Call for Papers | La Chiesa di San Rocco
From ArtHist.net (where the posting includes the Italian version of the CFP) . . .
The Church of San Rocco: Confraternal Religious Space and Sanctuary
Churches of Venice: New Research Perspectives, Number 9
Venice, 2–4 December 2021
Organized by Maria Agnese Chiari Moretto Wiel and David D’Andrea
Proposals due by 21 June 2020
The project Churches of Venice: New Research Perspectives (Chiese di Venezia: Nuove prospettive di ricerca)—begun in 2010 and from 2017 supported by the Department of Philosophy and Cultural Heritage at Ca’ Foscari University, Venice and currently sponsored by Save Venice Inc.—consists of a multi-year program of interdisciplinary conferences each focused on a specific Venetian church. The project is designed to engage different disciplines for a deeper understanding of the complex social and religious phenomena embodied in Venetian churches, physical spaces created to serve a variety of religious functions and meanings. In addition to investigating Venetian churches from ‘new research perspectives’, the project also strives to disseminate the latest research to the general public through the publication of the conference proceedings in a dedicated book series published by Viella.
After having studied the churches of San Bartolomeo (2011), Scalzi (2012), San Lazzaro dei Mendicanti (2013), San Zaccaria (2014), San Pietro di Castello (2015), San Giacomo dall’Orio (2017), San Polo (2019), and Santa Maria dei Servi (forthcoming in 2020), the conference scheduled for December 2021 will investigate, for the first time in a systematic way, the history of the church of San Rocco. The conference is scheduled for three days, with the last sessions to take place on site in the church. Participants will have access to a professional photographer who will take images on request for use at the conference and in the subsequent publication.
The church of San Rocco is the only Venetian church that is both a confraternal devotional space and a sanctuary that houses the body of the titular saint, who was translated to Venice in 1485 and located in the main altar since 1520. The power of Saint Rocco to heal those stricken by the plague made the church an international pilgrimage destination. To properly venerate San Rocco, the confraternity adorned the religious space with significant works of art and constructed an organ and choir gallery to foster liturgical devotion focused on the altar-reliquary. The original church, built in 1489, was heavily restructured by Giovanni Scalfarotto between 1726 and 1733. The rebuilt façade, completed by Bernardino Maccaruzzi in 1769, unifies the confraternity’s ritual space, which encompasses the square and the adjacent streets.
The conference proposes to examine, in a broad chronological and interdisciplinary approach, significant aspects of this devotional space, where processions, festivals, and pilgrimages reaffirmed the status of the confraternity and the healing power of San Rocco both in Venetian life and in universal Catholic devotion.
In particular, the organizers would like to examine the following themes:
• Origins of the cult of San Rocco in Venice, the foundation of the Scuola and the building of the church, and the relationship between the church and confraternity.
• The church in the 15th and 16th centuries: architecture, altars, and decorative furnishings. The relationship between the church of San Rocco and the other confraternal churches in Venice.
• The transformations and renovations of the church in the 17th and 18th centuries.
• The church of San Rocco and ritual spaces: San Rocco and the urban context; Venetian festivals and the church; music.
• San Rocco as an international pilgrimage site.
• Liturgy and devotional objects: (the reliquary of San Rocco, the miraculous Crucifix, the miraculous image of Christ Carrying the Cross; devotion to the Holy Eucharist); the Scuola’s printed images; the relationship with Venice’s other devotions for the plague, the Redentore and Madonna della Salute.
• The relationships between the Scuola and clergy: confraternal chaplains; the Franciscans of the Frari, and nearby parish churches (San Tomà and San Pantalon).
• The cult of San Rocco in Venetian territories: San Rocco and the lazzaretti; devotional images, churches and chapels dedicated to San Rocco in the Venetian state; the cult of San Rocco along the Adriatic coasts.
Paper proposals, consisting of a brief abstract (250 words maximum) and a brief CV, should be sent by email attachments to chiesedivenezia@gmail.com by 21 June 2020. Accepted proposals will be announced by 15 September 2020.
At Auction | Horse Racing Tickets
Lot 276: Northumberland, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Newcastle Grand Stand, 1800, silver, unsigned, grandstand, rev. horse standing right, held by a jockey, named (His Grace the Duke of Northumberland), 31mm, 15.05g (W 1545; D & W 323/17; cf. DNW 157, 1319-20). Pierced for suspension, very fine and toned, very rare, estimate: £300–400.
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
Via Art Daily (11 May 2020) . . .
Tokens, Tickets and Passes, Historical Medals — Online Auction
Dix Noonan Webb, London, 26 May 2020
International coins, medals, banknotes, and jewellery specialists Dix Noonan Webb, are encouraging racing enthusiasts to take a gamble on a group of 18th- and 19th-century horse racing tickets and passes (lots 274–294) that will be offered in a live online auction in their sale of Tokens and Historical Medals on Tuesday, 26 May 2020 at 11am on their website.
The collection comprises 20 lots, and estimates range from £40 to £400. Many of the pieces are engraved with names of nobility and well-known figures in the horseracing fraternity such as the Duke of Northumberland (Alnwick Castle); Hon. Egremont Lascelles (Harewood House); Major John St Leger; Henry Fiennes Pelham Clinton, (2nd Duke of Newcastle); the Duke of Portland and Lord Dundas.
As Peter Preston-Morley, Specialist and Associate Director, Dix Noonan Webb, commented: “We are very pleased to be offering this fascinating group of early tokens relating to horseracing—right now, when there’s no racing taking place, it is a perfect opportunity to take a gamble on these!”
The collection, from several different owners, includes pieces dating from throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. Among the highlights is a very rare silver example depicting the Newcastle Grand Stand that belonged to His Grace the Duke of Northumberland. Lt-General Hugh Percy, 2nd Duke of Northumberland (1742–1817), acceded to the title in 1786, and after an illustrious military career, in later life, he became one of the richest men in England (estimate: £300–400). There is a pair of ivory admission tokens to the Ladies Stand at Doncaster bearing the name Honble. Egremont Lascelles. Lascelles, who lived at Harewood, was a prominent figure at race meetings in Yorkshire from the late 1840s until the late 1870s and his pair of tokens, for him and his wife, is estimated at £300–400.
New Book | Art of the United States, 1750–2000
Distributed by The University of Chicago Press:
John Davis and Michael Leja and edited by Francesca Rose, Art of the United States, 1750–2000 (Chicago: Terra Foundation for American Art, 2020), 544 pages, ISBN: 978-0932171689, $39.
Art of the United States is a landmark volume that presents three centuries of US art through a broad array of historical texts, including writings by artists, critics, patrons, literary figures, and other commentators. Combining a wide-ranging selection of texts with high-quality reproductions of artworks, it offers a resource for the study and understanding of the visual arts of the United States. With contextual essays, explanatory headnotes, a chronology of US historical landmarks, maps, and full-color illustrations of key artworks, the volume will appeal to national and international audiences ranging from undergraduates and museum visitors to art historians and other scholars. Texts by a range of artists and cultural figures—including John Adams, Thomas Cole, Frederick Douglass, Mary Cassatt, Edward Hopper, Clement Greenberg, and Cindy Sherman—are grouped according to historical era alongside additional featured artists.
A sourcebook of unprecedented breadth and depth, Art of the United States brings together multiple voices throughout the ages to provide a framework for learning and critical thinking on US art.
John Davis is the provost and under secretary for museums, education, and research at the Smithsonian Institution and the author or coauthor of numerous catalogs and books, including, with Sarah Burns, the comprehensive volume American Art to 1900. Michael Leja is the James and Nan Wagner Farquhar Professor of History of Art at the University of Pennsylvania and the author of numerous catalogs and books, including Reframing Abstract Expressionism: Subjectivity and Painting in the 1940s and Looking Askance: Skepticism and American Art from Eakins to Duchamp. Francesca Rose is the program director for publications at the Terra Foundation for American Art.
Call for Papers | Enlightening the Plates of the Encyclopédie
From the Call for Papers:
Enlightening the Plates of the Encyclopédie:
Perspectives and Research on the Recueil de planches, 1762–1772
Sorbonne University, Paris, 27–29 May 2021
Proposals due by 30 September 2020
For several decades and due to the impulsion provided by the pioneering work of Jacques Proust, John Lough, Richard N. Schwab and then Frank A. Kafker, the studies on the Encyclopédie, ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers (1751–1772) by Diderot and D’Alembert proliferated. Many conferences, books and articles, including those published since 1986 in the review Recherches sur Diderot et sur l’Encyclopédie, testify to this. Easier access to the work thanks to digital editions (the one designed by the Redon company, commercially distributed since 2000, and then the ARTFL edition, freely accessible on the web) have also contributed to this dynamic. The online publication in 2017 of a first critical digital edition of the work (ENCCRE) is a new stage in the interest shown by historians from all disciplines in this essential monument of the Age of Enlightenment.
Despite the founding studies already cited, Madeleine Pinault-Sørensen’s seminal contributions and many other works dedicated to the 11 volumes of plates of the Encyclopedie, the latter remain far less known and studied than the 17 volumes of articles (1751–1765) that came before and refer to them, as if the illustrations and their relationship to the text, although considered as one of the most important innovations of the Encyclopedie, had in the end met less interest than the articles themselves.
Today, ENCCRE—thanks to its high-quality digitization of the engraved plates and its ability to directly relate illustrations and explanations—allows us to rediscover this iconographic treasure with a fresh eye and offers new resources for exploring it. More generally, new technologies encourage us to imagine specific ways of analyzing these illustrations, the explanations that accompany them, their reciprocal links, and their relationship with the volumes of articles. It is therefore essential to hold an international conference to review the research specifically dedicated to the plates of the Encyclopédie.
In this perspective, we launch a call for papers for the conference Les Planches de l’Encyclopédie en lumière which will be held over three days at Sorbonne University from 27 to 29 May 2021 and within the framework of which the common reflection will be organized around four main axes (hereafter, we will refer to the Recueil to designate the 11 volumes of the Recueil de planches sur les sciences et les arts, and to ‘series’ to designate each of the thematic chapters which constitute it, such as ‘Anatomie’, ‘Bouchonnier’, or ‘Draperie’). The questions addressed by each of the axes are not limitative:
1. The manufacture of the engraved plates and series of the Recueil, i.e. all the questions relating to the modalities of their intellectual manufacture and the history of their editorial production: what are the sources of the plates? How were they used (additions, modifications, arrangement)? Have preparatory drawings been preserved? To what extent do these elements shed light on the content of the plates and the intentions of their author(s)? Furthermore, what are the elements that make it possible to reconstruct and, possibly, date the stages of the making of a series?
2. The contributors of the plates, i.e. the Encyclopédie’s draftsmen and engravers: who are they? What place did their work for the Encyclopédie hold in their career? What role(s) have they played in the Encyclopédie? What is their contribution (explicit attributions and attribution hypotheses)? Do they differ from each other according to technical and/or stylistic criteria?
3. The explanations of the plates, i.e. all the questions relating to the ‘Explications’ which form the first part of each series of the Recueil before the corresponding engraved plates. This essential subject can be approached from several angles:
• authors: what do we know about the authors whose explanations bear the explicit signature? To what extent can we attribute to them the many unsigned plates in the book? Are they also contributors for articles on the same subjects?
• editor: question of Diderot’s role, not only as author of explanations, but also as editor of the entire collection (organization of the series, writing of the introductory pieces presenting the volumes, etc.): at the end of the detailed statement of volume II (1763), he states that he “reviewed all the arts and crafts [explanations] on the manuscript and on the plates”;
• relations with the engraved plates: different types of links between explanations and illustrations according to the series? Additional cross-references to the articles (with the effects of repetition, correction or replacement)? There is also the more general question of the relationship between text and image as the Encyclopédie establishes it and, sometimes, takes them up as a central theme.
It is also possible to study in this perspective the relations between articles and plates in a given field: concordance or not between the articles and the figures they describe? Possible replacement of the plates on which the articles were written and for what reasons? Questions which also refer to the problem of the manufacture of a series (axis n° 1), whether or not associated with the writing of the articles.
4. The place of the plates of the Encyclopédie in the history of illustration in the 18th century: can we situate the traditional and innovative parts of the Recueil in relation to the standards of the time, according to the weight, place, and roles of the illustrations in the book? According to the link that the plates maintain within the book with their explanations and the articles associated with them? To what extent can the book be considered as an illustrated corpus? More generally, to what extent the Recueil can be considered as a part of the history of the circulation of knowledge in the 18th century?
The proposed papers must necessarily fall within one or more of the previous axes. They may consist of a case study or address a more general issue.
Proposals should be sent before 30 September 2020 to enccre@gmail.com. Proposals will include a title and an abstract of about fifteen lines, supplemented by some general information: your status within your institution (and department if necessary), main research topics, list of publications related to the themes of the colloquium and/or the French 18th century. The languages of the conference are French and English.
Steering Committee
Alexandre Guilbaud, Sorbonne Université
Alain Cernuschi, Université de Lausanne
Malou Haine, Université Libre de Bruxelles
Christine Le Sueur, Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1 Alain Sandrier, Université de Caen Normandie
Scientific Committee
Alain Cernuschi, Université de Lausanne (responsible for the follow-up)
Malou Haine, Université Libre de Bruxelles (responsible for the follow-up) Emmanuel Boussuge, chercheur associé au CELLF (CNRS, Sorbonne Université) Thierry Depaulis, chercheur indépendant
Alexandre Guilbaud, Sorbonne Université
Charles Kostelnick, Iowa State University
Marie Leca-Tsiomis, Université Paris-Ouest Nanterre
Susan H. Libby, Rollins College
François Pépin, professeur agrégé au Lycée Louis le Grand
Stéphane Schmitt, CNRS, Archives Henri-Poincaré
Yann Sordet, Bibliothèque Mazarine
Pierre Wachenheim, Université de Lorrain
Exhibition | The Curator’s Bookcase
Fredrik Boye, Målare-lexikon til begagnande såsom handbok för Konstidkare och Taflesamlare, Painter’s Dictionary
(Stockholm, 1833)
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
Now installed (if not on view) at the Nationalmuseum:
The Curator’s Bookcase: Stories from the Archives
Stockholm, Nationalmuseum, 19 February — 28 June 2020
Using examples from the Art Library’s older collection of books, The Curator’s Bookcase gives an insight into the emergence of art history as an academic discipline in the 19th century. General handbooks on art, biographies, and other examples of literature that kept the museum professionals of that time up to date are exhibited along with photographic reproductions from the Image Archive.
In the 19th century, art history emerged as an academic discipline. This took place in the first half of the century in Germany, and mid-century in Sweden and had a decisive impact on museum practices. Being an artist or a well-read connoisseur was no longer sufficient—academic studies were also required to become a curator. Thus, the museum practice was professionalised. The curators used a scientific approach to analyse, identify, and classify objects of art putting them in a historic context. The collections were presented chronologically and geographically in different schools. The Nationalmuseum gave the most space to the Italian, Dutch, French, and Swedish schools, which dominated the Royal collection donated in 1792 to the Museum, then known as the Royal Museum, one of the first public museums in northern Europe.
The growing interest in art history is reflected in the many books on this subject that were published and spread. Subjects of special interest were the Greco-Roman period and national ideals. Swedish museum curators had lively contacts with colleagues abroad, and it was part of their job to keep abreast with the latest research. The books displayed in this exhibition are from the Art Library’s older collection. They are mainly textbooks on art history, general handbooks, and monographic biographies. The books give an idea of the literature that would have been found in a curator’s bookcase. Several of these books are exquisitely and artistically bound and were published in limited, numbered editions. The exhibition also includes examples of older displays of the collections as photographic reproductions from the Image Archive.
The masterpieces of art have always been of great importance to museum professionals and artists. In the current exhibition on the 6th floor Inspiration: Iconic Works you can discover more about how contemporary artists have been inspired by the old masters. The Curator’s Bookcase is on display in the Old Library.
Sweden Nationalmuseum Acquires Two Drawings by Oudry
Jean-Baptiste Oudry, View of the Garden in Arcueil, Facing North with the Orangery Terrace and the Peak of the Forest Park or So-Called ‘Talus Cone’, 1744–47 (Stockholm: Nationalmuseum, NMH 55/2019).
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
Press release (5 May 2020) from Sweden’s Nationalmuseum in Stockholm:
Nationalmuseum has acquired two drawings with views from the garden and park of Arcueil by the French Rococo master Jean-Baptiste Oudry. The drawings depict a geometrically landscaped garden with elements of a freer park in a state of picturesque decay. The artist presents both immediate visual impressions and more artfully elaborated ones. This type of landscape had previously been completely lacking from the museum’s large collection of works by Oudry.
Jean-Baptiste Oudry (1686–1755) has become known as one of the foremost artists of the French Rococo style. He began as a portrait painter but soon came to specialise in still life painting. His close friends and clients included the Swede Carl Gustaf Tessin, which is also why National museum has so many works by the artist in its collection. Oudry’s activities as a landscape painter are somewhat less known. At times, he is even said to have used a camera obscura in the production of his views.
Starting in 1740, Oudry began to make excursions to scenic Arcueil, located in the southern suburbs of Paris. The place was famous for its beautiful garden and park, which boasted a monumental aqueduct as a backdrop. Today, most of it has vanished or been rendered unrecognisable. The garden complex, which attracted artists such as Oudry, Boucher and Natoire, was created for the Prince of Guise between 1720 and 1730 by the architect Jean-Michel Chevotet. Among Chevotet’s fellow students at the French Academy of Architecture was the Swede Carl Hårleman, and both specialised in landscape architecture. Arcueil was transformed into an intimate formal garden in the spirit of Rococo, with geometric elements such as parterres, ponds and trellis works. The differences in terrain levels on the site created movement and vistas. It was thus also necessary to construct a variety of walls, terraces and stairs, which contributed to the special and complex character of the garden. There was also a wilder and more informal section with a picturesque touch.
It is therefore hardly surprising that Oudry was fascinated by Arcueil. He rented a house that was located directly adjacent to the property, which gave him many opportunities to draw various views. Most are believed to have been executed between 1744 and 1747. Many have an immediate character, revealing that they were drawn outdoors, on site. Others appear more elaborate. Over fifty such views are known to exist, two of which have now been acquired by Nationalmuseum. Of them, the view to the north with the orangery terrace and the peak of the forest park (or so-called ‘talus cone’), is among Oudry’s finest drawings from Arcueil. The artist has worked on a beige paper (which was probably originally blue) with black and white chalk, which he then smudged with a stump (an artist’s tool made of hard rolled paper or chamois leather). Then Oudry used a brush to add highlights in white gouache. In this way he managed to create fine contrasts between sunlit areas and other shady parts of the image. The figures are considered to have been drawn by another hand, perhaps Victoire Chenu or Jacques-Philippe Le Bas, who later (1776) engraved and published this view under the title Ancienne et première vue d’Arcueil.
Jean-Baptiste Oudry, View of the Bosquet in the Garden of Arcueil with Promenade and Garden Shed, 1744–47
(Stockholm: Nationalmuseum, NMH 46/2018).
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
While the view from the orangery terrace has the character of a completed drawing, or what Carl Gustaf Tessin called la manière très finie, Oudry’s second drawing is characterised by a seemingly immediate visual sensibility. It was create using chalk and faint white gouache highlights on a grey-blue paper, and reproduces a more informal part of the garden, a bosquet area with a promenade. In the background one can see a garden shed with a somewhat dilapidated fence. In this view, Oudry has depicted a pastoral scene which seems quite distant from the more formal environment of the previous drawing and thus appears to herald the parks of the late 18th century.
Nationalmuseum receives no state funding with which to acquire design, applied art, and artwork; instead, the collections are enriched through donations and gifts from private foundations and funds. The acquisitions have been made possible through a purchase using donations from the Wiros Foundation and the Hedda and Nils D. Qvist Memorial Fund.
Call for Essays | Women and the Art and Science of Collecting
From ArtHist.net:
Women and the Art and Science of Collecting: Eighteenth-Century Collecting Beyond Europe
Edited by Dr. Arlene Leis and Dr. Kacie Wills
Abstracts due by 1 July 2020, with case studies due by 31 October 2020 and longer essays due 1 December 2020
We are inviting chapter abstracts for a collection of essays designed for academics, specialists, and enthusiasts interested in the interrelations between art and science in women’s collections and collecting practices beyond Europe in the long 18th century. This volume will follow our forthcoming compendium on the topic entitled, Women and the Art and Science of Collecting in Eighteenth-Century Europe, published by Routledge. This book recovers women’s histories through numerous interdisciplinary discourses pertaining to the subject of collecting, and it examines their interests, methodologies, and practices in relation to cultures of art and science.
In the second volume, we continue this discussion and consider women’s relationships to collecting of European and non-European objects, gathered, exchanged, and displayed within colonies and with indigenous cultures beyond Europe. Responding to ideas about indigenous collecting raised by Nicholas Thomas, Jennifer Newell, Greg Dening, Anne D’Alleva, Adriana Craciun, Mary Terrall, and others, we also aim to consider intercultural exchanges and collections of objects relatively unknown to Europeans. European collecting often traces its roots to biblical mythologies, such as the stories of Adam (naming and owning) and Noah (rescuing and preserving). What are the histories of collecting beyond Europe? And in what ways did women actively participate in or challenge those stories?
We hope to explore a diverse range of theoretical contexts, such as art historical, material culture, feminist, social, performance, gender, colonial, archival, and literary. We welcome essays that take a material culture approach and are particularly keen on research that makes use of new archival resources. We encourage interdisciplinary perspectives and are especially interested in essays that reveal the way in which women’s collections outside of Europe participated in cultures of art and science.
The compendium will consist of around ten essays of 6,000–6,500 words (with footnotes), each with up to four illustrations. In addition to these more traditional essays, we are looking for shorter (circa 1,000 words) case studies on material objects of interest from the period. The subject of women’s collections and art and science is also central to these smaller contributions, and each will include one illustration.
We aim to address the following topics and questions:
• The practice of collecting as cultural construct
• Decolonizing collecting
• What motivated women to collect in places outside of Europe? What were they collecting? How were women’s collections beyond Europe similar or different to their European counterparts?
• Women’s travel, immigration, exploration and the mobility of objects
• Collaborations
• Classification, taxonomies and methodologies of collecting outside of Europe
• Religious collections
• Display
• Collecting for power and status
• Preservation, creation and learning
• The aesthetics of collecting beyond Europe
• Women’s exchanges/interactions with indigenous populations
• Collections formed as a means of making sense of the world
All inquiries should be addressed to Arlene Leis, aleis914@gmail.com or Kacie Wills, kacie.wills@gmail.com . Essay abstracts of 500 words and 300 word abstracts for smaller case studies are due July 1, 2020 and should be sent along with a short bio to: kacie.wills@gmail.com and aleis914@gmail.com. Finished case studies will be due October 31, 2020, and long essays will be due December 1, 2020.
New Book | The Edinburgh History of Reading
Spread across the volumes are essays addressing the long eighteenth century, including topics of illustrations and visual culture. From Edinburgh UP:
Mary Hammond and Jonathan Rose, eds., The Edinburgh History of Reading, 4 volumes (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2020), 1512 pages, 978-1474478717, £350. [Each volume is also sold individually.]
Bringing together the latest scholarship from all over the world on topics ranging from reading practices in ancient China to the workings of the twenty-first-century reading brain, the 4 volumes of The Edinburgh History of Reading demonstrate that reading is a deeply imbricated, socio-political practice, at once personal and public, defiant, and obedient. It is often materially ephemeral, but it can also be emotionally and intellectually enduring.
Volume Titles
Early Readers, edited by Mary Hammond, with contents listed here.
Early Readers presents a number of innovative ways through which we might capture or infer traces of readers in cultures where most evidence has been lost. It begins by investigating what a close analysis of extant texts from 6th-century BCE China can tell us about contemporary reading practices, explores the reading of medieval European women and their male medical practitioner counterparts, traces readers across New Spain, Peru, the Ottoman Empire and the Iberian world between 1500 and 1800, and ends with an analysis of the surprisingly enduring practice of reading aloud.
Modern Readers, edited by Mary Hammond, with contents listed here.
Modern Readers explores the myriad places and spaces in which reading has typically taken place since the eighteenth century, from the bedrooms of the English upper classes, through large parts of nineteenth-century Africa and on-board ships and trains travelling the world, to twenty-first-century reading groups. It encompasses a range of genres from to science fiction, music and self-help to Government propaganda.
Common Readers, edited by Jonathan Rose, with contents listed here.
Common Readers casts a fascinating light on the literary experiences of ordinary people: miners in Scotland, churchgoers in Victorian London, workers in Czarist Russia, schoolgirls in rural Australia, farmers in Republican China, and forward to today’s online book discussion groups. Chapters in this volume explore what they read, and how books changed their lives.
Subversive Readers, edited by Jonathan Rose, with contents listed here.
Subversive Readers explores the strategies used by readers to question authority, challenge convention, resist oppression, assert their independence and imagine a better world. This kind of insurgent reading may be found everywhere: in revolutionary France and Nazi Germany, in Eastern Europe under Communism and in Australian and Iranian prisons, among eighteenth-century women reading history and nineteenth-century men reading erotica, among postcolonial Africans, the blind, and pioneering transgender activists.
Enfilade 
leave a comment