Since the 1990s, historical research has recognized church benches as communicating social, political and religious aspects (Margaret Aston, Gabriela Signori et al.). It has appreciated pews and seats as mirrors of the communities owning them and sitting on them. However, the material aspect of this issue and the heterogeneity of seat design have seldom been considered in depth. With this panel, we therefore want to discuss the culture of sitting and the issue of ownership in the church interior from a visual and material point of view. By foregrounding visual and material aspects, we aim to elucidate the entanglement between seats, owners and society. This allows approaching both perception of social status and standing as well as the symbolic importance of church spaces from a different point of view.

Our panel seeks to provide a fresh look at both well-known and less known examples of furnishings that were essential in conditioning the use and perception of church interiors. New perspectives on artistic programs, inscriptions, heterogeneous designs, conceptions, forms and later modifications of church seats are welcome. We are looking for contributions that take representations of church benches and choir stalls in art or the realia themselves from the Middle Ages to the early modern period in Europe as their starting point. Possible topics include but are not limited to:
- Signs of ownership and commemoration in script and image
- Signs of segregation: Changes to the fabric, destruction, palimpsests, structural modifications such as partitions, doors and locks
- Material, visual and spatial hierarchies: decoration and typology of pews (e.g. existence of box and family pews); pictorial programs (bench ends etc.); individual and collective hot spots in the sacral topography as reference points for preferred seating areas (e.g. altars, altarpieces, pulpits)
- Material and spatial contexts: tombs and graves, altars, wall and glass paintings

Please send a single-page abstract (maximum of 300 words) for a 15–20 minute paper, accompanied by a short CV and completed Participant Information Form https://wmich.edu/medievalcongress/submissions to Sabine Sommerer, sabine.sommerer@uzh.ch, and Tina Bawden, tina.bawden@fu-berlin.de, by 15th September 2019. There is information on the Congress and on Congress Travel Awards on the website: https://wmich.edu/medievalcongress/awards. Please feel free to contact the session organizers for further information.