Rarely do material traces of the premodern world survive without damage or alteration. In response, the fragment has emerged in recent years as a productive theoretical framework for understanding the present condition of medieval objects, buildings, and archives. AVISTA’s emphasis has long been the intersection of medieval art, craft, and technology. In line with this focus, this session seeks papers which present new case studies of the fragment. This includes medieval objects or buildings that have been reconstructed or, in their current state, are incomplete or damaged. We also seek to broaden discussion of the medieval fragment to include works abandoned in process, or those that were not finished following their original plan. While this concept has gained traction in manuscript studies, the notion of the unfinished has been less discussed in architecture, even though there are many prominent examples, such as the cathedrals of Beauvais, Narbonne, and Siena, amongst others. We invite interdisciplinary papers, representing all disciplines and geographies, to take up unfinished, damaged, or reimagined medieval objects.

Speakers may discuss, for example, repaired or transformed objects, architecture that was never completed or has since been lost, as well as medieval and modern efforts to complete the fragment. Objects, topics, and methodologies may include but not be limited to:

• Digital twins and reconstructions

• Studies of medieval technologies 

• Incomplete, reused, and abandoned architecture

• Repurposed objects including reliquaries and textiles

• Composite, repaired, and orphaned sculpture

• Spolia or other architectural fragments 

• Repurposed decorative objects

• Manuscript fragmentology

• Fragmented historical sources 

• Modern and Medieval repair techniques and materials (such as lead, mortar, etc.)

Selected Bibliography:

Bamford, Heather. Cultures of the Fragment: Uses of the Iberian Manuscript, 1100–1600. University of Toronto Press, 2018.

Dickerson III, C.D., and Andrew Sears, eds. Broken: The Power of the Fragment in Sculpture. University of Chicago Press, 2026. 

Feltman, Jennifer M., and SarahThompson, eds. The Long Lives of Medieval Art and Architecture. Routledge, 2019. 

Fernandez, Catherine A., and Pamela A. Patton, eds. Fragments : Medieval Makers, Modern Responses. Pennsylvania State University Press, 2026.

Fricke, Beate, and Aden Kumler, eds. Destroyed—Disappeared—Lost—Never Were. Pennsylvania State University Press, 2022.

Gertsman, Elina. The Absent Image: Lacunae in Medieval Books. Pennsylvania State University Press, 2021.

Martin, S. Rebecca, and Stephanie M. Langin-Hooper, eds. The Tiny and the Fragmented : Miniature, Broken, or Otherwise Incomplete Objects in the Ancient World. Oxford University Press, 2018.

Savage, Emily N., ed. New Approaches to the Archive in the Middle Ages : Collecting, Curating, Assembling. Routledge, 2024.

Trachtenberg, Marvin. Building-in-Time: From Giotto to Alberti and Modern Oblivion. Yale University Press, 2010.