DEADLINE EXTENDED 6/28 Call for Applications:The implications of images/Les enjeux de l’image: Methods in the analysis of medieval images
Deadline: June 28, 2019
The implications of images/Les enjeux de l’image
Methods in the analysis of medieval images
Interdisciplinary workshop
Paris, 5 November 2019
Call for Applications
The study of medieval images is no longer the exclusive domain of art historians. Today, it stands at the crossroads of several disciplines that take their own approaches to visual material. The impact of historical anthropology has also opened up new methodological perspectives favoring more thorough consideration of social and cultural contexts. With the increasing number of publications in history, literature and musicology that use images as evidence for their arguments, it is necessary to redefine the scope and the implications of the methods employed in the analysis of images.
Scholars of the Middle Ages employ a particularly wide range of approaches to visual material, and the historical analysis of the visual arts has grown as a field of study over the last two decades. Influential books using visual evidence written by medievalists who are not art historians include, Jean-Claude Schmitt, Le corps des images (2002); Miri Rubin, Mother of God (2009); and Margot Fassler, The Virgin of Chartres (2010); and Sara Lipton, Dark Mirror: The Medieval Origins of Anti-Jewish Iconography (2014), among others. Edited collections also reflect the increasing importance of visual evidence in various fields of the humanities; a few representative examples are Quand l’image relit le texte: regards croisés sur les manuscrits médiévaux, ed. Maud Perez-Simon and Sandrine Hériché-Pradeau (2013); The Social Life of Illumination: Manuscripts, Images, and Communities in the Late Middle Ages, ed. Markus Cruse, Joyce Coleman, and Kathryn Smith (2013): Resounding Images: Medieval Intersections of Art, Music, and Sound, ed. Susan Boynton Diane J. Reilly (2015).
The aim of this international, interdisciplinary workshop is to establish a methodological and historiographical dialogue among specialists in different fields whose research relies on the analysis of images. This one-day workshop will bring together selected MA and Ph.D. French and American students (in art history, history, literature, musicology, and other fields) to present their work in progress in a closed seminar that will offer young scholars the opportunity to reflect thoroughly on their working methods. Senior scholars will provide detailed commentaries and responses, and will present their own papers, to which the students will respond. Each 30-minute paper will be pre-circulated to all participants in advance. The languages of presentation will be English and French.
Discussions will address questions such as the following: what does the study of images bring to research on the Middle Ages, in any discipline, and how does it inform one’s conclusions? How do approaches to and understandings of visual materials in art history compare to the use of textual or musical sources in musicology, history, and literature? What is the role of traditional iconography in this research and, more generally, how does it employ scholarship on images and visual studies? Drawing on all the senses of the French word “enjeux” (“implications”), we will explore the implications of images in and of themselves and the broader methodological implications of using visual materials in humanities research.
Location:
Columbia Global Center
4 rue de Chevreuse
75006 Paris
Organizers:
Susan Boynton (Columbia University)
Anne-Orange Poilpré (Université Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne)
Applications will consist of the following materials:
1. A 5-page summary of the proposed paper, indicating clearly the methodological implications in relation to images, with a bibliography (one file)
2. A curriculum vitae (one file)
Application deadline: 2019, June 15th
Send applications by email to Susan Boynton ([email protected]) and Anne-Orange Poilpré ([email protected]); make sure to send applications to both addresses.
Applicants will be notified by July 15, 2019.
The papers must be written and sent (with illustrations) to the organizers before October 1, 2019. The texts should be limited to about 3200 words (not including footnotes).
Participants should apply for travel funding in order to attend. Organizers in Paris will help participants locate housing. Lunch and dinner on the day of the workshop will be provided.