A Companion to Seals in the Middle Ages
Deadline: Oct 31, 2014
Decoding Medieval Sources (Brill’s Companions to Medieval Sources)
A Companion to Seals in the Middle Ages
Medieval seals were material and visual statements of identity, power, agency, and legitimacy that could operate locally or traverse great geographic expanses to assert individual or corporate authority. The importance of the seal in medieval culture cannot be underestimated. This inter-disciplinary, edited volume seeks essays analyzing seal design, production, meaning, usage and reception in the Middle Ages. As a whole, the volume will critically engage with the historiography of seals as well as highlight new approaches to understanding seals across time and space with emphasis on Europe, the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem and Byzantium c. 1100-1500. Essays therefore must include historiographical, regional and thematic explorations of medieval seals.Scholars from a range of disciplines, such as but not limited to History, Art History, Numismatics, Archaeology, Cultural and Visual Studies, are invited to contribute new and innovative examinations of select seals or seal types in context. Essays should appeal to the specialist as well as students of medieval history. Submissions are especially welcome from scholars whose work locates seals within broader developments in medieval social codes and visual or material
Topics of Interest:
– The Production of Seals
– Ownership, Access and Usage
– Authority, Ritual and the Practice of Sealing
– Seals and their Documents
– Sign Theory and Seals
– Heraldry and Seals
– The Body and the Seal
– Gendering the Seal
– Identity (individual or corporate) and the Seal
– Seals and Foundations or Networks
– Place and the Seal
– The Seal and Visual Culture
Please submit a 250-word abstract for an article-length study and a CV to Laura Whatley (whatlel@ferris.edu) and Charlotte Bauer
(bauersmi@illinois.edu) by October 31, 2014. The essays in the volume will be in English, but Brill can fund some translations of
contributions from continental scholars.
Editorial Team:
Laura J. Whatley, Ph.D.
Kendall College of Art and Design of Ferris State University
Charlotte D. Bauer, Ph.D.
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Series Editorial Team at Brill:
Julian Deahl, Ph.D.
Kate Hammond, Ph.D.ls
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