International Summer School “Iconography of the Southern Levant” 16.-20. September 2024
Since the 1970s, the iconography of the southern Levant has become a focus of Old Testament research, especially through the work of Othmar Keel and his circle of students. While in the early works of the emerging “Fribourg School” the pictorial evidence of the southern Levant as well as of the great cultures on the Nile, Euphrates, and Tigris, which alternately dominated this region, were initially used as illustrations of biblical texts, their value as a historical source was gradually recognized and established, thus creating an independent field of research within Old Testament scholarship. Thus, alongside textual scholarship and biblical archaeology, visual scholarship today represents a third, constitutive field for reconstructing the religious history of the southern Levant.
The international summer school is a great opportunity to combine theoretical insights of iconography with practical experience in image analysis and to meet students and lecturers from different academic contexts. In order to explore the world of images, we will work in alternation between theoretical foundations, independent practice, and methodological reflection to develop an independent methodology of iconography corresponding to the objects and artefacts as well as to the specific research perspectives, and to train specific competences in image analysis. The Archaeological Museum of the University of Münster will host us for to work with objects and artefacts in a museum environment.
Course leader:
Dr. Thomas Wagner (Wuppertal) and Dr. Silas Klein Cardoso (Bern)
Participating senior scholars:
Prof. Dr. Sara Kipfer (University of Dortmund, Old Testament)
Prof. Dr. Ursula Kocher (University of Wuppertal, Literary History)
Dr. Florian Lippke (BIBEL+ORIENT Museum, Fribourg)
Prof. Dr. Dirk Lützenkirchen-Hecht (University of Wuppertal, Physics)
Dr. Heinz-Helge Nieswandt (Archaeological Museum of the University of Münster)
Target group:
This course is targeted for Graduate Students and PhD Students in Hebrew Bible, New Testament or similar fields.
Course aim:
Students will learn the basics of image analysis and be able to apply them to objects and artefacts. On the basis of continuous methodological reflection, they will be trained to evaluate their observations in relation to their respective research questions.
Following topics will be covered through the course:
- Methodological approaches to image analysis
- Methods of material analysis
- Symbolism and emblematic
- Iconographic Exegesis
Credits info
2 EC
Contact hours: 20
Fee info:
50.00€/person (costs for accommodation, catering, travel are excluded)
Please send in your application until March, 15th, 2024 to Thomas Wagner (twagner[at]uni-wuppertal.de). We will accept a maximum of 20 participants.
