IAS at Kalamazoo

46th International Congress on Medieval Studies
University of Western Michigan, Kalamazoo MI, May 15–15, 2011

The IAS is currently seeking paper proposals for the following sessions.  The form and submission instructions are determined by the Congress, and may be accessed on the Congress website.  Submissions should be sent via e-mail to Felicity Ratté, Program Committee Chair. The deadline for submissions is September 15, 2010.

Session Descriptions/Call for Papers

The Study of the Art and Architecture of Italy: A Reassessment of the Discipline

These four linked sessions will reconsider fundamental assumptions underlying the current practice of medieval art history, including the temporal and geographic parameters bounding the study of “Italian medieval art,” the methodological structures of the field, the influences of key figures on the development of the discipline, and the privileged role of the urban environment in studies of the Italian peninsula. These sessions dovetail with broader concerns within the humanities, including a shift toward new geographical divisions, investigations of formerly neglected time periods, and a renewed engagement with the works of such pioneering scholars of medieval Italian art as Bernard Berenson, Arthur Kingsley Porter, Josef Strzygowski, Pietro Toesca, and Aby Warburg, and their successors, including Otto Demus, Ernst Kitzinger, Richard Krautheimer, and Mario Salmi.

From classical antiquity to the fifteenth century and beyond, the study of Italian art and architecture is locked into a narrative of continuity and tradition, disjunction and rupture. On a surface level, a geographic association with the peninsula and islands governed by the modern Italian state unifies scholars of Italian art. Although defined at the base level by contemporary geopolitics, this unity has historical depth in that it responds to the centrifugal role played by the art of Italy in the development of art history as a discipline and, more recently, to the questioning of the privilege given to specific moments in Italian art within the formation of our discipline. These sessions arise from the conviction that it is time to step back and examine critically the structures and methodologies of our field. What common elements of intellectual inquiry may bind the scholar of Early Christian Rome with the scholar of late medieval Florence? What points of intersection might exist between studies of a medieval town in the Val d’Aosta, Umbrian altarpieces, and the Islamic presence in South Italy, Corsica, and Sicily? We seek to address such broad thematic issues as spatial, geographic, and temporal assumptions, historiography, and methodology, as we ask, What does it mean to be a historian of medieval Italian art?

Our four linked sessions propose to address this question from four different thematic angles:

Seminal Figures (chair: Catherine McCurrach): This historiographic session seeks to examine the methodologies of key figures in the study of Italian art of the “long” Middle Ages. Who were they? What narratives did they construct? What legacies have the structures of their scholarship created?

Geographic Limits (chair: Felicity Ratté): How does the definition of the geographic boundaries of modern Italy shape the study of Italian art? From the cores of Florence and Rome to the peripheries of the piedmont and Sicily, how does one define the “map” or “boundaries” of the field, and how does that map define us?

The Temporal Element (chair: Jessica Richardson): The study of Italian art is now divided into a number of distinct yet amorphous temporal divisions, including Late Antiquity, the early, central, and high Middle Ages, and the Renaissance. What is to be gained by these categorizations? Can sufficient commonalities be identified to support the divisions as currently applied, and, if so, within what limits and with what caveats?

Urbanism (chair: Niall Atkinson): From the Christianization of imperial Italy to Mussolini’s demolition of large swaths of medieval Rome, creation and manipulation of the urban center has been a constant on the Italian peninsula. This session considers the privileged position of urbanism, notions of urban identity, motives of urban creation, practices of urban space, and modes of urban patronage.

For additional information on past and upcoming conferences, visit the Kalamazoo conference website.

Past IAS at Kalamazoo Sessions
45th International Congress on Medieval Studies (2010)