Slowly but surely, the last centuries of Medieval Europe on the verge to turn to Modernity, bang to build up a lot of dilemmas and moral interrogations: numbers of heresies and peculiar religious questions indicate how intricate cultural identities were during the Middle Ages. One of the many ways to document and explore those discrepancies and the modalities of maybe mending them, is the study of visual images, mental ones and pictures.

1-4 July 2024 - Panel Session at Leeds IMC 2024 "Crisis"

Argument

The session invites papers dealing with multiple societal / moral / religious / economic crisis in late medieval Europe resulting in the new approaches in visual media – such as new or idiosyncratic iconography (crisis of images), emotional aspects of visual objects, naturalism etc. Papers should address not only the ways the visual media reflected, responded to and represented the period crisis, but also the rituals and rites that helped to pacify it and battle the period anxiety. Papers using the variety of methodologies are welcome, in particular those addressing the period relation between the society and images via the optics of media studies, visual anthropology, visual semiology and information and communication sciences, theories of reception, or addressing the particular aspects of the late medieval visuality.

The possible topic may (but not have to) include:

• moral and religious crisis and its visual perceptions
• visualizing late medieval heresy and witchery and how to “deal with it” with images or pictures
• crisis of images – new images in mind
• moral theology and art (seven deadly sins, works of mercy, Sunday Christ etc.)
• visualizing the pastoral didactics
• visual objects and prayers against the illness / heresy
• magical visual objects: visual
• media and sin / death / devil
• new ways: visual information and communication (dogmatic images, pastoral education)

Studying relationships and collective dynamics within mediation processes with visual objects and artefacts give us a better understanding of cultural representations of the idea of “crisis” during this particular time. We cananalyse social and individual identities, but also how images are used to perform and mediate meaning and symbol, that can also change through use.

This panel will therefore look at the agency and the multimodality of newsets of thinking the crisis through, with, and in reflection to Late Medieval images.

Submission guidelines

Paper proposals (20 minutes) should be sent to Marianne Cailloux (marianne.cailloux@univ‑lille.fr) and Daniela Rywiková (daniela.rywikova@osu.cz). They should include paper title, max 150 word abstract, speakers’ affiliation and contact information.

The deadline for paper proposals is 31 August 2023.

Session organisers

• Marianne Cailloux, MCF - Sciences de l'Information et de la Communication, Université de Lille - sciences humaines et sociales - GERIICO 
• Daniela Rywiková, professor at the Department of Art History and Cultural Heritage (VIVARIUM - Centre for Research in Medieval Society and Culture) and Vice-Dean for Internation Affairs and Public Relations

Leeds IMC 2024 scientific committee

• Julia Barrow (School of History / Institute for Medieval Studies)
• Catherine Batt (School of English / Institute for Medieval Studies)
• Emma Cayley (School of Languages, Cultures and Societies – French / Institute for Medieval Studies)
• Alaric Hall (School of English / Institute for Medieval Studies)
• Emilia Jamroziak (School of History / Institute for Medieval Studies)
• Catherine Karkov (School of Fine Art, History of Art, and Cultural Studies / Institute for Medieval Studies)