Enfilade

Prisons of Stone, Word, and Flesh: Medieval and Early Modern Captivity, ca. 400-1800
Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, 21 February 2014

Proposals due by 1 November 2013

We invite submissions for a one-day interdisciplinary symposium to take place at Brown University on February 21, 2014, hosted by the Cogut Center for the Humanities and sponsored by the Department of French Studies, the Department of Comparative Literature, the Medieval Studies Program, and the Department of History. Our theme will be “Prisons of Stone, Word, and Flesh: Medieval and Early Modern Captivity.” Professor Adam Kosto (History, Columbia University), author of Hostages in the Middle Ages (Oxford University Press, 2012), will serve as the keynote speaker.

If, following the thought of Michel Foucault and others, the prison is an essentially modern invention, how can we best conceptualize captivity in the time beforehand? Historical records of the medieval and early modern period (roughly 400-1800 AD) offer countless examples of human bondage, including the capture and detention of prisoners of war and the voluntary submission of hostages, as well as evolving forms of punitive incarceration. During the same time, art and literature are replete with depictions of imprisonment, often employed as a master metaphor for concepts like erotic love or mankind’s enslavement to the Devil and the body. Being held against their will even seems to have been something of a rite of passage for numerous medieval and early modern authors (such as Marco Polo, François Villon, Charles d’Orléans, Thomas Malory, and Cervantes) who found in various forms of captivity the time and inspiration necessary to create some of the most enduring works of western literature.

Submissions are sought from graduate students, faculty members, and other scholars in fields including—but not limited to—history, literature, languages, philosophy, religious studies, art and architectural history, and music. Particularly welcome are submissions which offer new methodological or theoretical approaches to issues of medieval and early modern captivity, or which examine the relationship of captivity to cultural production and/or intercultural exchange. Papers should be no more than twenty minutes in length and should be in English. Please send a 250-word abstract, along with brief contact information, to John Moreau, Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in French Studies and Comparative Literature, at John_Moreau@Brown.edu. The submission deadline is November 1, 2013.

Society of Early Americanists | London and the Americas, 1492-1812
Kingston University 17-19 July 2014

Proposals due by 1 September 2013

This thematic interdisciplinary conference of the Society of Early Americanists will examine London’s connections with the Americas in the colonial era. It will focus on the role that Europe’s largest urban center played in the structuring of an Atlantic world inscribed, amidst both war and peace, by networks of trade, travel, religion, kinship, cultural identification, captivity, slavery, and governance. At the same time, participants will consider how the Americas in particular shaped the geography, both actual and metaphorical, of early modern London (that is, the cities of London and Westminster), influencing its practices, hierarchies, infrastructures, modes of representation, arrangements of space, and movements of peoples. The focus will thus be on London as both recipient and source of transmission and interaction, connected imaginatively and actually with American regions under the control of other European powers as well as with its own colonies.

Hosted by the School of Humanities at Kingston University London, the conference will take place on the University’s campus in South West London, a 25-minute train ride from central London and a short bus ride from Heathrow Airport. Housing options will include university dormitories as well as a diverse array of local hotels.

Proposals are welcome for individual papers or complete panels. Innovative panel formats are welcome along with traditional trios of 20-minute papers. Please send 250 word proposals by October 1, 2013, to: sea14london@gmail.com

Program Committee:

Kristina Bross, Purdue University, co-chair
Laura Stevens, University of Tulsa, co-chair
Eve Tavor Bannet, University of Oklahoma
George Boudreau, Pennsylvania State University Harrisburg
Brycchan Carey, Kingston University
Jonathan Field, Clemson University
Christopher Loar, University of California Davis
Oliver Scheiding, University of Mainz

Framings: Interdisciplinary Conference on Frames
University of Copenhagen, 29 November — 1 December 2013

Proposals due by 17 May 2013

The conference will bring together strands of international research on frames that took place over the past 5 years and extend the conceptual and material framework of interdisciplinary between the Humanities, Social- and Communication Sciences. Expected and welcomed are contributions from art and media history and theory, philosophy and cultural studies, dance and theater studies, film theory and film semiotics, literature and music, communication science, visual and textile studies, and computer science.

Submissions are solicited in, but not limited to, the following areas:
– frames in art and art history
– dialectical nature of frames
– framing strategies in medieval texts
– mediality of the frame
– parergon
– framing (with) textiles
– conceptual frameworks
– mirrors
– (video-)feedback
– ‘frame generators’
– self-reflexive practices
– frame as ‘metaphor generator’
– performativity of the frame
– interdisciplinary and methodological aspects of framings (more…)

In addition to the session organized by Kevin Chua ‘After the Secular: Art and Religion in the Eighteenth Century’, HECAA will be represented at next year’s CAA conference with a ‘New Scholars Session’ chaired by Kristel Smentek. Information on additional panels related to the eighteenth century is available here» -CH

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102nd Annual Conference of the College Art Association
Chicago, 12-15 February 2014

Proposals due by 13 May 2013 (extended from 6 May)

Historians of Eighteenth-Century Art and Architecture
New Scholars Session
Kristel Smentek, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, smentek@mit.edu

The Historians of Eighteenth-Century Art and Architecture (HECAA) invite paper proposals from advanced doctoral students and recent PhDs that present innovative approaches to the interpretation of the art, architecture, and material culture of the global eighteenth century. Presenters selected for this session are expected to become members of HECAA before the conference.

From the conference website:

Northeast American Society for Eighteenth Century Studies Conference | The Ends of War
Yale University, New Haven, 3-6 October 2013

Proposals due by 3 May 2013

Joseph Wright of Derby, The Dead Soldier, ca. 1789
(Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection)

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Yale University is pleased to host the 2013 Annual Meeting of the Northeast American Society for Eighteenth Century Studies, an event it last hosted in 1993. Home to Sterling Memorial Library, the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, the Lewis Walpole Library (in nearby Farmington), the Cushing/Whitney Medical Library, the Yale Center for British Art, and the Yale University Art Gallery, and host institution for The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, The Works of Jonathan Edwards, the Yale Editions of the Private Papers of James Boswell, and the Yale Indian Papers Project, Yale has longstanding traditions in eighteenth-century studies across the disciplines. The Beinecke, which in 2013 is celebrating its 50th anniversary, will host the conference’s welcome reception.

2013 marks the 300th anniversary of the Treaty of Utrecht, signed in April 1713, formally ending the War of the Spanish Succession, and the 250th anniversary of the Treaty of Paris, ending the Seven Years War, known in its colonial North American theater as the French and Indian War. What are The Ends of War? The phrase here reflects the elusive Johnsonian sense in the quotation on the home page, above, implying both cessation, but also paradoxically what lives on after formal cessation, as well as the deeper, more troubling sense of “ends” as aims, purposes, intentions, and perhaps unintended consequences. Do wars end, or end anything? Beyond the massive geo-cultural realignments that followed especially from the global conflicts of 1757–1763, what are the social, literary, aesthetic, and artistic consequences of war and its ends? And what did and do these ends look like at the other ends of the earth, non European, non North American? We welcome papers on any aspect of these and other related questions. In keeping with NEASECS traditions, panels and papers addressing elements of the long eighteenth century not directly related to the conference theme are also welcome.

Proposals for panels should be submitted to the Program Committee at neasecs2013@yale.edu by May 3, 2013. Panel proposals will be listed on this website on a rolling basis, as received and approved, through the Spring. Paper proposals should be sent directly to the panel organizers at the addresses they provide. The conference welcomes traditional panels of three 20-minute papers (with chair, and respondent if desired), as well as roundtables, sessions on Teaching Approaches, State-of-the-Field debates, or other sessions with variously innovative formats.  Individual papers on topics not addressed in the proposed panels may be sent directly to the Program Committee, which will try to accommodate them in thematically grouped sessions. Please submit them by June 30, 2013.

For a current list of panel proposals, click here. It will download as a separate word file.

Panel organizers should notify panelists of acceptance or otherwise by June 30, 2013, and submit completed panels, noting AV or any other special requirements, to the Program Committee, at neasecs2013@yale.edu, by July 15, 2013. The conference program will be posted on the conference website in August.

The Eighteenth-Century Gothick Symposium
University of Oxford, 7 August 2013

Proposals due by 31 May 2013

The Gothick Revival in eighteenth-century Britain is a multi-faceted phenomenon, simultaneously liminal and mainstream, historical and modern, whimsical and serious. This one-day symposium seeks to explore the revival’s many dimensions. Proposals are invited for 20-minute papers that address any aspect of the Gothic revival, and may include:

• art
• architecture
• interiors
• furniture
• antiquarianism
• history
• literature
• medievalism
• patronage
• politics
• restoration
• sexuality

Please email 250-word proposals to the symposium organisers, Oliver Cox and Peter Lindfield by 31 May 2013 at 18thCenturyGothick@gmail.com.

The 2014 ASECS Conference takes place in Williamsburg, Virginia, March 20-23. Proposals for panels are due by June 1 (extended from the original May 1 deadline). Details and a form for submitting a session for consideration can be found here»

From SAH:

Annual Conference of the Society of Architectural Historians
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 30 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. (more…)