Enfilade

A colleague of mine here in Paris, Jessica Fripp from the University of Michigan, is organizing an international conference on art and sociability during the eighteenth century. The call for papers is listed below, and I hope many of you out there will be inspired to submit some ideas for this promising event. – JF.

Art et sociabilité au XVIIIe siècle (1715-1815)
Institut national d’histoire de l’art, Paris, 23-25 June 2011

Proposals due by 31 December 2010

Over the past two decades, sociabilité has become a useful and hotly debated concept for discussing the social, political, and cultural changes during the eighteenth century. The works of Daniel Roche, Dena Goodman, Daniel Gordon, Antoine Lilti, and others have demonstrated that sociabilité can be fruitfully approached from the perspectives of sociology, philosophy and anthropology. In the eighteenth century, the Encyclopédie defined the term as “this inclination we have to do to others all the good that we can, to reconcile our happiness with that of others, and always to subordinate our personal advantage to the overall and communal advantage” (Louis de Jaucourt, 1751-1765) – that is, it was an abstract concept that explained the desire humankind had to participate in society. At the time, it was intricately linked to the social practice of commerce, broadly defined as any reciprocal communication or exchange. The emerging public sphere of the period, constituted by spaces such as academies, literary salons, and Masonic lodges, was the stage on which such exchanges were enacted.

Since the publication of Thomas Crow’s Painters and Public Life in Eighteenth-Century Paris, art historians have taken an interest in the role of artists in the public sphere. These studies tend to take a monographic approach that is more interested in reconstructing the history of an individual artist, salonnière, or collector rather than the role that artworks played in larger systems of practice and exchange. This symposium will examine sociabilité in the eighteenth-century art world through the theme of social practice. By investigating the social practices of artists, amateurs, critics, salonniers, and others we seek to uncover the larger networks of social exchange created by the commerce of material objects through collection practices, the art market and the display of art, and by the commerce of ideas through writing and conversation. To what extent did social practices in the public sphere influence artistic production and the material, economic, and verbal exchanges that took place around that production?

This symposium will take place at the Institut national d’histoire de l’art in Paris, June 23-25, 2011. We welcome papers from a wide range of humanities disciplines such as: history of art, history, anthropology, philosophy, and literature, as well as sociology and cultural studies, as we are interested in bringing together different disciplinary approaches to these topics and exploring connections between them. Please send an abstract of no more than one page, in French or English, and C.V. to colloque.sociabilite@gmail.com before December 31, 2010.

Book Destruction
University of London, Senate House, 16 April 2011

Proposals due by 10 January 2011

Much attention has been given in recent years to the book as a material, historical object and its possible technological obsolescence in the era of digitization. Such reflections have tended to concentrate on the production and cultural circulation of books, their significance and their power to shape knowledge and subjectivities. But there is another aspect to our interactions with the book which remains relatively unexplored: the history of book destruction. In certain circumstances books are treated not with reverence but instead with violence or disregard. This conference invites reflections on this alternative history of the book, and we welcome papers from a range of historical periods and disciplinary backgrounds. We welcome proposals from postgraduate students, as well as from more established academics.

Why do people destroy books? What are the mechanics of book destruction: the burning, pulping, defacing, tearing, drowning, cutting, burying, eating? What are the cultural meanings that have been attached to book destruction, and what do they reveal about our investments in this over-familiar object? Why should the burning of books have such symbolic potency? Book destruction is often invoked as a symbol of oppressive, despotic regimes; what is our ethical position, now, in relation to such acts? What is the relationship between book destruction and other forms of cutting up (quotation; collage)? When do acts of destruction become moments of creativity? How does destruction relate to recycling and reuse? Do transitions in media (manuscript to print; print to digital) threaten those older forms? How might the current phase of digitization and the gradual disappearance of library stock relate to prior moments of destruction? In the internet age, is it still possible to destroy (that is, completely erase) a text? What does materiality mean in a digital age?

Please send 300-word proposals (for a 20-minute paper) and a brief CV to Dr Gill Partington (g.partington@bbk.ac.uk) and Dr Adam Smyth (adam.smyth@bbk.ac.uk) by 10 January 2011.

Joint Meeting of CSECS, NEASECS, and the Aphra Behn Society
McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, 27–29 October 2011

‘The Immaterial Eighteenth Century’

Proposals due by 31 January 2011

In response to the sustained scholarly focus on the material aspects of eighteenth-century culture, the core concern of this interdisciplinary, bilingual (English and French) conference will be reactions to instability in the material realm, including but not limited to the emergence of an affective public sphere, a revaluation of labour, cosmopolitanism, sensibility, the new spiritualism, political radicalism and rights discourse, supernaturalism and the rise of the gothic, and anti-slavery and anti-imperial movements.  Papers on these and any topics related to the material and the immaterial in the period will be welcomed.  Panels dedicated to new theoretical models are particularly encouraged: looking beyond “thing theory” and “interiority,” enquiries that have dominated the field for the last decade, what approaches can raise the ethical and political stakes in the study of eighteenth-century literature and culture? Session and paper proposals should be emailed directly to Peter Walmsley (walmsley@mcmaster.ca) or Eugenia Zuroski Jenkins (zjenkin@mcmaster.ca).

From the ISECS website:

Thirteenth International Congress for Eighteenth-Century Studies
University of Graz, Austria, 25-29 July 2011

Proposals due by 31 January 2011

Our last general meeting took place at the 12th International Congress in Montpellier in 2007, and now preparations for the 13^th Congress, to be held in Graz (Austria) from July 25^th – 29^th, 2011, are well underway. (Please consult the website www.18thcenturycongress-graz2011.at for further information). Graz is Austria’s second largest city after Vienna. It is situated in the southeast of the country and can easily be reached by plane, train or car.

The Executive Committee of the ISECS accepted the organisers’ thematic proposals and so the principal overriding theme is confirmed as notions of time (past, present and future) in the eighteenth century. We believe that this topic is likely to be of keen interest not only to Congress participants, but also to the general public, especially as it allows for the possibility of research that can engage with issues of current concern.

The second overriding theme, Central and Eastern Europe in the Age of Enlightenment, has also been confirmed. Not only will this theme provide the opportunity for the discussion of state-of-the-art research on a fascinating range of topics, it will also allow participants the chance to forge new links with this part of the world and meet Central and Eastern European colleagues.

Here, we add a reminder that registration of new sessions and workshops is open until the end of July, 2010. We strongly encourage members take advantage of this opportunity to contribute new session and workshop topics in order that the congress programme is as rich and varied as possible. Once registration has closed, the organisers will draft a preliminary programme which will be posted on the website.

And, finally, we would also like to reiterate our invitation for members to register individual papers within the framework of the sessions and workshops. Please submit papers from October 1, 2010 to January 31, 2011. Papers will be selected on the basis of academic merit, and also with the aim of producing a varied and interesting conference programme with a wide range of contributors so that participants have the chance to make new and valuable contacts. In addition, special attention will be given to the work of young scholars, and this may also include the possibility of us providing additional support in some cases.

We look forward to welcoming you to Graz in 2011!

Yours sincerely,

The Congress Committee

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Panels that might be especially interesting for HECAA members include the following:

• AS028: Portraiture and Time in the Age of Enlightenment
• CS005: Collecting Art and Visual Culture in Latin America
• CS014: Garden Culture in Enlightenment Europe “In Memoria Michel Baridon”
• CS037: New Directions in Visual Culture
• CW016: The Art and Ritual of Eighteenth-Century Diplomacy

From The Clark:

In the Wake of the “Global Turn”: Practices for an Exploded Art History without Borders
The Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, MA, 28-29 October 2011

Proposals due by 15 January 2011

Conveners: Jill Casid and Aruna D’Souza

Raqs Media Collective, "Escapement," detail, 2009. 27 clocks, high glass aluminium with LED lights, four flat screen monitors, video and audio looped

This Clark conference on art history in the wake of the “global turn” takes up, and yet departs from, decades of the critique of Eurocentric priorities and presumptions of the discipline of art history. What would it mean to understand the global turn as something that does not merely expand but potentially explodes the borders between fields and even the discipline itself? The conference, then, aims to address methodologies, research practices, and models for not just a de-centered but also a reoriented practice of the global, one that reckons with radical difference, unevenness, and even the untranslatable. And it will do so from an eccentric, agonistic position. Rather than seeking a unifying conceptual term or method that merely expands the discipline as we know it, the conference starts from the position that confronting the challenge of developing practices of and for “the global” necessarily involves learning how to engage with a range of irresolvable frictions, disunities, and incommensurabilities. Pushing beyond the questions that have arisen over whether there is or even could be a global art history or histories, the conference is dedicated to developing practices of and for a fractured conception of the global. (more…)

Wanted: two additional proposals for a collection of essays tentatively titled Objects of Inquiry and Exchange: Eighteenth-Century Thing Theory in a Global Context. If interested, please submit your proposal by January 15, 2011:

Whereas the temporal expanse of the “long” eighteenth-century has been repeatedly emphasized, its spatial inclusiveness and thematic coincidences beyond British (or British colonial) boundaries are still insufficiently addressed. This volume invites papers that may fill in this informational gap: they will focus on how the increased production and circulation of things during the century has encouraged processes of cultural, scientific, and commercial exchange that justify the period’s consideration from a more globalizing perspective. The main goal of the volume is to cover geographical and cultural areas insufficiently mapped out in eighteenth-century studies (the Near and Far Orient, South-Eastern Europe, the Russian and Ottoman Empires, the Nordic countries, Black Africa, and Latin America) by exploring them through the material and narrative circulation of emblematic or familiar objects that represent them literally and culturally.  The possible topics include (but are not limited to):

• objects in intimate spaces and the emergence of domesticity;
• (im)proper objects and the public sphere;
• exotic things in travelogues and scientific investigation;
• automatons, fossils, totems and the scientific inquiry;
• collectibles, souvenirs, gifts and the epoch’s emerging interest in antiquarianism and the culture of the museum;
• gigantic and monstrous objects and the gothic imagination;
• anthropomorphized objects;
• it-narratives as forms of picaresque fiction and anti-luxury discourse;
• persons as things: the reifying mechanism of the satire;
• desirable things and associated practices (advertising, fashion, shoplifting);
• the traffic in china, fabrics, spices, and perfumes and the emerging interest in Orientalism;
• things as fetishes and objects of exchange;
• curious, magical, and ritual objects;
• the role of commodities in bringing geographically alien spaces together.

Ideally, the collection will highlight patterns of similar or divergent trends, behaviors, or themes that will reconfigure our understanding of the East/West (and North/South, for that matter) dichotomy by tracing down paths of commercial and intercultural exchange. Our goal is to provide a more accurate representation of the relationship between literature and material culture during the century from a comparative perspective that aims to elucidate whether synchronicity is a matter of influence or coincidence. Consequently, our call for papers encourages submissions from scholars involved in interdisciplinary and comparative research, both domestically and abroad.

Please send abstracts of 300-500 words and a brief bio to Ileana Baird at ifp4a@virginia.edu and Christina Ionescu at cionescu@mta.ca by January 15, 2010. The deadline for manuscript submission will be June 30, 2011.

Icons and Iconoclasm
Inaugural issue of Jefferson Journal of Science and Culture

Proposals due by 29 October 2010

The Jefferson Scholars Foundation and the Jefferson Fellows at the University of Virginia recently hosted the second biennial Forum for Interdisciplinary Dialogue. Scholars from across the United States and the World presented their research at the two-day event. On the heels of the success of this conference, the Jefferson Scholars Foundation is proud to launch a new peer-reviewed academic journal entitled the Jefferson Journal of Science and Culture. The journal is a twice-annual publication intended to present high-quality manuscripts on interdisciplinary topics.  Each journal will also have a theme.  The theme for the first journal will correspond to the conference — Icons and Iconoclasm. We invite scholars in all fields to submit papers exploring the many roles, uses and interpretations of icons, as well as criticisms of their iconic status. Scholars are invited to interpret the terms “image,” “icon,” and “iconoclasm” in different ways. Some topics may include:

• iconic ideas (scholarly theories, religious beliefs and practices, culture)
• mechanics of icons (construction, transmission, perception, and reception/destruction)
• iconic images (scientific models, branding, maps, artwork)
• iconic figures (historical, religious, literary, political)

Please read the submission guidelines on this website and email your manuscript to jeffersonjournaluva@gmail.com by Friday, October 29, 2010.

Proposals due by 15 December 2010

Each year ASECS sponsors a scholar session at the annual meeting of these societies. Because ASECS is an interdisciplinary society, it encourages its members to propose a session (panel, round table) on a topic of broad scholarly interest and one that will have particular resonance and appeal for the constituencies of the AHA (historians), CAA (art historians), and MLA (literary critics). The deadline for submitting proposals is December 15.

Proposals should take into account the type of interdisciplinary work encouraged by ASECS. A non-member status waiver can be requested from the MLA, for scholars working in fields other than language and literature. A submission form is available on the ASECS website (near the bottom of the page).