SPACE IN TIME: FROM THE HEAVENS TO OUTER SPACE

The Warburg Institute

12–13 October 2023

CALL FOR PAPERS

Space in Time is a forum for new work in the long and global cultural history of the space beyond Earth, from the ancient heavens to modern outer space. While space history is a vibrant field of study, extending across the humanities and social sciences, it often breaks down along familiar geographical, disciplinary, and period-based boundaries. In particular, the field’s predominant interest remains in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, especially following what is now increasingly referred to as the First Space Age. However, while outer space undeniably gains in interest in this period, this interest is preceded and underwritten by a cross-cultural history stretching as far back as the human imagination itself, much of it yet to be written.

Space in Time invites work sparking new cross-disciplinary, cross-cultural, and cross-period conversations in this field, encompassing, but not limited to, perspectives in the histories of art, astronomy, cosmology, geography, literature, philosophy, religion, science and technology, and intellectual and cultural history at large. Contributions challenging traditional approaches to outer space are particularly welcome, as well as those working across one or more established domains of inquiry, and especially across the premodern/modern divide. The event is open to researchers of any disciplinary background, of any career stage, working in any regional or cultural tradition, from the ancient world to the present day.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

• Shifting depictions, descriptions, and understandings of spaces(s) above and around the earth, its domains and inhabitants, in different periods and contexts: e.g. the heavenly spheres, astrological houses, the apeiron, the sensorium of God, a sphere whose circumference is nowhere, outer space, deep space, etc. What cosmological, ontological, epistemological, theological, metaphysical, aesthetic, ethical concerns have shaped representations of superlunary space?
• New directions in space history. Is it possible to write a history of outer space beyond ‘official’ histories of science? How have different senses and media informed perceptions and imaginations of outer space? How have terrestrial geopolitics, intercultural relations, and geographical imaginations shaped extra-terrestrial imaginations?
• Contrasting and complementary perspectives on outer space or the superlunary regions—e.g. ‘enchanted’ / ‘disenchanted’, local / global, popular / elite, timeless / historical.
• The Second / Third Space Age in historical perspective. How does a long cultural history of space inform the recent resurgence of public and private space programmes, controversial developments in space industry, space junk, and space tourism, and their complex political and cultural dynamics?
• Sounds of and from outer space, from the celestial music of the heavenly spheres to the signals of early satellites’ radio beacons, radiotelescopy, and the first sound recordings from Mars.
• Space, citizen science, and amateur initiatives: e.g. IGY Moonwatchers, radio amateurs, amateur astronomy, rocketry, SETI, diverse social and historical contexts of astrology, etc.
• Long history of science fiction and speculative voyages beyond Earth.
• Space in classical tradition / classical tradition in space.

We stress that these topics are meant as indicative only. If you are unsure about whether your topic fits the event’s remit, please do not hesitate to be in touch with a preliminary inquiry.

Space in Time will be a ‘hybrid’ event, combining in-person and online participation. Limited financial support may be available for early-career presenters attending in person.

The event will feature a keynote lecture by Frédérique Aït-Touati (History of Science, CNRS) as well as invited presentations by Oliver Dunnett (Geography, QUB), Andrew Gregory (History and Philosophy of Science, UCL), and others TBC.

Please send an abstract (up to 500 words) and abbreviated CV (2 pages) to spaceintime.conference@gmail.com by 31 May 2023, with an indication of whether you wish to attend in person or online. Please direct any inquiries, including about financial support, to the same address.

Organizers: Vladimir Brljak (English, Warburg/Durham), Veronica della Dora (Geography, Royal Holloway), Stamatina Mastorakou (History of Science, MPIWG), and John Tresch (History of Art, Science, and Folk Practice, Warburg).

Event homepage: https://warburg.sas.ac.uk/events/CFP-space-in-time.

To encourage the integration of Byzantine studies within the scholarly community and medieval studies in particular, the Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture seeks proposals for a Mary Jaharis Center sponsored session at the 59th International Congress on Medieval Studies, Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, May 9–11, 2024. We invite session proposals on any topic relevant to Byzantine studies.

The journal Convivium is publishing a themed issue on The Arts of Medieval Northern Africa for vol. 11, no. 1 (2024). Please find the call for papers below. A PDF poster is also attached. We encourage a diverse range of topics, including Jewish, Christian, Islamic, or polytheistic/indigenous art and architecture in dialogue; domestic, civic, or secular art and architecture; transcontinental trade and influence; historiography; or any other topic highlighting the contributions of Northern Africa to the history of medieval art and architecture.

Call for Papers for 

Convivium 11, no. 1 (2024):

The Arts of Medieval Northern Africa

Edited by Nathan S. Dennis and Ravinder S. Binning

• Deadline for abstracts and CV: June 5, 2023
• Deadline for manuscripts: November 30, 2023 
• Deadline for complete articles: January 31, 2024

Whether in museum collections or textbooks, the arts of medieval Northern Africa remain largely omitted from canons of premodern art history. Yet the region’s aesthetic legacy continues to reward scholarly inquiry. Recent excavations in Sudan alone, for example, have unearthed artifacts attesting to understudied epigraphic traditions and hitherto unimagined pilgrimage routes. Various forms of artistic media, as well as liturgical objects, continue to surface. Archaeological surveys over the last twenty years in the Maghreb and Sahel have uncovered new artistic, theological, and political relationships between urban centers and rural settlements. Indeed, Northern Africa had robust cross-cultural exchanges with European, Asian, and Southern African cultures. Its pluralistic societies included Jewish, Christian, and Islamic art and architecture in dialogue, as well as remnants of polytheistic traditions extending back to Dynastic Egypt or rooted within indigenous communities. Furthermore, Northern African workshops provided artistic labor for various canonical monuments in Southern Europe and the Levant. Complex trade networks also demand further scholarly investigation: medieval commodities arrived in Europe from West Africa and the Gulf of Guinea, as well as the southeastern Nilotic lands and Horn of Africa. Locally produced metalwork, ivory and wood sculpture, textiles, and ceramics were recognized as some of the finest works of medieval craftsmanship. They were collected and traded as far north as Great Britain and as far east as China.

The prominent position that Northern Africa held historically in medieval art and architecture has been the subject of several important exhibitions. Byzantium and Islam: Age of Transition (2012) and the upcoming Africa and Byzantium (2023) exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art are helping re-center Northern Africa as a cultural driver—not a marginal outpost—in the study of Byzantine and Islamic art. Caravans of Gold, Fragments in Time: Art, Culture, and Exchange Across Medieval Saharan Africa (2019) at the Block Museum of Art provided a much-needed focus on the medieval cultures of the Sahara/Sahel and their rich artistic contributions to medieval Europe and the Middle East. And the upcoming exhibition, Ethiopia at the Crossroads (2023), at the Walters Art Museum offers opportunities to reframe Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa as a dynamic and influential space of artistic exchange between three continents. The proposed 2024 volume of Conviviumseeks to expand upon these conversations and connections. Topics may include, but are certainly not limited to:

1. Late antique and medieval Jewish art and architecture in Africa
2. Early Christian and Byzantine Africa
3. Medieval Islamic Africa
4. Medieval Nubia
5. Coptic Egypt
6. Medieval Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa
7. Amazigh/Berber and other nomadic arts of the medieval Sahara/Sahel
8. Art and trade networks between Northern Africa and other areas of the African continent
9. Western medieval or Asian art in dialogue with medieval Northern Africa
10. Historiography of medieval Northern Africa

Please submit an abstract of approximately 300 words and a CV to Nathan Dennis at ndennis@usfca.edu or Ravinder Binning at ravi.binning@gmail.com by June 5, 2023. Articles selected for the volume will be due by November 30, 2023. All submissions will undergo double-blind peer review.