What is an Image in Medieval and Early Modern England?
Swiss Association of Medieval and Early Modern English Studies, Fifth Biennial Conference
Zurich
9-11 September, 2016

Confirmed Plenary Speakers:

• Prof. Brian Cummings (University of York)
• Prof. Andrew Morrall (Bard Graduate Center, New York)
• Prof. Alexandra Walsham (University of Cambridge)
• Prof. Nicolette Zeeman (University of Cambridge)

It has been argued that we live in a world saturated by visual images, that culture has undergone a ‘pictorial turn’. This premise has prompted researchers in the humanities and social sciences to theorize the visual image, documenting its function and status relative to other media, tracing the history of its power and the attempts to disempower it. We might think of the work of David Freedberg (The Power of Images, 1989), Bruno Latour (Iconoclash, 2002), W.J.T. Mitchell (What do pictures want? 2004), or James Elkins (What is an image? 2011). This conference aims to extend this scholarship in two interrelated ways, firstly by focusing on the image in a particular period and location, namely in medieval and early modern England, and secondly by exploring the status of the visual image in relation to texts.

In the Latin West, it was in the late medieval and early modern periods that religious images would be subject to particular pressure, notably in the first half of the sixteenth century when reformers in Strasbourg, Zurich and Geneva would denounce them as idolatrous, and Catholics would reinstate them. But it was in England that the debate on images was particularly protracted, first expressed in Lollard resistance to depictions of the divine, and then in the iconomachy and full-blown iconoclasm of the Reformations of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. As a consequence, the relationship between the so-called sister arts of pictura and poesis, image and word, would be problematized.

Yet, the story of the inexorable demise of the religious image in late medieval and early modern England and the concomitant ‘iconophobia’ of its people is being revised. Evidence suggests that there was a far more variegated iconic landscape in post-Reformation England and that the status of the religious image was inflected by its medium, location, and subject matter. Moreover, such images formed and were in turn formed by images produced in new secular media across a range of disciplines.

What, for example, did the new print culture do to the status of the visual image embedded in a text on a page? What happens to textual images–pictures made exclusively of words–when they are visualized through costumed actors in a church, or on a pageant-cart, or on the new commercial stage? How far did new tools for looking at the natural world–telescopes, microscopes–change theories of vision? Where in the hierarchy of the senses was sight now?

We invite 20-minute papers on topics including (but not limited to) the following:

• image theory (Lollard; Protestant; Catholic; Renaissance; Laudian)
• image practice (material artefacts; effect of function, medium, size, colour, location; subject matter)
• images and idolatry
• images and iconoclasm
• mental images (art of memory; meditation; poetics)
• textual images (metaphors; similes; enargia; ekphrasis; picture poems)
• texts and images (emblems; images embedded in texts; illustrations; manuscript and print culture)
• linguistic iconicity and images
• image, voice, sign, and signification in the philosophy of language
• words and images in performance (liturgical and secular medieval drama; staging plays in the new playhouses; history of gesture)
• theories of vision (emission v. intro-mission; impact of New Science)
• sight in the hierarchy of the senses

Deadline: 30 April 2016

Please send abstracts (c. 200-400 words) and a short bio (max. 100 words) to a.bevan.zlatar@es.uzh.ch

Dante and the Visual Arts: a Summer Symposium
UCLA and the J. Paul Getty Museum
August 22–24, 2016

The UCLA Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies (CMRS) invites applications from graduate students and post-doctoral scholars to attend the Dante and the Visual Arts Summer Symposium. The symposium, organized by CMRS and the journal Dante e l’Arte in conjunction with the J. Paul Getty Museum, will take place August 22–24, 2016 in Los Angeles with sessions at UCLA and at the Getty Center.

The symposium is part of the larger research project Envisioning the Word: Dante and the Visual Arts 1300-1500 which is an ongoing collaboration between the UCLA Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies and the Institut d’Estudis Medievals at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. The project’s goal is to demonstrate and document how Dante’s imagery, particularly that associated with the Divine Comedy, draws upon the visual traditions of Dante’s own time and gives them a new form. It also examines the way that Dante’s Comedy influenced the visual arts of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and the culture of early modern print.

The Dante and the Visual Arts Summer Symposium will consist of a day at the Getty Museum focusing on manuscripts and printed books of the fourteenth through the sixteenth centuries, concentrating on the long visual tradition associated with Dante and his milieu. Participants will also learn how books and manuscripts were made, illuminated, and illustrated. The symposium will then move to UCLA for two days of presentations and discussions focusing on the most important editions of Dante’s Comedy analyzing such factors as the relationship between text and image, the hermeneutic importance of the image, and the criteria by which a particular description in the text has been selected to be represented visually. An exhibit of early books and manuscripts will be on display in UCLA Library Special Collections in conjunction with the symposium.

ELIGIBILITY
Applicants must be graduate students or post-doctoral scholars who are doing research or specializing in some aspect of Dante studies. An ability to speak and to understand spoken Italian is preferred, but not required. Please note that applicants who are not US citizens will be responsible for obtaining the appropriate visa if required. If selected for the award, the UCLA-CMRS staff will assist with this process.

AWARD
A total of 12 applicants will be selected to attend the symposium. Six of these applicants will be chosen from the southern California region. An additional six from outside the greater Los Angeles area will be selected to receive funding in the form of roundtrip, economy class travel to/from Los Angeles (i.e., airfare and ground transportation) and 5 nights lodging.

APPLICATION PROCEDURE
There is no application form. An application consists of these items:

1. A cover letter with the following information: Name, mailing address, email address, telephone number, affiliation and status (school you attend or graduated from; highest academic degree and date awarded), and citizenship status. Please address the cover letter to Professor Massimo Ciavolella.
2. A short description (500 words) of your academic or research interests and an explanation of how the Dante and the Visual Arts Summer Symposium will help you achieve your academic goals. Please describe your fluency with the Italian language.
3. Curriculum vitae.
4. Transcript(s) from all colleges or universities attended.
5. Two letters of recommendation from faculty or scholars familiar with your academic work.

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
Submit application items 1-4 as a PDF email attachment to cmrs@humnet.ucla.edu. Use the subject line “Dante Application.” Letters of recommendation should be submitted by the recommender to the same email address. All applications and letters will receive an email confirmation of receipt.

DEADLINE
April 15, 2016

If you need more information about the symposium or the application process, please contact Karen Burgess (UCLA-CMRS Assistant Director) at kburgess@ucla.edu.