Enfilade

Confronting a World of Bondage: Britain, Global Slavery, and the Long Eighteenth Century
Abstracts due by 15 March 2010

Great Britain’s engagement with transatlantic slavery in the long eighteenth century has garnered critical attention from scholars across disciplines, primarily in history and literary studies. Their dominance of the slave trade and the surprisingly successful abolitionist movement places Britain at the nexus of a set of singular social, political, and economic changes, specifically with respect to other European nations. However, as scholars like Nabil Matar and Linda Colley have shown, the idea of enslavement extended beyond West Africa and the New World. The public imagination also responded with fascination to tales of Barbary captivity and enslavement as well as to the ‘exotic’ slaving practices of the Ottoman empire. In addition, conflicts over religion produced tracts that compared Catholicism to a form of enslavement. During the Restoration in particular, pamphlets expressed the fear that Englishmen would become political ‘slaves’ to an absolutist monarch—i.e. French Catholic absolutism would enslave Englishmen in an overdetermined way. Moreover, proto-feminist discourse from writers like Mary Astell depicted the female condition as a form of enslavement.  Clearly, the term ‘slavery’ to the eighteenth-century audience encompassed broader physical and metaphysical conditions than current scholarship seems to acknowledge.

Contemporary scholarship has produced useful studies on Atlantic and Mediterranean forms of slavery, illustrating that human bondage was an extremely complicated and varied phenomenon during the long eighteenth century. If the term ‘slavery’ is associated in modern minds with the racialized institutions of plantation slavery in the Americas, it is clear that conceptions of slavery from the Restoration to the organized abolitionist movements against West African slavery encompassed a much larger domain, in both a literal and figurative sense. Moreover, audiences in Britain could and did often formulate competing ideas of slavery that allowed them to simultaneously view African slavery as a necessary evil, consider Mediterranean slavery as an atrocity, and invoke metaphorical slavery to inveigh against the current socio-political state. What new meanings can be discovered by bringing these multiple understandings of the term into conversation? How can we complicate ideas of bondage in an era that introduced new concepts of freedom and progress and knit it into a complex national narrative? (more…)

Women’s Political Thought in Europe 1700-1800
Prato, Italy, 25-29 August 2010

Proposals due by 8 March 2010

Offers of papers are invited for a conference on the contribution of women to the history of political thought in Europe during the Enlightenment period. Papers may discuss the political ideas of individual women such as Mary Wollstonecraft, Catherine Macaulay, Mary Hays, Sarah Churchill, Mary Delariviere Manley, Marie Jodin, Emilie du Châtelet, Madame Dupin, Olympe de Gouges, Felicité Keralio-Robert, Madame Roland, Germaine de Staël, Dorothea Erxleben Leporin, Amalie Holst, Johanna Charlotte Unzer, Luise Gottsched, Mariana von Ziegler, Elise Reimarus, Elisabetta Caminer Turra, and others. Papers placing the work of such women in the broader context of political writing by men are encouraged. ‘Political thought’ is broadly interpreted to include sexual politics as well as political theory, and discussions of the political ideas of women as expressed in genres other than the political treatise are welcome.

Submissions of title and one-page abstract should be sent by 8th March 2010, to Karen.green@arts.monash.edu.au, or in hard copy to Karen Green, School of Philosophy and Bioethics, Monash University, Melbourne 3800, Australia.

Up to five bursaries of up to $500 will be available to help post-graduates and early career researchers to attend the conference. Applicants who wish to be considered for one of these should indicate this with their submission.

An edited volume on women’s political thought in Europe during the eighteenth century is proposed, and contributions to the conference may be submitted for publication in this volume. Contributors who are unable to attend the Prato Conference but would like to contribute a paper to the volume are invited to submit papers for consideration by September 30th 2010.

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

Session Proposals due by 4 January 2010

Members of the SAH, representatives of affiliated societies, and other scholars who wish to chair a session at the 2011 annual meeting are asked to submit proposals by January 4, 2010, to Professor Abigail A. Van Slyck, General Chair of the SAH 64th Annual Meeting (Dayton Professor of Art History, Connecticut College, Box 5565, 270 Mohegan Avenue, New London, CT 06320-4196, aavan@conncoll.edu).

As SAH membership is required to present research at the annual meeting, non-members who wish to chair a session or deliver a paper will be required to join the Society and to pre-register for the meeting in September 2010. SAH will offer a limited number of travel fellowships (with a value of up to $1000) for speakers participating in the annual meeting; session chairs are not eligible for these awards. The deadline for applying will be in October 2010. (more…)

From the INHA website:

Being an Art Historian Today : An International Symposium
Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art, Paris, 18-19 June 2010

Paper proposals due by 25 January 2010

Organized by THES-ARTS, association of PhD students and PhD’s in 19th- and 20th-Century Art, at the Paris-Sorbonne University

For its first anniversary in June 2010, the THES-ARTS Association will initiate a series of symposiums in order to promote the work of young art historians. As preamble THES-ARTS decided to dedicate its first symposium to today’s role of the art historian. This event will be the occasion to place ourselves in relation to this discipline and also to statue on its evolution. Being a social science, Art History cannot afford a fixed way of looking at things, but needs constant renewal by confronting itself to the evolution of its proper subject of research. While the artistic revolutions of the last decades have deeply transformed the process of creation, it has become inevitable to question the way these disruptions have, or have not changed the thoughts and researches of the art historian, as well as the applications of his work. This symposium will be organized around three main problematics, which will question the rearrangement of traditional settings in which Art History is born.

New Researching Tools / New Art Forms / New Art Histories?

In the last few years, the new materialities of the work as the new researching tools have reinvented the approach and the speech of the art historian. Through the artistic experimentations, which have emerged at the dawn of the twentieth century, the materiality of the work has changed. The artist has appropriated every single element of life from the usual objects to the precious ones, from the organic to the new technologies, from tangible to the immaterial. The lack of boundaries of these raw materials has enriched the artistic vocabulary that has in its turn contributed to the evolution of the art historian’s theoretical vocabulary. The art historian’s work has been revitalized by the creation of innovative tools, which brought him to reconsider his approach towards new and old works. Thanks to technology and especially to computer science, many tools are now accessible to the researcher. Databases have been created, museums have digitized their collections and archives are now widely available by remote access. Is travelling and facing the original works getting superfluous? This symposium will be the occasion to study how art historians reinvent their way of researching and their speech when faced with these new stakes.

Art History Today: In Search of Critical Detachment

The renewal of the work materiality and the methodology of the art historian raise the question of the detachment he uses to understand the works of his time. Constantly assailed by requests to give his point of view in the various medias, isn’t he playing both roles, the one of critics and of scientifics? His ability to expertise gives him a specific legitimacy to express his judgments of taste. But at the same time, he might try to find his place amongst writers, journalists or even philosophers? Is this mediatic shift shattering the theoretical foundations of Art History? Some studies will have to answer these questions by recounting the epistemological continuities and discontinuities which characterize Art History and by analyzing how the past’s Art History influences today’s Art History.

Art History as Applied Art

From the library to the museum via the gallery, the art historian has to face different scopes of application that turned his knowledge into a “savoir-faire” making sense in its interaction with other subjects and jobs. Through this gathering of knowledge which has also nourished other theories, doesn’t the art historian appear as much as a scientific and a professional of conservation and circulation of cultural inheritance? From these three problematics, transverse studies will contribute to improve the thought. Thus, while questions have appeared in recent years concerning the survival of Art History (in the works of Hervé Fischer and Hans Belting, for example), this upcoming symposium will remind us how the art historian has always been able to invent a totally new methodology, a new approach of art, metamorphosing his fields of thinking and his areas of applications, as he was carried by the creative impetus of art.

Abstracts — in French or English — should not be more than 500 words. Please submit the abstract and a short CV, before the 25th January 2010 to: thesarts.sorbonne@gmail.com. Replies will be sent at the end of January 2010. For the participants, the costs of travel and lodging will be paid for in full or in part. Articles will be published after the conference on the THES-ARTS website.

Notes:
_____________________

The French artist and philosopher Hervé Fischer symbolically cut the the string of linear Art History on 15 February 1979 during a performance in the Centre Pompidou Museum. He is also the author of the essay L’histoire de l’art est terminée published in 1981. The German art historian Hans Belting continues Fischer’s reflections in 1983, in L’histoire de l’art est-elle finie?

13th International Congress for Eighteenth-Century Studies
Graz, Austria, 25-29 July 2011

Proposals due by 31 January 2011

Organised by ISECS, the University of Graz, and the University for Music and Dramatic Arts of Graz

Graz is situated in South Eastern Austria which is in Central Europe. Travellers can reach the town by aeroplane (from Vienna, Frankfurt and other destinations), by train or by car. Graz is the historical centre of the unique region in Europe where Latin, Germanic and Slavic elements come together to form a common heritage. There are three universities with about 50,000 students.

Main subjects

I. Time in the Age of Enlightenment: Situating the Present, Imagining the Future
In the age of Enlightenment man did not only think systematically and continuously about his life, but began to manage and change it. So it is necessary to focus on this change in perception of time and to ask: In which manner did man esteem his time? What were the reasons for turning his attention to the future? What did the visions about the future contain? For instance: How did man intend to organise the future? What did the idea of prevention mean for him? Since the 18^th century served as foundation for today’s world – which of the contemporary visions are still prevalent and which ones are not and why not?

II. Central and Eastern Europe in the Age of Enlightenment
Although Central and Eastern Europe represent a considerable part of the European continent, this area does not have the same characteristics in the 18^th century as the Western world: The political order was based on large Empires (Russia, Turkey, Austria), similar colonial processes as in the occident did not exist, the cultural situation was influenced by three major religions (Catholicism, Orthodoxy, Islam) and by a dominant rural world. The most important questions are: What was the social and cultural profile of the countries in this space in the 18^th century? How did the Enlightenment from the West enter into the area between the Baltic and the Black Seas? What signals did this region give to the West? Are there any effects which have remained as problems till the present?

Beginning October 2010 we will gladly accept your proposal for a paper within a section or a workshop; applications forms are available on the conference website. We ask you to please register your proposal no later than January 31st, 2011. Proposals cannot be accept after this date. You will receive information about the acceptance of your proposal no later than March 1st, 2011 as well as a request to register yourself.

Materials of Persuasion
Bard Graduate Center, New York, 23 April 2010

Proposals due by 29 January 2010

Few persons are capable of being convinced; the majority allow themselves to be persuaded. -Goethe

I’m in the persuasion business, and frankly I’m disappointed by your presentation. -Peggy Olson, Mad Men

Critics passing judgment, clergy seeking converts, advertisers selling products, and politicians running for office are all in the persuasion business. Persuasion is the key to the art of rhetoric, but there has always been a material dimension to persuasion as well. Objects are vehicles of persuasion. We are persuaded to purchase and consume objects, and we use them to persuade others, to mediate the identities we put forth, and our interactions with each other. The roles of persuasive objects change over time as they pass from hand to hand. The mutable relationships between material objects, people, and desire are powerful, tantalizing subjects of study. So how does persuasion factor into these fluid equations? Makers, buyers, and users all have unique perspectives on the art of persuasion, as well as unspoken intentions that are constantly at work beneath the surface. Some of these intentions may be deceptive – persuasion can have a dark side. Finally, persuasion rests upon various types of evidence – what must we see in order to believe? We invite scholars from diverse fields to explore these issues– come, and be persuasive. Topics may include but are not limited to:

• Marketing, advertising, and the mechanics of consumer desire
• Branding and the elevation of the status symbol: what’s in a name?
• The continuum of authenticity: influences, appropriations, copies, knock-offs and forgeries
• Persuasive scholarship: methodologies, authorial tone, and the use of revealed/suppressed information
• Surface treatments: gilding, varnishing, veneering, trompe l’oeil and faux materiality
• The toolbox of persuasion: emotion, rationalism, the hard sell, manipulation, and deceit (more…)

German Studies Association Conference
Oakland, California, 7-10 October 2010

Paper proposals due by 15 February 2010

The German Studies Association will hold its thirty-fourth annual conference in Oakland, California, October 7-10, 2010. This will be the GSA’s first conference in the San Francisco Bay Area in over twenty years. The Program Committee cordially invites proposals on any aspect of German, Austrian, or Swiss studies, including (but not limited to) history, Germanistik, film, art history, political science, musicology, religious studies, sociology, and cultural studies. Proposals for entire sessions and for interdisciplinary presentations are strongly encouraged. Individual paper proposals and offers to serve as session moderators or commentators are also welcome.  Programs of past GSA conferences may be viewed at the GSA website. Please see the website for information about the submission process, which opens on January 5, 2010.  Please note that ALL proposals must be submitted online; paper forms are not used. The deadline for proposals is February 15, 2010. Presenters must be members of the German Studies Association. For more information, visit the GSA website or contact members of the 2010 Program Committee:

• Program Director: George Williamson (University of Alabama), gwilliam@ua.edu
• Medieval, Early Modern, Eighteenth Century: Jason Coy (College of Charleston), coyj@cofc.edu
• Nineteenth Century: Jonathan Hess (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill), jmhess@email.unc.edu
• Twentieth- & Twenty-First-Century History: Andrew Port (Wayne State University), ar6647@wayne.edu
• Twentieth- & Twenty-First-Century Literature/Cultural Studies: Jennifer Ruth Hosek (Queens University, Ontario), jhosek@queensu.ca
• Political Science: Louise Davidson-Schmich (University of Miami), davidson@miami.edu
• Interdisciplinary: Janet Ward (University of Nevada, Las Vegas), janet.ward@unlv.edu

Conference on British Queer History
McGill University, Montreal, 14-16 October 2010

Proposals due by 1 February 2010

The Department of History at McGill University solicits paper proposals for a conference on British Queer History. Keynote addresses will be given by

• Laura Doan (Professor of Cultural History and Sexuality Studies, University of Manchester)
• Chris Waters (Professor and Chair of History, Williams College, Mass.)
• Jeffrey Weeks (Emeritus Professor of Sociology, London South Bank University)

We welcome proposals on all aspects of the topic and for all periods. We hope to attract both established and younger scholars researching in and writing about some of the freshest and most promising new approaches across the field. Selected papers from the conference will be considered for publication. Details of venue, accommodation and registration fees will be forthcoming in the New Year.

Please send a paper abstract of under 500 words, plus a CV by February 1, 2010 , to brian.lewis@mcgill.ca or to Brian Lewis, Associate Professor, McGill University, Department of History, 855 Sherbrooke Street West, Montreal, Quebec, H3A 2T7, Canada.

More than a Spa Resort? — The Urban Experience in Bath since the Reformation
Symposium at Bath Spa University, 24 April 2010

Paper proposals due by 1 January 2010

Bath is a city in need of historical reappraisal. Much historiography focuses on the city as a spa resort and the personalities involved in its development, but little has been written on the residential population and links between them and the visitors. Bath attracted entrepreneurs and young people with the offer of employment opportunities and education. Could the city be seen as a centre for commerce and education outside London? The city was also a centre of conversation and opinion with many spaces set aside for sociability and display. How did these social networks develop and how were they maintained? The relationship between Bath and the rest of country also needs to be addressed. Was the city a trend follower or a trend setter? How did Bath stand in relation to London and other main towns?

To explore these issues, Bath Spa University is hosting an international symposium on 24th April 2010, with a view to holding a conference later in the year placing Bath within the European context. Keynote speakers include Professor Rosemary Sweet (Head of History, University of Leicester) and Professor Peter Borsay (Aberystwyth University). Proposals for papers of 15 minute duration are invited on any of the following subjects:

• Urbanisation
• Commercialisation
• The use of space
• The growth of civic consciousness
• Class (particularly the rising middle classes and servants)
• Gender
• Philanthropy
• Education
• Religion
• Political culture
• Other subjects relating to the urban milieu

Interdisciplinary and non-historical papers are particularly welcome. Please send abstracts of proposed papers (250 words) to d.hughes@bathspa.ac.uk. The closing date for the submission of abstracts is 1st January 2010.