Women and the Sensory in Medieval Art
Sponsoring Organization(s)
Special Session
Organizer Name
Pamela A. Patton, Julie A. Harris
Organizer Affiliation
Southern Methodist Univ., Speruts Institute
Presider Name
Pamela A. Patton
Paper Title 1
Gender and the Senses in the Carolingian Era: Prudentius of Troyes’s Sermo de vita Maurae
Presenter 1 Name
William Diebold
Presenter 1 Affiliation
Reed College
Paper Title 2
Beautiful Flesh: Uta from Naumburg and the Clash of Medieval and Modern Perceptions of Attractiveness
Presenter 2 Name
Na'ama Shulman (Congress Travel Award Winner)
Presenter 2 Affiliation
Tel Aviv Univ.
Paper Title 3
"Black is the new black": Clothing and Misbehavior in Medieval Toledo
Presenter 3 Name
Julie A. Harris
Start Date
10-5-2014 10:00 AM
Session Location
Bernhard 213
Description
Women and the Sensory in Medieval Art
Throughout the medieval world, women were perceived as closely linked to the bodily senses, not just because of their own supposed sensitivity to sensory experience, but also for the strong sensory reactions they were thought to provoke in men. As Marc Bloch and others have argued, such associations drew upon larger notions, largely crafted by male Classical and medieval thinkers who were themselves strongly wary of the sensory, that linked women with carnality and sensory pleasure and men with reason and sensory restraint. The same ideas also infused medieval works of art produced in Christian, Jewish, and Muslim cultures alike. This session examines the relationship between women and the senses as it is set out in such works, asking: how do traditional perceptions of the intersection between women and the sensory shape medieval images and objects? How did such perceptions and their visual expression vary among disparate medieval cultures, periods, and places? How did such works correspond to the lived experience of medieval women? To what extent did women share the male-generated notion that the senses were a domain special to them?
Pamela A. Patton
Women and the Sensory in Medieval Art
Bernhard 213
Women and the Sensory in Medieval Art
Throughout the medieval world, women were perceived as closely linked to the bodily senses, not just because of their own supposed sensitivity to sensory experience, but also for the strong sensory reactions they were thought to provoke in men. As Marc Bloch and others have argued, such associations drew upon larger notions, largely crafted by male Classical and medieval thinkers who were themselves strongly wary of the sensory, that linked women with carnality and sensory pleasure and men with reason and sensory restraint. The same ideas also infused medieval works of art produced in Christian, Jewish, and Muslim cultures alike. This session examines the relationship between women and the senses as it is set out in such works, asking: how do traditional perceptions of the intersection between women and the sensory shape medieval images and objects? How did such perceptions and their visual expression vary among disparate medieval cultures, periods, and places? How did such works correspond to the lived experience of medieval women? To what extent did women share the male-generated notion that the senses were a domain special to them?
Pamela A. Patton