Call for Papers for Two Sessions
Association Villard de Honnecourt for the Interdisciplinary Study of Medieval Technology, Science, and Art
Tree to Truss
International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, MI (8-10 May 2025)
Due 15 September 2024
AVISTA invites paper proposals for its two sponsored in-person sessions at the next International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, Michigan (May 8-10, 2025).
1. From Tree to Truss: Wood in Medieval Building(s)
The 2019 Notre-Dame fire laid bare vast quantities of a building material ubiquitous throughout the medieval world, yet sometimes concealed from view: wood. Despite their practical, structural, and even symbolic importance, the wooden elements of medieval buildings often go unheralded in scholarship or are treated in isolation from building materials like earth, brick, and stone rather than in concert with them. This session welcomes papers that take a range of approaches to the use of wood in medieval construction (e.g. as formwork or scaffolding) and/or in the finished structures themselves (e.g. as roof trusses or vaults).
Submit your paper proposal here: https://icms.confex.com/icms/2025/paper/papers/index.cgi?sessionid=6440
2. From Tree to Truss (2): Woodcarving in Medieval Architecture
The 2019 Notre-Dame fire laid bare vast quantities of a building material ubiquitous throughout the medieval world, yet sometimes hidden in plain sight: wood. As a pendant to our session about the place of heavy timber in medieval building(s), this session will focus on the works of woodcarvers, woodturners, and joiners within medieval architectural spaces. To that end, we welcome papers that take material, technical, or intermedial approaches to more intricate forms of woodwork, including but not limited to wooden altarpieces, bemas, canopies, ciboria, iconostases, lecterns, maqsuras, minbars, screens, stalls, templons, Torah arks, and beyond.
Submit your paper proposal here: https://icms.confex.com/icms/2025/paper/papers/index.cgi?sessionid=6443
Proposals are due at the links above on September 15, 2024. Please direct any questions to session co-organizer Lindsay Cook (lsc5353@psu.edu).