The Medieval Academy Blog

Collecting Orthodoxy in the West:
A History and a Look Towards the Future

In a 1947 article titled “Byzantine Art and Scholarship in America,” Kurt Weitzmann examined the history of collecting Byzantine art in the United States. “…The combination of formal beauty and material splendor, coupled with great technical perfection and an aristocratic spirit which gives to even the smallest object a rare distinction…” renders these works particularly attractive to private collectors, wrote Weitzmann. Our conference takes this statement as a starting point and focuses on the history of collecting Christian Orthodox objects in the West from the nineteenth century to the present: a topic replete with spectacular objects, profound questions and captivating narratives.

This international conference, organized and sponsored by the Museum of Russian Icons in Clinton, MA (USA), considers why, how, where, and by whom these objects have been and continue to be acquired. Once obtained, how are they classified, conserved, displayed, and described? How and by whom is their value, whether symbolic or monetary, determined? What is the relationship between their original purpose and the newfound one? From Marjorie Merriweather Post and Henry Walters to modern day collectors such as Gordon Lankton, small private museums to major public institutions, there has been a sustained interest in owning architectural remnants, manuscripts, liturgical objects, enkolpia and, of course, icons. Whether to save them from destruction, perpetuate
a living tradition, preserve personal or communal memory, demonstrate erudition, wealth or taste, or to tell a story, these pieces are found in nearly every important collection. In addition to the above, topics include, but are not limited to: discussions of single objects or entire collections; individual or institutional collectors; related questions of loot, provenance, authenticity, religious and cultural sensitivity, and ethics; as well as past collecting patterns versus possible future directions.

We welcome papers from museum professionals and scholars at any career stage. Please send a CV as well as a 350-word abstract with at least one image to Lana Sloutsky at lsloutsky@museumofrussianicons.com by 5 October 2020. Selected speakers will be notified by 6 November 2020. The virtual conference is scheduled for 11 and 12 June 2021. Interested presenters will have a chance to have their papers peer-reviewed and published in the 2022 issue of the Journal of Icon Studies.

Visit the conference webpage at museumofrussianicons.org/conference/

Marco Manuscript Workshop 2021:
“Immaterial Culture”
February 5-6, 2021

The sixteenth annual Marco Manuscript Workshop will take place Friday, February 5, and Saturday, February 6, 2021. Sessions will meet virtually via an online platform. The workshop is led by Professors Maura K. Lafferty (Classics) and Roy M. Liuzza (English), and is hosted by the Marco Institute for Medieval and Renaissance Studies at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

This year’s workshop will consider some of the recent challenges that researchers have faced with the suspension of travel, the closing of libraries and universities, and the quarantine restrictions that have kept so many of us in our homes. How can our field, which has always emphasized the importance of physical place and tactile artifacts, work successfully in isolation and at a distance? What does it mean for us when our work takes place in an incorporeal world of light and numbers rather than ink and flesh, in matrices of data rather than dusty rooms? We propose to explore the advantages and disadvantages of this “immaterial culture,” and to think about how our work is shaped by access or lack of access to manuscripts, texts, catalogues, and objects. We would like to hear about experiences working remotely, discoveries made using virtual archives or catalogues, or advice on how to study manuscripts without visiting archives or how to teach codicology without a library. We welcome stories of scholars who have been productive in constrained circumstances. We would also like to learn from the experience of those for whom archives have been inaccessible for other reasons – scholars who are homebound, visually impaired, or otherwise physically challenged, or those whose access to libraries and collections has been restricted or denied. How have these constraints shaped your work? What can these experiences tell us about our discipline? We welcome presentations on any aspect of this topic, broadly imagined.

The workshop is open to scholars and graduate students in any field who are engaged in textual editing, manuscript studies, or epigraphy. This year’s workshop will be virtual, but we hope to retain as much of the format and the flavor of our in-person meetings as possible. Individual 75-minute sessions will be devoted to each project; participants will be asked to introduce their text and its context, discuss their approach to working with their material, and exchange ideas and information with other participants. We will prepare an online repository where presenters can place abstracts, presentations, or supporting material for access by all attendees. As in previous years, the workshop is intended to be more like a class than a conference; participants are encouraged to share new discoveries and unfinished work, to discuss both their successes and frustrations, to offer practical advice and theoretical insights, and to work together towards developing better professional skills for textual and codicological work. We particularly invite the presentation of works in progress, unusual problems, practical difficulties, and new or experimental models for studying or representing manuscript texts.

The deadline for applications is October 9, 2020. Applicants are asked to submit a current CV and a two-page abstract of their project to Roy M. Liuzza, preferably via email to rliuzza@utk.edu.

Presenters will receive a $500 honorarium for their participation.
The workshop is also open at no cost to scholars and students who do not wish to present their own work but are interested in sharing a lively weekend of discussion and ideas about manuscript studies. In order to keep the virtual sessions manageable, preregistration will be required and spaces will be limited. Further details will be available later in the year; please contact the Marco Institute at marco@utk.edu for more information.

The Total Library: Aspirations for Complete Knowledge in the Middle Ages and Renaissance

The 27th Biennial Conference of the Medieval and Renaissance Studies Program of Barnard College
Barnard College, New York City
December 5, 2020
ONLINE CONFERENCE

Plenary Speakers:
Ann Blair (Harvard University)
Elias Muhanna (Brown University)

According to Borges, “The fancy or the imagination or the utopia of the Total Library has certain characteristics that are easily confused with virtues.” This one-day conference will explore the aspiration for complete knowledge in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, an aspiration expressed in atlases, herbals, encyclopedias that were meant to mirror and maybe tame the diversity of the earth by including in their pages everything. Whether virtuous or problematic, the fantasy of the complete mastery of knowledge created utopias of learning. In our current moment when the value of knowledge is under question, we invite scholars of multiple disciplines (art history, history, literary studies, religion, history of science) to raise questions about the technologies, social structures, and modes of thought that shape what knowledge means at a given moment.

PLEASE NOTE THAT, DUE TO COVID-19, THIS CONFERENCE WILL BE HELD ONLINE VIA ZOOM. WE ARE EXTENDING THE SUBMISSION DEADLINE TO SEPTEMBER 1. Please submit an abstract of 250-300 words and a 2-page CV to Rachel Eisendrath, reisendr@barnard.edu.

Call for Papers
56th International Congress on Medieval Studies
Western Michigan University, May 2021

Decolonizing the Medieval Studies Syllabus (a roundtable)

This session is sponsored by the CARA Committee of the Medieval Academy of America. In the effort to help decolonize the field, some medievalists have turned to a Global Middle Ages to challenge the assumptions of their own scholarship and of traditional canons. Not all teachers have the opportunity to design brand-new courses, however. This roundtable seeks participants willing to share their own experiences of broadening the Medieval Studies syllabus, with the goal of offering sample assignments and texts from a range of disciplines to help teachers integrate non-Eurocentric material into their current Medieval Studies classes, as well as suggestions for reframing canonical texts. It is designed to continue pedagogical themes from the Medieval Academy meeting scheduled for April 2021. We encourage submissions from instructors in any field, especially those who teach outside of a research university setting.

Please submit a proposal of 250 words or less via the Congress website (https://wmich.edu/medievalcongress/submissions) by September 15, 2020. For any questions, feel free to contact Renée Trilling at trilling@illinois.edu.