Carving Collective Practice: Working Against Monolithic Scholarship on Stone 

Organizers

Meg Bernstein, Meg Boulton, Jill Hamilton Clements, and Carolyn Twomey

Session information

Carving Collective Practice is a three-part series at IONA 2024.

Session I: Viewing Stone is a site visit and discursive workshop on early medieval stone sculpture, introducing questions about these multivalent and polyvocal monuments that will be further explored in Sessions II and III.

Session II: Handling Stone is an immersive and interactive lab on the haptic qualities of stone. Used as we are to thinking about stone monuments as things not touched or moved, this hands-on lab focuses on the physical, material, and tactile properties of stone as a worked substance that was handled, carved, and subject to changes from weather and use.

Session III: Thinking with Stone is an interdisciplinary, experimental roundtable exploring collaborative methods and conversational approaches to studying stone in the medieval period. The roundtable will consist of five- to ten-minute presentations on works in progress on a stone object or structure, a particular methodological approach to stone, or new pedagogical ideas for engagement with stone. The session provides a forum for collaborative development of these projects in a way that looks outside traditional modes of single-authored expertise.

Any questions may be sent to Meg Bernstein at meg.bernstein@gmail.com.