Call for Contributions | Towards a Blue Art History
From ArtHist.net:
Online Platform: Towards a Blue Art History
Hosted on Arcade by the Stanford Humanities Center
Curated by Juliette Bessette and Margaret Cohen
Proposals for contributions accepted on an ongoing basis
The visual arts hold a privileged position in exploring human connections to the ocean. Across history, they have expressed ocean emotions and ocean knowledge. In the modern and contemporary periods, they have been associated with its scientific, popular, poetic, mythical, and political approaches. Increasingly, visual studies scholars are surfacing the connections among human practice, the imagination, and the environment to reveal the power of the image, in all its forms, to probe and expand the human relationship with the seas.
The importance and critical role of visual studies within the field of blue humanities, or ocean humanities originated from the interdisciplinary symposium A Blue Art History (Marseille, France, 2024, organized by Juliette Bessette, with Margaret Cohen as keynote speaker). Bringing together insights from ocean sciences and the humanities, as well as from art historians, artists, and museum professionals, it highlights key issues through which art has shaped conceptions of the ocean across different periods and contexts, as well as specific oceanic modes of understanding the world. These issues include the porous boundaries between artistic and scientific representations of the sea, the emotions and ethics of fishing, and the cultural significance of the marine environment and its biodiversity, whether shown in conventional art venues or visited in underwater installations.
Towards a Blue Art History is a scholarly platform bringing together contributions from current research on art and visual culture related to the ocean. Its aim is to foster the development of a Blue Art History: a historical approach to the arts grounded in the blue humanities and attentive to how artworks, across periods, articulate and shape human relationships with the sea. The platform is curated by Juliette Bessette (Université de Lausanne) and Margaret Cohen (Stanford University) and is hosted by the Stanford Humanities Center on Arcade. A more detailed introductory text is available on the platform here.
Proposals are welcome from all disciplines, provided they engage in sustained and critical attention to artworks or visual objects and make them central to the argument; hence art historians are especially encouraged to contribute. All historical periods and a wide range of visual media are encouraged. There is no submission deadline. Contribution formats are open and can be defined in dialogue with the editors, ranging from written essays to short video capsules, interviews, or other alternative formats discussed collaboratively. Contributions should help expand and structure the emerging field of Blue Art History. To submit a contribution idea (no more than 500 words) outlining the topic, corpus, and approach, please write to juliette.bessette@unil.ch.
Call for Papers | The Jews, the Arts, and the Mediterranean, 1450–1750
From ArtHist.net and the Call for Papers:
The Jews, the Arts, and the Mediterranean, 1450–1750
Les Juifs, Les Arts, et la Méditerranée, 1450–1750
Palazzo Alberti, Florence, 12 June 2026
Organized by Piergabriele Mancuso and Jorge Morales
Proposals due by 1 March 2026
Supported by The Medici Archive Project (Florence), Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines (Université Paris-Saclay), and Fondazione Ugo e Olga Levi (Venice)
A period of major sociopolitical transformations and profound cultural and spiritual ruptures—from the discovery of the New World to the rise of religious dissent—the early modern era marked for Jews the beginning of a long phase of arbitrary legal impositions, among which were the creation of ghettos, first in Italy and then in the rest of Europe. Despite these legal, economic, and social discriminations, small groups of Jewish intellectuals, artists, musicians, and artisans managed to weave fruitful relationships with the cultural and political elites of Italian and Southern European courts. Starting from this premise, some strands of historiography have often failed to recognize the interpenetrating interactions that took place beyond, and the connections that were triggered between different social groups thanks to the porous nature of the barriers of separation.
Clear evidence of this phenomenon can be found in the world of craftsmanship and the arts, both visual and musical. A systematic review of historical sources shows that in these areas the legal restrictions imposed upon Jews were repeatedly disregarded—by Jews and Christians alike. Such ‘exceptions’ often extended far beyond the specific spheres of the disciplines involved, giving rise to more complex exchanges.
This conference aims to identify, contextualize, and historically define the significance of these phenomena; to analyze the education, working conditions, and material production of Jewish musicians, artists, and artisans in the early modern Mediterranean. All forms of artistic production (music, visual arts, performing arts) and craftsmanship were essential activities for the functioning of daily life, and in particular for the artistic life (theater, concerts, performances, visual arts) of a court, a city, or a given place.
The organizers—Piergabriele Mancuso (The Medici Archive Project) and Jorge Morales (Université de Versailles–Saint-Quentin)—invite proposals for 20-minute unpublished papers in English, Italian, and French that address topics including, but not limited to:
• Collecting and Patronage Patterns (Visual Arts, Literature, Music and Theater)
• Decorative Arts
• Jews as Artistic Brokers
• The Ottoman Empire and the West
• The Jewish Maghreb
• Port Cities and Cultural Exchange
• Women and the Arts
• Book and Print Culture
• Artistic Dialogue between Sephardic, Italian, and Ashkenazi Cultures
• The Architecture of Sacred Spaces
• Northern European Jews in the Mediterranean
• Artistic Theory and Practice
To apply, please send a PDF with an abstract (max 250 words) and a short bio (max 100 words) by 1 March 2026 to education@medici.org. Successful applicants will be notified on 1 April 2026. We plan to include selected papers in an edited volume published by the Medici Archive Project Series with Brepols/Harvey Miller.
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