Full Description
Where are the limits of medieval art as a field of study? What happens when conventionally trained art historians disregard the chronological, geographical, or cultural parameters that both direct and protect their scholarship? Beginning with Thelma K. Thomas and Alicia Walker's acute assessment of the need for a "medieval art history for now," the essays in Out of Bounds ask what happens when the study of medieval art disregards boundaries that it once obeyed. The volume focuses on questions surrounding the production of knowledge and on how scholarly investigation beyond the conventional thematic boundaries of medieval art history is changing, demonstrating how the field can address the ethics of scholarship today by positing a global turn in response to growing demands for socially responsible medieval studies. Collectively, the contributors demonstrate how "going out of bounds" can transform modern understanding of the people, traditions, and relationships that gave rise to medieval works. As such, this book argues for the necessity of reshaping scholarly discourse about the nature and significance of medieval art and generates fresh scholarly interpretations and important new critical tools for teaching and researching the Middle Ages.
The contributors to this volume are Suzanne Conklin Akbari, Michele Bacci, Jill Caskey, Eva Frojmovic, Sarah M. Guérin, Christina Maranci, Alice Isabella Sullivan, Thelma K. Thomas, Michele Tomasi, and Alicia Walker.
Contents
List of Illustrations
Preface
1. Shifting Boundaries: Medieval Art History for Now
Thelma K. Thomas and Alicia Walker
2. On Account of the Rotundity of the Earth: Steps Toward an Inclusive Medieval Art
Jill Caskey
3. Medieval Masks? Meditations on Method Out of Bounds
Sarah M. Guérin
4. Along the Art-Historical Margins of the Medieval Mediterranean
Michele Bacci
5. Looking at the "Center" from the "Border": An Exchange of Franco-Ottoman Gifts and the Perception of Art Around 1400
Michele Tomasi
6. Alexander the Great's Encounters with the Sacred in Medieval History Writing: From the Shahnameh to the Histoire ancienne jusqu'à César
Suzanne Conklin Akbari
7. Fashioning the Gendered, Classed, and White Self: A Sephardi Cultural Project
Eva Frojmovic
8. Beyond Traditional Boundaries: Medieval Art and Architecture in Eastern Europe
Alice Isabella Sullivan
9. "The Summit of the Earth": What Armenian Texts Can Do for the History of Medieval Art and Beyond
Christina Maranci
Contributors
Index
