Sensory Reflections: Traces of Experience in Medieval Artifacts, Session at 51st International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, MI, May 12–15, 2016

The rich potential of medieval matter (most obviously manuscripts and visual imagery, but also liturgical objects, coins, textiles, architecture, amulets, graves, etc.) to complement and even transcend purely textual sources is by now well established in medieval scholarship across the disciplines. So, too, attention to medieval sensory experiences—most prominently emotion—has transformed our understanding of medieval religious life and spirituality, violence, power, and authority, friendship, and constructions of both the self and the other.  This session draws the two approaches together, plumbing medieval material sources for traces of sensory experience—above all ephemeral and physical experiences that, unlike emotion, are rarely fully described or articulated in texts. Papers should address some of the varied ways that the experiences of the senses could be communicated (or constructed) through medieval objects.   

Organizers
Fiona Griffiths, Stanford University
Kathryn Starkey, Stanford University

Sponsor
Stanford University Center for Medieval and Early Modern Studies