Medieval Manuscripts and Their Biographies, Kiel, July 26, 2019

Within the scholarly discussion of medieval manuscripts, an object-biographical approach that not only focuses on the origin and the originally intended function of the codex, but also on its history of ownership, material changes and reception during the whole period of its existence was long neglected by art history as well as by German studies.

In art history, this approach is currently becoming particularly important. Diachronic studies on the re-encoding and the shifts in meaning of artworks have led to a new perspective on written artifacts. A similar trend is also becoming apparent in German studies, where an artifact-related perspective on manuscripts has gained increasing significance in the context of the ‘material turn’. Accordingly, more importance is attached to examinations of the correlations between the manuscript and the cultural practices linked to it.

The workshop aims to create an interdisciplinary dialogue between postdoctoral scholars from art history and German studies who will present the object biographies of different medieval manuscripts. Special emphasis is given to praxeological questions as well as to the material and textual modifications of manuscripts. By putting the material conception and the usage of the codex in a diachronic perspective, the modified attributions of meaning can be discussed and considered within the area of tension between the study of texts and the study of objects.

The workshop ‘Medieval manuscripts and their biographies’ is directed at researchers with a doctoral degree who wish to present their object-biographical studies about religious as well as secular manuscripts in a 30-min. talk (German or English). It takes place on July 26, 2019 at the Christian-Albrechts-University of Kiel (CAU). As the workshop is funded by the International Center of the CAU, travel and accommodation expenses will be covered only for researchers who are not currently located in Germany.