Arts, Architecture, and Devotional Interaction in England, 1200-1600

FAIN: FS-50358-13

Kenyon College (Gambier, OH 43022-5020)
Sarah Blick (Project Director: March 2013 to November 2014)
Laura D. Gelfand (Co Project Director: August 2013 to November 2014)

A four-week seminar for sixteen college and university faculty to explore the relationship between art and devotional practices in medieval England.

This four-week NEH Summer Seminar for College Teachers held in York, England, will provide participants with an extraordinary opportunity to explore how and why artwork and architecture produced between 1200-1600 engaged devotees and others in dramatic new forms of physical and emotional interaction. In the past decade scholars working across diverse disciplines in the humanities have been examining the role performativity, sensual engagement, and dynamic kinetic action played in medieval devotions. Emotion and imagination were fundamental to the success or failure of devotional materials and the flurry of recent scholarship on the topic have given us a new understanding of the Middle Ages and Renaissance that is tremendously appealing to faculty and students in university classrooms across the country. The seminar, visiting historic sites and museums, often in the company of renowned experts, will make this topic come alive for participants, enhancing their scholarship.