The Medieval Academy Blog

CFP: Questioning “Gregorian Reform Art” (11th-12^th c.):
Challenges, Strategies, and New Approaches (2 sessions, virtual format)
International Congress on Medieval Studies, May 11-13, 2023
University of Western Michigan, Kalamazoo, MI (USA)
Sponsored by the Italian Art Society, www.italianartsociety.org
Submission Deadline: September 15, 2022

Organizers:
Barbara Franzé, Lecturer, Universities of Neuchâtel and Lausanne
Gillian B. Elliott, Adjunct Professor, George Washington University

Call for Papers:

Since the early studies by Ernst Kitzinger and Hélène Toubert, art historians have interpreted the monumental decorative programs of Rome by placing formal inventiveness, new narrative strategies, and the intensification of figurative production of the reforming century in a causal relationship with the social issues of the Gregorian Reform movement. Even as research initiatives now consider a vast territory, from Northern Italy to France, the Iberian Peninsula, and the regions of Eastern Europe, the subject of “Gregorian Reform Art” remains controversial because skeptics continue to cast doubt on a systematic artistic reform agenda. The purpose of the two sessions is to free our discipline from the epistemological rut of the “all-encompassing reform agenda” or the “non-existent reform agenda” in which it is stuck, by proceeding on a case-by-case basis, through the examination of singular monuments. By analyzing iconography and its language, the art historian discovers the intentions expressed “hic et nunc” and reveals the issues presiding over the materialization of the decorations. By accumulating specific knowledge of individual monuments, the sessions aim to draw a more complete picture of a complex and changing phenomenon.

Session I. Rome and Northern Italy

For the first session we welcome papers about artistic programs in Rome, its surrounding area and northern Italy.

Session II. To the Boundaries

For the second session we wish to widen the debate to the “off-center” territories of the reform (Portugal, Croatia, Hungary, Poland, etc.) and the question of a universalist (i.e., Western European), character of the pontifical project.

Please submit proposals that consider, but are not limited to, the following possible topics:

• Individual monumental artistic programs in Italy
• Comparisons of a range of monuments
• Shifting definitions of “Gregorian Reform Art”
• Methodological approaches to political interpretation and artistic programs
• Hybrid spaces and meanings
• The artistic language of the reform
• Universal vs. local political agendas

Please submit abstracts of 200 words no later than September 15, 2022, to Barbara Franzé at barbara.franze@unil.ch and Gillian Elliott at gillianelliott@gwu.edu

Fordham Center for Medieval Studies’ 42nd Annual Conference
LOST & FOUND:
The Legacies Of Greek Culture In The Global Middle Ages

March 4-5, 2023, in-person at

Fordham University’s Lincoln Center campus, New York NY

Plenary speakers: Mirela Ivanova (University of Sheffield), Anthony Kaldellis (Ohio State University), and Glenn Peers (Syracuse University)

CALL FOR PAPERS

The legacies of ancient and Christian Greek culture exerted a powerful influence in western Europe, the Slavic territories, and the Islamic principalities around the Mediterranean rim from the end of antiquity to the fifteenth century, but the transmission of these legacies was neither straightforward nor without difficulty.  From the seventh century onwards, we find intellectuals, theologians, poets, and artists actively discovering, appropriating, and adapting many aspects of Greek literature, medicine, science, and theology to serve their own ends.  This conference examines the channels of transmission that allowed premodern people from western Europe to the Eurasian Stepp to the northern fringe of the Sahara to find the lost legacies of the Greeks, from the industry of the translators who rendered Greek texts into Latin, Arabic, Armenian, and Georgian to the activity of the cultural brokers who travelled back and forth between medieval Europe, Byzantium, and the House of Islam (diplomats, merchants, or soldiers) to the appropriation of Greek cultural objects for the purpose of devotion or as spoils of war.  Interdisciplinary in its approach and expansive in its geographical reach, this conference will consider the impact of Greek learning on medieval theology, medicine, philosophy, law, literature, history, material culture, and the transmission of the classical tradition.

We welcome papers that consider the following or related questions:

• What does it mean to speak of “Greek” culture and artefacts in the Middle Ages? How do we decide what is “Greek”?  How did medieval people understand, receive, and authenticate ideas and artefacts from “Greek” lands?
• How did Slavic, western European, Islamic, and other cultures distinguish (if they did) between classical Greek texts, ideas, and artefacts and “Byzantine” (East Roman) ones? Were classical texts, artefacts, and ideas prized over contemporary ones?  Did perceptions of the relative value of classical and Byzantine texts, ideas, and artefacts differ in different cultures
• How did Greek ideas, culture, and artefacts travel? Which items or elements of Greek culture were most likely to be transmitted by diplomats, merchants, monks, crusaders, or mercenaries?
• What happened to items and elements from Greek culture when they arrived in a foreign land? What kinds of translation, mutation, reframing, adoption, and adaptation were they subjected to?  Does reception of these elements in Christian lands differ from their reception in Islamic lands?  Are there features of reception that were common across all cultures?
• How did contact with living “Greeks” affect the reception, adoption, and adaptation of elements of Greek culture?
• Did the reception of Greek culture provide a means of contact or dissent between Islamic and Christian communities in the Middle Ages?
• How did non-native Greek speakers learn to read Greek in the Middle Ages? What resources did they have at their disposal?  How can we measure their level of proficiency?

Please submit an abstract and cover letter with contact information by September 15, 2022 to medievals@fordham.edu

‘The Networks of Romance’, sponsored by the Medieval Romance Society, for the 58th International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, May 11-13, 2023. 

Please note: Session II will be in a hybrid format, while sessions I and III will be in person.

The Networks of Romance I: Transnational and Global – (In-Person Format)

Increased social mobility and technological advances in modern society, as well as the advent of postcolonial studies, have spurred scholars to investigate the ‘interconnectedness’ of the global Middle Ages, and to challenge Western-centrism. This session is open to papers that apply these critical approaches to romance texts. We welcome scholars who consider the textual representations of cross-culturalism, and of networks that transcend regional and national boundaries. Also invited are papers that examine depictions of networks from outside the medieval West. We particularly encourage participants who use decolonising methodologies.

The Networks of Romance II: Material Culture and its Networks – Blended Format – (Virtual & In-Person Formats)

In recent years, scholars have increasingly posed questions about the relationship between medieval romance and the material. This session seeks to contribute to this discussion, inviting papers that interrogate material culture and its networks in relation to romance texts. Participants might examine how characters interacted with material objects, or the connections between ‘things’ and space in romance. Also invited are papers that consider the circulation, transmission and reception of romance manuscripts.

The Networks of Romance III: Intersectionality, Instability, and Social Networks – (In-Person Format)

A growing body of research by medievalists examines the intersectionality of identities, experiences and relationships. This work reveals the numerous ways that individuals of medieval society differentiated themselves based on age, disability, gender, ethnicity and social standing. However, it also tends to overlook the instability of these overlapping social categories. This session challenges the assumption that intersecting identities, experiences and relationships in the Middle Ages were static. It does so through interrogating the multiple and complex features of social networks in romance, whether that be on a micro or macro level.

Deadline for proposals: 15 September 2022

Proposals should be up to 250 words for a 20-minute paper
Please submit your proposal to the ICMS Confex: https://icms.confex.com/icms/2023/cfp.cgi
If you have any questions, please contact Rachel Harley: rah600@york.ac.uk