Enfilade

From the University of Leipzig:

Workshop | Art History: Research and Teaching Going Digital
University of Leipzig, 22 July — 2 August 2013

Proposals due by 15 June 2013

The 2013 European Summer School in Digital Humanities, focusing on Culture & Technology, is taking place at the University of Leipzig, 22 July-2 August 2013. It includes a workshop on “Art History: Research and Teaching Going Digital” organized by Elli Doulkaridou (PhD candidate in art history at the University of Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne and a research assistant at the Institut national d’histoire de l’art) and Elaine Hoysted (doctoral candidate at University College, Cork). This joint workshop aims to question research and teaching practices in the field of art history in the digital age.

The first part of this course will be dedicated to investigating the challenges and opportunities that have emerged in the digital realm for scholars in art history. The second half will focus on an analysis of how these resources can be utilized as effective teaching and learning tools within the academic system. The fact that this is going to be a
joint course will allow us to focus on each theme but also bring them together during the collective discussions that will accompany the end of each course.

This workshop does not intend to propose technical training in the use of dedicated tools or encoding languages. Its purpose is to foster a collaborative reflection, in matters of art historical research and teaching methodology. We will be questioning the notion of digital art history through the study of various digital corpora, produced in different fields of art history, such as image databases, digital catalogs, scholarly critical editions, etc.  Part of the course will also be dedicated to the commentary and collective debate of recent studies. (more…)

Nun Artists in Early Modern Italy
Biblioteca Domenicana, Florence, 5 October 2013

Proposals due by 31 July 2013

Co-sponsored by the Medici Archive Project’s Jane Fortune Research Program on Women Artists and the Biblioteca Domenicana in Santa Maria Novella, this conference highlights new research on artistic production in female monastic communities since the early Renaissance until the Napoleonic suppression.

Demolishing older notions of enclosure as an absolute barrier between nuns and the world outside, recent research on social and religious aspects has begun to reinsert the convent within the wider networks of patronage and economic life in the early modern state, and to reposition it within larger civic and ecclesiastical discourses.
Presumably this model can also be applied to the study of nun artists. By framing research on nun artists and their activities within broader visions of society and material culture, we hope to arrive at a clearer understanding of the significance of nuns’ artistic production.

We welcome papers on a variety of topics regarding convents and their artistic production, from painting, to needlework, to carta pestata sculpture, to ephemera, to manuscript illumination. Suggested topics include but are not limited to:

• monographic studies on single artists
• studies of artistic practice in one or more female religious communities
• stylistic analysis and attributions of artworks
• studies of the visual culture of nun artists
• the role of art in the economic and patronage strategies of monastic communities
• the teaching of art in female religious communities
• comparisons between nuns’ artistic patronage their artistic production
• investigations of the relations and tensions between piety and artistic production
• historiographic studies of nun artists

Paper presentations, which must feature original research, may be given in Italian or English, and should be no longer than 20 minutes. A publication based on the conference papers is planned. Some support for travel expenses may be available. To apply, please send a one-page abstract and a brief c.v. to Dr. Sheila Barker (barker@medici.org) and Dr. Luciano Cinelli, O.P. (memorie.domenicane@gmail.com). The deadline for applications is July 31, 2013.

From the conference website:

Eutopia Seated in the Brain: The 300th Anniversary of
Bernard de Mandeville’s The Fable of the Bees
Coimbra University, Portugal, 27-29 November 2013

Proposals due by 5 September 2013

Dutch physician with a literary, humanist formation, Bernard de Mandeville (1670-1733) is known as a portraitist of manners, a satirist and a fine observer of socio-economic behavior. From the perspective of the literary genre, B. Mandeville was a cultivator of the satirical fable, continuing La Fontaine and P. Scarron. His moral and political thought falls into several lines of the development of the European Enlightenment. His originality was only fully recognized many centuries later. One of his criticisms is related to Shaftesbury’s appreciation of virtue and moral sense in the Characteristics. The possibility of the contribution of pleasure and virtue for the formation of the human society, emphasized again in F. Hutcheson’s Remarks upon the Fable of the Bees, was the controversial point in Mandeville’s point of view. From his peculiar idea about the combination of virtue and the pure self-interest in social behavior evolved his idea of society. The modern sense of ‘interest’ had in B. de Mandeville a former inventor. Additionally, B. Mandeville has questioned the meaning of the connection between conscious actions with defined purposes and the objective results in the market of the autonomous individual drives. His depiction of the creation of social wealth reveals the relative independence of the objective results of individual actions regarding the initial purposes of the conscious agents. Luxury was one of the subjects that B. Mandeville addressed clearly. He tried to explain the imaginary mechanisms allied to the formation of luxury in the nations that explain why luxury cannot result from actions motivated solely by virtue or vice. (more…)

The editors of Eighteenth-Century Fiction are interested in publishing occasional ‘image essays’ and welcome proposals. These pieces are often shorter than the average ECF research article, with some latitude for essay-like musings. Image essays complement the expanded mandate of Eighteenth-Century Fiction, which includes various media and cultural studies and provides ECF readers with examples of the editors’ very broad definition of ‘fiction’. Ideas and proposals can be submitted to ecf@mcmaster.ca.

Examples of past ECF image essays can be found here:

• Frank Felsenstein, “Unravelling Ann Mills: Some Notes on Gender Construction and Naval Heroism,” Eighteenth-Century Fiction 19.1 (2006), here»

• Maximillian E. Novak, “The Cave and the Grotto: Realist Form and Robinson Crusoe’s Imagined Interiors” Eighteenth-Century Fiction 20.3 (2008). here»

• and most of the recent special issue, Gestes admirables, ou la culture visuelle de l’imprimé, Eighteenth-Century Fiction 23.4 (2011).

Fifth Early Modern Symposium
Work in Progress: Bringing Art into Being in the Early Modern Period
The Courtauld Institute of Art, London, 26 October 2013

Organised by Anya Matthews and Giulia Martina Weston

Proposals due by 21 June 2013

Complex narratives spanning months, years or even decades exist behind the single bracketed date attached to artworks to indicate their moment of execution or completion. This one-day symposium will explore the ‘ante-natal’ development of early modern art from its conception to its ‘quickening’ and eventual birth. The process fascinated contemporary theorists and continues to raise questions for modern art historians. For example, when was an artistic project considered finished or unfinished? What terms were used to indicate the various stages of bringing an artwork into being, and what implications did these terms have for authorship and authenticity? The creation of art is not the work of a moment or achieved at a single stroke; it involves a series of transpositions from idea to study or plan, from sketch to painting, from plan to building and so on. How did early modern art reflect on the process of its own making?

We invite 20-minute papers considering artistic ‘work in progress’ in the early modern period (c.1550-1800): (more…)

From SAH:

Society of Architectural Historians 67th Annual Conference
Austin, Texas, 9-13 April 2014

Proposals due by 1 June 2013

The Society of Architectural Historians is now accepting abstracts for its 67th Annual Conference in Austin, TX, April 9-13, 2014. Please submit abstracts no later than June 1st for one of the 31 thematic sessions or open sessions. Sessions have been selected to cover topics across all time periods and architectural styles. SAH encourages submissions from architectural, landscape, and urban historians; museum curators; preservationists; independent scholars; architects; and members of partner organizations.

Please submit abstracts of no more than 300 words no later than June 1st for one of the 31 thematic sessions. There will also be open sessions for those whose research does not match any of the themed sessions.

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An example of one of the thematic sessions:

The Elusive Gothic in the Long 18th Century
Chairs: Sylvia Shorto, American University of Beirut, ss56@aub.edu.lb; and Zirwat Chowdhury, Clark Memorial Library, UCLA, zirwat@u.northwestern.edu

By the later 18th century, Gothic architecture had already called attention to its own alterity. Western opinions as to its possible Eastern origins were mixed: British academician Thomas Sandby’s lectures disputed Sir Christopher Wren’s earlier genealogy of the Gothic, whilst the painter William Hodges embraced and furthered the position in his Dissertation on the Prototypes of Architecture, Hindoo, Moorish, and Gothic (1786). Meanwhile, antiquarians were busy reconfiguring the Gothic canon with localised studies, new designs and restoration. Later, in the mid-19th century, John Ruskin and his followers would champion a nostalgic and value-laden way of thinking about a past which privileged things made locally and by hand, resulting in the separation between pre-modern and modern, architecture and vernacular building, design and workmanship: false dichotomies that would become cemented in a Modernist historiography of architecture. There were no such artificial distinctions in the manifold awareness of the late 18th-century Gothic.

As a way of registering alternative histories at this transitional stage to industrial making, this session will explore the heterogeneity of the Gothic in Britain and Europe, in their expanding imperial territories, and in contemporary non-Western empires during the long 18th century. While we invite papers that use the Gothic to widen the current discourse on the handmade, topics might also address, but are not limited to, shifts in the antiquarian imagination; revolutionary aesthetics; notions of decay and decline; the peripatetic Gothic; nascent architectural preservation in Europe and its empires; and the material relationships between neoclassicism and Gothic. We especially welcome submissions that address non-European interlocutors of Gothic styles, and that incorporate the use of painting and other visual media in furthering understanding of the topic.

From Calenda (published 17 April 2013) and Le Blog de l’ApAhAu (with thanks to Pierre-Henri Biger). . .

Les lieux de l’opéra (XVIIe-XXIe siècle)
Opéra-comique, Paris, 21-23 November 2013

Proposals due by 15 May 2013

Alors que l’on observe depuis plusieurs années un rapprochement entre musicologues et historiens pour aborder la dimension spatiale et sociale des lieux de musique, les lieux de l’opéra n’ont guère fait l’objet d’une approche interdisciplinaire. Observés sous un angle unique, le plus souvent celui de l’architecture monumentale occupant une place à part dans l’espace urbain, ces lieux de spectacle méritent pourtant d’être abordés de façon plurielle. Ils doivent faire l’objet d’une réflexion prenant en compte la complexité des problématiques liées à ces espaces particuliers, qui sont eux-mêmes multiples. Destinés à accueillir des manifestations liant musique et théâtre, ils se prêtent également au jeu de la sociabilité aristocratique dans un premier temps, puis bourgeoise et, dans une certaine mesure, populaire. Intrinsèquement liés à la ville, ces lieux peuvent aussi être ceux offerts par une villa vénitienne, un manoir anglais ou un théâtre de verdure, reconsidérant l’image d’un espace perçu a priori comme essentiellement urbain. De même, si l’opéra est une forme lyrique traditionnellement représentée dans des lieux clos, de nombreuses expériences ont montré, dès le xviie siècle, qu’il pouvait s’épanouir en plein air, ce qui pose la question des rapports entre forme musicale et lieu d’exécution. Une étude des lieux de l’opéra permettra également de mener une réflexion sur la mutation des pratiques culturelles et sociales de la musique entre les XVIIe et XXe siècles, mutation en partie liée à la transformation des espaces qui hébergent et structurent l’activité musicale. (more…)

The original May 6 deadline for paper proposals for CAA 2014 in Chicago has been extended to May 13 (thanks, Alicia, for the clarification). More information is available here»

The deadline for proposing a session at ASECS 2014 in Williamsburg has been extended until 1 June 2013. More information is available here»

Below is a selection of panels accommodating eighteenth-century topics at the 2014 EAHN conference; see the Call for Papers for more information and a full listing:

European Architectural History Network Third International Meeting
Turin, Italy, 19-21 June 2014

Proposals due by 30 September 2013

Abstracts are invited for the sessions and round tables listed below between April 15 and September 30, 2013. Abstracts of no more than 300 words should be submitted through the conference website, along with applicant’s name, professional affiliation, title of paper or position, a short curriculum vitae, home and work addresses, e-mail addresses and telephone numbers. Sessions will consist of either five papers or four papers and a respondent, with time for dialogue and questions at the end. Each paper should be limited to a 20-minute presentation. Abstracts for session presentations should define the subject and summarise the argument to be presented in the proposed paper. The content of that paper should be the product of well-documented original research that is primarily analytical and interpretative rather than descriptive in nature.

Round tables will consist of six to eight participants and an extended time for dialogue, debate and discussion among chair(s) and public. Each discussant will have 10 minutes to present a position. Abstracts for round table debates should summarize the position to be taken in the discussion.

More information is available here»

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European Architecture and the Tropics
Chair: Jiat-Hwee Chang (School of Design and Environment, National University of Singapore)

Europeans have a long history of social, cultural and economic contacts and exchanges with the people of the Tropics. Although this history can be traced to an earlier time, it intensified in the past few centuries, with extensive formal and informal colonization of tropical territories by Europeans. The circulation and translation of architectural knowledge and practices between Europe and the Tropics is an inextricable part of this long and rich history.

By choosing the Tropics over other geographic categories, this session foregrounds the environmental and climatic dimensions of this history of exchange. This session will focus on how European architectural knowledge and practices were ‘acclimatized’ to the ecologies, heat and humidity of the Tropics. However, tropicalization entailed more than just environmental and climatic adaptations. Scholars in various interdisciplinary fields, particularly environmental and medical history, have shown that the tropicalization of European knowledge and practices involved social, cultural and political transformations too. David Arnold developed the concept of tropicality to suggest that tropical nature – of which climate is an important component – could be understood along the lines of Saidian Orientalism as an environmental ‘other’, deeply entwined with social, cultural, political, racial and gender alterities in contrast to the normality of the temperate zone. Tropicality is, however, not a monolithic category. Not only have the constructions of the Tropics varied with the changing social, cultural and political conditions of European colonization in the past few decades, they have also changed based on the shifting medical, environmental and other scientific paradigms of understanding the Tropics. How this climatic ‘other’ has been addressed architecturally by various actors at different historical moments has likewise been characterized by multifarious approaches.

This session invites papers that examine in a situated manner how European architecture has been tropicalized in any historical period at any tropical site. Tropicalization is of course not a one-way diffusionist process. Just as this session explores European architecture in the Tropics, the very notion of European architecture is neither immune to outside influence nor necessarily produced solely by Europeans. This session also, therefore, invites papers that explore how European architecture outside the Tropics was transformed by tropicalization and how European architecture might have been a hybrid entity coproduced by non-Europeans.

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How It All Began: Primitivism and the Legitimacy of Architecture in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries
Chairs: Maarten Delbeke (Faculty of Engineering and Architecture, Ghent University), Sigrid De Jong (Centre for the Arts in Society, Leiden University), and Linda Belijenberg (Centre for the Arts in Society, Leiden University)

By the turn of the eighteenth century, architects and writers questioned many of the foundations of renaissance design theory and its later developments: the role of Roman antiquity as the primary provider of architectural references; the authority of Vitruvius’ De architectura and its many editions, translations and re-workings; and also some of the very concepts that shaped this design theory, such as the idea that architecture emerged as the imitation of primitive forms of building. Challenging these authorities was not merely a matter of rejecting or reinterpreting the design principles espoused by Vitruvius or retrieved from ancient monuments. It also entailed redefining the foundations of architecture as a culturally and socially embedded artistic discipline. After all, traditional models – and primitive origins in particular – explained how architecture was enmeshed with the very fabric of society. If these authorities were challenged, new arguments had to be found explaining how architecture found its place at the centre of human culture.

In this session, we will examine one particular strain of arguments that addressed this problem: new ideas about the origins of architecture. In particular, we are interested in how the increasingly vivid debates about primitivism – the idea that any human action, institution or custom is at its purest at the moment of inception – informed new ways of thinking about architecture, its origins, and its role in society and culture. Hitherto primitivism has been considered mainly in relation to Modernism, but it emerged in the early eighteenth century as a mode of thought about the origins, meaning and legitimacy of society and cultural practices. As such, it offers a unique perspective on the still current problem of how to endow architectural forms with cultural meaning. By advocating a return to first origins, primitivism offers an alternative to history as the storehouse of architectural form and meaning. We invite papers that address the role of the quest for origins in general, and ideas on primitivism in particular, in architectural thought and practice in the eighteenth and nineteenth century. We welcome case studies about texts, buildings or oeuvres that open up wider intellectual, social and institutional contexts. We are particularly interested in how questions about origins and primitivism introduced new ideas into architectural discourse – such as the religious and symbolical, rather than the practical and tectonic origins of architecture – and configured the relation of architecture with other artistic and scientific disciplines, such as archaeology and different kinds of historiography, natural history, linguistics and ethnology. Finally, we are curious to see how the preoccupation with primitivism translated into building practice.

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Architects, Craftsmen, and Interior Ornament, 1400-1800
Chairs: Christine Casey (Department of History of Art and Architecture, Trinity College Dublin) and Conor Lucey (School of Art History and Cultural Policy, University College Dublin)

Is the study of interior ornament an integral part of architectural history? To date, the literature on architectural history has largely neglected the relationship between spatial form and interior ornament, resulting in the development of a sub-genre focused on interior design and decoration. Given the scale of ornament in early modern architecture across Europe, this separation of the building from its decoration militates against a holistic understanding of architecture and divides the Vitruvian triad that lay at the centre of architectural education and practice: firmitas, utilitas and venustas.

For example, in the large literature on Palladianism there has been little and discrete coverage of the interior. Perhaps the multifaceted and complex nature of interiors, mediated as they were by patron, architect and craftsman, complicates overarching historical narratives? But this separation of architecture from ornament does not reflect the real experience of buildings. Is it time to reunite these realms? Given the rehabilitation of craft in contemporary discourse, might interior ornament reclaim its place in architectural history?

Appropriately, pioneering research on Filippo Juvarra’s work in Turin provides an exemplar for broader study of the relationship between architects and craftsmen in early modern Europe.

This session aims to explore the evidence for communication and creative collaboration between architects and craftsmen, including plasterers, carvers and painters. While detailed written instructions are relatively rare, a range of other materials – such as drawings, models and building accounts – illuminates the process. To what extent were architects equipped to design ornament, and to what extent did they rely on craftsmen for ornamental design? Papers are invited that consider these issues in broad or specific terms.

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Public Opinion, Censorship, and Architecture in the Eighteenth Century
Chairs: Carlo Mambriani (Dipartimento di Ingegneria Civile, dell’Ambiente del Territorio e Architettura, Università di Parma) and Susanna Pasquali (Dipartimento di Architettura, Università di Ferrara)

Among the general transformations of the eighteenth century, there arose a new relationship between the press and architecture. For the first time, a space was born for the emergence of public opinion regarding architectural projects of varying scale and relevance. In those countries where the press was under direct censorship, public opinion found other outlets, such as pamphlets and anonymous letters; in all cases, though, there was evidence of a new and more critical response to changes in the built environment, replacing unrestrained praise. The aim of this session is to collect and discuss published, and unpublished, examples of the interaction between architecture and public opinion during the eighteenth century. Architecture in the periodical press, in private correspondence and in pamphlets.

Increasingly, the periodical press becomes a commercial enterprise, with direct competition between different journals and newspapers. How far was architecture – as well as other transformations of the built environment – among the themes that formed part of this process? A periodical press also develops in nations where censorship is in place. In these conditions, how exactly was architectural criticism/ debate affected? And what do other sources tell us about positions that could not be expressed in the official press?

Patronage and building type: major transformations in architecture. For works commissioned by rulers, whether kings, princes or popes, what room for criticism/opinion was there in the Eighteenth century press? What were the restrictions of censorship, either of the state, or self-imposed? What role did official Academies play in facilitating criticism? The Assembly Rooms in Great Britain, the seats of the Accademie scientifiche di dilettanti in Italy, and theatres in every nation were commissioned by collective bodies, such as the Società dei cavalieri, or similar groups of patrons. What kind of discussion developed through the projects for these buildings, and how far was that discussion open in character, involving wider public opinion? And finally, with the growth of cities, the design of open spaces and of urban-scale projects, and the emergence of competitions the European landscape changes. As new public buildings, city squares, bridges and port facilities started to appear, how were contrasting opinions on these transformations expressed? By what means, and where, did a public debate around these objects develop?

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Piedmontese Baroque Architecture Studies Fifty Years On
Chair: Susan Klaiber (independent scholar)

The current decade marks the fiftieth anniversary of the great flowering of studies on Piedmontese Baroque architecture during the 1960s. Proceeding from pioneering works of the 1950s such as Rudolf Wittkower’s chapter “Architecture in Piedmont” in his Art and Architecture in Italy 1600-1750 (1958), or Paolo Portoghesi’s series of articles and brief monograph on Guarini (1956), international and local scholars like Henry Millon, Werner Oechslin, Mario Passanti, and Nino Carboneri produced an impressive array of publications on the period. Some of the milestones of this scholarly output include the architecture section of the exhibition Mostra del Barocco Piemontese (1963), Andreina Griseri’s Metamorfosi del Barocco (1967), and Richard Pommer’s Eighteenth-Century Architecture in Piedmont (1967). This scholarship culminated in major international conferences on Guarini (1968) and Vittone (1970), as well as the initiation of the Corpus Juvarrianum in 1979.

This roundtable aims to commemorate the golden age of studies on Piedmontese Baroque architecture through a critical assessment of the heritage of the 1960s. Have Griseri’s and Pommer’s ‘challenging’ (Wittkower) concepts proven robust? Does a traditional geographic-stylistic designation remain fruitful for investigating a region whose two major architects built throughout Europe and whose ruling dynasty entered supraregional marriage alliances? Do recent interdisciplinary methodologies – drawing from fields like geography, sociology, or history of science – reframe the roles of agents like civic authorities, construction workers, or military engineers? Has new material evidence altered long-held assumptions? Discussion positions may directly address historiography or methodology of the 1960s, or present alternative approaches in the form of case studies or new research projects that critically engage with this historic body of scholarship on Piedmontese Baroque architecture, urbanism, and landscape.

At its previous conferences, the EAHN did not highlight the architecture of the host region in dedicated panels. Turin, however, arguably presents an ideal venue for an international roundtable with regional focus: then as now, Piedmont is a major European crossroad for cultural influences from the Italian peninsula, France and Spain, northern Europe, and the former Hapsburg empire. Piedmontese Baroque architecture continues to occupy both local and international scholars, as demonstrated by the recent series of monographic conferences in Turin on architects like Alfieri, Garove, and Juvarra organized by the Bibliotheca Hertziana together with the Venaria Reale consortium. Breaking out of these monographic constraints, this roundtable will provide an opportunity to reflect on where the field has been during the past half century, as well as where it might go in the next fifty years.

From Bath Spa University:

Georgian Pleasures
Holburne Museum, Bath, 12–13 September 2013

Proposals due by 30 April 2013

Pleasure is the object, duty and the goal of all rational creatures.
–Voltaire

This interdisciplinary two-day conference jointly sponsored by takes the diversity of the experience of Georgian Pleasures as its theme and invites new and established academics, period performers and musicians to come together for a lively cross-disciplinary conversation exploring the conceptualization and practice of pleasure globally in the long eighteenth century. Georgian pleasures were myriad. Some were exclusive — specific to certain classes, ages or genders —others were inclusive and/or overlapping. High life or low life, licit or illicit, private or public, domestic or commercial — there were pleasures to suit all tastes and circumstances. This conference aims to explore what it was that people of the period enjoyed and what we, as academics, re-enactors and period performers, can learn about society and culture from a better appreciation of pleasure, Georgian-style. The conference will take place in Bath’s recently refurbished Holburne Museum, itself the centre-piece of Sydney Gardens, the last of Bath’s famous Georgian Pleasure Gardens.

We welcome proposals (approx. 200 words) for individual papers or individual/group performances. Panels of three papers with chair and commentator are also welcome. All proposals should be sent to the Centre for History and Culture at Bath Spa University (email historyandculture.bsu@gmail.com) by 30th April, 2013.

Potential themes include:

• Alehouses to Almacks: the pleasures of high / low life
• Urban and rustic: the pleasures of location
• Leisure, pleasure and consumption: the delights of the spa
• Female and male: gender and pleasure
• Pleasures of the imagination: music, theatre, opera & the arts
• Dangerous and illicit pleasures
• Continental pleasures
• Spas

Conference sponsors:
Centre for History & Culture, Bath Spa University: Dr Roberta Anderson, Dr Elaine Chalus, Dr Matthew Spring
Regional History Centre, University of the West of England: Dr Steve Poole

For further information, contact historyandculture.bsu@gmail.com