Call for Papers: Renaissance Resonances: Across Time, Across Disciplines: A Transdisciplinary Conference, London & Online (20-21 April 2024), Due by 22 March 2024

Call for Papers

LABRC (London Arts-Based Research Centre)

Renaissance Resonances: Across Time, Across Disciplines
A Transdisciplinary Conference

April 20-21, 2024
April 20: in person and online at Birkbeck, university of London (hybrid presentations)
April 21: fully online

Due by 22 March 2024

This conference invites academics, creatives, practitioners, and students to look at how the Renaissance influences culture today, from the sciences to the arts, and anything in between. In exploring the different transdisciplinary approaches to the Renaissance and its relevance today, we will look at the interstices between the Renaissance and contemporary artwork, literary pieces, performances, music, film, science, and the ways in which these interact with history, politics and culture.

“Renaissance”, meaning “re-birth”, refers to the breaking free from the Middle Ages and founding the modern world as we know it today, mainly through the transdisciplinarity of its artists and scientists. The world owes many of its inventions to the Renaissance (like the pencil by the Bernacottis, the printing press by Gutenberg, the airplane by Leonardo da Vinci, and the microscope by Galileo), which also influenced art, literature, and drama (as we see in the case of Shakespeare and the Renaissance masters like Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci, Michaelangelo, and Donatello). So perhaps, the influence of the Renaissance goes beyond the names of the Ninja Turtles!

The conference will have two tracks:

• Renaissance Europe

• Shakespeare

We welcome 15-minute presentations on topics including (but certainly not limited to) the following:

Renaissance Europe track:

• Archetypal themes and patterns in Renaissance art

• Renaissance-inspired historical novels

• Modern adaptations of iconic Renaissance paintings, such Botticelli’s Birth of Venus

• Relevance of medieval alchemy today

• Arab Spain

• Renaissance Florence

• Comparative art history

• Ekphrastic responses to Renaissance art

• Influence of Renaissance architecture

• Renaissance-influenced pop music (such as Lady Gaga, Beyonce, and Ariana Grande)

• Contemporary Renaissance-inspired painting

• The Renaissance-inspired fashion world (Alexander McQueen, Sarah Burton, etc.)

• Renaissance influences on modern sciences and medicine

• Renaissance-inspired photography

• Renaissance depictions of magic and the supernatural

• Renaissance women

Shakespeare track:

William Shakespeare: the bard, the playwright, the poet, the actor. You probably quote him on a regular basis without even knowing it. Celestial bodies are named after some characters in his plays. His name has become a brand for bookstores, coffee shops, toys, and cigars, and has even been dubbed by literary scholar Doug Lanier as “the Coca-Cola of canonical culture.” How relevant is Shakespeare today? And how far has the playwright’s ingenuity resonated across generations and disciplines? The enduring popularity and influence of Shakespeare is a clear testimony to his relevance and contributions to the English language, the arts, and even people’s behaviour. Shakespeare still has a significant presence in contemporary culture, ad is ever-present within fields of art across all genres and disciplines. Looking at the impact of Shakespeare, we see that he has greatly contributed to shaping society in various ways while inspiring a new generation of contemporary artists and filmmakers!

From coining thousands of words in English, to new concepts, grammatical structures, and phrases, Shakespeare had shaped the language we still use everyday (“all’s well that ends well”). He offered timeless themes, and his plays live on again and constantly evolve and remake themselves through modern adaptations in art, theatre, film, and literature, not only because of his fame, but also because of the universality of his themes and characterization.

We welcome 15-minute presentations on topics including (but certainly not limited to):

• Shakespearean archetypes and universal themes

• Ideas of space and place

• “All the world’s a stage”: Shakespearean models in characterization and/or drama

• Shakespeare as a brand

• Concepts of dreams and surrealism

• “We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep”: Shakespeare-influenced perceptions of different layers of reality

• Shakespearean influences in today’s fiction (romance, history, thrillers, mysteries, fantasy, sci-fi, etc.)

• Innovative ways of teaching Shakespeare

• Shakespeare and film

• Shakespearean plays as pedagogic tools

• Presentation of the environment and climate change

• “All’s well that ends well”: Words, phrases, and aphorisms

• “Be not afraid of shadows”: Jungian theory and therapy regarding shadow work

• The magical and supernatural

• “Cruel to be kind”: Shakespeare and psychology today

• Shakespeare in visual art

• Shakespeare in tourism

• “the lady doth protest too much”: feminist takes on Shakespeare

Presenters may either share academic papers and/or creative work (poetry, prose, photography, music, painting, performance, etc.), as we highly encourage arts-based research. Please fill out the proposal form by March 22, 2024 (and please indicate whether you need an early response for travel plans).

For inquiries or further information, please contact us on conferences@labrc.co.uk (kindly allow at least 2-3 days response time)

We look forward to receiving your abstracts!

Fees: In person: 165 GBP/Online: 90 GBP

To register for the conference, click here

For more information about the organization and the conference, click here.

Online Lecture: ‘The hooly blisful martir for to seke’: Manuscripts with Chaucer’s pilgrims, Dr. Allison Ray and Dr. Andrew Dunning, 25 March 2024, 4.30–5.30pm GMT/12:30-1:30PM ET

Online Lecture

‘The hooly blisful martir for to seke’: Manuscripts with Chaucer’s pilgrims

Dr. Allison Ray and Dr. Andrew Dunning

Monday 25 March 2024, 4.30–5.30pm GMT/12:30-1:30PM ET

Free, booking required.

Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales tell the story of pilgrims 'from every shires ende / Of Engelond to Caunterbury they wende’. Experience these journeys, both real and imagined, through discussion and sharing of medieval manuscripts from the Bodleian collection live under the visualiser. 

Dr Alison Ray, archivist at St Peter’s College, and Dr Andrew Dunning, RW Hunt Curator of Medieval Manuscripts at the Bodleian Libraries, will explore the new iconography that developed after Thomas Becket’s murder, the impact of his death on Oxford’s religious houses and how Canterbury became a significant pilgrimage destination. 

For more information about the event, click here.

ONLINE TALK: Exploring Chaucer Here and Now, Marion Turner, Weston Library, Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, 14 March 2024 5-6PM GMT/1-2PM ET

ONLINE TALK

Exploring Chaucer Here and Now

Professor Marion Turner

Weston Library, Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford

 Thursday 14 March 2024,  5–6pm GMT/1-2PM ET

Image credit: Ian Wallman, https://visit.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/event/mar24/exploring-chaucer-here-and-now

Free, booking required

In this webinar, Professor Marion Turner introduces some of the themes of Chaucer Here and Now, the exhibition currently on view at the Weston Library.

Focusing on manuscripts and printed books from the fifteenth century to the twenty-first, she will discuss some of the ways in which readers of Chaucer have responded to and reimagined Chaucer's works. From medieval scribes to Zadie Smith, via early printers, Victorian children's authors and William Morris, Professor Turner explores the afterlife of one of our greatest poets.

This webinar will be interactive, with plenty of time for Q&A, and will feature some of the Bodleian's treasures shown under the visualiser. 

For more information about the event, click here.

Exhibition Closing: Chaucer Here and Now, Weston Library, University of Oxford, Ends 28 April 2024

Exhibition Closing

Chaucer Here and Now

ST Lee Gallery, Weston Library

Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, UK

8 December 2023 - 28 April 2024

This is a stunning example of a Chaucer manuscript, 'The Complaint of Mars'. The artist has been identified as the Abingdon Missal Master, who worked near Oxford in the mid-15th century (MS Fairfax 16). Image © Ian Wallman https://visit.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/chaucer

Misogynist. Feminist. Conservative. Radical. Respectful. Irreverent. Monocultural. Multicultural. Imperial. Domestic. English. European. Catholic. Protestant.

Chaucer Here and Now presents Geoffrey Chaucer as you haven’t seen him before. Not as the “Father of English Literature”, but as a dynamic, global author, whose works have been reworked and reinterpreted over time and around the world. Each generation reinvents Chaucer, taking inspiration from his work, and finding new meanings.

Drawing on material ranging from the earliest known manuscript of The Canterbury Tales to contemporary adaptions in theatre and film, this exhibition explores the many creative responses to Chaucer and asks why this medieval author still fascinates so many people today.

Come and reinvent Geoffrey Chaucer for yourself.

This exhibition is curated by Professor Marion Turner, JRR Tolkien Professor of English Literature and Language at the University of Oxford.

Free and no ticket required.

For more information about the exhibition, click here.

Call for Papers for Various Panels: 2025 MLA Annual Convention, New Orleans (9-12 January 2025), Due by 15-17 March 2024

Call for Papers for VArious PanelS

2025 MLA Annual Convention, New Orleans, Louisiana, 9-12 January 2025

Due by 15-17 March 2024

All of the panels below specifically noted either medieval art or visual aspects. Other panels at the conference focus on medieval studies more generally or medieval writings.

Premodern Practices of Space in Iberia and the Americas: Digital Perspectives

We welcome papers which engage with the digital turn to explore how (physical, textual, visual, etc.) spaces in premodern Iberian and American worlds were constructed, distorted, communicated or erased.

250-word abstract and a one-page CV.

Deadline for submissions: Saturday, 16 March 2024

Marija Blašković, Universitat Pompeu Fabra - Campus del Mar (marija.blaskovic@upf.edu )

Visualizing Medieval Iberia

The session explores how Medieval Iberia is represented in visual culture. Papers addressing, comparing, and contrasting how Medieval Iberia is represented globally via different mediums, & periods are welcome. 150 word abstract and short bio.

Deadline for submissions: Friday, 15 March 2024

Dr. Yasmine Beale-Rivaya, PhD, Texas State University (yb10@txstate.edu )

Visible and Invisible Cities in Medieval and Early Modern Italy

This panel explores how literature, drama, painting, and treatises deployed visual strategies, discourses, and tropes to envision, theorize and/or critique urban worlds (local/global, utopic/fantastic/infernal, past/present/future).

[250-word abstract, one-page CV]

Deadline for submissions: Sunday, 17 March 2024

Paola Ugolini, State University of New York at Buffalo (ugolini@buffalo.edu )

“Ut Pictura Poësis”: Visual Poetics and Visual Arts in Medieval and Early Modern Italy

We invite contributions that deal with visual poetics as writing exploring the materiality of the word, in a manuscript or a printed book, and/or visual arts closely connected with literary texts.

[250-word abstract, one-page CV]

Deadline for submissions: Sunday, 17 March 2024

Paola Ugolini, State University of New York at Buffalo (ugolini@buffalo.edu )

Visibility and the Visual in Medieval and Early Modern German Culture (Sponsored by LLC German to 1700)

Visibility and invisibility played a fundamental role in medieval and early modern social, cultural, and religious contexts. We seek papers exploring in/visibility and the visual in pre-modern German literature and culture.

Deadline for submissions: Friday, 15 March 2024

Jonathan Seelye Martin, Princeton U (jsmart5@ilstu.edu ) Aleksandra Prica, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (aprica@email.unc.edu )

Visualizing Bodies in Medieval and Early Modern Italy

This panel intends to explore how different bodies were categorized, described, and represented in Medieval and Early Modern Italy considering questions of gender, race, disability, and class differences.

[250-word abstract, one-page CV]

Deadline for submissions: Sunday, 17 March 2024

Paola Ugolini, State University of New York at Buffalo (ugolini@buffalo.edu )

For more information about the call for papers more generally, click here.

Call for Applications: Assistant Professor in Global History of Art, Trinity College Dublin, Due By 4 April 2024 12:00PM IST/7:00AM ET

Call for Applications

Assistant Professor in Global History of Art

Trinity College Dublin, Ireland

Due by 4 April 2024 12:00PM IST/7:00AM ET

The School of Histories and Humanities at Trinity College Dublin seeks to appoint an Assistant Professor in Global History of Art, based in the Department of History of Art and Architecture. Candidates can have expertise in any period from early modern to contemporary but, preferably, their research will encompass global histories of art. Candidates must demonstrate an ability to incorporate collections in Ireland in their teaching and research. It is also desirable that candidates should have experience of working with museum collections. The primary purpose of this post is to contribute to teaching and research in history of art and to undertake administrative activities in the Department and School. The successful applicant will have a proven ability or evidence of potential to establish a strong record of research and publication in the history of art and will be expected to contribute to both undergraduate and postgraduate teaching in this field and to interdisciplinary curricular teaching, supervision, and mentoring.

The successful candidate will be expected to take up post on 1 August 2024 or as soon thereafter as possible.

For more information about the position, https://my.corehr.com/pls/trrecruit/erq_jobspec_version_4.display_form

Opportunity for Graduate Students & ECRs: Inscriptions in a Digital Environment: An Introduction to EpiDoc for Byzantinists (5, 12, and 26 April 2024 - Zoom), Register By 22 March 2024

Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture and the Byzantine Studies Association of North America

Opportunity for Graduate Students & ECRs

Inscriptions in a Digital Environment: An Introduction to EpiDoc for Byzantinists

Workshop by Martina Filosa (University of Cologne)

5, 12, and 26 April 2024 / 11:00 AM–3:00 PM EDT with a break from 12:30–1:00 PM - Zoom

Registrations By 22 March 2024

The Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture and the Byzantine Studies Association of North America are pleased to offer a three-part EpiDoc workshop for graduate students and early career researchers in collaboration with Martina Filosa of the University of Cologne.

In this online workshop, participants will explore the use of EpiDoc, the established standard for digitally encoding ancient inscriptions, papyri, and other primary and documentary texts in TEI XML for online publication and interchange. The workshop will also introduce the participants to the EFES (EpiDoc Front-End Services) platform for viewing and publishing EpiDoc editions. The workshop will include asynchronous tutorials, real-time sessions, and guided hands-on exercises. Participants will have the opportunity to work with their own epigraphic material, broadly understood.

Registration closes Friday, March 22.

Who is eligible?
* Graduate students and early career researchers (PhD received after April 2016) in the field of Byzantine studies.
* All participants must be BSANA members. BSANA membership is free for graduate students and early-career contingent scholars who have earned their PhD within the last eight years and who do not hold a permanent or tenure-track appointment.

For a full description of the workshop and to register your interest, please visit https://maryjahariscenter.org/events/inscriptions-in-a-digital-environment.

Contact Brandie Ratliff, Director, Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture, with any questions.

Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture Lecture Series: Recycled Cities: Sardis and the Fortifications of Early Byzantine Anatolia, Jordan Pickett, 28 March 2024 12:00PM ET (Zoom)

Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture Lecture Series

Recycled Cities: Sardis and the Fortifications of Early Byzantine Anatolia

Jordan Pickett, University of Georgia

Thursday, March 28, 2024 | 12:00 PM EDT | Zoom

Sardis Acropolis, oblique view from east. Photo: Jordan Pickett for Sardis Expedition, 2019, https://maryjahariscenter.org/events/recycled_cities

The Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture is pleased to announce the final lecture in our 2023–2024 lecture series.

The largest standing architecture at the ruined city of Sardis is not its famous Temple of Artemis, the fourth largest Ionic temple of antiquity, but is instead the massive but little-published fortification that sits on its Acropolis. This paper delivers preliminary results from new study of the Byzantine fortifications on the Acropolis at Sardis, part of the larger Harvard-Cornell Exploration of Sardis ongoing since 1958. Composed entirely of thousands of architectural blocks and sculpture recycled from older Iron Age and Roman monuments of Sardis, our understanding of the Acropolis fortifications hinges on three questions considered here. How has the Acropolis, composed of extraordinarily friable loose conglomerate subject to erosion and earthquake, changed since Antiquity? When were the Acropolis fortifications constructed? Possibilities range from c. 550 during the reign of Justinian to as late as c. 850. And, how and by whom were the Acropolis fortifications constructed? Set at a remarkably steep elevation, the labor for transport and construction with reused materials was extraordinary. No minor monument of the “Dark Ages”, the fortifications on the Acropolis at Sardis stand as a remarkably well-preserved complex of defensive architecture that sheds light on the priorities and capacities of communities in Byzantine Anatolia.

Jordan Pickett is Assistant Professor in the Department of Classics at the University of Georgia and co-PI, with Benjamin Anderson (Cornell University), for Acropolis investigation for the Archaeological Exploration of Sardis, Turkey, under the direction of Nick Cahill (University of Wisconsin).

Advance registration required at https://maryjahariscenter.org/events/recycled_cities

Contact Brandie Ratliff (mjcbac@hchc.edu), Director, Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture with any questions.

Call for Sessions: Mary Jaharis Center Sponsored Panel, 50th Annual Byzantine Studies Conference, Due 3 April 2024

Call for Sessions

Mary Jaharis Center Sponsored Panel, 50th Annual Byzantine Studies Conference

Due 3 April 2024

As part of its ongoing commitment to Byzantine studies, the Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture seeks proposals for Mary Jaharis Center sponsored sessions at the 50th Annual Byzantine Studies Conference to be held in New York City, October 24–27, 2024. We invite session proposals on any topic relevant to Byzantine studies.

Session proposals must be submitted through the Mary Jaharis Center website. The deadline for submission is April 3, 2024.

If the proposed session is accepted, the Mary Jaharis Center will reimburse a maximum of 5 session participants (presenters and chair) up to $800 maximum for scholars based in North America and up to $1400 maximum for those coming from outside North America. Funding is through reimbursement only; advance funding cannot be provided.

For further details and submission instructions, please visit https://maryjahariscenter.org/sponsored-sessions/50th-bsc

Contact Brandie Ratliff, Director, Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture, with any questions.

Upcoming Exhibition! The Book of Marvels: Wonder and Fear in the Middle Ages, The J. Paul Getty Museum, 11 June - 25 August 2024

Upcoming Exhibition

The Book of Marvels: Wonder and Fear in the Middle Ages

June 11–August 25, 2024

The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, California

This exhibition explores the text and images of the Book of the Marvels of the World, a manuscript made in the 1460s that weaves together tales of places both near and far. Told from the perspective of a medieval armchair traveler in northern France, the global locations are portrayed as bizarre, captivating, and sometimes dangerously different. Additional objects in the exhibition from the Getty’s permanent collection highlight how the overlapping sensations of wonder and fear helped create Western stereotypes of the “other” that still endure today. A complementary exhibition focusing on a second illuminated copy of the same text at the Morgan will open at the Morgan in the spring, and a publication will unite both exhibitions, The Book of Marvels: A Medieval Guide to the Globe.

For more information: https://www.getty.edu/visit/exhibitions/future.html

GCMS Hybrid PGR Conference 2024: Saints & Angels, University of Reading, 14 March 2024 (In-Person & Online)

GCMS Hybrid PGR Conference 2024

Saints & Angels

The Graduate Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Reading

14 March 2024 (In-Person & Online)

In an early ninth century English prayerbook believers were encouraged to pray to Cherubim and Seraphim for strength and health. Late antique and early medieval Christians were advised both to approach angels in prayer and to follow their example as role models in leading virtuous lives.

Meanwhile assistance could also be sought from the saints, who were perhaps easier to identify with as fellow human beings, and the High Middle Ages saw the rise of the cult of the saints. Litanies listed the many saints and a number of named angels, along with the whole heavenly host, in supplication.

Despite their very different origins, both saints and angels played an important role in the psyche of medieval people. The focus of this conference will be on the lived experience of believers and how saints and angels were encountered in medieval life, and how they influenced beliefs and actions. The ways in which different members of the company of heaven were sought for intercession and protection will be explored. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, we hope to shed new light on the roles of both saints and angels.

To book online tickets, click here.

To book in-person tickets, click here.

PROGRAMME

9:15-9:30AM GMT/5:15-5:30AM ET Registration

9:30-9:45AM GMT/ 5:30-5:45AM ET Welcome - Prof. R. Rist, University of Reading

9:45-11:00AM GMT/5:45-7:00AM ET Session 1 Angels - their roles.

Verity Bruce, University of Exeter, The Great Prince? St. Michael Archangel's Masculinity and Saintly Gender Performance

Tracy Silvester, University of Reading, Guardian of the Faithful and the Perfect Christian Champion: St. Michael’s Crucial Role in the Individual’s Fight Against Sin

Christopher Simonson, University of Missouri-Columbia, Angels and AI: The Genesis of Artificial Intelligence and Its Parallels with the Designs of the Divine

11:00-11:30AM GMT/ 7:00-7:30AM ET Break

11:30AM-12:45PM GMT/7:30-8:45AM ET Session 2 Angels - their representation.

Natasha Coombes, UWTSD Lampeter, Everyday Angels

Emily Metcalf-Corrison, University of Aberdeen, The Hours of the Guradian Angel and the Bridgettines

Dr. Hana Buer & Dr. Bettina Ebert, Museum of Archaeology, University of Stavanger, Norway, From Heaven S(c)ent. Revealing Angels on the Ceiling on St. Swithun’s Cathedral.

12:45-1:45PM GMT/ 8:45-9:45AM ET Lunch

1:45-3:05PM GMT/9:45-11:05AM ET Session 3 Saints - their roles and relics

Stephen Evans, University of Reading, St. Christopher: An exemplar as well as a Protector?

Dr. Frances Cook, University of Reading, Encountering St. Margaret in Antioch in Parish Churches in the Middle Ages

Luiz Octávio Lima de Mello, Universidade Federal Fluminense (UFF-Brasil), ‘Con piedoso latrocinio Io sacó’ - an analysis of the Ibrerian Furta-Sacra

3:05-3:20PM GMT/11:05-11:20AM GMT Break

3:20-4:30PM GMT/11:20AM-12:30PM GMT Session 4 Saints and the natural world

Scott Royle, Concordia University, Montreal, The Inheritance of Wind Miracles by bede from the Irish hagiographer Adomnán

Caroline Bourne, University of Reading, Seeking Intercession for Love: Holy Wells and Female Agency

4:30PM GMT/12:30PM ET Close

Call for Papers for Panel: CARVING COLLECTIVE PRACTICE: WORKING AGAINST MONOLITHIC SCHOLARSHIP ON STONE, IONA Conference (26-28 June 2024, London), Due 5 April 2024

Call for Papers for Panel

CARVING COLLECTIVE PRACTICE: WORKING AGAINST MONOLITHIC SCHOLARSHIP ON STONE

IONA: Islands of the North Atlantic Conference (King's College London, 26-28 June 2024)

Run by Meg Boulton, Meg Bernstein, Jill Hamilton Clements & Carolyn

Due Friday, 5 April 2024

We are seeking participants for Thinking with Stone, an interdisciplinary, experimental roundtable exploring collaborative methods and conversational approaches to studying stone in the medieval period. We welcome five- to ten-minute presentations on ideas for a work in progress on a stone object or structure, a particular methodological approach to stone, or new pedagogical ideas for engagement with stone. The session provides a forum for collaborative development of these projects in a way that looks outside traditional modes of single-authored expertise. Send your CV, project title, and short abstract (200 words) describing your project to the Google form linked (click here).

Thinking with Stone is Session III of a three-part series at IONA 2024 on Carving Collective Practice, which all are welcome to attend. Session I: Viewing Stone is a site visit and discursive workshop on early medieval stone sculpture, introducing questions about these multivalent and polyvocal monuments that will be further explored in Sessions II and III. Session II: Handling Stone is an immersive and interactive lab on the haptic qualities of stone. Used as we are to thinking about stone monuments as things not touched or moved, this hands-on lab focuses on the physical, material, and tactile properties of stone as a worked substance that was handled, carved, and subject to changes from weather and use.

Questions may be sent to jelements@uab.edu.

For more about IONA, click here.

Interdisciplinary Seminar on Medievalism: Drawing Medievalism: Dialogue with the Past through Comics, Patrick Murphy, 20 March 2024, 5:30-7:00PM GMT/1:30-3:00PM ET (Online - Teams)

Interdisciplinary Seminar on Medievalism

Drawing Medievalism: Dialogue with the Past through Comics

Patrick Murphy (Miami University)

Institute of Historical Research, School of Advanced Study, University of London

20 March 2024, 5:30PM - 7:00PM GMT/1:30PM - 3:00PMET

Online - Microsoft Teams

Charles Hatfield has characterized comics as an "art of tensions": text in conversation with image, layout in conversation with sequence, and images in sequential conversation with each other. Any comics maker works with such "tensions" (among others), but those creating within nonfiction historical genres—whether personal memoir, graphic history, or scholarly sequential art—confront another tension: that between perspectives of the present and an uncaricatured image of the past. Such a tension is central to the field of medievalism studies, which often highlights the blurred lines between imaginative creativity and detached scholarly study in the ongoing invention/discovery of the medieval past. Indeed, Richard Utz has called for medievalist scholars to embrace, rather than deny, our “own investigating subjects’ role in the long history [of medieval reception],” and comics seems to offer an ideal medium for doing just that. To consider this possibility, this presentation draws on examples from my own in-progress work of graphic nonfiction, A Comics History of the English Language, which features a cartoonized stand-in for myself, interacting with both students and subject matter. In the process of writing and illustrating this book, I have come to find such conversational possibilities of the comics medium to be at least as important as its graphic and illustrative resources—particularly in navigating a subject of such richness and risk.

Patrick J. Murphy is Professor of English at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. He is the author of Unriddling the Exeter Riddles (2011) and Medieval Studies and the Ghost Stories of M.R. James (2017), both published by Penn State University Press. His current project is a work of graphic nonfiction, A Comics History of the English Language, which he is in the process of both writing and illustrating.

All welcome-this seminar is free to attend, but booking in advance is required.

Contact: ihr.events@sas.ac.uk

For more information about the event, click here.

Call for Papers: The Jeweled Materiality of Late Antique/Early Medieval Objects and Texts, Brno (11-12 Nov. 2024), Due By 30 Apr. 2024

Call for Papers

The Jeweled Materiality of Late Antique/Early Medieval Objects and Texts: From Cloisonné to Stained Glass to Experimental Poetry (4th–9th Centuries)

International conference, November 11–12, 2024

Center for Early Medieval Studies, Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic

Abstracts Due by 30 April 2024

The interface among the material, visual, and literary cultures of the long late antiquity and beyond has become a topic of scholarly interest ever since the publication of the seminal 1989 book The Jeweled Style by Michael Roberts. The visual–verbal dialectics of this period of geopolitical and cultural transformation, as manifested in various instances of spoliation, patterns of fragmentation, and a preoccupation with (exquisite) detail in different cultural media, were subsequently studied especially by Jaś Elsner and Jesús Hernández Lobato. The topical relevance of Roberts’ original concept more than 30 years after its invention is clear from, among other scholarly endeavors, the recent edited volume A Late Antique Poetics? The Jeweled Style Revisited (2023), which offers numerous insightful contributions on the topic across different genres, regions, and temporal contexts.

Following this fruitful line of scholarly discourse, we wish to expand and collectively rethink the “cumulative aesthetics” of the long late antiquity ranging from the 4th to the 9th century by examining material artefacts and literary texts which are, in one way or another, rooted in what came to be called the “jeweled style”. The aim of the conference is to offer a shared interdisciplinary platform to study late antique aesthetic developments across different media and territories (esp. late Roman and Merovingian Gaul, the British Isles, the Italian peninsula, Hispania, West Asia, and Northern Africa). By bringing together specialists from different disciplines, including, but not limited to, art history, aesthetics, classical philology, and archaeology, we would like to consider complementary methodological perspectives on the phenomenon of jeweled aesthetics in late antique art and beyond with a particular focus on the following topics:

• the birth of so-called mosaic windows composed of fragmented quarries of colored glass, a direct ancestor of medieval stained-glass windows;

• the image-fragmentation processes at work in parietal mosaics and opus sectile;

• the development and diffusion of objects made in the cloisonné style featuring precious gems, glass, and enamels;

• the tradition of illuminated manuscripts featuring letters formed from animal figures, human forms, or “aniconic” motifs, typical of Merovingian and Insular book painting but also existing in other contexts;

• the “material” work with language (incl. stylistic features, genre mixing, etc.) in late antique authors such as Optatian, Ausonius, Sidonius Apollinaris, Venantius Fortunatus, Aldhelm of Malmesbury, Hrabanus Maurus, and Sedulius Scotus;

• the phenomena of (not only) so-called Hisperic aesthetics, such as multi-mediality, conceptual ambiguity, and meta-textual/meta-visual self-referentiality, across different spheres of late antique/early medieval cultural production;

• the applicability of the concept of the “jeweled style” and fragmented aesthetics to the artistic cultures of West Asia (from late Sasanian to early Islamic) and the respective material production (e.g. silverware, mosaics, textiles, architectural decoration).

The conference will be held under the auspices of the project “Fragmented Images. Exploring the Origins of Stained-Glass Art” (GA23-05243S) funded by the Czech Science Foundation. Conference participants will have their travel expenses and accommodation costs fully or partially reimbursed.

Submit paper abstracts of about 300 words by 30 April 2024 to alberto.virdis@mail.muni.cz and marie.okacova@mail.muni.cz. Acceptance notification will be sent by 15 May 2024.

For a PDF of the call for papers, click here.

Conference papers will be considered for publication in the Convivium Supplementum series, indexed in WoS and Scopus and published jointly by Masaryk University and Brepols. The deadline for submitting complete papers is 31 March 2025, and the issue will be published by the end of 2025.

Organizers: Alberto Virdis, Marie Okáčová

CALL FOR PAPERS: Scaling Conques – The Frames of Reference in Understanding an 'Abbey in a Shell, Rome (10 October 2024), Abstracts & CVs Due 31 March 2024

CALL FOR PAPERS

Scaling Conques – The Frames of Reference in Understanding an 'Abbey in a Shell'

10 October 2024, Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max Planck Institute for Art History, Rome

Abstracts and CV Due 31 March 2024

This conclusive conference of the project “Conques in the Global World. Transferring Knowledge: From Material to Immaterial Heritage” aims at reviewing the question implicit in the projects main title: How is the knowledge we generate about Conques conditioned by the frames of references we apply and what is the right scale of observation to answer our research questions? How does the choice of scale predetermine the results? Locating medieval Conques within a network of abbeys characterized by administrative, political or artistic relations; understanding Conques’ treasury as a means to manifest claims connecting the abbey to the major centers of Christianity; studying the long durée of Conques’ heritage within the broader framework of 19th century national heritage building as well as that of the 20th century tourism industry; analyzing the architecture of the abbey as a complex organism whose transformations are conditioned by the period eye of each historical phase – these are just four examples of “Scaling Conques”.
In continuity with the last conference highlighting interdisciplinary perspectives we would like to invite participants to reflect on the design of their individual research in order to understand what it means to position Conques in the Global World as well as in a timeframe ranging from the central middle ages until today. The call for papers is directed at researchers both from within the project as well as beyond, in order to present research results and to reflect on this outcome in dialogue with the broader scientific community working on Conques.
The conference will be held at the Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max Planck Institute for Art History, Rome on 10 October 2024. The project will cover the costs of accommodation, and part of the travel expenses. The conference languages are English, French and Italian.
Researchers wishing to contribute are invited to upload a proposal including a title, an abstract (ca. 300 words) and a short CV (max. 2 pages) as a single PDF on the following platform until March 31, 2024: https://recruitment.biblhertz.it/position/13565974
Organized by Tanja Michalsky and Adrian Bremenkamp.
This conference is organized as a part of the project "Conques in the Global World. Transferring Knowledge: From Material to Immaterial Heritage" (H2020_ MSCA-RISE 101007770) https://conques.eu/

New Video! The ICMA Annual Lecture At the Courtauld: tannczen, helsen, kussen, vnd rawmen: Of Dancing and Dalliance in the Late Middle Ages, Nina Rowe, 7 February 2024

New Video!

The ICMA Annual Lecture At the Courtauld

tannczen, helsen, kussen, vnd rawmen: Of Dancing and Dalliance in the Late Middle Ages

Nina Rowe

Vernon Square Campus, Lecture Theatre 2, London

Wednesday 7 February 2024, 17:30 - 19:00

Nikolaus Türing, Relief with Morris Dancers, detail of the Goldenes Dachl, Innsbruck, ca. 1496-1500. (Photo: Stadtarchiv Innsbruck / Museum Goldenes Dachl)

For the link to watch the video, go the Courtauld Lecture section of the Lectures tab on the ICMA website.

In the German realm in the late Middle Ages, dancing was cause for both celebration and concern. Poets crafted animated accounts of boisterous roundelays welcoming winter and summer, municipal leaders designated festival days when citizens were permitted to whirl and shuffle in city squares, and churchmen admonished Christian youths to beware the seductions of frivolous young ladies on the dance floor. In short, literary and administrative texts evoke the appeal and hazards of dance, both as pastime and performance, in the southern part of the Holy Roman Empire, circa 1450 to 1500. Scholars of medieval art, however, have seldom probed the array of images showing couples spinning, performers leaping, and folks on the sidelines being enticed into the joyful fray. This lecture examines illuminations, wall paintings, prints, and sculptures that capture a variety of attitudes toward dancing in the regions of Bavaria and Austria in the second half of the fifteenth century. Clerics may have condemned dancing as a tool of the devil that irresistibly leads to unchastity and thereby damnation, but artistic evidence indicates that laypeople were willing to take their chances. In public images and small-scale works targeted to wealthy urban audiences, viewers could learn about the risks of dance, but also find encouragement to step out and join the party.

Nina Rowe is a Professor of Medieval Art History at Fordham University in New York City. Her books include The Jew, the Cathedral, and the Medieval City: Synagoga and Ecclesia in the Thirteenth Century (Cambridge UP, 2011) and The Illuminated World Chronicle: Tales from the Late Medieval City (Yale UP, 2020), as well as edited volumes, most recently: Whose Middle Ages?: Teachable Moments for an Ill-Used Past (Fordham UP, 2019). She has held fellowships from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the American Council of Learned Societies, and she served as President of the International Center of Medieval Art (ICMA), 2020-2023.

Organised by Dr Tom Nickson (The Courtauld) and Dr Jessica Barker (The Courtauld). 

This event was kindly supported by the International Center of Medieval Art (ICMA). Series made possible through the generosity of William M. Voelkle.

The SAHGB Annual Lecture: Architecture and Affect in the Middle Ages, Paul Binski, 14 March 2024, 18:30-20:20GMT/14:30-16:20ET, London (In-Person & Online)

The SAHGB Annual Lecture

Architecture and Affect in the Middle Ages

Professor Paul Binski

Thursday, 14 March 2024, 18:30-20:20GMT/14:30-16:20ET (In-Person & Online)

Church House, Great Smith Street, London, England, SW1 United Kingdom

Palam Cathedral

Much has been said in recent years about the emotional power of medieval religious art and its capacity to move audiences: think of the Pietà, the Crucifixion, the Virgin and Child.

But why has this interest not included the power of the buildings that sheltered and framed that art? There is no shortage of modern beliefs about the emotional power of architecture.  The great religious structures of the Romanesque and Gothic eras, along with their counterparts in the Byzantine and Islamic worlds, are for many among the most self- evidently moving creations of their, or any, age.  ‘Like a Bach fugue, a Gothic cathedral demands all our emotional and intellectual powers’, said Nikolaus Pevsner rather dauntingly in his widely-read An Outline of European Architecture.  Yet as objects of historical enquiry into the emotional power of architecture, such structures are neglected to a striking extent. 

Our speaker, Professor Paul Binski, promises an evening that will sharpen the focus on this neglected area, with skilled reflection and eloquence. Of his lecture, he gives a taste of what we can expect:

“My aim in delving into this relationship is not to promote the rights and wrongs of particular emotional responses to buildings, or to pretend that a study of such responses exhausts our critical understanding of architecture.  It is simply to propose a way of exploring the capacity that built structures had to move their beholders, and particularly the way that those experiences were communicated by what those people actually said.”

This will be a hybrid event. We warmly invite you to register for a place in person or as part of a remote audience. Please note that the lecture will be recorded and may be shared with SAHGB members.

There will be a reception after the lecture for those who join us at Church House, a historic Westminster site newly emerging from refurbishment following an extensive project. This provides an opportunity to meet the speaker and other guests over a drink before concluding the evening.

Paul Binski is Emeritus Professor of the History of Medieval Art at Cambridge University.  He is a Fellow of the British Academy and a Corresponding Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America, and was Slade Professor, Oxford University, 2006-7.   His publications include Westminster Abbey and the Plantagenets (1995), Becket’s Crown. Art and Imagination in Gothic England 1170-1300 (2004), Gothic Wonder: Art, Artifice and the Decorated Style 1290-1350 (2014) and most recently Gothic Sculpture (2019).  He now writes widely on general issues of aesthetics, rhetoric and the visual arts in the Middle Ages.

Remote Zoom places will be bookable until 3pm on the day of the event, but all should have registered in advance, as we will not be able to sell tickets on the door. The Annual Lecture is often one of the key annual events so we recommend booking early if you can.

Registration Form: LAST FEW PLACES NOW BOOKING

Giusto di Gand Reconsidered. An International Symposium Presenting New Research on his Attributed Oeuvre, In-Person (Rome & Urbino) & Online (05/13-15/2024), Registration Closes 03/31/2024

Giusto di Gand Reconsidered. An International Symposium Presenting New Research on his Attributed Oeuvre

Rome and Urbino as well as Streamed Online, 13-15 May 2024

Registration Closes 31 March 2024

On the occasion of the 550th anniversary of the Communion of the Apostles (Urbino, Palazzo Ducale), scholars from all over the world will convene in Rome and Urbino to reconsider the oeuvre attributed to its enigmatic Flemish painter, recorded as Giusto di Gand in Urbino and likely synonymous with the Ghent painter Joos van Wassenhove. Over the course of history the number of paintings attributed to this master has grown, to include works such as the magnificent Triptych of the Calvary (Ghent, Cathedral) and the Adoration of the Magi (New York, Metropolitan Museum). Recent research has offered new insights on their context of creation, dating and attribution. There is no better place to discuss new thoughts and theories about this painter than Urbino, the home of the painter’s principal work of reference made in 1473-1474. The attributed works will be studied in depth and discussed within the broader context of panel and manuscript painting in Ghent and of the arts at the ducal court Federico da Montefeltro in Urbino.

For more information and to register, click here. Places are limited.

Questions? giustodigand@gmail.com

Online Event: Index of Medieval Art Database Training Session, 19 March 2024, 10-11am EST (Zoom)

Online Event

Index of Medieval Art Database Training Session

19 March 2024, 10-11am EST (Zoom)

The bishop Ambrose of Milan writing in his study, Evangelarium of Santa Giustina (ca. 1523–1525), Dublin, Chester Beatty Library, MS. W 107, fol. 26v (Index system no. 205445)

We are pleased to announce that the Index will be holding a new online training session for anyone interested in learning more about the database! It will take place via Zoom on Tuesday, March 19, 2024 from 10:00 – 11:00 am EST.

This session, led by Index specialists Maria Alessia Rossi and Jessica Savage, will demonstrate how the database can be used with advanced search options, filters, and browse tools to locate works of medieval art. There will be a Q&A period at the end of the session, so please bring any questions you might have about your research!

Further information and registration can be found here: https://ima.princeton.edu/index_training/

Call for Papers: Unruly Iconographies? Examining the Unexpected in Medieval Art, Princeton University (9 November 2024), Due By 1 April 2024

Call for Papers

Unruly Iconographies? Examining the Unexpected in Medieval Art

Princeton University, New Jersey, 9 November 2024

Abstracts and Biography Due by 1 April 2024

Modern study of medieval iconography inevitably entails grappling with exceptions and the rupture of expectations. No sooner might scholars settle on an expected visual formula—Cain killing Abel with his farmer’s hoe, Saint George riding his snowy steed—than we’re pulled up by an image that flouts those rules. In the fifteenth-century Alba Bible, Cain sinks his teeth directly into his brother’s neck, arguably in reference to Jewish exegesis, while in some Byzantine and post-Byzantine icons of St. George, a small boy carrying a cup rides with the saint, inspiring a semi-serious modern tradition concerning George’s love of coffee. Other iconographic traditions seem to emerge out of the blue, as did the distinctive type known as the Virgin of Humility, which flowered suddenly in Mediterranean cities in the 1340s. Such unruly iconographies both intrigue and disappoint us: they engage yet disobey our expectations, and we are left to wonder why.

The culprit in such cases is less often a rogue medieval work of art than the rigidity of modern scholarship. Despite ample evidence to the contrary, the assumption that medieval iconographic norms were formulaic, authoritative, and above all universally obeyed still shapes the way modern scholars analyze the imagery they study. Even after the poststructuralist turn, art historians have continued to wrestle with expectations deeply embedded in the discipline: that medieval artists preferred to copy or turn to text rather than to innovate; that unprecedented iconography must be based on a lost original; that patrons or learned advisors must have directed artists’ work; that traditions translated smoothly across media, formats, and contexts; that all viewers read and understood the images they saw in the same way. Underlying many of these assumptions has been a wider one: that the ideas of greatest value must be tracked to artists rooted in cosmopolitan centers, rather than to artists and works of art that circulated freely throughout their peripheries.

The conference “Unruly Iconographies? Examining the Unexpected in Medieval Art” aims to open a new conversation about medieval images that don’t follow the rules. We call for papers, drawn from any area of the medieval world broadly defined, that ask both speakers and audience to rethink the unspoken paradigms that have decided which iconographic motifs are canonical and which are “singular,” “exceptional,” or even “mistakes.” At the broadest level, we seek to problematize the binaries on which these paradigms were founded: tradition versus invention, canon versus exception, and center versus periphery. At a more specific one, we invite deeply researched case studies whose particularities can lead scholars to a more effective, contextually sensitive, and historically informed approach to the study of images and image-making in the Middle Ages.

“Unruly Iconographies?” will take place on November 9, 2024 at the Index of Medieval Art at Princeton University, following the Weitzmann Lecture by Dr. Brigitte Buettner, held on November 8 and hosted by Princeton’s Department of Art & Archaeology. It also will constitute the first of two internationally linked events, the second of which will be a site-based seminar at the Center for the Art and Architectural History of Port Cities “La Capraia” in Naples in June 2025. Whereas the Index conference will consider broadly disciplinary questions about methodology, theory, and models, the Naples conference, hoped to be the first of several site-based conferences of this kind, takes southern Italy as a laboratory for exploring the relationships between iconography and place within a geographically expanded Middle Ages, focusing on the potentials and limits of the study of iconography in southern Italy. Details about this conference will be available in Summer 2024.

Submissions for the Princeton-based conference are invited by April 1, 2024. They should include a one-page abstract and c.v. and be sent to fionab@princeton.edu. Travel and hotel costs for the eight selected speakers will be covered by the Index. Speakers will be informed of their selection no later than May 1, 2024.

For more information, https://ima.princeton.edu/2024/02/15/call-for-papers-unruly-iconographies-examining-the-unexpected-in-medieval-art/