Newsletter

AVISTA sponsored three sessions and a roundtable at the 2023 58th Annual International Congress on Medieval Studies (ICMS), which returned to an in-person format after three years. The American Gothic sessions, organized by Rob Bork, re-evaluated the contributions of North American scholars to the understanding of Gothic architecture; these were well-received and well-attended, and a book drawing from the sessions is on the way. The 2024 AVISTA sponsored sessions at ICMS, Notre Dame in Color, inspired by ongoing research during the restoration of Notre-Dame de Paris and organized by Jennifer Feltman, will include international scholars’ research on medieval polychrome. We will also be arranging a celebratory social event on the Thursday of ICMS, and the annual business meeting—more updates on dates/times/locations to come. Please join us if you can! The business meeting will have a Zoom modality available.

AVISTA also has a presence at the March 2024 Medieval Academy of America meeting: Abby Armstrong Check, Tania Kolarik, and Gabriela Chitwood organized two sessions, Moving Through Sacred Medieval Interiors I and II, and are among the presenters. We hope to hear from our membership about potential topics for future conferences. We would love to sponsor sessions at Leeds, the Society of Architectural Historians annual meeting, the Medieval Academy annual meeting, and other conferences of interest to our membership and to the field. We would also love to hear ideas for virtual programming and engagement. If you have a conference session topic or an event proposal, please contact AVISTA Vice President Maile Hutterer.

After a few quiet years during the pandemic, AVISTA returned to funding grants in 2023, and offered small travel grants to assist with the expenses of international presenters at ICMS. The generosity of longtime member Robert Jamison meant we could award the first AVISTA Graduate Student Research Grant, intended to assist early-stage graduate research on the theme of crossing borders in the medieval world. The 2023 recipient, Sven Gins, is pursuing research on the medieval park at Hesdin. This grant will also be available next year, with an early fall application deadline; see the website for details later this spring.

We continue to move forward with AVISTA Studies in the History of Medieval Technology, Science and Art under Brill’s wing, and encourage you to visit our listing on Brill’s website to find information on the latest volumes and on proposal submission. We continue to receive multiple promising book proposals for the series. The Worlds of Villard de Honnecourt and The Analysis of Gothic Architecture arrived in late 2022, and 2023 has seen the release of A Merchant of Ivory in 16th-Century Paris and Lateness and Modernity in Medieval Architecture. A book drawing from and expanding on the American Gothic sessions is in the works, and we have more to come.

For information during the year, visit www.avista.org

Facebook users: https://www.facebook.com/groups/116240305084695/ for the Facebook group and https://www.facebook.com/groups/116240305084695/user/61554413490720 for the Facebook user page.