Enfilade

Lecture in New York: Robert Adam against Palladio

Posted in lectures (to attend) by Editor on February 2, 2011

From the Parsons website:

Erika Naginksi, Contra Palladio
Parsons The New School for Design, New York, 3 February 2011

This talk broaches the question of Palladio’s critical legacy from the vantage of Robert Adam’s repudiation of the prevailing Palladianism of his time. The aim here is two-fold: first, to consider how Classical eclecticism and an interest in what Adam construed as “movement … the rise and fall, the advance and recess” of architectural form might have functioned as correctives to what in his eyes stood as the rigidity, predictability and mimicry of the Palladian system (as laid down by Lord Burlington); and second, to speculate more broadly on the tension between, on the one hand, the architect’s ambition to recodify Palladio, and on the other, to renounce the results that codification inevitably produces.

Erika Naginski is Associate Professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. A historian of 17th- and 18th-century art and architecture, Naginski addresses early modern aesthetic philosophy and the critical traditions of architectural history. Her publications include Sculpture and Enlightenment (Getty Research Institute, 2009), a study of commemoration in an age of secular rationalism and revolutionary politics; Polemical Objects (2004), a special issue of Res co-edited with Stephen Melville, which explores the philosophy of medium in Hegel, Heidegger and others; and Writing on Drawing (2000) for the journal Representations, with essays on the collision of semiotics and mimesis in drawing practices. She has been a fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows, The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, the Clark Art Institute, and the Deutsches Forum für Kunstgeschichte.  In 2007, she was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship for a book project on the intersections of architecture, archaeology and conceptions of history in the late 17th and 18th centuries.

Call for Papers: Literary London

Posted in Calls for Papers by Editor on February 2, 2011

Though primarily a literary conference, organizers are interested in interdisciplinary work that addresses issues of architecture, urban space, &c. From the conference website:

Literary London 2011: Representations of London in Literature, An Interdisciplinary Conference
The Institute of English Studies, University of London, 20-22 July 2011

Proposals due by 31 March 2011

Organised by the University of Northampton, Kingston University, London, and the Institute of English Studies, University of London

The 10th Annual Literary London conference will be hosted by the Institute of English Studies, University of London. The Institute is located in Bloomsbury, at the centre of literary London, and just a few minutes’ walk from such attractions as the British Library, the British Museum, and the clubs, pubs, and restaurants of Soho. It is at the heart of London: one of the world’s major cities with a long and rich literary tradition reflecting both its diversity and its significance as a cultural and commercial centre. Literary London 2011 aims to:

  • Read literary and dramatic texts in their historical and social context and in relation to theoretical approaches to the study of the metropolis.
  • Investigate the changing cultural and historical geography of London.
  • Consider the social, political, and spiritual fears, hopes, and perceptions that have inspired representations of London.
  • Trace different traditions of representing London and examine how the pluralism of London society is reflected in London literature.
  • Celebrate the contribution London and Londoners have made to English literature and drama.

Proposals are invited for 20-minute papers which consider any period or genre of literature about, set in, inspired by, or alluding to central and suburban London and its environs, from the city’s roots in pre-Roman times to its imagined futures. While the main focus of the conference will be on literary texts, we actively encourage interdisciplinary contributions relating film, architecture, geography, theories of urban space, etc., to literary representations of London. Papers from postgraduate students are particularly welcome for consideration. While papers on all areas of literary London are welcomed, the conference theme in 2011 is ‘Green London’. Topics that might be addressed are: (more…)