The Cyprus Institute, with support through the Getty Foundation’s Connecting Art Histories initiative, is launching a new research seminar project: Mediterranean Palimpsests: Connecting the Art and Architectural Histories of Medieval and Early Modern Cities. Interested scholars at a formative stage of their careers are encouraged to apply.
Directed by Nikolas Bakirtzis (The Cyprus Institute) and D. Fairchild Ruggles (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), the project investigates the layered art histories of medieval Mediterranean cities as the basis for scholarly connections that challenge and move beyond the boundaries of modern historiographies, national narratives and contemporary socioeconomic realities. Set in a region where issues of cultural heritage and identity are currently highly contested, the project looks at the material past to understand its relevance for the present and future. Mediterranean Palimpsests avoids nation-based models that emphasize unique, disconnected histories, and challenges scholars to consider the medieval Mediterranean as a matrix of cities that, united by the connections forged through trade, royal courts, migrations, pilgrimages, and conquests, produced the material culture and spaces that we encounter today. Questions about spatial context, scale and complexity are not particular to any one city in the Mediterranean, and thus provide common ground for research collaboration.
The project’s directors will convene three research seminars that will engage expert advisors and selected emerging scholars, that will explore transition, appropriation and identity in art and architectural history; these will be ten-day programs held in Nicosia (May 7-16, 2018), Granada & Cordoba (January, 2019), and Rhodes & Thessaloniki (May 2019).
Eligibility: Scholars and researchers who received their PhD in or after 2008 (i.e. within past 10 years) in the fields of art history, architectural history, landscape history, and archaeology are eligible to apply. Scholars must be willing and able to participate in all three workshops. The program provides travel and lodging costs and museum entrance fees for participating scholars.
Deadline: February 1, 2018. Applicants will be notified of results by the end of February
Application: Applicants should send as email attachments a 3-page Statement of Interest and a Curriculum Vitae to mcities@cyi.ac.cy
Project website: https://mcities.cyi.ac.cy