Art and Religions of Antiquity
Program Unit Type: Section
Accepting Papers? Yes
Call For Papers: Traveling Objects and Objects as Mediators
(Co-sponsored by AAR "Religion in Pre-Modern Europe and Mediterranean Group)
Inspired by Georgia Frank's 2023 book "Unfinished Christians," especially ch. 3, we invite papers that discuss portable an shifting objects in lived religions; e.g. that mediate between religious cultures or act as portable signifiers of religious identity, diversity, continuity, and/or transformation. Examples of portable mediating objects might include relics, reliquaries, amulets, icons, talismans, monstrances, elaborate vestments, jewelry, scrolls, codices, holy people, pilgrimage badges, lamps, censors, votive objects, spolia, and other "portabilia."
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Technicolor Religion: Polychromy in the Material World of Ancient Religions
Ancient Religions were enacted among multicolored mosaics, domestic and shrine statuary, wall-paintings and icons, fabrics, jewelry, amulets, votive objects and smoke. Colors glittered, emanated, changed, and transmitted spirits and divine presence. Even texts - novels, apocalypses, martyrologies - stressed the polychromy of religion. Thus our session asks what role color plays in the performance and experience of religious media and the material object? What did color mean and what were its textures? Were colors associated with particular places, times, gods and festivals? If color is mediated through texts, then what senses could it arouse? We invite papers that address real objects in their material presence and that deepen and theorize polychromy in religion(s) of antiquity.
Program Unit Chairs
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