Join us for the Provost’s Forum for Breaking Boundaries, where Professor Elina Gertsman and Maggie Popkin will present their ground-breaking research into mixed-reality modeling and their collaborative work with institutions across campus! More information on the event here.
Several grad students joined Prof. Gertsman at the Medieval Academy of America’s centennial meeting at Harvard University. Cecily Hughes delivered an award-winning paper in the session on Scandinavian art (more on that separately!). Claudia Haines reports that she had the opportunity to hear several fascinating papers (on topics ranging from the integration of music into the social fabric of thirteenth-century Lille, to the diaphanous pages of the Lindisfarne Gospels, to the construction of identity in Scandinavian literature, to narratives of enslavement in Iberia, and beyond), visit many of Boston’s fabulous libraries and museums, reconnect with familiar colleagues and meet new ones—all in all, it was a hugely enriching experience! Rebekkah Hart, in her capacity as a member of the MAA Graduate Student Committee, co-organized and co-chaired a panel on working across institutional and disciplinary boundaries. Sarah Frisbie had a wonderful time attending sessions on materiality, optics, and medieval epistemologies, cheering on Prof. Gertsman, Cecily, and Rebekkah, spending her lunch breaks in the Harvard Art Museums, and eating more than one cannoli. Anna Farber, for whom the MAA was her first conference, says that all the sessions, panels, and gallery visits she attended significantly improved her understanding of the diverse methodologies and subjects with which other medievalists are engaging in the field. Tess Artis, who presented her paper, “Prudent Giving: A Gold Girdle Book and the Rise of the Crokes Under Henry VIII,” at the RSA – held at the same time in the same city – nevertheless made her way to Cambridge to partake in several sessions. And Prof. Gertsman organized and chaired a session on “Form, Thought, and the Pleasure of Looking,” which featured Herbert Kessler, (Johns Hopkins), Megan McNamee (Edinburgh), Jeffrey Hamburger (Harvard), and Vincent Debiais (EHESS).
We are tremendously proud to announce the Tracing Jewish Histories symposium, co-organized by Reed O’Mara, with sessions introduced and chaired by several of our graduate students! See the full program here.
Works of art and architecture made by or for Jewish communities in the medieval period are often examined through the lenses of persecution and expulsion, or are contrasted against Christian or Muslim “styles.” This symposium seeks to expand and nuance these narratives in order to highlight how works of art and architecture can uniquely trace the history of particular Jewish communities by mapping their movements and traditions across generations and geographies. Medieval Jewish objects and spaces can also serve as loci to examine ideas related to collective memory and cultural identity. To that end, the symposium seeks to open new dialogues regarding the “afterlives” of medieval Jewish art more broadly, initiating discussions regarding the ways in which works of art and architecture continued to bear witness to the richness of Jewish life and culture long after they were created.
Organised by Laura Feigen and Reed O’Mara, this symposium is supported by Sam Fogg and the Mellon Foundation with additional support from The Department of Art History and Art at Case Western Reserve University.
12:00 pm | Clark Hall Room 206, 11130 Bellflower Road
Embodiment of paradoxes and prophecies, fragmented by metaphors, the heterogeneous, ever-shifting artifact that is the Virgin Mary, Mother of God, could hardly stand further from the natural world. Late antique and Byzantine authors described her womb was the bush that burns and is not consumed, her body as the throne and the altar of God, and her arms as the liturgical spoon. She is a virgin who lactates. Despite her extraordinary qualities, remote from the experiences of womankind, art historians who have attempted to interpret this last facet of a very complex subject – the nursing Virgin Mary – have commonly essentialized it by presenting modern western constructions of nursing and motherhood as ahistorical, self-evident truths that are realized in this image-type. While scholars in many fields have explored the implications of gender theory for well over two decades, little of this work has been directed at Byzantine, and none at Egyptian Christian, art history. The vast distance that separates women engaging in the biologically natural act of nursing from the social construction of a nursing female cult figure shrinks and even disappears in their writings. Elizabeth Bowman, Elsie B. Smith Professor in the Liberal Arts, was motivated by this historiographic pattern and uses this iconographic type as a vehicle for exploring the variability of assemblages of the Virgin Mary Galaktotrophousa, or ‘she who nourishes with milk,’ and her diverse audiences.
An informal lunch will be provided.
Registration is requested. Register HERE.
Join us for a facsimile viewing session on Wednesday, January 29, at 11 am! Listen to graduate students and faculty talk about illuminated manuscripts — poetry collections, books of hours, festival books — written in Hebrew, in Latin, and in Middle High German. All are welcome!
We were delighted to host the curatorial talk for the Creation and (Re)Birth Exhibition on November 14 to a full house! Co-curators Prof. Elina Gertsman and Dr. Gerhard Lutz talked about the concept of the exhibition and then focused on specific objects, with the all-important participation from Dr. Sonya Rhee Mace and three PhD students — Zoe Appleby, Rebekkah Hart, and Cecily Hughes. The repeat of the event, this time for the university audience, will take place on January 22.
What divides the animal and the human? Do animals form families? What do images of animals in Hebrew manuscripts signify? Consider these questions and more in this episode of the Multicultural Middle Ages Podcast, sponsored by the Medieval Academy of America and produced by Jonathan Correa-Reyes, Logan Quigley, Will Beattie, Reed O’Mara, and Loren Lee. This episode features Elina Gertsman, David Shyovitz, Julie A. Harris, Sara Offenberg, and Beth Berkowitz in conversation with Reed. Click on the link to hear the episode on the Multicultural Middle Ages website or click here for the direct link on the podcast’s RSS feed.