Daily Archives: 10 February 2012

Fordham University – 32nd Annual Conference of the Center for Medieval Studies – Registration Open

THINK ROMANCE!
Re-conceptualizing a Medieval Genre
32nd Annual Conference of the Center for Medieval Studies
March 31 – April 1, 2012
Fordham University, at the Lincoln Center Campus, New York City

Conference Website

Romances were the most popular, most influential, most wide-ranging form of fiction in the high and late Middle Ages. While this popularity has ensured a great deal of modern critical attention, particularly to individual romances, it has not necessarily meant that the place of romance in the Middle Ages has been understood adequately. That is, as scholars outside of the field of literary studies – historians, art historians, musicologists – have begun to look at romances, those inside continue to treat this genre largely in terms of its literary merit. This interdisciplinary conference seeks to re-conceptualize romance more broadly, not only as a topic of interest for scholars of particular medieval vernacular texts, but as a kind of tool, a bearer of a set of assumptions, a cultural category available to medieval authors, artists, composers, and patrons.

The conference program is comprised of fifty-five speakers from North America and Europe, including four plenary speakers:

  • Sharon Kinoshita, University of California, Santa Cruz – Romance in/and the Medieval Mediterranean
  • Emma Dillon, University of Pennsylvania – Sumptuous Songs: Musical Materialities and the Old French Romance Tradition
  • James Simpson, Harvard University – Unthinking Thought: Romance’s Wisdom
  • Marina Brownlee, Princeton University – Sequels, Prequels, and Contingency

For a full program and to register, please see the conference website: http://www.fordham.edu/mvst/conference12/Romance/program.html

The Deadline For Early Registration is March 22, 2012

Online registration is now available; a paper registration form is also available online. Please send the paper registration form and check to: Center for Medieval Studies, FMH 405, Fordham University, Bronx, NY 10458

Icons of the Holy Monastery of Karakallou – Book Annoucement and Preview

Icons of the Holy Monastery of Karakallou
Mount Athos

www.en.iconskarakallou.gr

For the first time in its history Karakallou Monastery of Mount Athos is revealing its iconographic treasures to the general public. Karakallou Monastery, one of the oldest monasteries on Holy Mountain, is celebrating its millennium of uninterrupted coenobitic life with the publication of a richly illustrated volume devoted to its portable holy icons; thereby bringing to light a virtually unknown part of late Byzantine culture and Athonite spiritual heritage.

From among the hundreds of portable icons in the monastery’s possession 152 were carefully selected for this edition and were reproduced at a stunning quality. Historically, they span from the late 14th to the early 19th century and include masterpieces that are inaccessible to most of the monastery’s pilgrims. Quite significantly, the Karakallou monastery’s holdings feature the largest collection of works by Dionyssios of Fourna, a prominent Greek iconographer of the 18th century.

The book’s rich visual content combined with an extensive and well documented analysis of the artistic and historical background of each icon provides a unique insight into post-Byzantine Athonian iconography and imparts a superb experience to admirers of this sacred art.

You may find more information on this edition, view sample pages at: www.en.iconskarakallou.gr.