Call for Contributions for Edited Volume: The Medieval in Museums, Due by 3 Nov. 2025, 5 pm GMT/12 pm ET

Call for Contributions for Edited Volume

The Medieval in Museums

Due by 3 November 2025, 5 pm GMT/12 pm ET

Choir stall originally from Burs Church, Swedish History Museum, https://samlingar.shm.se/media/4CB28EE1-6F86-412D-92D7-67462316F1AA

We invite short abstracts (100-200 words) in response to our call for chapters for an edited volume, ‘The Medieval in Museums’.

“The Medieval in Museums” seeks to demonstrate the cultural, aesthetic, political and historical stakes and effects of how medieval objects, texts, and histories are presented in museums. Our interpretation of ‘museum’ is broad, encompassing a range of ‘memory institutions’ including galleries, libraries, archives, and museums, and heritage sites both independently and government managed. We invite contributions which address the presentation of the medieval in physical galleries, landscapes, or other visitor-facing spaces in exhibitions and events programming; in behind-the-scenes archive and collections stores; and analogue or digital database or catalogue systems. Similarly, ‘the ‘medieval’ here encompasses Late Antiquity to the Late Medieval, as a temporal marker which shifts according to geo-spatial-political realities across a ‘global Middle Ages’.

We welcome traditional chapters, and will also consider dialogues, interviews, or other creative-critical text-based formats. Contributions may be from individual authors or two or more co-authors.

Full CfP available via the following link bit.ly/CfPMiM

Please send abstracts by 5pm GMT on Monday 3 November to Fran Allfrey (University of York) and Maia Blumberg (QMUL) fran.allfrey@york.ac.uk ; m.blumberg@qmul.ac.uk. Please be in touch with us to discuss your idea more informally should you wish.

New Publication! Proceedings of the Study Day: La sella perduta. L'oreficeria tardoantica a Ravenna

New Publication

Proceedings of the Study Day

La sella perduta. L'oreficeria tardoantica a Ravenna

The Study Day organised by the National Museums of Ravenna in 2024, 100 years after the theft of the so-called “Corazza di Teodorico”, was attended by various Italian and foreign experts. This volume publishes the contributions, which explore the themes of the discovery of the precious object in 1854 and its theft in 1924. The significance of this superb cloisonné artefact, now referred to in specialist literature as the ‘saddle of Ravenna’, was analysed in essays on the techniques and typology of the work and on the study of the historical context and craftsmanship, materials and visual culture of Ravenna in Late Antiquity. The book offers an enrichment of knowledge of cultural heritage and can provide a wide and varied audience with the latest advances in research.

Call for Applications for Student Scholarships: Boundaries and Encounters in Medieval Art and Architecture, BAA Conference, Oxford (12-14 Dec. 2025), Due by 16 Oct. 2025

Call for Applications for Student Scholarships

British Archaeology Association

Boundaries and Encounters in Medieval Art and Architecture: A Conference in Memory of John McNeill

Rewley House, Department for Continuing Education, University of Oxford

Friday 12 December to Sunday 14 December 2025

Due by 16 October 2025

A limited number of scholarships for students are available to help them cover the cost of the conference. Please apply by 16th October, 2025 attaching a short CV along with the name and contact details of one referee. Applications should be sent to: rplant62@hotmail.com.

For more information on the event, visit the ICMA post about the conference.

BAA Conference: Boundaries and Encounters in Medieval Art and Architecture: A Conference in Memory of John McNeill, University of Oxford, 12-14 Dec. 2025

Conference

British Archaeology Association

Boundaries and Encounters in Medieval Art and Architecture: A Conference in Memory of John McNeill

Rewley House, Department for Continuing Education, University of Oxford

Friday 12 December to Sunday 14 December 2025

In memory of our much-missed friend and inspiration, The British Archaeological Association will be holding a  conference to celebrate our former secretary on 12-14 December 2025.  

The conference opens for registration at 12.30pm on Friday 12 December at Rewley House, 1 Wellington Square, Oxford  OX1 2JA. The President’s Welcome and Introduction will be at 2.00pm followed by the first lecture at 2.15pm. Tea &  coffee refreshments will be served during the lectures and a buffet lunch will be provided on Saturday and Sunday in addition to dinner on two evenings. The conference will also include an evening reception.  

Participants will need to arrange their own travel and accommodation. Oxford is well provided with hotels and B&Bs,  and further information will be supplied by the conference organisers along with the booking form. These will be sent out later this month. 

Speakers will include:

David Robinson, Augustinian Claustral Buildings

Eric Fernie, John McNeill and the Study of the Romanesque

Julian Luxford, The Black Book of the Exchequer

Nicola Coldstream, ‘Sweet Thames run Softly’: London Bridge and the Building of St Stephen’s Chapel, Westminster’

Richard Halsey , ‘Few are run of the mill’, the late C12th capitals of Oxford Cathedral

Lloyd De Beer, Solomon in the Crypt: Romanesque Reuse and Gothic Intervention at Canterbury Cathedral

Fernando Gutiérrez Baños, A Painted Castilian Tabernacle-Altarpiece from the 14th Century now in the Wellcome Collection

Alexandrina Buchanan, The Secretaries of the BAA

Roisin Astell, Gendered Boundaries: Women as Antithesis and Exemplar in an early-fourteenth-century English Illuminated Manuscripts

Costanza Beltrami, Unexpected Connections: Making Sense of Spanish Gothic in 19th-Century London and Beyond.

Arturo Carlo Quintavalle, Willigelmo and Roman Art.

Tom Nickson, Batalha and Las Huelgas: Forms and Functions in Cistercian Cloisters in Iberia

Sally Dormer, Thoughts on Some Fragments of Romanesque Sculpture in Abbotsbury, Dorset

Rosa Bacile, The Use of Spolia in the Abbey of SS Trinita’, Venosa, 11th-12th Centuries

Richard Gem, Encountering St Benedict: his Tomb and Shrine at Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire

Gerhardt Lutz, A Crucifixus Dolorosus in the Cleveland Museum of Art and Art Around 1300.

John Munns, How Norman is the Norman Chapel in Durham Castle?

Neil Stratford, Vézelay, Avallon et al.

Alison Perchuk, California Romanesque

Marcello Angheben, Romanesque images and Affective Piety

Sandy Heslop, Celebrating the Resurrection in Medieval Norwich

Jordi Camps, The sculptural program of the first construction phases of the Tarragona Cathedral: Contexts, tendencies and repertoires.

John Goodall, The North Transept Facade of Merton College Oxford

Øystein Ekroll, Corbels and Chess pieces. A Contribution to the Discussion on the Origin of the Lewis Chess Pieces.

Veronica Abenza, The Western Reception of Transcultural Objects: a Matter of Reuse or Recycling

Zoe Opacic and Alexandra Gajewski, Prague and Avignon

Conference Convenor: Richard Plant; Conference Secretary: Kate Milburn & Assistant Secretary: Ann Hignell.

Scholarships

A limited number of scholarships for students are available to help them cover the cost of the conference. Please apply by 16th October, 2025 attaching a short CV along with the name and contact details of one referee. Applications should be sent to: rplant62@hotmail.com. Any general enquiries about the conference should be sent to conferences@thebaa.org. 

This conference has been made possible by a generous donation from Tim and Geli Harris to whom the Association is very grateful.

For more information, visit https://thebaa.org/events/boundaries-and-encounters-in-medieval-art-and-architecture-a-conference-in-memory-of-john-mcneill/

Lecture: Episcopal display and the English crozier around the time of the Norman Conquest, Sophie Kelly, at The Courtauld, London, 22 Oct. 2025 17:30-19:00GMT

LEcture

Episcopal display and the English crozier around the time of the Norman Conquest

Dr Sophie Kelly

Vernon Square Campus, Lecture Theatre 2, The Courtauld, London

22 Oct 2025, 17:30 - 19:00 GMT

Beverley Crozier, England, mid-11th century. Limerick, Hunt Museum, acc. no. BM 002.

Croziers, the sceptre-like staffs granted to bishops, abbots, and abbesses across Europe as a sign of authority, are one of the most distinctive symbols of ecclesiastical office. In England in the decades either side of the Conquest, their style and function underwent a fundamental change. ‘T-shaped’ or tau-crosses were gradually replaced by the crook-like crozier with its distinctive swirling head, a shift that occurred alongside changes to their role in the ecclesiastical and secular worlds. Whether processed at the heart of liturgical ceremonies or wielded as signs of ecclesial power in bitter disputes between bishops and kings, croziers were increasingly becoming a powerful visual indication of status and episcopal display.

This paper focuses on an important witness to these art-historical, political, and liturgical changes. The so-called Beverley Crozier, now in the Hunt Museum in Limerick, has tentatively been associated with the mid-eleventh century Archbishop of York, Ealdred, on account of the unusual pair of scenes carved on either side of its volute, one of which depicts the healing of a young boy by St John of Beverley. Ealdred was known to have been particularly devoted to John of Beverley, but his relationship to this crozier, and its significance in the context of Ealdred’s other artistic and literary commissions, has not been teased out in depth. Moreover, hitherto unnoticed by art historians is the unusualness of this crozier’s form. This is one of – if not the – earliest surviving crozier from England to be carved with a circular head, rather than the cross-shaped Tau-croziers favoured in pre-Conquest England.

Drawing on evidence for Ealdred’s connections with the Holy Roman Empire, where he may have seen this new crozier design, and reflecting of the significance of its form and imagery in the context of the political turmoil of his career, this paper offers a new reading of the little-known Beverley Crozier, revealing its importance in understanding broader relationships between status, symbols, and material culture in pre- and post- Conquest England.

Dr Sophie Kelly is a Lecturer in Visual Studies and Cultural Heritage in the Department of History of Art at the University of Bristol. Her forthcoming book Imagining the Unimaginable: The Trinity in Medieval England draws on her PhD research, which was supervised by Prof Alixe Bovey and Dr Emily Guerry. Prior to her current role, Sophie was Project Curator on the 2021 exhibition Thomas Becket: Murder and the Making of a Saint at the British Museum. She has also held curatorial roles at Canterbury Cathedral and the Royal Collection Trust. Sophie’s current research project focuses on the making and meaning of medieval croziers, the sumptuous and highly decorated staffs owned by bishops, abbots and abbesses across medieval Europe.

Organised by Dr Jessica Barker, Senior Lecturer in Medieval Art History, and Professor Alixe Bovey, Professor of Medieval Art History, The Courtauld, as part of the Medieval Work-in-Progress Series. This series is generously supported by Sam Fogg.

To book tickets and for more information, visit https://courtauld.ac.uk/whats-on/episcopal-display-and-the-english-crozier-around-the-time-of-the-norman-conquest/

York Medieval Lecture: Video Games & the Work of Medieval Art History, Glaire Anderson, 12 Nov. 2025 12:30-2:00PM ET/5:30-7:00PM GMT

York Medieval Lecture

Video Games & the Work of Medieval Art History: Possibilities for Public Impact Through Industry Collaborations

Dr Glaire Anderson (The University of Edinburgh)

Wednesday 12 November 2025, 5.30 PM to 7.00 PM GMT/ 12.30 PM to 2.00 PM ET

The lecture will be followed by a wine reception.

To attend in person, please register via Eventbrite. 
To attend online, please register via Zoom.

This lecture will be recorded, which we hope to upload to the Centre for Medieval Studies Youtube Channel shortly after the lecture.

Call for Papers: Animal Representation in the Global Middle Ages, Association for Art History 2026 Annual Conference, Cambridge (8-10 Apr. 2026), Due by 2 Nov. 2025

Call for Papers for Session

Animal Representation in the Global Middle Ages: Bridging the Natural and Social Worlds

Association for Art History 2026 Annual Conference

University of Cambridge, 8–10 April 2026

Due by Sunday 2 November 2025

Animals occupied a multivalent space in the medieval world. As part of nature, they were embedded in ecological systems, yet they were also abstracted into symbols of power, religious allegory, and medicinal knowledge—ultimately serving as a nexus between human societies and the natural environment. This panel explores the representation of animals across the global Middle Ages (c. 500–1500 CE), examining how diverse cultures imbued fauna with meaning through their representation. Moving beyond Eurocentric frameworks, we investigate how animal representations functioned as dynamic sites of meaning-making, from the meticulously rendered beasts in Islamic manuscripts, the symbolic menageries of Chinese paintings and prints, to the creatures that materialized along the Afro-Eurasian trade routes.

How did artists and patrons deploy animal iconography to articulate political authority, spiritual ideologies, or ecological knowledge? In what ways did the circulation of creatures, whether real or imagined, confer social prestige or negotiate cultural encounters? How did depictions of animals reflect or shape premodern environmental consciousness? Adopting a global perspective, we seek to illuminate the interconnectedness of medieval visual cultures while challenging anthropocentric narratives in art history. Of particular interest are studies that demonstrate how animals, as living beings and symbolic constructs, actively participated in shaping artistic traditions across regions. We welcome submissions focusing on understudied geographies and encourage interdisciplinary approaches bridging art history and environmental humanities. Ultimately, this panel aims to reconsider the global Middle Ages through its creaturely representations, revealing how such species—real, mythical, and metamorphic—fundamentally shaped medieval visual knowledge.

Session format

The session will include between three and eight 20-minute research papers, each followed by 5 minutes for questions.

Submit your Paper via this form. Please download, complete and send it directly to the Session Convenor(s) below by Sunday 2 November 2025:

Yuxi Pan, SOAS University of London, 714232@soas.ac.uk

For more information, visit https://forarthistory.org.uk/animal-representation-in-the-global-middle-ages-bridging-the-natural-and-social-worlds/

Call for Papers: Life and Landscape: Research Showcase, At University of Nottingham (13 June 2026), Due 1 Dec. 2025

Call for Papers

LIFE AND LANDSCAPE: RESEARCH SHOWCASE

UNIVERSITY OF NOTTINGHAM, INSTITUTE FOR NAME-STUDIES & INSTITUTE FOR MEDIEVAL RESEARCH

SATURDAY, 13 JUNE 2026

Due MONDAY 1 DECEMBER 2025

A day to celebrate the current exciting research of Early Career Researchers (postgraduate, post-doc, fixed-contract) at the University of Nottingham and beyond, on a fascinating mix of topics including Name-Studies, Medieval Studies, History, and English.

This Call For Papers seeks to offer an opportunity for ECRs to share their research with fellow-students and academics, and with the public outside the academic sphere. It is a great chance to engage with a diverse range of topics, to improve public-speaking skills and to network with people beyond our own institutions. We hope to focus on the benefits of knowledge exchange and public outreach, while promoting the work of up-and-coming researchers.

Papers are welcome from all ECRs on a broad variety of humanities and arts-based topics, focusing on but not limited to Name-Studies, Medieval Studies, History, English Language and Literature, Languages, and Linguistics.

TOPIC IDEAS COULD INCLUDE:

• Analysis of place-names or personal

• Political, social or cultural history
  names

• Medieval languages and texts

• Historical dreams, emotions, or philosophies

• Linguistic changes

• Language Interactions

• Religion, theology and superstition

• Migration and travel

• Material culture

• Literary analysis and critique

• Ecocriticism/Blue Ecology

• Multilingualism

ABSTRACT SUBMISSION

Papers are requested to be around 12-15 minutes long, with further time for questions.

Unfortunately, we cannot fund any travel costs for attendees, but the registration fee will be waived for accepted speakers.

Please submit an abstract of c. 250 words, a short bio (c. 50-100 words), and your details (name; institution & course (if applicable); email address) to rachel.maloney.@nottingham.ac.uk

Call for Papers: Princeton Symposium on Athonite Collections, 25-26 Sept. 2026, Due by 20 Dec. 2025

Call for Papers

Princeton Symposium on Athonite Collections

25-26 September 2026

Due by 20 December 2025

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Call for Papers: Carrying Across: Translation as Material Practice in the Pre/Early Modern World, Association for Art History Annual Conference, Cambridge (8-10 Apr. 2026), Due by 2 Nov. 2025

Call for Papers for Session

Carrying Across: Translation as Material Practice in the Pre/Early Modern World

Association for Art History 2026 Annual Conference

University of Cambridge, 8–10 April 2026

Due by 2 November 2025

This session explores how portable things, such as reliquaries, textiles, books, and tools, are objects of translation. A coconut shell from Ceylon, joined to a Fatimid rock-crystal ewer and refashioned as a Christian reliquary in thirteenth-century Münster, invites us to rethink the concept of ‘translation’ as an act of transgressing linguistic, sociocultural, geospatial, and temporal boundaries. Taking its etymological root, the Latin translatio (‘to carry across’), as our point of departure, we ask how materials move across contexts. We explore how they mediate intercultural traffic, urging a reconceptualisation of translation not as a linguistic but also a material act. Shifting focus from the moment and place of an object’s creation to the networks through which it has travelled, we seek to illuminate pre- and early modern circuits of local and global exchange. Building on scholarship on material agency by Beate Fricke, Finbarr Barry Flood, Tim Ingold, and others, we invite conference papers that explore questions such as: How can translating (e.g., mounting, re-cutting, over-painting) be understood as a form of making? How do deliberate misuses, repairs, or forgeries reveal contested meanings? In what ways do pre-/early modern artefacts act as ‘temporal hinges,’ enabling dialogue between past, present, and future? We welcome papers that consider materials and makers that have been underrepresented in existing scholarship and that stimulate a productive methodological conversation between art history and other adjacent disciplines, including translation studies, cultural heritage preservation studies, and material anthropology.

Abstracts (max. 250 words) should be submitted using the 2026 Paper Proposal Form to the convenors, Yupeng Wu (yupeng.wu@yale.edu) and Se Jin Park (sejin.park@yale.edu), by 2 November 2025.

Paper formats
The majority of AAH Sessions are made up of between three and eight 20-minute research papers, each followed by 5 minutes for questions. The minimum number of papers per session is three, and eight is the maximum number of papers per session. Sessions run for a half or full day only.

For more information or questions, please get in touch with the Session Convenors.

Please also visit https://forarthistory.org.uk/carrying-across-translation-as-material-practice-in-the-pre-early-modern-world/

Call for Applications: Assistant Professor in Medieval European Art and Architectural History in the World, Brown University, Reviewing of Applications Begins 15 Nov. 2025

Call for Applications

Assistant Professor in Medieval European Art and Architectural History in the World

Brown University

Reviewing of Applications Begins 15 November 2025

Position Description

The Department of the History of Art and Architecture at Brown University seeks applicants at the rank of Assistant Professor (tenure-track) whose scholarship focuses on histories of medieval (ca. 500s-1400s) European art and architecture in the world. We are interested in candidates whose work explores developments in Europe, and we consider scholarship that examines Europe’s relationship and connections to the wider world as a highly desirable additional area of investigation. We are especially interested in scholars who combine art or architectural historical and archaeological expertise. The position start date is July 1, 2026.

Qualifications

Applicants must have a doctorate in art or architectural history in hand by July 1, 2026. The successful candidate will demonstrate outstanding scholarly potential, as well as a commitment to classroom teaching of introductory as well as specialized courses at the undergraduate and graduate levels. They are expected to encourage cross-disciplinary collaborations through innovative teaching, research and mentoring, helping to make connections with students and faculty across the university.

Application Instructions

Candidates should provide a cover letter, a current curriculum vitae, a research statement, a teaching statement, a writing sample (ca. 30 pages) and the names and contacts of three recommenders (references will only be contacted for candidates under serious consideration). Applicants should state in their cover letter how they would contribute to the research and/or teaching missions of our diverse and inclusive university community. Please submit all materials online via Interfolio: apply.interfolio.com/174923 Review of applications will begin on November 15, 2025. The search will remain open until filled or closed.

Equal Employment Opportunity Statement

Brown University provides equal opportunity and prohibits discrimination, harassment and retaliation based upon a person’s race, color, religion, sex, age, national or ethnic origin, disability, veteran status, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, or any other characteristic protected under applicable law, in the administration of its policies, programs, and activities. The University recognizes and rewards individuals on the basis of qualifications and performance. The University maintains certain affirmative action programs in compliance with applicable law.

For more information, visit https://hiaa.brown.edu/news/2025-10-06/hiaa-faculty-position-opening

Boston University's First Annual Guild Symposium: Recentering the Periphery, Boston University, 17 Oct. 2025 9AM-5PM

Boston University's First Annual Guild Symposium

Recentering the Periphery

October 17, 20205

9:00 AM - 4:00 pm 

Howard Thurman Center, 808 Comm Ave FLR205

This symposium will feature graduate students from across the Boston area presenting papers on the theme “Recentering the Periphery” in Medieval and Early Modern Studies.

Call for Papers: Shaping the Word: the Form and Use of Biblical Manuscripts in the Early Medieval West, Durham University (2-5 July 2026), Due 17 Nov. 2025

Call for Papers

Shaping the Word: the Form and Use of Biblical Manuscripts in the Early Medieval West

Durham University, 2-5 July 2026

Due 17 November 2025

St. Matthew, Lindisfarne Gospels, BL Cotton MS Nero D IV, f.25v

In the second half of the first millennium, the Christian scriptures were produced, circulated, and put to use in a diverse range of forms and contexts. A manuscript may accommodate a single biblical text (the psalter, a gospel, the Apocalypse), a collection of texts (the Hexateuch, the fourfold gospel), or, rarely, a complete "New Testament" or "Bible" in the familiar modern sense. The distinctiveness of a manuscript is determined by its content and textual affiliation, its palaeographical and codicological characteristics, and its paratextual features - from illustrations of biblical narratives, author portraits, and illuminated lettering to canon tables, capitula, prefatory materials, and glosses. Once in circulation, a manuscript's contexts of use may include liturgical reading and preaching, meditation and mission, education and scholarship, gift-giving and display. Different uses correspond to different users with distinct and perhaps conflicting priorities and goals. Production and uses) may occur at the same site or at far distant times and places.

This conference aims to explore topics related to both the physical presentation and the use of scriptural manuscripts produced in the Early Medieval period (c. 500-1000 CE).

We welcome paper proposals from scholars working in all areas of this field, including PhD students. Whatever the specific topic, priority may be given to papers that also relate it to the wider focus of the conference on both "form" (or "production") and "use".

We hope to be able to cover presenters' full conference costs with the exception of travel.

Titles and Abstracts of proposed papers should be submitted to Lauren Randall (lauren.m.randall@durham.ac.uk), copied to Francis Watson (francis.watson@durham.ac.uk), no later than Monday 17 November. Abstracts should not exceed 150 words. Our current draft schedule can accommodate up to fourteen 45 minute sessions, with a maximum of 25 minutes for the presentation in order to allow substantial time for discussion. There will also be several keynote papers or presentations. Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions about this event!

For information, the context of this event is our sub-project "Text, Format, and Reader", focused primarily on Codex Amiatinus and funded by the Glasgow-based "Paratexts Seeking Understanding" project (Templeton Religion Trust). We are grateful to our Glasgow colleagues for their support.

ICMA members invited to keynote by Anne Derbes and Amy Neff at the Andrew Ladis Memorial Trecento Conference, Thursday 23 October 2025. Register now!

ICMA at the Andrew Ladis Memorial Trecento Conference
‘Notice every detail’: A Visual Narrative of the Passion and its Clarissan Audience
Keynote by Anne Derbes and Amy Neff
Sponsored by the ICMA

Thursday 23 October 2025 at 5:30pm
Register to attend online HERE
Instructions below to attend in person (Athens, GA)

ICMA members are invited to attend the keynote lecture for the Andrew Ladis Memorial Trecento Conference to be held in Athens, GA. The conference will be hybrid and ICMA members are welcome to attend online or in person.

‘Notice every detail’: A Visual Narrative of the Passion and its Clarissan Audience will be presented Thursday 23 October 2025 at 5:30 pm – 6:30 pm (EDT) by Anne Derbes (Hood College, Maryland) and Amy Neff (University of Tennessee, Knoxville).

Abstract:
The author of the Meditations on the Life of Christ, addressing a Clarissan nun, opens the meditation at Matins with this instruction: “Follow … from the beginning of the passion to the end…. Notice every detail as if you were present.” In our talk, we take that directive to heart. Our focus is a monumental, early-fourteenth-century, multi-scene panel painting of the passion from the convent of Santa Clara, Palma de Mallorca. The panel was probably intended for the nuns’ choir, the liturgical and devotional center of Clarissan life. While it has been widely and probably correctly ascribed to an itinerant Italian painter, close examination of the panel shows, first, that he collaborated with a Catalan artisan and, second, that the painter had spent considerable time in the Kingdom of Serbia before making his way to Mallorca. However, despite his careful emulation of Serbian wall paintings, at times he disregarded Palaeologan types and instead chose compositions that were popular in Italy and particularly relevant for the Poor Clares’ identity and devotional lives. The panel also would have spoken to the Palma Clares more specifically, for its narrative choices and certain details reveal an unusually pronounced antisemitism corresponding to local concerns.  In the second decade of the century, during the tenure of Abbess Blanca de Vilanova, the nuns waged a systematic campaign to drive Jews from the area. Our talk concludes by considering the agency of the nuns, the panel’s possible patrons, and the role of the Franciscan order in the mobility of people and images in the late medieval Mediterranean.

The Conference and keynote registration links:
The biennial Andrew Ladis Memorial Trecento Conference is based upon the conferences once hosted by our esteemed colleague, Andrew Ladis, at the University of Georgia, Athens. It is designed as a small, workshop-like gathering that offers a unique opportunity for advanced students, emerging and advanced scholars of fourteenth-century Italian art to network, collaborate, and share their research.

The Proceedings (revised conference papers) are published in the Trecento Forum series by Brepols Press.

The 2025 conference will be held at the Georgia Museum of Art in Athens, GA, and will be fully hybrid. All ICMA members are warmly invited to attend the keynote lecture, which is partly sponsored by the ICMA, and the full conference, either online or in person. [Note: online participation is free while in-person attendees are asked to pay a small fee. Although in-person registration may be closed, anyone wishing to attend can email jsteinhoff@uh.edu]

The full conference program and registration links are available at https://georgiamuseum.org/trecento/

due 19 December 2025: CALL FOR PAPERS / APPEL À COMMUNICATION: 43rd Canadian Conference of Medieval Art Historians / 43e colloque canadien des historiens de l’art médiéval

CCMAH / CCHAM

CALL FOR PAPERS / APPEL À COMMUNICATION

The 43rd Canadian Conference of Medieval Art Historians will be co-hosted by the University of Toronto and the Art Gallery of Ontario on March 27–28, 2026. Papers are invited on any topic related to the art, architecture, and visual/material culture of the Middle Ages, broadly defined, or its post-medieval revivals. Papers may be delivered in English or French. Please submit a short abstract (max. 250 words) and a one-page c.v. to ccmah2026toronto@gmail.com by December 19, 2025. Scholars at every stage of their careers are encouraged to submit proposals. There may be funding available for graduate-student travel and accommodations.

L’Université de Toronto e le Musée des beaux-arts de l’Ontario accueilleront conjointement le 43e colloque canadien des historiens de l’art médiéval qui se tiendra à Toronto les 27 e 28 mars 2026. Les communications portant sur tout sujet relatif à l’art, à l’architecture et à la culture visuelle/matérielle du Moyen Âge, au sens large, ou à ses renaissances postmédiévales seront bienvenues, et peuvent être présentées en anglais ou en français. Veuillez soumettre un bref résumé de votre communication (250 mots maximum) et un c.v. d’une page à ccmah2026toronto@gmail.com avant le 19 décembre 2025. Les chercheurs/chercheuses à tous les stades de leur carrière académique sont encouragé(e)s à participer. Des fonds pourraient être disponible pour les frais de déplacement et d’hébergement des étudiant(e)s diplômé(e)s.

Boston University HAA Guest Lecture featuring ICMA Member: Higher Ground: Medieval Foundations and the Formation of Heathen Prehistory, Gregory Bryda, at Boston University, 23 Oct. 2025, 6:00PM

Boston University HAA Guest Lecture featuring ICMA Member

Higher Ground: Medieval Foundations and the Formation of Heathen Prehistory

Gregory Bryda, Assistant Professor of Art History, Barnard College.

History of Art & Architecture Fall 2025 Guest Lecture Series

CAS 132, Boston University

Thursday, October 23, 2025, 6:00PM

The Guest Lecture Series in the History of Art & Architecture at Boston University cordially invites you to the first installment of our 2025-26 lecture series. This event is generously sponsored by the Boston University Center for the Humanities.

On Thursday, October 23rd, we will welcome Gregory Bryda, Assistant Professor of Art History at Barnard College. He will present a lecture entitled “Higher Ground: Medieval Foundations and the Formation of Heathen Prehistory.”

Abstract: This talk argues that in the Middle Ages, Christians used art to exaggerate a pagan affinity with the land to invent a false contrast, which enabled a redefinition of the landscape through a Christian lens. From the eleventh to the fifteenth centuries, as Christianity spread eastward across northern Europe in successive waves, artworks in wood sculpture, monumental stone carving, manuscript illumination, panel painting, and woodcut consistently portrayed non-Christian peoples as nature-bound idolaters—tree-worshippers, grove-dwellers, keepers of wells and stones. Scholars have long mined these representations for traces of authentic pagan ritual, frequently construing them as proof of syncretism in the process of conversion. I contend that the artworks portray retrospective fictions. Produced after Christianity had taken root, these works were directed less at pagans than at other Christians. By portraying a primitive “other” bound to earth and nature, ecclesiastical communities of various stripes—parish churches, cathedral chapters, Cistercian monks, Teutonic Order knights—cast themselves as its opposite: orthodox, rational, divinely sanctioned. In doing so, they justified their authority, sharpened rivalries, and claimed stewardship over the land as a sacred trust. What has been read as proof of confrontation thus emerges instead as self-reflective, with patrons deploying the arts to reshape both the perception and the use of land to align with their own specific needs.

For more information, visit https://www.bu.edu/haa/2025/09/23/haa-fall-2025-guest-lecture-series/

Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture 2025-2026 Lecture Series: Daily Life Encounters between the Byzantines and the Ottomans, Siren Çelik, 20 Oct. 2025, 12:00PM EDT, Via Zoom

Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture 2025-2026 Lecture Series

Daily Life Encounters between the Byzantines and the Ottomans

Siren Çelik, Marmara University

October 20, 2025 | 12:00 PM (EDT, UTC -4) | Zoom

Theodore Metochites and Christ mosaic, detail, ca. 1316–1321. Chora church, Constantinople (Istanbul)

The Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture is pleased to announce the first lecture in our 2025–2026 lecture series.

The Byzantines and the Ottomans were both rivals and neighbors, co-existing and fighting each other at the same time. In addition to their political, military and economic interactions, the Byzantines and the Ottomans were also in close cultural contact with each other. Byzantine and Ottoman histories as well as material artefacts preserve the memories of these encounters. Moreover, sources such as Byzantine religious dialogues and travelers’ accounts provide fascinating insights into the daily life encounters between these two cultures whose borders and life styles were often fluid. This talk will present some vignettes of daily life encounters between the Byzantines and the Ottomans, especially exploring the Byzantines’ perception of the Ottomans’ daily habits, food and clothing.

Siren Çelik is an associate professor at the History Department of Marmara University, Istanbul. She obtained her PhD in Byzantine Studies from the University of Birmingham in 2016. Her research interests are late Byzantine history, Byzantine literature, daily life and Byzantine-Ottoman interactions. Along with several articles and book chapters, she is the author of Manuel II Palaiologos (1350-1425): A Byzantine Emperor in a Time of Tumult (Cambridge University Press, 2021, paperback 2022) and a Byzantine poetry anthology in Turkish translation, with notes and commentary. She has held fellowships from Dumbarton Oaks, ANAMED-Koç University, Boğaziçi University and Harvard University.

Advance registration required. Register: https://maryjahariscenter.org/events/daily-life-encounters-between-the-byzantines-and-the-ottomans

Call for Papers: Confounding Images: Frustration as Art Historical Method, Association for Art History Conference, University of Cambridge (8-10 Apr. 2026), Due by 2 Nov. 2025

Call for Papers

ASSOCIATION FOR ART HISTORY CONFERENCE

CONFOUNDING IMAGES: FRUSTRATION AS ART HISTORICAL METHOD

UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE

8th-10th APRIL 2026

Due by 2 November 2025

If the mission of Art History is to make sense of visual and material cultures, then what can be learned from objects that resist art historical study?

This panel invites contributors to reflect on pre-modern artworks that they find compelling, but which they feel they have ‘failed’ to satisfactorily engage in art historical study. We encourage contributors to consider objects and images that they find confounding, have struggled to write about, have abandoned study of or which they have found resistant to art historical methodologies. We also invite papers which consider methodological ‘failings’: art historical theories that present significant challenges when applied to pre-modern art. In reflecting on encounters with the limits of art historical research, we hope to provoke generative discussion about what can be learned from this friction, about both these objects and Art History as a discipline. In doing so, we conceive frustration as a productive method in the study of material culture.

This panel discussion will consist of 10-minute presentations followed by a round table discussion and Q&A. We therefore invite papers that reflect on: a single pre modern artwork, object, image or method. Papers should raise issues which may form the basis of a broader conversation between panellists and with the audience. We welcome papers which consider pre-modern objects from across periods and geographies, including those related to the ‘afterlives’ of pre-modern objects.

Please submit an abstract using the form on the AAH website (https://forarthistory.org.uk/confounding-images-frustration-as-art-historical-method/) by Sunday 2nd November 2025.

Contributing panellists will have the opportunity to submit their paper for publication in a special issue of the open-access journal, Different Visions, titled ‘Points of Friction’ and co edited by Millie Horton-Insch and Lauren Rozenberg. More details may be found here: https://differentvisions.org/special-issue-points-of-friction/.

Online Conference: British Archaeological Association Postgraduate Conference, Via Zoom, 27 Nov. 2025, 12.20-17.30 (GMT) / 7.20-12.30 (EST)

Online Conference

British Archaeological Association Postgraduate Conference

Via Zoom

27 November 2025, 12.20-17.30 (GMT) / 7.20-12.30 (EST)

The British Archaeological Association are excited to present a diverse conference which includes postgraduates and early career researchers in the fields of medieval history of art, architecture, and archaeology. The British Archaeological Association postgraduate conference offers an opportunity for research students at all levels from universities across the UK and abroad to present their research and exchange ideas.

The conference will take place online via Zoom.

Register to attend the conference using this link.

For more information, including the program, visit https://thebaa.org/events/2025-baa-postgraduate-conference/

For a PDF of the conference program, click here.

Call for Papers: Rethinking Popular Religion from Late Antiquity to the Early Medieval Period, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice (12-13 Mar. 2026), Due by 30 Sept. 2025

Call for Papers

Rethinking Popular Religion from Late Antiquity to the Early Medieval PerioD

12–13 March 2026

Department of Humanistic Studies, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice

Due by 30 September 2025

Wall painting of Virgin and Child from the Roman catacombs, 4th Century

The relationship between popular culture and religion in the centuries between the fourth and the eleventh centuries has long posed interpretive challenges. Sources from this period often depict lay religious practices as deviant, syncretic, or unorthodox—testimonies that are as partial as they are polemical. As a result, categories such as popular religion, lived religion, syncretism, and hybridity have emerged in recent scholarship as tools to understand the religious experiences of communities often excluded from formal theological or institutional narratives.

We invite PhD students and early career scholars to explore the multiple forms through which religion was lived, negotiated, and contested outside the bounds of orthodoxy and ecclesiastical authority. Rather than seeking to fix definitions, we aim to interrogate the value and limits of these categories, and to reflect on how religious practice and belief were shaped by encounter, adaptation, and everyday agency.
We welcome proposals for case studies or theoretically engaged reflections that address, but are not limited to:

• Religious practices of laypeople and local communities;

• Subaltern or gendered experiences of religiosity;

• Encounters between Christian, pagan, and other religious traditions;

• The role of material culture, ritual, and domestic space;

• Discourses of heresy, deviance, and unofficial religion;

• Methodological approaches to studying fragmented or polemical sources.

Submission Guidelines

Please send:

• An abstract of approximately 300 words of your proposed paper and

• A short statement (max. 200 words) describing how your proposed paper relates to your broader research interests or ongoing work

• A CV is not required

to lilian.diniz@unive.it with subject “abstract – Rethinking popular religion” by 30 of September 2025.

Accommodation and travel expenses will be covered for participants without institutional funding.

For any questions, please contact Lilian Diniz.