Call for Papers

"Medieval Architecture in East Central Europe: Recent Research"

41st International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo (Michigan),
May 4-7, 2006

This session invites 20-minute papers from scholars working on medieval
(Romanesque to late Gothic) religious and secular architecture in east
central Europe, that is the present-day Czech and Slovak Republics,
Poland, Hungary, as well as the eastern part of Germany. Papers
discussing the architectural evidence in the context of patronage,
ritual, visuality, symbolic notions of space, and historiography are
particularly welcome.

The Iron Curtain has long been lifted, but its afterimage continues to
haunt the narratives of medieval architecture that are being studied, and
written, at academic institutions throughout the United States. Largely
reflecting the political situation of the Cold War, these narratives are
still centered on France, Italy, the Iberian Peninsula, and the western
parts of Germany. The one notable exception to this is the city of Prague
with its magnificent 14th-century cathedral, which has of late entered
the mainstream academic discourse. Yet, hundreds of (art-) historically
highly important monuments, located in cities such as Wroclaw or Kraków
in Poland, Levoca in the Slovak Republic, or Ják in Hungary, to name just
a few, are still largely unknown in the United States. The session
foregrounds some of these monuments within a variety of contexts, and
provides a forum of exchange between American scholars and their European
colleagues.

Interested speakers should send a 150-word abstract and their Curriculum
Vitae to:

Professor Achim Timmermann
Department of the History of Art
University of Michigan
110 Tappan Hall
519 South State Street
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1357
U.S.A.

Email: achimtimumich.edu
Phone: + 1 734 763 6112
Fax: + 1 734 647 4121

The deadline for the submission of abstracts is September 15, 2005.