Tag Archives: medieval

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Murray Seminars Autumn Term 2019

Welcome to the new academic year! We’re pleased to announce the details of this term’s Murray Seminars on Medieval and Renaissance Art at Birkbeck.  You’ll find a poster attached, which we hope will be of interest to you and your colleagues or students.  I’d be most grateful if you could display it on any noticeboards, or circulate it to any forums where you think it would be of interest.

Seminars take place at 5pm in the History of Art Department (43, Gordon Sq., London WC1H 0PD) in The Keynes Library (Room 114), unless stated otherwise.  Talks finish by 5.50pm to allow those with other commitments to leave, and are then followed by discussion and refreshments.  These talks are supported by the Murray Bequest in memory of the Department’s founder Peter Murray, and are open to all. No booking required.

This term’s papers are as follows;

Petr Uličný, 16th October, 5pm

The Origins of Renaissance Architecture in Bohemia

This seminar considers the leisure architecture of Central Europe in the Renaissance. He explores how two kings of Bohemia, Mathias Corvinus and Vladislaus Jagiello, hired foreign architects to bring the fashion for Renaissance architecture to central Europe. The Holy Roman Emperor, Ferdinand I, continued to do the same. As a result, palaces in Prague and Kutná Hora were built or ‘updated’ in styles which could be decades-old in their native Italy, but entirely novel in their new surroundings.

Michael Carter, 12th November, 5pm

Relics and monastic identity in late medieval England


Michael Carter, Senior Historian at English Heritage, analyses the importance of relics in the construction of monastic identities in late medieval England. Focussing on two Benedictine (Battle and Whitby) and two Cistercian (Hailes and Rievaulx) abbeys. He suggests that monasteries used relics to promote and sustain their wider religious role until the time of the Suppression, and that relics were also used to affirm relations between religious houses. The paper will also give an idea of the broad range of sources available for the study of the cult of relics at English monasteries, and show that significant material remains unexplored or capable of reinterpretation

Laura Jacobus, 4th December, 5pm

Faces and Enigmas: maker-portraits by Giotto and Giovanni Pisano

During the later middle ages, the questions ‘who makes an art-work?’ and ‘what is a portrait?’ had no simple answers.  The person who commissioned a work of art could be seen as the person responsible for its creation, and the person we call the artist could be regarded as just one of the means employed to make it. The word ‘portrait’ was not in use (at least not in its modern sense), and images of people were not expected to look like anyone recognisable. Giotto and Giovanni Pisano were two of the most famous artists working in Italy in the years around 1300 and they wanted recognition in every sense of the word. But how?

We look forward to seeing you,

The History of Art Department, Birkbeck

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CFP: The Literary Self: from Antiquity to the Digital Age – deadline 10 April 2018

CALL FOR PAPERS

The Literary Self: from Antiquity to the Digital Age

A postgraduate conference hosted by the University of Edinburgh on 4-5 June 2018.

Generously supported by the Institute for Academic Development, the Scottish Graduate School for Arts and Humanities and the School of Classics at the University of St Andrews.

Keynote: Professor Simon James, Durham University
Other confirmed speakers: Dr Roger Rees, University of St Andrews

Throughout history authors have grappled with how their texts are presented to their audience. Critics and theorists have responded to this in kind with a multitude of diverging approaches to the author in a text and the nature of the self generally. However, very few of these approaches have come to bear upon the literary nature of our online identities, whether it’s the lexical semantics and rhetoric of our online existences or indeed the literary value that such existences might produce. Our conference will examine approaches to authorship and selfhood through time and culminate in roundtable discussions of their applicability in our digital age.

We will have panels grounded in the Classical, Medieval and Early Modern, and Modern periods and invite papers from all disciplines.

As the conference is interdisciplinary we encourage papers that examine the literary self in a specific field or time period but also have applicability to a wide audience. Speakers who are successful will have the opportunity to publish their proceedings in FORUM: University of Edinburgh Postgraduate Journal of Culture and the Arts.

Paper topics might consider:
• Biographies, autobiographies, and the mythology of authorial persona
• The psychology of literary identity
• Digital humanities and the networks of reception
• Ontological philosophies of selfhood
• The media of self-presentation (e.g. papyri, codices, books, social media, or e-books)
• The linguistics of expression and repression

Thanks to the generosity of the Scottish Graduate School for Arts and Humanities, the Institute for Academic Development, and the School of Classics at the University of St Andrews, we can provide a limited amount of funding for travel from your home institution. Lunch and refreshments will also be provided.

Please submit abstracts of 250-300 words to literaryself2018@gmail.com by 10 April 2018.
You will be notified by email by mid to late-April of the submission outcomes.

Conference Organisers
Caitlan Smith (St. Andrews), Consuelo Martino (St. Andrews), Matthew Tibble (Edinburgh), Miles Beard (Strathclyde)

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Murray Seminar: Emmanuele Lugli – Tuesday 13 February 5pm

Dear Student,

I’m writing with details of next week’s Murray Seminar on Medieval and Renaissance Art at Birkbeck. These advanced research seminars are open to all, and attract interested members of the public, staff and students from other London colleges and beyond.  They are an opportunity to hear and contribute to cutting-edge research, often at the very early stages of work in progress.  The timing allows you to attend and still go to classes on the same evening.  All this term’s seminars take place in the History of Art Department at Birkbeck (43, Gordon Sq., London WC1H 0PD) in Room 114 (The Keynes Library) at 5pm.  Talks finish by 5.50pm (allowing those with other commitments to leave) and are then followed by discussion and refreshments.  We hope to see you there.

Emmanuele Lugli  Tuesday 13 February

Chasing Absence: The Body of Christ and the Measures to Enter in Touch with it

This talk focuses on the singular devotion for the ‘mensura Christi,’ or the act of praying with objects that reproduced the height of Christ. It explores the reasons for its phenomenal success, from its diffusion in the twelfth century up to its ban in the seventeenth, and the motives for its marginalization in historical accounts today. The talk asks questions about what turns an orthodox veneration into a mere superstition, an inversion that is all the more puzzling given that the ‘mensura Christi’ relies on measuring, one of the methods to fight credulity. The lecture thus reconsiders the relationships of measuring practices, visual belief, and religious orders, thus contributing to discussions on representations, faith, and material studies.

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Sussex CEMMS symposium on Old St Paul’s and Culture – 15 July 2017

Sussex CEMMS symposium on Old St Paul’s and Culture  will be held on 15 July 2017 in the Wren Suite at St Paul’s Cathedral and will offer an opportunity to think broadly about the significance of Old St Paul’s and its surrounding area in medieval and early modern England (poster attached).

Speakers: David Colclough; Sarah Dustagheer; Simon Healy; Victor Houliston; Mary Ann Lund; Rory McTurk; Mary Morrissey; Daniel Starza Smith; and Will Tosh.

For details and registration please visit https://oldstpaulsandculture.wordpress.com/

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Birkbeck Medieval Seminar: Medieval Textiles: Meaning and Materiality 25 November 2016

Birkbeck Medieval Seminar

Medieval Textiles: Meaning and Materiality

Friday 25th November, 2016

Birkbeck, University of London

Room 101, 30 Russell Square, London WC1B 5DT

medieval-textiles

On the occasion of the V&A Museum’s unprecedented exhibition of opus anglicanum, this one-day interdisciplinary conference brings together leading and emerging scholars working on questions of meaning and materiality in medieval textiles, both real and imaginary.

The conference is organised by Birkbeck Medieval Seminar and the History of Art Department with support of the Murray Bequest.

The programme, and details of how to book can be found at: https://medtex.eventbrite.co.uk

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Gender and Medieval Studies Student Essay Prize 2016: deadline 21 November 2016

Gender and Medieval Studies Student Essay Prize 2016

The Gender and Medieval Studies Group offers a postgraduate student essay prize, which is awarded at the GMS conference in January each year. The competition is open to students at all levels including those who will be completing their degree in the coming year.

Essays should be between 4,000 and 6,000 words in length (including notes) and should engage with questions of gender and/or sexuality in the Middle Ages. Essays should follow a recognised academic referencing system (such as MHRA), should include a bibliography and all images should be captioned.

Submissions from postgraduates working within any discipline in the field are encouraged.

The prize gives free registration to the GMS conference (held every January at a different UK institution) for two years (2017 and 2018) and a contribution towards UK travel costs to the conference. In 2017 the conference will be on Gender, Places, Spaces, Thresholds and will be held at Canterbury, Christchurch University (12th-15th January).

The winning essay will also be considered for publication in the academic journal Medieval Feminist Forum, run by the Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship (SMFS).

There may be years when no prize is awarded, depending upon submissions in any given year.

Electronic submissions should be submitted to Isabel Davis (i.davis@bbk.ac.uk) by November 21st 2016.

To keep up-to-date on the GMS conference series, please subscribe to the listserv address:  GMS-LIST@jiscmail.ac.uk or follow the link on the GMS homepage.

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Call for Papers: Othello’s Island 2017, deadline 1 January 2017

Othello’s Island 2017

The 5th annual multidisciplinary conference
on medieval and renaissance studies
and their later legacies

Venue: Centre for Visual Arts and Research (CVAR)
Nicosia, Cyprus, 6 to 8 April 2017
with optional historic-site visits on 9 April

Advance Notice CALL FOR PAPERS

a collaborative event organised by academics from
Sheffield Hallam University, SOAS University of London
University of Kent, University of Sheffield and the University of Leeds

www.tiny.cc/othello2017

Convenors

  • Emeritus Professor James Fitzmaurice, Northern Arizona University (USA)
  • Professor Lisa Hopkins, Sheffield Hallam University (UK)
  • Dr Sarah James, University of Kent at Canterbury (UK)
  • Dr Michael Paraskos, SOAS University of London (UK)
  • Benedict Read FSA, University of Leeds (UK)
  • Dr Rita Severis, CVAR (Cyprus)

We welcome applications from researchers to present papers at the 2017 edition of Othello’s Island.

First held in 2013, Othello’s Island now a well established annual meeting of academics, students and members of the public interested in medieval and renaissance art, literature, history and culture.

Othello’s Island is growing in size and stature every year. In 2016 over seventy academics from across the world presented papers at the conference, whilst also experiencing the medieval and renaissance art, architecture and historical sites of Cyprus.

This experience ranged from the island’s material culture, such as the French gothic cathedral of Nicosia, through to the remarkable living culture of the island that is still deeply affected by its medieval and renaissance past.

In 2017 we are interested in hearing papers on diverse aspects of medieval and renaissance literature, art, history, society and other culture.

Papers do not have to be specifically related to Cyprus or the Mediterranean region and do not have to be connected to Shakespeare.

It is worth looking at the range of papers from past conferences to see that previous speakers have covered topics ranging from slavery in medieval Cyprus and Malta, to the impact of Italian Renaissance art on Cypriot Byzantine painting, to the Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf and Margaret Cavendish.

That said, given our location, Cyprus, the Levant and the Mediterranean do impact on the conference, not least because for anyone interested in medieval and renaissance history Cyprus is real gem, full of architectural and other material culture relating to the period. This includes museums filled with historic artefacts, gothic and Byzantine cathedrals and churches and a living culture that has direct links to this period.

Othello’s Island has developed a reputation as one of the friendliest medieval and renaissance studies conferences in the world today, and it is also genuinely interdisciplinary. In part this is due to the relatively small size of the event, which generates a true sense of community during the conference.

For more informaton and submission deadlines please visit

www.tiny.cc/othello2017

All information here is subject to confirmation and possible modification

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