Conference | Travel Narratives and the Artistic Heritage of Dalmatia
From ArtHist.net:
Travel Narratives and the Fashioning of a Dalmatian Artistic Heritage, ca. 1675–1941
The Institute of Art History – Cvito Fisković Centre, Split, 12–14 December 2024
Conceived and organised as part of the Croatian Science Foundation (HRZZ) project TraveloguesDalmatia of the Institute of Art History, led by Dr Ana Šverko.
This conference brings together historians and theorists of art, architecture, urbanism, literature, anthropology, and ethnology, and other experts engaged in travel narratives. It aims to explore travel as an autonomous multidisciplinary and multimedia practice, as well as to investigate how perceptions of Dalmatia in the European imagination have been shaped through various travel narratives. These narratives span diverse genres, recording media, authorial backgrounds, and travel motivations.
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9.30 Introductions
• Vesna Bulić Baketić (Split City Museum)
• Ivana Vladović (Tourist Board of Split-Dalmatia County)
• Ana Šverko (Institute of Art History – Cvito Fisković Centre Split)
Conference Opening
• Renata Schellenberg: Living the Journey Twice: Travel Writing as Genre
10.30 Session 1 | Changing Perceptions of Dalmatia in Travel Narratives, 17th to the 20th Century
Moderators: Joško Belamarić and Sanja Žaja Vrbica
• Jesse Howell — Disorientation, Friction, and Anxiety in Dalmatian Travel Narratives
• Ulrike Tischler-Hofer — ‘Dalmatia Is His Majesty’s Passive Province… and Will Remain So for at Least Another 20 Years’ (1803): Mutual Perception and Rejection in Times of Transition, 1797–1815
• Mateo Bratanić — Early 20th-Century British Travel Writers in Dalmatia: The Change of Perspective
11.30 Coffee Break
12.00 Session 2 | The Evolution of Travelogues in the 18th and 19th Centuries, Part 1
Moderators: Ana Šverko and Irena Kraševac
• John Pinto — Advent’rous in the Sacred Search of Ancient Arts
• Frances Sands — Travels of the Mind: Travel Literature at Sir John Soane’s Museum
• Nataša Urošević — Dalmatian Journeys: Discovering Dalmatia on the Route of the Lloyd’s Steamers
13.30 Lunch Break
17.30 Presentation of the TraveloguesDalmatia Project
18.30 Journal Promotion — Život umjetnosti (Life of Art), Volume 113, No. 2 (2023)
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9.00 Walking Tour: Diocletian’s Palace
10.45 Introduction
11.00 Session 3 | The Evolution of Travelogues in the 18th and 19th Centuries, Part 2
Moderators: Mateo Bratanić and Mirko Sardelić
• Renata Schellenberg — Travel Reading and Travel Writing: Johann Georg Kohl’s Journey through Dalmatia (1851)
• Irena Kraševac — Arthur Rössler and Bruno Reiffenstein Discover Dalmatia on Their 1905 Journey
• Maciej Czerwiński — Competing Travel Narratives on Dalmatia: Giuseppe Modrich and Izidor Kršnjavi
12.20 Coffee Break
12.40 Session 4 | Travel Drawings: Shaping the Genre’s Definition, Part 1
Moderators: Frances Sands and Marko Špikić
• Ana Šverko — Before Spalatro: Clérisseau and Adam’s 1757 Journey from Rome to Split
• Svein Mønnesland — European Landscape Painters Discover a ‘Norwegian Fjord’, the Gulf of Kotor, 1810–1875
• Joško Belamarić — Sir John Gardner Wilkinson’s Gaze on Diocletian’s Palace
13.40 Coffee Break
14.00 Session 5 | Travel Drawings: Shaping the Genre’s Definition, Part 2
Moderators: Joško Belamarić and Ana Šverko
• Sanja Žaja Vrbica — Viennese Women Painters in the South of the Monarchy
• Elke Katharina Wittich — ‘Blue Sea and Black Mountains’: Visual Topoi in Travelogues and Guidebooks from the Mid-19th Century to the End of the First World War
• Nataša Ivanović — Genius Loci of Dalmatia in Zoran Mušič’s Oeuvre
15.30 Lunch Break
16.30 Visit to the Gallery of Fine Arts
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9.45 Introduction
10.00 Session 6 | Discovering Dalmatia: Identity through the Travel Narrative Lens, Part 1
Moderators: Mateo Bratanić and Elke Katharina Wittich
• Marko Špikić — Jacob Spon’s Language of Discovery of the Eastern Adriatic’s Cultural Heritage
• Frane Prpa — Maximilian de Traux and His Description of the Interior Regions of Dalmatia
• Antonia Tomić — Drniš: The Meeting Place of East and West
11.00 Coffee Break
11.20 Session 7 | Discovering Dalmatia: Identity through the Travel Narrative Lens, Part 2
Moderators: Marko Špikić and Ana Šverko
• Franciska Ćurković-Major and Boris Dundović — Professional Trip of the Society of Hungarian Engineers and Architects to Dalmatia in 1895: A Travel Account by Gyula Sándy
• Brigitta Mader — Through the Eyes of a Prehistorian: Josef Szombathy’s Photo Journeys through Dalmatia, 1898–1912
• Mirko Sardelić — Alice Lee Moqué’s Delightful Dalmatia
12.20 Discussion and Closing Remarks
13.00 Closing Reception
15.00 Visit to the Meštrović Gallery
Scientific Committee
Basile Baudez (Princeton University, Department of Art and Archaeology)
Joško Belamarić (Institute of Art History – Cvito Fisković Centre Split)
Mateo Bratanić (University of Zadar, Department of History)
Iain Gordon Brown (Honorary Fellow, National Library of Scotland)
Hrvoje Gržina (Croatian State Archives)
Katrina O’Loughlin (Brunel University London)
Cvijeta Pavlović (University of Zagreb, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Department of Comparative Literature)
Frances Sands (Sir John Soane’s Museum)
Marko Špikić (University of Zagreb, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Department of Art History)
Ana Šverko (Institute of Art History – Cvito Fisković Centre Split)
Elke Katharina Wittich (Leibniz Universität Hannover)
Organising Committee
Joško Belamarić (Institute of Art History – Cvito Fisković Centre Split)
Tomislav Bosnić (Institute of Art History – Cvito Fisković Centre Split)
Mateo Bratanić (University of Zadar, Department of History)
Ana Ćurić (Institute of Art History)
Matko Matija Marušić (Institute of Art History)
Katrina O’Loughlin (Brunel University London)
Cvijeta Pavlović (University of Zagreb, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences)
Ana Šverko (Institute of Art History – Cvito Fisković Centre Split)
Call for Papers | Recalling the Revolution in New England
From the Call for Papers:
Recalling the Revolution in New England
Online and in-person, Deerfield, Massachusetts, 27–28 June 2025
Proposals due by 13 January 2025
The Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife (founded in 1976) is pleased to announce the subject of its 2025 gathering, Recalling the Revolution in New England, to be held June 27–28 at Historic Deerfield. The conference keynote will be provided by Dr. Zara Anishanslin of the University of Delaware, author of the forthcoming book The Painter’s Fire: A Forgotten History of the Artists who Championed the American Revolution.
On September 11, 1765, political leaders in Boston attached a plaque to a majestic elm and named it “Liberty Tree” to honor its role in an anti-Stamp Act protest the previous month. New Englanders thus started to commemorate the events of the American Revolution even before they had any idea there would be such a revolution. Over the following centuries, people from New England shaped the national memory of that era through schoolbooks, popular poetry, civic celebrations, monuments, and more. On the 250th anniversary of the outbreak of the Revolutionary War in 1775, the Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife welcomes proposals for papers and presentations that address the broad range of ways the people of New England have looked back on the nation’s founding—and what they forgot, or chose to forget, in the process.
The annual Dublin Seminar is a meeting place where scholars of all kinds—academics, students, museum and library professionals, artisans and craftspeople, educators, preservationists, and committed avocational researchers—join in deep conversation around a focused theme in New England history, pooling their knowledge and exchanging ideas, sources, and methods in a thought-provoking forum. The 2025 seminar invites proposals for papers and presentations that illuminate how the peoples of the region have commemorated, memorialized, documented, invoked, fictionalized, and even forgotten the American Revolution through the Bicentennial period. Papers should examine events and trends in New England and adjoining regions.
The seminar encourages papers grounded in interdisciplinary approaches and original research, particularly material and visual culture, manuscripts, government and business records, the public press, oral histories, and public history practice or advocacy. Papers addressing such contemporary themes as gender dynamics, racial dimensions, and environmental aspects of Revolutionary commemoration are strongly encouraged.
Topics might include
• Efforts to recover the stories of marginalized participants in the American Revolution
• The processes of local commemoration in orations, pageants, reenactments, and more
• Recreating and depicting the American Revolution in popular fiction, theater, prints, and toys
• The collecting and preservation of Revolutionary-era artifacts and material culture
• Activating, maintaining, and interpreting historic sites, battlefields, monuments, homes, and other spaces
• The formation and activities of historical societies and heritage organizations
• Contesting the memory and meaning of the American Revolution
The seminar will convene in Deerfield, Massachusetts on June 27–28. This will be a hybrid program with both on-site and virtual registration options for attendees. The program will consist of a keynote address and approximately fifteen 20-minute presentations. Speakers will present on site at Historic Deerfield. Speakers will be expected to submit the text of their presentation at least a week before the conference. To submit a proposal, please send (as a single email attachment, in MS Word or as a PDF file, labeled LASTNAME.DubSem2025) a one-page prospectus describing the paper and the archival, material, or visual sources on which it is grounded, followed by a one-page vita or biography. Please send proposals to dublinseminar@historic-deerfield.org before noon (EST) on Monday, 13 January 2025.
Dublin Seminar presenters are expected to submit their papers (approximately 7000 words) for consideration to the Annual Proceedings of the Dublin Seminar by 14 October 2025. The scholarship proposed for presentation should be unpublished and available for inclusion in this volume to be published about eighteen months after the conference.
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