Ornament has long occupied a troubled position in the history of western art. Subject to rising and falling fashions, it has been beset from all sides. Derided as feminine and dismissed as superficial, ornament has been defined against both classical and modern austerities. Medieval ornament, like so much of medieval art, has acted as foil in the grand narratives of the rise and fall of figuration and abstraction. But broader trends in the history of art and material culture have, in recent years, highlighted the role medieval objects, with their simultaneously heightened physicality and spirituality, can play in illuminating profound questions of the nature of matter and representation. This panel seeks to add ornament - arguably a fundamental mode of premodern abstraction - to that equation. It invites papers drawn from both material and textual traditions that investigate the intersections of materiality, representationality, and ornamentality in medieval material culture. Possible topics include but are not limited to questions of the way in which matter gives rise to ornament; the way in which matter, such as sacred relics, is made legible through ornamentation; and the ways in which medieval ornament evokes both the matter of nature and the matter of the cosmos.

Paper proposals should consist of the following:

• Abstract of proposed paper (no more than 350 words)
• Completed Participant Information Form – available on the conferencewebsite1 
• CV with contact information.

ALL PROPOSALS AND INQUIRIES SHOULD BE DIRECTED TO Ashley Jones (ajones[at]arts.ufl.edu)

• 1. https://wmich.edu/sites/default/files/attachments/u434/2016/medieval-pif-2017.pdf