“Mediterranean Art History: An Introduction”
Mediterranean Studies Summer Skills Seminar
17-20 June 2024 • Remote

The Summer Skills Seminar,  “Mediterranean Art History: An Introduction”  will be held via Zoom from Monday, 17 June to Thursday, 20 June 2024 from 10am to noon and 1pm to 3pm MDT.

Registered Participants enter here.

This Summer Skills Seminar provides participants with an overview of key concepts and methodologies in the study of Mediterranean art history. The course will address the themes of mobility, connectivity, and encounter in relation to the visual culture of peoples and territories across the sea. Participants will acquire an art historical tool kit to assist them in conducting their own research on the visual culture and artistic production of the medieval Mediterranean

Course overview
The growth of medieval Mediterranean art history over the past twenty years has provided the opportunity for a reassessment of key concepts and methodologies. Art historians have broken down disciplinary barriers in their field to conduct research in a holistic, cross-cultural, and interdisciplinary manner. However, the visual culture of the medieval Mediterranean is an incredibly broad topic of study, encompassing a large geographic area, multiple media, and numerous cultures and political territories over a millennium. This skills seminar will approach this vast body of material with a focus on mobility, connectivity, and encounter. How do these three concepts decenter older narratives, encourage cross-cultural inquiry, and broaden the range of the objects and monuments we study? Course participants will analyze these themes and questions in four sessions, divided into the following categories: People, Things, Places, and Routes/Vectors. Each day will be dedicated to one of these topics with readings connected to broader issues in the first half of the session and close readings of primary sources (documentary and monumental) and theoretical studies in the second half. Selected medieval Mediterranean monuments will serve as visual case studies to focus the discussion of the day’s readings. Additional readings and resources will be provided for each topic in shared folders. The aim of the course is to provide a broad overview of current trends in the field of medieval Mediterranean art history and to enable participants to dig deeper and conduct their own research using the tools provided during the seminar.

Day One will address the human agents who produced, consumed, and disseminated artworks across the sea. Patrons, artists, merchants, and producers of raw materials all played a role in a network of people and things. Producers and consumers of art may or may not have been the same and audiences, individual or collective, may have understood works of art in complementary or diametrically opposed ways. Artworks also played the role of defining identity, highlighting familial status, corporate membership, or multicultural, transnational, and cross-confessional affinities and connections. Readings related to particular case studies and social groups will demonstrate how mobility staged encounter, created transnational artworks, and catalyzed connectivity in the medieval Mediterranean. In the second half of Day One, participants will discuss readings concerning patronage, production, dissemination of artworks, and reception theory.

Day Two will address a second set of Mediterranean actors in the realm of visual culture: things. We will explore the different types of materials that were used for making artworks that were often a combination of disparate materials. We will address the aesthetics and symbolism of materials as well as a Mediterranean aesthetic that embrace polymaterial ensembles. We will also analyze the types of objects and raw materials that circulated across the sea that captured the imagination of artists, patrons, and audiences. Ivories and ceramics will serve as focus, as they were the ultimate pan-Mediterranean objects, produced and consumed in various locales. The second half of Day Two will focus on theoretical approaches to objects and things. We will address thing theory and material culture studies in addition to analyzing the agency and biographies of objects. We will also look at inventories such as the Book of Gifts and Rarities (Kitab al-Hadaya wa’l Tuhaf) to understand hierarchies of objects, their worth, and how they forged relationships between people and one another.

Day Three will address a sense of place and space in the Mediterranean. How was a local identity and sense of place expressed in visual terms? How did local forms, traditions, styles, and mentalities contribute to larger global circulation and artistic practices? The content for this day’s discussion will also consider the impact of exploration and cross-cultural contact, and opportunities for cultural appropriation and appreciation. We will also look at more abstract conceptions of space as seen in the developing field of cartography in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries—what did it mean to see the world as a map? In the second part of Day Three, we will analyze four central Mediterranean spaces as case studies for different approaches to place and space, local identities and cross-cultural interaction. The first locale will be Spain and the development of a unique Mudéjar aesthetic there. Next, we will travel to the Peloponnese in Greece and analyze the hybrid visual culture created there in the wake of the Fourth Crusade. The third stop will be Cairo and the new visual forms developed by the Mamluks to connect them to Mediterranean artistic culture. Finally, we will go to Italy to study the vibrant visual culture developed there to distinguish Italian polities from one another in a fiercely competitive environment.

Day Four brings together all the topics of the first three days—people, places, things—and then study how they came to interact with one another in a Mediterranean environment. What motivated people to move and visit distant lands? What caused goods to circulate and garner new meanings and uses in new places? We will look at various vectors like commerce, pilgrimage, and war/crusade that forged novel connections between these three elements and then study the consequences of this heightened cultural interaction across the Mediterranean. What were the implications of connectivity for artistic production and reception? The second half of day two will consist of a brainstorming session addressing the ways in which all four of the course’s topics can be combined in the study of medieval Mediterranean visual culture. What kind of artworks should be addressed? How can they be studied in novel ways? What new combinations and connections can be created between people/things, people/places, things/places to gain a deeper understanding of visual culture and artistic production?

This Summer Skills Seminar builds on the experience of earlier editions, which participants signaled as “transformative” in terms of their research, and which provided them with an opportunity to network and lay the foundations for future collaborations. For information and participant reviews of our former Skills Seminars (Ladino/Judezmo & Aljamiado) see here.

Faculty

The course will be conducted by Prof. Karen Mathews (Department of Art and Art History, University of Miami). She received her B.A. in Art History from UCLA and a M.A. and Ph.D. in Art History from the University of Chicago. She has been conducting research on the visual culture of the medieval Mediterranean for forty years, with a particular emphasis on artistic production in Spain, Italy, and Egypt.

Fees
$1000 for Full Professors, Librarians & Professionals
$750 for tenured Associates, Emerita/us, Retired Faculty, Independent Scholars & Non-Academics;
$500 for non-tenured Associates and Assistants & Graduate and Undergraduate students;
$350 for Adjuncts, Lecturers & Contingent faculty.
Members of University of Colorado departments may be eligible for a discount.
Applicants who are (1) nationals; (2) current residents; (3) AND faculty or students in low-per-capita GDP countries may apply for a reduction (please see below).
Payment information will be provided at the time of acceptance. Posted fees do not include a 5% processing fee. NB - fees have not changed since 2017, we anticipate an increase of 10% for 2025.

Application & Information
Recommended prerequisites: AP Art History courses or introductory surveys. Some upper division or graduate art history coursework is ideal but not required
Please note: sessions will not be recorded; synchronous attendance is required.

The regular application period is until April 15.
Applicants will be advised of acceptance on April 21.  Payment of no less than 50% of the course tuition is due on April 28, with the balance due on May 7. Applicants waiting on a grant or subvention may request an extension for the second payment.
Late applicants may be accommodated if space remains. Full payment will be due within three days of acceptance, including a $50 surcharge for late applications.
All payments are final and non-refundable. A letter of confirmation/ receipt will be provided by the Mediterranean Seminar.

Apply via this form.
For further information or inquiries, contact mailbox@mediterraneanseminar.org subject: “Summer Skills Information”)

Important dates:
Application period: 15 April 2024
Acceptance/stand by notifications: 21 April 2024
Full payment: 7 May 2024 (subject to extension for late applicants/ or pending grants)
NOTE: Numbers are limited; participants are encouraged to apply early. [download poster]

Proposed Program

Monday, 17 June 2024: Who?—People
10am—noon & 1—3pm
1.  Patrons, artists, merchants, and producers
2. Patronage, production, dissemination of artworks, and reception theory

Tuesday, 18 June 2024: What?—Things
10am—noon & 1—3pm
1.    Materials, aesthetics and symbolism
2.   Theoretical approaches to objects and things

Wednesday, 19 June 2024: Where?—Places
10am—noon & 1—3pm
1.     Sense of place and space in the Mediterranean
2.     Mediterranean spaces: case studies

Thursday, 20 June 2024: How?—Routes, Vectors, and Means of Communication
10am—noon & 1—3pm
1.     Mediterranean environment: motivations and vectors of exchange
2.     Approaches to medieval Mediterranean visual culture