Catherine E Karkov – författare

A fresh appraisal of the art of Anglo-Saxon England, focusing on art as an aesthetic vehicle and art as an active political force.Two particular perspectives inform this wide-ranging and richly illustrated survey of the art produced in England, or by English artists, between c. 600 and c.1100, in a variety of media, manuscripts, stone and wooden sculpture, ivory carving, textiles, and architecture. Firstly, from a post-colonial angle, it examines the way art can both create and narrate national and cultural identity over the centuries during which England was coming into being, moving from Romano-Britain to Anglo-Saxon England to Anglo-Scandinavian England to Anglo-Norman England. Secondly, it treats Anglo-Saxon art as works of art, works that have both an aesthetic and an emotional value, rather than as simply passive historical or archaeological objects. This double focus on art as an aesthetic vehicle and art as an active political force allows us to ask questions not only about what makes something a work of art, but what makes itendure as such, as well as questions about the work that art does in the creation of peoples, cultures, nations and histories.Professor Catherine Karkov teaches in the School of Fine Art, University of Leeds.

Postcolonial theories have transformed literary, historical and cultural studies over the past three decades. Yet the study of medieval art and visualities has, in general, remained Eurocentric in its canon and conservative in its approaches. 'Postcolonising', as the eleven essays in this volume show, entails active intervention into the field of medieval art history and visual studies through a theoretical reframing of research. This approach poses and elicits new research questions, and tests how concepts current in postcolonial studies - such as diaspora and migration, under-represented artistic cultures, accented art making, displacement, intercultural versus transcultural, hybridity, presence/absence - can help medievalists to reinvigorate the study of art and visuality. Postcolonial concepts are deployed in order to redraft the canon of medieval art, thereby seeking to build bridges between medievalist and modernist communities of scholars. Among the varied topics explored in the volume are the appropriation of Roman iconography by early medieval Scandinavian metalworkers, multilingualism and materiality in Anglo-Saxon culture, the circulation and display of Islamic secular ceramics on Pisan churches, cultural negotiation by Jewish minorities in Central Europe and the Iberian peninsula, Holy Land maps and medieval imaginative geography, and the uses of Thomas Becket in the colonial imaginary of the Plantagenet court.

This book explores the complex interrelationship between texts and drawings in the late tenth or early eleventh-century Junius II manuscript, the only surviving illustrated Anglo-Saxon poetic manuscript. The book, which contains a plate section of sixty-one illustrations, focuses on the way in which the drawings both illustrate the text and translate it into a new visual language. Poems and illustrations work to create a carefully crafted and unified manuscript, but both also use formulaic language, iconography and compositions to construct a web of intertextual and intervisual references that open the poems to readings far more diverse than those of the biblical books on which they are based. Together poems and drawings create a new and unique version of biblical history, and suggest ways in which biblical history relates to Anglo-Saxon history and the manuscript's Anglo-Saxon audience - a process which has been extended by the manuscript's many editors to include contemporary history and the contemporary reader.

This book explores the complex interrelationship between texts and drawings in the late tenth or early eleventh-century Junius II manuscript, the only surviving illustrated Anglo-Saxon poetic manuscript. The book, which contains a plate section of sixty-one illustrations, focuses on the way in which the drawings both illustrate the text and translate it into a new visual language. Poems and illustrations work to create a carefully crafted and unified manuscript, but both also use formulaic language, iconography and compositions to construct a web of intertextual and intervisual references that open the poems to readings far more diverse than those of the biblical books on which they are based. Together poems and drawings create a new and unique version of biblical history, and suggest ways in which biblical history relates to Anglo-Saxon history and the manuscript's Anglo-Saxon audience - a process which has been extended by the manuscript's many editors to include contemporary history and the contemporary reader.

This volume offers comprehensive coverage of the archaeology of Anglo-Saxon England, bringing together essays on specifi fields, sites and objects, and offering the reader a representative range of both traditional and new methodologies and interdisciplinary approaches to the subject.

This Element covers the art produced in early medieval England from the departure of the Romans to the early twelfth century, an art that shows the input of multi-ethnic artists, patrons, and influences as it develops over the centuries. Art in early medieval England is an art of migrants and colonisers and the Element considers the way in which it was defined and developed by the different groups that travelled to or settled on the island. It also explores some of the key forms and images that define the art of the period and the role of both material and artist/patron in their creation. Art is an expression of identity, whether individual, regional, national, religious, or institutional, and this volume sheds light on the way art in early medieval England was and continues to be used to define particular identities, including that of the island on which it was produced.

This volume offers comprehensive coverage of the archaeology of Anglo-Saxon England, bringing together essays on specifi fields, sites and objects, and offering the reader a representative range of both traditional and new methodologies and interdisciplinary approaches to the subject.

Postcolonial theories have transformed literary, historical and cultural studies over the past three decades. Yet the study of medieval art and visualities has, in general, remained Eurocentric in its canon and conservative in its approaches. 'Postcolonising', as the eleven essays in this volume show, entails active intervention into the field of medieval art history and visual studies through a theoretical reframing of research. This approach poses and elicits new research questions, and tests how concepts current in postcolonial studies - such as diaspora and migration, under-represented artistic cultures, accented art making, displacement, intercultural versus transcultural, hybridity, presence/absence - can help medievalists to reinvigorate the study of art and visuality. Postcolonial concepts are deployed in order to redraft the canon of medieval art, thereby seeking to build bridges between medievalist and modernist communities of scholars. Among the varied topics explored in the volume are the appropriation of Roman iconography by early medieval Scandinavian metalworkers, multilingualism and materiality in Anglo-Saxon culture, the circulation and display of Islamic secular ceramics on Pisan churches, cultural negotiation by Jewish minorities in Central Europe and the Iberian peninsula, Holy Land maps and medieval imaginative geography, and the uses of Thomas Becket in the colonial imaginary of the Plantagenet court.

While the essays offered in this collection vary in subject, discipline, and methodological approach, they center on the interpretation of the material world, whether that materiality appears in literature, stone, or the artifacts removed from an archaeological dig. The essay deal mainly with the Germanic and Celtic worlds, but incorporate motifs from Eastern Christian and Roman cultures. Contributors address the themes of time in history; societal and ideological change and continuity; iconic style and polysemous textuality; symbolic and representational interpretation; gender-specific economic production; definitions of social and political structures; and social processes of eclecticism and adaptation. Hence the approaches are interdisciplinary, contextual, comparative, and fluid in their integration of texts and images where the text represented is as crucial to the meaning as is the image or object; they therefore represent the study of the material culture of the Anglo-Saxon period at its best. The variety of disciplines represented in the essays and the range of topics covered by the individual scholars give some indication of the enormous scope of the scholarship of Rosemary Cramp, in whose honor this volume was produced. Readers will find that the subjects dealt with resonate with each other in interesting and complex ways. It is an invaluable contribution to scholars of Anglo-Saxon culture and archaeology.

The essays in this collection honor Helen Damico's extensive interests in Old Norse and later medieval literatures as well as her primary focus on Anglo-Saxon studies, embracing Old English poetry, archaeology, art history, paleography, liturgy, landscape, and gender. Each of the essays contributes new interpretations, new evidence, even new technologies to further the study of some key medieval works.

A fresh approach to the construction of "Anglo-Saxon England" and its depiction in art and writing.This book explores the ways in which early medieval England was envisioned as an ideal, a placeless, and a conflicted geography in works of art and literature from the eighth to the eleventh century and in their modern scholarly and popular afterlives. It suggests that what came to be called "Anglo-Saxon England" has always been an imaginary place, an empty space into which ideas of what England was, or should have been, or should be, have been inserted from the arrival of peoples from the Continent in the fifth and sixth centuries to the arrival of the self-named "alt-right" in the twenty-first. It argues that the political and ideological violence that was a part of the origins of England as a place and the English as a people has never been fully acknowledged; instead, the island was reimagined as a chosen land home to a chosen people, the gens Anglorum. Unacknowledged violence, however, continued to haunt English history and culture. Through her examination here of the writings of Bede and King Alfred, the Franks Casket and the illuminated Wonders of the East, and the texts collected together to form the Beowulf manuscript, the author shows how this continues to haunt "Anglo-Saxon Studies" as a discipline and Anglo-Saxonism as an ideology, from the antiquarian studies of the sixteenth century through to the nationalistic and racist violence of today.

A fresh approach to the construction of "Anglo-Saxon England" and its depiction in art and writing.This book explores the ways in which early medieval England was envisioned as an ideal, a placeless, and a conflicted geography in works of art and literature from the eighth to the eleventh century and in their modern scholarly and popular afterlives. It suggests that what came to be called "Anglo-Saxon England" has always been an imaginary place, an empty space into which ideas of what England was, or should have been, or should be, have been inserted from the arrival of peoples from the Continent in the fifth and sixth centuries to the arrival of the self-named "alt-right" in the twenty-first. It argues that the political and ideological violence that was a part of the origins of England as a place and the English as a people has never been fully acknowledged; instead, the island was reimagined as a chosen land home to a chosen people, the gens Anglorum. Unacknowledged violence, however, continued to haunt English history and culture. Through her examination here of the writings of Bede and King Alfred, the Franks Casket and the illuminated Wonders of the East, and the texts collected together to form the Beowulf manuscript, the author shows how this continues to haunt "Anglo-Saxon Studies" as a discipline and Anglo-Saxonism as an ideology, from the antiquarian studies of the sixteenth century through to the nationalistic and racist violence of today.

Analysis of a group of images of kingship and queenship from Anglo-Saxon England explores the implications of their focus on books, authorship and learning.Between the reign of Alfred in the late ninth century and the arrival of the Normans in 1066, a unique set of images of kingship and queenship was developed in Anglo-Saxon England, images of leadership that centred on books, authorship and learning rather than thrones, sword and sceptres. Focusing on the cultural and historical contexts in which these images were produced, this book explores the reasons for their development, and their meaning and functionwithin both England and early medieval Europe. It explains how and why they differ from their Byzantine and Continental counterparts, and what they reveal about Anglo-Saxon attitudes towards history and gender, as well as the qualities that were thought to constitute a good ruler. It is argued that this series of portraits, never before studied as a corpus, creates a visual genealogy equivalent to the textual genealogies and regnal lists that are so mucha feature of late Anglo-Saxon culture. As such they are an important part of the way in which the kings and queens of early medieval England created both their history and their kingdom.CATHERINE E. KARKOV is Professorof Art History at the University of Leeds.

A powerful claim for the virtues of a more thoughtful and collegiate approach to the academy today.This book offers a response to the culture of metrics, mass digitisation, and accountability (as opposed to responsibility, or citizenship) that has developed in higher education world wide, as exemplified by the UK's Research Excellence Framework exercise (REF), and the increasing bureaucracy that limits the time available for teaching, research, and even conversation and collaboration. Ironically, these are problems that will be solved only by academicsfinding the time to talk and to work together.The essays collected here both critique the culture of speed in the neoliberal university and provide examples of what can be achieved by slowing down, by reclaiming research and research priorities, and by working collaboratively across the disciplines to improve conditions. They are informed both by recent research in medieval studies and by the problematic culture of twenty-first century higher education.The contributions offer very personal approaches to the academic culture of the present moment. Some tackle issues of academic freedom head-on; others more obliquely; but they all have been written as declarations of theacademic freedom that comes with slow thinking, slow reading, slow writing and slow looking and the demonstrations of its benefits.CATHERINE E. KARKOV is Professor and Chair of Art History at the University of Leeds. Contributors: Lara Eggleton, Karen Jolly, Chris Jones, James Paz, Andrew Prescott, Heather Pulliam

Cross and Cruciform in the Anglo-Saxon World: Studies to Honor the Memory of Timothy Reuter is edited by Sarah Larratt Keefer, Karen Louise Jolly, and Catherine E. Karkov and is the third and final volume of an ambitious research initiative begun in 1999 concerned with the image of the cross, showing how its very material form cuts across both the culture of a society and the boundaries of academic disciplines - history, archaeology, art history, literature, philosophy, and religion - providing vital insights into how symbols function within society. The flexibility, portability, and adaptability of the Anglo-Saxon understanding of the cross suggest that, in pre-Conquest England, at least, the linking of word, image, and performance joined the physical and spiritual, the temporal and eternal, and the earthly and heavenly in the Anglo-Saxon imaginative landscape.This volume is divided into three sections. The first section of the collection focuses on representations of ""The Cross: Image and Emblem,"" with contributions by Michelle P. Brown, David A. E. Pelteret, and Catherine E. Karkov. The second section, ""The Cross: Meaning and Word,"" deals in semantics and semeology with essays by Helen Damico, Rolf Bremmer, and Ursula Lenker. The third section of the book, ""The Cross: Gesture and Structure,"" employs methodologies drawn from archaeology, new media, and theories of rulership to develop new insights into subjects as varied as cereal production, the little-known Nunburnholme Cross, and early medieval concepts of political power.Cross and Cruciform in the Anglo-Saxon World: Studies to Honor the Memory of Timothy Reuter is a major collection of new research, completing the publication series of the Sancta Crux/Halig Rod project. Cross and Culture in Anglo-Saxon England: Studies in Honor of George Hardin Brown.

"A breadth of interdisciplinary voices" discuss how geographical insularity - specifically that of Britain and Ireland - has affected artistic tradition.A generously illustrated collection, The Insular Tradition explores the various ways in which tradition becomes part of our definition of insular culture and cultural history. The essays are the outcome of a conference held within the Medieval Academy of America meeting at Kalamazoo in 1991. Scholars from America, Scandinavia, Britain, and Ireland came together to discuss the latest research on the remarkable Christian art which flourished among the Celtic and Anglo-Saxon peoples in the Early Medieval Period. New discoveries and a renewed research interest are shedding light on the splendid manuscript illuminations, sculpture, and metalwork of the time. Historical sources are reanalyzed and, together with modern approaches to interpretation, provide fascinating new insights into the social, economic, and spiritual background of the creative artists.This book presents a number of challenging reinterpretations of landmark achievements such as the Book of Kells, the Irish High Crosses, and the enigmatic symbolic and decorative systems of the Pictish people of Scotland. The contributors discuss the processes of creativity, the way in which influences are transmitted, the cross-fertilization of the arts in different media, and the role of trade and exchange and of the patron.Extensive illustrations, some of them difficult to source elsewhere, and comprehensive up-to-date bibliographies make the volume especially useful to those wishing to find a suitable point of entry into this expanding and ever-changing field.

Considers the definitions and implications of style in Anglo-Saxon art and literature.Art historian Meyer Schapiro defined style as "the constant form-and sometimes the constant elements, qualities, and expression-in the art of an individual or group." Today, style is frequently overlooked as a critical tool, with our interest instead resting with the personal, the ephemeral, and the fragmentary. Anglo-Saxon Styles demonstrates just how vital style remains in a methodological and theoretical prism, regardless of the object, individual, fragment, or process studied. Contributors from a variety of disciplines-including literature, art history, manuscript studies, philology, and more- consider the definitions and implications of style in Anglo-Saxon culture and in contemporary scholarship. They demonstrate that the idea of style as a "constant form" has its limitations, and that style is in fact the ordering of form, both verbal and visual. Anglo-Saxon texts and images carry meanings and express agendas, presenting us with paradoxes and riddles that require us to keep questioning the meanings of style.

Considers the definitions and implications of style in Anglo-Saxon art and literature.Art historian Meyer Schapiro defined style as "the constant form-and sometimes the constant elements, qualities, and expression-in the art of an individual or group." Today, style is frequently overlooked as a critical tool, with our interest instead resting with the personal, the ephemeral, and the fragmentary. Anglo-Saxon Styles demonstrates just how vital style remains in a methodological and theoretical prism, regardless of the object, individual, fragment, or process studied. Contributors from a variety of disciplines-including literature, art history, manuscript studies, philology, and more- consider the definitions and implications of style in Anglo-Saxon culture and in contemporary scholarship. They demonstrate that the idea of style as a "constant form" has its limitations, and that style is in fact the ordering of form, both verbal and visual. Anglo-Saxon texts and images carry meanings and express agendas, presenting us with paradoxes and riddles that require us to keep questioning the meanings of style.