The Arts of Meditation

Kalamazoo Session

The WUN (Worldwide Universities Network) is sponsoring a session on the arts of meditation at the 2006 International Congress on Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo (May 4-7).

Rather than focusing on the theory of meditation, it is the practice thereof which will be our concern. Meditative practice can incorporate any part of lived experience - be it secular or religious -, or inspirations provided by any of the five senses. Because of the diversity of tools available to the practicant—the voice, the imagination, props, images, literary devices, etc.—meditative practices can be found throughout the ages albeit in very different forms. The study of meditative practices or the tools of meditation can therefore be divvied up among the disciplines. We hope to create a space of intersection in which scholars working with the tools of meditation can come together to expand their vision of what these are and how such tools work.

We welcomed abstracts for papers from any disciplinary background from any period of the Middle Ages. We are particularly interested in:

Poetry, prayer, manuscript illumination, sculpture, paintings, architecture, processional pathways, music, liturgy, instrumental music, but also natural phenomena.

Both the use of meditative practices to create a work of art and the use of art as meditative tool are of interest. Meditation for a secular purpose is as relevant to this session as the religious contemplation. We have chosen three papers that we think will work particularly well together. Glenn Young will discuss a subject dear to me, body and word, in his paper, "An Artistry of Body and Word: Contemplative Practice in Richard Rolle and The Cloud of Unknowing." We will have a paper by Emily Kelly on images adorning a chapel in Catalunya that may very well have served as meditative tools for the religious of the convent of Poor Clares at Pedralbes. Finally Professor Alvarez will speak about the literature and practices of the Spanish mystic Teresa de Cartagena.

Their abstracts are posted here.