Belonging in late medieval cities

Date: Friday June 28 to Sunday June 30, 2019.

Location: Huntingdon Room, King’s Manor, Exhibition Square, York YO1 7EP.

One of the ways belonging is conceptualised within sociological literature is that it is a socially constructed category which revolves around an individual’s inclusion and exclusion from formal and informal groups. It is thought that individuals can concurrently be included within one group yet excluded from others, and that belonging is negotiated by various actors such as local communities, governments and individuals themselves.

Late medieval and early modern cities were environments with many formal and informal groups to which people could belong, such as street communities, parishes, guilds and the citizenry, to name a few. The conference aims to explore how notions of belonging might be utilised within the study of late medieval urban centres. We invite speakers to consider whether belonging as a idea can be used to contribute to established ideas of identity, especially considering the (hierarchical) structures of urban society and examining how community boundaries were drawn and redrawn, how spaces were imagined as well as the significance of membership and exclusion. These were always in a state of flux, owing to the influence of the variety of agents who structured belonging, including rulers, local communities and individuals, with inclusion and exclusion operating along the axes of gender and social status. Papers will explore these intersections between the individual and their communities, and how inclusion and exclusion manifested themselves in historical urban areas.

Please send an abstract of 300 words to Joshua Ravenhill jtr518@york.ac.uk or Luke Giraudet lwg502@york.ac.uk by the 8^th October 2018.

Pieter Bruegel the Elder and his predecessors:  

Culture and Visual art and in the late 15^th and 16^th centuries

Masterclass with Reindert Falkenburg and Michel Weemans, organised by the Vlaamse werkgroep mediëvistiek (VWM) and the Réseau des médiévistes  belges de langue française (RMBLF)

2019 marks the 450^th anniversary of the death of Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c. 1525/30-1569), one of the most renowned Flemish artists of the 16^th century. In Belgium, several exhibitions (at the KBR, the MRBAB-KMSKB, the Mayer van den Bergh Museum, the Castle of Gaasbeek…) and other scientific activities are planned to highlight the artistic production of the master. This “Bruegel year” constitutes a great opportunity for the VWM and the RMBLF to explore this fascinating personality and the artistic, cultural and intellectual context in which he emerged through a vivid dialogue between young and senior scholars. Indeed, we aim at taking part to this celebration by organizing a masterclass with two specialists of Pieter Bruegel’s work, Reindert Falkenburg (NYU Abu Dhabi) and Michel Weemans (ENSA Bourges and EHESS), whose forthcoming book explores the religious and exegetical character of Bruegel’s landscapes and their relationship with landscape painters of the first half of the 16th century such as Hieronymus Bosch, Joachim Patinir or Herri met de Blès.[1] This masterclass will gather up to eight young researchers (PhD students, postdocs, young lecturers) coming from various disciplines (art history, literature, history…) who will have the opportunity to present and discuss their work on the visual art and culture at the time of Pieter Bruegel the Elder and his predecessors with both respondents and the audience.

Pieter Bruegel the Elder is a complex artistic figure. Often considered as “both a proponent and an exponent of popular culture”[2], the Flemish painter was also appreciated and admired by the high nobility whose members praised the exceptional quality of his oeuvre and owned paintings by his hand. His work also enjoyed a great deal of success among a wider audience thanks to the diffusion of his engravings. From an artistic point of view, Bruegel was deeply influenced by the Flemish pictorial tradition of the late 15^th and early 16^th century, and especially by Hieronymus Bosch. He also played a crucial role in the emergence of genre and landscape painting, a topic which is at the core of the new publication of Michel Weemans and Reindert Falkenburg. Bruegel also had close links with humanists and scholars such as Abraham Ortelius, and with the Antwerp chambers of rhetoric (rederijkerskamers) like the Violieren (the Gillyflower). In other words, he belonged to the Antwerp intellectual circles of his time. His artistic production is deeply influenced by this intellectual and cultural context, just as it nurtured it in return.

Recent scholarship on Bruegel[3] has highlighted the multi-layered complexity of his (painted, printed and drawn) pictures, which are rooted in the rich artistic, cultural and literary context that we will investigate during this masterclass. More precisely, we would like Pieter Bruegel the Elder to act as a prism through which young scholars will explore, among others, the visual interactions between artists and between pictorial practices, the relationships between literary groups such as the rederijkers and the visual culture of their time, the social and intellectual networks of Pieter Bruegel and other Flemish artists of the late 15^th century and 16^th century, the impact of the complex religious context on the artistic production of the time, the links between humanists and artists, the influence of Flemish artists of the previous generations on Bruegel and his contemporaries, etc.

Early career researchers are invited to submit proposals for a 15-minutes paper. The languages of the masterclass will be Dutch, French, and English. A description of the proposed paper (max. one page) and a short CV should be submitted to Micol Long (micol.long@ugent.be) and Ingrid Falque (ingrid.falque@uclouvain.be), no later than October 15. Selected researchers will be notified in the first week of November.

This masterclass is jointly organised by the Vlaamse Werkgroep Mediëvistiek (Flemish Medievalist Association) and the Réseau des Médiévistes belges de Langue Française (Network of French-speaking Belgian Medievalists), with financial support of the F.R.S.-FNRS and the Fondation pour la protection du patrimoine culturel, historique et artisanal (Lausanne). The event will take place In Brussels (precise location to be announced later) on 25 January. On 24 January, Michel Weemans and Reindert Falkenburg will give a public lecture on their forthcoming book. Further practical details will be announced at a later stage.

[1] Reindert L. Falkenburg and Michel Weemans, Bruegel (Paris, Hazan: 2018).

[2] Mark Meadow, Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s Netherlandish Proverbs and the Practice of Rhetoric (Zwolle, Waanders Publishers: 2002), 14.

[3] See among others: Walter S. Gibson, Pieter Bruegel and the Art of Laughter (Berkeley, University of California press<: 2006); Todd M. Richardson, Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Art Discourse in the Sixteenth-Century Netherlands (Farnham, Ashgate: 2011); Bertram Kaschek, Weltzeit und Endzeit. Die »Monatsbilder« Piter Bruegels d.Ä. (München, Wilhelm Fink Verlag: 2012); Christina Currie and Dominique Allart, The Brueg(H)el Phenomenon. Paintings by Pieter Bruegel the Elder and Pieter Brueghel the Younger with a Special Focus on Technique and Copying Practice (Brussels, Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage: 2012); Claudia Goldstein, Pieter Bruegel and the Culture of Early Modern Dinner Party (Farnham, Ashgate: 2013); Stephen Graham Hitchins, Art as History, history as Art. Jheronymus Bosch and Pieter Bruegel the Elder Assembling Knowledge not Setting Puzzles (Turnhout, Brepols: 2014); Jospeh Leo Koerner, Bosch and Bruegel. From Enemy Painting to Everyday Life (Princeton, Princeton University Press: 2016).

De zevende editie van interuniversitaire Masterclass Cultuur en Religie gaat dit jaar door aan de Universiteit van Antwerpen op 17 en 18 September 2018 en heeft als thema ‘Religie en culturele transfer’.

De laatste decennia is binnen cultural studies een verhoogde aandacht ontstaan voor het fenomeen van circulatie van culturele producten (teksten, beelden, ideeën) en in het bijzonder voor de wijze waarop deze culturele goederen temporele, geografische, nationale en ideologische grenzen overschrijden: welke transformaties ondergaan teksten, beelden en ideeën bij hun transfer naar nieuwe contexten?; hoe interageren ze met andere culturele producten uit de nieuwe contexten?; welke bemiddelaars en communicatiecentra zijn bij de transfer betrokken?

In deze tweedaagse masterclass worden de doctorandi en postdoctorandi vertrouwd gemaakt met de belangrijkste concepten en methoden uit cultural transfer-studies, om ze vervolgens te leren toepassen op het domein van het onderzoek naar religie en cultuur in het algemeen en op (een aspect van) hun eigen onderzoeksproject in het bijzonder. Keynote lezingen worden gegeven door Geert Janssen (Universiteit Amsterdam) en Sabrina Corbellini (Universiteit Groningen). Het volledige programma volgt later.

Doctorandi die een casus uit hun onderzoek willen presenteren in het kader van deze interuniversitaire masterclass, kunnen dat melden bij een lid van het wetenschappelijke comité uit de instelling waar ze werkzaam zijn (zie lijst hieronder) of rechtstreeks bij Nina Lamal (nina.lamal@uantwerpen.be).

Organiserend comité: Veerle Fraeters, Nina Lamal, Guido Marnef, Patricia Stoop

Ad Brudgias Portum. Bruges’ medieval port system as a maritime cultural landscape

In October 2018, Ghent University and Raakvlak organise an international conference that centres around medieval harbour hubs as gateways for goods, people and thoughts. Bruges’ maritime cultural landscape will be the guideline for these three days of medieval maritime connectivity

Scope of the conference

Submissions of abstracts for the international conference “The Medieval Literary Canon in the Digital Age,” to be held at Ghent University from 17-18 September 2018.

An often repeated promise of the digital humanities, in the wake of the “computational turn,” is that the wide availability and accessibility of historical texts would enable scholars to breach the restrictions of a literary canon. The present international conference wishes to explore how exactly the digital humanities can provide such insights for medieval studies, in which such a promise raises critical questions.

(1) In spite of the computational turn, much of the digital scholarship for the Middle Ages still seems to hinge on well-conserved and therefore well-known theological and literary authorities, whose texts have been reproduced continuously in subsequent editions and translations. To what extent does today’s computational research manage to escape the straitjacket of the traditional canon?

(2) Considering that in the past decades, medieval scholars have become increasingly sensitive to the materiality of textual transmission in the Middle Ages, the virtual, normative and reductive character of a digital environment are not always compatible to their research interests.

As the emancipation of the digital humanities from their merely supportive role is proclaimed increasingly, and as the tools for digital medieval studies proliferate (e.g. digital scholarly editing, computational stylistics, digital palaeography, digital stemmatology, …), this conference welcomes papers —based on either case studies or broader research questions— that both problematize the specialized character of medieval literary production and demonstrate the potential for computational criticism to “breach” or “widen” the medieval canon through digital tools.

Full details on the topic and discussion of the conference are available on the conference website: http://www.mcda.ugent.be​.

The conference, to which we will accept 8 scholars in addition to the confirmed speakers (cfr. infra) will consist exclusively of plenary sessions, with ample time for discussion. The conference committee encourages proposal submissions by both established and junior researchers. Please send abstracts (ca. 300 words) and a five line biography via email to Jeroen De Gussem (jedgusse.degussem@UGent.be) by the ​10th of May. Participants will receive a notification concerning the acceptance of their application by the end of May.

We expect from our applicants that they have the ability of covering their own travel costs. Accepted speakers are offered lunches and an invitation to our conference dinner. Accepted speakers from abroad (any country other than Belgium) will also be offered up to 3 hotel nights in Ghent.

The following invited speakers have confirmed their participation: Godfried Croenen (University of Liverpool) / Maciej Eder (Pedagogical University of Kraków) / Julie Orlemanski (University of Chicago) / Peter Robinson (University of Saskatchewan) / Karina van Dalen-Oskam (University of Amsterdam) / David J. Wrisley (New York University Abu Dhabi

Van 14 tot 16 november 2018 wordt aan het Institut de Recherches Historiques du Septentrion (CNRS / Université de Lille) het internationale congres “Objets politiques quotidiens du Moyen Âge à nos jours” georganiseerd. Er is nu een call gelanceerd voor presentaties:  meer details zijn te vinden in het Call for Papers Flyer.

Voorstellen (maximum een half pagina, in het Frans of in het Engels), kunnen tot 30 Maart 2018 bezorgd worden aan cfletcher.cnrs@gmail.com.

Van 24 tot 26 mei 2018 zal in Rome het internationale congres ‘Walking With Saints: Protection, Devotion and Civic Identity. The role of the landscape’ doorgaan. Er is nu een call gelanceerd voor presentaties: meer details zijn te vinden in het WalkingWithSaintsConference2018-flyer of op de website https://www.walkingwithsaints2018.com/