Out of Bounds: Exploring the Limits of Medieval Art

Index of Medieval Art

The next Index Conference, “Out of Bounds: Exploring the Limits of Medieval Art,” will be held on November 17, 2018. Conceived in collaboration between the Department of Art & Archaeology and the Index of Medieval Art, the conference will bring an international roster of scholars together with Princeton graduate students for a half-day workshop on November 16, prior to a full day of public lectures on the impact of the global turn on current study of medieval visual culture.

The conference responds to a question of current interest throughout medieval studies: what are the boundaries of medieval culture? As scholarly awareness of the global dimensions of the medieval world provokes new ways of considering traditional questions, what geographical, cultural, or chronological parameters now direct our study of the Middle Ages, and how do these reshape scholarly assumptions about medieval communities, identities, traditions, and interrelationships? Pushing beyond the center-periphery debate that once governed such questions, we ask what scholars and students can learn from a more flexible, decentered understanding of the medieval world and its visual culture.