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[1] The Material and Visual Culture of Sitting in the Church Interior

From: Sabine Sommerer
Date: 03.09.2019

Session Organizers:
Sabine Sommerer (University of Zurich)
Tina Bawden (Freie Universität Berlin)

Session Abstract:
Since the 1990s, historical research has recognized church benches as communicating social, political and religious aspects (Margaret Aston, Gabriela Signori et al.). Pews and seats have been considered to be mirrors of the communities owning and using them. However, the material and visual aspect of seating and the heterogeneity of seat design have received little attention so far. With this panel, we intend to discuss the culture of sitting and the issue of ownership in the church interior from a visual and material perspective. By foregrounding visual and material aspects, we aim to elucidate the entanglement between seats, owners and society. This should enable both perception of social status and standing as well as the symbolic importance of church spaces from a different point of view.

Our panel seeks to provide a fresh look at both well-known and lesser-known examples of furnishings that were essential in conditioning the use and perception of church interiors. New perspectives on artistic programs, inscriptions, heterogeneous designs, conceptions, forms and later modifications of church seats are welcome. We are looking for contributions that take representations of church benches and choir stalls in art or the realia themselves from the Middle Ages to the early modern period in Europe as their starting point. Possible topics include but are not limited to:
- Signs of ownership and commemoration in script and image
- Signs of segregation: Changes to the fabric, destruction, palimpsests, structural modifications such as partitions, doors and locks
- Material, visual and spatial hierarchies: decoration and typology of pews (e.g. existence of box and family pews); pictorial programs (bench ends etc.); individual and collective hot spots in the sacral topography as reference points for preferred seating areas (e.g. altars, altarpieces, pulpits)
- Material and spatial contexts: tombs and graves, altars, wall and glass paintings

Please send a single-page abstract (maximum of 300 words) for a 15–20 minute paper, accompanied by a short CV and completed Participant Information Form https://wmich.edu/medievalcongress/submissions to Sabine Sommerer, sabine.sommereruzh.ch, and Tina Bawden, tina.bawdenfu-berlin.de, by 15th September 2019. More information on the Congress and on Congress Travel Awards can be found on the website: https://wmich.edu/medievalcongress/awards. Please feel free to contact the session organizers for further information.

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[2] The Materiality of Knowledge in the Middle Ages

From: Anna Majeski
Date: Sep 4, 2019

Session Organizers:
Anna Majeski, PhD candidate, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University
Austin Powell, PhD candidate, The Catholic University of America

Session Abstract:
As vehicles for authoritative texts, as images in miniature or monumental settings, as objects imbricated in practice, or as architectural containers, material artifacts stood at the intersection between abstract intellectual concepts, and the body of the active viewer/reader. But material objects not only served as means to embody knowledge, they transformed, extended, and disseminated knowledge in spaces of lived experience. This panel will bring together medievalists across many disciplines increasingly grappling with how material artifacts and their contexts shaped the perception, reception and performance of knowledge. Our interdisciplinary approach will facilitate scholars’ engagement with new questions, methodologies, and approaches.

This session applies a cross-disciplinary approach to the materiality of knowledge in context by bringing together historians whose ‘objects’ are more traditionally textual together with historians of material and visual culture. Scholars in these fields often consider different kinds of artifacts, and ask different questions about them.

Areas we hope to address include: the materiality of texts and manuscripts, their transmission, and revision; how historical practices reframed and animated objects of knowledge; scientific instruments; the embodied and spatial dimensions of diagrammatic or encyclopedic imagery; spatial contexts for the production or communication of knowledge; material objects and images in legal contexts.

Deadline and requirements:
Please send an abstract (250 words) and CV by September 15, 2019 to Anna Majeski (atm285nyu.edu) and Austin Powell (36powellcua.edu)

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[3] Astrology in Practice: Perspectives from the history of visual and material culture

From: Anna Majeski
Date: Sep 4, 2019

Session Organizers:
Jordan Famularo, PhD candidate, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University
Anna Majeski, PhD candidate, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University

Session Abstract:
Recent scholarship has proven the widespread prevalence and import of astrology in the medieval world. A dynamic area of research accentuates astrology not simply as a theoretical science or cosmology, but as a practice with a wide range of applications—from medicine to politics. A focus on astrological practice allows us to understand how abstract scientific theorems shaped lives, bodies, and lived experiences. This session invites papers to examine historical arenas in which theory was enacted, enhanced, and modified by medieval bodies, in concert with artifacts and monuments.

Material objects and monuments offered critical intermediaries in the performance of astrological practice by human subjects. This session aims to advance interdisciplinary research on the practice of astrology, with emphasis on intersections between histories of science and visual/material culture. The session is open to topics addressing the medieval period up to 1550 CE. The maximum length for each paper is 20 minutes.

Potential topics include:
-the agency and import of the material astrological artifact.
-political, medical, and magical uses for material objects in astrological practice.
-talismans.
-monumental astrological cycles and their relations to functions performed in specific architectural spaces.
-astrological instruments: their construction, use, and depiction in art.
-depictions of practicing astrologers.
-manuscripts or other materials used by working astrologers.
-manuscripts that incorporate astrological instruments (such as volvelles).
-the role of human bodies, imagination, and cognition in symbiosis with artifacts and monuments in astrological frameworks.

To apply please submit the following files in PDF or MS Word format to Anna Majeski (atm285nyu.edu) and Jordan Famularo (jjf376nyu.edu) by September 15, 2019. (1) Abstract of 250 words or fewer. (2) CV. (3) Participant Information Form (downloadable at https://wmich.edu/medievalcongress/submissions).