On November 11th and 12th, The Index of Medieval Art hosted a workshop and conference on the theme of “Looking at Language,” which brought together eight scholars in a wide range of specializations to share their expertise on the multifarious relationships between language and works of medieval art. On the first day, the speakers met with medievalist graduate students in the department of Art & Archaeology for a workshop in which the students presented and discussed key questions related to their own work. On the next, the speakers offered 30-minute papers and participated in several lively Q&A sessions before gathering with the audience at an evening reception.

Conference speakers included Sarit Shalev-Eyni (Hebrew University, Jerusalem), Benjamin C. Tilghman  (Washington College / The Material Collective), Sean Leatherbury (University College Dublin), Warren T. Woodfin (Queens College, City University of New York), Ludovico V. Geymonat (Louisiana State University), Kathryn Starkey (Stanford University), Ruba Kana’an (University of Toronto, Mississauga), and Margaret S. Graves (Indiana University).

While the conference was held in person, in an ongoing effort to increase access to Index resources a free livestream of the conference was provided for listeners worldwide who were unable to travel to campus for the event. The Index also recognized Johann Spillner, a doctoral candidate at Birkbeck College, University of London, as the first recipient of an Index-sponsored travel grant intended to support a non-Princeton graduate student who wished to attend the conference in person but lacked the financial resources to do so. We hope to continue both these access-related initiatives in future conferences.

Work presented at Index Conferences is often published in the peer-reviewed Signa series in collaboration with Penn State University Press. Recent volumes and further information is available on the PSUP series page.