• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

The Material Collective

A collaborative of art historians and students of visual culture

  • Home
  • About
    • Mission Statement
    • Manifesto
    • Organizational Structure
    • Links
    • Contact Us
  • Blog
  • Activism
  • Tiny Collections
  • Store
  • Show Search
Hide Search

CFP: Ecological Seeing I & II (Kalamazoo, May 2023)

July 25, 2022 By Ben Tilghman Leave a Comment

Otters!
Gaston Phebus, Le livre de la chasse, BnF Ms. fr. 616, f. 37r

​​CALL FOR PAPERS
International Congress on Medieval Studies
Kalamazoo, MI May 11-13, 2023 

Ecological Seeing I – Teaching Environmental Art History

Ecological Seeing II – New Research in Environmental Art History

Sponsored by the Material Collective. Co-organized by Danielle Joyner (Lawrence University), Nancy Thebaut (Skidmore College) & Benjamin C. Tilghman (Washington College / The Material Collective)

The ongoing environmental crises facing our planet calls for action in every field. As teachers, medieval art historians can help their students make sense of the situation by exploring the ways people conceived of, saw, and interacted with the natural world in the Middle Ages. Sometimes, we might uncover habits of thought that persist into the present day; in other contexts, we might find that medieval people understood the natural world very differently from contemporary paradigms and in ways that can be instructive for us in the present. In the roundtable, Ecological Seeing I – Teaching Environmental Art History, participants will discuss their experiences building courses or individual class sessions around ecological topics, focusing on both challenges and successful strategies for helping students work with the material. 

Ecological Seeing II – New Research in Environmental Art History is designed to address one particular challenge to teaching environmental art history: the relative dearth of secondary sources to support a course. There are only a few scholarly studies that take an ecocritical approach to medieval art, despite the expansion of the approach in other subfields of art history. We invite papers on any topic within medieval art that will help the field work towards a richer body of literature on the environmental art history of the Middle Ages. 

Abstracts (300 words) due September 15 via the conference’s Confex system (https://wmich.edu/medievalcongress/call).

Questions? Please contact Nancy Thebaut at nthebaut@skidmore.edu

Filed Under: Calls for Papers

About the Material Collective

As a collaborative of students of visual culture, Material Collective seeks to foster a safe space for alternative ways of thinking about objects. We strive for transparency in our practice, and we encourage the same in our institutional surroundings.

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Primary Sidebar

Connect with Us

  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Twitter

Latest Posts

  • CFP: Ecological Seeing I & II (Kalamazoo, May 2023)
  • Keep Fighting!
  • “One Amazing Ball of Learning” —-Faith Rush, University of Akron, class of 2022
  • CFP: Medievalism, Orientalism, Capitalism.
  • An open letter to the College Art Association Board of Directors on layoffs and closures in Art History

Contact Us

Copyright © 2023 · The Material Collective · Log in