Visual Studies Workshop Conference
Ways of Seeing in Late Antique Material Religion
March 28-29, 2008
University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky

All meetings are free and open to the public
Briggs Theater, Fine Arts Building
College of Fine Arts
University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky

sponsored by the International Catacombs Society Shohet Scholars Program
with support from UK Office of the Provost, College of Fine Arts, Catholic Studies Program, Department of Classical and Modern Languages and Department of Art

For more information contact: Prof. Alice Christ, Conference Coordinator and Co-Organizer at alice.christ@uky.edu


Schedule:
Friday, March 28
9:00  Welcome

9:30-12:00  
Work Session 1. Religious Seeing and Historicizing Vision:  Theory, Historiography, Methods
Papers in this session address problems of reconstructing other visualities in principle and Late Antique religious visualities in particular.  Issues include principles of cultural construction of the Visual; the roles of human perceptual capacities and social needs in construction of religious image cultures or "scopic regimes" in general;  relation of religious image cultures to other specialized viewing techniques; and methods for retrieving religious symbol systems directly through an image discourse.
James Francis, University of Kentucky: "Ancient Artistry, Ancient Literacy, and the Interpretation of Earliest Christian Art"
Brent Plate, Christian Texas University: "The Skin of Religion: Aesthetics and Religious Theory"
Sheena Rogers, James Madison University: "Nature and Culture in Religious Visual  Experience."
Daria Pezzoli-Olgiati, Universität Zürich: "Theory and Method in Reconstructing  Ancient Religious Seeing"

12:00-1:00 Lunch Break
 
1:00-2:00  Public Lecture:
Barbara Kellum, Department of Art, Smith College, ”Material Intertextuality: the Seduction of the Visual.”
 
2:30-5:30
Work Session 2.
Space, Place Ritual and Belief
Working with the understanding that belief is an embodied practice which may or may not follow statements of creed, some papers in this session address the visual aspects of human interaction with or contestation of sacred space/place.  These may include visual marking of religious experience by participants as well as visual constructions or representations of sacred space. Other papers emphasize ways in which use of art and artifacts in ritual performances both respond and contribute to the visual culture of religious groups.  Emphasis may be on visual aspects of ritual in forming religious experience or in incorporating the individual into a religious culture. Or the ritual use of art and artifacts may contribute to understanding the modes of seeing they expect and reward.
Steven Fine, Yeshiva College: “The Dura Europos Synagogue as a Liturgical Environment”
Barbette Spaeth, College of William & Mary: "Visual Expressions of Belief and Ethnicity at the Spring of Upper Peirene on Acrocorinth in the Roman Period"
Ellen Bradshaw Aitken, McGill University:  “ ‘But We See Jesus. . .’ (Heb 2:9): The Epistle to the Hebrews in a Culture of Visual Display and Monumental Memory”
Linda A Fuchs, Cornell University: "Representation of Space, Place, Time and Belief  in the Vatican Jonah Sarcophagus."
Hallie Meredith-Goymour, Lincoln College, Oxford: "Making the Past Visible: Ekphrasis and Inscribed Decoration on Usable Art in Late Antiquity"

 
6:00-8:00 Public Reception, Tuska Gallery, Fine Arts Building, room 107
 
Saturday,  March 29
9:00-12:00 Work Session 3
Training the Eye, Indoctrinating Belief?
The formation of canonical imagery, together with the tremendous outpouring of verbal description of visual religious experience in late antique literature may be evidence of formation or enforcement of a new scopic regime, one that requires its members to see what they know.  Papers in this session raise issues of the normative authority of images in constructing religious experience and roles, the control of this authority, and the role of rhetoric in negotiating image authority.
Molly Lindner, Kent State University: "Roman Priestesses: Portraits of Piety in the Second-Century C.E."  
Sharon Salvadori, John Cabot University:   "Prayers, Scrolls and Codices: Images of Women on Third- and Fourth-century Roman Sarcophagi"
Rachel Neis, Harvard University: "Rabbinic Eyes: Cataloging, Curtailing and Constructing Vision"
Patricia Cox Miller, Syracuse University: "Word-Pictures and Animated Objects:  ‘Seeing’ Icons in Late Ancient Hagiography"
Daniel Sarefield, Ohio State University: "Seeing Religious Violence in Late  Antiquity.”

12:00-1:00 Lunch Break
 
1:00-2:00 Public Lecture:
David Morgan, the Phyllis and Richard Duesenberg Professor in Christianity and the Arts at Christ College, Valparaiso University, “Religious Visual Culture and the Production of Visibility."
 
2:30-5:30  Work Session 4
Late Antique Perception and Representation
Papers in this session present case studies of a particular material practice and its artifacts, or a particular genre of seeing or representation within or across Late Antique religions.   They may address aspects of Late Antique conceptions of the nature and workings of vision.  
Janet H. Tulloch, Carleton University: “Historicizing the Sacred Gaze: Ways of Seeing inside an Early Christian Household Tomb.”
Nicola Denzey, Independent Scholar: "Seeing Women's Ways: Women, Wealth and Self-Representation in Late Antique Commemorative Spaces"
Linda Jones Hall, St. Mary's College of Maryland: "Reading and Seeing: the Name of Jesus and the Designs of the Chi Rho in the Poems of Publilius Optatianus Porfyrius."
Roger Beck, University of Toronto: "What you See is What you Get: the Case of the  Mysteries of Mithras"
Linda Wheatley-Irving, Chicago: "The Domain of Adam:  Standing and Seeing a Syrian Church Floor."