Art History 400B: THE MEDIEVAL OBJECT

Autumn Quarter 2015

Professor Ivan Drpić

Course website: https://canvas.uw.edu/courses/1009857

Course Description

Moving beyond the notion of “art,” this course will embrace a spectrum of medieval objects,
many of which we now consider under the rubric of “medieval works of art,” and will investigate
their making and meaning, agency and social life. Spanning the period from roughly 300 to 1500
CE, the course will attend to both the Byzantine East and the Latin West. Among the topics to be
discussed are icons, relics, gems, magical amulets, ex-votos, spolia, exotica, and seals. With
focus upon the Middle Ages, a larger goal for the course is to introduce students to some of the
most invigorating recent interdisciplinary work on material culture, the anthropology of art,
object agency, and what has been termed new materialism. The course is designed as an upper-
level undergraduate seminar, the lifeblood of which will be class discussions based upon a set of
shared readings. In addition to art history majors, the course welcomes students in other related
disciplines, including history, literature, comparative religion, archaeology, and the classics.
However, some background in medieval art history and Christian religious cultures is essential
for participation in the course.

Course Objectives

By successfully completing this course, you will deepen your understanding of the medieval
world at large and develop new ways of engaging with and thinking about art—not just medieval
art—and its place in society. Additionally, you will gain familiarity with a body of theoretical
writings on material culture and the entanglement of humans and things that animate much of the
current scholarship in art history. The course will, finally, help you improve your skills of visual
analysis and critical reading through class discussions and independent research.

Course Materials

All assigned and recommended readings for the course will be available electronically in PDF
through the course website (under Files/COURSE READINGS).

Requirements and Grading for Undergraduate Students

Your grade for the course will be assessed based on the following components:

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Class participation 20%
Reading response 30%
Research statement and bibliography 10%
Final paper 40%

Class participation: Since each meeting will consist of a discussion of the readings assigned for
that day, with very little lecturing on my part, your preparation and active participation are
crucial for the success of the course as well as for your success in it. Please complete the
assigned readings before class, print them out and bring them to class (or bring them on an
electronic device), and be prepared to discuss various points or questions they raise.

Reading response: Once during the quarter, each of you will act as a respondent to the readings.
This means that you will be responsible for the readings assigned for a particular meeting (an
online sign-up sheet will be available by the end of the first week of the quarter). Your response
will consist of two parts. First, you will provide your classmates with a list of 3 to 5 questions
relevant to the readings. These questions should engage with the themes, arguments, ideas, and
interpretations presented in the readings with the aim of stimulating discussion in class. The
questions must be posted on the course website (under Discussions/Questions for Class
Discussion) by 12:00 am midnight the day before the meeting. Second, you will write a four-
page paper (double-spaced, with 1-1.25 inch margins and in a 12-point font) analyzing and
critically responding to the readings, based in part upon the related class discussion. The paper is
due in class one week from the meeting.

Research statement and bibliography: For the final paper, you may choose, in consultation with
me, any topic within the purview of the course. A research statement (approximately 300 words)
presenting your topic and laying out your argument(s) or the guiding question(s) is due in class
on Thursday, November 12. The statement must be accompanied by a bibliography. The
bibliography may include some of the readings from the course materials, but at least three of
your sources must be selected from elsewhere.

Final paper: Building upon your research statement, you will write a final paper, 8-10 pages
long (double-spaced, with 1-1.25 inch margins and in a 12-point font). Be sure to use endnotes
(not counted towards the required number of pages). When citing sources in the endnotes, you
may choose any style guide you prefer, as long as you are consistent. The final paper is due on
Monday, December 14, by 4:00pm in my office.

All requirements must be fulfilled for a passing grade.

Requirements and Grading for Graduate Students

Your grade for the course will be assessed on the basis of:

Class participation 20%

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Unlike undergraduate students, you will not act as respondents to the readings, but are expected
to actively participate in class discussions. You will choose a topic for your final paper in
consultation with me. A research statement (approximately 300 words) accompanied by a
bibliography is due in class on Thursday, November 12. You will give a short presentation of
your research for the final paper (approximately 20 minutes) in one of the two final meetings,
either on Tuesday, December 8, or Thursday, December 10. Your paper should be 14-16 pages
long (double-spaced, with 1-1.25 inch margins and in a 12-point font) and is due on Monday,
December 14, by 4:00pm in my office.

All requirements must be fulfilled for a passing grade.

Course Policies

All assignments will be graded on a 4.0 scale.

You are required to complete the assignments as scheduled. Late submission will be accepted
only in case of a documented emergency or by prior agreement with me. Otherwise, a deduction
of .5 per day late will apply to the grade. The papers and research statement must be typed and
stapled. Electronic submissions will not be accepted.

For additional policies and procedures of UW School of Art + Art History + Design, see page 8
of the syllabus.

COURSE SCHEDULE*

Thu, Oct 1
Introduction

Tue, Oct 6
Approaching Objects
•! Alfred Gell, “The Technology of Enchantment and the Enchantment of Technology,” in
Anthropology, Art, and Aesthetics, ed. J. Coote and A. Shelton (Oxford: Clarendon Press;
New York: Oxford University Press, 1992), pp. 40–63.
•! Bruno Latour, “Where are the Missing Masses? The Sociology of a Few Mundane
Artifacts,” in Shaping Technology/Building Society: Studies in Sociotechnical Change,
ed. W. E. Bijker and J. Law (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992), pp. 151–80.

Recommended:
Fiona Candlin and Raiford Guins, “Introducing Objects,” in The Object Reader, ed. F.
Candlin and R. Guins (London and New York: Routledge, 2009), pp. 1–18.

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*
All scheduled meetings and reading assignments are subject to change.

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Thu, Sep 8
Matter, Materials, Materiality
•! Tim Ingold, “Materials against Materiality,” in Archaeological Dialogues 14.1 (2007): 1–
16.
•! Ittai Weinryb, “Living Matter: Materiality, Maker, and Ornament in the Middle Ages,”
Gesta 52.2 (2013): 113–32.

Recommended:
Caroline Walker Bynum, Christian Materiality: An Essay on Religion in Late Medieval
Europe (New York: Zone Books, 2011), pp. 217–65 (“Matter and Miracles”).

Tue, Oct 13
The Stuff of Painting
•! Cennino d’Andrea Cennini, The Craftsman’s Handbook, trans. D. V. Thompson, Jr.
(New York: Dover Publications, 1954), pp. 36–39 (“On the character of ultramarine blue,
and how to make it”).
•! Anne Dunlop, “On the Origins of European Painting Materials, Real and Imagined,” in
The Matter of Art: Materials, Practices, Cultural Logics, c. 1250–1750, ed. C. Anderson,
A. Dunlop, and P. H. Smith (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015), pp. 68–96.

Thu, Oct 15
Stones
•! Kellie Robertson, “Exemplary Rocks,” in Animal, Vegetable, Mineral: Ethics and
Objects, ed. J. J. Cohen (Washington, DC: Oliphaunt Books, 2012), pp. 91–121.
•! Fabio Barry, “Walking on Water: Cosmic Floors in Antiquity and the Middle Ages,” The
Art Bulletin 89:4 (2007): 627–56.

Tue, Oct 20
Sacred Images I
•! Cyril Mango, The Art of the Byzantine Empire, 312–1453: Sources and Documents
(Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1972), pp. 165–77.
•! Jaś Elsner, “Iconoclasm as Discourse: From Antiquity to Byzantium,” The Art Bulletin
94.3 (2012): 368–94.

Thu, Oct 22
Sacred Images II
•! Caroline Walker Bynum, Christian Materiality: An Essay on Religion in Late Medieval
Europe (New York: Zone Books, 2011), pp. 37–123 (“Visual Matter”).

Tue, Oct 27
Relics and Reliquaries I
•! Peter Brown, The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1981), pp. 86–105 (“Praesentia”).

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 •! Patrick Geary, “Sacred Commodities: The Circulation of Medieval Relics,” in The Social
Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective, ed. A. Appadurai (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press), pp. 169–91.

Thu, Oct 29
Relics and Reliquaries II
•! Cynthia Hahn, “What Do Reliquaries Do for Relics?,” Numen 57 (2010): 284–316.
•! Alexander Nagel, “The Afterlife of the Reliquary,” in Treasures of Heaven: Saints,
Relics, and Devotion in Medieval Europe, ed. M. Bagnoli et al. (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 2010), pp. 211–22.

Tue, Nov 3
Spolia: Reuse, Transformation, and Object Biographies
•! Dale Kinney, “Ancient Gems in the Middle Ages: Riches and Ready-Mades,” in Reuse
Value: Spolia and Appropriation in Art and Architecture from Constantine to Sherrie
Levine, ed. R. Brilliant and D. Kinney (Farnham and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2011), pp.
97–120.
•! Avinoam Shalem, “Histories of Belonging and George Kubler’s Prime Object,” Getty
Research Journal 3 (2011): 1–14.

Recommended:
Dale Kinney, “The Concept of Spolia,” in A Companion to Medieval Art: Romanesque
and Gothic in Northern Europe, ed. C. Rudolph (Malden: Blackwell, 2006), pp. 233–52.

Thu, Nov 5
The Eucharist
•! Caroline Walker Bynum, “Women Mystics and Eucharistic Devotion in the Thirteenth
Century,” Women’s Studies 11 (1984): 179–214.
•! Aden Kumler, “The Multiplication of the Species: Eucharistic Morphology in the Middle
Ages,” Res: Anthropology and Aesthetics 59–60 (2011): 179–91.

Tue, Nov 10
Rethinking the Human/Nonhuman Divide
•! Nurit Bird-David, “‘Animism’ Revisited: Personhood, Environment, and Relational
Epistemology,” Current Anthropology 40, Supplement (1999): 67–91 (focus on pp. 67–
79).
•! Glenn Peers, “Real Living Painting: Quasi-Objects and Dividuation in the Byzantine
World,” Religion and the Arts 16 (2012): 433–60.

Thu, Nov 12
The Agency of Objects: Art as a “System of Action”
•! Michelle O’Malley, “Altarpieces and Agency: The Altarpiece of the Society of
Purification and Its ‘Invisible Skein of Relations’,” Art History 28.4 (2005): 416–41.
•! Reread Alfred Gell, “The Technology of Enchantment and the Enchantment of
Technology.”

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 Recommended:
Alfred Gell, Art and Agency: An Anthropological Theory (Oxford and New York:
Clarendon Press, 1998), pp. 1–72.

***Research statement and bibliography due in class***

Tue, Nov 17
Gifts I
•! Marcel Mauss, The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies, trans.
W. D. Halls (New York: W.W. Norton, 1990), pp. 1–18.
•! Brigitte Buettner, “Past Presents: New Year’s Gifts at the Valois Courts, ca. 1400,” The
Art Bulletin 83.4 (2001): 598–625.

Recommended:
Cecily J. Hilsdale, “Gift,” Studies in Iconography 33 (2012): 171–82.

Thu, Nov 19
Gifts II
•! T. Papamastorakis, “The Display of Accumulated Wealth in Luxury Icons: Gift-Giving
from the Byzantine Aristocracy to God in the Twelfth Century,” in Byzantine Icons: Art,
Technique and Technology, ed. M. Vassilaki (Heraklion: Panepistemiakes Ekdoseis
Kretes, 2002), pp. 35–47.
•! Megan Holmes, “Ex-Voto: Materiality, Memory, and Cult,” in The Idol in the Age of Art:
Objects, Devotions and the Early Modern World, ed. M. W. Cole and R. Zorach
(Farnham: Ashgate, 2009), pp. 159–81.

Recommended:
Hugo van der Velden, The Donor’s Image: Gerard Loyet and the Votive Portraits of
Charles the Bold (trans. B. J. Jackson; Turnhout: Brepols, 2000), pp. 191–285.

Tue, Nov 24
Text as Object
•! Erik Thunø, “Looking at Letters: ‘Living Writing’ in S. Sabina in Rome,” Marburger
Jahrbuch für Kunstwissenschaft 34 (2007): 19–41.
•! Alicia Walker, “Pseudo-Arabic ‘Inscriptions’ and the Pilgrim’s Path at Hosios Loukas,”
in Viewing Inscriptions in the Late Antique and Medieval World, ed. A. Eastmond (New
York: Cambridge University Press, 2015), pp. 99–123.

Recommended:
Jeffrey F. Hamburger, Script as Image (Paris and Leuven: Peeters, 2014).

Thu, Nov 26
No class – HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

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Tue, Dec 1
Amulets and Other Magical Objects
•! James George Frazer, The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion, ed. R. Fraser
(London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 26–59 (“Magic and Religion”).
•! Jacquelyn Tuerk, “An Early Byzantine Inscribed Amulet and Its Narrative,” Byzantine
and Modern Greek Studies 23 (1999): 25–42.

Recommended:
Jeffrey Spier, “Medieval Byzantine Magical Amulets and Their Tradition,” Journal of the
Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 56 (1993): 25–62.

Thu, Dec 3
Statues

***Guest lecturer/class participant: Prof. Benjamin Anderson (Cornell)***

•! Averil Cameron and Judith Herrin, Constantinople in the Early Eighth Century: The
Parastaseis Syntomoi Chronikai (Leiden: Brill, 1984), pp. 88–91.
•! John Wortley, John Skylitzes: A Synopsis of Byzantine History, 811–1057 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 85–87.
•! Cyril Mango, “Antique Statuary and the Byzantine Beholder,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers
17 (1963): 53–75.
•! Liz James, “‘Pray Not to Fall into Temptation and Be on Your Guard’: Pagan Statues in
Christian Constantinople,” Gesta 35 (1996): 12–20.

Tue, Dec 8
GRADUATE STUDENTS’ PRESENTATIONS

Thu, Dec 10
GRADUATE STUDENTS’ PRESENTATIONS

Mon, Dec 14
FINAL PAPER DUE by 4:00pm in my office

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 University of Washington School of Art + Art History + Design Policies and Procedures

Equal opportunity: The School of Art + Art History + Design reaffirms its policy of equal
opportunity regardless of race, color, creed, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation,
age, marital status, disability, or status as a disabled veteran or Vietnam-era veteran in
accordance with UW policy and applicable federal and state statutes and regulations.

Disability accommodation: If you would like to request academic accommodations due to a

Plagiarism: Plagiarism is defined as using in your own work the creations, ideas, words,
inventions, or work of someone else without formally acknowledging them through the use of
quotation marks, footnotes, bibliography, or other reference. Please check with me if you have
questions about what constitutes plagiarism. Instances of plagiarism will be referred to the Vice
Provost/Special Assistant to the President for Student Relations and may lead to disciplinary
action.

Incomplete grades: An incomplete is given only when you: have been in attendance and done
satisfactory work through the eighth week of the quarter; and have furnished satisfactory proof to
me that the work cannot be completed because of illness or other circumstances beyond your
control.

Concerns about the course: Talk with me as soon as possible. If you are not comfortable talking
with me or are not satisfied with the response that you receive, you may contact the Director of
Advising and Student Services, Judith Clark, Art Building, room 104, (206) 543-0646. If you are
not satisfied with the response that you receive, you may contact the Director of the School of
Art + Art History + Design, Jamie Walker, Art Building, room 102.

Grade appeal procedure: If you are concerned that the grade you received for this class is
incorrect, contact me to discuss the matter. If the matter is not resolved to your satisfaction, make
an appointment with the Director of Academic Advising and Student Services, Judith Clark, Art
Building, room 104, (206) 543-0646. If necessary, submit a written appeal to the Director of the
School of Art + Art History + Design who will take the matter under advisement and call a
faculty committee to review your course work and make a final determination concerning the
grade dispute.

Materials fees: All art and art history classes have materials fee that are billed on your tuition
statement. Information is available in Art Building, room 104. If you drop a class in the first five
days of the quarter, the fee is automatically removed from the quarterly billing. If you drop after
the first five days (and before using any class materials), you must petition for a refund. The
School of Art cannot process any petitions received after noon on the last day of the quarter.

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