39^th Annual Medieval and Renaissance Forum: 

Image and Visual Experience in the Middle Ages and Renaissance

Keene State College

Keene, NH, USA

Friday and Saturday April 13-14, 2018

Call for Papers and Sessions

We are delighted to announce that the 39^th Medieval and Renaissance Forum: Image and Visual Experience in the Middle Ages and Renaissance will take place on April 13 and 14, 2018 at Keene State College in Keene, New Hampshire. 

We welcome abstracts (one page or less) or panel proposals that discuss images and visual experience in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.

Papers and sessions, however, need not be confined to this theme but may cover other aspects of medieval and Renaissance life, literature, languages, art, philosophy, theology, history, and music.

This year’s keynote speaker is Jeffrey F. Hamburger, Kuno Francke Professor of German Art and Culture at Harvard University who will speak on “The Diagram Paradigm in the Middle Ages—and Beyond.”

 

Professor Hamburger's teaching and research focus on the art of the High and later Middle Ages. Among his areas of special interest are medieval manuscript illumination, text-image issues, the history of attitudes towards imagery and visual experience, German vernacular religious writing of the Middle Ages, especially in the context of mysticism, and, most recently, diagrams, the topic of his forthcoming book: From Cross to Crucifix: Typology, Diagrams and Devotion in Berthold of Nuremberg's Commentary on Hrabanus Maurus' In honorem sanctae crucis.  Dr. Hamburger is also the author of several other books, including St. John the Divine: The Deified Evangelist in Medieval Art and Theology (Berkeley-Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2002), The Visual and the Visionary: Art and Female Spirituality in Late Medieval Germany (New York: Zone Books, 1998), Nuns as Artists: The Visual Culture of a Medieval Convent (Berkeley-Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1996), and The Rothschild Canticles: Art and Mysticism in Flanders and the Rhineland circa 1300 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990).

All papers presented at this year’s Forum are eligible for inclusion in Selected Proceedings of the 39^th Medieval and Renaissance Forum, to be published by Cambridge Scholars Press.  Contributors interested in publishing their work in this volume should submit their revised essays by May 15, 2018.

Students, faculty, and independent scholars are welcome. Please indicate your status (undergraduate, graduate, or faculty), affiliation (if relevant), and full contact information, including email address on your proposal.

We welcome undergraduate sessions, but require faculty sponsorship.  

Please submit abstracts, audio/visual needs, and full contact information to Dr. Robert G. Sullivan, Assistant Forum Director at sullivan@german.umass.edu.

Abstract deadline: January 15, 2018

Presenters and early registration: March 15, 2018

We look forward to greeting returning and first-time participants to Keene in April!