Enfilade

From the conference website:

Scientiae: Disciplines of Knowing in the Early Modern World
Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, B.C., 26-28 April 2012

Proposals due 30 September 2011 [extended to 18 October 2011]

Paper and panel proposals are invited for Scientiae: a new interdisciplinary conference on early-modern science, to be held in Vancouver, B.C. (under the auspices of Simon Fraser University), April 26th-28th, 2012. The working assumption of the conference is that interdisciplinarity is not only an option, but a necessity, for the study of early-modern culture in its knowledge of the natural world. That is because period science is itself an interdisciplinary function, emerging from Biblical exegesis, advanced design, and literary humanitas; as well as from natural philosophy, alchemy, craft traditions, etc. By the same token, emergent science lends unique coherence to the gathered diversity of early-modern or Renaissance scholarship, when it is taken as an intellectual focal point. Scientiae offers a forum for scholars of the period’s art and literature, as well as its intellectual history, to illuminate aspects of early-modern science in the latter’s proper strangeness. Topics and questions may include, but are by no means limited to: (more…)

This interdisciplinary conference seeks to investigate how statues facilitate this interplay of sexuality and history. It explores the numerous ways statues – as historical and imagined artifacts– allow us to think about the past and its relation to sex, gender and sexuality. The conference may be of interest to HECAA members working on sculpture of the period, as well as those working on the reception of antique sculpture within an eighteenth-century context. Reflections on gender, particularly with regard to the female consumer of sculpture could make for a fruitful submission. –FG

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From H-ArtHist:

Desiring Statues: Statuary, Sexuality and History Conference
University of Exeter, 27 April 2012

Proposals due by 1 October 2011

Antonio Canova, "The Three Graces," ca. 1814 Image © Victoria & Albert Museum, 2011

Keynote Speakers: Dr Stefano-Maria Evangelista (University of Oxford) and Dr Ian Jenkins (British Museum)

Statuary has offered a privileged site for the articulation of sexual experience and ideas, and the formation of sexual knowledge. From prehistoric phallic stones, mythological representations of statues and sculptors, e.g. Medusa or Pygmalion, to the Romantic aesthetics and erotics of statuary and the recurrent references to sculpture in nineteenth- and twentieth-century sexology and other new debates on sexuality, the discourse of the statue intersects with constructions of gender, sex and sexuality in multiple ways.

As historical objects, statues give insight into changing perceptions of the sexed body and its representation; they tell stories of ownership and appropriation of sexualities across diverse cultural locations and historical moments. As an imaginary site, statues can serve to trouble the distinction between subject and object, reality and unreality, presence and absence, and present and past, thereby offering rich possibilities for
thinking about the relation between individual and communal identities,
sexuality and the past.

The conference brings together contributors from a wide variety of disciplines, including history, gender and sexuality studies, literary and cultural studies, art history, classics, archaeology and philosophy. Contributions from postgraduate research students are very welcome. Papers should explore how statuary intersects with questions of sexuality and gender, and temporality, specifically history. Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

•       Uses of Statuary in Sexual Science
•       Statues in  Colonial and Postcolonial Contexts
•       Representations of Statues and Sculptors (in Literature, Visual Arts, New Media)
•       Sculptures and the Construction of Gender, Racial and National Identity
•       Use of Statuary in Sexual Reform Movements
•       Psychoanalytic Uses of Statuary
•       Statues, Gender and Sexuality in Myths, Legends and Their Adaptations
•       Sculpture and Figurations of Desire
•       Statuary Representations of the Gendered Body
•       Reception Histories of Individual Statues

The conference is organised by Dr Jana Funke (j.funke@exeter.ac.uk) and Jennifer Grove (jeg208@exeter.ac.uk) as part of the interdisciplinary Sexual History, Sexual Knowledge project, funded by the Wellcome Trust, and led by Drs. Kate Fisher and Rebecca Langlands. Please send 300-500 words abstracts to j.funke@exeter.ac.uk and jeg208@exeter.ac.uk. The deadline for abstract submissions is 1 October 2011.

Facts & Feelings: Documentary Evidence on Emotions of Artists, 1600-1800
Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium, 8-9 December 2011

Proposals due 15 September 2011

Arenberg Castle, ca. 1500, part of the Catholic University of Leuven (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

The art history research unit of the University of Leuven (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium) announces the Call for Papers for the symposium Facts & Feelings: Documentary Evidence on Emotions of Artists in the Early Modern Period, 1600-1800 to be held at the Faculty of Arts on 8-9 December 2011. The symposium’s aim is to bring together researchers in various historical disciplines to focus on a rare type of source material: documents revealing emotions of early modern artists from the Low Countries and neighbouring countries (1600-1800).

Although these sources are hard to find, they are essential to shed (new) light on personal issues and inter-human relationships of early modern artistic communities. Topics are not limited to but may address any of the following aspects: written evidence of empathy, friendship, inspiration, doubt, pride, envy, dispute, etc. Potential contributors are invited to submit a paper abstract (max. 400 words) in the language of the paper (preferably Dutch, English, French or German), accompanied by a brief curriculum vitae including a list of max. five publications to the symposium organisers no later than 15 September 2011. The proceedings will be published.

Organisers: Prof. dr. Katlijne Van der Stighelen, Prof. dr. Koen Brosens, and Dra. Leen Kelchtermans
• Katlijne.VanderStighelen@arts.kuleuven.be
• Koen.Brosens@arts.kuleuven.be
• Leen.Kelchtermans@arts.kuleuven.be

As noted at Le Blog de ApAhAu:

Art and Knowledge, 1500-1750 — Special issue of Fragmenta
Journal of the Royal Netherlands Institute in Rome

Proposals due by 30 September 2011

The interdisciplinary journal Fragmenta welcomes contributions to the theme Art and Knowledge in Italy and the European Republic of Letters, 1500-1750. The volume explores the ways in which knowledge was shaped and shared among painters, architects, collectors and scientists. It brings to the fore the epistemological dimensions of the making, trading, collecting and discussion of artworks. The city of Rome, debating ground for the key artistic and scientific issues of the Early Modern period, and perennial fulcrum of European antiquarianism and the academic approach of art, functions as the backdrop for a range of topics with a wide geographical spread.

The editors especially encourage a transnational perspective. How and why were artists and architects involved in the knowledge networks of the Republic of Letters, and how does this international dimension modify older historiographical differentiations? Possible topics include:
● artists’ and collectors’ writings
● images and material objects included in correspondence
● scientific publications and “paper museums” involving international collectives of artists (e.g., Dutch and French engravers working in Rome)
● the interrelations between artists, artisans and scientists in the production of scientific instruments and encyclopaedic collecting
● the role of material objects in the shaping and circulation of antiquarian scholarship
● notions of virtuosity and connoisseurship
● the role of the visual arts in communicating technical and theological knowledge to the non-Western world (and knowledge about the colonies and missions to Europe).

Fragmenta, published by Brepols, is a peer-reviewed interdisciplinary journal available in print and online, focusing on history, art history and archaeology. Recent thematic issues have discussed Early Modern subjectivity (forthcoming) and archaeology and national identity (2008). It is edited by the staff of the Royal Netherlands Institute in Rome. Guest editor for this volume is Thijs Weststeijn. Contributors are invited to send a one-page abstract to: thijs.weststeijn@uva.nl before September 30th, 2011.

As noted by Jon Lackman at The Art History Newsletter, Michèle Hannoosh and Catriona MacLeod are succeeding John Dixon Hunt as editors at Word & Image. Their editorial from the current issue (27:1) seems promising for the eighteenth century:

. . . All of us working in the area of word and image studies owe an enormous debt of gratitude to John Dixon Hunt for making Word & Image the journal of reference for all work in the relation between images and texts. As new editors, we aim to continue the formative role the journal plays in advancing the field of word and image studies in its latest developments. We would like to open up the field to new research in as many periods and approaches as possible. While maintaining our acknowledged strength in medieval and modern subjects, we encourage submissions in other periods such as antiquity, early modern, romanticism and the nineteenth century, and
contemporary; in Western and non-Western subjects; in philosophical and theoretical approaches to word and image; in book arts, photography, new media and virtuality; in translation and adaptation. On-line technologies now make it possible to include supplemental material and video images on our website, thus expanding the possibilities for illustration beyond the printed page. We envisage a series of critical assessments of key works in the history of word and image studies. We welcome ideas from our readers for other initiatives in which the journal could take the lead. In all things, we remain committed to publishing significant new research, methodologically rigorous and intellectually enlightening. We take this occasion to announce a special issue in honor of John Dixon
Hunt. The issue will focus on one of the most fundamental issues in the relations of word and image, one in which John Dixon Hunt has had a long interest: ekphrasis. Readers are invited to submit articles on any aspect of ekphrasis in theory or practice by 1 December 2011. . . .

The full editorial is available here»

A selection of panels at the AAH conference addressing the eighteenth century; for further information, visit the AAH website:

Association of Art Historians 38th Annual Conference
The Open University, Milton Keynes, 29-31 March 2012

Proposals due by 7 November 2011

The 2012 AAH Annual Conference will showcase the diversity and richness of art history in the UK and globally over an extensive chronological range. Like The Open University itself, AAH2012 is open to all people, places and ideas. This three-day event will profice a broad scope of geographies and methodologies, ranging from object-based studies, socio-historical analyses, theoretical discourses, visual culture of the moving image, exhibition cultures and display. Sessions and papers will reflect the composition of the wide consituency that is art history today. Keynote events and special interest sessions/workshops will celebrate the strengths and respond to the challenges that face art history now, whilst the book fair, receptions, and visits will provide opportunities for delegates to relax and network.

If you would like to propose a paper, please email the session convenor(s) directly. You will need to submit an abstract of your proposed paper in no more than 250 words, your name and insitututional affiliation (if you have one). You should receive acknowledgement of receipt of your submission within two weeks. Do not send paper proposals to the conference administrator, convenor or AAH office, send them to the Session Convenor(s). Please also read the Conditions of Submission if you are considering submitting a paper.

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Art’s Insiders: New Histories of Europe’s Academies
Keren Hammerschlag (King’s College London) keren.hammerschlag@kcl.ac.uk
Hannah Williams (University of Oxford), hannah.williams@sjc.ox.ac.uk

For centuries, institutions like the Royal Academy in London, the Académie Royale (later the Académie des Beaux Arts) in Paris, and the Accademia di San Luca in Rome were the epicentres of European art practice, theory and education. For artists, having the letters ‘RA’ after their name, or the opportunity to show works at the Salons or the Summer Exhibitions promised elevated social standing and commercial success. As institutions, Academies developed principles and ideals that dominated artistic production throughout the period. In art history, however, the ‘Academy’ has been variously recast as staid, kitsch and archaic. According to critics, ‘academic’ art represents the inert centre against which avant-garde innovation and originality was pitted. But in their time, Europe’s Academies were anything but static or homogenous. Established by groups of artists resisting under-developed or conservative attitudes to art, these communities often began as innovative alternatives; they were home to radical new approaches, and became sites of heated debate in response to political, theoretical and social shifts.

This session seeks a re-evaluation of art’s insiders. What did it mean to be at the centre of these powerful institutions? And how can we effectively revisit the Academy without falling into the trap of reviving dead, white, male, bourgeois artists? We invite proposals for papers that take a new look at the ‘Academy’ and academicians in the period 1600 to 1900. Papers might address issues of gender, social networks, individual and collective identity, educational practices, centre and periphery (eg. regional academies), in-groups and rivalries, competition and emulation, successes and failures. In particular we invite papers informed by sociological, anthropological and cultural theory approaches, which take art objects as their focus.

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Conflicting Art Histories: Dialogues of Cosmopolitanism and Nationalism in Eighteenth-Century British Culture
Freya Gowrley (University of Edinburgh), f.l.gowrley@gmail.com
Viccy Coltman (University of Edinburgh), viccy.coltman@ed.ac.uk

William Hogarth’s traditional position as the stalwart of English nationalism in the arts was drastically re-evaluated in 2007 with the publication of Robin Simon’s Hogarth, France & British Art. Published to coincide with the Tate’s major Hogarth exhibition of 2007, Simon’s text situates Hogarth, a renowned anglophile, within a firmly European context of artistic theory and practice. How does the idea that Hogarth gleefully propagated his anti-Gallic public image, but was in fact greatly indebted to French art and theory, affect our understanding of apparently critical eighteenth-century works of art such as his Marriage-à-la- Mode (c. 1743)? While historians Linda Colley and Gerald Newman prioritised national identity as an evaluative tool for the examination of aspects of eighteenth-century British culture, is it appropriate to apply this label to broad cultural manifestations, notably the consumptive behavioural patterns of the aristocracy and the middling classes alike? This session will consider this intriguing dichotomy of eighteenth-century British art – the underwritten and unresolved conflict between nationalism and cosmopolitanism – and its relation to the artistic practice, material culture and intellectual history of the period. Topics for discussion could include, but are not limited to:
– artistic response to the luxury debates
– landscape and nation
– the connoisseur and the Grand Tour
– the usefulness of labels (exotic, chinoiserie, rococo)
– the reception of Italy
– the creation of a British national school
– consumption & the meaning of goods
– the local and the global/the provincial and the metropolitan
– the issue of -isms (Englishness, Britishness, Scottishness)

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Art History beyond National Boundaries
Emma Barker (The Open University), e.barker@open.ac.uk

Since its inception, the modern discipline of art history has been informed or even defined by the notion of the national school. The belief that works of art manifest a nation’s culture can be traced back to the foundational scholarship of Winckelmann in the eighteenth century and was reinforced by nationalistically-minded scholars in the nineteenth century. Although such notions are now generally discredited, their influence persists in so far as the practice of art history continues to be organized along predominantly national lines. Occasional studies of artistic exchanges between one nation and another and the current interest in the impact of empire and colonization on European art have not fundamentally challenged this state of affairs. As a result, comparatively little attention has been paid to the international dimension of artistic practice in the period before the emergence of modernism as a self-consciously international movement.

Contributions to this session may seek to rectify this omission by discussing the internationalization of art in broad, theoretical terms or by exploring specific artistic developments that transcend national boundaries. In either case, the challenge will be to do so without falling back on the similarly problematic notion of the transnational period style. Papers dealing with any period before 1900 are welcome, though in the interests of intellectual coherence preference may be given to those focusing on the art of the centuries immediately preceding this date.

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Out of Time
Rosalind McKever (Kingston University), rosalind.mckever@gmail.com
James Day (Courtauld Institute of Art), james.day@courtauld.ac.uk

The date an artwork was produced does not seal it off from the rest of time. Indeed historical readings might trace how an artwork intersects different times. Art history presents past art through conservation, exhibition and writing. Artworks are connected diachronically, linking the artist to predecessors, contemporaries and successors. Narratives of art chart traditions and innovations, historians source-hunt for influences and appropriations. Artists are identified as precursors and rebels; periods and movements are labelled as renaissances and avantgardes. The changing interests of art history also affect practice contemporary to it, as research, excavations, restorations, discoveries and exhibitions alter the canon, art education and the sources of appropriation available; they also revise the lens through which we look at the past. This session invites papers addressing art from any period, particularly those which do not belong to that period. In this panel we will interrogate the temporality of art history by focussing on the premature, the belated, and the anachronistic. Topics for papers could include, but are not limited to:
– Precursors and avant-gardes, conservatives and rebels, Post- and Neo Appropriation, translating art of one time into art of another
– Excavations and discoveries, how unearthing disrupts the past and affects the present
– Writing art history: non-linear narratives and creative history
– Chronology in galleries and exhibitions
– Posthumous casts, copies and reproductions
– Art education’s role in artists’ relationships with the past

[NB: This could be a particularly interesting session for those HECAA members interested in any aspect of revivalism in eighteenth-century visual culture]

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Student Session: The Everyday and the Extraordinary, Material Culture and Art History
Gemma Carroll (University College London), gemmacarroll@gmail.com
Laura Bolick (The Open University), l.bolick@open.ac.uk
Elizabeth Moore (University of Birmingham), exm592@bham.ac.uk

Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life. –Pablo Picasso

Art objects not only range from the everyday, such as a piece of furniture or a photograph in a newspaper, to the extraordinary, a heavily jewelled illuminated manuscript, but the places these objects are found also differ widely, from our daily encounters on street corners to the singular magnificence of a gothic cathedral. The physical creation of art can also be understood as spanning this chasm from commonplace household objects, ephemera and preparatory sketches to lapis lazuli, gold and exquisitely finished works. In addition critical approaches to art understand it variously as an autonomous agent or as a site of exploration and perhaps intervention in the life praxis. This session will openly investigate art objects from tapestries to performance art and gardens to media studies, readdressing and examining traditional divisions between decorative and fine art and notions of artist, artisan, author, designer and producer. Exploring how everyday items make the transition into art objects and how ‘fine’ art has been brought into the everyday, the session will also examine the idea that the emphasis on the everyday in art means that we no longer place value on the extraordinary. Finally, the concept that the everyday and the extraordinary co-exist within all art objects will be considered. Topics for papers could include, but are not limited to:
– Different stages of Art Production
– Theories of the Everyday
– Museum Studies/ Conservation/ Collecting
– Recycling and Salvaging
– Socially Engaged Art
– Immateriality/ Ephemera
– Shifting boundaries between art and material culture
– Uniqueness/ Transcendence

From the society’s website:

Centre and Periphery in the Enlightenment: The Annual Conference of the Werkgroep 18e Eeuw
Groningen, The Netherlands, 20-21 January 2012

Proposals due by 30 June 2011

In recent years, Enlightenment studies have moved away from a traditional national, most often Francocentric or Anglocentric focus toward a new view of the Enlightenment as an international process. New conceptual categories have emerged, including that of an international, transnational or Atlantic Enlightenment, while older categories such as the Republic of Letters have been revived. Yet these categories do not fully do justice to the power relations also underlying much Enlightenment debate, in the Low Countries and beyond. As attractive as the notion of a transnational Enlightenment may be, it obscures the unequal access to power of different participants in Enlightenment debate, not only in terms of geography but also related social, institutional, and gender identifications.

This conference would therefore like to ask whether the older concept of centre and periphery might be useful in addressing power discrepancies between participants in Enlightenment debates. In doing so, it takes up the provocative question formulated by one of the conference’s key-note speakers, Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra: whose Enlightenment was it anyway? Who defined what the Enlightenment’s central discourse and players were, and who defined its periphery? Can centre-periphery relations be perceived not only horizontally, i.e. across national borders, but also vertically, i.e. within them? What was the relation between various forms of regionalist consciousness and Enlightenment discourse? Topics that may be considered include, but are not restricted to:

• colonial discourse on / and the Enlightenment
• regionalism and Enlightenment
• the participation of ‘small’ or peripheral countries and regions to Enlightenment debate
• gatekeepers controlling access to Enlightenment discourse
• key institutions / mediators within larger configurations of power structures
• authors’ positioning as insiders / outsiders

Prospective speakers are invited to submit a 300-word paper proposal, together with a short bio-bibliographical statement, by 3oth June 2011 to the conference organizers: M.M.Lok@uva.nl and A.C.Montoya@rug.nl. Accepted proposals will be printed as abstracts in the conference booklet, together with high-resolution illustrations where relevant. Speakers will be asked to limit their papers to 20 minutes. The conference language will be English.

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From the society’s website:

The Werkgroep 18e Eeuw / The Dutch-Belgian Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies

The ‘Werkgroep 18e Eeuw’ endorses research into all aspects of eighteenth-century history in the Low Countries (Belgium and the Netherlands). The society is open to anybody who is interested in eighteenth-century history; both interested laymen and professional researchers alike. The Werkgroep intermediates between members and is a meeting place for all those interested in eighteenth century history. The Werkgroep approaches its objectives primarily through the organisation of annual conferences and the publication of the periodical De Achttiende Eeuw. By means of an electronic news letter, the Werkgroep keeps its members informed about conferences, calls for papers, guest lectures by foreign experts, and other current developments. Each year, the Werkgroep awards a the author of the most outstanding MA thesis on a topic concerning eighteenth-century history. (more…)

François Cointeraux (1740-1830), Pioneer of Modern Earthen Architecture:
Theory, Teaching and Dissemination of a Vernacular Technique
Lyons, 10-12 May 2012

Proposals due by 31 July 2011

From 1785 onwards, the builder and master mason François Cointeraux actively promoted a construction technique of vernacular origin, known as pisé de terre (or ‘rammed earth’), which was at that time confined to southeast France. His cahiers or fascicules from the Ecole d’architecture rurale (School of Rural Architecture), published in Paris in 1790-91, were rapidly translated into seven languages (German, Russian, Danish, English, Finnish, Italian and Portuguese). They attracted the attention of major architects such as Henry Holland (1745-1806) in England, Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826) in America, David Gilly (1748-1808) in Germany and Nicolaï L’vov (1751-1803) in Russia, founder of a flourishing school of earthen architecture in Tiukhili near Moscow, based on Cointeraux’s school of the Colisée in Paris. Through his publications, Cointeraux generated an almost universal interest for this material, as cheap as it was abundant, and encouraged its adaptation to rural or residential architecture.

This success can largely be explained by a desire to revive rural architecture, which was in perfect harmony with both the physiocrats’ line of thought and the actions of agricultural societies. However, Cointeraux never managed to popularise its use widely and lastingly in France. His numerous publications did not achieve their expected uptake with the institutions concerned. He is nonetheless representative of a culture of invention and innovation, highly characteristic of the first industrial revolution and the birth of modern architecture. The aim of the conference is to present a synthesis of the extensive research carried out on François Cointeraux over the course of the last twenty years and to re-situate his work in the wider context of the evolution of ideas and techniques.

T H E M E S  O F  T H E  C O N F E R E N C E (more…)