Artificial Light in Medieval Churches between Byzantium and the West

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Virtual Workshop Program

Artificial Light in Medieval Churches between Byzantium and the West

9 February 2023

Register Here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfGj4WxvME6eCOyhpm8Nk8nr-TtT34_LuI6OLaToTd7OrF4vA/viewform

ORGANIZERS:
Alice Isabella Sullivan, Tufts University
Vladimir Ivanovici, University of Vienna | Accademia di Architettura di Mendrisio, USI

Throughout the Middle Ages, artificial illumination was used to draw attention to and enhance certain areas, objects, and persons inside Christian sacred spaces. The strategies usually found in Latin and Byzantine churches have been analyzed in recent decades. However, the cultures that developed at the crossroads of the Latin, Greek, and Slavic spheres, particularly in regions of the Balkan Peninsula and the Carpathian Mountains, have received less scholarly attention. The uses of artificial light in churches were likely shaped by aspects such as inherited practices, the imitation of other societies, as well as by local climatic, economic, and theological parameters.

Following a similar workshop that focused on natural light, which showed how uses of sunlight reveal patterns of knowledge transfer and cultural interaction between Byzantium, the West, and the Slavic world throughout the Middle Ages, this workshop hosts papers on the economy of artificial light in medieval churches with a focus on examples from Eastern Europe and other regions of the medieval world that developed at the crossroads of competing traditions. Whether innovative or inspired by the more established traditions on the margins of the Mediterranean, local customs are examined to understand how artificial light was used in ecclesiastical spaces, and how it brought together and enhanced the architecture, decoration, objects, and rituals.

Thursday, 9 February 2023 (EST time)

09:00-09:15 Alice Isabella Sullivan, Welcome and Introduction

09:15-09:45 Teresa Shawcross (Princeton University), The Influence of the Jerusalemite Miracle of Holy Light on Medieval
Sacred Space

09:45-10:15 Thomas E.A. Dale (University of Wisconsin–Madison), The Phenomenology of Artificial and Natural Light at San Marco in Venice

10:15-10:30 (make your own) Snack / Coffee Break

10:30-11:00 Anna Adashinskaya (New Europe College Bucharest | The University of Bucharest, Center for Russian Studies), “The Radiance of the Divine”: Lightening Iconography, Its Significance,, Equipment, and Procurement in the Katholikon of Visoki Dečani Monastery

11:00-11:30 Jelena Bogdanović, Leslie Forehand, Magdalena Dragović, Dušan Danilović, Travis Yeager, Debanjana Chatterjee, Jacob Gasper, Marko Pejić, Aleksandar Čučaković, Anastasija Martinenko, Suvadip Mandal, and Charles Kerton
Modeling the Illumination of the Church at Studenica Monastery During
Evening Services

11:30-12:00 Vlad Bedros (National University of Arts Bucharest), “In thy light shall we see light”: The Interplaying of Light, Liturgical Furnishings, and Images in Moldavian Monastic Churches (15th–16th c.)

12:00-13:00 Longer Break

13:00-13:30 Vera Henkelmann (University of Erfurt | Max-Weber-Kolleg), The Use of Artificial Light in Medieval Churches of Old Livonia – On the Relationship between Lighting, Ritual, Furnishings and Architecture

13:30-14:00 Anthony Masinton (Independent Scholar), Lux ex Machina: Methodological Approaches to Simulating and Analyzing Light in Medieval Churches

14:00-14:30 Discussion followed by concluding remarks (Vladimir Ivanovici)

Introduction to 3D Modeling Workshop

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The Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture and BSANA are pleased to offer a two-part 3D Modeling workshop for graduate students and early career researchers in collaboration with Alicia Walsh of Recollection Heritage.

Introduction to 3D Modeling with Photogrammetry and Agisoft Metashape for Byzantinists, workshop Alicia Walsh (Recollection Heritage), via Zoom, January 27 and February 3, 2023, 12:00–1:30 pm (EST)

Photogrammetry is the science of creating a measurable 3D point cloud from high-resolution 2D images. It is a commonly used to document archaeological and cultural heritage in order to preserve, analyze, and make artefacts digitally accessible. This online workshop will introduce the theory of photogrammetry and Agisoft Metashape, a useful software for processing 3D models. Participants will create a 3D model of an object of their choosing during the workshop.

The workshop is limited to 15 participants. The time commitment for this workshop is three hours of instruction and an additional two–four hours between the meetings for the creation of the 3D model. Participants are required to attend both sessions. Registration is first come, first served.

Registration closes Wednesday, December 21 at 1:00 pm (EST). If spaces are still available, registration will reopen on Tuesday, January 10 and close on Wednesday, January 18 at 1:00 pm (EST).

Who is eligible?

  • Graduate students and early career researchers (PhD received after January 2015) in the field of Byzantine studies. Students enrolled in graduate programs in North America and early career researchers working in North America will be given priority. Graduate students and early career researchers outside of North America will be placed on a waiting list and contacted if space is available.
  • All participants must be BSANA members. BSANA membership is free for graduate students and early-career contingent scholars who have earned their PhD within the last eight years and who do not hold a permanent or tenure-track appointment. If you are not already a BSANA member, please complete the BSANA Membership Form (https://bsana.net/members/) before registering for the workshop. Your membership status will be confirmed before your space in the workshop is confirmed.

To read a full description of the workshop and register your interest, please visit https://maryjahariscenter.org/events/introduction-to-3d-modeling.

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

2023 ASCSA Summer Session

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ASCSA Programs
Deadline for applications: January 9, 2023
 

2023 ASCSA Summer Session

The Summer Session program of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens is a six-week travel study course designed for those who wish to become acquainted with Greece and its major monuments, and to improve their understanding of the country’s landscape, history, material culture, and literature from antiquity to the present. The 2023 Summer Session runs from June 12 to July 26, 2023, and its Director is Professor Glenn R. Bugh of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.
Format: The ASCSA Summer Session has provided extensive exposure to Greece, ancient and modern, for generations of students of Classics and related fields. It has a strong academic component with participants researching and presenting topics on site and offers unique opportunities to interact with eminent archaeologists in the field. Roughly half of the session is spent in travel throughout Greece. Three trips give participants an introduction to the major archaeological sites and museum collections throughout the country. The remainder of the session is devoted to study of the museums and monuments of Athens and the surrounding area with day trips to such sites as Marathon, Sounion, and Eleusis. The Summer Session’s commitment to presenting a comprehensive view of Greece’s rich history and archaeology leads to long days and extensive walking in the hot Mediterranean summer. Participants must be able to cover very uneven, rocky terrain and endure temperatures well above 30ºC for extended periods.
2023 ASCSA Summer Seminars
The Summer Seminars of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens are 18-day programs that focus on specific cultural themes, historical periods, or geographical regions. The Seminars are led by exceptional scholars of Classics and related fields. Under their direction, participants study texts, visit archaeological sites and museums, and engage with expert guest speakers in order to deepen their understanding of Greece’s landscape, history, literature, and material culture.
For Summer 2023, the two seminars are:
The Archaeology of Caves in Greece: Cult and Life through the Ages (June 5 to June 23, 2023)
Participants will investigate life and cult stretching from the Paleolithic period to today, through archaeological and anthropological research focusing on caves. The course examines caves as living entities that actively shape local cultures as centers of cult, active arenas of archaeological exploration, nodes of complex economic and religious landscapes, and major archaeological sites doubling as tourist attractions with a major impact on local economies. Attention will be paid to caves as carstic phenomena that have attracted various forms of human action (habitation, exploitation, cult, refuge, shelter) for millennia. The seminar will visit several caves as well as significant nearby sites and museums (e.g. Delphi, Athenian Acropolis). Taught by Professors Amy and Nassos Papalexandrou (University of Texas at Austin).
Locating Ancient Gender and Sexuality (July 3 – July 21, 2023)
This seminar examines discourse about gender and sexuality within distinct cultures of ancient Greece, articulated through association with cities, sanctuaries, and liminal spaces. The program is structured through a comparative framework, studying social systems across space and time: analyzing Athens and its rivals of the classical period, Sparta, Corinth and Thebes. Literary traditions will be brought into conversation with archaeological evidence and the landscapes of Greece. Taught by Professors Kate Gilhuly and Bryan Burns (Wellesley College).Internationally known scholars of Greek history, art, and archaeology will participate as guest lecturers in both seminars. Students are expected to give on-site reports, which they will prepare in their home libraries before the program begins. Committed to presenting a comprehensive view of Greece’s rich history and archaeology, these seminars involve long days and extensive walking, often over uneven terrain, in the hot Mediterranean summer, where many days over 30ºC can be expected.
 
The American School of Classical Studies at Athens does not discriminate on the basis of age, color, disability, gender identity or expression, genetic information, national or ethnic origin, pregnancy, race, religion, sex, or sexual orientation when considering admission to any form of membership or application for employment.
—
American School of Classical Studies at Athens
321 Wall Street
Princeton, NJ 08540-1515
Email: programs@ascsa.org
Website: https://www.ascsa.edu.gr

Index Taxonomy Workshop: 8 Nov. 2022

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On Tuesday, 8 November 2022, 12:00 – 1:00pm EDT, the Index of Medieval Art will be holding a workshop on Zoom titled Looking at (Index) Language: A Dive into Taxonomy at the Index of Medieval Art. This workshop is open to anyone interested in learning about Index language standardization practices and preferred terms in Index cataloging. There will be a Q&A period at the end of the workshop, so please bring any questions you might have about Index terminology and language.
https://ima.princeton.edu/index_taxonomy_workshop_fall_2022/
 
The workshop is held in connection to the Index of Medieval Art conference “Looking at Language” on Nov. 12. https://ima.princeton.edu/conferences/

Byzantine City Workshops

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The Institut Français d’Études Anatoliennes d’Istanbul (IFEA) in collaboration with the Department of History, the Department of Archaeology and the Program in Cultures, Civilizations and Ideas at Bilkent University, the Department of  Art History at Hacettepe University, ANAMED-Koç University, and Byzantium at Ankara is happy to announce a HYBRID lecture series in Fall 2022 with the title “Zooming in on Byzantine cities: Αἱ ἀληθείαι τῶν πόλεων.”

This conference aims to provide an interdisciplinary and critical investigation of cities in Byzantium, drawing on the material, literary, epigraphic, archaeological, environmental, and geospatial evidence. We will examine Byzantine cities through a series of thematic sessions centered on the daily life of the city, its infrastructure, and built environment, as well as the relationship between the Byzantine heartland and its coastal and insular koine, urban cultural history, and symbolic spaces, and finally, Byzantine cities as seen and perceived by ‘the other.’

The series will start on 15 October with the session entitled Cities: Material Remnants as divided into two panels which will see the participation of Kerem Altug (IBB), Michael Jones (Koç University), Jorge Quiroga (Universidad Autonoma de Madrid), and Natalia Poulou-Papadimitriou (University of Thessaloniki) and Koray Durak (Bogazici University), and Jim Crow (University of Newcastle) as respondents.

The series will continue with further workshops to be hosted by ANAMED-Koç University (26 November), Hacettepe University (8 December), and Bilkent University (17 December).

Each panel will host two scholars in conversation on the topic in question. After a brief presentation (20 minutes maximum) of the presenter’s main arguments and the historiographical and methodological issues at stake, a respondent will engage with the presenters in a 15-minute dialogue with the respondent. Finally, the three speakers will be all involved in the Q&A session (15-20 mins).

Zoom link : https://zoom.us/j/3899516358

MJC-BSANA DH workshop

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The Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture and BSANA are pleased to offer a four-part Network Analysis workshop for graduate students and early career researchers in collaboration with Dr. Johannes Preiser-Kapeller of the Austrian Academy of Sciences.

Introduction to Network Analysis for Students of Byzantium and Late Antiquity, workshop by Dr. Johannes Preiser-Kapeller (Austrian Academy of Sciences), via Zoom, October 7, October 14, October 21, October 28, 2022, 11:00 am–1:00 pm (EDT)

This online workshop will provide both an overview of basic concepts of network theory and their application in historical and archaeological research (with a focus on the study of Late Antiquity and Byzantium) as well as an introduction into software tools and practical network analysis. The aim of the workshop is to enable students to critically evaluate the growing number of studies using network analysis as well as to apply these tools themselves in a well-reflected and productive way.

The workshop is limited to 15 participants. The time commitment for this workshop is eight hours. It will meet every Friday in October from 11:00 am–1:00 pm (EDT). Participants are required to attend all sessions. Registration is first come, first served.

Registration closes Friday, September 30 at 1:00 pm (EDT).

Who is eligible?

·      Graduate students and early career researchers (PhD received after October 2014) in the field of Byzantine studies. Students enrolled in graduate programs in North America and early career researchers working in North America will be given priority. Graduate students and early career researchers outside of North America will be placed on a waiting list and contacted if space is available.

·      All participants must be BSANA members. BSANA membership is free for graduate students and early-career contingent scholars who have earned their PhD within the last eight years and who do not hold a permanent or tenure-track appointment. If you are not already a BSANA member, please complete the BSANA Membership Form (https://bsana.net/members/) before registering for the workshop. Your membership status will be confirmed before your space in the workshop is confirmed.

To read a full description of the workshop and register your interest, please visit https://maryjahariscenter.org/events/introduction-to-network-analysis.

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

 

Call for participants: Studying East of Byzantium IX: Networks

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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: Networks.

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 networks in studying the Christian East, to share methodologies, and to discuss their research with workshop respondents, Zara Pogossian, University of Florence, and Joel Walker, University of Washington. The workshop will meet on November 18, 2022, February 17, 2023, and June 12–13, 2023, 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 networks (microregional, regional, transregional, global, etc.) 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 19, 2022.

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 Applications: Dumbarton Oaks Study Day

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Dumbarton Oaks will be hosting a Museum Study Day on September 23, 2022.

In conjunction with the special exhibition Lasting Impressions: People, Power, Piety (https://www.doaks.org/visit/museum/exhibitions/lasting-impressions-people-power-piety) the 2022 Dumbarton Oaks Museum Graduate Study Day will consider the relationship between seals and other forms of religious and secular art in Byzantium. This workshop, led by Dumbarton Oaks curators Jonathan Shea and Elizabeth Dospel Williams and John Cotsonis, (His Grace Joachim Bishop of Amissos), Director of the Archbishop Iakovos Library, Hellenic College/Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology, will explore the use of images in a variety of media to express piety, identity, group belonging, and social status.

All applications should be submitted to museum@doaks.org by August 7, 2022.

Byzantine Tradition in the Barnes Collection

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Byzantine Tradition in the Barnes Collection
Tuesday, July 19, 10am – 4pm

Dr. Albert C. Barnes announced in 1925 that “Modern painting developed out of mosaics,” referring to the glittering glass and stonework of the Byzantine Tradition. The arrangement of his collection seems to support this bold claim. Modern and Byzantine objects are often displayed together—including a 16th- or 17th-century icon of the Nativity in an ensemble with paintings by Renoir—highlighting their shared visual qualities and connecting past and present experiences of art. This one-day workshop explores the art of the Byzantium, its role in Dr. Barnes’s collection, and the profound impact it had on modern artists like Vincent van Gogh, Henri Matisse, and Giorgio de Chirico.

Instructors

Amy Gillette is a research associate at the Barnes. She earned her PhD in art history from Temple University, specializing in late medieval art and architecture. Her publications address the music of angels in Gothic and Byzantine art and the formation of medieval collections in Philadelphia during the Gothic Revival movement.

Kaelin Jewell is a member of the adult education faculty at the Barnes. She holds a PhD in late Roman and early medieval art history from Temple University and has worked as a field archeologist. In addition to her work at the Barnes, Jewell is the art historian for an underwater archaeology project near the Sicilian town of Marzamemi.

 

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