2023 International Congress on Medieval Studies: Program
January 15, 2023 in Conference, Conference Announcement, International Congress on Medieval Studies
2023 International Congress on Medieval Studies: Program
58th ICMS (11–13 May 2023)
To occur in a transitional ‘hybrid’ form
with Sponsored and Co-Sponsored Sessions
— to be held either in person or online —
and with an Open Business Meeting
and Co-Sponsored Reception
[Posted on 17 January 2023, with updates]
Façade of the Celsus library, in Ephesus, near Selçuk, west Turkey. Photograph (1910): Benh LIEU SONG, via Creative Commons.
Building upon the successful completion of our activities at the 2022 ICMS (see our 2022 International Congress on Medieval Studies Program), we announce our Activities for the 2023 International Congress on Medieval Studies, following our Preparations for them, with the completion of the Call for Papers (15 September 2022) and the selection and submission of the Programs for our Sessions (by 15 October 2022).
With the turn of the calendar year toward the year of the Congress, we published the selected Programs for our Sessions and announced our other Activities, while we awaited the promulgation of the official Schedule for the 2023 Congress as a whole. With the publication of a Sneek Peak for the Congress Program, we can add the times and venues for our Sessions.
This year, with some Sessions on line and some in person in a transitional ICMS, we prepare six Sessions, an Open Business Meeting, and a Reception. Our co-sponsors:
- Societas Magica: 2 Sessions and the Reception
- Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies (SIMS): 2 Sessions
- Polytheism-Oriented Medievalists of North America (P.-O.M.o.N.A.): 1 Session
- Index of Medieval Art at Princeton University: Reception
This year marks Year 19 of our co-sponsorship with the Societas Magica; the second (non-consecutive) year of co-sponsorship with POMONA, the third of co-sponsorship with the Index of Medieval Art, and the first year of co-sponsorship with SIMS.
As always, we thank the host, organizers, co-sponsors, presiders, speakers, respondents, and participants for our activities at the Congress.
I. Pair of Sessions
Co-Sponsored with the Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies
These Sessions represent a new co-sponsorship with the Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies at the Congress.
Responses for the Call for Papers yielded more proposals appropriate for the subject that permission was granted for a pair of Sessions. They are designed to continue the tradition of our series of RGME Sessions at the Congress on “Medieval Writing Materials”, which began in 2014. (See 2022 International Congress on Medieval Studies Program.)
Front cover and ties of French notebook for ‘Recettes’ reusing a vellum bifolium from a medieval Latin Psalter. Photography © Mildred Budny
1–2. “Bound but not Gagged:
The Eloquence of Medieval Book Bindings”
Sessions 87 and 137 on Thursday 11 May: Virtual
Sponsor: Research Group on Manuscript Evidence
Co-sponsor: Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies
Organizer: William H. Campbell (University of Pittsburgh — Greensburg) and
Co-Organizer: Mildred Budny (Research Group on Manuscript Evidence)
Modality: Online
Aim
Medieval books communicate far more than the words on their pages. They were frequently subjected to damage and repair, to loss and addition, to division and recombination. Their bindings bear witness to the moments in their history that altered and shaped them, or — in the case of still older books recycled into binding material — destroyed them. This session is dedicated to everything about the codex that is not its text, to what J. A. Szirmai called The Archaeology of Medieval Bookbinding.
[Note: On the image shown here, see our blog:
Part 1: The Eloquence of Medieval Book Bindings from German Lands
University of Pittsburgh, Special Collections, Office of the Dead (1487), Front Cover. Photography by William H. Campbell.
Session 87. Thursday 11 May, 1:30 – 3:00 pm EST (Virtual)
(Congress Program, page 32)
Presider: Mildred Budny (Research Group on Manuscript Evidence)
Presenters
William H. Campbell (University of Pittsburgh — Greensburg)
“Recogitabo tibi omnes annos meos: Tracing the Life of an Office of the Dead”
Michael L. Chrisman (Independent Scholar)
“Early Bindings of the Gutenberg Bible”
Barbara Williams Ellertson (The BASIRA Project)
“Spines and Fastenings: Binding Archaeology in Works of Art”
New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art. Albrecht Dürer, Print of copper engraving of “Erasmus of Rotterdam” (1526). Books both opened and closed rest on the writing desk and the ledge in the foreground. Image via Wikimedia and Creative Commons.
Part 2. The Eloquence of Medieval Book Bindings:
Diverse Regional Techniques
Session 137. Thursday 11 May, 3:30 – 5:00 pm EST (Virtual)
(Congress Program, page 50)
Presider: William H. Campbell (University of Pittsburgh — Greensburg)
Presenters
David W. Sorenson (Allen Berman Numismatist)
“Some Medieval Islamic Bookbindings: A Ghost Story”
Eleanor A. Congdon (Youngstown State University)
“Covers of the Account Books in the the Datini Collection: Binding Information Together”
Yukie Baba (Hitotsubashi University)
“Curious Quire Signatures Discovered in a Fourteenth-Century Legal Manuscript”
Prato, Civic Museum, Filippo Lippi (circa 1406-1469), Madonna del Ceppo, with Francesco Datini at lower left. Image Public Domain via Wikipedia.
II. Sessions Co-Sponsored with the Societas Magica
Societas Magica logo
In Year 19 of our Sessions co-sponsored with the Societas Magica, we prepare three Sessions.
3–4. “Moving Parts and Pedagogy, Parts I–II”
Sessions 369 and 419. Saturday 11 May (In person)
Sponsor: Societas Magica
Co-Sponsor: Research Group on Manuscript Evidence
Organizer: David Porreca (University of Waterloo)
Modality: In person
Part I: “Teaching Magic and Other Occult Arts”
Session 369. Saturday 11 May, 1:30 – 3:00 pm EST (Fetzer Center 2040)
(Congress Program, page 136)
Poster for “Astrology and Magic” Congress Session (7 May 2013)
Aim
Magic, alchemy, geomancy, and other occult arts were never part of the official curriculum in any medieval university faculty. Moreover, magical treatises abound in claims of legitimacy in terms of belonging alongside other more overtly recognized sciences. Nevertheless, the abundance of surviving treatises, manuals, and commentaries suggests that there must have been some means outside the bounds of officially recognized institutions for these bodies of knowledge and practices to have been taught, learned, and transmitted, despite the negative light often cast upon them in ‘mainstream’ circles. This session aims to investigate the pedagogy of such arts and practices.
Presider: David Porreca
Presenters
Daniel M. Harms (SUNY Cortland)
” ‘To give myself to be carried immediatly into Hell’:
Weather, Witchcraft , and Two Late Seventeenth-Century Contracts
between a Magician and a Student”
Samuel P. Gillis Hogan (University of Exeter)
“Philosophy is the Child of Contention:
The Accretion of Theory in Instructional Chiromantic and Fairy-Summoning Texts
as a Response to Hostile Criticism”
Part II: “Teaching Astrology and other Liberal Arts”
Session 419. Saturday 11 May, 1:30 – 3:00 pm EST (Fetzer Center 2040)
(Congress Program, page 154)
Aim
During the later Middle Ages, astrology began to play an ever more prominent role in university curricula. It was frequently merged with astronomy as one of the Seven Liberal Arts, and it became required knowledge for the practice of medicine. These developments created a need for new masters capable of rendering its intricacies intelligible to the next generation of doctors and other practitioners. This session aims to examine how the pedagogy of astrology functioned, and how the teaching of that discipline fits alongside the rest of the Liberal Arts curriculum.
Presider: Marla Segol (SUNY University of Buffalo)
Presenters
Michael Allman Conrad (University of Zurich)
“Gamified Numbers:
Board Games as Educational Instruments for Teaching Astrology and Other Quadrivial Arts”
Arina Zaytseva (Rice University)
” Ludwig Milich‘s Lutheran Astrology: The Art of the Wise, the Art of the Foolish”
David Porreca (University of Waterloo)
“Games and Pedagogy: William Fulke (1538–1589), Astrology, and Geometry”
Matthew Vanderkwaak (University College Dublin)
“Divine Instruments: The Role of the Heavens in Albert the Great‘s Astrological Cosmos”
Philosophy and the Seven Liberal Arts personified, as illustrated in a reconstruction of the Hortus deliciarum (“Garden of Delights”) of Herrad of Landsberg (circa 1130 – 1195). Image Public Domain, via Wikipedia.
III: Session Co-Sponsored with Polytheism-Oriented Medievalists of North America (P.-O.M.o.N.A.)
This session is the second (non-consecutive) year of co-sponsorship with this organization. (See 2019 International Congress on Medieval Studies 2019 Report.)
Pomona Session Kzoo 2019
5) “Words as Agents”
Session 50. Thursday 11 May, 10:00 – 11:30 am EST (Virtual)
(Congress Program, page 19)
Sponsor: Research Group on Manuscript Evidence
Co-sponsor: Polytheism-Oriented Medievalists of North America (P-OMoNA)
Organizer: Phillip Bernhardt-House
Co-Organizer: Mildred Budny
Modality: Online
Aim
The idea of words as agents of specific actions, changes of status, or as means via which changes occur in the wider world is inherent in many forms of literate and verbal communication, underlying human social phenomena as diverse as legal systems, religious community formation and practices, and the practice of magic, amongst others. Textual amulets, deeds, dedicatory inscriptions, and other written matter (even entire alphabets!) can convey notions of words’ agency.
This session explores a variety of these, reflected in specific examples from pre-modern periods and cultures, from the Iron Age to the Renaissance and across wide geographic ranges.
Presider: Michael Allman Conrad (University of Zürich)
Presenters
Mildred Budny
“Where Words Collide: Metadata versus Scholarship in Manuscript Studies”
Summary
Metadata for manuscripts can sometimes clash with the original materials, for example by misstatements or mistaken assumptions about features and character of the book. Cases abound with fragments dispersed in Portfolios or Leaf-Books, issued with generic labels copied in library catalogues and WorldCat. We explore examples among Otto Ege fragments.
Phillip Bernhardt-House (Academic Vagabond)
“The Ephesia Grammata as Grammatical Beings; Or, ‘That Orpheus Is Pretty Good . . . Who’s His Agent?’ ”
Respondent: Linde M. Brocato (University of Miami)
Façade of the Celsus library, in Ephesus, near Selçuk, west Turkey. Photograph (1910): Benh LIEU SONG, via Creative Commons.
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2023 Congress Sessions
The strong responses to the Call for Papers, in a suite of sessions co-sponsored by the Research Group, accord with our many years of participation in the Congress, both in person and online. That tradition is described in our ‘archive’ of Events and Congress Sessions.
- Congress Activities
- Sponsored Sessions at the International Congress on Medieval Studies
- Co-Sponsored Sessions at the International Congress on Medieval Studies
Our tradition includes the publication of Abstracts, as their authors allow, for the Papers and Responses of Sessions sponsored and co-sponsored by the RGME.
As they appear, you may find individual Abstracts by Name and/or by Year of Presentation in our Lists of
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Open Business Meeting
Modality: In Person
Thursday 11 May 2023 from 12:00 to 1:00 pm EST (GMT-5). Fetzer Center 1035
(Congress Program, page 19)
We resume our tradition of in-person Business Meetings at the Congress, with an Open Business Meeting at lunchtime.
All are welcome. Lunch will be served, through a customary donation for the occasion.
As background, the Agenda and Report for the 2022 Congress Business Meeting are available for download as 1-page handouts.
The Agenda and Report for 2023 will become available for the Meeting.
As in 2021 and 2022, the RGME will also hold an online Pre-Congress Business Meeting within the weeks leading up to the Congress, as a way to prepare for the planning onsite at the Congress. It also gives the opportunity to gather the voices of participants who do not attend the Congress (for example, with interests in other areas) as well as those who do.
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Reception
Modality: In Person
Thursday 11 May 2023 from 5:30 to 7:00 pm EST (GMT-5). Fetzer Center 1035–1045
(Congress Program, page 56)
With the resumption of in-person activities at the ICMS, after the cancelled Congress in 2020 and the fully virtual Congresses in 2021 and 2022, we return to our tradition of a Reception.
This year, as before, we co-sponsor the event with the Societas Magica and the Index of Medieval Art. The Reception is scheduled for Thursday 11 May 2023 from 5:30 to 7:00 pm EST (GMT-5).
All are welcome.
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Watch this space for developments in the progress of preparations for the 2023 Congress.
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Post Script:
The Stories that Bindings Can Tell
Reused Bifolium, Verso, turned Sideways, as the Cover for a missing volume of Euthymius on the Psalms. Photography Mildred Budny.
[Note: For information about this image, see our blog:
More stories to tell. Watch this space!
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