Disembodied Heads in Medieval and Early Modern Culture

From a 2013 conference in Rome, 10 essays explore the trope of disembodied heads in medieval and early modern literature and art. Among the topics are Adam's skull, the meaning of the head in high medieval culture, cephalophory and relic claims, head images of John the Baptist in a political conflict, interpreting artistic self-insertion, head relics in counter-reformation Rome about 1570-1630, patterns of presentation and representation in early modern dress and portraiture, and the longevity of the heart as the primal organ in the Renaissance. Annotation c2013 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Catrien Santing (1958), Ph.D. in History, is Professor of Medieval History at the University of Groningen. She has published widely on late medieval and early modern cultural and medical history, including Blood-Symbol-Liquid, together with Jetze Touber, Louvain 2011.Barbara Baert (1967), Ph.D. in Art History, is Professor of Medieval Art at the University of Leuven. Her research is mainly interdisciplinary, regarding sacred topography, visual anthropology, relics, and female biblical figures such as Mary Magdalene and the woman with the bloodflow. Recently she published Caput Joannis in Disco. {Essay on a Man’s Head}, (Visualising the Middle Age 8), Brill-Leiden, 2012.Anita Traninger (1969), Ph.D. in Literary Studies, is Einstein Junior Fellow at the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures at Freie Universitat Berlin. Her areas of research include the history of rhetoric and discourses of knowledge in early modern Europe, with Disputation, Deklamation, Dialog (Stuttgart 2012) being her most recent book publication.