Enfilade

From the YCBA:

The Romantic Eye, 1760–1860 and Beyond
Yale University, New Haven, 17–18 April 2015

Proposals due by 2 February 2015

This symposium examines Romanticism as a shape-shifting cultural phenomenon that resists easy categorization. Focusing on the period from 1760 to 1860, the symposium embraces the amorphousness that has been ascribed to Romanticism historically by eschewing any limiting definition of it, seeking instead to explore the broad range of art and visual culture characterized as ‘Romantic’ during this hundred-year span. We are interested in what the Romantic ‘eye’ pursued and perceived, and how it set itself the task of recording those perceptions. In addition to interrogations of the relationship between the visual arts and Romanticism, we welcome papers on writers, composers, scientists, and philosophers whose projects engaged the visual. Papers also are sought for a special panel that will address the legacies of Romanticism in contemporary art.

This symposium coincides with a major collaborative exhibition organized by the Yale Center for British Art and the Yale University Art Gallery, The Critique of Reason: Romantic Art, 1760–1860, which opens March 6, 2015. The exhibition comprises more than three hundred paintings, sculptures, medals, watercolors, drawings, prints, and photographs by such iconic artists as William Blake, John Constable, Honoré Daumier, David d’Angers, Eugène Delacroix, Henry Fuseli, Théodore Géricault, Francisco de Goya, John Martin, and J. M. W. Turner. Talks that respond explicitly to works in the collections of the Yale Center for British Art or the Yale University Art Gallery are particularly encouraged, as are cross-disciplinary and comparative studies.

We are seeking presentations of thirty minutes in length. Graduate students and early career scholars are particularly encouraged to apply. Travel and accommodation costs will be covered by the organizers. Please e-mail abstracts of no more than three hundred words and a short CV or bio (no more than two pages) by February 2, 2015, to romanticism2015@gmail.com.

The symposium is co-sponsored by the Department of the History of Art at Yale University, the Yale Center for British Art, the Yale University Art Gallery, and the Yale Student Colloquia Fund.

From the conference website:

Echoes—Reflections: German Studies Graduate Conference
Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, 24–25 April 2015

Proposals due by 31 January 2015

Keynote Speaker: Professor Avital Ronell, New York University

Ich kann Dich noch sehn: ein Echo.
Ertastbar mit Fühl-
wörtern, am Abschieds-
grat.  –Paul Celan, “Ich kann Dich noch sehen”

At the ridge of language, language resounds as an echo—an echo that is the other of and in language, resounding in repetitions and transformations, always already endangered to be forgotten in impending silence. Silence haunts the end of each line break, each seismic shift, in the first stanza of Celan’s poem “Ich kann Dich noch sehen” (1967), which addresses the echo as an aesthetic phenomenon at the outer limit of presence. The outer limit of presence marked by the echo is never one of merely sound or speech, but towards and for a lost presence that has ceased to be hearable as well as visible. Such an interrelation of voice and reflection is also central to Ovid’s classical rendition of the myth about the nymph Echo: she is forced to repeat the words of her vis-à-vis, while Narcissus, at the brim of a well, falls in love with his own image.

Since the 18th century, the evasive echo has been a point of reflection in German literature and philosophy. From Lessing to Herder and Kant, aesthetic re-flection attempted to correct, enrich, and complement ethical and political discourse, whether as a subjective faculty, Besinnung, or the counterpart of conceptual knowledge. Between loss and intensification, echoes of thought and language reverberate through Hegel’s speculative logic, the Romantics’ idea of art as a medium of reflection, Nietzsche’s Genealogy of Morals, and Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory. In the 20th century, during which concepts such as history and historical time were continuously challenged, the echo allowed for a rethinking of nonlinear and discontinuous forms of correspondence, interruption, and similarity. While Walter Benjamin emphasizes the translator’s task of perceiving the “echo of the original,” Heidegger, Celan, and others, in turn, take up the concern of how the pursuit of such an origin remains enmeshed in questions of historical specificity, politics, and rhetoric. (more…)

From H-ArtHist:

Discovering Dalmatia in 18th- and 19th-Century Travelogues, Pictures, and Photographs
Institute of Art History – Center Cvito Fiskovic in Split, Croatia, 21–23 May 2015

Proposals due by 28 February 2015

The idea of the Grand Tour, which began in the 17th century, gained extreme popularity throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. Although the Grand Tour originally focused on Rome, the exploration of  the Ancient World, in which the origins of the Neoclassical period lay, its reach widened to further areas once part of the Roman Empire, among which Dalmatia held a prominent position. Drawings and literary works by travel writers-artists from that period are treasured in prestigious European museums and libraries and together constitute a priceless portion of the European cultural heritage.

There are two fundamental reasons why Dalmatia became a major destination of the European Grand Tour in the 18th and the 19th centuries: it presented a fountainhead of Ancient forms, knowledge of which helped in the quest for a universal language of architecture, and in addition it was almost an uncharted territory inspiring Enlightenment intellectuals to discover and get to know the world.

Ancient architecture presented the dominant cultural infrastructure of that period in Europe. The outline of the European Grand Tour embraces places which preserved the traces of those idealised times. However, travel writers also collected information of another kind; on the topography and customs, language and religion and in short a general representation of the area they wanted to come to know and write about.

The overall aim of the conference is to identify, problematise and integrate the issues related to the phenomenon of description of space, predominantly Dalmatian. This phenomenon was a formative factor in the development of European Neoclassicism and Romanticism in literature, the arts and architecture. Invited to the conference, accordingly, are art historians, literature comparatists, historians, architecture historians and theorists and experts from cognate disciplines to contribution to the research into the role of Dalmatia in the European Grand Tour in all its aspects.

The conference arises out of the research project Dalmatia: A Destination of European Grand Tour in the 18th and the 19th Century (2014–2017) of the Institute of Art History, under the aegis of the Croatian Science Foundation. Please visit our website to learn more about the project.

We welcome proposals for 20-minute papers. Proposals should consist of a 250-word abstract and 1-page CV, sent via email as a pdf attachment to asverko@ipu.hr by 28 February 2015. Notification of acceptance will be sent by 9 March 2015. If you have questions about the conference, please contact the organizing committee at asverko@ipu.hr.

Academic Committee
Josko Belamaric (Institute of Art History – Centre Cvito Fiskovic Split)
Cvijeta Pavlovic (University of Zagreb, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences)
Milan Pelc (Institute of Art History Zagreb)
John A. Pinto (Princeton University)
Ana Sverko (Institute of Art History – Centre Cvito Fiskovic Split)
Elke Katharina Wittich (Fresenius University of Applied Sciences,  AMD Hamburg)

Organizing Committee
Josko Belamaric (Institute of Art History – Centre Cvito Fiskovic Split)
Cvijeta Pavlovic (University of Zagreb, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences)
Milan Pelc (Institute of Art History Zagreb)
Ana Sverko (Institute of Art History – Centre Cvito Fiskovic Split)

Important Information
• Registration fee is 50 euros.
• The registration fee includes: welcome reception on 20/05/2015 evening; conference material; lunches and refreshments during the scheduled breaks.
• Registration fee can be paid by bank transfer. The invoice of the participation fee will be sent to the participants by e-mail within 5 days of the notification of acceptance.
• The organizers could arrange accommodation for the participants.
• The organizers are not able to pay the travel expenses of the participants.
• Conference languages: English and French.
• The duration of a spoken contribution should not exceed 20 minutes. Contributions will be divided into sections according to topics. Each section will be followed by discussion.
• Selected papers will be published in the conference proceedings. Please send final written version by 31/08/2015.