The Virgin’s Milk in Global Perspective: On the Fluidity of Images and the Production of Divine Presence

International Conference, May 11, 2022; 9am-5pm (Eastern Standard Time)

Amherst College, Think Tank, Center for Humanistic Inquiry, Frost Library, Amherst College, Amherst.

Organizers: Jutta Sperling, Mati Meyer, Vibeke Olson, Bronwen Gulkis.

In conjunction with the Kinney Center for Interdisciplinary Renaissance Studies.

Funded by the Department of Religious Studies, the Department of Art and Art History, the Department of History, the Center for Humanistic Inquiry, and the Georges Lurcy Lecture Series Fund at Amherst College; the Kinney Center for Interdisciplinary Renaissance Studies, and the Time and Narrative Learning Collaborative at Hampshire College.

Zoom link: https://amherstcollege.zoom.us/j/95004062651?pwd=TmlaQVg1UzNWdlNDL3FIQ052OTFoUT09

Meeting ID: 950 0406 2651

Passcode: 969329

9-10am:

Keynote Lecture:

Liquid Flesh and the Medicine of Immortality: The Nursing Virgin Mary in Egypt

Elizabeth Bolman, Elsie B. Smith Professor in the Liberal Arts, Professor and Chair of Art History, Case Western Reserve University.

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10am - 11:15am:

I. (In)Imitable Performances: Disembodied Breasts and Kinetic Lactations

 

1. The Radical Potential in Becoming: Disembodied Breasts and Maternal Femininity

Clare Johnson, University of the West of England

Jenny Rintoul, University of the West of England

 

2. Lactatio Performed – The Kinetics of the Melun Diptych

Roland Krischel, Walraff-Richartz Museum, Cologne

 

3. Milk, Blood and Dew in Male and Female Mystical Experience: Transference and Resignification of European Iconography in Seventeenth-Century Quito

Carmen Fernández-Salvador, Universidad San Francisco de Quito

 

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11:15am – 12:30pm:

 

II. Iconographic Variance, Displaced Gestures, and (Dis)Identifications

 

4. Reassigning the Virgin’s Lactation in Byzantine Art

Mati Meyer, The Open University of Israel

 

5. The Virgo Lactans and Christ as a Mother: Suor Plautilla Nelli’s Last Supper Chrystine L. Keener, Ringling College of Art and Design, Sarasota, Florida

 

6. Essence of Mary: The Visual and Poetic Evocation of Fluids in Armenian Art

Ioanna Rapti, École Pratique des Hautes Études, Paris.

 

7. The Virgin, the Unicorn, and some Potent Drops of Milk

Christine Stephan-Kaissis, Johannes Gutenberg Universität Mainz

 

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12:30-1:pm: Lunch Break

 

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1pm - 2:15pm:

III. Function, Devotional Reception, and Patronage

 

8. The Lactating Virgin at Anzy-le-Duc: Nurturing the Devotees?

Gili Shalom, Tel Aviv University

 

9. The Nursing Virgin in the Crusader Era: A Middle Eastern Tradition?

Mat Immerzeel, Universiteit Leiden

 

10. The Madonna del Latte – the Nursing Virgin in Trecento Italy

Beth Williamson, University of Bristol

 

11. The Birgittine Tradition of the Nursing Madonna in Late Medieval Sweden

Jonas Carlquist, Umeå Universiteit

 

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2:15pm - 3:30pm:

 

IV. Miracle-Working Images

 

12. Noetic Milk of the Virgin: Theotokos Galaktotrophousa of Hilandar Monastery

Fr. Nebojsa Tumara, Saint Athanasius College

 

13. Rethinking Saidnaya: An Oil-Pouring Icon and Its History

Michele Bacci, University in Fribourg, Switzerland

 

14. The Madonna del Ponte in Montevarchi

Tiziana Bonetti, Universität Luzern

 

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3:30pm -4:15pm:

 

V. Milk of Sorrow, Milk of Creativity, Milk of Suffering: Decolonial, Feminist, and Gender-Fluid Approaches to the Visual Depiction of Lactation

 

15. Corporeal Address: The Aesthetics of Shocked Milk in Claudia Llosa’s The Milk of Sorrow 

Norman S. Holland, Hampshire College

Monique Roelofs, University of Amsterdam

 

16. Artemisia Gentileschi and the Metaphoric Female Breast

Mary D. Garrard, American University

 

17. Gender Fluid/Gendered Fluids: Considerations of Lactation and Bleeding as Exempla in the Devotional Art and Thought of the Late Middle Ages

Vibeke Olson, University of North Carolina, Wilmington

 

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4:15pm - 5:30pm:

 

VI. Copies, Hybrids, and Global Circuits

 

18. The Nursing Virgin in Mugal India

Bronwen Gulkis, Bowdoin College

 

19. The Global Circulation of a Nursing Virgin after Robert Campin: Japan, Peru, and Ethiopia

Jutta Sperling, Amherst College