L'Agenda des Médiévistes

Call for Proposals: Early Global Insularities
Viator Special Cluster
Editors: Sara Torres and Nahir I. Otaño Gracia

Early Modern literatures are suffused with references to fantastical, miraculous, and topographical islands, from the isle of Avalon in Arthurian legend, to Dante’s Purgatorio, to the pilgrimage site of St. Patrick’s Purgatory in Lough Derg, Ireland. Some texts imagine islands as archipelagos and networks—linked coastal zones where merchants, missionaries, and migrants mingle in local ports. Islands can be replicable, itinerant, or phantasmagorical (St. Brendan’s Isle), tied to the temporalities of liturgy or climate. They can, like the Fortunate Isles, float tantalizingly at the edges of cartographic knowledge and cultural epistemes, beckoning us beyond the thresholds of human knowledge. Other texts, such as Thomas More’s Utopia, focus on the spatial autonomy of islands, emphasizing their disjunctive status as unique in culture or in social organization, exceptionalist in outlook or in ideology. Such sites, conspicuously separate from surrounding polities and politics, draw attention to cultural difference or utopian possibility, and can facilitate the nostalgic affect that transforms a kingdom such as England into a “sceptered isle”—fantasies that can be used to exclude other communities or reinforce endogenous practices. At the heart of the idea of islands is an exploration of the nature and extent of our relationship as individuals to society at large, and of cultures to one another.

Islands occupy a sometimes ambiguous place in center-periphery models, and it’s our hope that by “centering” insularity as a topography, a literary conceit, and a disciplinary trope, we can explore both the range of “islands” in medieval and medievalist texts as well as the possibilities of working in an archipelagic scholarly community. In a time of climate crisis, the precarity of islands and archipelagoes (so often the sites of colonial violence) brings a sense of urgency to our reappraisal of the historical ideation of insularity and the relationship of the local to the global.

We invite proposals on topics broadly related to our theme of “Insularity and Early Globalities” and especially encourage contributions from early career scholars and scholars whose work spans multiple geographical regions and linguistic traditions.

Possible topics include:

• Mythical islands in medieval, medievalist, or early modern literature
• Iberian insolarios, coastal contact zones, and archipelagic regions
• Mediterranean studies, Blue studies, and ecological commentaries on coasts or islands
• Reflections on how geographical thought shapes premodern and early modern theories of race
• Islands, periodization, and disruptive temporalities
• Decolonizing approaches to early global insularities
• Disciplinary insularity and its discontents
• Reflections on teaching premodern or early modern literature from scholars working within “insular” institutional or geographical spaces

Proposals should be no more than 500 words in length and should be submitted by email to sara.torres@converse.edu and nahir@unm.edu with “Viator Proposal” in the subject line by 15 July 2022. The authors of selected proposals will be notified by 31 August 2022. Contributors will have the opportunity to workshop essays-in-progress in November 2022. Completed essays will be expected by 20 January 2023. Tentative publication date 2024.

Source : The Medieval Academy of America

Authenticity Studies-International Journal of Archaeology and Art is an international and independent journal, based on a peer review system and dedicated to the study of the methods of attribution and authentication of archaeological and art-historical artifacts.

Founded by Monica Salvadori (Editor in Chief), Federica Toniolo, Andrea Tomezzoli, Marta Nezzo, Monica Baggio and Luca Zamparo, Authenticity Studies is a journal of the Department of Cultural Heritage of the University of Padua and is published by Padova University Press. Authenticity Studies is an open access electronic journal (with ISSN). It is based on an anonymous and international double peer review system.

Authenticity Studies accepts original and unpublished contributions focused on three main research lines:

1 – Theory and method of art-historical and archaeological attribution
2 – Investigations on the phenomenon of falsification: history, philosophy, methods and society
3 – Provenance Studies

In this way, Authenticity Studies intends to analyze the methods of study and analysis, as well as the philology, for the attribution and authentication of archaeological and artistic manufacts, to propose new attributions or verify the authenticity of the same, as well as to study the revival of taste and tradition in modern and contemporary society.

Furthermore, Authenticity Studies intends to propose a complete analysis of the phenomenon of falsification, verifying the material results and the economic, social, legal, philosophical and ethical implications. Authenticity Studies analyzes the authentication techniques and methods (humanistic and technological-scientific), the connections with the art market, and the history of collecting, thus also investigating historical fakes and those inserted, over time, in the field museum public and private.

Finally, Authenticity Studies wants to be the forum for discussion and reflection around studies on the provenance and on the reconstruction of the original context of archaeological and art-historical heritage, and the place for discussion on protection practices and on the actions to be taken for the conservation and the safeguarding of authentic Cultural Heritage.

Authors submitting a contribution to Authenticity Studies guarantee the originality of their works, the intellectual property of the contribution and the absence of conflicts of interest or economic interests arising from the publication of the attribution/authentication.

Authenticity Studies does not accept: attribution or authentication researches of objects of uncertain or incorrectly reconstructed provenance (and/or ownership); attributions or authentication of items offered for sale.

Authenticity Studies. International Journal of Archaeology and Art is published annualy.
The publication of the next volume is scheduled for March 2023.

The deadline for articles submissions is July 15th, 2022.

Publication is free of charge.

Submissions should be sent to: authenticity.studies.dbc@unipd.it

Info: luca.zamparo@unipd.it (Managing Editor)

Source : Medieval Art Research