CAA News
New Sessions for 2009 Conference
The following sessions have been added to the CAA Annual Conference in Los Angeles. They do not appear in the printed version of the 2009 Call for Participation, which was mailed this week to all CAA members and can also be downloaded. The first session listed below takes place at the Los Angeles Convention Center—the primary conference location—and the J. Paul Getty Museum hosts the second and third sessions.
Art History Open Session
East Asian Buddhist Art
Nancy S. Steinhardt, University of Pennsylvania, Dept. of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, 847 Williams Hall, Philadelphia, PA 19104-6395, nssteinh@sas.upenn.edu
This session provides a forum for new research on any topic in Buddhist art or architecture in China, Korea, or Japan from any time period. Historical, methodological, documentary, theoretical, or revisionist approaches are welcome. The session is especially interested in papers that deal with Buddhist art of more than one East Asian country.
The Medieval Manuscript Transformed
Kristen Collins and Christine Sciacca, J. Paul Getty Museum, Dept. of Manuscripts, 1200 Getty Center Dr., Ste. 1000, Los Angeles, CA 90049; kcollins@getty.edu and csciacca@getty.edu
The transformed object has inspired much recent discussion among scholars of medieval art. Paintings and sculpture, in particular, have been studied as objects whose physical forms have been modified or repurposed through ritual and daily use after their creation. As portable and infinitely mutable objects, manuscripts, in particular, were often altered over time to reflect the changing needs and desires of their owners, both private and institutional. Papers might address manuscripts changed through removals and additions, dismemberment and reconstruction, and relocation and change of ownership. This session explores the life of the medieval book, as objects read and viewed over hundreds of years, and examines the shifting meaning of manuscripts and their images through the manipulation of their physical form.
Luxury Devotional Books and Their Female Owners
Richard Leson and Thomas Kren, J. Paul Getty Museum, Dept. of Manuscripts, 1200 Getty Center Dr., Ste. 1000, Los Angeles, CA 90049; rleson@gmail.com and tkren@getty.edu
Women were often the patrons or recipients of beautiful and artistically ambitious illuminated devotional books, a genre that occupies an important place in the history of medieval manuscript illumination but is still largely studied piecemeal. This session explores the potential relationship of female owners to the creation of artistically innovative luxury psalters, prayer books, and books of hours, and to the establishment of new pictorial programs and iconographic types as well as to the reinvention of the traditions of the devotional book. We welcome papers that consider pictorial programs and imagery across Europe along with evidence for the role of women either as patron or recipient and, more broadly within this context, the issues, factors, and individuals (including benefactors and advisors) that contribute to shaping the programs of illuminated devotional books during the Middle Ages.
Deadline: May 9, 2008.