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CONFERENCE - The Muses and their Afterlife in Post-Classical Europe, London, The Warburg Institute (Lecture Room), 23 - 24 October 2009, organized by Claudia Wedepohl (The Warburg Institute), Kathleen  Christian (University of Pittsburgh) and Clare Guest (University of Agder).

As personifications of the arts from Antiquity to the present, the  muses have long been self-evident subjects of study in a wide variety  of academic fields. Yet this colloquium is the first to map out  changes in their reception from Antiquity to the sixteenth century,  tracing how the afterlife of the muses sheds light on cultural notions  of creativity and on the changing organization of artistic  disciplines. A broad look at the muses opens up fundamental questions  about the place of the arts in European societies and how the  competition between the creative disciplines played out at particular  moments in time. The topic of the muses provides an ideal point of  departure for a cross-disciplinary dialogue between historians of art, literature and music.

PROGRAM - Friday, 23 October (9:45): Charles Hope (Director of The Warburg Institute), Welcome. Session I: Pagan to Christian. Chair: Charles Burnett (The Warburg Institute). John Dillon (Trinity College, Dublin), The Muses in the Platonic  Academy; Penelope Murray (University of Warwick), The Muses in Classical  Antiquity; Karin Schlapbach (University of Ottawa), The Muses and Culture in Late Antiquity; Bissera Pentcheva (Stanford University), Inspiration in Byzantium: The Muses, Sophia, and the Theotokos. Session II: Italian Renaissance Art. Chair: Eckart Marchand (The Warburg Institute). Kathleen Christian (University of Pittsburgh), “Strani Parnasi”. The Reception of Antique Images of Muses in Renaissance Italy; Stanko Kokole (University of Primorska, Koper), The “Chapel of the  Muses” in the Tempio Malatestiano in Rimini; Ulrich Pfisterer (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München), “Seductress  and Lover”: the Erotization of the Muses in the Renaissance. Saturday, 24 October. Session III: The Arts and Musical Humanism. Chair: Christian Leitmeir (Bangor University). Monika Schmitter (University of Massachusetts at Amherst) and Anne  Stone (Queens College and Graduate Center, City University of New York), The Cycle of the Muses from the Casa Maffi in the Victoria and Albert  Museum; Reinhard Strohm (University of Oxford), The “Quattrocento Muses” between Musical Theory and  Practice; Brigitte van Wymeersch (Université Catholique de Louvain), The Muses  and Musical Inspiration in the Early Modern Period. Session IV: Furor and Poetics. Chair: Elizabeth McGrath (The Warburg Institute). Jan Söffner (Zentrum für Literatur- und Kulturforschung, Berlin), “Furor Musarum” in Ficino and Bruno; Clare Guest (University of Agder, Kristiansand), The Growth of the  Pygmy Muses: the Muses in Italian Renaissance Poetics; and Claudia Wedepohl (The Warburg Institute), Muses as Epistemological Figures in Aby Warburg¹s Theory of Culture.

Click here to read the program in full.

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The two-day conference ‘Divers Manuscripts both Antient & Curious’: Treasures from the Harley Collection was held at The British Library (96 Euston Road, London NW1 2DB) on the 29-30 June 2009.

The Harley collection was formed by Robert Harley (d. 1724) and his son, Edward (d. 1741), 1st and 2nd earls of Oxford. Renowned even in its own day, it encompassed collections of sculpture, pictures, drawings, engravings, coins, printed books, and manuscripts, and provided a mirror of early 18th-century English aristocratic taste, in part shaped by the Grand Tour. Today only the manuscript collection remains intact: in 1753 it became one of the foundation collections of the British Museum, and subsequently the British Library. Out of about 7,660 manuscripts, around 2,000 contain significant decoration. Reflecting the broad and eclectic taste—and very considerable wealth—of its two founders, it is probably the most important intact privately-formed collection of illuminated manuscripts anywhere in the world. The objective of the Harley conference is to publicise and celebrate the inclusion of these Harley manuscripts in the British Library’s Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts project, and to encourage new research. 

Programme: Keynote speaker: Jeffrey Hamburger (Harvard University), The Hand of God and the Hand of the Scribe: Collaboration in the Scriptorium of the Abbey of Arnstein. Special demonstration: Patricia Lovett (professional scribe and illuminator), Gold on Parchment: a Consideration and Demonstration of the Tools and Materials used in Medieval Manuscripts. Other speakers: Richard Gameson (Durham University), The Artist of the Ramsey Psalter; Marie-Thérèse Gousset (Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris), Christine de Pizan, Harley 4431 and the Master of the Cité des Dames; Frances Harris (The British Library), The Harleys as Collectors; Anne Hedeman (University of Illinois), Advising France through the Example of England: Visual Narrative in the Livre de la prinse et mort du roy Richart (Harley 1319); Colum Hourihane (Index of Christian Art, Princeton), Pontius Pilate in Thirteenth-century Manuscripts; Deirdre Jackson (The British Library), Humfrey Wanley and the Harley Collection; James Laidlaw (University of Edinburgh), Tag the Queen’s Manuscript? Elementary, my dear Christine; Julian Luxford (University of St Andrews), The Aesthetics of Error in Harley 612; Francesca Manzari (Università di Roma), Harley 2979 and the Books of Hours Produced in Avignon by Jean de Toulouse; Marigold Anne Norbye (University College London), History in Diagram and Genealogical Tree: Pierre de Poitiers’Compendium and a French Universal Roll Chronicle; Maud Perez-Simon (Université Paris III-Sorbonne Nouvelle), Stretching Models: Shedding Light on the Images and Text of MS Harley 4979; Sarah Pittaway (University of Birmingham), Text and Image in Harley 1766, Lydgate’s Fall of Princes; Kathryn Rudy (Koninklijke Bibliotheek, The Hague), Talismans in Harley Manuscripts; Jörg Völlnagel (Staatliche Museen zu Berlin), Harley 3469: The Splendor Solis or The Splendour of the Sun: A German Alchemical Manuscript; Alison Walker (University of California, Los Angeles), The Westminster Tournament Challenge and Thomas Wriothesley’s Workshop; Hanno Wijsman (University of Leiden), Harley 1310: Good Manners for a Burgundian Nobleman; and Catherine Yvard (Courtauld Institute of Art), The Master of the Dark Eyes, Martin Schongauer, and Other Surprises: Disentangling Harley 1892.

To register: Send a cheque in pounds sterling for the relevant registration fee, made payable to The British Library, and your name, title, and institution, and email address to The British Library, 96 Euston Road, London NW1 2DB, Attention: Gareth Burfoot. Contact HarleyConference2009@bl.uk for further information, including payment in other currencies. Please note that overseas attendees (those coming from outside the UK) should register in advance, but may pay in cash on the day (Registration fees: Standard  £40; AMARC members £35; Students  £20).

Click here for further details or to download the registration form

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CALL FOR PAPERS - Early Modern Rome, ca. 1341-1667, University of California, Rome, Italy, 14-15 May 2010. Conference Organizers: Paolo Alei, Antonella De Michelis, Julia L. Hairston, and Portia Prebys. Conference sponsored by the Association of American College and University Programs in Italy (AACUPI) and the University of California, Rome with ACCENT.

Early modern Rome was contradictory and complex; its vernacular and  high culture animated and rich. From Petrarch’s crowning as Poet Laureate on the Capitoline in 1341 to the pontificate of Alexander VII Chigi in 1667, this conference aims to bring together scholars from a range of disciplines - history, art and architectural history, literature, music, dance, religious studies, philosophy, history of medicine or science, and others - to investigate the city through a variety of different approaches and methods. The conference organizers intend to bring together in a single venue those whose research focuses on the city of Rome in an effort to encourage scholars to venture outside of their own disciplinary issues and concerns to explore concurrent forms of cultural production or social and political events. We also aim to amend in part the Florentine/Venetian axis of much scholarship on Renaissance Italy, at least outside of art history. All accepted papers will be published in a volume devoted to the conference, and selected papers will be included in a subsequent edited volume with a university press.

Conference papers should be 20-minutes (approximately 10 double-spaced pages) and may be in either English or Italian. Please send a one-page CV and an abstract of 150 words to Julia L. Hairston by June 5, 2009. Participants will be notified by June 16, 2009.

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CALL FOR PAPERS - Conference: Italian Cultural Studies, May 6-7-8, 2010, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, USA. Organized by Dartmouth College (Graziella Parati) and the University of Bari, Italy (Patrizia Calefato.)

This interdisciplinary conference will focus on the state of the field of Cultural Studies in Italian Studies. We invite presentations on Cultural Studies as practiced in Italian Studies, and on topics focusing on Italy and Cultural Studies in all fields. We invite submissions from colleagues in anthropology, art history, economics, geography, history, literary studies, Mediterranean studies, religion, semiotics, sociology, visual studies and the sciences. Presentations will last 20 minutes. Participants will bring a final, longer version of their presentation for publication (please follow the Chicago Style Manual for the publishable essay). Final essays will be refereed and those recommended for publication by independent readers will become part of the volume Italian Cultural Studies (2010). All presentations and final essays must be in English (please let us know if you need to contact translators). No registration fees.

Please send a one page abstract with title of presentation by October 31 2009 to both Graziella Parati and Patrizia Calefato. 

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