Happy Arbor Day
I posted notice of this collection last September, but I’m reposting it in honor of National Arbor Day. From SVEC (formerly Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century), available from the Voltaire Foundation:
Laura Auricchio, Elizabeth Heckendorn Cook and Giulia Pacini, eds., Invaluable Trees: Cultures of Nature, 1660-1830 — SVEC 2012:08 (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2012), 360 pages, ISBN 9780729410489, £65 / €95 / $110.
Trees and tree products have long been central to human life and culture, taking on intensified significance during the long eighteenth century. In this interdisciplinary volume, contributors trace changes in early modern theories of resource management and ecology across European and North American landscapes, and show how different and sometimes contradictory practices were caught up in shifting conceptions of nature, social identity, physical health and moral wellbeing.
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C O N T E N T S
Introduction
• Laura Auricchio — Elizabeth Heckendorn Cook and Giulia Pacini, Invaluable trees
I. Arboreal Lives
• Hamish Graham — ‘Alone in the forest’? Trees, charcoal and charcoal burners in eighteenth-century France
• J. L. Caradonna — Conservationism avant la lettre,? Public essay competitions on forestry and deforestation in eighteenth-century France
• Paula Young Lee — Land, logs and liberty: the Revolutionary expansion of the Muséum d’histoire naturelle during the Terror
• Peter Mcphee — ‘Cette anarchie dévastatrice’: the légende noire of the French Revolution
• Paul Elliott — Erasmus Darwin’s trees
• Giulia Pacini — At home with their trees: arboreal beings in the eighteenth-century French imaginary
II. Strategic Trees
• Elizabeth Heckendorn Cook — The vocal stump: the politics of tree-felling in Swift’s ‘On cutting down the old thorn at Market Hill’
• Michael Guenther — Tapping nature’s bounty: science and sugar maples in the age of improvement
• Meredith Martin — Bourbon renewal at Rambouillet
• Susan Taylor-Leduc — Assessing the value of fruit trees in the marquis de Fontanes’s poem Le Verger
• Elizabeth Hyde — Arboreal negotiations, or William Livingston’s American perspective on the cultural politics of trees in the Atlantic world
• Lisa Ford — The ‘naturalisation’ of François André Michaux’s North American sylva: patriotism in early American natural history
III. Arboreal Enlightenments
• Tom Williamson — The management of trees and woods in eighteenth-century England
• Steven King — The healing tree
• Nicolle Jordan — ‘I writ these lines on the body of the tree’: Jane Barker’s arboreal poetics
• Waltraud Maierhofer — Goethe and forestry
• Paula R. Backscheider — Disputed value: women and the trees they loved
• Aaron S. Allen — ‘Fatto di Fiemme’: Stradivari’s violins and the musical trees of the Paneveggio
Summaries
Bibliography
Index
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Laura Auricchio is Associate Professor of Art History and Chair of Humanities at The New School in New York. Her current research addresses Franco-American cultural exchanges in the Age of Revolution.
Elizabeth Heckendorn Cook is Associate Professor of English at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She studies the history of environmental ethics and early modern representations of trees and forests.
Giulia Pacini is Associate Professor of French at The College of William & Mary. Her current research focuses on the political and material significance of trees in early modern France.
Conference | Objects in Motion in the Early Modern World
I posted notice of this two-day conference in February, but here I’ve included the full program, and what a program! In addition to the really interesting papers, the breakout sessions look like immense fun. -CH
From The Getty:
Objects in Motion in the Early Modern World
The Getty Center, Los Angeles, 10-11 May 2013
Mounted Vase, Chinese porcelain ca. 1662–1722, French mounts, ca. 1745–49. J. Paul Getty Museum (79.DI.121.1)
The Getty Research Institute and the USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute are co-sponsoring a two-day conference, “Objects in Motion in the Early Modern World,” on Friday, May 10 and Saturday, May 11, 2013, at the Getty Center in Los Angeles, California.
An international group of scholars will examine the circulation of objects across regions and cultures in the early modern period (1500-1800), addressing the ways in which mobility led to new meanings, uses, and interpretations. Break-out sessions will invite the audience to consider these questions as we examine objects from the Getty’s collections. A closing roundtable will provide an opportunity to discuss the methodological and theoretical potential of this line of inquiry for the study and teaching of art history. The symposium is organized by Daniela Bleichmar (University of Southern California), Meredith Martin (Wellesley College), and Joanne Pillsbury (Getty Research Institute).
Admission is free. Separate reservations are required for each
day of the conference.
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F R I D A Y , 1 0 M A Y 2 0 1 3
8:30 Coffee and Pastries
9:30 Welcome, Andrew Perchuk (Getty Research Institute) and Peter Mancall (USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute)
9:35 Introductory Remarks, Daniela Bleichmar (University of Southern California) and Meredith Martin (Wellesley College)
9:45 Session 1 — Moderator: Joanne Pillsbury (Getty Research Institute)
• “The Itinerant Lives of Mexican Codices,” Daniela Bleichmar (University of Southern California)
• “Trading in the Senses: Exotica On and Off the Early Modern Dutch Marketplace,” Claudia Swan (Northwestern University)
11:15 Coffee Break
11:30 Session 2 — Moderator: Alka Patel (University of California, Irvine)
• “Diana Transformed: The Case of the Diana Automaton,” Jessica Keating (University of Southern California)
• “Translating, Transporting, and Transforming Mughal History: An Illustrated French Translation of the ‘Ain-i Akbari,” Chanchal Dadlani (Wake Forest University)
1:00 Lunch
2:00 Breakout Sessions
Lacquer Without Borders led by Arlen Heginbotham, Conservator, J. Paul Getty Museum
This tour through the Museum galleries focuses on examples of Chinese and Japanese lacquer that have been incorporated into French decorative arts and addresses the worldwide exchange of aesthetics, raw materials, and finished goods associated with the lacquer trade.
VOILA—How Science Can Help Establish a Community of Asian Lacquer Researchers, led by Michael Schilling, Senior Scientist, Getty Conservation Institute
Ever wondered why scientists study cultural heritage? This tour of the Organic Materials Laboratory at the Getty Conservation Institute illustrates the role of science in uncovering the mysteries of Asian lacquer, the topic of a recent workshop for conservators and scientists hosted by the Institute.
Looking East: Rubens’s Encounter with Asia, led by Stephanie Schrader, Curator, J. Paul Getty Museum
This exhibition tells an intriguing story about early trade between Europe and Asia, the trafficking of Asian slaves, a shipwreck, the role of Jesuit missionaries in the East, and an unusual hat. Featuring a masterpiece from the Getty collection, Man in Korean Costume, the exhibition includes important scholarship that illuminates unexplored facets of Peter Paul Rubens’s much-celebrated career.
An Evolving Understanding of the Object via Art History and Science: La Roldana’s San Ginés, led by Maite Alvarez, Project Specialist, and Jane Bassett and Brian Considine, Conservators, J. Paul Getty Museum
In the early modern period, materials such as pigments, woods, and dyes traveled across the globe. Scientific advances have enabled these global materials to be more clearly identified; in fact, material identification has became such a part of art history that larger questions are often missed: How do we come to the conclusions we come to? How do we bring out true knowledge rather than conjecture? What are the implications and what is at stake? This session examines Spanish artist La Roldana’s polychrome wood sculpture San Ginés and her use of New World materials like cochineal, indigo, and cedar. An interdisciplinary team of scholars arrived at a new understanding of this work through the combined application of art history and science.
From Military Campaigns to Museum Collections, led by Louis Marchesano, Curator, and Peter Bonfitto, Senior Project Management Coordinator, Getty Research Institute
Napoleon’s military expedition in Egypt was a monumental failure, but it provided both the French and the English an opportunity to seize the country’s riches. This session presents a variety of publications related to the military campaign, including the multivolume Description de l’Égypte (1809–28), auction catalogs, and museum publications.
Imperial Impressions: Chinese Engravings and French Models, led by Marcia Reed, Chief Curator, Getty Research Institute
Rare prints from the Getty Research Institute’s collections demonstrate the evolution of China’s cultural exchange with Europe during the Qing Dynasty.
Facing East: The Western View of Islam in Early Modern Europe, led by David Brafman, Curator, Getty Research Institute
The Getty Research Institute’s rare books and manuscripts from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment display the evolving knowledge of Islamic art and culture in early modern Europe.
Untold Stories: Collecting and Transforming Medieval Manuscripts, led by Elizabeth Morrison, Curator, J. Paul Getty Museum
For hundreds of years, manuscripts have been bought and sold, hidden and displayed, preserved and rearranged, loved and forgotten, cut into pieces, hung on the wall, and glued into albums. Drawn from the Getty Museum’s permanent collection and featuring several outside loans, this exhibition reveals how manuscripts have been refashioned both conceptually and physically and explores the long and eventful history of these books before their arrival at the Museum.
3:15 Session 3 — Moderator: Stephen Little (Los Angeles County Museum of Art)
• “Mirror Reflections: Louis XIV, Phra Narai, and the Material Culture of Kingship,” Meredith Martin (Wellesley College)
• “Coins for Candles: Asian Commodities and the Visual Culture of Spanish America,” Dana Leibsohn (Smith College)
4:45 Reception
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S A T U R D A Y , 1 1 M A Y 20 1 3
8:30 Coffee and Pastries
9:30 Session 4 — Moderator: Charlene Villaseñor Black (University of California, Los Angeles)
• “From the Rue Saint-Jacques to the Paraguayan Outback: The Itinerant lives of Rococo Decorative Prints in Eighteenth-Century South America,” Gauvin Alexander Bailey (Queen’s University, Ontario, Canada)
• “Monumentality in Motion: A Mughal Audience Tent in Late Eighteenth-Century Jodhpur,” Zirwat Chowdhury (Center for 17th- and 18th-Century Studies, University of California, Los Angeles)
11:00 Coffee Break
11:15 Session 5 — Moderator: Polly Roberts (University of California, Los Angeles)
• “Porcelain Objects and Mercantile Aesthetics: Trading Culture in Coastal East Africa,” Sandy Prita Meier (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign)
• “Chairs, Writing Tables, and Chests: On the Postures of Commercial Documentation in the Early Modern Indian Ocean,” Nancy Um (SUNY–Binghamton)
12:45 Lunch
2:00 Session 6 — Moderator: Sean Roberts (University of Southern California)
• “Classicizing the New: The Publication of the History of the New World (Tarih ül-Hind il garbi el-müsemma bi-Hadis-i nev),” Avinoam Shalem (Institut für Kunstgeschichte, Munich)
• “Technology in Paradise,” Mary Sheriff (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill)
3:30 Coffee Break
3:45 Closing Roundtable Discussion
5:15 Closing Reception
Call for Papers | London and the Americas, 1492-1812
Society of Early Americanists | London and the Americas, 1492-1812
Kingston University 17-19 July 2014
Proposals due by 1 September 2013
This thematic interdisciplinary conference of the Society of Early Americanists will examine London’s connections with the Americas in the colonial era. It will focus on the role that Europe’s largest urban center played in the structuring of an Atlantic world inscribed, amidst both war and peace, by networks of trade, travel, religion, kinship, cultural identification, captivity, slavery, and governance. At the same time, participants will consider how the Americas in particular shaped the geography, both actual and metaphorical, of early modern London (that is, the cities of London and Westminster), influencing its practices, hierarchies, infrastructures, modes of representation, arrangements of space, and movements of peoples. The focus will thus be on London as both recipient and source of transmission and interaction, connected imaginatively and actually with American regions under the control of other European powers as well as with its own colonies.
Hosted by the School of Humanities at Kingston University London, the conference will take place on the University’s campus in South West London, a 25-minute train ride from central London and a short bus ride from Heathrow Airport. Housing options will include university dormitories as well as a diverse array of local hotels.
Proposals are welcome for individual papers or complete panels. Innovative panel formats are welcome along with traditional trios of 20-minute papers. Please send 250 word proposals by October 1, 2013, to: sea14london@gmail.com
Program Committee:
Kristina Bross, Purdue University, co-chair
Laura Stevens, University of Tulsa, co-chair
Eve Tavor Bannet, University of Oklahoma
George Boudreau, Pennsylvania State University Harrisburg
Brycchan Carey, Kingston University
Jonathan Field, Clemson University
Christopher Loar, University of California Davis
Oliver Scheiding, University of Mainz
Enfilade 
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