Call for Papers: Dialogues Between Life and Death – 18th Annual Medieval Postgraduate Student Colloquium

Vision of the Virgin and Child. Photo c. British Library Board (Harley 4431)

The Courtauld Institute of Art, Conference: 2nd February 2013; Call for Papers deadline: 1st December 2012.

This colloquium will address how communication and interactions between the living and the dead are depicted in art by focusing on the liminality, or the thresholds where these interactions take place. Papers should explore art objects or architectural structures that demonstrate the ways in which the living approached or experienced death and the afterlife, especially how such depictions reflected cross-cultural or geographical differences. For many in the Middle Ages, this issue would have involved how perceptions of Heaven, Hell and the Last Judgment were envisioned in art and the audience’s reception of such images. For others, it would have encompassed myths, magic and mysticism, and how they were used in communicating with those in the post mortem world or to reconcile the very idea of death. Such perceptions and behaviours generated artworks involving Apocalyptic images; legends like that of the Three Living and the Three Dead; visions and apparitions of saints, both in the afterlife and revisiting the living; the use of relics to communicate with saints; and legacies as dialogues between the dead and their descendants via objects such as coats of arms, wills and bequests, and badges and inscriptions.

Papers could discuss liminal beings such as angels, demons, or other supernatural entities which cross the boundaries between the living and the dead; liminal spaces such as funerary chapels or tomb monuments; liminal experiences such as visions and visionary experiences; and the liminality of once-living materials (eg ivory and parchment) given an afterlife by the artisans who repurposed them into art objects.

Call for Papers: Art History and Sound, The Courtauld Institute of Art

Three workshops: 6 December 2012, 14 March and 30 May 2013 (10.00 – 12.00), The Courtauld Institute of Art, London. Cfp Deadline: 28 September 2012

Art historians constantly encounter traces of sound. These can take the form of notes in an illuminated manuscript, a textual echo of past noise and lost voices, or depictions of instruments, singers and dancers, captured on panel, canvas, paper, film or in wood, marble and bronze or spaces that have been specifically designed and built to embrace and amplify sound: pulpits, choir stalls, opera houses, the floor of the stock exchange. The aural is continuously intertwined with visual arts as content or context. In the 20th and 21st centuries especially artists have variously incorporated sounds, live and recorded, in their performances, happenings and multi-media installations putting into question the silence and fixity of visual art.

Conference: Art Without Borders – Cultural Exchange and Influence in Irish History

5th October 2012, Trinity College Dublin, Long Hub Room

This richly diverse one day symposium at Trinity College Dublin will address the theme of cross-cultural exchange in Irish Art, architecture and material culture, exploring topics including Irish-American exchange, cultural communication between Ireland and China, and the impact of architecture and town planning in the 19th and 20th centuries . The central aim is to explore the theme of influence, both outward and inward, on art in Ireland from the pre-Christian to the Contemporary. The full programme for the day – which includes a keynote address from Sian Rainbird, Director of the National Gallery of Ireland – can be found at the Art Without Borders website, as can full details for registration (registration is essential, although the event is free, and must be recieved by Friday 21st September).

Call for Papers – Sensing the Sacred: Religion and the Senses, 1300-1800

The University of York: 21-22 June 2013

Religion has always been characterised as much by embodied experience as by abstract theological dispute. From the sounds of the adhān (the Islamic call to prayer), to the smell of incense in the Hindu Pūjā (a ritual offering to the deities), the visual emblem of the cross in the Christian tradition, and the ascetic practices of Theravada Buddhism, sensation is integral to a range of devotional practices. At the same time, the history of many faiths is characterised by an intense suspicion of the senses and the pleasures they offer. This international, interdisciplinary conference, to be held at the University of York from 21 to 22 June 2013, will bring together scholars working on the role played by the senses in the experience and expression of religion and faith in the pre-modern world. The burgeoning field of sensory history offers a fertile ground for reconsideration of religious studies across disciplinary boundaries. We welcome papers from anthropologists, archaeologists, art historians, historians, literary scholars, musicologists, philosophers, theologians, and any other interested parties.

Call for Papers: Beyond the Western Mediterranean – Trade and Exchange of Materials, Techniques and Artistic Production, 650–1500

Conference 20 April 2013 at The Courtauld Institute of Art; Call for Papers deadline: 3rd September 2012

The notion of a shared Mediterranean culture has become a central tenet in the study of medieval art history (see also the Mediterranean Mobilities website). Growing out of the Roman mare nostrum, the Mediterranean as a conduit of communication, dissemination, and transmission throughout the Middle Ages is shaping the scope of our discipline. Yet the investigation into the Mediterranean remains unbalanced, and while the northern and eastern edges of the basin are well investigated, historiographical and political considerations have limited the study of the sea’s southern shores, not to mention the exchanges across that other sea – the sea of sand – that lies beyond those territories’ southern borders.

Call for Papers: Charming Intentions – Occultism, Magic and the History of Art

University of Cambridge Graduate Conference 2012/13; Call for Papers deadline 30th September 2012

This two-day graduate conference will investigate the intersections between visual culture and the occult tradition, ranging from the material culture of ‘primitive’ animism, through medieval and Renaissance depictions of witchcraft and demonology, to the contemporary fascination with the supernatural in popular culture. The conference aims to provide a stimulating arena for the presentation of innovative research in this field as well as to offer a vibrant and thought-provoking forum for scholarly discussion and exchange.

Call for Papers: Medieval Art of East Anglia Symposia

Symposia 27 October 2012; Call for Papers deadline 31 August 2012

The University of East Anglia and the University of Cambridge are pleased to announce the latest in our series of occasional symposia on the Medieval Art of East Anglia, to take place in Cambridge on Saturday 27 October 2012. The symposia interpret ‘art’, ‘medieval’ and ‘East Anglian’ in the broadest sense and invite proposals for papers of 20 minutes in length. We would particularly like to encourage MA and PhD students to participate in what we intend to be a stimulating but friendly event.

Proposals of no more than 200 words should be submitted by email to Laura Slater (lss33@cam.ac.uk) no later than Friday 31st August 2012. Enquiries welcome at the same address.

Opportunity: Two Postdoctoral Research Associateships at YCBA

The Yale Center for British Art is offering two Postdoctoral Research Associateships of three-year duration, one in the Department of Paintings and Sculpture and the other in the Department of Exhibitions and Publications. These Postdoctoral Research Associateships are for recent recipients of a PhD (degree granted within the last three years) in a field related to British art. The PhD must be in hand by the time the position begins. The closing date for applications is Monday, August 6, 2012. A preference for either position may be stated in the application but is not required. Applicants should apply online and upload a cover letter, CV, and writing sample. Three letters of reference should be e-mailed directly to ycba.research@yale.edu.

Call for Papers:Art and Its Afterlives

Fourth Early Modern Symposium: The Courtauld Institute of Art, London, 17 November 2012. Proposals due by 1 July 2012

Art and Its Afterlives aims to address the ways in which the work of art continues to resonate after its creation. While much art history takes as its focus the initial facture of the work of art, this one-day symposium explores what happens to early modern art after the moment of its making. How did early modern works continue to be created in their display, preservation, and reception from the moment of their creation on? Papers will examine how art is shaped by its afterlives – whether these collect, curate, cut up, cut out, copy or correct it – and the ways in which art both persists and changes through time as a material object, a field of generative meaning, and a subject of debate and interpretation. Material, technical and social histories as well as theoretical approaches drawn from the discipline of art history and other fields of the humanities are welcome. Accounts from curatorial practice and the field of museology are also encouraged.

Call for Participation: Illuminated Manuscripts and Their Users @ Durham University

Workshop at Durham University in association with The British Library, 6 June 2012; Call for Participation Deadline: 25 May 2012

As part of an exciting new project to digitze the incredibly beautiful illuminated manscripts in the British Library‘s Royal Collection, the British Library and Durham University will be holding a participatory workshop on the 6th June 2012. The first part of the workshop will focus on the use of digital resources in manuscript research, with a presentation by Dr Joanna Fronska (The British Library), ‘Behind the scenes process of digitisation’, followed by a roundtable discussion of the use and value of online digital resources. The second session will consist of short panel presentations/discussion on illuminated manuscripts in the Royal collection. Sumbissions from researchers are invited which address one of the following questions:

How were the illuminated manuscripts in the royal library used and received by their owners? What are the characteristics of illustrated manuscripts collected by English monarchs? How did monastic manuscripts enter the royal collection, or what was their function within the library? How representative is what survives of the royal library, and why is there a relative lack of liturgical or private devotional books in the royal collection?