Keynote for Index of Medieval Art Conference: Art as Proof: Statues and High Relief as Ideological Statements at the Time of the Image Controversy, c.750–850?, Francesca Dell’Acqua, 5 Dec. 2025 5-6PM

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

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

Francesca Dell’Acqua

Università di Salerno – DISPAC

Princeton University, Princeton, NJ

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

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

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

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

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

Save the Date: Index of Medieval Art Conference, Art and Proof in the Ninth Century, 6 December 2025

Save the Date

Index of Medieval Art conference

Art and Proof in the Ninth Century

6 December 2025

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

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

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

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

Scheduled speakers

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

Andrea Achi, Associate Curator, Metropolitan Museum of Art

Nourane Ben Azzouna, Associate Curator, Metropolitan Museum of Art

Anouk Busset, Lecturer, Université de Lausanne                   

Zsuzsanna Gulacsi, Professor, Northern Arizona University

Rachel Saunders, Assistant Professor, Princeton University

Alexei Sivertsev, Professor, DePaul University

Erik Thunø, Professor, Rutgers University                     

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

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

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

Department of Art & Archaeology Lecture Series: Like the Dawn of Creation: Byzantine Fragments in the Queer Imagination, Roland Betancourt, at Princeton University, 2 October 2025 4:30-6:00 PM

Department of Art & Archaeology Lecture Series

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

Roland Betancourt

University of California, Irvine

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

East Pyne Building 010, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ

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

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

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

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

Online Lecture: Ancient India: sacred stone, British Museum, 18 Sept. 2025, 12:30-13:30 ET (17:30-1830 BST)

Online Lecture

British Museum

Ancient India
sacred stone

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

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

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

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

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

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

Exhibition: Ancient India: Living Traditions, British Museum, 22 May - 19 Oct. 2025

Exhibition

Ancient India
living traditions

British Museum

22 May – 19 October 2025

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Exhibition

Knights

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

May 22nd, 2025 — October 19th, 2025

An exceptional collection introducing you to the world of chivalry

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

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

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

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

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

A unique experiential zone

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

A famous copy of the Mona Lisa at the Museum!

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

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

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

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

Upcoming Exhibition

Medieval | Renaissance: A Dialogue on Early Italian Painting

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

September 2, 2025–December 7, 2025

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ConFerence

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

October 17 & 18, 2025

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

In-Person & Online

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

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

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

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

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

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

Call for Papers for International Conference: 'Instrumenta altaris': Ritual Artefacts and Their Images for Medieval Liturgy, Madrid (20-22 Jan. 2026), Due 1 Oct. 2025

Call for Papers

CONGRESO INTERNACIONAL

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

Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Campus de Madrid

20-22 January 2026

Quintana Organized by Project Thesauri Rituum

Due 1 October 2025

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

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

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

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

Key Dates Summary

Deadline for presentation proposal submissions: October 1, 2025

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

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

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

Call for Applications

UCLA CMRS Center for Early Global Studies

John W. Baldwin Post-Doctoral Fellowship

Due 3 November 2025

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

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

Call for Papers: Performing Magic in the Pre-Modern North (13-14 Nov. 2025, Zoom), Due by 1 Sept. 2025

Call for Papers

Fifth Conference

Performing Magic in the Pre-Modern North

13-14 November 2025, Zoom

Due by 1 September 2025

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

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

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

• Household and agricultural magic, charms, and protective rites

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

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

• The transmission and evolution of folk magical knowledge across generations

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

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

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

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

Call for Papers: The Living Goddess Traditions, Journal of Bengali Studies Vol 8 No 1, Due by 5 October 2025

Call for Papers

Journal of Bengali Studies Vol 8 No 1

The Living Goddess Traditions

Due by 05 October 2025

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

The Living Goddess Traditions

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Goddess and Tantra.

• The Folk Goddess Cults: From antiquity to contemporaneity.

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

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

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

• Pala Period Goddess Vajrayoginī and the contemporary Goddess Chinnamastā.

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

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

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

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

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

• Śākta Rāsa (of Nabadwip and elsewhere).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Editor: Dr Rituparna Koley

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

Call for Papers For a Session: Stilled Lives: Living Materials and their Architectural Afterlives in Premodern Buildings, European Architectural History Network Conference, Due 12 Sept. 2025

Call for Papers For a Session

9th Biennial Conference of the European Architectural History Network Conference

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

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

Due 12 September 2025

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

• Cosmologies, ontologies, and ecologies underlying material choices;

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

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

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

Contact Information:

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

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

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

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

Call for Applications for Doctoral Fellowships: Dr. Günther Findel-Stiftung / Rolf und Ursula Schneider-Stiftung, Due 1 October 2025

Call for Applications for Doctoral Fellowships

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

Due 1 October 2025

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

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

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

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

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

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

For more information visit, https://www.hab.de/en/doctoral-and-young-scholars-fellowships/

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

Conference

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

24-26 October, 2025

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

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

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

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

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

Call for Applications: Prize for Research on South Netherlandish Art 1400-1800, Due 1 September 2025

Call for Applications

Prize for Research on South Netherlandish Art 1400-1800

Due 1 September 2025

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

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

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

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

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

Deadline for applications: Monday 1st September 2025

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

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

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

Conference

Fachtage Kloster Kultur

Zwischen Himmel und Erde – Musik im Kloster

 10–13 September 2025, Stiftsbibliothek St. Gallen

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

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

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

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

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

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

Upcoming Exhibition

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

Musée de Cluny, Paris, France

Du 7 octobre 2025 au 11 janvier 2026

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

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

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

Tarif(s) :

• Droit d'entrée plein tarif : 12€

• Droit d'entrée tarif réduit : 10€

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

Society for Church Archaeology Annual Conference 2025: Church Archaeology in 2025, Lincoln, UK 11-12 October 2025

Society for Church Archaeology Annual Conference 2025

Church Archaeology in 2025

11-12 October 2025

Lincoln, Barbican Creative Hub Saturday 11th October 2025

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

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

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

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

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

To make a booking:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Call for Papers for Virtual Conference: Confound the Time: Reception in Medieval & Early Modern Studies, 24-25 January 2026, Due 25 October 2025

Call for Papers

Virtual Conference

Confound the Time: Reception in Medieval & Early Modern Studies

24-25 January 2026

Due 25 October 2025

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

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

Topics for individual papers may include:

• Medieval and early modern reception of classical mythology/culture

• Early modern reception of medieval literature/culture

• The Pre-Raphaelites and other neo-medievalist movements

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

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

• Manuscript Studies/Book History

• Time/The Times

• Gender and Sexuality

• Nationalism and Race

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

Paper submissions should include:

• An abstract of approximately 250 words

• A 2-3 sentence third-person bio

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

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