Medievalist, historian, premodern Japan, DH, project juggler. @shinpaideshou. She/her. Like my content? 
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Our first presenter is Alice Isabella Sullivan (History of Art, University of Michigan), who recently won @MedievalAcademy’s Elliott Prize. Her talk is entitled “Exploring New Geographies: Medieval Art in Eastern Europe.” 
#DGMA19 #GlobalMiddleAges
Sullivan raises issues in medieval & Byzantine art- Western/Constantinopitan-centric narratives, grappling w/ conflicting ideas of “center.” Who is peripheral or intermediary? Local interpretations get marginalized. Should consider the web of W med, Byzantine & Slavic influences.
How do consider these locations individually, and also as a whole? Questions might be raised about roles of places considered frontiers.
What does “medieval” mean geographically or temporally in Art History? What happens in East Europe? What makes it “medieval”? Local styles tend to be seen in opposition to influences from Byzantium or the West. But Sullivan looks at 14-16th cen Moldavia to show eclecticism.
Moldavian churches reveal ties to neighboring regions and new sacred landscapes that help rethink standard narratives. Ties to Byzantine forms as well Gothic forms, while building practices and design emerge from Eastern European forms and traditions.
There are incredible, colorful painted murals on the exterior of the Moldavian churches. Eventually incorporate both biblical stories and historical narratives, commentary on Ottoman threat to Moldavian people and religious practices.pic.twitter.com/XKu9eMNYF1
Sanctification by visual means in interior and exterior contexts is not, as some Romanian scholars say, a "unique" and "local" phenomenon, but a transformation and interpretation of Byzantine practices.
To follow up on the question of "medieval," Sullivan wrote in her paper that we might instead think of “medieval” in this case as being relational to the spiritual power of Byzantium. Sullivan also frames her approaches as thinking with/through the concerns of medievalists…
…This is something we might think about in our methods—is there a refraction of “the medieval” at play when we “think in medieval modes,” so to speak, in our scholarly approaches. Something that contributes to our conceptualizations/framing? If so, how do we define it?
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