Enfilade

The Five Senses of the City: From the Middle Ages to the Contemporary Period
Tours, 19-20 May 2011

Proposals due by 30 November 2010

The conference The Five Senses and the City aims to explore the urban sensorial landscape (Alain Corbin), starting from the individual and collective experience of city dwellers and users, an experience which can be understood as a resource for sensible expression and action (Arlette Farge), in association with the study of the objects of sensorial perception. Our ambition is to historicize the link between urban space and the senses, as a central tool for the construction of the city as a body of significations (Jean François Augoyard). Urban reality is elaborated through “spatial practices” (Michel de Certeau), among which sensorial experiences are essential: our reflection on the urban aspects of the history of sensibility will thus concentrate on the figure of the urban dweller as a privileged observer, as well as the urban landscape and the people who live in it. The city shall furthermore be considered as the generator and amplifier of sensorial experience; it can thus appear in turn attractive or repellent to groups that approach and occupy it.

The history of sensorial experience is not linear: the hierarchy of the senses is in permanent flux, depending on the historical, geographical and cultural context. Discourses on senses and their representations are shaped by science, religion, politics, art and literature: for instance, how come the 19th century city is so often pictured in rural settings? We should also take into account and analyse the role of ethics and medicine, which are central in the shaping of socio-political distinctions: let’s consider, for instance, the perception of poor neighbourhoods since 18th century, or that of a faraway city by an amateur traveller or a scientist or again, that of inner cities today. The posture and position of the body in motion are crucial in our perceptions. Medieval and modern conceptions of the human “body” governed by humours, as well as penetrated by natural and supernatural forces, will help us to think differently about the nature and hierarchy of sensations. Furthermore, the increasingly important role of technical and urban changes since the XVIIIth century has to be taken into account, since they play a major part in the history of urban sensibility: let’s think about city lighting, means of transportation (horses, cars, trains…), infrastructures (water, gas, electricity, sewage system…). Furthermore, sensorial experience is structured by gender identities, through a series of prohibitions and possibilities. How does gender, combined with other social categories, organize the hierarchy of perceptions? How do sensations – shaped by representations – infere in the perception of a urban space (e.g. the link “Paris, the city of pleasure” – “Paris, the city of the woman”)? In other words, what does it mean to “feel at home”, to be “touched” by another person? How can we register the urban experience of the Other?

In addition to history, the history of urban sensibility calls for the cooperation of many disciplines, such as sociology, geography, ethnology, philosophy, cognition, as well as literary or theatre studies, linguistics, musicology, art and architecture history, urban planning and urbanism. (more…)

Annual SEASECS Meeting — ‘Science and the Arts in the Long Eighteenth Century’
Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, NC, 3-5 March 2011

Proposals due by 1 November 2010

The 37th Annual Meeting of the Southeastern American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (SEASECS) will be held 3-5 March 2011 at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, NC. The theme for the conference will be “Science and the Arts in the Long Eighteenth Century.” The deadline for submission of paper proposals and full panels is 1 November 2010.

The eighteenth century has sometimes been seen in the history of science as a quiescent period between the great advances made by the likes of Descartes, Newton, and Leibniz in the seventeenth century and Darwin in the nineteenth. As Roy Porter argues in The Cambridge History of Science (2003), however, the eighteenth century is an especially rich era of interdisciplinarity because of the prominence of humanists “in the dissemination of the sublime truths of the new science” (7). By the end of the century, Romantic artists began to reject the “truths” of science and to promote the arts as alternatives to rather than disseminators of science. Thus the eighteenth century represents a kind of golden era of cross-pollination before the arts and sciences were separated into distinct, sometimes opposing, disciplinary discourses. (more…)

College Art Association Annual Conference
Los Angeles, 22-25 February 2010

Panel Proposals due by 1 September 2010

CAA invites individual members to propose a session for the 2012 Annual Conference, taking place February 22–25, 2012, in Los Angeles. Proposals should cover the breadth of current thought and research in art, art and architectural history, theory and criticism, pedagogical issues, museum and curatorial practice, conservation, and developments in technology. The Los Angeles conference closes CAA’s Centennial year, which will begin at the New York meeting in February 2011.

The Annual Conference Committee welcomes session proposals that include the work of established artists and scholars, along with that of younger scholars, emerging and midcareer artists, and graduate students. Particularly welcome are those sessions that highlight interdisciplinary work. Artists are especially encouraged to propose sessions appropriate to dialogue and information exchange relevant to artists.

Proposals are only accepted online; paper forms and postal mailings are not required. To set up an account in CAA’s content management system, please email Lauren Stark, CAA manager of programs, who will register your email address and provide you with a password. For full details on the submission process, please visit Chair a Conference Session. Deadline: September 1, 2010; no late applications are accepted.

First Annual EE Colloquium on the Sociology of the Letter
St Anne’s College, Oxford, 12–13 November 2010

Proposals due by 10 September 2010

The Divinity School, Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford

The Colloquium on the Sociology of the Letter is a new event from the Electronic Enlightenment Project, a leading scholarly resource for correspondence in the early modern period, supported by the Centre for the Study of the Book, a centre for fostering research into books across academic and professional specialisms. Both groups are scholarly departments of the Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford. The colloquium is intended to provide a forum for both academics and graduate students exploring different aspects of both correspondence about publishing(letters to and from authors, editors, copy-editors, printers, proof-readers, printers, binders, booksellers, censors, reviewers . . .) and the publication of correspondence itself (ancient, medieval, contemporary, translations, fictional, satirical, translations . . .) in the early modern period.

Both correspondence and publishing were immensely influential in the nexus of political, religious, literary and cultural ferment in Europe and the Americas in the 16th-18th centuries. By exploring the links between the two, we expect to contextualize both and reach a deeper understanding of their social and
historical significance.

Call for Papers
The papers given by academics will be 40 minutes; those given by graduate studentswill be 20 minutes. Conference papers can be in English or French. A selection of papers will be published electronically in the Electronic Enlightenment Project’s e-journal Letterbook. Please send your proposals (max 250 words) by Friday 10 September 2010 to the following addresses:
Dr Robert V. McNamee
Director, Electronic Enlightenment Project
Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford
Email: eecolloquium@e-enlightenment.info

Society of Architectural Historians 64th Annual Meeting
New Orleans, 13-17 April 2011

Proposals due by 14 August 2010

Members and friends of the Society of Architectural Historians are invited to submit abstracts by 14 August 2010. Abstracts of no more than 300 words should be sent directly to the appropriate session chair; abstracts are to be headed with the applicant’s name, professional affiliation [graduate students in brackets], and title of paper. Submit with the abstract a short curriculum vitae, home and work addresses, email addresses, and telephone and fax numbers. Abstracts should define the subject and summarize the argument to be presented in the proposed paper. The content of that paper should be the product of well-documented original research that is primarily analytical and interpretative rather than descriptive in nature. In addition to the following two panels, the full list of session topics can be found here»

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Architecture and Gastronomy

Architecture and food have long held analogies. Both can be characterized by words such as “tasteful,” “bland,” and most prominently in recent years—“organic.” Their synergy is embodied by the Latin word colere (“to till, tend”), which is also the root of our modern term “to cultivate.” Importantly, cultivation can reference both pragmatic and symbolic phenomena. Cicero notably fused the concrete and figurative inflections of the term, proposing that the human mind must be cultivated in order “to fruit.” During the Enlightenment this analogy was widened into architectural theory when J.-F. Blondel defined “taste” as the “fruit of reasoning.” Just as chefs designed recipes for fine cuisine, architectural theorists began to devise rules for good architecture. While both architecture and gastronomy are disciplines that espouse fundamental principles and standards, neither can be wholly controlled by absolute prescriptions or rigid formulae. They rely on a combination of intuition, inventiveness, and even wonder. This session aims to illuminate and clarify the reciprocity between building and eating, paying particular attention to the role of gastronomy in the expression and interpretation of architecture. Proposals can be from diverse approaches, and those that reassess the metaphorical relationship between taste and architecture are particularly welcome. Speakers may also wish to present case studies that address how the built environment, including landscape, participates in the experience of a meal. Possible questions to explore might include: What is the underlying significance of the terms like “setting” and “service” within architectural discourse? How do food markets contribute to the character of a city? In what ways does architecture structure certain forms of dining, such as ritual meals and communal feasts? How can tastes and smells help define the memory of particular places? The session is also open to presentations that examine emerging dialogues between building and eating, such as how vernacular architecture and regionalism have been aligned with contemporary movements like Slow Food and Edible Schoolyards.

Please send proposals to: Samantha Martin-McAuliffe, University College Dublin School of Architecture, Richview, Clonskeagh, Dublin 14, Republic of Ireland; samantha.martinmcauliffe@ucd.ie   +353.1.716.2757.

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The Architecture of Spectacle: Antiquity through Early Modernity

While many recent period-specific studies address the ways that buildings and cities serve spectacle, from the perspective of visuality (Jay 1988) it may be useful to analyze how architecture for spectacle may condition visual experience itself and how it is theorized within cultural contexts. In turn, we might also ask how the requirements of facilitating or enhancing spectacle impacted the institution of architecture and its design processes, or how theaters or similar buildings adapted to new practical uses or even as models for envisioning the design and structure of the world. This session seeks papers focused on any period from antiquity to 1800, addressing how historical places for spectacle of all sorts shaped or reflected other architectural forms, how they adapted to other purposes, or how they influenced knowledge. How did forms in the theater resonate with public buildings, institutions, houses, or cities? How might columnar stage backdrops with pavilions, niches, and aediculas have both influenced and evoked urban forms? In what ways did later periods adapt monumental theaters or amphitheaters like those of the Roman world for domestic, commercial, or political purposes? Similarly, how might designers have adapted the architecture of theaters to different visual concerns in the manner Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon, for example? What role did theaters serve in the development or construction of institutionalized knowledge in contexts like the anatomical theater or planetarium, or more generally in terms of the nature of spectacle and how visual experience itself works?

Send proposals to: John Senseney, Assistant Professor, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, School of Architecture, 117 Temple Buell Hall, MC-621, 611 Lorado Taft Drive, Champaign, Illinois 61820; 217-244-5137; senseney@illinois.edu

14th Australasian David Nichol Smith Seminar in Eighteenth-Century Studies
Melbourne, 4-8 July 2011

Proposals due by 1 November 2010

The David Nichol Smith Seminar in Eighteenth-Century Studies is a long-running quadrennial conference. Over the years, it has spawned many influential publications. We hope our 14th seminar will be the same. Inaugurated and supported by the National Library of Australia, the Nicol Smith is the major Australasian showcase for inter-disciplinary professional and academic discussion on eighteenth-century studies. The conference attracts scholars across all the Humanities’ disciplines of history, literature, art history, and musicology, studies of material culture and anthropology and archaeology. The conference embraces every aspect of life, politics and culture during the ‘Long Eighteenth Century’, circa 1688 to 1815.

Venues: National Gallery of Victoria, State Library of Victoria, Conference Centre (city-based)

The 14th quadrennial David Nichol Smith Seminar in Eighteenth-Century Studies, to be held in Melbourne city centre on 4 to 8 July 2011, will focus on realms of power, privilege and ideas, and on themes of leisure, material culture and sociability in Europe’s long eighteenth century. We are interested in Europe’s Easts and Wests, Norths and Souths, and in effects on places far beyond. We welcome papers exploring any site of interaction in and between Europe’s private and public spheres: those outside in villas or villages, on estates, or thronging the streets of cities, or those inside in the new spaces of sociability like the lobby, salon, studio, boudoir, club, coffee house and promenade-pleasure garden. This long-established interdisciplinary seminar based in Australasia has a distinguished history, producing select publications: books of essays and special issues of international journals. Your convenors intend to continue this tradition.

• Town and Country: Villa, Palace and Town House
• Environment, Land Management and Ecology
• Antiquaries: The Discovery of the Past
• Coffee, Coffee Houses: New Tastes and Social Spaces
• Sensibilities and Sociabilitiés: Lived and Literary
• Spectacles: Art, Music, Theatre — Performed and
• Ephemeral
• Display: at Court or in a public sphere
• Europe and Asia
• Representation and Self-Representation: Portraiture, Dress and Toilette
• Reason, Un-Reason and Romanticism
• Domination, Slavery and Empire: Global & European Impacts
• The Rise of the Individual: Monarchies under Stress
• The Marginalised: Itinerants, Roma and Prostitutes
• Cosmopolitanisms and Nationalisms
• The Enlightenment and the Pacific
• Opera and Theatre in Europe in the Long Eighteenth Century
• Letter-Writing, the Novel and Poetry in Europe in the Long Eighteenth Century
• Spirituality and Space: Islamic and Christian Architecture in Europe in the Eighteenth Century

The conference committee seeks submissions of papers. Please use the online Abstract form for your submissions. Abstracts should be between 200-300 words in length. Convenors: Dr Adrian Jones OAM (adrian.jones@latrobe.edu.au) and Dr Lisa Beaven (l.beaven@latrobe.edu.au).

First Annual Feminist Art History Conference
American University, Washington D.C., 5-6 November 2010

Proposals due by 1 August 2010

“Continuing the Legacy: Honoring the Work of Norma Broude and Mary D. Garrard”

Keynote Speaker: Friday, 5 November 2010, 6pm

Dr. Anna Chave, Professor (Graduate School, City University of New York)

Sponsored by the Art History Program, Department of Art, College of Arts and Sciences at American University.

Conference is free and open to the public; sessions and keynote will be held at the Katzen Art Center on AU’s campus. Please submit one-page proposals on any topic of feminist interest in art history and/or visual studies with a current curriculum vita by August 1, 2010. Accepted proposals will be notified by August 31, 2010.

Email proposals and CVs to all committee members: nbroude@american.edu, mgarrar@american.edu, hlanga@american.edu, butler@american.edu

The Rhetoric of Violence in the Early Modern Era
Special Issue of Cahiers Shakespeare en devenir-Shakespearean Afterlives

Abstracts due by 30 November 2010

We invite submissions for the 2011 issue of Cahiers Shakespeare en devenir-Shakespearean Afterlives. These might include essays (6000-7000 words including notes) for the issue proper, and review-essays (2-3000 words) or reviews of plays or exhibitions (1000-1500 words) for the issue’s supplement L’Oeil du spectateur.

The 2011 issue of the journal is dedicated to interdisciplinary and monodisciplinary approaches to the theme of violence against body and soul in literature and the arts, from the Renaissance to the Long Eighteenth Century. Focusing on the theme of the tormented body, this issue will offer a different insight on verbal and visual representations of violence in both theoretical and practical terms. It will concentrate on the analysis of how violence was presented to the early modern public and also on the iconoclastic consequences of both violence and its representations: “Of course violence at once shocked and repelled people by its brutality. But it also fascinated many because it so contradicted religious precepts and social norms” (Ruff, 2001: 28). Violence needs to be considered as a means of constraint, and as a form of political and aesthetic subversion and resistance to the excessive forms of regulation of which it was the instrument. We will consider papers on Shakespeare and/or his contemporaries (literature and performance studies), on early modern literature and the arts in England, Europe, The East and the New World, on the paragone of violence in Early Modern works of art, and on the representations of Renaissance violence and violent topics in subsequent eras. Targeted disciplines: English Literature, Comparative Literature, Theatre studies, Performance studies, Cinema studies, History of Ideas, History of Arts, Philology. Topics might include (non exclusive list): (more…)

Mutiny and Maritime Radicalism in the Age of Revolution: A Global Survey
International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam, 17-18 June 2011

Proposals due by 1 September 2010

We announce a conference to be held June 17-18, 2011 at the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam (NL). The conference will explore the transnational dimensions of mutiny and maritime radicalism during the great cycle of war and revolution beginning in the mid-1750s, progressing through the eras of the American, French, and Haitian Revolutions, into the period of the South American Wars for Liberation, and concluding with the revolutionary movements of the 1830s-40s.

Our central theme will be mutiny – its causes, frequency, forms, patterns, and outcomes – as we chart, link, and compare maritime insurrections in the Atlantic and beyond, on warships, merchant and fishing vessels, on privateers, slavers, convict ships, troop transports, hulks, galleys, and other vessels plying their trade on the seas. We will also concentrate on the mutineers themselves: their individual and collective biographies, social composition, self-organization, objectives, and ideas. We also include unrest in port cities, sites of international exchange between maritime and landed forms of resistance. Sailors did not live only on ships. They spent significant amounts of time in port, sometimes connecting shipboard unrest and radical movements on land in personal, political, and social ways. (more…)