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From: Luke Fidler <lfidleruchicago.edu>
Date: Jun 26, 2018
Subject: CFP: Mit manigir slachti wunnin: The Politics of Pleasure in the Holy Roman Empire

Deadline: Sep 15, 2018

Session Organizer: Luke Fidler (Department of Art History, University of Chicago)

The twelfth-century poem Das Lob Salomons describes how King Solomon decorated the temple "with much to delight the eyes" [mit manigir slachti wunnin]. Although Solomon's Temple was repeatedly invoked as both exegetical object and architectural influence throughout the Middle Ages, this casual reference to ocular enjoyment only hints at the degree to which pleasure itself became a topic of interest in medieval aesthetic, moralizing, and political discourses. Bernard of Clairvaux's famous salvoes in the Apologia ad Guillelmum attest the virulence with which forms of beholding that might entail delight could be condemned. Pleasure was a heavily contested category.

Beyond the charged politics of medieval art and theology, conspicuous consumption and the performance of pleasure also played a key role in the making of social identity and the maintenance of rule in the Holy Roman Empire. From the elaborate hôchgezît, which might be staged by nobles or emperors on occasions like a martial victory (e.g. Frederick Barbarossa's defeat of Tortona in 1155 CE) or a religious holiday (e.g. Welf VI's feast near Augsburg for Pentecost in 1175 CE), to the presentation of luxury gifts or the production of toys and games for less elite audiences, pleasure frequently served as a medium for self-fashioning. Delight—and its regulation—was never simply a personal issue however, but a medium for marking, reinforcing, or undermining power relations.

Taking up these intersecting problems, this session will examine the distinctive contours of pleasure and politics in the Holy Roman Empire. Moreover, given the key roles that medieval sources have played in some of the most conceptually-sophisticated accounts of pleasure written by twentieth-century scholars, including Mikhail Bakhtin, Georges Bataille, Pierre Bourdieu, and Johan Huizinga, robust historiographical revisions of how we should approach medieval enjoyment's political efficacy will be welcome. Proposals from all disciplines, methodologies, and theoretical stances will be considered. Please send brief abstracts (no more than 300 words) and a completed Participant Information Form (https://wmich.edu/medievalcongress/submissions) to Luke Fidler (lfidleruchicago.edu) by September 15, 2018.

A PDF of this call may downloaded and shared here: https://www.academia.edu/36916696/CFP_Mit_manigir_slachti_wunnin_The_Politics_of_Pleasure_in_the_Holy_Roman_Empire