Enfilade

Plans for this edited volume grow out of a session from this year’s meeting of the Society for French Historical Studies (March 2012 in Los Angeles). As noted at the Society of Architectural Historians:

Edited Volume: The Modern French Interior and Mass Media
Co-editors: Anca I. Lasc, Georgina Downey, and Mark Taylor

Proposals due by 19 November 2012

We invite papers that focus on the relationship between mass media (broadly defined) and the modern French interior. Since the mid-18th century, a new interest in the modern and comfortable interior, removed from the world of power, staged a gradual dislocation of life away from the court at Versailles and into the city. New patrons and new living spaces inaugurated an unprecedented interest in new building techniques, fashionable tendencies in interior decorating, and new modes of social interaction. With the 19th century, techniques of representing the modern interior witnessed an extraordinary development, enhanced by advances in photography, techniques of color reproduction, and photo-mechanical printing processes. Architectural drawings were complemented by visual representations of the modern interior in prints, books, illustrated journals, private collections, department store catalogs, photographs, guidebooks, and even film. The variety of media employed in representing the modern interior blurred the boundaries between spectacle and privacy, collecting and decorating, the fine and the decorative arts, the domestic and the commercial spheres. Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

– The invention, display, and commercialization of the modern French interior
– The modern interior and technologies of reproduction
– Privacy and publicity in the modern interior
– Mass media – advice and consumption for the home
– Visual and textual narratives of the spectacular or the tasteful interior
– The gendering and politicization of private space as mediated through representational techniques
– Advertising and selling Empire, Art Nouveau, or Art Deco interiors
– The exhibition as a new mass medium for displaying the private interior
– New representational strategies for staging the modern French interior in fine and/or commercial art
– The modern French interior, the studio, and the performed self: artists, ateliers and apartments
– The modern French interior and sexuality: dandies and divas

Please submit a 500-600 words abstract and a short C.V. to Anca I. Lasc (alasc@ship.edu), Georgina Downey (georgina01@adam.com.au) and Mark Taylor (Mark.Taylor@newcastle.edu.au).

From the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz:

The Substance of Sacred Place: An Interdisciplinary Workshop on Locative Materiality
Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut, Florence, 20-21 June 2013

Proposals due by 30 November 2012

Organised by Laura Veneskey and Annette Hoffmann

The study of holy places has long been a central concern of not only the humanities, but also the social sciences. Much of this body of scholarship has focused on pilgrimage and sacred centers, either as theoretical constructions or as concrete places, such as Jerusalem, Mecca or Benares. These subjects have been explored, on the one hand, through the study of ritual and liturgy, and on the other, through various modes of representation, be they architectural, cartographic, iconic, or textual. Complementary to these lines of inquiry, we invite papers that explore the material and tactile dimensions of locative sacrality across religious traditions. How is a sense of place communicable through physical means? What can a consideration of matter tell us about the often fraught relationship between the tangible world and its representation?

We seek analyses of all materials evocative of a particular sacred milieu, not only earth, dust, stone, but also wood, metal, pigments, oil, or water. Presentations exploring either the substances and places themselves or textual and iconic depictions thereof are equally welcome. We invite papers from all disciplines on any locale conceived of as sacred, whether scriptural, pilgrim, monastic, ascetic, or cultic, between antiquity and the early modern period. The workshop is aimed at young researchers, and is intended to bring together graduate students, postdoctoral scholars, and those in the early stages of their teaching or professional careers. Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

– Sacred landscapes (deserts, mountains, caves, etc.)
– The material dimensions of topographic representation (iconic or textual)
– Earthen, geographic, and locative relics
– Transportable versus site-specific sanctity
– The physicality of built environments and places of worship

Interested applicants should send a current c.v. and an abstract of no more than 250 words (for presentations of twenty minutes) to hoffmann@khi.fi.it and lv2308@columbia.edu). Proposals must be received by date 30th November 2012.