Middle Ages and Medievalisms
The field of Medieval Studies is undergoing a process of transformation that is calling the concept of the “Middle Ages” into question. What we know of the Middle Ages is always filtered through a medievalist lens and the very substance of medieval buildings, objects, and images has been altered accordingly. This research area therefore explicitly includes studies on restoration of medieval monuments in the 19th and 20th centuries, and different forms of medievalisms through the centuries, thus also sharpening the sensorium for appropriations of medieval art in the Early Modern Era. The methodological challenges are manifold and include an acknowledgment of the necessity to study the Middle Ages on a global scale as well as in a highly interdisciplinary manner, without neglecting the core competences that art history has developed over time. These issues have also been addressed in the context of an international collaboration, in a five-year project that saw a large and diverse team spread between Europe and the United States working on a single, but exceptional case study: that of the medieval abbey of Conques (MSCA-RISE project Conques in a Global World).
On an individual level, the Department encourages projects with a micro-historical approach that carry out intensive research on a limited body of objects and yet highlights how these relate to a large-scale discourse. Research projects have addressed areas as diverse as France, Germany, Spain, Croatia, Byzantium, and Mongolia, while also continuing to exploit the Institute’s unique position in central Italy. Since 2018, studies of medieval monuments in Italy have been supported by the Ursula Nilgen Hertziana Foundation, which awards scholarships for young researchers in particular. Naturally this research area also deals with questions of space, its construction, and definition and thus has overlappings with the research area Historical Spaces, also with regard to taking advantage of the possibilities of digital tools and innovative databases that have been developed within the departmental project Mapping Sacred Spaces. The current pre- and postdoctoral research projects deal with questions of space and performativity, materiality and object studies, as well with the nascent field of sound studies and the notion of soundscape. This research area has particularly profited by the invitation of Richard Krautheimer Fellows, who have given new impulses to research and proposed field seminars with junior scholars.
