Call For Participants: Studying East of Byzantium X: Communities

The Mashtots Professor of Armenian Studies at Harvard University and the Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture at Hellenic College Holy Cross in Brookline, MA, are pleased to invite abstracts for the next Studying East of Byzantium workshop: Studying East of Byzantium IX: Communities.

Studying East of Byzantium IX: Communities is a three-part workshop that intends to bring together doctoral students and very recent PhDs studying the Christian East to reflect on how to reflect on the usefulness of the concept of “Community” in studying the Christian East, to share methodologies, and to discuss their research with workshop respondents, Michael Pifer, University of Michigan, and Salam Rassi, University of Edinburgh. The workshop will meet on November 17, 2023, February 9, 2024, and June 6–7, 2024, on Zoom. The timing of the workshop meetings will be determined when the participant list is finalized.

We invite all graduate students and recent PhDs working in the Christian East whose work considers, or hopes to consider, the theme of communities in their own research to apply.

Participation is limited to 10 students. The full workshop description is available on the East of Byzantium website (https://eastofbyzantium.org/upcoming-events/). Those interested in attending should submit a C.V. and 200-word abstract through the East of Byzantium website no later than September 13, 2023.

For questions, please contact East of Byzantium organizers, Christina Maranci, Mashtots Professor of Armenian Studies, Harvard University, and Brandie Ratliff, Director, Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture at contact@eastofbyzantium.org.

EAST OF BYZANTIUM is a partnership between the Mashtots Professor of Armenian Studies at Harvard University and the Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture at Hellenic College Holy Cross in Brookline, MA. It explores the cultures of the eastern frontier of the Byzantine Empire in the late antique and medieval periods.

Call for Papers ‘Fiction and Faction in Byzantine Literature’

Call for Papers ‘Fiction and Faction in Byzantine Literature’ (Buenos Aires, 3-5 April 2024)

Fifth Byzantine Colloquium of the University of Buenos Aires

Continuing the tradition of the Buenos Aires conferences, the topic of the fifth instalment is primarily narratological. The aim of this colloquium is to discuss case studies from the Byzantine millennium that show the tension between the narration of ficta res and of events ‘that really happened’.

We invite proposals for 20-minute on any topic pertinent to narrative in Byzantium in the widest sense, including art. Submissions of English presentations are particularly welcome. Please submit your abstract by 31 January 2024 to the conveners.

All information can be found here online.

via Reinhart Ceulemans (Leuven), also on behalf of Tomás Fernández and Paloma Cortez (Buenos Aires).

 

 

 

CFP: CIHA Lyon 2023

 

We invite proposals for the session CIHA202400009 “Dressing Bodies, Dressing Spaces: Challenges and New Approaches to Textiles and Adornment (300-1600) / Habiller le corps, Habiller l’espace: Enjeux et approches aux textiles et à l’adornement (300-1600)” at CIHA (Lyon, France June 23-28, 2024).

Session description:

Holistic consideration of the interrelationships of pre- and early modern bodies and spaces across Eurasia (300—1600) has been limited by conceptual frameworks divided into geographic, temporal, and methodological specialization. Thus, work on dress has dealt with personal appearance, highlighting questions about identity through clothing, jewelry, and accessories. Likewise, scholarship on interior decoration has considered the relationship of ephemeral design elements to permanent architectural forms through function and placement. Further, scholarship on the body’s presence in space has tended to work with movement, placement, and perception of abstracted bodies, rather than concrete figures weighed down by clothing and jewels.

These approaches, divided largely by medium, reflect art historiographical biases and technical specializations which silo, on the one hand, experts in textiles (weaving), jewelry (metalwork), and sculpture (architecture), or of art historians, archaeologists, and architectural historians, on the other. Similar divisions of body and interior also occur in the broader perspective of material culture theory, while modernist aesthetics have further obscured the interrelatedness of human form and spatial environment. Museum contexts reinforce this divide: objects tend to be isolated within cases, leading to a view of these pieces as context-free, while the museumification of historical spaces means that attendant furnishings are often displayed in special exhibition spaces, whereas historical rooms lie empty.

The proposed panel considers adorned human bodies in their spatial environments to forge new theoretical frameworks drawn from decorative arts historiography, ornament studies, sensory archaeology, anthropology, and material spatiality. An intermedial approach is essential, such as advocated in Luke Lavan and Ellen Swift’s (2009) work on late antique dress and interior decoration and in Jonathan Hay’s (2010) explorations of the somatic experiences of surfaces in early modern Chinese decorative arts objects. Recent efforts to draw together diverse Eurasian experiences of dress and furnishing textiles include a conference on medieval wearables at the Bard Graduate Center (2022) and a panel on embodied movement and interior decoration at the ICMS-Kalamazoo (2023).

We seek papers that:

  • articulate new theoretical approaches that treat pre- and early modern dress and furnishings as coherent visual and material systems;
  • consider the concept and metaphor of “dress,” viewing bodies as structures for adornment and decor, and buildings as immersive environments that respond to the embellished body;
  • evaluate dress and furnishings in a cross-cultural or comparative global framework, particularly in terms of status, value, ritual, identity, and somatic experience;
  • include contributions that draw from museum collections, given the history of textile research and collections in LyonSubmission deadline: 15 September 2023

    Candidates should send the following information:
    – Title of the paper
    – Paper proposal :
    An abstract of 350 to 500 words, in English or French, including 4 to 6 key words and a possible bibliography.
    – CV of 500 characters :
    First name, last name, title, position, institution, with a link to the personal or professional page if applicable.

Submissions should be made through the conference websitehttps://www.cihalyon2024.fr/fr/appel-a-communications

If you have questions, please do not hesitate to reach out to any of the session organizers:

Patricia Blessing pblessing@princeton.edu

Elizabeth Dospěl Williams williamse@doaks.org

Eiren Shea sheaeire@grinnell.edu

 

 

Warburg Institute CFP: Space in Time: From the Heavens to Outer Space

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.

Start Planning for Vienna Congress

The call for proposals for Round Tables for the 25th International Congress of Byzantine Studies, to be held in Vienna on August 24-29, 2026, went out during the busy season of the spring semester.  In case you missed it, I am re-circulating the call.  Please spend some time this summer thinking and discussing potential topics for round tables and colleagues for proposals.

The US National Committee is able to submit 10 proposals to the Congress Program Committee at the end of 2023.  The US Committee requests that you send us your proposals by NOVEMBER 3.  If we receive more than 10 proposals, we will suggest that some proposals go through different national committees.

Proposals should represent scholars from at least two different countries.  Ideally proposals would represent scholars at a range of career stages, including emerging scholars.

If you wish to share ideas about potential proposals with the US Committee ahead of the November deadline, we can help alert you to potential overlap and opportunities for collaboration with other scholars.  We want to help put forward the best possible slate of proposals for the Congress.

Please send plans and proposals to Leonora Neville at leonora.neville@wisc.edu.  She will share with the rest of the US National Committee, which consists of Leonora Neville, Cecily Hilsdale, Andrea Achi, and Benjamin Anderson.

For more information, see also The 25th International Congress of Byzantine Studies (2026) announcement.

Call for Sessions: Mary Jaharis Center Sponsored Panel, 59th International Congress on Medieval Studies

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.

Session proposals must be submitted through the Mary Jaharis Center website. The deadline for submission is May 15, 2023.If the proposed session is approved, the Mary Jaharis Center will reimburse a maximum of 4 session participants (presenters and moderator) up to $800 maximum for scholars traveling from North America and up to $1400 maximum for those traveling from outside North America. Funding is through reimbursement only; advance funding cannot be provided. Eligible expenses include conference registration, transportation, and food and lodging. Receipts are required for reimbursement. Participants must participate in the conference in-person to receive funding. The Mary Jaharis Center regrets that it cannot reimburse participants who have last-minute cancellations and are unable to attend the conference.

For further details and submission instructions, please visit https://maryjahariscenter.org/sponsored-sessions/59th-icms.

Please contact Brandie Ratliff (mjcbac@hchc.edu), Director, Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture with any questions.

CFP: Convivium 11, The Arts of Medieval North Africa

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.

Bryn Mawr College Graduate Group Symposium

Call for Papers:

Timecraft: From Interpreting the Past to Shaping the Future 

The Fourteenth Biennial Symposium organized by Graduate Students in Archaeology, Classics, and History of Art at Bryn Mawr College 

November 10th-11th, 2023

Deadline for Abstract Submissions: Friday May 5th, 2023, 5:00 PM EST. biensymp@brynmawr.edu

Past, present, and future are not universal truths but ideas that emerge in relation to human existence. The social construction of time takes many forms. From the collection of relics and repatriation of antiquities to the creation of memorials and the removal of monuments, traces of the past help us to make sense of the current moment. Performances of epics collapse the past into the present and wish-fulfilling rituals tie the present to the future. Questions about time are accordingly wide ranging. For instance, how do researchers identify the cultural strategies people use to define their own time? What does the archaeological record tell us about continuities with and breaks from the past? How do objects and texts reflect attitudes and anxieties about the future?

Timecraft invites you to consider the ways in which people use the concept of time to understand the past, define the present, and envision the future. This will be the fourteenth biennial symposium organized by students in the Graduate Group of Archaeology, Classics, and History of Art at Bryn Mawr College. We encourage graduate students in relevant disciplines, working in any time period, to send us paper proposals on timecraft. Applicants may choose to present their research in the following formats:

  • Several regular panels are intended for full-length paper presentations. 15- to 20-minute papers will be followed by individual, 10-minute Q&A sessions in these panels. While we are planning the regular panels as in-person sessions, we hope to provide space for remotely-delivered papers to those participants who are unable to travel to the area.
  • One lightning panel is intended as an opportunity to share works-in-progress, and is geared towards fostering a hybrid mode of participation, allowing both remote and in-person participants to bring ideas into conversation. Five-to seven-minute introductions of the works-in-progress will be followed by a 10-minute Q&A after each paper.

Application process: Applicants are encouraged to submit abstracts to either or both types of panels, provided that the two submissions are separate works. We will consider submissions from graduate students at any point in their degree. All proposals should be sent to the BMC Graduate Symposium Committee at biensymp@brynmawr.edu by Friday May 5th, 2023, 5:00 PM EST.

  • To apply for the regular panel please send an abstract of 300-words to us, specifying your preferred panel format in the subject line of your email.
  • To apply for the lightning panel, please send a 150-word abstract to us, specifying your preferred panel format in the subject line of your email.

Review and Acceptance Process: The committee will assess submissions through a blind review process. Applicants will be notified of the outcome of their submission by Monday May 22nd, 2023.

Please contact us with any questions regarding the symposium at biensymp@brynmawr.edu.

Please visit this link to see a list of some suitable topics for Timecraft.

The 25th International Congress of Byzantine Studies (2026)

Following the online meeting of the Organizing Committee of the 25th International Congress of Byzantine Studies -Vienna 2026 with the members of the AIEB Bureau on 16 March 2023, we would like to inform you about the preliminary profile and structure of the Congress program and to appeal to all National Committees to send us their proposals for Round Tables by 31 December 2023. The call for Free Communications will be sent in spring 2025. You may find below the main theme of the Congress, the themes of six Plenary Sessions, as well as the timetable and procedures for Round Tables, to be confirmed and approved at the Inter Congress meeting in Athens on 12 April 2024.

INFORMATION ON THE PROFILE AND STRUCTURE OF THE 25th CONGRESS OF BYZANTINE STUDIES- Vienna 2026

Date:

The 25th International Congress of Byzantine Studies will be held on 24 to 29 August 2026 in Vienna, Austria.

Main Theme:

“Byzantium beyond Byzantium”, “Byzance au-delà de Byzance”, “Το Βυζάντιο πέρα από το Βυζάντιο”

General Rule:

Scholars can participate in no more than two sessions throughout the Congress. (i.e., as speaker in two sessions, or as speaker in one session plus as convener, or as convener in two sessions).

Plenary Sessions:

There will be six Plenary Sessions. The list of Plenary Session themes and speakers will be approved at the Inter-Congress meeting in Athens on 12 April 2024. National Committees will be informed about the details shortly before the meeting. The themes for Plenary Sessions are:

  1. Byzantium lost and found
  2. Romanitas beyond Byzantium. Diffusion and impact of ideas of Rome in a „post-Roman”world
  3. The beasts, the crops and the bones. Biological perspectives on the Byzantine world
  4. Byzantine Diversities
  5. Reading Byzantine literature across the centuries
  6. Byzantium in Central Europe

Round Tables:

General rules

  1. Round Tables must be proposed through the National Committee of the proposer. There is also the option of joint proposals by more than one National Committee.
  2. Round Tables are allocated 90 minutes. They should consist of no fewer than four and no more than six speakers, plus the convener(s), in order to ensure adequate time for discussion.
  3. The professional affiliation of the speakers should represent at least two countries. We particularly encourage the inclusion of young researchers.
  4. We strongly encourage those who propose Round Tables to follow the Congress main theme.
  5. The most important criterion for accepting a Round Table proposal will be its innovative scholarly contribution.
  6. The number of proposals, including joint proposals by each National Committee is limited to ten.
  1. Proposals should include a title, an abstract of 250 words, 5 key words, the names of the convener(s) and speakers as well as the name of the person sending the proposal, his/her affiliated institution and his/her mail address.
  2. Proposals should be written in English or French. Timetable
  • The deadline for submission of Round Table proposals by National Committees to the Organizing Committee is 31 December 2023. Any Round Table proposal sent after the deadline will not be accepted. The proposals should be sent to program.ICBS2026@univie.ac.at.
  • Conveners of Round Tables will be informed about the decision of the Program Committee (in accordance with the Bureau of the AIEB) in mid-February 2024. Proposed Round Tables will either be accepted or rejected or the option of an Organized Session will be offered.
  • Conveners of accepted Round Tables will be asked to confirm their participation and the organization of their Round Tables by 31 March 2024.
  • The list of Round Tables will be presented at the Inter-Congress meeting in Athens on 12 April 2024.

Vienna, March 2023
The Organizing Committee

CFP: 49th Annual BSC, Abstracts due April 14

This is a reminder that abstracts for the 49th Annual BSC are due April 14.

CALL FOR PAPERS

The Forty-Ninth Annual Byzantine Studies Conference
DEADLINE: April 14, 2023

The Forty-Ninth Annual Byzantine Studies Conference (BSC) will be held at the Wosk Centre for Dialogue at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver from Thursday, October 26 to Sunday, October 29, 2023. The Local Arrangements Co-Chairs are Dimitris Krallis (Department of Humanities and SNF Centre for Hellenic Studies) and Lauren Gilbert, Simon Fraser University (Department of Global Humanities). This conference will be in-person only.
The Program Committee invites proposals for papers and thematic panels on all topics and in all disciplines related to Byzantine Studies, broadly construed. All proposals must be submitted via EasyChair, and must adhere to specific formatting requirements. To deliver your paper at the BSC, you must be a member of BSANA in good standing, enrolled in a graduate program at the time of submission, or hold a graduate degree. We encourage undergraduate attendance, but do not accept submissions from undergraduates. To join or renew your membership in BSANA, pay your dues according to your current status at: https://bsana.net/members/.
For instructions on how to submit a proposal and to learn about funding opportunities, please see the attached PDF or visit the BSANA website: https://bsana.net/annual-conference/.
Brad Hostetler, BSC 2023 Program Committee Chair
Assistant Professor
Art History & Asian and Middle East Studies
Kenyon College

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