Call for PhD course: The Legal Document in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Period: Visuality, Materiality, and Performance
PhD School/course at the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Copenhagen (Saxo-Institute)
Date and time
5 May 2025, from 09:00 – 16:00 (On-line Meeting via Zoom)
15 May – 16 May 2025, from 09 – 18:00 (Conference at the Saxo Institute)
17 May 2025, from 10:00 – 13:00 (Final discussion at the Saxo Institute)
Aims of the course
This course, offered by the Saxo Institute, is open to PhD students from all areas of research at all universities who work within and across the fields of premodern history, diplomatics, legal history, art history, and archaeology.
The PhD course aims to highlight and explore from an interdisciplinary angle the visuality, material properties, and performative aspects of legal documents and their role in legal communication across regional and cultural borders and within a broadly conceived time frame from antiquity to ca. 1500. While the course is inspired by the research competency of the instructor in European medieval art history, one of the goals of the PhD course is to examine the legal visuality from a global perspective, including the medieval and Early modern worlds of Africa, Asia, and the Ancient Americas.
Traditionally, legal documents have been studied with a focus on their content and regarding attribution to specific authors and scribes, failing to acknowledge the importance of their visuality. At the same time, art historians have ignored illuminated charters, because they fell short – aesthetically – to qualify for the category of “art”.
This course attends to the complex aesthetics of legal documents, their graphic signs of corroboration (monograms, crosses, Tyronian notes, signatures), attached or affixed seals, stylized palaeography, and colour schemes (i.e. red, gold, and dark ink). Another emphasis is set on the performative aspects of medieval charters in court and church rituals.
The course will enable PhD students in the related fields of history, diplomatics, and art history to better contextualize their research projects within larger legal, aesthetic, and material debates and agendas and with global outreach, thereby enhancing their research and its impact.
The PhD school is connected to a two-day international symposium dedicated to the same topic to be held on 15-16 May 2025. Students signing up get the benefit of discussing their specialized research with peers and international scholars and engaging in an interdisciplinary debate at the cutting edge of pre and early modern humanities. Students can apply for financial support for travel and lodging in Copenhagen.
Central themes and questions
During the course, participants will reflect on the following questions and themes through project presentations and discussions:
- Relationship between the visuality of legal documents and strategies of authentication.
- Material properties and technological innovations of legal documents (i.e. papyrus, parchment, paper, chrysography, ink, sealing, printing).
- Performance in legal communication (i.e. ritualized actions of authentication, legal agreements, legal proclamation).
- How can individual research questions be reframed for peers with a different specialization?
- How can the interdisciplinary environment of this PhD school help to contextualize, complement, strengthen or challenge the research of the students' projects?
Preparation and workload
The course will consist of research presentations by the course instructor and guest Carsten Jahnke (Associate Professor, medieval history, Saxo-Institute, Faculty of Humanities, Copenhagen University ), group discussions of course readings (c. 250 standard pages) and materials related to the current state of the field of medieval and early modern legal documents and legal communication, and the attendance of an international conference on the course theme. Each participant will prepare a short presentation of their research project that will be discussed in an online meeting via Zoom. Students will attend and participate in discussion and response contributions at the Saxo-Institute conference. The course will end with a final meeting right after the conference to discuss in the classroom the impact of the conference debates on the students' PhD projects. Course material and further information will be available upon registration, and a more detailed program will follow.
Duration: 4 days
Course organizer
Associate Professor Nino Zchomelidse, Medieval Art History, Johns Hopkins University and Visiting Associate Professor at Saxo Institute, Faculty of Humanities, University of Copenhagen.
In terms of administration, the course will be organized through the Saxo Institute at the Faculty of Humanities
Language: English
Max. number of participants: 10
Students can apply for financial support for travel and lodging in Copenhagen.
Interested students should submit a CV, a brief letter of interest, and a short abstract of their research/dissertation project pertinent to the course topic.
Further information and application/registration: Please contact Nino Zchomelidse
Application/registration deadline: 31 January 2025
Course dates
5 May 2025, 15-17 May 2025
Lecturer
Please see the course description for details
Place/Venue
University of Copenhagen, Saxo-Institute, Room: TBA
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