Delaware Valley Medieval Association

Serving Medieval Studies in the Delaware Valley since 1983

Category: Announcements Page 1 of 6

INTENSIVE COURSE: The Crusades and Islamic History (University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, July 20-22, 2026)

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On February 9, 2026

In Announcements

This three-day intensive in-person course will focus on reading medieval primary sources for the social, economic and religious history of Egypt and Greater Syria, including Palestine during the period of the Crusades, roughly 1050-1500. It is intended for advanced graduate students and other qualified participants and will be offered by Prof. Paul M. Cobb (University of Pennsylvania) in collaboration with Prof. Ann Zimo (University of New Hampshire) and Prof. Reuven Amitai (Hebrew University of Jerusalem). The course will include close reading and historical analysis of published Arabic literary sources (chronicles and the like), Frankish sources in translation, and modern secondary literature. The overall goal is to provide students with in-depth understanding of the conventions and genres of historical writing on the Crusades and what we gain (and lose) by understanding the Crusades in their Middle Eastern context.

The number of participants will be limited to a maximum of 12.

Applications for the intensive course should include a CV, a statement of purpose (up to 750 words), and a letter of recommendation by someone familiar with your work. These should be sent to sms2026philadelphia@gmail.com by March 6, 2026. Those who are selected for the course will be notified before the end of March 2026, at which time a syllabus and information about the method of payment for the course fees will be provided.

The course fee is $250, which also includes the registration fee for the subsequent conference (July 23-25), about which more information can be found here: https://mamluk.uchicago.edu/sms-conference.html

All fees must be paid by April 15, 2026. Registration and participation will not be confirmed until payment is received. Participants must make their own travel arrangements; the local organizer will provide suggestions for accommodation.

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Jackson Lecture in Byzantine Art: Alice Isabella Sullivan, “Eastern Europe in Focus: Medieval Art, Cultural Heritage, and Global Conflicts”

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On January 29, 2026

In Announcements, Meetings

Friday, February 6, 2026, 4:30–6:00 PM EST
Hybrid: In-person at the Tyler School of Art and Architecture, Room Arch 104
Temple University, 2001 N. 13th Street, Philadelphia PA 19122
and virtual via Zoom (register here: https://temple.zoom.us/meeting/register/YEJDqOhrSdGUT4v7hktfUQ)

A reception will follow the lecture in person at the Tyler School of Art and Architecture, Temple University.

This lecture explores aspects of the history and art of Eastern Europe, which developed at the intersection of competing traditions and worldviews for much of the Middle Ages. Byzantium played a key role in shaping local artistic developments in regions of the Balkan Peninsula, the Carpathian Mountains, and further north, as did contacts with Western and Central Europe. Key objects and monuments reflect aspects of local negotiations among competing traditions, and the shifting meanings and functions of cultural heritage during moments of change, crisis, and conflict. Examples from regions of modern Ukraine, Romania, and North Macedonia, among others, underscore the importance of putting Eastern Europe in focus temporally, geographically, methodologically, and theoretically within the study of medieval, Byzantine, post-Byzantine, and early modern art history.

Alice Isabella Sullivan, PhD, is Assistant Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of the History of Art and Architecture at Tufts University. She specializes in the artistic production of Eastern Europe and the Byzantine-Slavic cultural spheres in the period between the 14th and 16th centuries. Sullivan is the author of the award-winning book The Eclectic Visual Culture of Medieval Moldavia (2023), Europe’s Eastern Christian Frontier (2024), and co-editor of several volumes. In addition, she is co-director of the Sinai Digital Archive, and co-founder of North of Byzantium and Map­ping Eastern Europe— two initiatives that explore the history, art, and culture of the northern frontiers of the Byzantine Empire in Eastern Europe during the medieval and early modern periods.

The event is free and open to the public. The Jackson Lecture in Byzantine Art is generously sponsored by Lynn Jackson, with additional support from Temple University’s General Activities Fund (GAF).

Making the Medieval Archive: Celebrating Elizabeth A. R. Brown at Penn

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On September 4, 2025

In Announcements, Meetings

This day-long symposium will commemorate Elizabeth (Peggy) A. R. Brown’s extraordinary legacy in the field of Medieval Studies and will mark the official launch of the Elizabeth A. R. Brown Medieval Historians’ archive. For more details and the event program, click here.

Co-organized by Nicholas Herman (Kislak/SIMS) and Ada Kuskowski (Department of History).

Register here

A photograph of Elizabeth (Peggy) A. R. Brown conducting research early in her career. Source: Brown family

Register for the Symposium Webinar, “Medieval Mediterranean Ways”, Friday April 11!

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On March 6, 2025

In Announcements, Meetings

The topic of this virtual symposium, Medieval Mediterranean Ways, is conceptualized very broadly geographically as well as intellectually, and it seeks to examine both meanings of the word “ways”, as direction and as manner. Our articulation alludes to both Mediterranean ways as routes or directions as well as ways as manners, customs and cultural practices. Thus, this symposium aims at engaging in an intellectual dialogue that widely encompasses areas of inquiry as varied as trade, cartography, visual cultures and intercultural and interreligious relationships across the Mediterranean during the medieval period. 

(CLICK HERE TO REGISTER!)

MEDIEVAL MEDITERRANEAN WAYS SYMPOSIUM PROGRAM

MORNING SESSION. 10:00 am-12:00 pm 

  • 10:00 am-10:30 am (EST) Susan McDonough, Univ. of Maryland, Baltimore County, Medieval History, “Moving in the Mediterranean: Public Women and Their Routes” 
  • 10:30 am-11:00 am (EST) Sébastien Garnier, Université Paris 1, “What lies behind al-Tiǧānī’s travelogue (scr. post 711/1311)?” 
  • 11:00 am-11:30 am (EST) David Wacks, Univ. of Oregon, Sephardic Studies , “Medieval Sephardic Narratives of Mediterranean Migration” 
  • 11:30 am-12:00 pm (EST) Q&A 

12:00 pm-1:00 pm (EST) Lunch Break 

AFTERNOON SESSION. 1:00 pm-3:00 pm 

  • 1:00 pm-1:30 pm (EST) Ariel Fein, Institute for Advanced Studies, Princeton, Byzantine and Islamic Art History, “A Refugee Family across Syria and North Africa: Artistic Heritage and Communal Self-Memory” 
  • 1:30 pm-2:00 pm (EST) Michelle Hamilton, University of Minnesota, and Núria Silleras-Fernández, University of Colorado , “Iberia and the Multilingual Mediterranean” 
  • 2:00 pm-2:30 pm (EST)  Uri Zvi Shachar, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, “Paths of Faith: Fourteenth Century Mediterranean Encyclopedism” 
  • 2:30 pm-3:00 pm (EST), Q&A and Closing Remarks 
Registration Linkhttps://temple.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_JzgTXT6OSGuhx8Lw9pCwXw#/registration
VenueZoom Webinar
StartsFri Apr 11 2025, 10:00 AM EDT
EndsFri Apr 11 2025, 3:00 PM EDT

DVMA Spring Meeting – April 19, 2024 – Rare Book Department, Free Library of Philadelphia

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On April 19, 2024

In Announcements, Meetings

DVMA Spring 2024 Meeting, Friday, April 19, 1:00 p.m – 5:00 p.m

Please join us for the Delaware Valley Medieval Association’s Spring Meeting held in the William M. Elkins room at the Rare Book Department of the Free Library of Philadelphia (1901 Vine Street, Philadelphia, PA 19103). The event features three engaging speakers on topics of special interest to medievalists and includes a viewing of the manuscripts on exhibit. 

PROGRAM

1:00 p.m. – 1:15 p.m.   

Welcome and Introduction. Professor Montserrat Piera, Temple University

1:15 p.m. – 2:00 p.m.

Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski, Professor Emerita, Department of French and Italian, University of Pittsburgh

“Making Miracles in late Medieval France: Three Saints and Would-be Saints”

2:00 p.m. – 2:45 p.m.

Roxanna Cosme-Colon, Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of Spanish, Haverford College

“The Matter of Iberia: Fashioning the Legendary Carolingian Corpus for Iberian Popular Audiences”

“The Matter of Iberia: Fashioning the Legendary Carolingian Corpus for Iberian Popular Audiences”

2:45 p.m. – 3:30 p.m

Break

Refreshments

Viewing of Manuscripts Exhibit at the Rare Book Department

3:30 p.m. –  4:30 p.m. 

Martha Easton, Associate Professor of Art History and Program Director, Museum Studies, Department of Art and Art History, Saint Joseph’s University

“Medieval Architectural Salvage in American Collections”

4:30 p.m.- 5:00 p.m.

Discussion and Closing Remarks

Registration is $10 for DVMA members, $15 for guests. Graduate students should register but attend at no cost (use code DVMA24GS at registration checkout). Payment can be made during web-registration or at the door.

Curating Art of the Global Middle Ages, DVMA Fall Meeting, September 25, 2021, 1-4 PM

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On September 25, 2021

In Announcements, Meetings

Delaware Valley Medieval Association (DVMA) virtual meeting.

The event will feature curator-scholars and professor-curators who have engaged with the question of how to exhibit works of art in ways that foreground the intellectual and ethical dimensions of a global perspective on the middle ages.

The meeting will be run as a Zoom webinar, and registration is open now. The speakers are prerecording short talks discussing their recent and current curatorial work. Some of the talks are available already, and the rest should be ready for viewing by the end of August. The meeting will entail a roundtable discussion (1-3pm) followed by a discussion about curatorial careers in medieval art (3-4pm). Information about all this, links to register, etc. can be found on the event website here: https://curatingartoftheglobalmiddleages.blogs.brynmawr.edu/

While the Zoom Webinar format will not accommodate questions from the floor, the website allows for submitting questions in advance via the event website. The prerecorded talks can be incorporated into courses this fall, with an assignment culminating in a class devising one or more questions to submit.

Organizer:

Alicia Walker, Associate Professor, Department of History of Art, Bryn Mawr College

Speakers:

Andrea Achi, Assistant Curator, Medieval Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Kristen Collins, Curator of Manuscripts, the Getty Museum, Los Angeles and

Gerhard Lutz, Robert P. Bergman Curator of Medieval Art, Cleveland Art Museum

Amanda Luyster, Senior Lecturer, Visual Arts Department, College of the Holy Cross

Risham Majeed, Assistant Professor, Art History, Ithaca College

Elizabeth Williams, Curator, Dumbarton Oaks

DVMA Graduate workshop, October 16,2021

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On November 28, 2020

In Announcements

Held in conjunction with the 46th Annual, Patristic, Medieval, and Renaissance Conference at Vilanova University, 10:00 AM-3 PM.

https://www1.villanova.edu/university/liberal-arts-sciences/programs/theology/events/pmr.html

 

Region and Enmity October 19-22, 2021

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On November 17, 2020

In Announcements

 

Region and Enmity

A RaceB4Race Symposium

 

October 19-22, 2021

Darkness and Light, DVMA Spring Meeting, April 24, 2021

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On November 15, 2020

In Announcements

The History/Social Sciences and Arts departments at Bryn Athyn College in partnership with Glencairn Museum are proud to host the Spring Meeting of the Delaware Valley Medieval Association for 2021 (Hybrid event).

For more program information and to register, click here.

 

Virtual Symposium: “Transformed Bodies in Medieval Culture,” March 13, 2021

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On November 15, 2020

In Announcements

 

Venue: Vilanova University (remote event)

 

 

 

 

In 2002, Alan Deyermond described his relationship with Harriet Goldberg as one of admiration “for the quality of her scholarship and her range of interests.” These interests focused on popular sayings and traditions, dreams, sexual humor, and riddles. Goldberg also noted how images of societal inversion or role reversal of could be conformed to express anxieties over gender and social identity. Inspired by Harriet Goldberg’s work on Iberian traditions, this conference seeks to examine different forms of bodily transformation, to map out the limits of gender, and to think of the ways in which current discussions on gender and identity intertwine with our understanding of the past. 

 

The keynote address will be given by Michelle Hamilton (University of Minnesota), author of Beyond Faith: Belief, Morality and Memory in a Fifteenth-Century Judeo-Iberian Manuscript. (Brill, 2014)

 

This event is sponsored by The Delaware Medieval Association, the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures at the University of Delaware and the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Temple University.

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