Brigitte Miriam Bedos-Rezak

École Nationale des Chartes (Sorbonne), France, PhD 1977

Sorbonne, Paris IV (History and Classics); Ecole nationale des chartes (Paris)

History and Theory; Semiotic Anthropology; Material Culture; Media and Communication; Historical Anthropology of the Middle Ages; Medieval Cultural Techniques; Documentary and Archival practices in the Middle Ages; Medieval France; Medieval Identity; Medieval Sign Theory; Medieval Diplomatics and Sigillography

Brigitte Bedos-Rezak’s scholarship bears primarily on medieval France (900-1600), with some attention to England, Germany, and Spain. Her early social-historical and archival work considered the modes of engagement between kingship and the northern French nobility over six centuries, particularly their documentary practices, their manipulation and domination of bureaucratic structures, their relations as clients and kindred, and their conflicting politics of prestige and cultural modeling. In the course of considering the dialectics of power among ruling elites, Bedos-Rezak observed the developing agency of media in these elites’ strategies of representation and communication from the twelfth century onward. She has demonstrated that authoritative presence and personal identity during that period came to be embodied in material artefacts (badges, insignia, seals, images, inscribed parchment), so that such artefacts were effective as agents of their users in situations requiring commitment and accountability. In her analysis of these mediatic developments, Bedos-Rezak’s work aims at constructing a semiotic anthropology of the western Middle Ages. She has explored the relationship between medieval sign theory and both the concept of and markers of personal identity. Her investigation of medieval definitions of person and identity has revealed that loci of singularity and distinction did not necessarily overlap with or result in the creation of individuality. Her present work considers the medieval imprint as an object, a process, and a metaphor, so as to probe the spectrum of active concerns during the later Middle Ages about the autonomy and agency of material signs.

Department of History; Institute of Fine Arts (IFA); Institute for the Study of the Ancient World (ISAW) Editorial Board, Revue Camaren: Cahiers Moyen Age et Renaissance (U. of Nantes, France); Editorial Board, Signs and Society (U. of Chicago); Editorial Board, Series: Cultural Histories of the Material World, Bard Graduate Center and University of Michigan Press; Editorial Board, British Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies (UK)

National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship; Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales (Paris); Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton); Mellon Fellowship (Metropolitan Museum of Art); John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship; Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries (London); Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America; Fellow of the International Committee on Diplomatics, Comité des sciences historiques.

"les Juifs et l'écrit dans la mentalité eschatologique du Moyen Age chrétien occidental (France, 1000-1200),"Annales. HSS 49/5 (1994): 1049-1063

 

“L’ au-delà du soi. Métamorphoses sigillaires en Europe médiévale,” Cahiers de civilisation médiévale49(2006) : 337-358

 

“Cutting Edge. The Economy of Mediality in Twelfth-Century Chirographic writing,” in: Modelle des Medialen im Mittelalter, ed. Christian Kiening and Martina Stercken, special issue of Das Mittelalter 15(2010): 134-161

 

“Semiotic Anthropology. The Twelfth Century Experiment,” European Transformations 950-1200, Thomas F.X. Noble and John Van Engen, ed. (Notre Dame : University of Notre Dame Press, 2011), pp. 426-467

 

Le sceau et l’art de penser au XIIe siècle, » Pourquoi le sceau ? La sigillographie, nouvel enjeu de l’histoire de l’art, ed. Marc Gil and Jean-Luc Chassel (Lille, 2011), pp. 153-176

 

Were Jews Made in the Image of God? Christian Perspectives and Jewish Experience in Medieval Europe,” inStudies in Medieval Jewish Intellectual and Social History. Festschrift in Honor of Robert Chazan, ed David Engel, Lawrence H. Shifman, Elliot R. Wolfson , Supplements to The Journal of Jewish Thought and Philosophy15 (2012): 63-96

 

“Image as Patron. Convention and Invention in Fourteenth-century France,” in Patrons and Professionals in the Middle Ages, ed. Paul Binski and Elizabeth A. New, HARLAXTON MEDIEVAL STUDIES, XXII (Donington, 2012.), pp. 216-236

 

“Outcast. Seals of the Medieval West and their Epistemological Frameworks (XIIth-XXIst centuries), in From Minor to Major: The Minor Arts in Medieval Art History, ed. Colum Hourihane (Princeton, 2012, pp.122-140

 

“The ambiguity of Representation. Semiotic Roots of Political Consent in Capetian France,” in The Capetian         Century, 1214-1314, ed. William Chester Jordan and Jenna Phillips (Turnhout: Brepols), pp. 151-182