Convivium
The new periodical will restart and continue the glorious Seminarium Kondakovianum, the journal of the institute founded in memory of Nikodim Kondakov in 1927, which represented the desire to maintain and deepen Kondakov’s pioneering scholarly work in Byzantine and medieval studies, celebrated not only in the Russian and Czech worlds but also in western Europe.
To revive this journal at a moment of crisis in the world of publishing, specifically in scholarly publishing, is to invest in the vitality of the interests that connect eastern and western Europe and the cultural roots they share through the Mediterranean. Convivium will cover an extended chronological range, from the Early Christian period until the end of the Middle Ages, which in central Europe lasted well beyond the Renaissance in Italy. Equally vast is the range of subjects it will treat. Whereas its central concern will remain art history, that is, whatever pertains to images, monuments, the forms of visual and aesthetic experience, it will also include many disciplines tied to art history in the deepest sense: anthropology, liturgy, archaeology, historiography and, obviously, history itself. The goal is to ensure that the journal will provide a 360º opening onto the field and the research methods being deployed in it.
The people and institutions that are starting Convivium bring diverse perspectives and come from various countries. The primary institutions are the Center for Early Medieval Studies at the University of Brno, the Academy of Science in Prague and the University of Lausanne; the organizing committee includes Czech, Italian, Swiss, and American scholars; in additon, a scientific committee is being appointed to make recommendations and approve contributions.
Two numbers of the journal will be issued every year, each organized by a member of the editorial committee; all articles will be approved by a blind peer-review process. The first will focus on a theme, and the second will be a miscellany. Each issue will comprise five to ten articles (in French, English, Italian, or German), between 40,000 and 60,000 strokes long and fifteen illustrations (some in color); and it will include five book reviews. Convivium will be published in paper and digital format.
Editor-in-chief: Ivan Foletti
Editors: Klára Benešovská (IAH CAS); Ivan Foletti (Université de Lausanne, Masaryk University, Brno); Herbert L. Kessler (John Hopkins University, Masaryk University, Brno); Serena Romano (Université de Lausanne); Elisabetha Scirocco (Kunsthistorisches Institut, Florenz)
Executive editors: Alžběta Filipová, Zuzana Frantová, Francesco Lovino, Adrien Palladino, Johanna Zacharias
Editorial board: Michele Bacci (Université de Fribourg); Xavier Barral i Altet (Université de Rennes, Università di Venezia Ca' Foscari); Nicolas Bock (Université de Lausanne); Valentina Cantone (Università di Padova); Clario di Fabio (Università di Genova); Ondřej Jakubec (Masaryk University, Brno); Xenia Muratova (Université de Rennes); Assaf Pinkus (Tel Aviv University); Jiří Roháček (IAH CAS); Alicia Walker (Bryn Mawr College)