Visual Studies Workshop

    

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Visual Studies Distinguished Scholar Lecture Series    

2006

David Ehrenpreis

Director, the Institute for Visual Studies at James Madison University

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2005

Nicholas Mirzoeff

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2003 

W.J.T. Mitchell

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Call for Participation:

Ways of Religious Seeing in Late Antiquity Working Group

We are seeking participants in an interdisciplinary working group on Ways of Religious Seeing in Late Antiquity. Recent scholarship in the area of Religious Studies has shown an elevated interest in theinter-relationships among objects, art and belief. A wealth of new journals and books which address these ideas have sprung up to fill the lacuna left by what some would call the discipline’s over-emphasis on the study of canonical texts. While Religious Studies scholars have reached into other disciplines, especially Art History, to borrow new frameworks for the analysis of data, Art Historians, Historians and Philologists have become engaged with the problem of Visuality as historically conditioned image practices. These practices can be evidenced in image/artifacts as well as in texts.

We are seeking funding to support travel for members of the group to meet at the University of Kentucky, under the auspices of the Art Department's Visual Studies Workshop, in academic year 2007-2008 to present and discuss our research. Building on discussions by scholars in a double session on “Women and Material Religion in Late Antique Rome” at the AAR-SBL annual meeting in Philadelphia last November, this inaugural meeting will open up discussion on the problems, methods of construction, and reception of “Late Antique Visuality” to a broader array of scholars from various disciplines. The particular focus of the meeting will be on some aspect of Visuality and late antique religious groups. The ultimate goal of this interdisciplinary meeting is a collaborative publication of various theoretical, historiographic, or case studies in the conception and reception of Visuality in the art, artifacts and religious practices of Late Antiquity.

If you are interested in participating, we would like to include you in the scheduling and definition of topical sessions. Suggested sessions so far include:
Theory: Religious Seeing and Historicizing Vision;
Late Antique Perception and Representation;
Training the Eye, Indoctrinating Belief?;
Gender and Religious Seeing in late Antiquity;
Space, Place and Belief.

Because we are seeking grant support, it would be most useful if you could respond before October 5 by e-letter to either Alice Christ achrist@uky.edu or Janet Tulloch:
janet_tulloch@carleton.ca

Please attach a current CV and include your tentative title and/or the topic of a session in which you would like to participate. Also, please tell us if you have a preference for a Spring or Fall Semester symposium in 2007-8.

Finally, if we receive funding sufficient to support a symposium, it will be used first to bring participants (as well as guest speakers) who respond to this proposal to the meeting . However, if you cannot respond at this time, there could be future collaborative opportunities and we expect to continue working as a group.

Alice Christ
Janet Tulloch