Issue Four: Active Objects
The essays in this issue are drawn from two sessions on “Active Objects” sponsored by the Material Collective at the 2012 International Congress of Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo: “Optics and Transparency” and “Agency and Phenomenology.” The papers all consider ways in which medieval objects had agency; that is, how they acted upon viewers and shaped response.
Contents
Karen Eileen Overbey & Benjamin C. Tilghman. Active Objects: An Introduction.
Joseph Salvatore Ackley, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. Copper-alloy Substrates in Precious Metal Treasury Objects: Concealed and Yet Excessive.
Benjamin C. Tilghman, Lawrence University. On the Enigmatic Nature of Things in Anglo-Saxon Art.
Genevra Kornbluth, Independent Scholar. Active Optics: Carolingian Rock Crystal on Medieval Reliquaries.
Alexa Sand, Utah State University. Materia Meditandi: Haptic Perception and Some Parisian Ivories of the Virgin and Child, ca. 1300.
Beatrice Kitzinger, Stanford University. The Instrumental Cross and the Use of the Gospel Book Troyes, Bibliothèque Municipale MS 960.
Anne F. Harris, DePauw University. Of Liturgical Straws and Spiritual Breadboxes: a review of Caroline Walker Bynum, Christian Materiality: An Essay on Religion in Late Medieval Europe (New York: Zone Books, 2011) and Mary Carruthers, The Experience of Beauty in the Middle Ages (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).