2022
The Longue Durée of Cultural Heritage: Curation of the Past from Antiquity to the Present Day
While heritage is typically thought of as a modern concept with origins in the late-eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, there is ample proof that pre-modern societies curated their pasts in highly comparable ways.This interdisciplinary conference, organised by the University of Oslo through the Norwegian Institute in Rome and the Heritage Experience Initiative project, relate to cultural heritage as a long-term process.
Time and place: Dec. 6, 2022 9:00 AM – Dec. 7, 2022 6:00 PM, The Norwegian Institute in Rome
Starting from the understanding of cultural heritage as a process, we recognize certain practices regarding the management of spaces, monuments, and objects in pre- and early modern societies as congruent to types of activity commonly placed within the heritage rubric. By adopting a long-term approach to the subject, this conference aims to create opportunities for new lines of research across disciplines. This includes examining historical examples to contextualize, interrogate, and deepen our understanding of modern views on heritage. Moreover, developments in contemporary heritage theory and practice can provide a fresh and productive framework for examining and categorizing processes in the past.
By bringing together scholars working on issues of heritage in the present day with those studying similar ideas in more remote, historical contexts, this interdisciplinary conference aims to foster a dialogue which can enrich analyses of heritage practices in the past and in the present day.
Conference programme
Pre- Conference Event Monday 5 December
18:00: H.P. L’Orange Lecture 2022: Prof. Lynn Meskell, University of Pennsylvania:
Saving the World? Reflections on UNESCO’s Mid Century Mission in Conflict
Introduction: Prof. Kristin B. Aavitsland, Director of the Norwegian Institute in Rome
19:30
Reception
Conference Day 1, Tuesday 6 December
09:00 Coffee and registration
09:30 Introduction: Christopher S. Siwicki, Norwegian Institute in Rome and Unn Pedersen, Director of Heritage Experience Initiative (HEI), University of Oslo
09:45-11:15: Session 1. Chair: Christopher S. Siwicki, Norwegian Institute in Rome
Chris Whitehead, Newcastle University: New Interrogatives of Heritage
Thora Petursdottir, University of Oslo: Prolepesis: Narrating Deep Time Through Heritage Landscapes
Arnold Witte, Amsterdam University: Identity formation at work: the future heritage of corporate art collections
Discussion
11:15-11:45: Coffee break
11:45-13:15: Session 2. Chair: Kristin B. Aavitsland, Norwegian Institute in Rome
Chiara Mannoni, Università di Basilicata, Matera: Protecting heritage by law. Concepts and procedures introduced in Northern and Southern Europe in the 1600s
Armin Bergmeier, University of Leipzig: Claiming Cultural Heritage and Displaying the Ruins of the Ancient Past in Medieval Italy, Byzantium, and Seljuk Anatolia
Philip Schwyzer, University of Exeter, The Curation of Iconoclasm
Discussion
14:15-15:45 Session 3. Chair: Han Lamers, University of Oslo
Arthur Crucq, Leiden University: Restorations of ancient temples on Java: an intercultural ‘clash’ along the lines of time and attitudes
Rebecca Salem, New York University: Curating Architectural and Cultural Heritage at Ancient Corinth: A Case Study of the Architectural Terracottas of the South Stoa
Ludovica Cappelletti, Politecnico di Milano, The Impact of Italian Mannerism in XX Century Culture: The Case of Mantua
Discussion
18:00: Optional city walk looking at museification of historical urbanscapes, led by Christopher S. Siwicki and Marianne Ritsema van Eck, Norwegian Institute in Rome. Meeting point: Piazza di Campioglio, next to the equestrian statue
20:00: Dinner for speakers and moderators, Il Duca, Vicolo del Cinque, 56
Conference Day 2, Wednesday 7 December
10:00-11:30 Session 4. Chair: Marianne Ritsema van Eck, Norwegian Institute in Rome
Linn Willets Borgen, The National Trust of Norway: Accumulated Sacrality: Pre- and Early Modern Curation of the Past in the Norwegian Stave Churches
Anja Božič, Central European University: Hagiographical Heritage and the Cult of St. Jerome in the Late Middle Ages and Early Renaissance
Joanna Smalcerz, University of Warsaw/ University of Bern: Deploying the Sacred: Political Use and Mediatization of the Sacred Sites and Religious Heritage of Rome during the Jubilee Years of Leo XIII
Discussion
11:30-12:00: Coffee break
12:00-13:00 Session 5. Chair: Lynn Meskell, University of Pennsylvania
Birgit Meyer, Utrecht University: In Between: Unravelling a Missionary Colonial Collection
Karin Tetteris, Stockholm University: Creating history in Early Modern Sweden – heritagisation of captured military flags
Discussion
13:00-14:00: Lunch break
14:00-15:30 Session 6. Chair: Christopher Prescott, University of Oslo
Victor Castillo, Jagiellonian University, Kraków: The Creation of Persistence in the Maya Highlands of Guatemala during the Late Postclassic Period (AD 1250-1550)
Ruth Nugent, University of Liverpool: How Pre-modern Britain managed its ‘ancient dead’: attitudes and authentication
David C. Harvey, Aarhus University: Myth, reality and revelation: tracing a biography of early-modern heritage on Dartmoor
Discussion
15:30-16:00 Coffee break
16:00-17:30 Round table discussion:
Antiquities, monuments, heritage, reception: what does terminology entail?
Chair: Lynn Meskell, University of Pennsylvania
Panel:
Anne Eriksen, University of Oslo
Lars Boje Mortensen, Southern Denmark University, Odense
Han Lamers, University of Oslo
Kristin B. Aavitsland, Norwegian Institute in Rome
17:00-18:00: Conclusion
20:00: Dinner for speakers and moderators, Ristorante Lo Scarpone, Via di S. Pancrazio, 15
Saving the World? Reflections on UNESCO’s Mid Century Mission in Conflict
Professor Lynn Meskell takes the 50th anniversary of UNESCO’s World Heritage Convention as an opportunity to reflect on the vast challenges that come with saving the world faced with the impossibility of calling powerful nations to account.
Time and place: Dec. 5, 2022 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM, The Norwegian Institute in Rome
The Norwegian Institute in Rome is honored to welcome Professor Lynn Meskell as this year´s L’Orange Lecturer.
In her lecture, Professor Meskell will reflect on UNESCO’s mission and agency in a conflicted world.
At the 50th anniversary of the World Heritage Convention, UNESCO finds itself at an impasse, faced with the impossibility of calling powerful nations to account.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine is the most recent example. Yet earlier instances of inertia include international conflicts in Lebanon, Palestine, Yemen and Crimea.
More able to publicly repudiate non-state actors, such as Ansar Dine or Islamic State, than some of its own high-profile member states, UNESCO has increasingly walked a diplomatic tightrope and prioritized geopolitical alliances, financial considerations, and tactical relationships.
In response, civil society and heritage NGOs have increasingly emerged to supersede the work of UNESCO, seeking to be independent, nimble and responsive to heritage and humanitarian crises.
It is time to reflect on the vast challenges that come with saving the world, and that extends beyond the issues of monumental conservation to the needs of the multiple and highly diverse communities that are exerting greater calls for visibility, participation and power-sharing.
About Lynn Meskell
Lynn Meskell holds the position as Richard D. Green University Professor at University of Pennsylvania, with joint appointments in the Department of Anthropology, the Historic Preservation Program and Department of City and Regional Planning in the Weitzman School of Design, and the Penn Museum as a Curator in both the Asian and Near East Sections.
She is currently A.D. White Professor-at-Large at Cornell University (2019–2025) and holds Honorary Professorships at Oxford University and Liverpool University in the UK, Shiv Nadar University, India and the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa.
Born in Australia, she has done pioneering archaeological work across the world, including research into Neolithic Turkey and New Kingdom Egypt.
Her most current work explores World Heritage sites in India, especially how heritage bureaucracies interact with the needs of living communities, and the implications of archaeological research for wider contemporary challenges of heritage, national sovereignty, and multilateral diplomacy.
Her landmark institutional ethnography of UNESCO World Heritage, A Future in Ruins: UNESCO, World Heritage and the Dream of Peace (Oxford University Press, 2018) – awarded the 2019 Best Book Award from the Society for American Archaeology – rereads the politics of preservation in relation to international history and global practices of governance and sovereignty.
Archbishop Erik Valkendorf: From Nidaros to Rome in the Early Sixteenth Century.
November 2022 marked the 500th anniversary of Erik Valkendorf's death in Rome. A memorial plaque was unveiled 28th November, the day he died, in the church S. Maria dell’Anima. The following day, the Norwegian Institute in Rome invited selected speakers to a one-day international conference exploring this multi-faceted prelate and the time and places in which he lived and died.
Time and place: Nov. 29, 2022 10:00 AM – 5:00 PM, The Norwegian Institute in Rome
In November 1522 Erik Valkendorf, the metropolitan archbishop of Nidaros, died in Rome. He had travelled to the Holy See to discuss King Christian II’s curtailment of ecclesiastical jurisdiction in the realm of Denmark-Norway, and to get papal support in his fight against the expansive monarch. Arriving in Rome early in 1522, Valkendorf found the ambitious new basilica at the Vatican under construction and the chair of St. Peter vacant. It took almost a year before the newly elected Pope Hadrian VI made it to Rome and took up his office. Before the pontiff was ready to receive his archbishop from the far north, Valkendorf had left this world. The pope praised him posthumously for his loyalty and endurance in fighting for libertas ecclesiae, the freedom of the church.
The deceased archbishop had been a prolific and ambitious figure in political and ecclesiastical life in Denmark-Norway as well as in Europe at large. Valkendorf was a learned humanist, author, explorer, antiquarian, publisher, church restorer, and politician. The second to last archbishop of Norway, he was installed as head of the geographically vast see of Nidaros in 1510. When he died in Rome twelve years later, the ongoing Protestant Reformation was causing a political and religious avalanche in Europe, a development which he had observed with unease. Although the Protestant Reformation did not reach Norway during his reign, his conflict with secular power anticipated that of his successor, Olav Engelbretson, who had to flee the country on account of the Protestant king’s troops. Moreover, Valkendorf, both pioneer and traditionalist, was a reformer himself, representative of the evolving Catholic Reformation. Prospering and afflicted at the same time, he also emerges as a characteristic intellectual of his flourishing, but troubled time.
Programme
Pre-symposium programme 28th November
Venue: S. Maria dell’Anima, Via di S. Maria dell’Anima, 64
19:00 Vespers and unveiling of plaque commemorating Erik Valkendorf on the 500th anniversary of his death in Rome, 28th November 1522
20:00 Reception hosted by the Catholic Diocese of Trondheim and Collegio teutonico di S. Maria dell’Anima
Symposium programme 29th November
Optional:
08:00 S. Maria dell’Anima: Requiem Mass for Archbishop Erik Valkendorf
Transport to Istituto di Norvegia will be provided
Symposium opening
10:15 Welcome and greetings, Kristin B. Aavitsland, Director of The Norwegian Institute
Session 1: Erik Valkendorf and his time
Moderator: Francesco D’Angelo, La Sapienza (Rome)
10:45 Andrea Fara, La Sapienza (Rome):
Rome at the time of Erik Valkendorf: A Political and Economic Profile of Rome between the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Age
11:15 Erik Opsahl, NTNU (Trondheim):
A faithful, wise, and godly Danish royal official? Erik Valkendorf as Norwegian Archbishop 1510-1522
11:45 Coffee break
12:00 Louis Sicking, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam / University of Leiden:
Erik Valkendorf and the Netherlands
12:30 Henning Laugerud, University of Bergen:
The Archbishop and the Faith in Norway at the Eve of the Reformation
13:00 Lunch break
Session 2: The legacy of Erik Valkendorf
Moderator: Sigrun Høgetveit Berg, University of Tromsø
14:00 Karen Skovgaard-Pedersen, Society for Danish Language and Literature (Copenhagen):
Mission at the Northern Edge of Christendom –Erik Valkendorf’’s Letter to the Pope about Finnmarken, the Norhternmost Part of his Diocese
14:30 Vigdis Evang, European University Institute (Florence):
Erik Valkendorf and Olaus Magnus: a comparative perspective
15:00 Øystein Ekroll, Nidaros Cathedral Restoration Workshop (Trondheim):
Archbishop Erik Valkendorf, Rome and Nidaros
15:30 Coffee break
15:45 Espen Due-Karlsen, National Library of Norway (Oslo):
Erik Valkendorf and his summa of five centuries of Nidaros liturgy
16:15 Sigurd Hareide, University of South-Eastern Norway (Tønsberg):
Archbishop Valkendorf and the Rescuing of the Nidaros Rite
16:45 Concluding remarks and end of symposium
17:00 Reception hosted by The Norwegian Institute
20:00 Conference dinner (by invitation only)
"Iscrizioni in latino nella Roma fascista: una panoramica"
Antonino Nastasi (independent researcher/UiO) will give a presentation of the project "Fascist Latin Texts". The presentation will be held in Italian.
Time and place: Nov. 3, 2022 6:00 PM, The Norwegian Institute in Rome
This event is part of the project "New Signs of Antiquity", funded by the Research Council of Norway. Fascist Latin Texts makes available Latin texts on subjects relating to Fascism and written under Mussolini's regime (1922–1943).
It includes works of both prose and poetry, such as textbooks for school children, eulogies of Mussolini and his regime, epic poems on Italy’s colonial wars, or translations of some of Mussolini’s speeches. Facist Latin Texts also aims to offer short scholarly introductions to all authors and texts.
Program
- Introduction by Han Lamers, University of Oslo and Bettina Reitz-Joosse, University of Groningen. The introduction will be given in English.
- Presentation of the project Fascist Latin Texts: “Iscrizioni in latino nella Roma fascista: una panoramica”, by Antonino Nastasi, independent researcher, University of Oslo. The presentation will be held in Italian.
Registration
Please register via e-mail to: events@roma.uio.no before 2. November 2022 in order to reserve a seat at the Norwegian Institute.
To follow the lecture online (Zoom) please register by filling out this form by 3 November at 16 hrs: https://nettskjema.no/a/294921
S. Stefano al Monte Celio and Papal Legates in Twelfth Century Ireland
Dr. Jesse Harrington (University of Cork) will present his current research at the Director's seminar
Time and place: Sep. 20, 2022 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM, The Norwegian Institute in Rome
Jesse Harrington is an international postdoctoral researcher with the Irish National Institute for Historical Research and the School of History, University College Cork. He completed his M.Phil. and Ph.D. in Medieval History at the University of Cambridge, with a doctoral thesis on vengeance and saintly cursing in the saints’ Lives of England and Ireland, c. 1060–1215. His research interests cover the religious cultures of the medieval Latin West (including Britain, France, Ireland, and Italy), with special emphasis on the tenth to thirteenth centuries.
Jesse Harrington is collaborating with the Norwegian Institute in Rome to develop a research project on religious culture in medieval Rome.
Crossing borders via translations
Linguistic paths, cultural boundaries, and transnational imaginaries
Time and place: Sep. 1, 2022, The Norwegian Institute in Rome
The workshop will investigate the impact of translated texts on other translated texts, and includes a theoretical panel on cross-texts and a Petrarchan Studies Panel.
It is organised by by the Universities of Sussex, Oslo, Catania and Ca' Foscari Venezia, and is funded by the European Union. Kindly contact Dr. Riccardo Raimondo or one of the other organisers for more details if you are interested in the topic.
Organisation and Scientific Committee
Fabrizio Impellizzeri (Associate Professor, University of Catania)
Riccardo Raimondo (Marie Skłodowska-Curie Global Fellow, University of Oslo)
Alessandro Scarsella (Associate Professor, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice)
Allison Steenson (Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow, University of Sussex)
Giuseppe Trovato (Senior Lecturer, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice)
Ekphrasis
Workshop: Research and Teaching Ekphrasis Through Creative Practise
Time and place: Aug. 29, 2022 1:30 PM – Aug. 31, 2022 6:00 PM, Det norske institutt i Roma
This workshop explores the research and teaching potential of adopting creative and imaginative approaches to historical material. It is based on the principle that we can more intensely understand the remote worlds of the past not just by writing about them, but by engaging directly with them through creative practice.
Despite increasing recognition of creative practice as forms of research and teaching that can generate knowledge and insights that are different to, but complementary with, other research and pedagogical methods, creative-led projects still tend to be limited to disciplines that fall under the creative arts umbrella.
The workshop will focus specifically on the theme of ekphrasis – here loosely defined as a self-conscious literary description of a work of art or architecture – and participants are asked to think of how new understandings of such descriptions in ancient, medieval, or early modern texts might be developed through creative practice (as opposed to more traditional methods). Such approaches might take the form of, but are certainly not limited to, drawing, modelling, photography, and digital technology.
The workshop participants present their ideas through talks or case studies or alternative formats, and will discuss the potential applicability of such methods in regard to both research and teaching.
Standardization in the Middle Ages
How did medieval people envision and enforce ideals of predictability, uniformity and order?
Time and place: May 25, 2022 9:00 AM – May 27, 2022 8:00 PM, Det norske institutt i Roma
“Standardization” is a term usually applied in industry, technology and business. However, it is also a vital feature in much human interaction. The papers of this multidisciplinary conference interrogate from various angles and materials the historical, social, and cognitive processes related to standardization in medieval societies. The conference has a double scope:
1. To explore how medieval institutions and individuals attempted to obtain and maintain standards across vast distances and heterogeneous social structures.
2. To develop the theoretical term “standardization” in a tight multidisciplinary collaboration, emphasizing that standards involve both flexibility and force, resistance and silencing, cognition and materiality.
PROGRAM
Wednesday May 25
9:00 Welcome & introduction by the organizers
Session 1 Canonicity & communities
Chair Line Cecilie Engh (University of Oslo)
9:30 Philip L. Reynolds (Emory University), Toward Understanding Scholastic Theology as a Canonical Culture
9:50 Discussion
10:30 Anders Winroth (University of Oslo), How European Law Became Standardized
10:50 Discussion
11:30 Coffee
11:45 Wim Verbaal (University of Ghent), Canalising the Floods. Variance and Standardisation of Written Language in the Middle Ages
12:05 Discussion
12:45 Lunch at the institute
Session 2 Form & transformation
Chair Kristin B. Aavitsland (Norwegian Institute in Rome)
14:00 Line M. Bonde (National Museum of Denmark), A Sense of Decorum: Negotiating the Standard Fabric for the Danish Parish Church
14:20 Discussion
15:00 Emanuele Lugli (Stanford University), When Bodies Become Points: Fencing,
Standardization, and the Erasure of Matter
15:20 Discussion
16:00 Coffee
16:15 Mary Franklin-Brown (University of Cambridge), The Metamorphosis of Elephants. Medieval Chess Pieces between Play and Standardization
16:35 Discussion
17:15 Jørn Øyrehagen Sunde (University of Oslo/National Library of Norway), Standardisation of Norwegian law with the Code of 1274 (via Zoom)
17:35 Discussion
18:30 Reception at the institute’s rooftop terrace
20:00 Dinner at Il cortile (Monteverde)
Thursday May 26
Session 3 Fieldwork
9:00-12:30 Excursion led by Chris Siwicki (Norwegian Institute in Rome)
13:00-15:00 Lunch
Session 4 Creativity & flexibility
Chair Karl-Gunnar Johansson (University of Oslo)
15:00 Franziska Quaas (Universität Hamburg), How to Write a Private Charter in the Early Middle Ages: Formulaic Writing between Uniformity and Heterogeneity
15:20 Discussion
16:00 John Burden (University of New Haven), Standardizing Penances in Burchard’s Decretum (c.1023): Goals, Methods, and Limits
16:20 Discussion
17:00 Coffee
17:15 Patricia Clare Ingham (Indiana University), Artistic Humility: Originality and Emergent Style in Chaucer’s Sir Thopas and The Treatise on the Astrolabe (via Zoom)
17:35 Discussion
18:15 End of programme
Friday May 27
Session 5 Variations & convergences
Chair Jon Gunnar Jørgensen (University of Oslo)
9:00 Rory Naismith (University of Cambridge), Taming Standardisation? Money and its Use in the Early Middle Ages
9:20 Discussion
10:00 Arthur Westwell (Universität Regensburg), The Gregorian Sacramentary and Its Reputed Standardizations Before 1000
10:20 Discussion
11:00 Coffee
11:15 Abigail Firey (University of Kentucky), Between Chaos and Codification: Carolingian Manuscripts of Canon Law
11:35 Discussion
12:15 Final remarks by Mark Turner (CWRU), Francis F. Steen (UCLA), and Geoffrey Bowker (UCI– via Zoom) and concluding discussion
12:50 Info on publishing and deadlines
13:00 Lunch at the institute
Session 6 Fieldwork
14:30-18:00 Excursion led by Kristin B. Aavitsland and Line Cecilie Engh to Abbazia delle Tre Fontane (transport will be arranged)
20:00 Dinner at Capo de fero (Trastevere)
We wish to welcome interested scholars but have limited space in the conference room. Please contact Kristin Bliksrud Aavitsland if you wish to participate in any of the sessions or days.
Organizer
Line Cecilie Engh og Kristin B. Aavitsland
The P. A. Munch Lecture 2022
Prof. Mario Bevilacqua. Maps, Trees of Knowledge, and Encyclopaedias:
Cartography of Rome, 16th-18th centuries
Time and place: Apr. 4, 2022 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM, The Norwegian Institute in Rome
Prof. Mario Bevilacqua is Full Professor in History of Architecture at Università degli Studi in Florence. He is Director of the Centro di Studi sulla Cultura e l’Immagine di Roma. His research spans the history of Western architecture and urbanism from the late Middle Ages to the 19th century, with special attention to issues of language and patronage, models and functions, identity and interchange.
Moderator: Dr. Christopher Stephen Siwicki, postdoctoral fellow at The Norwegian Institute in Rome
To register for in-person (limited number) or online attendance, please contact post@roma.uio.no before 4 April at 12 hrs.
Director's seminar - Spring 2022
Hilde Hagen (AHO) will present her project on this weeks' seminar at the Institute.
The Director’s seminar series takes place on Wednesday afternoons, usually at 5 pm. Presentations take the format of 20 minute-papers, followed by a Q&A session and an informal reception in the garden or in the common room upstairs.
Time and place: Mar. 16, 2022 5:00 PM – 7:00 PM, Det norske institutt i Roma
Wednesday 26 January
Visiting fellow Francesco Maniglia, University of Oslo: Remoulding Culture: Issues of Continuity and Change in Magna Graecia Under Roman Rule
Wednesday 2 February
Prof. em. Siri Sande, DNIR: Two Neglected Roman Women
Wednesday 9 February
Visiting fellow Oscar Dahl Lein, University of Oslo: The Codex Einsidlensis 362: A Transalpine Conception of Rome
Wednesday 16 February
Guest researcher Kristian Reinfjord, University of Bergen: Medieval Quarryscapes. Raw Material Actants of Stone Technology in Medieval Norway
Wednesday 23 February: Circolo Gianicolense (venue: Institutum Romanum Finlandiae, Villa Lante)
Dr Samer Abdel Ghafour, American University in Rome: Looting and Illicit Trafficking of Antiquities in the Middle East and North Africa: Understanding the Minds and Motives of Looters, Traffickers and Dealers and Other Supply Chain Actors
Wednesday 2 March
Professor Kristin B. Aavitsland, DNIR: Measuring the sacred: the height of Christ and other devotional measures in medieval culture
Wednesday 9 March
Visiting fellow Sara Sveen, University of Oslo: «Wake up, proud lion». Analysis of a Renaissance Poetic Prophecy about Florence
Wednesday 16 March, 5:30pm
Visiting fellow Hilde Hagen, Oslo School of Architecture and Design: The Conservation of the Villa of Livia
Wednesday 23 March: 3 pm: Circolo Gianicolense (venue: American University in Rome). Grace Funsten, American Academy in Rome: TBA
Wednesday 30 March
Visiting fellow Rihannon Williams, MF Norwegian School of Theology, Religion and Society, Oslo: Examining the Identifiability of “Christian” Burials in the Dakhla and Kharga Oases (Egypt)
Wednesday 6 April
Guest researcher Courtney Ward, DNIR alumna: The Jewels of Motherhood: Markers of Maternal Identity in Roman Italy
Wednesday 13 April
Visiting fellow David Carrillo Range, University of Bergen: Performing Heavenly Delights in Medieval Barcelona: Circulation of Birgittine Texts and Affective Communities
Wednesday 20 April, 6 pm: Circolo Gianicolense (venue: AAR) Kirsi Vikman, IRF: Dirt is not just dirt - Traces of use in the late medieval confession manuals
Women in Prehistory
Gender, identity and kinship - international workshop
Time and place: Mar. 10, 2022 9:00 AM – Mar. 11, 2022 6:00 PM, Det norske institutt i Roma
The workshop aims to stimulate new discussion and widen the interpretive possibilities for women's movement, by considering how biological and social relatedness were experienced in prehistory.
International participants from archaeology, anthropology and related disciplines will meet in Rome to explore how data from biological evidence and archaeological material culture can be combined, with relevance to issues of gender, identity, and kinship.
The workshop is a collaboration between The Norwegian Institute in Rome, the University of Bergen and the University of York, and is generously funded by The Wenner Gren Foundation.
Workshop organizers:
Penny Bickle (University of York) and Daniela Hofmann (University of Bergen)
2021
Wednesday 1 December: Director’s seminar
Visiting fellow Christine Marie Bruu, MA student, University of Oslo:
Dissecting La Venere Anatomica: A psychoanalytic approach to the discussion of idealized and eroticized full-length female anatomical models in Enlightenment Italy
The Basilica of St John the Lateran and the Ark of the Covenant: Housing the Holy Relics of Jerusalem
Guest lecture by Dr. Eivor Andersen Oftestad
Time and place: Nov. 25, 2021 6:00 PM–8:00 PM, The Norwegian Institute in Rome
Why did the twelfth-century canons at the basilica of St John the Lateran claim the presence of the Ark of the Covenant inside their high altar? In Eivor Andersen Oftestad’s study the so-called temple treasure of the Lateran Basilica is taken seriously for the first time as a central subject of scholarly research. Oftestad argues that the temple treasure played a decisive role in the Lateran canons’ response to new challenges in the aftermath of the First Crusade in 1099. She reveals a fascinating story of cultural dynamics and theological interpretations typical of the Latin West in the twelfth century.
The Ark of the Covenant was central as part of the treasure from the Jerusalem temple, allegedly transported to Rome after the destruction of the Temple in 70 AD, and according to contemporary accounts depicted on the arch of Titus. Oftestad explores the history of the Lateran Ark of the Covenant through a reading of the description of the Lateran Church (Descriptio Lateranensis Ecclesiae), composed around 1100. She follows the transmission of the text both in the Lateran Archive and in monastic settings in northern France and Belgium, comparing the claim to the Ark with similar claims in texts from Jerusalem. The alleged Ark of the Covenant is contextualized in the mental and spiritual milieu of the early crusades, of the ecclesiology of the Reform movement and of the regular canons. Central to the argument is the proposal of a “translatio templi” (drawing on medieval theories of translatio imperii), from Jerusalem to Rome.
Eivor Andersen Oftestad is Associate Professor at Department of Humanities at Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences. She has pursued a wide range of research interests in medieval and early modern church history. At the MF Norwegian School of Theology, Religion and Society, Oslo, she was an initiator and central member of the research project «Tracing the Jerusalem Code: Christian Cultures in Scandinavia» (NFR-funded, 2015-2018), and at The Faculty of Theology, University of Oslo she was a central member of «Death in Early Protestant Tradition» (NFR-funded, 2010-2013). Recent titles include The Lateran Church in Rome and the Ark of the Covenant: Housing the Holy Relics of Jerusalem. (With an edition and translation of the Descriptio Lateranensis Ecclesiae (BAV Reg. Lat. 712)), Studies in the History of Medieval Religion, Boydell & Brewer, 2019 and Eivor A. Oftestad & Joar Haga (eds.), Tracing the Jerusalem Code, Volume 2: The Chosen People. Christian Cultures in Early Modern Scandinavia (1536–ca. 1750), de Gruyter 2021.
Wednesday 24 November: Director’s seminar
Visiting fellow Aksel Teigen Breistrand, MA student, University of Bergen: Ideology in Architecture: Past, Present and Future in the Forum of Augustus
Alphabet Concepts and Uniform Letters
Guest lecture by Prof. Johanna Drucker
Time and place: Nov. 18, 2021 6:00 PM–8:00 PM, Det norske institutt i Roma
Standardization of the alphabet is largely thought of in terms of the forms of the letters. The uniform identity of local hands, scripts associated with specific communities, depended on techniques of copying and training. In addition, the less obvious aspect of standardization was that the concept of the alphabet—its origins and identity—also had to assume a consensual form. In the medieval to early modern period, textual and graphical modes of knowledge production assisted in the consolidation of a concept of the alphabet through transmission of textual and visual models. The conceptual aspects of this activity are the focus of this talk.
Johanna Drucker is the Breslauer Professor and Distinguished Professor in the Department of Information Studies at UCLA. She has published and lectured widely on topics related to history of writing, graphical texts and knowledge production, visualization and digital humanities. She is also known for her work as a book artist and visual poet. Recent titles include: Iliazd: Meta-biography of a Modernist (2020), Visualization and Interpretation (2020), The Digital Humanities Coursebook (2020), and the forthcoming Inventing the Alphabet (2022). In collaboration with artist Susan Bee, she also recently published Off-World Fairy Tales (2020)
Wednesday 17 November,
6 pm: Circolo Gianicolense (venue: DNIR) 6 pm
TBA
Wednesday 10 November, 4 pm: Director’s seminar
Visiting fellow Karen Kvamme Aase, MA student, University of Bergen:
Lived religion in Pompeii: lararia in private houses
Visiting fellow Sofie Amalie Ramstad, MA student, Oslo School of Architecture and Design: Hadrian's Villa: A journey back to fundamental values - Revisiting scale, proportion, and geometry through the human body.
Wednesday 3 November, 4 pm: Director’s seminar
(Chris standing in for Kristin) Visiting fellow Anne Marlene Karlsson, PhD student, University of Bergen: The politics of heritage: Discourses of policy and practise in Norway
Wednesday 27 October, 4 pm: Director’s seminar
(NB! Venue 3rd floor) Visiting fellow Anna Danilova, PhD student, University of Bergen: Neighborhoods of Ostia
Might is Not Right
Critiques of Imperial Rule and Historiographical Representations of the World
Time and place: Oct. 21, 2021 4:30 PM–Oct. 23, 2021 1:00 PM, Det norske institutt og Sapienza Universitetet i Roma
In popular wisdom, history is written by the winners, and it is certainly true that the writing of history can reflect relationships of power. In antiquity, we see the first attempts to write histories of the whole world. These ancient universal histories saw world history through the lens of imperial history; empire and conquest created a visible process of interconnection that allowed historians to write about the whole world rather than single sites of regional conflicts.
In the recent past, these universal histories have been seen as irrevocably imperialistic; by identifying imperial power with historical interconnection, universal historians would have endorsed it.
Daniele Miano (IAKH/UiO) is organising this conference in collaboration with Prof. John Thornton (Sapienza University of Rome), with support from CAS and The Norwegian Institute in Rome.
Conference programme
Thursday 21 October – ‘Sapienza’ University of Rome, Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia,
Aula Odeion (Piazzale Aldo Moro, 5)
16:30 – Coffee break
17:00 – Institutional welcome – Prof. Kristin
Bliksrud Aavitsland, Director of the Norwegian Institute in Rome – Prof. Giorgio Piras, Director of the Dipartimento di Scienze dell’Antichità, University of Rome ‘La Sapienza’
17:15 – Inaugural address of Hervé Inglebert
(Chair: Prof. Roberto Nicolai) – Histoire impériale, histoire universelle et sub-cultures chrétiennes durant l’Antiquité tardive : les exemples d’Augustin et d’Orose
18:15 – End of day 1
Friday 22 October – The Norwegian
Institute in Rome (Viale Trenta Aprile 33)
10:00 – Daniele Miano – John Thornton –
Universal historiography and power: complicating the relationship
10:40 – Jesper Madsen – Why Empire: motives of conquest in Cassius Dio’s Roman History
11:20 – Coffee break
11:40 – Chiara Silvagni – The universality inmodern age: the New World narrated through the works of Peter Martyr d’Anghiera
12:20 – Martial Staub – Comparison and comparability in late medieval and early Renaissance universal chronicles
13:00 – Lunch
14:30 – Michele Campopiano – Empire, Translatio imperii and the multiplicity of human polities in the high and late Middle Ages: some reflections with specific reference to the work of Paolino Veneto
15:10 – Benjamin Pedersen – The nature (and value) of universal history in Hellenistic historiography
15:50 – Coffee break
16:10 – Silvina Vidal – Tommaso Campanella’s criticism of Spanish monarchy, between politics and historiography
16:50 – Alice Borgna – Parcere subiectis et debellare superbos. Pompeius Trogus and Augustus
18:00 – Wine reception
Saturday 23 October – ‘Sapienza’ University of Rome, Facoltà di Lettere e
Filosofia, Aula A, second floor (Piazzale Aldo Moro, 5)
10:00 – Craige Champion – Universal Empire in Polybius
10:40 – Laura Mecella – The Decline of Pagan Universal Historiography in Late Antiquity
11:20 – Coffee break
11:40 – Blythe Alice Raviola – Giovanni Boteroand Le relazioni universali (1591)
12:20 – Pietro Vannicelli – A long way to Polybius: Universal Perspectives in Classical Greek historiography
13:00 – End of day
Wednesday 20 October, 4 pm: Director’s seminar
Guest researcher Jesse Ophoff, PhD student, MF Norwegian School of Theology, Religion and Society: Reading Under the Guidance of the Gospel: Evanglium in Regulae Benedicti et Pastoralis
Wednesday 13 October, 6 pm: Circolo Gianicolense
(venue: Villa Lante) Visiting fellow, IRF, PhD student Joonas Vanhala:
TBA
Wednesday 6 October, 4 pm: PhD workshop;
No seminar. For attendance: contact Chris
The L’Orange lecture 2021
Prof. Nino Zchomelidse will give a lecture on "Rome and the aesthetics of illusion: the Privilegium Ottonianum and the Marriage Charter of Empress Theophanu"
Time and place: Oct. 5, 2021 6:00 PM–8:00 PM, Det norske institutt i Roma
Wednesday 29 September: Director’s seminar
(Chris standing in for Kristin) Guest researcher Lasse Hodne, Professor, NTNU, Trondheim: Winckelmann and the Art of Enlightenment
Wednesday 15 September, 4 pm: Director’s seminar
Guest researcher Sturla Stålsett, Professor, MF Norwegian School of Theology, Religion and Society: Political theology of vulnerability in (post-)pandemic times. A brief presentation of work in progress
Sacred Books, Holy Relics and Godly Women: New Perspectives on Sanctity in Europe
Professor Brian Richardson (University of Leeds, UK) and Dr Ruth S. Noyes (National Museum of Denmark) will present on history of the circulation of texts and premodern migrations of sacral heritage.
Time and place: Sep. 14, 2021 2:00 PM–4:00 PM, The Norwegian Institute in Rome
The seminar Sacred Books, Holy Relics and Godly Women: New Perspectives on Sanctity in Renaissance Europe starts from the new research findings of Emeritus Professor Brian Richardson (University of Leeds, UK), author of the recent book Women and the Circulation of Texts in Renaissance Italy (2020), and art historian Dr Ruth S. Noyes (National Museum of Denmark), currently working on a book project called Translatio. Richardson and Noyes are two key experts in the history of the circulation of texts and premodern migrations of sacral heritage across the Nordic-Baltic region and greater Europe respectively. The seminar will investigate the notion of sanctity in the Renaissance by looking at women as key actors in the circulation of religious books and objects. Richardson's and Noyes's presentations will be followed by an open discussion. The proposed seminar is related to the ongoing research on sanctity pursued at the Department of Philosophy, Classics, History of Art and Ideas via the projects "The Legacy of Birgitta of Sweden" and "Women Writing Saints" which focus respectively on the circulation of Birgitta of Sweden's Revelations and the production of religious literature by women writers in Renaissance Italy, in connection with the activities of the interdisciplinary research group 'Textual Traditions and Communities in Early Modern Europe'.
Wednesday 8 September, 4 pm: Director’s seminar
Visiting fellow Mads Prøitz, MA student, University of Oslo:
Greek and Roman Victory Trophies - Adoption and Continuity
The Annual H.P. L’Orange lecture
Prof. Ulrich Pfisterer: Raphael and the Cornucopia of Antiquity
Time and place: June 23, 2021 6:00 PM–8:00 PM, The Norwegian Institute in Rome
The Norwegian institute in Rome is honored to welcome Prof. Pfisterer as this year's H.P. L'Orange lecturerer.
His lecture will discuss the so-called Small Holy Family (Paris, Musée du Louvre) as a key work to understand Raphael’s use of antiquity, as well as his own art theoretical thinking.
This painting reveals not only Raphael’s implementation of the ancient models, but also his peculiar understanding of the relationship between autography and workshop participation in his works.
Additionally, the analysis will show how the concepts of friendship and art as a gift – both inherited from the antiquity – play a crucial role in Raphael’s self-fashioning.
The Small Holy Family thus presents itself as a painted theory of art in emulation with the classical past.
About Ulrich Pfisterer
Ulrich Pfisterer is Director of the Zentralinstitute für Kunstgeschichte in Münich.
Image may contain: Glasses, Hair, Facial hair, Chin, Beard.
Pfisterer has taught Art History at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich since 2006, and has undertaken research at the Bibliotheca Hertziana in Rome, the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florence, the Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel, the Getty Research Center in L.A. and at CASVA/The National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.
His interests encompass the fields of early modern art in Europe and beyond, as well as the methodology and historiography of Art History.
He has published books on – among other subjects – Donatello, art literature and theory in the Italian Renaissance, the Sistine Chapel, and the interplay of concepts of erotic or biological procreativity and artistic creativity in early modern Europe.
Currently, he is preparing a collected volume of essays on global artistic exchange and contact zones from c. 1300-1650.
2020
Ecclesia Semper Reformanda Est: Women Passing the Baton of Catholic Reformation
Presentation by Dr. Clara Stella as part of the Circolo Gianicolense seminar series.
Time and place: Oct. 28, 2020 3:00 PM–4:30 PM, Det norske institutt i Roma
Dr Stella will present her research project focusing on the interlaced legacy of fourteenth-century female reformers, Birgitta of Sweden and Catherine of Siena, and the experiences of the women that more than a century later found themselves in the struggle for, once again, a Catholic reform within the Romana ecclesia.
With Aldo Manuzio’s 1500 edition of Catherine’s letters, to which he added a short vita and some prayers, the sixteenth century opened its doors with ominous and apocalyptic warnings. Only two years after the execution of Girolamo Savonarola in 1498, who had regarded his prophetic mission as a continuation of Catherine of Siena’s legacy, the printer aimed to revive Catherine’s cult and ethical message in the hope that the letters ‘would spread throughout the world like solemn preachers’ and foster the reform of both individuals and the Church. Aldus’s impressive edition will be our starting point in investigating the reception of Catherine as a model of religious exemplarity, knowledge, and diplomacy - a catalyst in the search for a renewed society, amid a climate of foreign invasions, internal political strife and the wake of the Reformation movement in the Northern countries. Looking instead at the first pages of the first 1494 edition of her Dialogue, Catherine is represented on a throne, or a cattedra, as a dispenser of knowledge and spiritual guidance, giving copies of her book to two noblewomen, and replicating in her pose and gesture the authorial legacy of Birgitta of Sweden giving copies of her Rule to her Brigittines.
The latter is just one small example that brings out several factors, ranging from how the legacy of those reformers was perceived as interlaced to the circulation of their texts among the same readership. On a different level, it also stresses how Birgitta - and then Catherine - became a model of intellectual knowledge, activism, and spiritual authority for religious and laywomen alike in the centuries that follow. With a particular focus on two women living during the same years of the sixteenth-century Catholic reformation - the prophetess Domenica Narducci from the Florentine Convent of the Paradiso and Vittoria Colonna, the most powerful woman living in Renaissance Rome - this talk will consider how these women embodied the roles of reformers and intellectuals, following in the footsteps of Birgitta and Catherine both within and beyond their communities.
About
Dr. Clara Stella: After having completed her studies at the University of Padua in Modern Philology, Clara undertook a PhD in Italian literature at the University of Leeds (UK) under the supervision of Professor Brian Richardson and Federica Pich. Her research has shed new light on the history and poetic activity of 53 noblewomen whose work is gathered in the Rime diverse di alcune nobilissime, et virtuosissime donne, the first anthology entirely dedicated to women poets of the Renaissance, edited by Lodovico Domenichi in 1559.
Clara is now a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow at The University of Oslo for the research project 'Women Writing Saints in Counter-Reformation Italy' (September 2019 - September 2021). The project looks at how women authors have negotiated the legacy of female saints in their writings as both subjects as well as intellectual and ethical inspirations for their own oeuvre and authorship.
Clara is also part of the project "The Legacy of Birgitta of Sweden: Women, Politics, and Reform in Renaissance Italy" led by Prof. Unn Falkeid at the University of Oslo.
Opposition to Public Building in the Ancient World
Presentation by Dr. Christopher Siwicki as part of the Circolo Gianicolense seminars.
Time and place: Oct. 16, 2020 1:00 PM–2:30 PM, Det norske institutt i Roma
Christopher is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Norwegian Institute in Rome. His research focuses on ancient architecture and the city of Rome.
The seminar is open to the public, but due to COVID there are strict limitations to number of participants and registration is obligatory. Kindly contact post@roma.uio.no if you wish to register.
Lions and hunting
Roman influences and depictions in the Hellenistic and Imperial Era. Presentation by Dr. Miika Remahl. Part of the series Circolo Gianicolense.
Time and place: Oct. 2, 2020 1:00 PM–3:00 PM, Downstairs lecture room at DniR
Miika Remahl is the Wihuri fellow 2020 – 2021 at the Finnish Institute in Rome. He is currently working on his doctoral thesis with the preliminary title ”The Image of Lion in Hunting Settings in Literary and Visual Sources in Hellenistic and Roman Imperial Times”.
His research focuses on the different meanings attributed to lions from a humanistic point of view. Remahl deals with the relationship between lions and hunting in Roman literature of the Republican and Imperial periods and in Roman-Campanian mosaics and mural paintings. The lion has been one of the most commonly used animals in metaphors and often represented as a part of hunting themes.
The research tries to shed light on the following questions:
- How did Romans represent lions and people as hunters?
- What kind of meanings did those representations have and what can they tell us about their authors from a cultural and social viewpoint?
The theoretical basis of the research comes especially from humanistic animal studies and the diverse social meanings of hunting.
During his year as a Wihuri fellow, Remahl will focus on the study of Pompeian mosaics and mural paintings representing lions that will be a part of his visual source material. These materials have so far been relatively little used and not well catalogued.
The Wihuri Fellowship has been awarded in co-operation with the Jenny and Antti Wihuri Foundation since 1965.
Miika Remahl is a PhD student with a specialization in ancient animal studies at the University of Helsinki. He holds a Master’s degree in General History from the University of Eastern Finland. He has also studied at Northumbria and Harvard universities. His minors include Latin, ancient Greek, archaeology, art history, sociology and social policy.
Circolo Gianicolense
Museums as actors in cultural heritage security, and refugees trafficking antiquities - this and more at the first Circolo Gianicolense meeting and discussion this autumn.
Time and place: Sep. 16, 2020 1:00 PM–3:00 PM, Det norske institutt i Roma
Marie Elisabeth Berg Christensen: The securitisation of cultural heritage: The museum as an actor in global security.
Samuel Hardy: Trafficking of antiquities by refugees: Failed policy and exploited victims.
Limited number of participants due to infection control measures, please contact post@roma.uio.no to request participation.
Heritage is engagement with the past in the present. Heritage is, therefore, entangled in, and crucial for a deeper understanding of some of the most important contemporary global challenges: Migration, integration, conflict and cultural destruction, climate change and adaptation to rapid and major technological changes.
HEI: Heritage Experience Initiative aims at developing critical heritage research in cooperation with the heritage sector and will experiment with new teaching models. For more about the project: https://www.hf.uio.no/english/research/strategic-research-areas/hei/
Marie Elisabeth Berg Christensen is a doctoral fellow at the University of Copenhagen. She is currently on a 2-month research stay at the Norwegian Institute in Rome where she will be part of HEi and collaborate with Dr. Sam Hardy and Prof. Christopher Prescott in the working group “Heritage activism and conflict”.
Christensen’s project explores the new roles and challenges museums face in relation to security matters in the protection of cultural heritage in armed conflict. Here, security is not understood as personal security or security for the organization, but as security for the world’s cultural heritage. The theoretical framework of the project will discuss the discursive construction of cultural heritage as a security issue. The discussion of cultural heritage and security is inspired by the research of securitisation of climate change, development, immigration etc.
The research is based on analyzing data obtained from interviews with cultural heritage experts and museum professionals, as well as case studies of the work done by leading museums in the field alongside written research material on the activities of museums related to security of cultural heritage. It will also include an examination of the research literature that directly or indirectly touches upon security and cultural heritage issues.
The PhD is increasingly relevant due to the fact that cultural heritage protection is becoming a transnational and non-traditional security issue and museums have become important actors in the international protection of the world’s cultural heritage. In relation to cultural heritage protection, we also see fundamental changes in the understanding and management of cultural heritage as an area of legal, political and governmental significance. There is a decentralization and redistribution of the responsibility of protection of cultural heritage, and here the museum, as a civilian actor, plays an important role.
Samuel Andrew Hardy is a post-doctoral fellow with HEI. He examines the relationships between illicit trafficking of cultural objects and political violence in the Mediterranean and the Middle East. He explores the practice of looting; the interconnections between cultural property crimes and other crimes; and the politics of policing in the Eastern Mediterranean.
He is also reviewing the evidence for conflict antiquities trafficking; the use of heritage propaganda; and the interconnections between antiquities trafficking and the refugee crisis in West Asia and North Africa. Hardy is also exploring transnational networks that bridge conflict zones and antiquities markets. The aim of Hardy’s research is to produce evidence that will inform efforts to reduce the loss of cultural heritage and the income of violent organizations.
Organizer
Det norske institutt i Roma
The uses of “Italian Theory” and Gaetano Mosca in media studies
Francis Therrien will present his exploratory threefold research project.
Time and place: Feb. 18, 2020 1:30 PM–2:15 PM, Det norske institutt i Roma
On the one hand, the notion of “Italian Theory” will be addressed on the question the label itself and on the potential genealogy of thinkers within it. It will be followed by a description of Mosca’s “ruling class” and his place in regard to “Italian theory”.
Finally, the framework for a more quantitative approach to the subject, an analysis of the references from the scholarly journal, Comunicazione politica, will be presented
Patristic Books in the High Middle Ages
Nick Pouls (PhD, University of Bergen) will present his research project "Writing and Reading Texts of the Church Fathers: a Quantitative Codicological Approach to the Legibility of Patristic Books in the High Middle Ages"
Time and place: Feb. 11, 2020 1:00 PM–2:00 PM, Det norske institutt i Roma