[1] Arts, Architecture, and Devotional Interaction in England, 1200-1600
The NEH Summer Seminar on Arts, Architecture, and Devotional Interaction, 1200-1600 will be held in York, England from June 8 to July 4, 2014. The seminar is designed to provide college and university teachers with an extraordinary opportunity to explore how and why artwork and architecture produced between 1200-1600 engaged devotees in dramatic new forms of physical and emotional interaction. Building on the work of scholars over the past decade, we will examine the role of performativity, sensual engagement, dynamic kinetic action as well as emotional and imaginative interaction within the arts.

The seminar will take full advantage of its spectacular locale. Most seminar meetings will be held in churches or museums and we will be accompanied by visiting scholars who are specialists in the daily topics. The seminar is designed for all kinds of teachers in the humanities, not just art historians. You do not need a specialist’s knowledge of English Gothic art and architecture, but we expect that participants will have some scholarly engagement with European history, art history, theology, theater, music, or some other appropriate field.

For further details, visit http://www.usu.edu/NEHseminar2014/

[2] Reform and Renewal in Medieval Rome
In this seminar held at the American Academy in Rome, project directors Maureen C. Miller (University of California, Berkeley) and William L. North (Carleton College) use the rich history of the city and its surviving medieval monuments as a laboratory for reconsidering central concepts in European history that continue to be powerful elements of our public discourse. Indeed, “reform” and “renewal” seem to be almost passwords for legitimate and positive transformation. With its repeated movements for religious and political reform and renewal, the Middle Ages offers a particularly rich historical landscape in which to investigate these processes. Through readings, site visits, and discussions, the seminar seeks to foster participants' individual research and pedagogical projects and to build a supportive interdisciplinary community of inquiry that will continue to share ideas, work, and teaching materials after the summer ends. Theoretical readings on the dynamics of conceptual and institutional change will be paired with three richly documented, interdisciplinary case studies: the Carolingian political, religious, and intellectual transformations of the ninth century; ecclesiastical reform in the eleventh and twelfth centuries; and the efforts to revive the Roman republic in both the twelfth and the fourteenth centuries. Readings include theoretical discussions of the conceptual and institutional dynamics of reform, core primary sources for each of the case studies, as well as a range of classic and revisionist scholarship. Site visits in and around Rome – for example, to S. Clemente, S. Prassede, SS. Quattro Coronati, S. Angelo in Formis, the Lateran, and the Campidoglio – are designed to put texts into conversation with visual and material evidence.

The directors encourage applications from scholars engaged in research and teaching on reform and renewal throughout medieval Europe, but also welcome those in Renaissance studies, for which the medieval movements of reform and renewal are an essential foundation, and those pursuing comparative projects on these themes. In addition to the unparalleled resources of Rome's numerous archives, libraries, sites, and museums, participants may also be aided by the American Academy's own library and research facilities.

For further information visit, https://apps.carleton.edu/neh2014/

Summer Institute

[3] Dante's Divine Comedy: Poetry, Philosophy, and the City of Florence
This four-week NEH Summer Institute for College and University Teachers will take place in Florence in summer 2014. Situating the study of the Comedy in Florence offers an intellectually expansive view of the poem and of how Dante parlayed Florence’s emerging power into a critique of civic disorder, acquisitiveness, and corruption. At the same time that Dante was formed as a poet in his turbulent but brilliant city, he was inspired by the intellectual, spiritual, and theological currents and cross-currents represented so pervasively in its built environment. The Institute is designed for those who want to teach Dante, who would like to expand their knowledge of the place and time that inspired the poem, or who want to increase their knowledge of medieval literature, history and art.

The director of the Institute, Professor Brenda Deen Schildgen, will join a number of leading scholars of Dante, medieval history, art history, and philosophy, to lead the NEH scholars through a close reading of Dante's Comedy. These institute leaders include Peter Hawkins, Professor of Religion and Literature at Yale University; Giuseppe Mazzotta, Sterling Professor in the Humanities for Italian and chair of the Italian Studies Department at Yale University; Professor William Franke at Vanderbilt University; Lino Pertile, Carl A. Pescosolido Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures at Harvard University and director of the Villa I Tatti. The focussed discussions of Dante's poem will be supported through lectures on Medieval Ethics and Politics by Professor David Ardagh; the history and importance of Benedictine monasticism to the development of Florence, and more particularly, to Dante's formation, by the Rector of San Miniato al Monte; and the role of St. Francis, Franciscanism, and Giotto in Dante by Professor Chiara Frugoni.

For more information, see http://nehinstitutedantesdivinecomedy.ucdavis.edu

For additional information, please consult www.utc.edu/NEH or email Irven-Resnickutc.edu

See more Summer Institutes

Medieval Political Philosophy: Islamic, Jewish, and Christian
http://medievalpoliticalphilosophy.gonzaga.edu/

The Mongols and the Eurasian Nexus Global History
http://www.eastwestcenter.org/education/asian-studies-development-program/upcoming-programs/neh-the-mongols-and-the-eurasian-nexus

Representations of the 'Other': Jews in Medieval England
http://www.utc.edu/NEH