Triangulating Our Vision - Issue One now on-line
Welcome to the first issue of the on-line, peer-reviewed, open-access journal Different Visions: A Journal of New Perspectives on Medieval Art. We are excited to provide this new publishing venue designed for authors and readers interested in the intersection of critical theory and medieval visual culture. We hope this journal will energize the field of medieval studies by presenting progressive scholarship in an equally progressive image-rich electronic form available on the web without charge.
Issue One is devoted to a selection of papers first presented in 2006 at the Forty-first International Congress on Medieval Studies. Corine Schleif, this issue's guest editor, and Alyce Jordan organized five sessions sponsored by the International Center of Medieval Art centered on Madeline Caviness's method of "triangulation," a way of negotiating the overlap and dissonance created when medieval objects are placed under the lens of critical theory. The resulting essays examine a variety of medieval objects ranging from manuscripts to paintings, stained glass, and tomb effigies, and engage diverse methodologies including cultural studies, gender analysis, and post-colonialism.
The second issue of Different Visions will present selected papers from sessions, also sponsored by the International Center of Medieval Art, on Monstrosity at the 2008 International Medieval Congress, Leeds, co-organized by Debra Strickland and Asa Mittman. We welcome submissions for future issues, both stand-alone articles and conference proceedings, and especially encourage approaches that engage feminist and gender analysis, historiography, semiotics, post colonialism and queer theory applied to works produced during the period from the fourth through the fifteenth century.
No journal is launched without the support and help of numerous colleagues and collaborators. Deep gratitude goes to Corine Schleif and Alyce Jordan for co-organizing and co-chairing the sessions from which the essays in this first issue derive. In addition to her work co-organizing the original sessions, Corine is due special appreciation as she willingly took on the arduous task of Guest Editor for this issue. Other individuals who provided both intellectual and moral support, as well as technical facility, also warrant enthusiastic acknowledgment. Foremost among these is Caitlain Devereaux Lewis, the designer of the Different Visions website. Finally, recognition is due to the members of the Editorial Board who have provided enthusiastic support for this venture. Without their continuing interest, Different Visions would never have come into being.
