Enfilade

I realize this is more literary than art historical, but how nice it would be to hear a strong visually-oriented talk on sensibility in Austen’s context. From the conference website:

200 Years of Sense and Sensibility
University of St Andrews, 9-10 September 2011

Proposals due by 30 June 2011

Keynote speakers: Kathryn Sutherland (St Anne’s College, Oxford) and Paula Byrne (author of the new Harper Collins Jane Austen biography).

“I am never too busy to think of S&S,” Jane Austen wrote to her sister, Cassandra in April 1811. The year saw the publication of her first novel and to mark the anniversary, we are hosting a conference that reflects upon two hundred years of readership and opens up new interpretations of the novel. We invite proposals for 20-minute papers and round table panels on any aspect of the novel. Possible topics may include but are not limited to:

• Social and historical context
• Reception
• Tradition of Sensibility/contemporary aesthetic theory
• Literary influences
• Sibling relationships
• Feminist readings
• Adaptations and appropriations
• Re-writings and sequels
• The novel’s place in the canon

Please send abstracts of no more than 250 words to the conference organisers, Marina Cano López and Rose Pimentel, at  200sensibilities@gmail.com. Please also email us with any questions. The deadline for proposals is 30 June 2011.

Art Against the Wall
The Courtauld Institute of Art, London, 19 November 2011

Organized by Thomas Balfe and Jocelyn Anderson

Anon. Fireplace with sculpture of birds, Claydon House, Buckinghamshire, 19th century. Source: Conway Library, The Courtauld Institute of Art

Art against the Wall, the third symposium of The Courtauld’s Early Modern department, will provide an occasion for established and emerging scholars to present and discuss their research together. This one-day symposium will explore the relationship between walls and art in early modern visual culture. During the period 1550-1850 the interplay between work and wall became increasingly complex as art objects began to pull away from the walls which had previously defined them. The enduring association between artistic skill and craft production meant that many art works were often still regarded as elements in overarching decorative schemes; paintings installed in eighteenth-century English domestic interiors, for example, continue to be described as part of the ornamentation, even as the furniture, of a room. Conversely, walls now had the power to redefine art works, giving them a new meaning through a new context; thus, in late sixteenth-century debates on the status of the religious image, walls – which map the division between sacred and secular space – take on crucial importance. Yet the wall could also become art, as the numerous examples of trompe l’oeil wall illustration to be found in seventeenth-century architecture and garden design suggest. Taking as its point of departure Derrida’s insight that there can be no clear separation of ergon (work) from parergon (not-the-work, ‘wall’), the symposium will attempt to investigate the rich questions raised by the phenomenon of art against the wall. We welcome contributions relating to paintings, sculptures, decorative schemes, architecture and works on paper. Topics for discussion may include, but are not limited to: (more…)

Conference of the Eighteenth-Century Scottish Studies Society: Media and Mediation
University of South Carolina, Columbia, 12-15 April 2012

Proposals due 1 December 2011

ECSSS will celebrate its 25th annual conference in Columbia, South Carolina, in April 2012. The conference will explore the varieties of media through which eighteenth-century Scots articulated or created both individual voices and communal understandings. Papers and sessions may focus on any aspects of cultural mediation or forms of oral and written media in the broadest sense, including manuscript culture journals, letters, notebooks, and marginalia), aural culture (sermons, songs, conversation, and academic lectures), and print culture (from stately folios and elegant octavos, to pamphlets, newspapers, broadsides, and chapbooks). Papers focused on the mediators rather than the media-authors, diarists, scholars, orators, readers and listeners, singers and composers, editors, critics, and members of the book trades-are equally welcome, as are Conference sessions will be held in the new Hollings Special Collections Library, home of the G. Ross Roy Collection of Robert Burns & Scottish Literature, and other Scottish collections. Plenary sessions will include the 2012 W. Ormiston Roy Memorial Lecture by Professor Nigel Leask, Regius Professor of English, University of Glasgow, speaking on the cultural functions of commonplace books. (more…)

As noted at Le Blog de L’ApAhAu and at OSK — Onderzoekschool Kunstgeschiedenis (Dutch Postgraduate School for Art History) . . .

Transnational History of Museums
Technische Universität Berlin, 17-18 February 2012

Proposals due by 15 June 2011

Temple of muses, custodian of cultural heritage, site of memory, space for the mediation of taste and knowledge: The functions of the museum are manifold and are given different emphases, depending on the type of museum and the disciplinary outlook. However, the argument that the institution is a major venue for the construction of national identity has recurred again and again since the first royal collections were opened to the public around the middle of the eighteenth century. Indeed, the number of museum foundations was particularly high in Europe during the nineteenth century, when the modern nation-state was being established. Yet the tight linkage between nation-building and the birth of public collections has increasingly been called into question by recent scholarly work on the history of museums. Instead, local traditions have been stressed or international comparisons have been drawn upon in order to explain policies of collecting, the display of exhibits or the architectural design of individual galleries.

The aim of the planned conference is to go beyond the national framework in analyzing the institution of the museum. It offers an invitation to reflect from a transnational perspective upon the purposes and concepts of museums, museum practices, and the perception of museum culture. Which models from abroad were imported by museum representatives in order to give their own collections a certain profile? To what extent were “foreign” principles of order and hanging appropriated? Can the international networks on which museum experts relied be reconstructed? How can we describe the activities of commissions that were assigned to explore the organisation of museums beyond their geographic borders? Did an internationally inspired taste have any influence on the planning, the architectural settings or the compositions of collections? Do documents such as letters, travelogues or diaries written by museum visitors give concrete indications of a comparative, transnational perception?

Central to the conference is the discussion of the museum as a space of, even product of, cross-border processes of exchange and transfer. Seen from this angle, an examination of the museum of art, in particular, is to be carried out, also taking into account archaeological and historico-cultural collections, arts and crafts museums and the so-called universal museums inside and outside of Europe. Chronologically, the conference sets in around 1750, at that point in history when there was a gathering momentum of the crucial characteristics of the modern museum of art still familiar today: public access, an independent exhibition space or building, the application of scientific principles of order, or didactic aspirations. A second chronological benchmark ? before the caesura of World War II? is the conference that took place in Madrid in 1934. For the first time, museum experts from all over the world came together and thus made the museum, as such, very literally the pivotal subject of intense international discussion.

The conference will be held on Friday, February 17, and Saturday, February 18, 2012 at the Technische Universität Berlin. Please submit proposals of about 1.000 characters for papers not exceeding 30 minutes by June 15, 2011 to Prof. Dr. Bénédicte Savoy (benedicte.savoy@tu-berlin.de) or Dr. Andrea Meyer (andrea.meyer@tu-berlin.de). Languages of the conference are German, English and French.

Midwestern American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Conference
Indiana State University, Terre Haute, 4-6 November 2011

Proposals due by 19 August 2011

We are pleased to announce that the annual conference of the Midwestern American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies will be held jointly with the Midwest Conference on British Studies at Indiana State University in Terre Haute, Indiana, November 4-6, 2011. Our plenary speaker will be Paula Backscheider, Phillpott-Stephens Eminent Scholar of English Literature at Auburn University, and author of Eighteenth Century Women Poets and Their Poetry.

MWASECS invites contributions on all aspects of the eighteenth century.  We welcome traditional 20-minute paper presentations as well as more innovative formats such as round table discussions, performances, etc. Please send individual abstracts and/or proposals for complete sessions to mwasecs2011@gmail.com by August 19, 2011. For an early response, please submit your abstract/proposal by July 30.

From the BSECS website:

British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Annual Conference
St Hugh’s College, Oxford, 4-6 January 2012

Proposals due 30 September 2011

The annual meeting of the British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies is Europe’s largest and most prestigious annual conference dealing with all aspects of the history, literature, and culture of the long eighteenth century. We invite proposals for papers and sessions dealing with any aspect of the long eighteenth century, not only in Britain, but also throughout Europe, North America, and the wider world. Proposals are invited for fully comprised panels of three or four papers, for roundtable sessions of up to five speakers, for individual papers, and for ‘alternative format’ sessions of your devising.

While proposals on all and any eighteenth-century topics are very welcome, this year the conference theme will be Landscapes & Environments. We would thus particularly welcome proposals for panels and papers that address eighteenth-century uses of, and attitudes to, landscapes and environments of all kinds, throughout the long eighteenth century and in any part of the world. These might include, but will not be confined to: changes in the landscape (including urban landscapes) and environment; climate and weather (for example ‘the great storm’ of 1703); ‘greening’ the eighteenth century; landscape gardening; enclosure; pastoral; the picturesque; sacred landscapes; ruins and archaeology; representations of the landscape; and meanings and significance given to landscapes and environments, in all fields from history to the arts, literature, and philosophy.

All enquiries regarding the academic programme of the conference should be addressed to the academic programme co-ordinator, Dr Corinna Wagner (academic@bsecs.org.uk). Proposals are due by Friday 30 September. Registration will be available in September and you will be notified whether your paper has been accepted or not by Friday 21 October. For more information please see the BSECS website.

Alternative Venues: Artists’ Solo Shows and Other Exhibits beyond the Academy and the Salon, 1700-2000

Abstracts due by 1 December 2011

I am putting together a volume of essays devoted to the subject of single-artist, thematic, and single-object exhibitions from the eighteenth century through the twentieth, organized and displayed outside of academic jurisdiction, in most cases by the artist her/himself. It is tentatively called Alternative Venues. Essays will explore the functions, meanings, organizational and visual structures, and/or successes/failures of artists’ solo shows (e.g., Courbet’s Pavilion of Realism), exhibitions of thematically unified work by a single artist (e.g., Fuseli’s Milton Gallery), and displays of single art objects (e.g., David’s Intervention of the Sabine Women). It is my hope that the collection as a whole will highlight the innovation and modernity of such exhibitions, while perhaps setting their motivations and functions into relief against similar displays in the contemporary art world, where the solo show is the benchmark of artistic success for the living artist. Publishing interest has already been expressed by a very reputable press, famed for such volumes of art historical essays. Please send a CV and 3-5 page abstract by December 1, 2011 to Andrew Graciano, Associate Chair and Graduate Director, Department of Art, University of South Carolina, 1615 Senate Street, Columbia, SC 29208; or by email at graciano@mailbox.sc.edu.

Participants will be notified in January 2012. Full drafts of accepted essays are due by March 2012. Projected publication date is early to mid 2013.

The 2011 annual conference for the Universities Art Association of Canada (UAAC/AAUC) will be hosted by Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario, from Thursday, October 27th, to Saturday, October 29th. The following list of sessions suggests the possibilities for eighteenth-century papers. A one-page proposal and CV should be sent to the session chair by May 15. Presenters must become members of UAAC. For more information and the full call for papers (including the French), please visit the conference website.

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Drawings from the Fifteenth Century to the Present Day
Chairs: Jen Diorio and Janina M. Knight, 2jmk1@queensu.ca

This session calls for papers that explore topics relating to the important role of drawing in art and architecture. Papers can discuss the role of the drawing as a preparatory step in the artistic process, or how a drawing can be created and exist as a work of art in its own right. How can drawings aid art historians in understanding the true intentions of artists and architects? How can drawings be used to reveal otherwise unknown aspects of an artist’s working process? In what ways can drawings enlighten us as to the meaning of particular works of art or architectural designs? We invite submissions that discuss the role of drawing in European art and architecture from the fifteenth century to the present day.

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“The Barbarous Gaudy Goût”: Encounters between East and West in Early Modern Art
Chairs: Je Eric Weichel, 6ejw@queensu.ca, and Allison Fisher, 1anf@queensu.ca

In 1749, Elizabeth Montagu wrote “we must all seek the barbarous gaudy goût of the Chinese; and fat-headed Pagods and shaking Mandarins bear the prize from the finest works of antiquity.” Montagu’s satirical description of chinoiserie is one of the most famous commentaries on the process of aesthetic and artistic contact between Asia and Europe. This session seeks papers reflecting the cultural communication between East Asia and Western Europe in a range of diverse media, including ceramics, painting, textiles, pattern and lacquer. We are specifically interested in the dialogue between China and Japan and Britain, France and Italy from the fourteenth to the nineteenth centuries. Subjects could include: activities of the East India Company or the VOC, chinoiseries, textile trade and conservation, landscape design, architecture, tea drinking and ceremonies, consumption of exotic commodities, food history, portraiture, costume history, mission work, archaeological investigations, and Impressionist japonisme.

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The Global Baroque in Postcolonial Perspective
Chairs: Stephanie Dickey and Gauvin Alexander Bailey, dickeys@queensu.ca

This session seeks papers concerned with visual and material culture around the world in the period ca. 1580- 1750. In this era of colonial and economic expansion, artists and architects frequently traveled outside their home countries for work or inspiration, while paintings and prints functioned as internationally-traded commodities. We are especially interested in case studies that explore the creative dynamic produced by interactions between artists, artworks, and/or consumers of art from divergent cultures. This might include intersections both within the European continent (e.g., Netherlandish artists in Rome or Prague) and between Europe and the wider world (e.g., French architecture in Quebec, European artists in Asia or the Ottoman Empire, etc.).

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Landscape of Ruins
Chairs: Karla McManus, karla.mcmanus@gmail.com, and Luke Nicholson, ld_nicho@alcor.concordia.ca

The ruin is a charged concept, evoking both wreckage and the possibility of renewal. In architectural and landscape painting, drawing and printmaking, the ruin has a long history as an emblem of civilization’s decay, the sublime possibilities of destruction, and a warning against hubris. More recently, ruination has returned to envision the future collapse of contemporary civilization, brought on by ecological, cultural or political disaster. Time-based technologies, such as photography, video and film, have emerged as central in the representation of ruination today. Proposals are invited on any aspect of the landscapes of ruin, in any medium and historical period.

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The Signature of the Artist
Chairs: Franziska Gottwald and David de Witt, franziskagottwald@googlemail.com

Signatures of artists have been known since Antiquity, and are often found as name, monogram, or symbol. In the Renaissance, many signatures were written in Latin and sometimes expanded into an assertion of the artist’s intellectual and manual work. But such inscriptions are not the only kind of authorial signature to be identified in art. The artist’s typified style of painting or etching can also serve as a signature. This panel seeks papers that discuss the different meanings of “signature” from a range of periods and contexts, and addresses questions such as: artistic commentary, self-representation, and the aesthetics of the signature of the artist.

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Prints and Cross-Cultural Encounters, 1600-1850
Chair: Stéphane Roy, stephane_roy@carleton.ca

In recent years, “globalization” has coloured the historian’s practice, leading scholars to widen their scope in order to get a more comprehensive look at modern and early modern societies. Evidence of cross-cultural connections seems indeed to abound, from the propagation of Caravaggio’s style through the paintings of foreign artists to the use of printed text to disseminate ideas during the Enlightenment. But perhaps no other medium can better testify to the vigour of cultural exchanges than printmaking itself. As works of portable dimension, prints had the natural ability of connecting cultures, shaping and fashioning ideas; they could also be reinterpreted and given new meanings in different cultural environments. Preliminary evidence indicates that interactions between European (and, later, North-American) printmakers resulted in cultural transfers that have not been without consequences on the shaping of national identities. Just as with literature and political theory (areas enriched and transformed by “international” dialogue), the effects of cosmopolitism were equally felt in the world of visual arts. Measuring those effects, however, has yet to be done. How did these elements of intercultural connections translate into visual terms? Are there indications pointing to the existence of a common iconographical lexicon based on shared values or ideals? Does the practice of printmaking itself challenge the long-standing tradition of “national schools”?

By using the print medium as a prime vehicle for cross-cultural encounters, this panel welcomes proposals in both English and French dealing with the following issues: circulation of prints in different national contexts; visual recycling of specific visual motifs; existence of recurring themes and common visual codes; advertisement of foreign prints in newspapers; role of print sellers as cross-cultural intermediaries; artists travel and correspondence; development of national styles using “foreign” engraving techniques; dissemination of painters’ work in different national contexts; international art trade; and representation of otherness in prints.