CALL FOR PAPERS
The Past, Present and Future of Medieval Art in the British Isles
due 10 November 2023
Association for Art History Annual Conference
3-5 April 2024
Bristol, United Kingdom
University of Bristol
Organized by
Matthew M. Reeve, Queen’s University, Canada, matthew.reeve@queensu.ca
Amanda Luyster, College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, United States, aluyster@holycross.edu
Where are we with writing the history of British medieval art? The arts of medieval Britain once had a peripheral place in broader histories of medieval art where they were frequently understood as passive receptors of Continental influence. Much scholarship has challenged this view and reframed British art as a vital component of European and even global Medieval art. But “British art” was never monolithic: it was created by diverse linguistic, religious, and artistic cultures (Welsh, Norman, etc). These diverse cultures and their art production were shaped and reshaped by colonial encounter from the mission of Augustine and the Viking incursions through the Norman and Edwardian conquests, and yet they retained their cultural, linguistic and artistic complexity. “British art” was also inherently international: the importation of relics and ars sacra during the crusades, the export of luxury goods such as opus anglicanum and alabaster, and the odysseys of artists from Rome to Westminster or architects from Bristol to Prague, meant that British art was framed by global networks of exchange. Recent discoveries such as the Staffordshire Hoard, the Macclesfield Psalter, and the wall paintings of St Cadoc’s, Llancarfan, and the publication of significant studies of Anglo-Saxon through Gothic art in Britain have profoundly changed the scholarly landscape and demand that we reassess some of our key ideas and approaches. This session will present research that explores British art from a range of perspectives (including historiographical), although each will reflect critically on the place of British art within medievalist art history in general.
Sessions sponsored by the ICMA with support from the Kress Foundation.
To offer a paper: Please email your paper proposals direct to the session convenor(s). You need to provide a title and abstract (250 words maximum) for a 20-minute paper (unless otherwise specified), your name and institutional affiliation (if any).
Please make sure the title is concise and reflects the contents of the paper because the title is what appears online, in social media and in the digital programme.
For more information about the conference, click HERE.
A note about Kress Travel Grants
Thanks to a generous grant from the Kress Foundation, funds may be available to defray travel costs of speakers in ICMA sponsored sessions up to a maximum of $600 for domestic travel and of $1200 for overseas travel. If a conference meets in person, the Kress funds are allocated for travel and hotel only. If a presenter is attending a conference virtually, Kress funding will cover virtual conference registration fees.
Click HERE for more information.