[Martha Dana Rust]

Medieval and Renaissance Center
New York University

Call for papers: New York University’s Medieval and Renaissance Center invites proposals for ten-minute papers for its annual conference to be held May 1-2 2025.

Divergence and Interconnectivity: Global Premodernity in Five Objects

Keynote speaker
Lia Markey, Director of the Center for Renaissance Studies, Newberry Library

Divergence and Interconnectivity: we understand these terms as capturing the essence both of premodernity as our object of study and of the collaborative mode of inquiry it calls for in the wake of the “global turn” in Premodern Studies. The five objects that structure the conference will thus both invite explorations of the numerous divergences and interconnectivities in which these objects inhere and serve as the occasion for participants to approach them from a diverse, yet interconnected set of perspectives, thus demonstrating the generative quality of collaborative study.

The conference will be conducted in partnership with New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, where all five objects are held: (04.3.458)

• A twelfth-century stone Persian chess set (1971.193a-ff)
• A late thirteenth-century Mongol safe-conduct pass with an inscription in the rare Phakpa script (1993.256)
• A fifteenth-century Italian mandora (64.101.1409)
• A late-fifteenth century Granadan leather Qur’an case (04.3.458)
• A late-sixteenth or early-seventeenth Flemish bronze statue called “African Venus, or the Bather” (26.14.15)

Each object will be discussed during its own panel session, which will consist of introductory remarks from an invited expert on the object of study followed by four ten-minute presentations.

Abstracts of 200 words or less for ten-minute papers on any one of these objects may be sent to marc.center@nyu.edu. We especially encourage proposals that engage the objects from tangential perspectives or that put them in dialogue with places and periods beyond the circumstances of their production. Submissions from faculty, graduate students, independent researchers, and practitioners in fields pertaining to these objects are all welcome. The Medieval and Renaissance Center may be able to offer assistance with travel and accommodation to conference participants living outside of New York City.

Deadline for submission: October 1, 2024

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