Enfilade

Call for Papers from the YCBA:

Art, Agency, Empire: India in Global Contexts — Graduate Student Symposium
Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, 11 February 2012

Proposals due by 31 October 2011

I enquired of monuments and ruins, I questioned the Vedas whose pages count their existence by thousands of years…. And then did India appear to me in all the living power of originality. —Louis Jacolliot (1869)

The objective of this one-day graduate student symposium is to work against earlier paradigms by asserting the existence of multiple forms of agency—artistic, cultural, political—in India from about 1600 to Independence and beyond. The symposium also aims to examine visual and cultural exchanges between India and the rest of the world, with special (but not exclusive) reference to Britain and the British Empire. We welcome papers discussing the broadest range of visual materials, from architecture and material culture through representations in various media, and proposing interpretations that may engage with questions of agency, artistic identity, power, and politics. We aim to complicate canonical categories such as the “Company School,” “Mughal Miniature,” “British Art” and “British India,” “Swadeshi,” and even “diaspora” by critiquing methodologies currently employed in researching, interrogating, and evaluating materials from this place and time.

This symposium is informed by the recent proliferation of projects on India’s visual and material culture, including two exhibitions opening at the Yale Center for British Art in the fall of 2011: Johan Zoffany RA: Society Observed, which includes a substantial section devoted to the works the artist produced during his residence in India, between 1783 and 1789; and Adapting the Eye: An Archive of the British in India, 1770–1830, which concentrates on the complex networks of British and Indian artists, patrons, and scholars in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Art, Agency, Empire: India in Global Contexts explores how, in a postcolonial period, it has become increasingly pressing to reevaluate India as a site of multifarious cultural (indeed intercultural) production, which has provoked global responses across media. Topics may include, but are not limited to:

• colonizing, Independence, and postcolonial contexts
• construction of identities
• spaces of India: maps, landscapes, cityscapes, panoramas
• architecture: exterior and interior
• monuments and monumentality
• popular print, graphic satire, illustrated books
• art as document/document as art
• bodies of evidence: collections, compilations, physical bodies
• methodological innovations
• caretaking sources: conservation, preservation, digitization

We invite proposals for 25-minute papers on this theme from graduate students working in any discipline. Special consideration will be given to papers examining the topic in relation to the British involvement in India. Cross-disciplinary and comparative studies are particularly welcome. Please e-mail abstracts of no more than 300 words by October 31, 2011 to lars.kokkonen@yale.edu, Lars Kokkonen, Postdoctoral Research Associate Research Department Yale Center for British Art. Travel funds for speakers are available upon application.

European Architectural History Network Second International Meeting
Brussels, Belgium, 31 May — 3 June 2012

Proposals due by 30 September 2011

The European Architectural History Network (EAHN) invites paper proposals for the twenty-three thematic sessions and four roundtable panels to be presented at its Second International Meeting. Sessions and roundtables will cover architecture of all periods, from antiquity, medieval, and early modern, up through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as well as topics from allied disciplines.

The following sessions may be of particular interest for historians of eighteenth-century architecture:
• Travel of Men and Models: Interpreting, Collecting and Adapting French Art and Architecture in Europe During the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries
• The Spoils of Architectural Training: Studying School Manuals, Teaching Handbooks and Exercises Sheets in Europe (Eighteenth to Nineteenth Centuries)

Other sessions and roundtables address broad historic periods including the eighteenth century, for example:
• Clerical Ties: Architectural Networks and Networking in the Colonial Mission Field, c. 1500-1950
• Urban Representations of the Temporal
• Politics and Architecture: Definitions, Methods, Possibilities
• Fusion Architecture from the Middle Ages to the Present Day: Incorporation, Confrontation, or Integration?

For the complete call for papers, including full instructions for proposal submission, please visit the conference website: http://eahn2012.org.

Historians of British Art, Young Scholars Session at CAA 2012
Los Angeles, 24 February 2012

Proposals due by 15 October 2011

The Historians of British Art, a CAA-affiliated society, seeks papers for an upcoming mini-session of work by emerging scholars to be held during the HBA Business Meeting at CAA in Los Angeles on February 24, 2012. Current or recent graduate students (if a Ph.D. recipient, the degree must have been earned within the past three years) are invited to submit proposals. Papers may address any topic related to British art, architecture, and visual culture and should be limited to fifteen minutes. This is an opportunity for informal presentations of new or ongoing research followed by open discussion.

To submit a paper for consideration, please send the following items to Colette Crossman, HBA 1^st Vice President, at colettecrossman@yahoo.com: (1) a one page abstract; (2) a C.V. (limited to two pages).; and (3) a brief cover letter explaining interest in the field. The deadline for submission is October 15, 2010. Decisions will be made by November 1. Upon selection, presenters are requested to join HBA if not currently a member. For more information about the Historians of British art, visit our website, www.historiansofbritishart.org

From Lemoine-Bouchard Fine Arts:

The Miniature in Europe
Institut de France, Fondation Simone et Cino del Duca, Paris, 11-12 October 2012

Proposals due by 1 December 2011

Jacques-Antoine Barrois (1766-after 1795), Allégorie de l'Amour et de l'Absence (Lemoine-Bouchard Fine Arts)

Once again with the support of the Institut de France, the 2nd International Symposium wishes to motivate research on 17-19th century miniature painting in France and in Europe. Curators, researchers and PhD level students are invited to concentrate on first class artists who have not been studied so far, unpublished collections of miniature, on relations between miniature painting and the other artistic expressions.

Miniature painting (gouache and watercolour on vellum, ivory, paper, cardboard…) has been one of the most popular artistic disciplines in France and Europe. Many artists painted in miniature, full time or part time, and some famous artists practiced miniature painting for their own personal pleasure. Five years after the first International Symposium in Chantilly — Actes published by Institut de France — the Second Symposium wishes to stimulate research in this field in France and in Europe. Researchers are invited to open the chapter “Miniature” when they study the work of 17-19th century painters. The 2012 edition will focus on research on monographs of first class miniature painters — many of whom have never been properly studied — on relationships between the different artistics forms, graphic arts, arts of fire (enamel, porcelain), decorative arts (goldsmith’s trade, fans…). The use of miniature as a mean of propaganda also invites us to study the role of small portraits in the edification of the public image of sovereigns and personalities.

The 2nd Intl Symposium La miniature en Europe will be organised during two days on the same model as the first one in 2007: studies of unpublished collections / monographs of miniature painters / technical aspects and context of miniature painting, with a maximum of 20 contributions. The final program will be posted in December 2011. Parallel to the Symposium, one or two interesting visits will be organised.

Proposals of 200-400 words (in French or English) should be submitted by 1 December 2011.

Coordination:
Dr Nathalie Lemoine-Bouchard
Centre de recherche sur la miniature et l’iconographie française (réseau indépendant de chercheurs)
13 rue des Petites Ecuries, 75010 Paris
Contact : nlemoinebouchard@hotmail.fr

Enlightened Objects: Essays on Material Culture and Gender in Eighteenth-Century Europe
Edited by Jennifer Germann and Heidi Strobel

Proposals due by November 2011

We are developing an anthology called Enlightened Objects: Essays on Material Culture and Gender in Eighteenth-Century Europe, under consideration for the Ashgate series, The Histories of Material Culture and Collecting, 1700-1950, edited by Michael Yonan. The volume addresses the relationship between gender and material culture in order to examine the creation of gendered identities in relation to material objects. We are seeking proposals that consider a broad array of objects including, but not limited to, furniture, paintings, sculpture, clothing/textiles, and jewelry, produced by both amateur and professional artists.

Are you working on any projects that relate to our proposed volume? We welcome submissions from a variety of fields such as anthropology, history, sociology, museum studies, studio art, art history, and other areas of study. If you are interested, we will send more detailed information about submitting an abstract.

Jennifer Germann (Ithaca College), jgermann@ithaca.edu
Heidi Strobel (University of Evansville), hs40@evansville.edu

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