The Material, Visual, and Cultural Life of Scholasticism

Martin Schwarz Announcement
Location
Michigan, United States
Subject Fields
Art, Art History & Visual Studies, History Education, Medieval and Byzantine History / Studies, Music and Music History, Theatre & Performance History / Studies

CfP: The Material, Visual, and Cultural Life of Scholasticism

52nd International Congress on Medieval Studies, May 11–14, 2017, Kalamazoo, MI

 

Organizer: Martin Schwarz, University of Chicago

Chair and Respondent: Alex Novikoff, Fordham University

 

This panel explores the cultural dimensions of Scholasticism, a topic of study that has been largely confined to the realm of intellectual history and the history of ideas. The term principally denotes the profound revolution of knowledge and learning that swept across Europe during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, most notably through the reception of Greco-Arabic learning, the development of new intellectual methods and pedagogical practices, and the institutional formation of higher education in universities. Broadly speaking, standard narratives have traditionally cast Scholasticism as a purely intellectual and therefore immaterial discourse dissociated from its immediate material and cultural surroundings. More recently, however, scholars have begun to question the disciplinary isolation of the study of Scholasticism, challenging its reach from a variety of angles. In investigating, for instance, Scholasticism’s dimension of sound and its relationship to polyphonic music, the performative character of scholastic disputations, its physical and aesthetic presence and expression in urban space and architecture, or its dependence on literary forms and visual representation, this new approach has in many respects sharpened our perception of the co-dependence between intellectual and material worlds—and has, consequently, demonstrated the need for an expanded, integrative account that reckons both with the Scholasticism’s cultural life and its centrality to the scholastic production of knowledge. Accordingly, this panel invites contributions that address the material, visual, spatial, and sonic dimensions and qualities of Scholasticism from the twelfth to the fourteenth century. We aim to bring together scholars from different backgrounds such as Art History, Material and Visual Culture, Theatre Studies, Sound Studies, Urban Studies, Musicology, and Literature to open new lines of inquiry and reflect upon the disciplinary and methodological complexities of their research.

 

This panel will feature 15–20min papers. Please submit a 150-word abstract with your paper title and a short CV by Sept 9, 2016 to Martin Schwarz (schwarzm@uchicago.edu) and Alex Novikoff (anovikoff@fordham.edu).

 

Contact Information

Martin Schwarz, University of Chicago (schwarzm@uchicago.edu)

Alex Novikoff, Fordham University (anovikoff@fordham.edu)