„My Favorite Things“. Patterns of Construction and Perception in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Period

/ Termine

„My Favorite Things“. Patterns of Construction and Perception in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Period

Veranstalter
Institut für Realienkunde des Mittelalters und der frühen Neuzeit, Krems an der Donau / Interdisziplinäres Zentrum für Mittelalterstudien, Universität Salzburg
Veranstaltungsort
Universität Salzburg, Unipark Nonntal, Erzabt-Klotz Straße 1, HS 3.409
Ort
Salzburg
Land
Austria
Vom - Bis
12.12.2014 - 13.12.2014
Deadline
28.11.2014
Website
http://www.imareal.sbg.ac.at/home/institut/aktuelles/news/
Von
Ingrid Matschinegg

Research into material culture has become one of the most important fields in medieval and Early Modern Studies. While past research focused primarily on the objects as such, the present emphasis derives from humans and their ties to things. In this context, the partiality and preference for certain objects or groups of objects play a particular role. A variety of “Favorite Things,” although not always named as such, are becoming a field of interest that can be recognized as determining present research initiatives.

For this reason the “Institut für Realienkunde des Mittelalters und der frühen Neuzeit” of the University of Salzburg has decided to organize an international symposium on the topic of “My Favorite Things: Patterns of Construction and Perception in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Period.” The discussion should lead from religious materiality to the economic world of things, from exclusive objects in one’s mind to the significance of things as social markers, from the appeal of material foreignness to the love of homeland culture, from public to ‘private’ space, from old to new, and so on. The range between prestigious and ‘unspectacular’ material as well as the role of the manufacturing proces ses will also be issues raised in the meeting.

A particular aim of the symposium is to connect the discussion with questions and results of contemporary consumer research as well as with the relevance of most liked things in past and present discourses of everyday life, art and literature.

Programm

10:00-10:30 Opening and Welcome Address

10:30-12:00 Introductory Keynotes:

Eric Arnould (Syddansk Universitet, Odense), “My Favorite Things” in Consumer Research: What Has Changed since the 1980s?

Hans Peter Hahn (Goethe Universität, Frankfurt am Main): The Values of Things: “Actual,” Symbolic, Emotional, ... – Fuzziness and Uncertainties

LUNCH BREAK

14:00-15:20 Global Aspects:

Giorgio Riello (University of Warwick): Printed to Impress: Indian Cotton Textiles in Afro-Eurasia before the European East India Companies

John Styles (University of Hertfordshire): Innovation and Obsolescence: European Textiles for the Body and the Household, 1400-1760

COFFEE BREAK

15:40-16:20 Object biographies:
Karin Dannehl (University of Wolverhampton): Industry‘s Favorite: an Example of Hollowware Production and Supply from Early Eighteenth- Century England

16:20-17:00 Favorite Gifts:

Christina Janine Maegraith (Newnham College, Cambridge): Communal Favourite Things: Exchange and the Choice of Gifts in Seventeenth-Century Bohemia

Saturday, December 13, 2014

9:00-10:20 Gendered Objects:
Renata Ago (Università degli Studi di Roma „La Sapienza“): Successful Men and Their Homes in Seventeenth-Century Rome

Gabriela Signori (Universität Konstanz):
Ringomania: Ring Production and Consumption in Late Medieval Konstanz

COFFEE BREAK

10:40-12:00 Smell, Taste, and Touch:

Asa S. Mittman (California State University, Chico): Touching the Past/Being Touched by the Past

Otto Gecser (ELTE, Budapest): Some Like It Hot: The Preference for Piquant Food between the Middle Ages and Modern Times

LUNCH BREAK

13:30-14:10 Things and Identity:
Joanita Vroom (Universiteit Leiden): The Unbearable Brokenness of Artefacts: Dining Utensils as Social Markers in the Byzantine World (ca. 10th-15th c.)

14:10-14:50 Favorite Spiritual Materiality:

Denis Renevey (Université de Lausanne): The Religious Materiality of the Name of Jesus

14:50-15:30 Favorite Images of Favorite Things:Practices – New Theories?

Keith Moxey (Columbia University, New York): Thingly Time

Followed by a final discussion

Kontakt

Ingrid Matschinegg

Institut für Realienkunde des Mittelalters und der frühen Neuzeit, Körnermarkt 13, 3500 Krems

++43 622 8044 4982
++43 622 8044 4999
ingrid.matschinegg@sbg.ac.at

http://www.imareal.sbg.ac.at/home/institut/aktuelles/news/