AVISTA Studies in the History of Technology, Science, and Art
AVISTA Studies in the History of Medieval Technology, Science, and Art is published by Brill. For more information about purchasing or submitting a proposal, please see the AVISTA MTSA Brill page here.
AVISTA Studies in the History of Medieval Technology, Science, and Art is a wide-ranging and multi-disciplinary book series publishing scholarly work on a variety of aspects of technology, science, art, and architecture of the Middle Ages. The series publishes works that emphasize the interrelationship of these fields. In doing so, the series aims to promote a cross-disciplinary perspective, and submissions are encouraged from any field of study, including (but not limited to) history, art and architectural history, manuscript studies, literature, and history of science. Studies with a closer focus or works examining wider contexts and global developments are equally welcomed. The series publishes monographs, thematic edited volumes, and, on occasion, text editions and translations. All proposals from early career projects to those from established scholars are invited.
Learn more about our series with Brill here.
Katherine Baker, Associate Professor of Art History, Arkansas State University
AVISTA Studies in the History of Medieval Technology, Science, and Art, Volume: 17
While we sometimes think about the past as distant and dusty, portals that can shoot through centuries exist. The estate inventory of Chicart Bailly is one of those gateways, and through its many pages we are transported back into an entirely different material culture – Paris at the turn of the 16th century.
Chicart, whose death in June 1533 led to the creation of the document, was part of a legacy of working with ivory, bone, and precious woods as a tabletier. This transcription and annotated translation of the inventory provides a key for new insights into this previously understudied profession — the objects made, the varied media used, and the world of the Paris’ tabletiers.
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Volume Editors: Alice Isabella Sullivan, Assistant Professor, History of Art and Architecture, Tufts University
Kyle G. Sweeney, Assistant Professor of Art History, Winthrop University
AVISTA Studies in the History of Medieval Technology, Science, and Art, Volume: 16
How have the concepts of “lateness” and “modernity” inflected the study of medieval and early modern architecture? This volume seeks to (re)situate monuments from the 14th—16th centuries that are indebted to medieval building practices and designs within the more established narratives of art and architectural history.
Drawing on case studies from Cyprus to the Dominican Republic, the book explores historiographical, methodological, and theoretical concerns related to the study of medieval architecture, bringing to the fore the meanings and functions of the Gothic in specific contexts of use and display. The development of local styles relative to competing traditions, and instances of coexistence and hybridization, are considered in relation to workshop practices and design theory, the role of ornament, the circulation of people and knowledge, spatial experiences, as well as notions of old and new.
Contributors are: Jakub Adamski, Flaminia Bardati, Costanza Beltrami, Robert Bork, Jana Gajdošová, Maile S. Hutterer, Jacqueline Jung, Alice Klima, Abby McGehee, Paul Niell, Michalis Olympios, Zachary Stewart, Alice Isabella Sullivan, Kyle G. Sweeney, and Marek Walczak.
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Volume Editors: George Brooks, Professor of Humanities, Medieval Studies, History of Science & Technology, Valencia College
Maile Hutterer, Associate Professor, Department of the History of Art and Architecture, University of Oregon
AVISTA Studies in the History of Medieval Technology, Science, and Art, Volume: 15
This book charts the past, present, and future of studies on medieval technology, art, and craft practices. Inspired by Villard’s enigmatic portfolio of artistic and engineering drawings, this collection explores the multiple facets of medieval building represented in this manuscript (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS Fr 19093).
The book’s eighteen essays and two introductions showcase traditional and emergent methods for the study of medieval craft, demonstrating how these diverse approaches collectively amplify our understanding about how medieval people built, engineered, and represented their world. Contributions range from the analysis of words and images in Villard’s portfolio, to the close analysis of masonry, technological marvels, and gothic architecture, pointing the way toward new avenues for future scholarship to explore.
Contributors are: Mickey Abel, Carl F. Barnes Jr., Robert Bork, George Brooks, Michael T. Davis, Amy Gillette, Erik Gustafson, Maile S. Hutterer, John James, William Sayers, Ellen Shortell, Alice Isabella Sullivan, Richard Alfred Sundt, Sarah Thompson, Steven A. Walton, Maggie M. Williams, Kathleen Wilson Ruffo, and Nancy Wu.
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Volume Editor: Robert Bork, Professor, School of Art and Art History, University of Iowa
AVISTA Studies in the History of Medieval Technology, Science, and Art, Volume: 14
The essays in this volume reflect on and build on the remarkable legacies of Robert Mark and Andrew Tallon, who pioneered the application of high-technology research methods to the study of Gothic architecture.
Combining personal reminiscences and historiographical discussions with meticulous geometrical and structural analyses based on photogrammetric and laser-scanned building surveys, this book offers valuable new perspectives not only on Mark and Tallon themselves, but also on major churches including the abbeys of Saint-Denis and Alcobaça, Santa Maria Novella in Florence, Notre-Dame in Paris, and the cathedrals of Clermont, Reims and Wells.
Contributors are: Sheila Bonde, Robert Bork, Lindsay S. Cook, Michael Davis, James Hillson, Kyle Killian, Peter Kurmann, Clark Maines, Ethan Mark, Stephen Murray, Sergio Sanabria, Dany Sandron, Ellen Shortell, Elizabeth B. Smith, Rebecca Smith, Arnaud Timbert, Stefaan Van Liefferinge, and Nancy Wu.
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Volumes 1–13
Prior to 2022, the AVISTA book series was published by Routledge (formerly Ashgate).
Volume Editor: Steven A. Walton, Associate Professor of History, Michigan Technological University
AVISTA Studies in the History of Medieval Technology, Science, and Art, Volume: 13
This volume brings together a series of papers at Kalamazoo as well as some contributed papers inspired by the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of Lynn White Jr.’s, Medieval Technology and Social Change (1962), a slim study which catalyzed the study of technology in the Middle Ages in the English-speaking world. While the initial reviews and decades-long fortune of the volume have been varied, it is still in print and remains a touchstone of an idea and a time. The contributors to the volume, therefore, both investigate the book itself and its fate, and look at new research furthering and inspired by White’s work. The book opens with an introduction surveying White’s career, with a bibliography of his work, as well as some opening thoughts on the study of medieval technology in the last fifty years. Three papers then deal explicitly with the reception and longevity of his work and its impact on medieval studies more generally. Then five papers look at new cast studies areas where White’s work and approach has had a particular impact, namely, medieval technology studies and medieval rural/ ecological studies.
Contributors are: Constance H. Berman, George Brooks, Chantal Camenisch, C.R.J. Currie, Christie Peters, B.B. Price, Steven A. Walton, and Elspeth Whitney.
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Volume Editors: Jennifer M. Feltman, Associate Professor of Art History, Department of Art and Art History, University of Alabama
Sarah Thompson, Associate Professor of Art History, School of Art, Rochester Institute of Technology
AVISTA Studies in the History of Medieval Technology, Science, and Art, Volume: 12
Traditional histories of medieval art and architecture often privilege the moment of a work’s creation, yet surviving works designated as "medieval" have long and expansive lives. Many have extended prehistories emerging from their sites and contexts of creation, and most have undergone a variety of interventions, including adaptations and restorations, since coming into being. The lives of these works have been further extended through historiography, museum exhibitions, and digital media. Inspired by the literary category of biography and the methods of longue durée historians, the introduction and seventeen chapters of this volume provide an extended meditation on the longevity of medieval works of art and the aspect of time as a factor in shaping our interpretations of them. While the metaphor of "lives" invokes associations with the origin of the discipline of art history, focus is shifted away from temporal constraints of a single human lifespan or generation to consider the continued lives of medieval works even into our present moment. Chapters on works from the modern countries of Italy, France, England, Spain, and Germany are drawn together here by the thematic threads of essence and continuity, transformation, memory and oblivion, and restoration. Together, they tell an object-oriented history of art and architecture that is necessarily entangled with numerous individuals and institutions.
Contributors are: Nicola Camerlenghi, Meredith Cohen, William J. Diebold, Amanda W. Dotseth, Jennifer M. Feltman, Elisa A. Foster, Lynley Anne Herbert, Cathleen Hoeniger, Laura Jacobus, Matilde Mateo, Charles R. Morscheck, Maeve O’Donnell-Morales, Emily N. Savage, Kyle G. Sweeney, Imogen Tedbury, Sarah Thompson, Catherine Emma Walden, and Nancy Wu.