Renaissance Society of America: Philadelphia 2-4 April 2020
Objects of the Cult. Liturgy/Devotion and its Instruments in Early Modern Europe
Organizers:
Ethan Matt Kavaler: University of Toronto, CRRS
Ralph Dekonink: University of Louvain-le-Neuve, Belgium
How were religious ideas and practice realized through interaction with objects that were both functional and aesthetic? How did the presence of devotional and liturgical objects—their visibility, tactility, and materiality—help form attitudes toward private devotion and public cult? In other words, how did people think and acts with things—both clerics and lay devotees? What were the mechanics of agency that empowered these objects? And how did their aesthetic properties structure, direct, or regulate ideas and behavior? The aim of this session isto investigate the material and symbolic nature as well as the spatial and ritual context of these objects, so as to provide a renewed analysis of their forms and functions.
We invite papers of 20 minutes dealing with the following issues among others:
– the properties and values of materials which are part of the very meaning and function of these objects. How materials generate certain forms and appearances, and how they bring about and maintain certain beliefs in the immanent power of objects, independent of their formal or representational value?
– the positions, interactions and manipulation of these objects in specific rituals, their relationships with gestures, words, sounds or smells. How they formed body-parts of a ritualized time-space? How they functioned as dynamic spatial and ritual parameters, and not as static ‘passive’ containers of meanings?
Please send to matt.kavaler@utoronto.ca and ralph.dekoninck@uclouvain.be in WORD Documents the following information if you are interested in presenting:
· paper title (15-word maximum)
· abstract (150-word maximum) abstract guidelines
· curriculum vitae (.pdf or .doc upload, no longer than 5 pages)
· PhD completion date (past or expected)
· general discipline area (History, Art History, Literature, or other)
· keywords
The deadline for submissions to us is August 1, 2019.