CALL FOR PAPERS
"Gothic Sculpture of the Holy Roman Empire in Its Architectural Setting (ca.
1200- ca. 1400): Recent Contextual Approaches"
37th International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, 2-5 May 2002
Special Session organized by Jacqueline E. Jung (New York) and Achim Timmermann
(Berlin, Los Angeles)

The abundance, diversity, and often very high quality of Gothic sculpture
produced in countries comprising the medieval Holy Roman Empire (including most
of modern Germany, the Burgundian Netherlands, western Poland, Silesia,
Bohemia,
and northern Italy) make this field a particularly rich and important source
for
understanding the visual, religious, and social culture of the Middle Ages. But
all too often it falls out of the purview of medieval studies, as European
presentations of the monuments tend to stay confined to archaeological or
stylistic analysis while American scholars, more inclined toward integrative
approaches, are often unaware of the lesser-known monuments.
This session will bring together scholars from Europe and America who work on
the sculpture produced between ca. 1200 (the beginning of the Gothic style in
central Europe) and ca. 1400 (the death of Peter Parler), asking them to
discuss
the ways figural works function visually, socially, politically, liturgically,
etc. within their given architectural frames. In so doing, we hope to broaden
both the canon of Gothic sculpture traditionally accessible to American
scholars*), and the range of approaches typically employed by their European
colleagues.

Because we are interested as much in the space a sculpture creates as the
technical details of the sculpture itself, we hope to draw together
three-dimensional figural objects usually assigned to discrete categories. Thus
potential papers might deal with fixed works of architectural sculpture (e.g.,
portals or buttress figures) and funerary sculpture; sculpture animating
liturgical furnishings (e.g., altarpieces, choir stalls and screens, and
sacrament houses); moveable objects (e.g., reliquaries and cult statues); or
public monuments featuring figural programs (e.g., fountains, boundary markers
and wayside crosses). We believe that these sessions will stimulate a
long-overdue dialogue between American and European art historians, while
offering an important supplement to an understanding of Gothic sculpture and
its
uses gained from concentration on the monuments of northern France.

*) 13 of the 18 papers on Gothic sculpture presented at the last Kalamazoo
Congress dealt exclusively with French monuments.

Jacqueline E. Jung
506 W.113th St., Apt. 5D
New York, NY 10025
phone 212 678 0552
fax 212 865 4511
e-mail jej15@columbia.edu

Achim Timmermann
Wittstocker Strasse 20
10553 Berlin
phone 030 39 74 26 80
e-mail a_timmermann@yahoo.com