Activities International conference: Armenian and Georgian Women Patrons (IX-XIV Centuries)

International conference: Armenian and Georgian Women Patrons (IX-XIV Centuries)

The growing number of studies dealing with female agency in medieval Eurasia has necessitated forging new ways of analysing socio-political and cultural histories of the relevant regions. One useful category to approach this question is patronage, which—despite its etymology—has proven productive for tracing medieval women. Despite some forays into this subject of study, patronage has a still unexplored potential for offering answers to larger questions dealing with socio-religious systems and political-administrative realities of premodern societies. By exploring women’s patronage practices, including their self-representation through art or inscriptions among others, one may start to draw patterns of behaviour and social norms that go beyond religious or linguistic boundaries, opening up new opportunities of studying entanglements. This third and final conference within the ERC-funded ArmEn project is dedicated to this subject with a focus on women patrons hailing from medieval Armenian and Georgian lands, who were active in the greater region that covers south of the Caucasus to the Eastern Mediterranean and Northern Syria. The purpose of this two-day meeting is twofold: it aims to reflect on the state-of-the-art and to explore the forms and functions of female patronage through the lens of architectural, artistic, and intellectual creations. While the preferred chronological span of this inquiry is the ninth to the fourteenth centuries, case studies dealing with other periods are also welcome insofar as they contribute to advancing the knowledge on medieval Armenian and Georgian female patronage, with an aim of placing it in a wider context.

24–25 November 2025

SAGAS Department, University of Florence

Florence, Palazzo Fenzi, via San Gallo 10

 

The full programme is available here.

and further details will be announced soon.