Out of Bounds

Exploring the Limits of Medieval Art

Pamela A. Patton, Maria Alessia Rossi, Pamela A. Patton, Maria Alessia Rossi

• Publisher: Penn State University Press
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN: 9780271094977
• eBook ISBN: 9780271095851
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Art Theory & Criticism

Where are the limits of medieval art as a field of study? What happens when conventionally trained art historians disregard the chronological, geographical, or cultural parameters that both direct and protect their scholarship? Beginning with Thelma K. Thomas and Alicia Walker's acute assessment of the need for a "medieval art history for now," the essays in Out of Bounds ask what happens when the study of medieval art disregards boundaries that it once obeyed. The volume focuses on questions surrounding the production of knowledge and on how scholarly investigation beyond the conventional thematic boundaries of medieval art history is changing, demonstrating how the field can address the ethics of scholarship today by positing a global turn in response to growing demands for socially responsible medieval studies. Collectively, the contributors demonstrate how "going out of bounds" can transform modern understanding of the people, traditions, and relationships that gave rise to medieval works. As such, this book argues for the necessity of reshaping scholarly discourse about the nature and significance of medieval art and generates fresh scholarly interpretations and important new critical tools for teaching and researching the Middle Ages.

The contributors to this volume are Suzanne Conklin Akbari, Michele Bacci, Jill Caskey, Eva Frojmovic, Sarah M. Guérin, Christina Maranci, Alice Isabella Sullivan, Thelma K. Thomas, Michele Tomasi, and Alicia Walker.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Preface
• 1. Shifting Boundaries: Medieval Art History for Now
• 2. On Account of the Rotundity of the Earth: Steps Toward an Inclusive Medieval Art
• 3. Medieval Masks? Meditations on Method Out of Bounds
• 4. Along the Art-Historical Margins of the Medieval Mediterranean
• 5. Looking at the “Center” from the “Border”: An Exchange of Franco-Ottoman Gifts and the Perception of Art Around 1400
• 6. Alexander the Great’s Encounters with the Sacred in Medieval History Writing: From the Shahnameh to the Histoire ancienne jusqu’à César
• 7. Fashioning the Gendered, Classed, and White Self: A Sephardi Cultural Project
• 8. Beyond Traditional Boundaries: Medieval Art and Architecture in Eastern Europe
• 9. “The Summit of the Earth”: What Armenian Texts Can Do for the History of Medieval Art and Beyond
• Contributors
• Index