Landscape, Nature, and Sacred Site

Synergies across the Global Middle Ages

The conference will take place on 11 and 12 May 2022 at the Department of Arts and Cultural Studies at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark.

The goal of this 2-day interdisciplinary conference is to explore the dynamics between landscape, nature, and sacred sites across the medieval world. Building on Mircea Eliade’s pioneering work, the recent focus on landscape and nature as agents of sacred power and religious symbolism, and on sacred topography as determined and shaped by the physical environment, has opened up new ways of investigating religious sites in their natural but far from neutral settings.

How do mountains, rivers, wilderness, rocks or caves capture the imagination, evoke and anchor myths? In which ways do they mediate and participate in the sacred? Which spatial and visual strategies were used to engage and capitalize on the ‘natural’ in the creation of sanctuaries and other sacred buildings? How did religious communities and pilgrims respond to the land and its features? Through these and related questions, this conference aims to bring together scholars who are willing to address traditional divides between the sciences and the humanities, ‘nature’ and ‘culture,’ as well as between western, eastern, and indigenous ways of relating to the natural world and the place of humans within it.

Confirmed keynote speakers are Tamara Sears (Rutgers University) and Michele Bacci (University of Fribourg).

Conference papers are expected to be published in a peer-reviewed anthology (the call for papers is closed).

Travel, accommodation and meals related to the conference will be covered by the Novo Nordisk Foundation.

 

11 May 2022, room 23.0.49

10.00

Welcome

HELLE MUNKHOLM DAVIDSEN, Head of Department of Arts and Cultural Studies, University of Copenhagen
10.10

Introduction

ERIK THUNØ, Rutgers University/University of Copenhagen

NICOLETTA ISAR, University of Copenhagen

ECOLOGIES OF PLACE

Chair: NICOLETTA ISAR, University of Copenhagen

10.30

Keynote Lecture

TAMARA SEARS, Rutgers University

On Stone, Storms, and Seismic Tremors: Architecture and Ecology in Medieval India
11.30 Coffee
12.00

JORGE LÓPEZ QUIROGA, Autonomous University of Madrid

NATALIA FIGUEIRAS PIMENTEL, Complutense University of Madrid

Landscape, Nature, and Sacred Site in the Rupestrian Complex of St Pedro of Rocas

(Galicia, Spain)
12.30 Lunch

Chair: AMALIE SKOVMØLLER, University of Copenhagen

13.30

NICOLETTA ISAR, University of Copenhagen

Fluid Sites – To Adore or To Abhor?

The Clash of Gods: A Sacred Drama in the Antiochene Groves of Daphne

14.00

PNINA ARAD, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem                                                                               

The Dead Sea: A Cultural Metaphor for Sin and Punishment
14.30

Coffee

LANDSCAPE BETWEEN REPRESENTATION AND SACRED SITE

Chair: MARIA FABRICIUS HANSEN, University of Copenhagen

15.00

JACOB WAMBERG, University of Aarhus

From Othering to Smothering: Medieval Landscapes as World Pictures
15.30

ISABELLA AUGART, University of Göttingen      

Luoghi aspri. Mountainous Landscapes in Trecento and Early Quattrocento Art between Representation and Experience
16.00

General discussion
16.30

Snacks and apéro

12 May 2022, room 23.0.50

LANDSCAPE, BODY, AND PILGRIM

Chair: ERIK THUNØ, University of Copenhagen/Rutgers University

10.00

Keynote Lecture

MICHELE BACCI, University of Fribourg

Immersive Devotions: The Pilgrim's Experience of Palestinian Landscape and the Creation of New Loca Sancta (13th-17th centuries)
11.00

IVAN FOLETTI, Masaryk University

Global Dynamic Landscapes: Nature, Culture, and the Pilgrim’s Body
11.30

Coffee

ORGANIC MATTER AND METAMORPHOSIS

Chair: STEFANIE HEINE, University of Copenhagen

12.00

NADINE MAI, Hamburg

Wounded Places: Anthropomorphic Landscape and the Idea of “Similarity Relics” in Monumental Reproductions of the Holy Sites of Jerusalem
12.30

YAMIT RACHMAN-SCHRIRE, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Fossilized Bodies and Animated Stones
13.00 Lunch

SACRED TREES AND WOODLANDS

Chair: MARKUS BOGISCH, Copenhagen

14.00

NAÏS VIRENQUE, Catholique University of Louvain

Living inside Trunks. Dendritism and Spiritualization of Nature in the Global Middle Ages

14.30

KRISZTINA ILKO, University of Toronto

The Augustinian Friars’ Perception of Nature between Tree Lore and Environmental History
15.00

ERIK THUNØ, Rutgers University/University of Copenhagen

Pillar and Tree. Creative Assemblage in Medieval Georgia
15.30

Coffee

NATURE, RITUAL, AND ICON

Chair: NICOLETTA ISAR, University of Copenhagen

16.00

KRISTI M. PETERSON, Skidmore College

Imperial and Natural Tonalli: Tenochtitlan as Sacred Site
16.30

SONYA S. LEE, University of Southern California (USC)

Bathing Buddha Images in the Rivers of Khotan (via Zoom)
17.00

Conclusion
17.30

Snacks and apéro
18.30

Dinner at Islands Brygge