Summer Institute in Italian Paleography

Posted on January 11, 2022 by Chris

Summer Institute in Italian Paleography
July 11-22, 2022
Newberry Library

Application Deadline: March 15, 2022

CRS is pleased to announce that applications are now being accepted for this two-week residential course, which will be directed by Maddalena Signorini, Università degli Studi di Roma “Tor Vergata.”

The course offers an intensive introduction to reading and transcription of handwritten Italian vernacular texts from the late medieval through the early modern periods. This graduate-level course is taught in Italian and requires advanced language skills.

While the emphasis is on building paleographical skills, the course also offers an overview of materials and techniques, and considers the history of scripts within the larger historical, literary, intellectual, and social contexts of Italy. Participants practice on a wide range of documents, including literary, personal, legal, notarial, official, and ecclesiastical works. The course provides insight into the systems of Italian archives and allows participants to work with inventories, letters, diaries, and other primary source materials from the Newberry Library.

The institute enrolls 15 participants by competitive application. We welcome applications from advanced graduate students and junior faculty from universities, from professional staff of libraries and museums, and from qualified independent scholars. First consideration will be given to applicants from Center for Renaissance Studies Consortium institutions.

For more information about the institute, including a link for submitting an application, please visit the Institute calendar page here: https://www.newberry.org/07112022-summer-institute-italian-paleography

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2022 Class of Medieval Academy Fellows

Posted on January 10, 2022 by Chris

To the members of the Medieval Academy of America:

The 2022 Election of Fellows and Corresponding Fellows of the Medieval Academy of America closed on Monday, 3 January. The results have been certified by the President of the Fellows and the Fellows Nominating Committee, and the new Fellows have been informed of their election.

I am very pleased to introduce the Fellows Class of 2022:

Fellows:
Suzanne Conklin Akbari
Deborah Deliyannis
Consuelo Dutschke
Sean Field
Elina Gertsman
Richard Firth Green
Fiona Griffiths
Carol Lansing
Robert Ousterhout
Jerome Singerman
Laura Ackerman Smoller

Corresponding Fellow:
Nicholas Charles Vincent

The chief purpose of the Fellowship is to honor major long-term scholarly achievement within the field of Medieval Studies. Fellows are nominated by MAA members and elected by the Fellows. To learn more about the Fellows and Corresponding Fellows of the Medieval Academy of America, please see the Fellows section of our website.

Please join us (online or in person) as we honor these colleagues at the annual Induction Ceremony for new Fellows during the Fellows Plenary Session on Saturday, 12 March, at the upcoming Annual Meeting of the Medieval Academy of America. Last year’s virtual induction videos can be found here.

– Lisa Fagin Davis, Executive Director

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ASCSA Fellowship for Study in Turkey at ARIT, Coulson Cross Aegean Exchange Program

Posted on January 6, 2022 by Chris

Deadline: March 15, 2022

W.D.E. Coulson and Toni M. Cross Aegean Exchange Program for Greek Ph.D. level graduate students and senior scholars in any field of the humanities and social sciences from prehistoric to modern times to conduct research in Turkey, under the auspices of the American Research Institute in Turkey (ARIT) in Ankara and/or Istanbul during the academic year. The purpose of these fellowships is to provide an opportunity for Greek scholars to meet with their Turkish colleagues, and to pursue research interests in the museum, archive, and library collections and at the sites and monuments of Turkey. Fellowships are funded by the U.S. Department of State Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs through the Council of American Overseas Research Centers, which also provides funding for Turkish graduate students and senior scholars to study in Greece, under the auspices of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens.

The ARIT-Ankara library holds approximately 13,000 volumes focused on archaeological studies, but also includes resources for scholars working on modern Turkish studies. The library at ARIT-Istanbul includes approximately 14,000 volumes and covers the Byzantine, Ottoman, and modern Turkish periods. Archives, libraries, sites, and museums in Turkey provide resources for research into many fields of study and geographical areas.

Eligibility: Greek nationals, including staff of the Ministry of Culture and Sport, doctoral candidates, and faculty members of Greek institutions of higher education.

Duration: From two weeks to two months.

Terms: Stipend of $250 per week plus up to $500 for travel expenses. Four to eight awards are available. ARIT, located in Istanbul and Ankara, will provide logistical support and other assistance as required, but projects are not limited to those two cities. For further information about ARIT: https://aritweb.org/. A final report to ASCSA and ARIT is due at the end of the award period, and ASCSA and ARIT expect that copies of all publications that result from research conducted as a Fellow of ASCSA/ARIT be contributed to the relevant library of ASCSA/ARIT.

Application: Submit “Associate Membership with Fellowship” application online. The application includes a curriculum vitae, statement of the project to be pursued during the period of grant (up to three pages, single-spaced in length), and two letters of reference from scholars in the field commenting on the value and feasibility of the project.

Click here for more information.

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2022 Governance Election Results

Posted on January 6, 2022 by Chris

To the members of the Medieval Academy of America:

I am very pleased to announce the results of the 2022 governance election, which closed at 11:59 PM on Jan. 3:

President: Maureen Miller (History, Univ. of California, Berkeley)
1st Vice-President: Robin Fleming (History, Boston College)
2nd Vice-President: Sara Lipton (History, Stony Brook Univ.)

Council:
Julia Walworth (Manuscript Studies, Merton College Library, Oxford Univ.)
Adam Cohen (Art History, Univ. of Toronto)
Tracy Chapman Hamilton (Art History, Sweet Briar College)
Constant Mews (Religious Studies, Monash Univ.)

Nominating Committee:
John Tolan (History, Univ. of Nantes)
Margaret Graves (Art History, Indiana Univ.)

781 ballots were cast, representing voter turnout of around 20%. My thanks to all who voted and to all who stood for election, and my congratulations to all who were elected.

Lisa Fagin Davis
Executive Director, Medieval Academy of America

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2022 Annual Meeting Update

Posted on December 22, 2021 by Chris

To the Members of the Medieval Academy of America:

I am writing with a brief update about the plans for the Medieval Academy of America Annual Meeting, scheduled for March 10-13 at the University of Virginia. As we move towards 2022, we know that you are all concerned about the surge in COVID cases worldwide, especially the Omicron variant. We are, too. Currently, we are planning to go forward with the meeting as a hybrid event, but we are delaying opening registration until we learn more from the University of Virginia administration about their plans for the spring.

The Program Committee has identified two critical dates for re-assessing our plans. In mid-January, we expect the UVA provost to announce whether students are to return to UVA and whether Spring Break 2022 will occur. Should the provost cancel in-person teaching OR Spring Break, we will pivot to an exclusively online event. If the provost announces that UVA will move forward with in-person classes and Spring Break, we will reassess during the first week of February whether it is prudent and possible to welcome everyone to UVA. In short, exactly one month before the conference is to occur, we will make a final decision and open registration. If we go forward as planned, there will be a vaccine- and mask-mandate in place, including a booster mandate. All in-person participants will be required to show proof of vaccination in order to attend, and masks will be required indoors.

I know that this uncertainty is frustrating, but we want to ensure that we are doing everything possible to prioritize the health of our attendees over what would certainly be the joy of greeting one another in person. We will be back in touch with more information as it becomes available.

Wishing you a safe and healthy New Year –

Lisa

Lisa Fagin Davis
Executive Director, Medieval Academy of America

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Call for Papers: Reimagining the Medieval Double Monastery in Interdisciplinary Perspective

Posted on December 20, 2021 by Chris

To be held at the Monastery of Admont in Steiermark, Austria, 14-16 October 2022.

The conference will bring together an interdisciplinary group of scholars with broad interest in dual-sex monasticism in the Middle Ages. The conference aims to put research on double monasteries on a new footing and to provide new perspectives in this not yet fully explored world.

The conference will be organized thematically, and we welcome abstracts for papers that focus on:

  • Theoretical Discourses and Ideological Justifications for Dual-Sex Monasticism: Theology, History, and Literature
  • Interaction, Interference, and Reciprocal Influence between the Sexes: Customaries, Rules, Liturgy, and Music
  • Coexistence, Collaboration, and Challenges between the Sexes: Archaeology, Architecture, and Art

The conference will mark the twentieth anniversary of Admont I — Manuscripts and Monastic Culture: Admont and the Twelfth-Century Renaissance (2002). Like Admont I, Admont II will emphasize collegiality and the informal exchange of ideas among colleagues of various disciplines, ranks, and career paths.

Participants are welcome to present in English or German. Each session will comprise two thirty-minute presentations, comments from an invited respondent, and an informal discussion.

Organizers: Alison I. Beach (University of St Andrews), Cristina Andenna (University of Graz), Father Prior Maximilian Schiefermüller (Librarian and Archivist, Stift Admont), and Karin Schamberger (Assistant Librarian, Stift Admont)

Submissions should include a brief abstract (max. 300 words) and a curriculum vitae.  Please use the following link to upload this material by March 31, 2022: https://form.jotform.com/213412914963355

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Workshops – Creating a memory of ancient pasts Choices, constructions and transmissions from the 9th to the 18th Century

Posted on December 16, 2021 by Chris

October 13th and 14th 2022, Paris

The ERC Advanced Grant AGRELITA project will organize workshops entitled “Creating a memory of ancient pasts” on October 13th and 14th 2022, Paris.

Mnemosyne, mother of the Muses, embodies a continuing relationship between memory, arts and sciences. This myth invites us to question ourselves over a long period of time, as soon as we study the memory of ancient pasts – the Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Biblical ones, among other – in texts as well in images. By taking a transdisciplinary look at memory, from anthropology to visual studies including history, sociology, literature and cognitive sciences, we aim to explore the strategies of how a memory of ancient pasts is created, and to highlight the processes which contribute to the constitution of distant pasts as a legacy. Yet, this appropriation is not obvious : a logic of alterity does indeed appear, in several forms and to varying degrees, between the present and these/its ancient pasts, due to a lack of continuity, not only temporal, but also spatial, documentary or religious and cultural.

In fact, for many decades, research on memory remarkably developed in a wide range of disciplines. Concepts and approaches, such as individual memory and collective memory, cultural memory, social memory, memorials, how tangible and intangible memory are linked to each other, how memory and imagination interact, cognitive mechanisms which act in memory processes, have provided new keys to understand the forms and the uses of memory (-ies) within communities.

Our objective is thus to continue the reflection on these notions by analyzing the methods of the creation of a memory of the ancient pasts, according to a chronology which starts from the 9th Century, which was a period when creative activity was intense, ancient texts were rediscovered by Western Europe, but also when written memory increased, until the 18th Century, when Antiquity was particularly mobilized, as much in the arts, with the emergence of archeology and neoclassicism, as in political speeches. Through the collected papers, the workshops aim to question the constants as well as the mutations of the strategies that authors and artists displayed in order to elaborate this (these) memory(-ies) of ancient pasts, since they selected and organised elements of the past to the detriment of others, which implies a range of recompositions.

Submitted papers may deal with theoretical reflections or case studies, and come within one or more the following themes, which do not exhaust the range of possibilities :

– Epistemology and taxonomy of memory : cross-cutting reflections on the memory about the distant past, its functioning, the notions and concepts that must be mobilized.

– “Memory entrepreneurs”: all those who participate in the creation of the memory of ancient pasts through their roles and activities such as writers, humanists, sponsors, readers, antique dealers, artists, translators, publishers-booksellers, collectors, archaeologists, and so on.

– How this memory is developed, as well as the interactions of the conditions of such a development : how the text is set up into narrative and plot forms, images, recomposition as well as invention, re-uses, rewritings / palimpsests, quotations, imitations, emulations, mental and visual images, imagines agentes, and so on.

– How this memory is transfered, as well as the interactions of the conditions of such a transmission : oral, written, visual, tangible and symbolic communications, the challenges of each of these modes of transmission as well as their effects on the representation of ancient pasts, their links with the “ars memoriae”, the functions and uses of emotions.

– The elements making up this memory of ancient pasts : civilizations, periods, events, traditions, narratives, myths, figures, works and concepts resulting from the process of a selection, a transmission and a re-elaboration, and so on.

– The stakes and aims of this creation of a memory of ancient pasts : the contexts and discourses in which it is shaped and represented, the objectives which are followed (didactic, ethical, aesthetic, linguistic, political, economic, religious, patrimonial ones).

The papers will be published by Brepols publishers, in the “Research on Antiquity Receptions” series :

http://www.brepols.net/Pages/BrowseBySeries.aspx?TreeSeries=RRA

Travel and accommodation costs will be covered according to the terms of the University of Lille. Contact: Catherine Gaullier-Bougassas

For more information about the ERC Agrelita Project, please see our academic Blog : https://agrelita.hypotheses.org/
Please submit a short abstract (title and a few lines of presentation) to catherine.bougassas@univ-lille.fr by February 15, 2022.

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Power, Patronage, and Production: Book Arts from Central Europe (ca. 800–1500) in American Collections

Posted on December 15, 2021 by Chris

Power, Patronage, and Production: Book Arts from Central Europe (ca. 800–1500) in American Collections
Princeton University Department of Art & Archaeology Conference ∙ January 13–15, 2022
https://bookarts.princeton.edu/

From October 15, 2021–January 23, 2022, the Pierpont Morgan Library & Museum in New York is hosting an exhibition ten years in the making: Imperial Splendor: The Art of the Book in the Holy Roman Empire, 800–1500. The exhibition presents material that has never before been gathered together, treating topics including visual rhetorics of power in book media, the production and patronage of manuscripts, the relationship between vernacular and classical languages, and the position of imperial cities in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The Princeton conference, Power, Patronage, and Production: Book Arts from Central Europe (ca. 800–1500) in American Collections, expands the purview of the exhibition. The papers encompass material written in Czech, German, Hebrew, and Latin, made for both religious and non-religious contexts in the ninth, twelfth, and fifteenth centuries. Most of the focal material is very little published; some papers present new looks at superstar examples based on cutting-edge findings. Themes include the networked relationships among centers of production, the representation of male and female patrons, early print culture, and the role of books in key developments for liturgy, private devotion, chronicle writing, and the law.

Organizers: Jeffrey Hamburger, Harvard University; Beatrice Kitzinger, Princeton University; Joshua O’Driscoll, Morgan Library & Museum; and Pamela Patton, Princeton University.

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Houghton Library Fellowships, deadline Jan. 14

Posted on December 15, 2021 by Chris

Houghton is pleased to be able to resume awarding visiting fellowships for research on its collections, to be conducted between July 2022 and June 2023. Fellows receive a $3,600 stipend and are expected to be in residence at Houghton for at least four weeks (which may be non-consecutive) within their fellowship year. See our website for a list of the fellowships we offer and instructions for applying. Applications are due by January 14th, 2022. https://library.harvard.edu/grants-fellowships/houghton-library-visiting-fellowships

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Call for Papers: Gender, Work and Service in Late Medieval Europe (1300-1600)

Posted on December 15, 2021 by Chris

Call for Papers:
Gender, Work and Service in Late Medieval Europe (1300-1600)
International Conference, University of Cologne
29th –30th  September 2022

Organisers: Eva-Maria Cersovsky (University of Cologne), Dr. Julia Exarchos (RWTH Aachen University)

Deadline: 31st January 2022. Please send proposals to cersovse@uni-koeln.de and exarchos@histinst.rwth-aachen.de

Work has long been recognised as crucial in both articulating and shaping gendered norms about one’s role and place within a given society. Medievalists have gained important insights by attention to gender, reassessing the very nature of work and blurring the lines between home and workplace, productive and reproductive labour, remunerated and unpaid work. Focussing on women’s work in particular, they have broadened the scope beyond the adult male worker to shed light on the varied economic contributions of women which were not only central to the survival and prosperity of medieval families and households but also crucial to the entire medieval economy and society. Yet, the conditions under which different men and women worked could vary tremendously as reflected by gendered regulations, earnings, work status, levels of coercion and autonomy, and cultural values attached to specific types of work. Thus, there is still considerable disagreement amongst scholars about the effects patriarchal structures had on women’s and men’s working opportunities, particularly during the late medieval period.

This conference aims at revisiting the complex relations between gender and work in Europe from 1300 to 1600, both in urban as well as in rural contexts. It seeks to bring together medievalists at all career stages currently working on any aspect of the field, providing a forum for international discussion. However, we would especially like to draw more sustained attention to service as an understudied but important socio-historical reality of work and working relationships. This includes e.g., domestic service, service work within institutions such as hospitals or brothels, at ports and on ships as well as services provided for a city via public office. We also encourage approaches that view gender within a matrix of other factors examining the flexible and complex interrelations of different labels, identities and experiences (e.g. socio-economic status, age, life cycle, marital status, religion, ethnicity). Papers attentive to men and masculinites are especially welcome, too. We invite speakers to present unpublished work in progress and focus on still-unresolved methodological or theoretical problems.

 

Possible topics in relation to gender include, but are by no means limited to:

  • Working experiences
  • Work, migration and mobility
  • Training and skills
  • Working relationships (collaborative, interdependent, or mutually dependent)
  • Forms of bondage and coercion, e.g. slavery
  • Positions of authority or leadership
  • Navigating and negotiating legal, social or cultural constraints of work
  • Visual, material or literary representations of work
  • Changing ideas and landscapes of work, e.g. at times of epidemics, famines or religious change

Please submit abstracts of 300-400 words (in English) for 30-minute papers to Eva-Maria Cersovsky (cersovse@uni-koeln.de) and Dr. Julia Exarchos (exarchos@histinst.rwth-aachen.de) by 31st January 2022. The proposal should also include the paper title as well as your name, contact information and academic affiliation.

Our aim is to hold a face-to-face event and we hope to be able to provide funding for travel and accommodation expenses. However, depending on the state of the COVID-19 pandemic in September 2022 the conference might be held as a virtual meeting. We also plan on publishing an edited volume with extended versions of the conference papers.

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