The 2019 SHERA Emerging Scholar Prize was awarded to Alice Isabella Sullivan (University of Michigan) for her article “The Athonite Patronage of Stephen III of Moldavia, 1457-1504,” Speculum 94.1 (2019): 1-46.

The jury consisted of Carolyn Guile, Colleen McQuillen, Marie-Alice L’Heureux.

Jury commendation: After contextualizing Stephen III’s activities within the mid-fourteenth-century legacy of patronage directed from within the sub-Carpathian Romanian-speaking lands, Sullivan demonstrates how the Prince’s “aspirations as a Christian ruler and protector of Orthodox faith” (8) in a kingdom perceived as a bulwark of Christianity, and his fashioning himself “an heir to the authority of Byzantine emperors among Christian peoples under Ottoman control”(4) motivated his activities as a patron of Athonite monasteries of the “Holy Mount”. The committee felt this highly original study deserves the Prize for its new and significant contribution to our understanding of not only how sacred landscapes developed within the northeastern Greek territories in the nearly fifty-year period of Stephen III’s rule, but also how princely patronage from Europe’s eastern borderlands had a direct and profound impact on the broader reification of Byzantine culture after the fall of Constantinople in 1453. Whereas previous scholarship has tended to focus on the study of Byzantine ideology in these lands (historical Wallachia, Moldavia) in the sixteenth-eighteenth centuries, Sullivan turns a conventional center-periphery argument on its head. An impressive linguistic and material array of primary sources that includes liturgical artifacts, vestments, manuscripts, buildings, inscriptions, and monetary records in Church Slavonic, Greek and Romanian underpins Sullivan’s deft elucidation of the connection between cross-cultural exchange and contemporary patronage. The committee would like to recognize and praise the intellectual work that a study of this type requires, the clarity of its presentation, and the demonstration of how the study of “borderland” territories is essential to how we interpret and theorize cross-cultural exchange.

Next Emerging Scholar Prize deadline: September 30, 2020

SHERA is currently seeking self-nominations and nominations for three positions on the SHERA Board:

Web News Editor (1-year term, with subsequent 2-year option for renewal, begins January 1, 2020). The Web News Editor maintains and updates the Society’s website and social media accounts.

Secretary-Treasurer (2-year term, January 1, 2020 – January 1, 2022). The Secretary-Treasurer oversees the Society’s bank accounts, maintains the membership directory, and oversees elections for officers and By-Laws amendments.

Listserv Administrators (2-year term, January 1, 2020-January 1, 2022). Listserv Administrators oversee and moderate H-SHERA.

SHERA seeks to include among its leaders colleagues at every career stage, from diverse professional backgrounds, and with a broad range of research specialties. Please consider getting involved with SHERA in a formal role to help shape the future of the organization.

For more information on any of these positions, please contact the SHERA Board at shera.artarchitecture@gmail.com.

Please submit nominations to shera.membership@gmail.com by Sunday, December 8. Online voting will take place December 9-13, 2018.

SHERA Membership Renewals!

Membership in the Society of Historians of East European, Eurasian, and Russian Art and Architecture (SHERA) is open to all those interested in the study of the visual and material cultures of Eastern Europe, Eurasia, and Russia from the pre-modern periods into the present. SHERA has members across the world and continues to grow as an organization. Please consider renewing your SHERA Membership for 2020, and encourage other friends and colleagues to join! SHERA Membership is open to students, teachers of any rank at any institution (elementary, secondary, college, university), art and architecture professionals, independent scholars, curators, librarians, art dealers, collectors, and any other individual or institutions who are interested in the work and mission of the organization.

SHERA members receive the following benefits:

· Regular news and updates through SHERA’s communication platform, the H-SHERA network on H-Net.

· SHERA Website with details about the organization and resources

· SHERA Directory with specialists in East European, Eurasian, and Russian art and architecture

· SHERA Reviews of recent publications

· Sponsorship of Conference Sessions: SHERA sponsors sessions at CAA and ASEEES every year.

· Graduate Student / Independent Scholar Research Grant in the amount of $500 for research and/or study toward the completion of a thesis, dissertation, or publication (deadline: April 15)

· Graduate Student / Independent Scholar Travel Grants for CAA and ASEEES to defray the cost of attending the conference (deadlines: June 1 for ASEEES; October 1 for CAA)

· Emerging Scholar Prize that recognizes and encourages original and innovative scholarship in the field (deadline: September 30)

Memberships are valid 1 January 2020 - 31 December 2020.

2020 MEMBERSHIP FEES (in USD): Student ($15), Member ($30), Contributor ($50), Sustainer ($100), Patron ($250), Sponsor ($500).

Institutions can become SHERA Institutional Members ($150), which includes a free individual membership for a representative of the institution.

You may JOIN or RENEW your membership online (http://www.shera-art.org/membership/renew.php) or with a check, mailed to the address on the attached form. Please, be in touch if you have any questions or concerns.

For those attending the College Art Association Annual Conference in February, we’re looking forward to seeing you in New York! Please add to your calendars the following SHERA events:

SHERA Business Meeting, followed by lunch:

Friday, 2/15, 12:30 pm, New York Hilton Midtown - 2nd Floor - Madison Suite

We’ll hold a 20 min. business meeting at the Hilton and then adjourn for further discussion and refreshment at the Russian Samovar (256 W. 52nd St.). If you plan to join us for lunch, RSVP here.

SHERA-Affiliated Panel:

Saturday, 2/16, 2-3:30pm, New York Hilton Midtown - 2nd Floor – Gramercy West

“Looking East: Russian Orientalism in a Global Context,” organized by Maria Taroutina and Allison Leigh, with papers by Ekaterina Heath, Andrew Nedd, Katrin Kaufmann, Inessa Kouteinikova, and Marie Gasper-Hulvat.

If you’re participating in or know of a panel that might be of interest to SHERA members, please post it on H-SHERA or send the information to us at shera.artarchitecture@gmail.com so that we can compile a list and send it out before the conference.

Dear Sheraens,

At the end of my term as President of SHERA I would like to thank all Board members for their hard work to keep our Society in good shape, increasing membership, posting our news, and contributing to making progress. Thanks go to all SHERA members for enthusiastically participating in our activities, sharing news of their work, achievements, and publications, and participate in our sponsored sessions at CAA and ASEEES. We greatly appreciate the continued support of our institutional members.

Thanks to the organizing work of Karen Kettering and the jury she recruited, we were able to establish the long-planned Emerging Scholar Essay Prize and award it in 2017 and 2018. We owe thanks to the anonymous donor who made it possible for us to award a SHERA Travel Grant for a confirmed speaker to facilitate attendance of CAA or ASEEES respectively in alternating years.

It would have been very difficult to oversee our activities without the continued counseling and attention of former Presidents Margaret Samu and Natasha Kurchanova.

It has been an honor for me to serve and I am confident that SHERA continues to make further progress under the guardianship of our new President and the continuing service of our Officers.

I wish a Happy Holiday Season to all of you and look forward to meeting up at our SHERA-sponsored sessions and other venues.

With Greetings to All, Eva Forgacs

The SHERA board is pleased to announce that Dr. Ekaterina Heath of the University of Sydney has been selected as the recipient of the SHERA Graduate Student / Independent Scholar Travel Grant for CAA 2019. She will deliver her paper entitled “Picturing the Cathay in Russia: Political use of Chinoiserie interiors under Empress Elisabeth Petrovna and Emperor Peter III” in the panel “Looking East: Russian Orientalism in a Global Context.” For more details see CAA’s webpage.

On April 5-6, 2019, the Society of Historians of East European, Eurasian, and Russian Art and Architecture will co-host “Eclecticism at the Edges: Medieval Art and Architecture at the Crossroads of the Latin, Greek, and Slavic Cultural Spheres,” along with the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies, the Department of Art & Archaeology at Princeton University, the International Center of Medieval Art, and The Index of Medieval Art at Princeton University. This two-day symposium focuses on the art, history, and culture of Eastern Europe between the 14th and the 16th centuries.

In response to the global turn in art history and medieval studies, “Eclecticism at the Edges” explores the temporal and geographic parameters of the study of medieval art, seeking to challenge the ways in which we think about the artistic production of Eastern Europe from the fourteenth through the sixteenth centuries. This event will serve as a long-awaited platform to examine, discuss, and focus on the eclectic visual cultures of the Balkan Peninsula and the Carpathian Mountains, the specificities, but also the shared cultural heritage of these regions. It will raise issues of cultural contact, transmission, and appropriation of western medieval and Byzantine artistic and cultural traditions in eastern European centers, and consider how this heritage was deployed to shape notions of identity and visual rhetoric in these regions that formed a cultural landscape beyond medieval, Byzantine, and modern borders.

Keynote Lectures

Dr. Jelena Erdeljan (University of Belgrade): Cross-Cultural Entanglement and Visual Culture in Eastern Europe c. 1300–1550

Dr. Michalis Olympios (University of Cyprus): “Eclecticism,” “Hybridity,” and “Transculturality” in Late Medieval Art: A View from the Eastern Mediterranean

Symposium Speakers

Dr. Vlad Bedros (National University of Arts, Bucharest): A Hybrid Iconography: The Lamb of God in Moldavian Wall Paintings

Dr. Elena Boeck (DePaul University): A Timeless Ideal: Constantinople in the Slavonic Imagination of the 14th–16th Centuries

Dr. Gianvito Campobasso (University of Fribourg): Eclecticism Among Multiple Identities: The Visual Culture of Albania in the Late Middle Ages

Krisztina Ilko (Ph.D. Candidate, Metropolitan Museum of Art Fellow): The Dormition of the Virgin: Artistic Exchange and Innovation in Medieval Wall Paintings from Slovakia

Dr. Nazar Kozak (National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine): Post-Byzantine Art as a Network: Mobility Trajectories of the Akathistos Cycle in the Balkans, the Carpathians, and Beyond

Dr. Dragoş Gh. Năstăsoiu (Centre for Medieval Studies, National Research University, Moscow): Appropriation, Adaptation, and Transformation – Painters of Byzantine Tradition Working for Catholic Patrons in 14th- and 15th-century Transylvania

Dr. Ovidiu Olar (Nicolae Iorga Institute of History of the Romanian Academy, Bucharest): A Murderer Among the Seraphim: Prince Lăpuşneanu’s Transfiguration Embroideries for Slatina Monastery

Dr. Ida Sinkević (Lafayette College): Serbian Royal Mausolea: A Reflection of Cultural Identity?

Dr. Christos Stavrakos (University of Ioannina / Greece): Donors, Patrons and Benefactors in Mediaeval Epirus between the Great Empires: A Society in Change or a Continuity?

The symposium is free, but registration is required to guarantee seating. Please register here. For any queries, please contact the organizers at eclecticism.symposium@gmail.com.

SHERA-sponsored panel at ASEEES 2019 (Deadline February 1, 2019)

The SHERA Board invites proposals for the Society’s sponsored panel at the 2019 ASEEES Annual Conference. The conference will be held in San Francisco from November 23 to 26, 2019 and the theme is “Belief.” More information on the convention theme can be found here. As an affiliated society, SHERA may submit one sponsored panel. This session has guaranteed acceptance from ASEEES and will be identified as an Affiliated Society session in all ASEEES conference schedules (printed, online, and in the conference app).

Proposed panels must focus on issues of art, architecture, visual culture, or any of the fields concerning SHERA as a Society.

All members of the proposed panel must be members of ASEEES and SHERA in good standing and must register for the conference. Please submit:

1. Title and a brief description of the panel (no more than 250 words)
2. Names of all panel members, including chair and discussants, and a brief CV (no more than two pages) for each
3. Brief descriptions of each paper (no more than 250 words)

Proposals should be sent to shera.artarchitecture@gmail.com with the subject heading “SHERA-sponsored panel at ASEEES 2019.”

Information joining SHERA can be found here. Information on joining ASEEES can be found here.

The deadline for submission of panels to ASEEES is February 15, 2019. Therefore, applications must be sent to the SHERA Board by February 1, 2019 for notification on February 10, 2019.

Please join us for SHERA’s annual business meeting, followed by an informal hors d’oeuvres reception at this year’s ASEEES meeting in Boston. We will be discussing future projects, calling for nominations for board positions, and announcing the recipient of this year’s Emerging Scholar Prize! All members and non-members are welcome to attend.

Date: Friday, December 7, 8:00 to 9:30pm Location: Boston Marriott Copley Place, 3rd floor, Brandeis Room Business meeting at 8pm, reception to follow at 8:30-9:30 pm

We ask that those who can, please contribute $25 toward the cost of food and drinks, either at the reception or via our online donation page: http://shera-art.org/donate

Please RSVP here.

SHERA Graduate Student / Independent Scholar Travel Grant for participation in CAA 2019

Thanks to a generous donation from an anonymous donor, the Society is pleased to announce the SHERA Graduate Student / Independent Scholar Travel Grant to defray travel costs through the awarding of up to $1,000 for local travel and up to $1,500 for international travel to one member presenting a paper at the CAA Annual Conference or the ASEEES Annual Convention. The grant is given for five consecutive years (2017-2021), alternating between the CAA conferences and the ASEEES conventions, beginning with CAA 2017 in New York City. The alternating order of the subsequent grants is as follows: CAA 2017, ASEEES 2018, CAA 2019, ASEEES 2020, CAA 2021.

Applications will be evaluated based on the academic merit of the paper topic and financial need. SHERA is especially committed to subsidizing a graduate student or independent scholar who is attending the conference for the first time and presenting a paper, and who has no local institutional resources for travel support. Eligible independent scholars are those SHERA members who have been awarded the Ph.D. within the previous five years. For the CAA 2019 grant, applications are limited to those who have received the Ph.D. no earlier than 2013. Applicants must be SHERA members in good standing and must submit:

1. the title and a brief description of their paper (no more than 250 words);
2. a brief CV (no more than two pages);
3. the names of the chair(s) and the title of the panel in which the applicant is participating;
4. and, a brief statement demonstrating need.

For more information on membership or to become a member, see http://shera-art.org/membership/join-shera.php Within two months after the conference, the recipient is required to submit to the SHERA Board a brief report outlining how participation in the conference furthered the development of their research. If the recipient has to withdraw from the conference for any reason, all funds must be returned to SHERA no later than the opening day of the conference. Applications are due December 9 for notification on December 21. All application materials should be sent to shera.prizes@gmail.com.