history.  Among the diverse materials on view in the exhibition will be sculptures, jewelry, household and luxury objects, manuscripts, and architectural remnants. What unites these materials is their connections to routes of exchange across the Sahara Desert during the medieval period (eighth through 16th centuries).

Caravans of Gold, Fragments in Time addresses the shared history of West Africa, the Middle East, North Africa and Europe during the critical epoch of the eighth through 16th centuries, when West African gold fueled a global economy and was the impetus for the movement of things, people and ideas across the Sahara Desert to Europe, the Middle East and beyond. Because of the scarcity of surviving intact works from before the 16th century, the early history and material culture of Africa have rarely been the focus of major exhibitions.

More than 100 assembled artworks and archeological fragments will help audiences discover the far-reaching impact of historic trans-Saharan exchange and the overlooked role of West Africa at the forefront of these developments. Using objects as points of entry and inquiry, Caravans of Gold, Fragments in Time will interweave the art history, archaeology, history and comparative literature of trans-Saharan trade, situating it within a broad geographical and historical context.

https://www.blockmuseum.northwestern.edu/view/exhibitions/upcoming-exhibitions/caravans-of-gold,-fragments-in-time-art,-culture,-and-medieval-trans-saharan-trade.html

Getty/ACLS Postdoctoral Fellowships in the History of Art

Getty/ACLS Postdoctoral Fellowships in the History of Art

The American Council of Learned Societies invites applications for fellowships to support research and/or writing by early career scholars, made possible by the generous support of the Getty Foundation. These fellowships provide an academic year of support for scholars from around the world for a project that will make a substantial and original contribution to the understanding of art and its history.

In the 2018-19 competition, ACLS will award 10 fellowships, each with a stipend of $60,000 plus up to $5,000 for research and travel costs. Awards also will include a one-week residence at the Getty Research Institute following the fellowship period.

Applications are welcome from scholars worldwide without restriction as to citizenship, country of residency, location of proposed work, or employment.

• Applicants must have a PhD that was conferred between September 1, 2013 and December 31, 2017.
• Applicants who earned their PhDs in and/or are currently employed in any humanistic field may apply, so long as they demonstrate that their research draws substantially on the materials, methods, and/or findings of art history.
• Applications must be completed in English by the applicant.
  
  Deadline: October 24, 2018, 9 pm EDT

More information on Getty/ACLS Postdoctoral Fellowships in the History of Art is available at https://www.acls.org/programs/getty/. Applications must be submitted through the online system at https://ofa.acls.org.

fellowships@acls.org

Upcoming NYC exhibition: From the Desert to the City: The Journey of Late Ancient Textiles

From the Desert to the City:
The Journey of Late Ancient Textiles

September 13–December 13, 2018

The Godwin-Ternbach Museum
405 Klapper Hall
Queens College, CUNY Campus
65-30 Kissena Blvd.
Flushing, NY 11367

The exhibition From the Desert to the City: The Journey of Late Ancient Textiles highlights textiles from Late Antique Egypt placed in multiple contexts—original use in 3rd-7th century, modern archaeological rediscovery and influence in the early 20th century, and contemporary reception and inspiration—all with an effort to connect today’s audiences with our communal ancient past.

The exhibition, curated by Warren Woodfin in collaboration with museum directors Elizabeth Hoy and Brita Helgesen, centers on the recent gift of eighty-five textile pieces from the Rose Choron collection to the GTM.

The first part of the exhibition sets the stage for the original use of these textiles, placing them in context with other household and religious objects, all of which provide comparisons for motifs and themes that dominate the textiles: myth, the natural world, and health and prosperity. With a major loan from the Brooklyn Museum, the GTM is displaying two large-scale mosaics of birds and fish, carved architectural stonework, and figural sculptures, the likes of which are rarely, if ever, seen in Queens, let alone for free!

The second part of the exhibition addresses the archaeological discovery of “Coptic” textiles in the late 19th and 20th centuries. Here, comparative works highlight the impact of the rediscovery of these textiles on modern art from the visual to theatrical, including the drawings by Henri Matisse and stagings of Jules Massenet’s opera Thaïs.

The third and final section will juxtapose the Late Antique textiles with contemporary works inspired by them. From the Desert to the City will include work by Brooklyn artist Gail Rothschild who has created large-scale paintings directly inspired by the fragmentary condition of the Choron textiles. Figurative works in crochet by Queens-based Caroline Wells Chandler propel stylized late antique figures into bold, humorous, 21st century technicolor. By tracing the reception of the textile arts of the Late Ancient world into the 21st century, the exhibition will attest to their continued vitality as sources of creative inspiration as well as scholarly insight.

As with a number of past exhibitions at the GTM, Queens College’s students are contributing to the research and writing for the exhibition and accompanying catalogue. This was facilitated through an Art History graduate seminar taught in Spring 2018 by Warren Woodfin.

The full color catalogue will feature essays by Jennifer Ball, Glenn Goldberg, Brita Helgesen, Elizabeth Hoy, Thelma Thomas, and Warren Woodfin, along with contributions from Queens College graduate students in Art History.

Exhibition in Montreal: Resplendent Illuminations: Books of Hours from the 13th to the 16th Century in Quebec Collections, 5 Sept 2018 - 6 Jan 2019

Resplendent Illuminations:
Books of Hours from the 13th to the 16th Century in Quebec Collections

From September 5, 2018 to January 6, 2019
Musée des beaux-arts, Montréal

This is the very first exhibition at the MMFA dedicated to the books of hours in medieval and Renaissance art offering a chance to discover an overlooked heritage through a remarkable selection of illuminations and bound manuscripts preserved in Quebec, dating from the 13th to the 16th centuries. Books of hours were created for lay people and were popularized by the Christian faithful. These manuscripts were, for the most part, personalized and illuminated with miniature paintings―or illuminations―illustrating the life of Christ, the saints or the Virgin Mary. They incorporated a calendar of holy and religious feasts, passages from the gospels and prayers. The result of significant academic research, this exhibition comprises more than 50 artifacts (leaves, complete manuscripts, prints), which offer a closer look of these treasures gathered from seven collections.

An exhibition organized by the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, in collaboration with Université du Québec à Montréal and McGill University.

New on View: Gallery of Medieval and Byzantine Art, Yale University Art Gallery

A selection of important medieval and Byzantine paintings, sculpture, and functional objects is now on view in the Mimi Gates Study Gallery, on the first floor of the Old Yale Art Gallery building.

The new display features artworks in all media ranging in date from the end of the first millennium to the late 16th century, most of which have not been exhibited for 30 years or more. Byzantine-period highlights include a spectacular silver processional cross with gold ornament and niello inlay, possibly from as early as the 10th century, and two icons from the 15th and 16th centuries—one a disassembled, five-panel folding tabernacle—that have only recently been recognized for their authorship and significance.

Also on view is Tino di Camaino’s Three Princesses relief, which is among the Gallery’s masterpieces of medieval sculpture, and incorporates Cosmatesque glass inlay in its background; it is juxtaposed with a recently acquired large marble Cosmatesque panel from Rome. Four newly conserved, large-scale, wooden figural sculptures from Flanders, France, and Spain join better-known carvings in marble, limestone, and alabaster, as well as small functional objects in a variety of media. Illuminated manuscripts include a full page from a distinguished, early 14th-century Bolognese antiphonary and one of the museum’s earliest cutout initials, a rare surviving example of 12th-century painting.

https://artgallery.yale.edu/

CFP: New Directions in Carolingian and Ottonian Art History: Assessing the Field, due 15 Sept, ICMS Kalamazoo

New Directions in Carolingian and Ottonian Art History: Assessing the Field

54th International Congress on Medieval Studies
University of Western Michigan, Kalamazoo, Michigan
May 9-12, 2019

Session Organizers: Joseph Salvatore Ackley (University of Arkansas) and Eliza Garrison (Middlebury College)

Long marginalized in the anglophone tradition of medieval art history, the study of Carolingian and Ottonian art has recently generated, over the last two decades, a striking chain of pathbreaking studies that have shaped and inflected the discipline in decisive ways. If earlier studies of Carolingian and Ottonian material were devoted to questions of dating, attribution, and the localization of workshops, more recent inquiries have considered questions of gender, representation, materiality, religious reform, temporality, and the role of the artist. As we approach the twentieth anniversary of the publication of Adam Cohen’s pioneering The Uta Codex: Art, Philosophy, and Reform in Eleventh-Century Germany, which appeared in 2000, the session organizers seek papers from historians of Carolingian and Ottonian art and architecture that display a broad range of innovative methodological approaches to artworks created in all media. Papers that attend to issues of historiography - a particularly charged and complicated conversation for these monuments - and to artworks created and built at the edges of the Carolingian and Ottonian empires are especially welcome.

To propose a paper, please send an abstract of no more than 250 words, together with a completed Participant Information Form (https://wmich.edu/medievalcongress/submissions), to Joseph Salvatore Ackley (jackley@barnard.edu) and Eliza Garrison (egarriso@middlebury.edu) by September 15, 2018.

CFP: Transfer of Cultural Products: France and the Mediterranean Area in the 12th-13th c. (Part I and II) - Due 10 Sept; ICMS Kalamazoo

Call for papers
Kalamazoo May 9-12, 2019
Sessions cosponsored by the IMS-Paris and the CESCM Poitiers

Transfer of Cultural Products:
France and the Mediterranean Area in the 12th-13th c. (Part I and II)

The two sessions cosponsored by the IMS-Paris and the CESCM-Poitiers aim to explore the transfer of cultural products between France and the Mediterranean area during the twelfth and the thirteenth centuries.

Following the theory of Michel Espagne proposed in the eighties, the notion of “cultural transfer” can be understood in broad sense, as a process of interaction, a dynamics of semantic transformations which results from the passage of a cultural object from one context to another. The transfer can concern material as well as immaterial data: objects, ideas, forms, methods, technologies etc. Within the relations between France and Mediterranean area (notably with the Islamic or the Byzantine world), what kind of transfer of cultural products can we observe? Which/who were the vectors and the “bridges” of these exchanges? Where were the places of mediation? Any object that falls into a new context takes on a new meaning. What processes are involved in the appropriation of an object, its adaptation, what resistance to its integration, what reinterpretation and re-signification? In which way did it transform its new context?

Art historic, archaeological, epigraphic, historic and literary approaches are welcome. Participants are invited to submit papers on the following topics (non-exhaustive list):
- Translation into French; translation from French
- Islamic or Byzantine material objects brought to France
- The role of the crusades in the transfer of objects, texts, or mentality
- The role of pilgrimage in cultural exchange
- The go-betweens who assist in keeping the chain of transmissions functioning
- Hybridity in art forms, music, texts created in a climate of cultural transference

Submission guidelines:
Proposals (title and abstract of 300 words) are due by September, 10th to Estelle Ingrand Varenne (estelle.ingrand.varenne@univ-poitiers.fr).
Proposals will be evaluated by IMS and CESCM's members.

The Centre d’études supérieures de civilisation médiévale (CESCM) in Poitiers is one of the main research institution in Europe for teaching and research in the field of medieval studies. Founded at the end of the 1950’s, it gathers scholars in different disciplines (history, art history, literature, linguistics, archeology, and musicology) and hosts several publications, among which is the journal Cahiers de civilisation médiévale (http://cescm.labo.univ-poitiers.fr).

The International Medieval Society-Paris (IMS) is a non-profit association that welcomes international scholars of the Middle Ages in France and promotes international exchange with French colleagues. It organizes an annual symposium in Paris at the end of June and several meetings with senior scholars and graduate students all along the academic year (http://www.ims-paris.org).