L'Agenda des Médiévistes

50th International Medieval Congress
Kalamazoo, MI
May 15-17, 2015

A number of different scholarly organizations have come together for the 50th Medieval Congress to pose questions about Materiality in the Middle Ages. While each panel represents a different issue and/or approach, at the core of these many inquiries is the question, « what about the MATTER of the Middle Ages? »

This panel invites papers to explore the ways in which medieval mystics and visionaries experienced the divine in and through their bodies and by way of other material encounters. Magistra’s sponsored session will focus on the role of bodies and objects in the experience and expression of desire in medieval female spirituality. What is at stake is not only the question of the « bodiliness » of female spirituality, but the way in which spiritual experience and expression was facilitated by and experienced within a corporeal or even « thingy » framework or interaction.

We seek papers that interrogate what “knowing” meant in the context of medieval heterodoxy, erotic mysticism, and the sacramental mediation of bodies. Additionally, we are interested in the way in which the practice of female spirituality was constituted through embodied, intellectual, and meditative encounters with things: beads, books, walls, clothes, food, and myriad other bodies or things. We are particularly interested in attracting papers that use both continental theologians and mystical writers to explore the relationships between sacraments and rituals and human bodies attempting to touch the untouchable. We ask: what constituted mystical knowledge and how was its ecstasy experienced?

Papers and abstracts can address the issues of mysticism, materiality and female spirituality in any of the following veins, or others occurring to individual submissions:

• The embodied experience of mystical visions/ecstasy
• The materialization of the mystical
• Writings (by men or women) describing or proscribing practices of female mysticism/piety/devotion
• Material or embodied practices of mysticism or mystical devotion
• The making manifest of mystical experience (in books, art, writing, re-telling, etc.)
• The role of objects in mystical experience, expression, or practice
• Human and/or non-human bodies in mysticism, mystical practice, or visions
• Bodily or corporeal experiences of mystical or divine ecstasy
• Sacraments in female mysticism—in practice, theology or visionary experience
• The role of touching in women’s mystical experience and/or practice
• The regulation of female bodies and/or materialities in mystical practice
• The policing of mysticism and heterodoxy in and through women’s bodies and material circumstances
• Etc.

Please submit abstracts (for paper proposals) of 250-400 words to medmaterialism@gmail.com with “Magistra” in the subject line. (This e-mail is receiving proposals for multiple panels, so please do not skip this step!) Please ATTACH your abstract as a Word (or other text) document, and include your name, contact information and the panel to which you are submitting (Magistra) IN THE TEXT OF THE DOCUMENT.

Deadline: September 15, 2014

Given that this panel is devoted to exploring religion or spirituality of any kind relating to women’s bodies and experiences, we ask that papers on GENDER (more broadly defined) and materiality and/or mysticism be re-directed to the Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship.

Source de l’information : UPenn.edu

Session at the 50th International Congress on Medieval Studies

Kalamazoo, 14-17 May 2015

Deadline: 15 September 2015

Recent scholarly interest in whiteness, emptiness, and material destruction that pervade medieval visual culture demonstrate a shift in focus: where art historians have historically focused on figuration, they now turn to the instances of material absence. This session will explore the notion of erasure and its function in transforming the object being partially or completely defaced, expunged, rubbed out. How does erasure augment and subvert the meanings of the original image? What does it tell us about the process of engagement with medieval material culture? Does erasure ever equal silence, or does it announce itself as a loud presence on manuscript pages, stone exteriors, and wood and canvas surfaces? And what of the erased word: how does that compromise or transmute the complex text-image relationships? Submissions from scholars in any discipline are welcomed.

Please send your abstract, along with the paper proposal form (which can be found here: http://www.wmich.edu/medieval/congress/submissions/index.html), to Elina Gertsman at exg152@case.edu, by September 15, 2014.

Source de l’information : Medieval Art Research

Call for Papers for three joint sessions to be submitted for the International Medieval Congress, Institute of Medieval Studies, Leeds 6-9 July 2015 (special thematic strand: Reform & Renewal)
The Myth of Origins. The (Re-)Making of Medieval Sacral Space through Liturgical Reform
Deadline: 10 September 2014

Organizers:
Ivan Foletti, Universities of Brno and Lausanne
Elisabetta Scirocco, Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz–Max-Planck-Institut
Sponsor: Center for Early Medieval Studies, University of Brno

The Myth of Origins. The (Re-)Making of Medieval Sacral Space through Liturgical Reform
i. The Second Vatican Council and Twentieth-Century Historiography
ii. Reformation and Counter-Reformation
iii. Gregorian Reform

Divided into three sections, this proposal aims to reflect the ways in which the sacred space of late antiquity is constructed in a retrospective manner, through the most important reforms in the two millennia of the Western Church. Following a diachronic process in reverse, from the twentieth century to the Middle Ages, the stages identified are: The Second Vatican Council; The Council of Trent and the Protestant Reformation; the so-called Gregorian Reform. All coincide with significant moments of crisis for the Latin Church. In each of these historical phases, the answer to the crisis is found in the mythical past, in the origins of the Early Church. In the liturgical field, this is realized in an attempt to restore some of the distinctive elements of the old liturgy, or elements that were presumed to be so. The changes are associated with a critical rhetorical frame, which legitimized the process by virtue of emphasizing the importance of its supposed “authentic” origins. Thus, the innovative dimension of the reform was often denied: in the words of the reformers, what was being done was not to create a new solution, but going back to original ideals, to a Church fair and immaculate.

The search for “antique” elements and the discourse that accompanied their introduction inevitably ended up building a new past, which is reflected heavily in objects and spaces of the sacred, and in the following historiography.

The proposed sessions focus on the manner in which these “denied” reforms actually build history. The sessions will follow a reverse chronology: (i.) the Second Vatican Council and its historiographical premises, which have their roots in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; (ii.) the Protestant Reformation and the Catholic Counter-Reformation; and (iii.) the so-called Gregorian Reform of the eleventh century.

Participants are invited to reflect on such issues as: the methods used by the reformers to learn about the past; the manner in which the past is reconstructed and modified (consciously and unconsciously) in the texts and monuments; the impact of the “new past” on studies and on the perception of the ancient liturgy.

Papers from a historiographical and a diachronic art historical perspective are especially welcome.

Paper proposals of no more than one page, accompanied by a short CV, can be submitted by 10 September 2014 to: ivan.foletti@gmail.com and escirocco@gmail.com.

Source de l’information : Medieval Art Research

Fluctuating Networks: The Constructive Role of Broken Bonds in the Medieval Mediterranean and Beyond
Kalamazoo, MI, 50th International Congress on Medieval Studies, 14-17 May 2015
Deadline: September 15, 2014

The Medieval Studies Research Group at the University of Lincoln (UK), seeks papers for one sponsored panel at the 50th International Congress on Medieval Studies at Western Michigan University, May 14-17, 20145. The theme is: Fluctuating Networks: The Constructive Role of Broken Bonds in the Medieval Mediterranean and Beyond

The aim of this session is to re-consider theories and approaches to the study of medieval social, political, economic and cultural networks from multidisciplinary perspectives. The medieval Mediterranean, as a space of interaction and communication, offers a myriad of possibilities to explore, which increase even more when considering its connections with Europe and the rest of the known world.

In particular, we would welcome studies which examine how agents and circumstances, which in principle undermined and destroyed pre-existing bonds, in reality generated parallel structures and alternative webs of relatedness. Political conspiracy is a case in point. Similarly, betrayal could be read as an alteration of a system of trust, which simply shifted toward other individuals with whom new connections were established.

Through the analysis of textual and material sources, as well as visual art and architecture, this panel seeks to explore ideas and narratives of exclusion as potential seeds for new or renewed types of private and public networks. Ethnic, religious, political, economic, legal and cultural aspects were all at stake when de-constructing, while re-constructing, bonds between individuals and entire communities.

Possible areas of discussion include, but are not limited to:

• Conspiracy and alternative networks
• Revolt and rebellion
• Exile and excommunication
• Treason and betrayal (multiple interpretations)
• Trade, boycott and commercial agreements/disagreements
• Criminal associations
• ‘Otherness’ within and outside ethnic and religious communities
• Changing networks and legal practices
• Marital and familial connections
• Secular and monastic bonds
• Diplomacy and the role of ambassadors, spies, etc.
• Breaking bonds in historical writing and the construction of memory
• Comparative views and socio-anthropological perspectives

Please, submit an abstract for a 15-20 minute paper (300 words maximum) and a completed Congress Participant Information Form (available at: http://www.wmich.edu/medieval/congress/submissions/index.html#PIF) by September 15, 2014, to: aliuzzoscorpo@lincoln.ac.uk

Dr Antonella Liuzzo Scorpo
Lecturer in Medieval History
School of History and Heritage,
University of Lincoln,
Brayford Pool,
Lincoln LN6 7TS
Office: MC2139
Email: aliuzzoscorpo@lincoln.ac.uk
Tel.: +44(0)1522 886340
Website:http://staff.lincoln.ac.uk/aliuzzoscorpo

Source de l’information : Medieval Art Research