Dates : 14-18 juin 2021 (en visioconférence)

Date limite de réponse à l’appel : 15 septembre 2020

In modern scientific publications, readers will often encounter diagrams providing a visual account of some complex concept or theory. This visual tool, the diagram, has a long, yet ill-understood history in premodern science. While some fields of knowledge, e.g. geometry and astronomy, have used diagrams from its very start, other disciplines of medieval and early modern science (such as medicine and alchemy) adopted this tool of presentation and reasoning at a later stage. This conference seeks to address and compare the development and use of diagrams in all strands of premodern scientific knowledge between approx. 1300 and 1700. This time period is chosen specifically to be able to study the material and medial side of diagrams, and to understand whether and how the introduction of the printing press to the Western World impacted the production, use, and availability of diagrams. Print was restricting the options, since for example, colour was harder to produce, diagrams were not always printed directly next to the related text, and the preparation of woodblocks and copper plates requested other skills than drawing them. At the same time diagrams (like texts, and other visual tools) became wider spread through print. Did this have an impact on the use of diagrams in the various scientific “disciplines” of premodern science? How strongly was diagrammatic thinking part of scientific practice on paper? We believe that we need to study the history of the diagram as part of the “scientific toolbox”, against the backdrop of broader scientific, technological and social developments, to understand more about the use, function, and epistemic value of images in premodern science in general.

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Date : 5 décembre 2020 (par visioconférence)

Date limite de réponse à l’appel : 1er septembre 2020

According to Borges, “The fancy or the imagination or the utopia of the Total Library has certain characteristics that are easily confused with virtues.” This one-day conference will explore the aspiration for complete knowledge in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, an aspiration expressed in atlases, herbals, encyclopedias that were meant to mirror and maybe tame the diversity of the earth by including in their pages everything. Whether virtuous or problematic, the fantasy of the complete mastery of knowledge created utopias of learning. In our current moment when the value of knowledge is under question, we invite scholars of multiple disciplines (art history, history, literary studies, religion, history of science) to raise questions about the technologies, social structures, and modes of thought that shape what knowledge means at a given moment.

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Lieu : Dublin (Irlande)

Dates : 07-10 avril 2021

Date limite de réponse à l’appel : 02 août 2020

Antiquity has long offered a repository of exemplary models to look at, stories of notable figures whose lives and deeds provided examples of good or bad moral behaviour, and therefore guidance as to what emulate or avoid. This is particularly true in the late medieval to the Renaissance and early modern period, when attention was first drawn to Famous Women – rather than to Illustrious Men alone – and a flourishing visual tradition established around them, stemming from Boccaccio’s ‘De mulieribus claris’ and Christine de Pizan’s ‘Livre de la Cité des Dames’. Figures as different as Penthesilea, Cleopatra, Lucretia, and Judith, among others, came to play particularly potent roles in European art from the mid-14th to the mid-17th century; their stories featured in a vast and varied corpus of paintings, manuscript and book illustrations, sculptures, tapestries, and a number of decorative objects in domestic interiors such as marriage chests and maiolica.

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