Wednesday, April 25, 2018

Call for Sessions
5. Forum Medieval Art
Peaks-Passages-Ponti

The fifth Forum Medieval Art will take place in Bern on 18th-21st September 2019. Bern – looking out to peaks Eiger, Mönch, and Jungfrau, situated at the border to the Romandy, and having a long-standing tradition in bridge-building – embodies certain notions of translations, entanglements, and interactions. The conference will highlight such themes, focusing on forms and means of exchange, infrastructure, political and religious relationships, and the concrete reflections of these connections through objects. Methodological challenges will also be paramount, such as questioning how to write a history of encounters between artists, artworks, materials, and traditions.

Many mountain regions, and especially the Alps, have a long history as sites of transfers and interferences. Today, mountains and glaciers are the locations revealing most rapidly the consequences of climate change. They raise our awareness of similar changes in the past. Mountain regions were and are traversed by several ecological networks, connecting cities, regions, and countries, as well as different cultures, languages, and artistic traditions. Mountains, with their difficult passages and bridges, structured the ways through which materials and people were in touch. Bridges were strategic targets in conduct of war, evidence of applied knowledge, expression of civic representation, and custom points—both blockades and gates to the world.

Peaks in the historiography of Art History mark moments of radical change within artistic developments, the pinnacles of artistic careers, and high moments in the encounters of different traditions. Since the unfinished project of Walter Benjamin, who obtained his PhD in Bern, the passage has also been introduced as a figure of thought in historiography. The passage describes historical layers as spatial constellations, in which works of art, everyday culture, religious ideas, definitions of periods and theories of history encounter. 


Please send your submission until June 1, 2018, to 
mail@mittelalterkongress.de

Friday, April 20, 2018

SAVE THE DATE
Internationale Konferenz am Institut für Kunstgeschichte der Universität Leipzig
Gefördert durch die DFG, die Freunde und Förderer der Universität Leipzig und die Research Academy Leipzig
Picturing the Present: Gegenwart im Bild und Bild in der Gegenwart (ca. 200–1500 CE)
14 Juni 2018 9–19 Uhr, Universitätsbibliothek Albertina, Vortragssaal
15 Juni 2018 9–16 Uhr, Universitätsbibliothek Albertina, Vortragssaal
When an image is made to depict the present moment, how do people engage with it? And, once that present moment is past, can that image ever again regain its claim to depicting the present or reclaim the immediacy it once held? Or will it then forever become merely a gateway to the past, only accessible through analogy, the imagination, or historical inquiry? This conference investigates how images originally made to depict the present function as they transition from contemporary depictions to historical ones, asking how the present remains ‘present’ over time.
TeilnehmerInnen: Benjamin Anderson (Ithaca), Hans Belting (Berlin), Roland Betancourt (Los Angeles), Armin Bergmeier (Leipzig), Rika Burnham (New York), Matthew Champion (London), Ivan Foletti (Brno), Beate Fricke (Bern), Andrew Griebeler (Berkeley), Sarah Griffin (Oxford), Stefan Hanß (Cambridge), Nadja Horsch (Leipzig), Heba Mostafa (Toronto), Keith Moxey (New York), Nathaniel Prottas (Wien), Katharina Schüppel (Dortmund), Stefanie Seeberg (Leipzig), Johannes Tripps (Leipzig), Simone Westermann (Zürich)


ANKÜNDIGUNG
Vortragsreihe: Byzanz und der Westen: Kolloquium zur materiellen Kultur im Mittelalter
Lecture Series: Material Culture in Byzantium and the Medieval West
Institut für Kunstgeschichte der Universität Leipzig in Kooperation mit dem GWZO, der HTWK und dem Handschriftenzentrum
29 Mai, 19 Uhr, Department of Art HistoryDittrichring 18–20, Raum 5.15
Branka Vranesević (Belgrad), Reflections on Late Antique Visual Culture on the Territories of Present-Day Serbia and Macedonia: Continuity and Change
14 Juni, 17 Uhr, Universitätsbibliothek Albertina, Vortragssaal
Hans Belting (Berlin)Iconic Presence and Real Presence: A Neglected Aspect From the History of Religious Images
26 Juni, 19 Uhr, GWZO, Reichsstr. 4-6, Conference Room
Olga Karagiorgou (Athen)The Dumbarton Oaks and the Venice Tondi: Products of a Cultural Osmosis?

Tuesday, April 17, 2018

We are inviting papers for our panels at the Christianity and Politics Conference (University of Turku, 22–23 November 2018):
3. Heresy and Politics (more information below)
7. Schisms, Saints, and Power in the Middle Ages (more information below)

To propose a paper:
Follow the instructions found at:
http://christianityconf.utu.fi/?page_id=97

Deadline
30 April 2018

We look forward to receiving your paper proposals!
Best wishes,
Marika Räsänen & Reima Välimäki


3. Heresy and Politics
Panel Convenor:
Dr. Reima Välimäki, University of Turku, Finland

Panel Abstract

If the study of pre-modern heresy once was a theological and doctrinal question, since the twentieth century it has primarily belonged to the field of history. After the seminal work, ‘The Formation of a Persecuting Society’ by R.I. Moore (1987), the intimate connection of persecution of dissidents and contemporary politics has been a point of departure for the vast majority of scholars. More recently, the view has been balanced by scholars who have pointed out that to the inquisitors the persecution was very much a question of piety, faith and devotion (e.g. Ames 2009). The entanglement of politics and faith, power and heresy, is a thus a very complicated question, and its instances range from mock trials perceived entirely political by contemporaries to extreme expressions of piety and faith defying all political calculation.

The panel “Heresy and politics” calls for papers treating different aspects of heresy, its persecution and politics from the ancient world to the eighteenth century. The possible topics can include but are not limited to

– role of secular rulers and lords in the persecution of dissidents
– misuse of power by inquisitors and other persecutors, and critique against them
– heresy in papal or imperial politics
– heresy, inquisition and colonial politics (e.g. in medieval Languedoc or early modern South America)
– heresy accusations as a tool against political opponents
– ancient, medieval and early-modern judicial, theological and philosophical discussions about the Church’s right to persecute dissidents

7. Schisms, Saints, and Power in the Middle Ages
Panel Convenor:
Dr. Marika Räsänen, University of Turku, Finland

Panel Abstract

Pre-modern people lived in a world in which the presence of saints and their relics intertwined with society at many levels. Saints and relics were involved and used both in devotional practices and secular tasks. It is commonly recognized that the functions of saints’ relics were ideologically loaded: popes, bishops, kings, barons, monks and friars drew on the sacral power of these objects and used them to transmit political values and agendas.

In times of ecclesiastic and political crisis, the demand for such heavenly intercessors and political legitimators increased. But at the same time, the construction and control of sacred authority became glaringly problematic, as the apparent unity of the Catholic Church was shattered by schism and secular rulers, lords, and cities rallied to the support of competing popes.

Despite the central position of saints in premodern societies and the recent flourishing of studies devoted to saints and society, relics themselves — the tangible remains that carried the physical presence of the saint — have been relatively neglected by cultural historians. Likewise, the role of the relics in medieval schisms is an understudied area. For a scholar, studying relics can make visible the effects of schisms not only at the courts of ecclesiastical and secular lords, but among lower levels of the social hierarchy. Relics, saints, and their cults open avenues to explore how divisions between religious and political elites were manifested and understood in local communities.

This panel calls for papers in which the influence of cults of saints and relics, and their relationship to schisms, are approached from new perspectives. We encourage papers that discuss the political strategies of popes, the ways that ecclesiastical schisms played out in individual communities, how ordinary laymen and women experienced and navigated these crises. The organization of the panel is connected to the special paper of Professor Daniel Bornstein, “How Great Was the Great Western Schism?”

Friday, April 6, 2018

The 94th Annual Meeting of the Medieval Academy will be held in Philadelphia on the University of Pennsylvania campus from March 7-9, 2019. The overall theme of the conference is “The Global Turn in Medieval Studies.” As a co-chair of the organizing committee, I would especially like to invite members of the dm- list to propose papers or sessions relating to the thread “Digitizing the Global Middle Ages: Practices, Sustainability, and Ethics.” While this thread can be broadly interpreted, our aim is to further conversations on the role and value of digitization in the preservation of our shared cultural heritage and on the practices and ethics of digitizing across cultural and geographic boundaries.

If you are interested in submitting a proposal, please consult the CFP, available here: www.medievalacademy.org/page/2019Meeting.

Individuals or groups may propose a poster, paper, full session, roundtable or workshop. Membership in the Medieval Academy is required to present at the conference, but special consideration will be given to individuals whose fields would not traditionally involve membership in the Medieval Academy. Proposals are due June 15, 2018.

Please feel free to distribute this announcement to other lists that may have interested members.

And please don’t hesitate to contact me or any member of the organizing committee (names appear on CFP) if you have questions.

Best,
Lynn


******************
Lynn Ransom, Ph.D.
Curator of Programs, Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies
Project Director, The New Schoenberg Database of Manuscripts
Co-Editor, Manuscript Studies: A Journal of the Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies
The University of Pennsylvania Libraries
215.898.7851