Urban Visual Culture(s): Productions and Perceptions of the Visual in Late Medieval and Early Modern Cities
University of Durham
22-23 June, 2016

Whereas scholars of modern visual culture tend to claim that only in modern times did the visual gain primacy over the textual or oral communication of the pre-modern era, medievalists and early modernists tend to conclude the opposite. In the last two decades, the study of the forms and functions of the visual—of signs, symbols, bodies, art and architecture in their relation to ritual, space, politics and identities—has demonstrated that the visual was not only a reflection of the norms and structures of medieval and early modern society, but a means of discursive communication, which was constitutive of social order.

In recent scholarship there has been a particular interest in the late medieval and early modern city as a site of the visual. Not only did the city serve as a quasi-public stage for the visual display and communication of diverse social groups, but its spaces and institutions, and the groups themselves, were in turn a product of visual communication, and an expression of visual culture. At the same time, visual display in the city was able to become the subject of meta-discourse on the visual itself.

The two key themes of this workshop are: ‘productions’ and ‘perceptions’ of the visual in the late medieval and early modern city.

The strand of ‘productions’ is meant to illustrate the ways in which visual culture was involved in maintaining and negotiating social order in the city. On the one hand, we can think about how social cohesion was established and how the identities of corporate bodies such as the urban commune, guilds, fraternities, political factions, and families, as well as of outsiders such as resident or visiting nobility, territorial lords, clerics, and minorities, were constructed. On the other hand, we can consider the social fragmentation of urban society, in which the visual was a means of communicating and negotiating conflict and discord.

The strand of ‘perceptions’ extends these practices of the visual to explore how contemporaries saw and interpreted visual elements in the city and how these perceptions interacted with the ‘reality’ of lived experience. Attitudes towards visual display could be strongly emotional, ranging from connoisseurship and idolatry to aniconism and iconoclasm.

Torsten Hiltmann (Münster) will give the keynote lecture on visual communication in medieval and early modern times. A round-table discussion at the end of the workshop encourages all participants to reflect on the state of the art in medieval and early modern urban visual culture, establishing the importance and specific functions of the visual in urban society, and proposing research questions and approaches for further enquiry.

It is hoped that the workshop will encourage intellectual exchange around common themes and threads in current research on visual culture in the medieval and early modern city.

We welcome papers on all aspects of urban visual culture, inviting contributions from disciplines such as history and the history of art, archaeology and historical geography, ritual and theatre studies, and heraldry and sigillography. Transdisciplinary perspectives are encouraged.

Papers will be no more than 20 mins. in length. Please submit abstracts of 250 words and a brief biography of 100 words to uvcdurham@gmail.com. The deadline for applications is 15 March, 2016.

Change, Commemoration and Community, 1916–2016
22nd Australasian Irish Studies Conference
Flinders University of South Australia [City Premises: 182 Victoria Square, Adelaide, South Australia]
29 November – 2 December, 2016

Under the umbrella of “Change” we envisage subthemes of creativity, rebirth, revolution, renewal, new departures, innovation and economics; “Commemoration” encompasses all the significant events in political, social and economic life and is particularly significant in 2016 when there is a spotlight on commemorating and celebrating the centenary of the Easter Rising, equally important are the events of the Great War; “Community” may include the diaspora, Irish language, religion, volunteerism, immigration, emigration, sport, cultural studies, literature, music, dance and drama.

Papers can address one or more of these themes but those which do not will be considered.

Guest speakers include Professor Melanie Oppenheimer, Flinders School of History and International Relations, and Professor David Fitzpatrick, Trinity College, Dublin. There will be a publication in 2017 of selected papers from the conference.

Abstracts should be emailed to Dr Dymphna Lonergan: dymphna.lonergan@flinders.edu.au and should be no more than 200 words in length. Please also provide your full name and that of your affiliated institution. The closing date for abstracts is 20 May, 2016.

Further information may be found on the Flinders Institute for Research in the Humanities (FIRtH) webpage: http://www.flinders.edu.au/ehl/firth/firth-conferences/22nd-australasian-irish-studies-conference/about.cfm

Cultures of Mortality: Death on the Shakespearean Stage
Shakespeare’s Globe, London
1-3 December, 2016

2016 sees the 400th anniversary of the deaths of Shakespeare, Francis Beaumont, the theatrical entrepreneur Philip Henslowe and the Spanish author Miguel de Cervantes. Globe Education is marking this memorable year with an international conference that explores death, rituals of dying and the experience of loss on the early modern stage.

This conference invites papers that explores these themes and more. It is particularly interested in:

• rituals of death
• artistic representation
• shifting practices from Medieval to Renaissance/early modern
• loss and bereavement
• performativity of death- performing death on the early modern stage
• commemoration
• textual, artistic and dramatic
• philosophical, religious and social attitudes to death and dying
• wills and legacies

Please submit a 150 word abstract/proposal to farah.k@shakespearesglobe.com by 1 March, 2016.