Jas Elsner | University of Oxford (original) (raw)

Videos by Jas Elsner

This video introduces J. Elsner, Eurocentric and Beyond: Art History, the Global Turn and the Pos... more This video introduces J. Elsner, Eurocentric and Beyond: Art History, the Global Turn and the Possibilities of Comparison, Beijing: OCAT, 2022. It describes the book and an aspiration for a global, non-Eurocentred comparative art history, as well as detailing soem aspects of the historiographic impasse of a discipline admirably but hopelessly mired in ancestralist Euro-American concerns.

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Papers by Jas Elsner

Amaravati: Art and Buddhism in Ancient India, 2024

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Art History, 2015

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Cambridge Critical Guide to Latin Literature, 2023

The decision to include a chapter on 'material culture' in a Critical Guide to Latin Literature b... more The decision to include a chapter on 'material culture' in a Critical Guide to Latin Literature bears witness to a fundamental truth: without 'material culture' there would be no 'Latin literature' to speak of. 1 The study of Latin is predicated on a series of physical survivals. Sometimes, albeit comparatively rarely, Latin texts are transmitted on scraps of ancient papyrus rolls or early parchment codices. 2 More often, they are preserved through Carolingian, later mediaeval and Renaissance manuscriptsthat is, by scribes who copy a text from one material context to another, thereby providing a principal source for later printed editions. 3 At other times, Latin texts come to us via epigraphic means 4whether inscribed as grand monumental declarations in stone, marble or metal (consider Augustus' Res gestae, which survives only epigraphically), 5 or else as wholly

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Edinburgh University Press eBooks, Oct 18, 2016

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Edinburgh University Press eBooks, Dec 1, 2016

In his seminal 1998 book, Homer and the Artists: Text and Picture in Early Greek Art, Anthony Sno... more In his seminal 1998 book, Homer and the Artists: Text and Picture in Early Greek Art, Anthony Snodgrass makes no mention of the Imagines, or indeed of its author, the Elder Philostratus. As Anthony would no doubt remind us, one would need have a very late (probably Byzantine) view of ‘Greek art’ to conceive of Philostratus alongside the word ‘early’. Yet the Imagines, written at around the beginning of the third century ad, provides one of the most scintillating accounts of ancient painting to survive from pre-Christian antiquity; it probes the very categories of ‘text’ and ‘picture’ that defined Snodgrass’ project.

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Edinburgh University Press eBooks, 2016

she outlines what the clergy wanted lay people to know. This included biblical stories, Psalms, p... more she outlines what the clergy wanted lay people to know. This included biblical stories, Psalms, prayers and fundamental doctrines such as the incarnation, the nature of Christ and the afterlife. Dialogue, the exploration of doubt and theories of reciprocity between human and divine all served as mechanisms through which lay instruction was undertaken and demonstrated, even if the results did not always meet clerical expectations. The brief survey of epitaphs with which the chapter ends offers a glimpse into lay attitudes towards the afterlife, perhaps less difficult to document than other theological beliefs, but still an elusive element of religious experience. Although it is not itself a study of lived Christianity in late Roman and Merovingian Gaul, the written and material evidence that B. analyses here offers many of the elements that such a study would include, with lay experience at its centre rather than its periphery. Her book can be recommended to any reader with an interest in the rich religious culture that flourished in the last phases and long aftermath of Roman imperial rule in Gaul.

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Cambridge University Press eBooks, Apr 10, 2017

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From classical Greece to Graceland, people of all religions and cultures have made sacred journey... more From classical Greece to Graceland, people of all religions and cultures have made sacred journeys to confirm their faith and their part in a larger identity. This text is a guide through the vast and varied cultural territory such pilgrimages have covered across the ages.

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Holy Smoke: Censers Across Cultures, 2023

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Scholarship and Controversy: Centenary Essays on the Life and Work of Sir Kenneth Dover, 2023

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The New Late Antiquity (ed. C. Ando and M. Formisano), Heidelberg, 2021

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German Historical Institute London: Bulletin vol. XLIV, no 2, 2022

On Museums, memory, Berlin, the WinckelmannInsititute in the Humboldt University, the Humboldt Forum

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Epitomic Writing in Late Antiquity and Beyond: Forms of Unabridged Writing, 2023

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Epitomic Writing in Late Antiquity and Beyond: Forms of Unabridged Writing, 2023

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Perspective, 2007

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Past and Present, 1992

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Monuments and Memory, 2003

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Amaravati: Art and Buddhism in Ancient India, 2024

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Art History, 2015

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Cambridge Critical Guide to Latin Literature, 2023

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Edinburgh University Press eBooks, Oct 18, 2016

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Edinburgh University Press eBooks, Dec 1, 2016

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Edinburgh University Press eBooks, 2016

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Cambridge University Press eBooks, Apr 10, 2017

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Holy Smoke: Censers Across Cultures, 2023

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Scholarship and Controversy: Centenary Essays on the Life and Work of Sir Kenneth Dover, 2023

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The New Late Antiquity (ed. C. Ando and M. Formisano), Heidelberg, 2021

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German Historical Institute London: Bulletin vol. XLIV, no 2, 2022

On Museums, memory, Berlin, the WinckelmannInsititute in the Humboldt University, the Humboldt Forum

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Epitomic Writing in Late Antiquity and Beyond: Forms of Unabridged Writing, 2023

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Epitomic Writing in Late Antiquity and Beyond: Forms of Unabridged Writing, 2023

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Perspective, 2007

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Past and Present, 1992

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Monuments and Memory, 2003

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Critical Inquiry, 2012

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On Friday 12 June, the Cult of Saints Project, in association with the Empires of Faith Project, ... more On Friday 12 June, the Cult of Saints Project, in association with the Empires of Faith Project, co-organises a colloquium dedicated to the iconography of saints in late antique art. Six talks will be given by members of the two project teams (Jaś Elsner, Bryan Ward-Perkins, Maria Lidova, and Efthymios Rizos) and guest speakers (John Mitchell and Ine Jacobs), discussing aspects of the emergent iconography of saints in Christian art.

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Seventy years ago Sirarpie Der Nersessian published a translation into French of a little known A... more Seventy years ago Sirarpie Der Nersessian published a translation into French of a little known Armenian treatise in defence of icons. Claimed by some to be the earliest example of this genre of writing to survive intact and imagined by others to have had a decisive influence on the theology of John of Damascus, it remains fundamentally unstudied. “Concerning Iconoclasm” is an extraordinary seventh-century treatise in support of the veneration of holy images. The author offers an extended argument (against an unnamed opponent) with ample textual citations from biblical and historical sources. This work offers a robust sense of the position of images within contemporary theology and culture. It also offers precious insight into a range of issues, including the relations (particularly regarding image-making) between the Armenians and Byzantines, and regarding the subject matter, and materials used to make, paintings.
Amid the flood of icon studies in recent decades, Vrt‘anēs’ contribution goes unexamined and virtually unmentioned. It is the purpose of the present Workshop to offer to the scholarly community a fresh translation into English of this critical document and to open the field to new scholarship, to which the scholars mentioned below cordially were invited to contribute from their own valuable background in the field.
The new translation prepared by Christina Maranci, Arthur H. Dadian and Ara T. Oztemel Chair of Art History, Tufts University, with Theo Maarten van Lint, Calouste Gulbenkian Chair of Armenian Studies at the University of Oxford, will be circulated in advance among the contributing participants. The place of the treatise in the history of the Armenian language and literature, the theological premises of its argument in the debate among Orthodox and Monophysite theologians, its background in earlier writings – Jewish, pagan and Christian – its contribution to the Byzantine dialogue on icon cult and its long-range impact on the history of art will all be under discussion in the two day conference.
The workshop will convene at Pembroke College, University of Oxford 30-31 October as part of the celebration of the fiftieth anniversary of the establishment of the Calouste Gulbenkian Professorship of Armenian Studies at the University of Oxford.
The workshop is convened by: Dr Jaś Elsner, Professor Thomas F. Mathews, Professor Christina Maranci, and Professor Theo Maarten van Lint.

The workshop is hosted by Theo van Lint, incumbent of the Calouste Gulbenkian Professorship of Armenian Studies and Fellow of Pembroke College, University of Oxford.

The workshop is made possible by a grant from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.

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This book reveals the rewards of exploring the relationship between art and religion in the first... more This book reveals the rewards of exploring the relationship between art and religion in the first millennium, and the particular problems of comparing the visual cultures of different emergent and established religions of the period in Eurasia-Buddhism, Hinduism, Zoroas-trianism, Islam, Judaism, Christianity and the pagan religions of the Roman world. Most of these became established and remained in play as what are called 'the world religions'. The chapters in this volume show how the long traditions of studying these topics are caught up in complex local, ancestral, colonial and post-colonial discourses and biases, which have made comparison difficult. The study of late antiquity turns out also to be an examination of the intellectual histories of modernity.

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The Seductions of Pilgrimage explores the simultaneously attractive and repellent, beguiling and ... more The Seductions of Pilgrimage explores the simultaneously attractive and repellent, beguiling and alluring forms of seduction in pilgrimage. It focuses on the varied discursive, imaginative, and practical mechanisms of seduction that draw individual pilgrims to a pilgrimage site; the objects, places, and paradigms that pilgrims leave behind as they embark on their hyper-meaningful travel experience; and the often unforeseen elements that lead pilgrims off their desired course. Presenting the first comprehensive study of the role of seduction on individual pilgrims in the study of pilgrimage and tourism, it will appeal to scholars of anthropology, cultural geography, tourism, heritage, and religious studies.

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The past two decades have been marked by a renewed concern with the agency, presence, and ontolog... more The past two decades have been marked by a renewed concern with the agency, presence, and ontological status of crafted things, witnessed in a shift of interest across several fields from questions of iconography and meaning to questions of affect and efficacy. These developments call into question some of the binary oppositions that are foundational to the epistemologies and ontologies of Enlightenment (and post-Enlightenment) thought: animate-inanimate, subject-object, material-meaning, and so forth. They raise significant questions about the nature and operation of things in the world, their materiality, their ability to act or inspire action, and their relation to speech, texts, and words. Acknowledging the need for an interdisciplinary approach to the profound questions raised by these developments, the conference aims to examine the historical antecedents for these 'new' ways of thinking about the material world, to consider their implications, and to imagine the ways in which they might help us develop novel approaches to images, things, and words.

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by Jas Elsner, Ida Toth, Marek Jankowiak, Anne McCabe, Paschalis Androudis, Emmanuel Moutafov, Pamela Armstrong, Georgios Pallis, Nicholas Melvani, Foteini Spingou, Georgios Deligiannakis, Andreas Rhoby, Antonio, Enrico Felle, Niels Gaul, Alexandra-Kyriaki Wassiliou-Seibt, Brad Hostetler, Arkadiy Avdokhin, Maria Lidova, and Paweł Nowakowski

The 49th Spring Symposium of the Society for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies INSCRIBING TEXT... more The 49th Spring Symposium of the Society
for the Promotion of Byzantine Studies
INSCRIBING TEXTS
IN BYZANTIUM:
CONTINUITIES AND TRANSFORMATIONS
18-20 March 2016, Exeter College, Oxford

In spite of the striking abundance of extant primary material – over 4000 Greek texts produced in the period between the sixth and fifteenth centuries – Byzantine Epigraphy remains largely uncharted territory, with a reputation for being elusive and esoteric that obstinately persists. References to inscriptions in our texts show how ubiquitous and deeply engrained the epigraphic habit was in Byzantine society, and underscore the significance of epigraphy as an auxiliary discipline. The growing interest in material culture, including inscriptions, has opened new avenues of research and led to various explorations in the field of epigraphy, but what is urgently needed is a synthetic approach that incorporates literacy, built environment, social and political contexts, and human agency. The SPBS Symposium 2016 has invited specialists in the field to examine diverse epigraphic material in order to trace individual epigraphic habits, and outline overall inscriptional traditions. In addition to the customary format of panel papers and shorter communications, the Symposium will organise a round table, whose participants will lead a debate on the topics presented in the panel papers, and discuss the methodological questions of collection, presentation and interpretation of Byzantine inscriptional material.

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A half-day program of discussions on material culture and the study of religion in the ancient an... more A half-day program of discussions on material culture and the study of religion in the ancient and late antique worlds run by TORCH, the British Museum and Oxford based Empires of Faith project, and the student-run Talking Religion group based at Oxford University.

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With a history of use extending back to Vedic texts of the second millennium BC, derivations of t... more With a history of use extending back to Vedic texts of the second millennium BC, derivations of the name Mithra appear in the Roman Empire, across Sasanian Persia, and in the Kushan Empire of southern Afghanistan and northern India during the first millennium AD. Even today, this name has a place in Yazidi and Zoroastrian religion. But what connection have Mihr in Persia, Miiro in Kushan Bactria, and Mithras in the Roman Empire to one another?

Over the course of the volume, specialists in the material culture of these diverse regions explore appearances of the name Mithra from six distinct locations in antiquity. In a subversion of the usual historical process, the authors begin not from an assessment of texts, but by placing images of Mithra at the heart of their analysis. Careful consideration of each example's own context, situating it in the broader scheme of religious traditions and on-going cultural interactions, is key to this discussion. Such an approach opens up a host of potential comparisons and interpretations that are often side-lined in historical accounts.

What Images of Mithra offers is a fresh approach to the ways in which gods were labelled and depicted in the ancient world. Through an emphasis on material culture, a more nuanced understanding of the processes of religious formation is proposed in what is but the first part of the Visual Conversations series.

Cover
Images of Mithra

Philippa Adrych, Robert Bracey, Dominic Dalglish, Stefanie Lenk, and Rachel Wood
General Editor Jas Elsner

Visual Conversations In Art And Archaeology

Table of Contents

Introduction
1: Reconstructions: Mithras in Rome
2: Patrons and Viewers: Dura-Europos
3: Settings: Bourg-Saint-Andéol
4: Identifications: Mihr in Sasanian Iran
5: Interpretations: Miiro in Kushan Bactria
6: Syncretisms: Apollo-Mithras in Commagene
Conclusions
Epilogue - Quetzalcoatl and Mithra

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The introduction to this volume addresses three main issues. First, it provides a critical a reas... more The introduction to this volume addresses three main issues. First, it provides a critical a reassessment of the discipline of late antique studies, going back to its very foundations and revealing its historical, cultural and political biases. Secondly, it presents and discusses the aesthetic/poetic paradigm of late antique literature and art proposed by the editors, thus setting forth the conceptual frame underlying the whole volume. To this end, notions like metaliterary twist, hybridization, poetics of the uncommon, culture of spolia, appropriationism, era of interpretation, cumulative aesthetics, poetics of the fragment/detail, etc. are briefly explained and discussed with the aid a number of representative examples. Last but not least, it explores the intriguing topicality of late antique culture in its problematic relationship to postmodern world. As usual in these pieces, the introduction also presents and justifies the volume’s aim and structure, as well as the main topics discussed by the different contributors.

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The aesthetic changes in late Roman literature speak to the foundations of modern Western culture... more The aesthetic changes in late Roman literature speak to the foundations of modern Western culture. The dawn of a modern way of being in the world, one that most Europeans and Americans would recognize as closely ancestral to their own, is to be found not in the distant antiquity of Greece nor in the golden age of a Roman empire that spanned the Mediterranean, but more fundamentally in the original and problematic fusion of Greco-Roman culture with a new and unexpected foreign element—the arrival of Christianity as an exclusive state religion. For a host of reasons, traditionalist scholarship has failed to give a full and positive account of the formal, aesthetic and religious transformations of ancient poetics in Late Antiquity. This book attempts to capture the excitement and vibrancy of the living ancient tradition reinventing itself in a new context in the hands of a series of great Latin writers mainly from the fourth and fifth centuries AD. A series of the most distinguished expert voices in later Latin poetry as well as some of the most exciting new scholars have been specially commissioned to write new papers for this volume.

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We are pleased to announce the International Colloquium Statues in Roman Religion, held by Univer... more We are pleased to announce the International Colloquium Statues in Roman Religion, held by Universidade Federal do Estado do Rio de Janeiro- UNIRIO, Brazil, and Newcastle University, UK, with the support of the British Academy (Newton Advanced International Fellowship programme).
The Colloquium will take place at the Auditorium of the Museu Histórico Nacional, MHN, Praça Marechal Câmara, s/n, Centro, Rio (http://mhn.museus.gov.br/). All welcome!

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