Enfilade

From ArtHist.net:

Le vrai, le faux: Festival de l’histoire de l’art / The True, the False: Festival of Art History
Fontainebleau, 6–8 June 2025

Proposals due by 3 November 2024

En 2024, la région autrichienne du Salzkammergut porte le titre de Capitale européenne de la culture. Si nous le mentionnons, c’est d’une part pour montrer qu’au-delà de Vienne, Linz ou Salzbourg, l’Autriche recèle des lieux culturels qui en font le pays invité de cette 14e édition du festival de l’histoire de l’art mais c’est aussi parce que cette région abrite le village d’Hallstatt. Ce charmant bourg de près de 800 âmes est inscrit sur la liste du patrimoine mondial de l’UNESCO, un classement qui ne l’a pas empêché d’être reconstruit à l’identique (lac inclus !) dans la province de Guangdong dans le sud-ouest de la Chine. Parler simplement d’Hallstatt a-t-il encore un sens ? Ne vaut-il mieux pas préciser « Hallstatt en Autriche » et « Hallstatt en Chine » ? Ou bien faut-il dire « Hallstatt l’originale » ? Y a-t-il alors une « vraie Hallstatt » et une « fausse Hallstatt » ? Le village construit en Chine n’est-il pas aussi réel que celui construit en Autriche ? Et si l’on répond à cette question par la négative, quels arguments convoquer ? L’origine géographique ? L’antériorité temporelle ? L’authenticité ?

En novembre 2017 a eu lieu, au palais de justice de Paris, dans les salons de la Cour de cassation, un colloque réunissant trois cent cinquante magistrats, juristes, conservateurs, historiens de l’art et experts. Au cœur de leurs discussions, l’évolution nécessaire de la loi du 9 février 1895 dite « loi Bardoux », seule loi dans l’arsenal juridique français à réprimer les « fraudes en matière artistique »[1] et établissant une distinction entre le faux et la contrefaçon[2].

Que faire de ces objets pris dans le champ du vrai et du faux ? Les exposer ? Les cacher dans les réserves ? Que faire des restaurations des édifices advenues au fil des siècles ? Faut-il montrer les strates historiques d’un édifice ou bien s’en tenir à la dernière version en date ? Autant d’interrogations qui touchent au cœur même de l’histoire de l’art et de ses métiers. Interroger le vrai et le faux dans l’histoire de l’art, ses discours et ses pratiques, exige de prendre en compte les glissements qui peuvent s’opérer entre ces deux notions et au sujet desquelles la réflexion se forme et se transforme au fil du temps et de bien garder à l’esprit que les partages entre vrai et faux se font selon des critères très différents en fonction des contextes culturels et historiques.

Rien n’a été plus normal, tout au long de l’histoire de l’art et ce, jusqu’à une époque relativement récente, que la répétition des formes et des œuvres sans altération de la valeur des premières créées. Bien que certains sculpteurs grecs ou romains, certains orfèvres ou architectes médiévaux aient l’habitude de signer leurs œuvres, la notion d’originalité de la création artistique comme fondement de la valeur d’une œuvre n’existait pas au sens où nous l’entendons aujourd’hui. Les premières anecdotes artistiques posant le problème du vrai et du faux en art occidental datent de la Renaissance. Le cupidon de Michel-Ange offert comme un antique au cardinal de San Giorgio, la copie sur cuivre par Marc-Antoine Raimondi des gravures sur bois d’Albrecht Dürer et l’utilisation par le premier du monogramme du second sont des topoï de la littérature artistique. La culture européenne de la première modernité n’ignorait pas le lien entre valeur artistique et authenticité de l’œuvre mais il ne s’agissait pas de penser les œuvres comme vraies ou fausses. Du XVIe au XIXe siècle, les copies, les pastiches, les interprétations sur d’autres médiums étaient nombreuses et leur utilité — pédagogique, politique, mémorielle — et leur valeur résidaient plus dans leurs qualités techniques que dans leur degré d’authenticité.

Le XIXe siècle marque un tournant dans l’importance conférée à cette notion. En 1885, le petit-fils de Jacques-Louis David publiait un texte intitulé Quelques observations sur les 19 toiles attribuées à Louis David à l’exposition des portraits du siècle (1783–1883). Ecole Nationale des Beaux-Arts (V. Havard, Paris, 1883). Sur ces dix-neuf toiles, il en reconnaît quatre, en accepte six autres et en exclue huit[3]. Jacques-Louis-Jules David fait donc œuvre d’expert et son jugement vaut pour homologation de l’œuvre de son aïeul. La figure de l’expert, qu’il ou elle soit artiste, historien de l’art ou critique, prend ainsi une importance nouvelle, capable de réduire à peau de chagrin le catalogue d’un artiste comme de le faire grossir plus que de mesure. À partir de la seconde moitié du XXe siècle, le faux et son créateur, le faussaire, deviennent les antagonistes majeurs des historiens de l’art, des experts, des musées et institutions culturelles. Ce n’est qu’avec ce qu’on appelle la « post-modernité » que le double, la copie et parfois le faux redeviennent des opérations artistiques et esthétiques à part entière[4]. Mais le faux peut aussi, pour certains artistes, être un objet politique. Lorsque le collectif d’artistes et d’auteurs italiens Wu Ming tentait de faire advenir dans les journaux d’informations nationaux ce que l’on appelle aujourd’hui des fake news, ce n’était pas dans le but de tromper mais bien de faire comprendre les mécanismes de la tromperie en rendant ensuite le stratagème public[5]. À l’ère de la post-vérité, nous pourrons poser la question de la réussite et des risques d’une telle utilisation du vrai et du faux. Aujourd’hui, les images générées par l’intelligence artificielle, elle-même nourrie d’images existantes, sortent du paradigme de la copie ou de la citation et obligent à repenser les notions d’auctorialté et d’authenticité[6].

Le thème choisi pour cette 14e édition du festival de l’histoire de l’art embrasse tous les champs de notre discipline, c’est pourquoi il est utile de dégager quelques pistes de travail qui ne sont, bien sûr, pas exhaustives :

• Entre « vrai » et « faux » : « Vrai » et « faux » sont les deux pôles d’une réflexion qui porte en premier lieu sur l’unique et le multiple. Les propositions pourront s’attacher ainsi au statut des différents types de production artistique qui viennent redoubler l’œuvre originale : il en va ainsi de l’interprétation (retranscription de l’originale dans une technique différente), du pastiche (travail réalisé à partir d’une œuvre par un autre artiste pour souligner la manière du premier), de la copie (reproduction fidèle d’une œuvre qui s’annonce comme telle) et bien évidemment du faux, dont les modalités varient entre la contrefaçon intentionnelle (la copie que l’artiste ou le vendeur n’annonce PAS comme telle mais comme original), la falsification de l’authenticité ou encore la reproduction non autorisée d’œuvres protégées par des droits d’auteur.

• Des histoires de « faux » : L’histoire de l’art est remplie d’œuvres et d’objets qui ont été à un moment considéré comme authentiques et dont on a par la suite démontré qu’il s’agissait de « faux », soit exécutés volontairement pour tromper, soit mal identifiés par celles et ceux qui les ont acquis, exposés et commentés. Les propositions pourront porter sur telle ou telle « affaire » plus ou moins célèbre, sur la manière dont le caractère faux ou inauthentique des œuvres ou d’un ou plusieurs éléments de celles-ci a été découverte, sur les modifications des discours qui ont pu en surgir. La parole des restauratrices et restaurateurs sera ici particulièrement précieuse.

• Techniques et reproductibilité technique: les questionnements autour du vrai et du faux, de l’unique et du multiple, doivent tenir compte des conditions de production. L’une des problématiques principales de cette édition est l’œuvre d’art aux époques de sa reproductibilité technique, de l’estampe à la photographie aux images numériques actuelles. Ces techniques reproductives successives soulèvent la problématique de l’œuvre originale et de ce que Walter Benjamin appelle son « aura », un concept qui se trouve aujourd’hui détaché des œuvres originales précisément à cause des techniques modernes de reproduction[7]. La dimension technique, celle qui permet à un artiste qui copie ou à un faussaire qui falsifie de s’approcher au plus près du style d’un artiste doit nous retenir et nous amener à nous demander où commence le faux. La création du faux requiert un véritable art de la contrefaçon et si un faussaire repenti souhaite venir partager ses secrets techniques avec le public du festival, qu’il ou elle s’en sente bienvenu.

• Plaisir de tromper et d’être trompé: dans l’Antiquité puis à partir de la Renaissance, le concept de mimesis possède une importance capitale dans les théories de l’art. Pourra ainsi être interrogée la notion de trompe l’œil qui, quel que soit le medium utilisé, cherche à donner par une exacte représentation l’illusion de la présence de l’objet figuré. Les grandes figures — réelles ou légendaires — de ce genre (Zeuxis et Parrhasios, Bramante, Le Bernin, Cornelis Gijsbrechts ou Louis-Léopold Boilly) pourront être convoquées mais il faudra également convier à nos débats les philosophes qui ont interrogé ce genre et qui et qui contestent la parfaite adéquation du trompe l’œil à la réalité et parlent plutôt du plaisir donné par une illusion connue [8].

• Restauration et authenticité : la notion de restauration ou de restitution authentique ou « à l’identique » varie fortement suivant les contextes historiques et culturels.

• L’histoire de l’art face au faux: quelle(s) position(s) pour l’historien/historienne de l’art face à cette question du vrai et du faux ? Dans une optique historiographique, nous invitons les participantes et participants à se pencher sur la fascination mais aussi la difficulté que certains grands noms de notre discipline ont éprouvé face à ces sujets. Toute aussi importante est la réflexion sur l’appréciation relative qui est attachée à la valeur d’authenticité. Ce qui est considéré comme non-authentique dans une culture, ne l’est pas forcément dans l’autre. Nous sommes particulièrement intéressés à élargir les exemples au-delà de l’art européen. Et puis, il serait intéressant de voir comment l’histoire de l’art peut s’emparer, si ce n’est du faux tout du moins de la fiction, sur un plan méthodologique. Certains de nos collègues historiens et historiennes travaillent depuis plusieurs années selon la méthode de l’histoire contrefactuelle[9]. Et si ? Et s’il existait une histoire de l’art contrefactuelle ? La méthode contrefactuelle, voici un futur encore trop peu advenu dans le champ de l’histoire de l’art qu’il serait pertinent d’interroger.

• De l’utilité du faux: aujourd’hui, la valeur de la copie ou de la reproduction ne se conçoit plus en fonction de la virtuosité qu’elles affichent mais de leur utilité. Les fac-similés permettent de montrer des œuvres et des lieux majeurs de l’histoire de l’art trop fragiles pour être visibles, voire de replacer dans son contexte original une œuvre déplacée. Cette problématique engage de nombreuses questions techniques, notamment celle de l’échelle de ces fac-similés (l’échelle 1 des moulages du musée des monuments français et les dimensions inférieures de la « réplique » de la grotte Cosquer à Marseille ne peuvent être mis sur le même plan), des matériaux utilisés pour les produire (voir le travail par exemple de l’atelier Factum Arte à Madrid dont l’imprimante assure des impressions reproduisant la couleur et le relief) et de la dimension éthique de leur utilisation (objectif uniquement financier, accessibilité du public et protection de l’œuvre, défi technique).

• Connoisseurship versus analyses scientifiques: traditionnellement, les arguments d’authenticité étaient fondés sur les analyses stylistiques qui permettaient d’attribuer une œuvre à un artiste. Aujourd’hui, et ce déjà depuis quelques décennies les méthodes et les outils scientifiques, parfois de laboratoires travaillant de concert avec les institutions culturelles (le C2RMF du Louvre ou le Labart à Louvain-la-Neuve), opposent au discours des experts celui des sciences dites dures. Si parfois les deux discours peuvent en effet s’affronter, comme pour les termes « vrai » et « faux », une opposition aussi binaire et manichéenne n’a pas lieu d’être. Le festival sera heureux de faire dialoguer ces deux méthodes tant « l’intervention du laboratoire dans les questions de critique d’art [est] l’une des principales révolutions [contemporaines][10]. »

• Le droit et la valeur de l’original : en lien avec ces discours d’authentification, le thème « Vrai-Faux » demande à la fois d’interroger celles et ceux qui élaborent le discours juridique nécessaire pour faire face aux dérives, mais aussi celles et ceux qui attribuent une valeur aux objets. Nous souhaitons accueillir des propositions abordant le marché de l’art d’hier et d’aujourd’hui, analysant la manière dont le vrai, le faux et toutes les nuances entre ces deux termes modifient, font ou défont la valeur d’une œuvre[11]. Cette problématique engage notamment le domaine de la restauration des monuments historiques et des œuvres. Si, sans le savoir-faire des restaurateurs, soucieux de préserver ou de reconstituer les œuvres dont l’état de conservation est fragile, nombre d’entre elles seraient menacées de disparition, quand est-ce qu’une restauration devient une « hyper-restauration », voire un faux[12]? Où se termine la restauration et où commence la création ?

Je propose une communication :

https://www.festivaldelhistoiredelart.fr/appel-a-contribution-le-vrai-et-le-faux/

[1] Loi du 9 février 1895, sur les fraudes en matières artistiques, JORF du 12 février 1895, page 805, modifiée par l’ordonnance n°2000-916 du 19 septembre 2000, art. 3.
[2] Cette loi définit le faux « à l’apposition d’une fausse signature » et ne s’applique qu’aux œuvres non tombées dans le domaine public. La loi définit la contrefaçon comme une violation des droits d’auteurs, cette dernière dépendant d’autres dispositions du code de la propriété intellectuelle (Articles L. 111-3, L. 332-1, L. 332-3, L. 335-2 et L. 335-3 du code de la propriété intellectuelle).
[3] François CHAMOUX et al, « Copies, répliques et faux », Revue de l’art, 21, 1973, p. 5–31.
[4] Thierry LENAIN, « Le faux en art et ses valeurs. Repères pour une archéologie », Boris LIBOIS et Alain STROWEL (éd.), Profils de la création, Bruxelles, Presses universitaires Saint-Louis, 1997, p. 177–187.
[5] Stefania CALIANDRO, « Fake Art, entre le contrefait et le contrefactuel », Interfaces numériques, 11 (2), 2022.
[6] Gregory CHATONSKY et Antonio SOMAINI, « Sortir du paradigme de la copie », A.O.C., mercredi 24 janvier 2024.
[7] Bruno Latour et Adam Lowe, « La migration de l’aura ou comment explorer un original par le biais de ses fac-similés », Intermédialités / Intermediality (17), 2011, p. 173–91.
[8] Jean BAUDRILLARD, « Le trompe-l’œil ou la simulation enchantée », De la séduction, Paris, Denoël-Gonthier, coll. « Bibliothèque Médiations », 1981 ; Oscar CALABRESE, L’Art du trompe-l’œil, Follet J.-P. (trad. de l’italien), Paris, Citadelles & Mazenod, coll. « Phares », 2010.
[9] Quentin DELUERMOZ, Pierre SINGARAVELOU, « Explorer le champ des possibles. Approches contrefactuelles et futurs non advenus en histoire », Revue d’histoire moderne & contemporaine, 2012/3 (n° 59-3), p. 70–95.
[10] Thierry LENAIN, « Le faux en art et ses valeurs … », art. cit.
[11] « [L]’esthétique a cédé la place à l’authentique qui, loin des critères de beauté, fait ou défait la valeur d’une œuvre, tant au regard de l’histoire de l’art, que du marché ». Jean-Claude Marin, procureur général près la Cour de cassation, Allocution prononcée lors du colloque du vendredi 17 novembre 2017, « Le faux en art » : https://www.courdecassation.fr/toutes-les-actualites/2017/11/17/le-faux-en-art
[12] Hélène VEROUGSTRAETE, « Vers des frontières plus claires entre restauration et hyper-restauration », CeROArt, 3 | 2009, [En ligne], URL : http://ceroart.revues.org/index1121.html ; voir également Hélène VEROUGSTRAETE, Roger VAN SCHOUTE et Till-Holger BORCHERT, T.-H.(éd.), Restaurateurs ou faussaires des Primitifs flamands. [Fake or not fake. Het verhaal van de restauratie van de vlaamse Primitieven]. Catalogue d’exposition, Bruges Groeningemuseum 26 novembre 2004-28 février 2005, Gand (Ludion) 2004.
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Modalités des interventions

Les interventions du festival de l’histoire de l’art adoptent des formats variés, avec une priorité donnée à des interventions traduisant la recherche en histoire de l’art sous une forme vivante et destinée à un large public.
• Conférence : 1 participant, entre 20 ou 30 minutes maximum,
• Dialogue : 2 participants, entre 40 et 50 minutes maximum,
• Table ronde : jusqu’à 3 participants plus 1 modérateur, durée 1h à 1h10 minutes maximum durée 1h30 maximum incluant le temps d’échange avec le public.

N.B. : Chaque intervention est suivie d’un échange de 10 à 15 minutes avec le public

Dépôt et sélection des propositions

Sont encouragées à candidater conservatrices et conservateurs, restauratrices et restaurateurs, professionnelles et professionnels du monde de l’art, étudiantes et étudiants en master et doctorat, chercheuses et chercheurs, enseignantes et enseignants.
Les candidatures peuvent être envoyées jusqu’au 3 novembre 2024 inclus (avant minuit) via le formulaire dédié : https://www.festivaldelhistoiredelart.fr/appel-a-contribution-le-vrai-et-le-faux/

Un lien n’est pas attendu entre le thème du FHA et le pays invité (l’Autriche), ce dernier ne faisant pas l’objet d’un appel à communication.

Les propositions de communication doivent impérativement être rédigées en français et se présenter sous la forme suivante :
• Titre du projet (80 signes maximum, espaces compris)
• Un résumé (600 signes maximum, espaces compris)
• Une présentation plus longue (3500 signes maximum, espaces compris)
• Un CV + une courte biographie professionnelle

N.B. : Dans le cas des dialogues et des tables rondes, le porteur ou la porteuse du projet doit se désigner clairement dans la proposition d’intervention. Les propositions incomplètes ne seront pas examinées.

L’examen des propositions sera réalisé par l’équipe du festival de l’histoire de l’art accompagné d’un jury issu du comité scientifique du festival de l’histoire de l’art présidé par Madame Laurence Bertrand Dorléac.

From the Call for Papers for round 3 (abstracts due by Friday) . . . and please be sure to consult the full list of panel offerings:

2025 American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Conference
Online, 55th Annual Meeting, 28–29 March and 4–5 April 2025

Proposals due by 20 September 2024

The American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (ASECS) is pleased to announce our Call for Papers for the 55th Annual Meeting, to be held virtually over two weekends in 2025: March 28–29 and April 4–5. The Society, established in 1969, is the foremost learned society in the United States for the study of all aspects of the period from the later seventeenth through the early nineteenth century. Round 3 (Submissions to Sessions) is open for submissions to panels, roundtables, and special sessions.

More information is available here»

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Africans and Africa in Italy (Italian Studies Caucus)
Chair: Wendy Wassyng Roworth (University of Rhode Island), wroworth@gmail.com [ID 51 / March 28–29]

Given the interest generated by the “Africans and Africa in Italy” panel at the 2024 ASECS meeting, the Italian caucus proposes another panel on the same topic for the 2025 online meeting. This session is dedicated to the realities and representations of African peoples and their homelands in the various Italian States, be they economic, political, religious, artistic, social, educational, etc. Papers may examine the lived experiences of Africans in rural and city environments, among nobility and other classes, and in relation to a variety of public entities. Portrayals of Africa and Africans may come from literary, theatrical, figurative, ceremonial, academic, etc. sources. Examples include but are not limited to: Africans featured in portrait and other figurative arts genres, treatment of/reference to Africans in historical, scientific, medical, ethnographic, encyclopedic and travel narratives; Africa as protagonist and/or setting in fictional, scientific, poetic, or dramatic literature. Papers may also interpret “Africans in Italy” in an indirect sense, i.e., to include the heated debates taking place in Italy (in person and in print) on the experiences of Africans outside of Italy. Chief among those discussion topics would be Africans’ experience of the transatlantic slave trade and subsequent enslavement in the Americas.

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Anne Schroder New Scholars Session (Historians of Eighteenth-Century Art and Architecture)
Chair: Laurel Peterson (Yale Center for British Art), laurel.peterson@yale.edu [ID 53 / April 4-5]

The Anne Schroder New Scholars Panel, sponsored by HECAA, seeks to promote scholarship that represents the future of eighteenth-century art and architectural studies. We invite proposals from advanced graduate students and early-career scholars working in the academy or museums. We welcome submissions that explore topics across the cultures, spaces, and materials that are related to art and architectural history globally over the long eighteenth century. We seek papers that reflect new approaches to both long-standing and under-studied issues and methods in eighteenth-century studies broadly, including but not limited to: critical race art history; Disability studies; ecocriticism and environmental studies; empire, colonization, and decolonial theory; gender and queer theory; global diasporic histories; Indigeneity; and material culture studies. Papers can be based on dissertations, book or article manuscripts in progress, Digital Humanities collaborations, or curatorial projects. We encourage scholars from underrepresented communities, contingent or independent scholars, and those working outside of North America to apply.

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‘Bad’ Art of the Long Eighteenth Century
Chair: Katherine Iselin (Emporia State University), kiselin@emporia.edu [ID 109 / April 4–5]

What constitutes ‘bad’ art? In art history, we often focus on surviving works that are unique or masterful in some way; works that epitomize the major interests of the period or works that exemplify the skill of the maker. But many other examples of art survive that do not qualify for any of these descriptions, or are perhaps even as far from them as possible. This panel looks to highlight these oft-forgotten pieces that occasionally sit in museum storage or private collections, hidden away from public eyes because they are considered unworthy of display. Yet we can learn much from such works: they can tell us a great deal of the levels of artistic production and appreciation, the accessibility of art to the non-elite, or artistic tastes outside the well-renowned. This panel seeks papers that examine works of art that might be construed as ‘bad’ in some way, exploring their place within the history of art in the long eighteenth century. Papers might also consider the role of accessibility for the artist, patron, or owner, as well as how works may have been displayed or viewed during their initial creation and by later collectors or owners.

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Bodies of Thought: Re-conceptualizations of the Body in Eighteenth-Century Art and Culture
Chair: Dorothy Johnson (University of Iowa), dorothy-johnson@uiowa.edu [ID 130 / April 4–5]

The Enlightenment in Europe witnessed radical shifts in the representation of the human figure in art and visual culture from the Rococo period to Neoclassicism and Romanticism. Transformations in the typology of the body in art can be best understood in the context of changing aesthetic, social, cultural, and political ideas and ideals that inflected the eighteenth century. The rise in prominence and prestige of the natural sciences during this period, which interrogated human origins and evolution, corporeal structures, biological, physiological, social and cultural identity and behavior, were ineluctably intertwined with artistic transformations in style and meaning. This panel invites papers that investigate the new meanings that accrued to the body as sign and signifier of cultural evolutions and revolutions.

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Eighteenth-Century Cats! (ASECS Graduate and Early Career Caucus)
Chair: Taylin Nelson (Rice University), tpn2@rice.edu [ID 68 / March 28–29]

What is an internet-based conference without addressing the internet’s favorite topic: cats!? This panel seeks papers interested in exploring eighteenth-century cats in their many facets and figurations. Cats abound during this period: from big cats in the natural histories, moralizing cats in fables and children’s stories, mysterious and symbolic cats in the art of Fragonard or Chardin, to real-life cats in the lives of Samuel Johnson or Horace Walpole.

Cats posed a challenge to Enlightenment thinking and represented diverse modes of existence during the period. It was Rousseau who claimed “the cat, enemy of all constraint, [a]s useful for characterising liberty.” From cultural perspectives, cats could represent a variety of topics, such as: domesticated pets, objects of torture, experimentation, and amusement, materially useful mousers, symbolic free agents, as street food, muses of philosophy and poetry, or dangerous predators from the ‘New World’.

This open-ended panel challenges panelists to tackle topics such as, but not limited to:
• Cats and Gender (associations with women and children, old maid tropes, sexuality and fertility, female subjectivity/objectivity)
• Cats and revolution (liberty, slavery, obedience, domestication, freedom versus torture)
• Cats and labor (skills, jobs, use-value, luxury versus labor, class)
• Cats and Science (vivisection and other experiments such as Lunardi’s balloon flight)
• Cats and the Atlantic World (predators, mousers on ships, posing threats/aids to colonists)
• Cats as vermin (massacres or street clearings)
• Thomas Gray’s “On the Death of a Favourite Cat” and any other artistic iterations of the poem
• Cats in fables (morality, education, kindness, pain, religion, transmutation)
• Author cats (Walpole, Johnson, Christopher Smart, and so on)

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Gifts from Flowers: Pollen, Fruit, Honey, Vegetables, Bouquets, Ceremonies, and More (South-Central Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies)
Chair: Kevin Cope (Louisiana State University), encope@lsu.edu [ID 83 / April 4–5]

Floral elements abound in long eighteenth-century culture. Still life paintings include or feature flowers; speculators plunge into the tulip market; posies and bouquets ornament every ceremony. Scientific concern for flowers reached a high pitch, whether in Thomas Jefferson’s pea-breeding program or among the growing ranks of botanical illustrators. Poets from John Philips to William Cowper celebrated all the members of the blooming tribe; travelers, fiction writers, and even musicians encounter or deploy the denizens of the vase. This panel is open to papers on all aspects of flower culture and activity, whether flowers themselves in art, literature, science, or philosophy or whether flowers as producers or sources of other cherished materials, whether the fruits and vegetables that swell from the bloom or the sweetening honey that competed with new-world sugar or even the icons that adorn heraldic devices. Papers from all disciplines, whether art history or botany or literature, are welcome.

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Hygge: The Visual and Material Culture of Coziness and Comfort
Chair: Kaitlin Grimes (Flagler College), KGrimes@flagler.edu [ID 150 / April 4–5]

Hygge, a Dano-Norwegian word, evokes the notions of comfortability and coziness that comes from the creation of a relaxing environment with specific creature comforts. Think of thick socks, a warm and fluffy blanket, a soft fire, a lovely cup filled with tea, and a good book all of which illustrate the simple and quiet pleasures of life away from the outside world. As we conference remotely, let us think about how those in the eighteenth century brought themselves comfort, both in childhood and adulthood. How did they create a cozy environment at home after a long day? What material objects did they turn to during the cold winters or the hot summers? And how was this idea depicted in eighteenth-century visual culture? Potential topics for this panel could include: blankets/textiles, fireplaces, tea and or coffee sets/services, beds/furniture, books (as a physical object), clothing, foodstuffs, children’s toy, interior decoration, family traditions, etc. This panel invites papers from all disciplines and as well as papers outside the potential topics listed above.

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‘Local’ Culture and Resistance
Chair: Harvey Shepherd (The Courtauld Institute of Art), hshepherd@courtauld.ac.uk [ID 123 / April 4–5]

This panel invites proposals from scholars studying ‘local’ culture as both a site and a tool of active resistance to conquest and cultural assimilation during the long-eighteenth century. The period of 1660 to 1830 is characterised by the emergence of national identities both in Europe and beyond, and the increase of colonial activity around the globe. These macrohistorical trends resulted in part from many understudied instances of interaction and erasure occurring at a regional level, often in border territories, coastlines, and newly-conquered areas. This discussion aims to complicate the distinction between the ‘micro’ and ‘macro’ histories of the eighteenth century by considering ‘the local’ as a sphere of resistance to the emergent globalisation of the early modern period. Panellists will consider the ways in which markers of ‘local’ cultural distinction—present in material and visual cultures, linguistics, writing, religious beliefs, or other expressions of identity—were mobilised as active tools of resistance to colonisation or the formation of modern nation states. In addition to considering the stakes involved in utilising ‘local’ identity as a form of resistance, the question of what constitutes our understanding of the term ‘local’ in the eighteenth century is itself a subject which presenters may choose to focus on. The panel welcomes submissions from scholars working in all areas of the humanities, and aims to stimulate conversation across disciplinary distinctions. Similarly, the discussion is not limited to any one geographical space, and papers are invited which examine any aspect of ‘local’ cultural resistance occurring across the eighteenth-century world.

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Sending a Woman to Do What an Army Could Not: Women in Asia
Chair: Samara Cahill (University of North Texas), samara.cahill@unt.edu [ID 46 / March 28–29]

Inspired by the multi-layered relationships among women portrayed in Hiroyuki Sanada et al’s 2024 adaptation of Shogun, James Clavell’s 1975 novel of early modern Japan, this panel invites papers on any aspect of women’s representation, experience, and relationships in long eighteenth-century Asia. Gender is both a mechanism of power and a method of symbolizing power dynamics that greatly influences the production of social institutions, privileges, and expectations. The issue of gender attained unprecedented prominence in early modern Asia, as the regulation and depreciation of women, which had long been shared and practiced, was fundamentally shaken by substantial social, political, and cultural transformations of the period. This panel asks literary scholars, historians, and art historians to investigate how social perceptions of gender were shaped and reshaped in diverse Asian cultures during the long eighteenth century.

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The Aesthetics of Chance, Risk, and Contingency
Chairs: Joseph Litts (Princeton University), jlitts@princeton.edu; and Erin Hein (University of Delaware), erinhein@udel.edu [ID 119 / March 28–29]

Being an artist is—and has been—risky business. Increased attention to and anxiety about uncertainty coincides with a period of increased transit, globalization, and industrialization from around 1650 to 1850. Fires and shipwrecks upended workshops and destroyed finished artworks, while open art markets led to financial instability. New and old media behaved unpredictably: marble cracked, oil paints did not cure, printmaking inks and acids went rogue, early photography capriciously captured and lost images. How did artists negotiate the unexpected? Amidst growing global trade, makers struggled to understand and manipulate new materials and subject matter. Printing errors paradoxically increased the value of impressions in Paris art markets. British and Dutch painters depicted maritime disasters for merchants whose treacherous voyages put lives and their own profits at stake. Artists from Giovanni Battista Piranesi to Alexander Cozens encouraged looking to random blots, tangled lines, and stains for inspiration. How did artists, collectors, and artworks convert chance, failures, mistakes, and risk into profits of all kinds?

Modern insurance, the stock market, and art itself converted loss into reward. For example, even the catastrophic financial losses of the South Sea Bubble became profitable for satirical artists who capitalized on the sudden inversion of fortune. Building on recent scholarship by Nina Dubin, Meredith Martin, and Madeleine Viljoen, as well as Charlotte Guichard and Matthew Hunter, how were artists visualizing and participating in systems of uncertainty? And how were art objects entangled in these networks? Attention to chance, risk, loss, and profit unsettles the fixedness of eighteenth century history and aesthetics. While this panel takes the Atlantic as its point of departure, we encourage contributions on a broad geographic range of materials and makers. We welcome submissions from scholars at all stages.

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The Art of Balance: Concepts of Equality and Democracy in Art and Visual Culture (Deutsche Gesellschaft für die Erforschung des 18. Jahrhunderts)
Chairs: Iris Brahms (Universität Tübingen), iris.brahms@fu-berlin.de; and Elisabeth Fritz (Freie Universität Berlin), elisabeth.fritz@fu-berlin.de [ID 78 / March 28–29]

In Western politics and philosophy of the eighteenth century, concepts of balance, equality, and democracy experienced a groundbreaking contouring that continues to have an impact until today (see McMahon 2023). These issues were negotiated not least in the arts. Our thesis is that the parallelism and simultaneity of opposing views and ideologies led to a striving for equilibrium and harmony, and was articulated, for example, within the ideas of social justice and political equality, or the goal of levelling extreme economic and financial differences, an idealistic balance that ultimately paved the way for new concepts of societal order, respectively democracy.

There is no glossing over the fact that a certain degree of difference and hierarchy to guarantee the aesthetically ‘harmonic’ order and balance was a persistent and prevailing ideal of the eighteenth century. Just as much, while aspiring for a newly balanced order within society, the dynamics of the socio-cultural developments of this period kept contributing to ongoing social injustices such as slavery or gender inequality. We decisively want include and discuss problematic strategies of appropriation and hegemonic agency and their paradoxical agenda in the names of equalization, modulation, normality, or assimilation, as well as non-Western concepts of equilibrium and collectivity. Our goal is to enter a fruitful debate and to develop a critical methodological approach, when we ask in which ways and to which ends the visual arts and their discourses helped to shape and spread the understanding of balance, equality, and democracy in the long eighteenth century.

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The Art of the Table: Dining and Desire in the Early Modern Period
Chair: Esther Gabel (Washington University in Saint Louis), esther.gabel@wustl.edu [ID 138 / March 28–29]

The early modern period saw a substantial shift in the preparation and presentation of food. Focus shifted from spice to ingredient, from captured to cultivated. New culinary techniques required new implements, and new methods of serving led to innovative porcelain and silver designs. Dining became more intimate, yet more elegant. Colonial drinks were the height of fashion. This panel seeks to bring together interdisciplinary perspectives to examine the complexities of ‘setting the table’ in the early modern period. Potential topics include (but are not limited to): print, cooks and cookbooks; porcelain and the art of presentation; the garnish; gardening; indulgence and intimacy in the dining room; food in art, or food as art; butter and sugar; and food or fiction (or melons made of sausage).

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The Historical Geographies of the Churrigueresque in the Iberian World
Chairs: Luis Gordo Peláez (California State University, Fresno), luisgordopelaez@csufresno.edu; and Cody Barteet (UWO), cbarteet@uwo.ca [ID 145 / April 4–5]

Spanish art historiography of the late 1700s (Llaguno and Ceán Bermúdez), favored Juan de Herrera’s sixteenth-century classical architecture and Bourbon-era architects Ventura Rodríguez and Juan de Villanueva. The latter architects were credited with restoring canonical models and shaping a national artistic identity by some historical and modern writers. This narrative castigates other ornamental architectural styles that developed after the mid-1600s, that were described as decorative fantasies and their designers, like Hurtado, Churriguera, and Ribera, labeled as ‘heretics’. In juxtaposition, the early 1900s American architects viewed Spanish architecture linearly, recognizing that Herrera’s work was in response to existing ornamental styles (like the Plateresque), and his ‘pure Classicism’ gave way to Churriguera’s ornamental creations. While vilified in Spain, Churriguera was celebrated in America, and Herrera criticized for adopting an ‘unrooted’ style deemed ‘out of key with the Spanish character’, unlike the ornamental styles that preceded or post-dated including the Churrigueresque. Few modern scholars have reconsidered this historiography by analyzing the exuberant aesthetic dominating Hispanic architecture in the late 17th and 18th centuries. The Churrigueresque and its transoceanic interpretations remain understudied in English scholarship. This panel aims to further examine the Churrigueresque through textual analyses and studies of its relationship to the Hispanic world’s built environment, including architectural, sculptural, and ephemeral elements. Proposals may address various aspects:
• Churrigueresque historiography and taxonomy, including the influence of other ‘decorative fantasies’ or styles
• Influence of other cultures and their technologies
• Intersection of race and built environment, sensorial studies, and digital humanities
• Center and Periphery Methodologies concerning the Churrigueresque in the broader Iberian world

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Women Artists: Emulation, Collaboration, Innovation
Chair: Christina Lindeman (University of South Alabama), clindeman@southalabama.edu [ID 99 / April 4–5]

In recent years, scholars have focused increased attention on women artists in the long eighteenth century. From watershed exhibitions including Making Her Mark in North America and Geniale Frauen in Europe, to publications on women artists by Spies-Gans (2022), Strobel (2023), and Quinn (2024). Taking advantage of this new research and artworks emerging on the market opens more opportunities to study women artists in various geographical areas and working in multifarious mediums. This panel seeks papers proposing new perspectives on women artists engaged in emulation, collaboration, and innovation from diverse regions and cultural settings.

Emulation was understood as a virtuous practice that led to innovation. However, as Laura Auricchio noted in her research on Adélaïde Labille-Guiard, that emulation was “necessary for female artists’ careers but dangerous for their reputations.” Emulating artworks deemed inappropriate could potentially damage a woman’s social standing even being judged unnatural. Moreover, a woman could be deemed a ‘copyist’ and lacking the intellectual breadth for history painting. How did women artists engage with artworks from the historical past or their contemporaries?

Taking collaboration as a focus, this panel invites new pathways to analyze the dynamic and gendered relationships in the studio. Papers that address how women collaborated with other artists, whether family members or contemporaries, are welcomed. How did women assert themselves in collaborative professional relationships? In what instances did collaborative working relationships run counter to established gender roles? How was the division of labor and responsibilities divided?

Finally, where can we see women innovating? Which women artists invented new methods of making art? How did they engage the materiality of their art by, for example, creating new formulas in pigments, brushes, pastels, or paper? How did women artists engage with natural philosophy and/or laboratory practices in the studio?

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Roundtable | Material Methods
Chair: Sal Nicolazzo (UC Davis), snicolazzo@ucdavis.edu [ID 118 / March 28–29]

We have long known that the eighteenth century was profoundly shaped by both materials and theories of materiality itself. From metallurgy to textiles, from ceramics to foods, scholars of eighteenth-century literature, the arts, history, economy, and governance have contributed to a rich and multifaceted understanding of how specific materials both acquired profound socio-cultural meaning and shaped human and ecological relations through their material properties.

This roundtable seeks to convene an interdisciplinary discussion of material methods for understanding the eighteenth century in the present. What kind of knowledge-production is entailed in cooking, fermenting, sewing, sculpting, binding, printing, growing, harvesting, or amalgamating the materials either represented or elided in the primary sources more traditionally employed in our disciplines for historical inquiry? How might we engage methodologically with contemporary artists like Candice Lin, Kara Walker, and Joscelyn Gardner, who devise artistic methods for reanimating eighteenth-century materials and histories? How might material methods transform, rather than simply re-enact, the material histories that shaped the eighteenth century, or push us to find terms other than ‘the eighteenth century’ for understanding the temporalities of our research or teaching? What material methods are necessary for engaging transformatively with the planetary material “duress” (Ann Stoler) of eighteenth-century capitalism and empire in which we all live? A wide array of formats, genres, and creative interpretations of the topic are welcomed, as is creative engagement with the unique affordances of the virtual format.

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Roundtable | The Legacies of Morris Eaves
Chairs: Wayne Ripley (Winona State University), wripley@winona.edu; and Tom Hothem (University of California, Merced), thothem@ucmerced.edu [ID 116 / March 28–29]

This panel invites participants to reflect on the life and work of the William Blake and Romanticism scholar Morris Eaves, who passed away in the spring of 2024. Eaves was the co-editor of Blake: An Illustrated Quarterly and a co-founder of the William Blake Archive as well as the author of books and articles on Blake, art history, technologies of visual reproduction, digital humanities, and editorial theory.

Eaves opened new interdisciplinary vistas of scholarly inquiry that were attuned to the relationship of print production, visual culture, and changing modes of technology. His book The Counter-Arts Conspiracy: Art and Industry in the Age of Blake (1992) positioned Blake in a variety of interrelated contexts—aesthetic, chalcographic, technological, religious, economic, and political—to show that Blake was engaged with debates that were both central to the eighteenth century and, as it happens, newly pertinent to the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Eaves similarly understood how changes in technology demanded, in his phrase, a new “editorial settlement.” By helping to create and maintain the Blake Archive, which celebrates its 30th anniversary in 2025, Eaves posited a new model of the scholarly edition for the digital age and helped to advance the idea of the digital humanities.

Contributors to this panel are welcome to explore any aspect of Eaves’s thought in relation to the eighteenth century, and/or to offer personal reflections. We appeal especially to Eaves’s students, colleagues, and readers in asking participants to examine our field’s current interdisciplinary trajectory in relief of given work(s) from the Age of Blake. Participants should engage cultural production as rigorously and specifically as possible, certainly in the spirit with which Eaves approached such work.

A selection of AAH panels of potential interest for dixhuitièmistes, though please also consult the full Call for Papers:

Association for Art Historians Annual Conference
University of York, 9–11 April 2025

Proposals due by 1 November 2024

The Association for Art History’s annual conference brings together international research and critical debate about art history and visual culture. A key annual event, the conference is an opportunity to keep up to date with new research, hear leading keynotes, broaden networks, and exchange ideas. The conference attracts around 400 attendees each year and is popular with academics, curators, practitioners, PhD students, early career researchers, and anyone engaged with art history research. Members of the Association get reduced conference rates, but non-members are welcome to attend and propose sessions and papers. We actively encourage applications from candidates who are Black, Asian, minority ethnic, or from other groups traditionally underrepresented within art historical roles in the UK, as well as new partnerships from those representing these groups.

To offer a paper, please email your paper proposals direct to the session convenor(s). You need to provide a title and abstract (250 words maximum) for a 20-minute paper (unless otherwise specified), your name and institutional affiliation (if any). Please make sure the title is concise and reflects the contents of the paper because the title is what appears online, in social media, and in the digital programme. You should receive an acknowledgement of receipt of your submission within two weeks.

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Art Histories of Experience
Stephen Whiteman (Courtauld Institute of Art), stephen.whiteman@courtauld.ac.uk; and Peyvand Firouzeh (University of Sydney), peyvand.firouzeh@sydney.edu.au

This panel explores the experience of spatial environments as an art historical question. Experience is multivalent, subjective, and above all ephemeral. Our experience of the built environment, designed landscapes, and the world at large is highly mediated and contingent, connected to both individual perspectives and cultural framing. It is, moreover, a subject that lies at the complex intersection of the humanities and the sciences, as the senses, emotions, perception, and memory incorporate objective and subjective elements of cognition. What contributes to our experience of a site or space? How do textual, visual, spatial, and cognitive elements interact to create experience? What sources can help reconstruct that experience? How does experience change across different cultural contexts, and how should our methods change in response? How can digital tools, such as mapping, 3-D modelling, or augmented reality, aid our understanding of experience?

We invite proposals for papers and presentations that explore historical experience of landscape and the built environment through art historical and interdisciplinary means. Papers may focus on experience of a specific site, take up a range of examples, address broader methodological issues, or pursue other approaches. We welcome submissions employing analog and/or digital methods and are eager to create conversation across the two. We also warmly encourage proposals from scholars working on pre-modern materials, and outside Euramerican contexts.

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Burning Matters: The Limits of the Image in a ‘World on Fire’
Elsa Perryman Owens (University College London), elsa.owens.15@ucl.ac.uk; and Jacob Badcock (University College London), jacob.badcock@ucl.ac.uk

In the context of rising global temperatures, raging wildfires, blazing conflict in the Middle East, and ever more incendiary political speech in Western liberal democracies, the politics and aesthetics of fire have become an increasingly important area of study, crucial to understanding a world caught in the throes of environmental crisis and unrest. This panel considers the role of representation in a ‘world on fire’. When the flames abate, they leave behind a world changed, but this change needs nuance. How are images of fire deployed in art and media and what are the limits of these images in representing this new reality? How do the frames of art and artworks conflict with and appease the boundaries of representation? Is it possible for burning to be a generative and transformative process, as well as a destructive one? What does studying burnt matter and fire-affected objects reveal about the wider social causes of disaster, both contemporary and historical, and what challenges do they present to the art historical method?

We invite papers addressing modern and contemporary or historical topics (we encourage those concerning pre-1900 material) including but not limited to the aesthetic politics of fire, fire and non-human agency, fire and environmental politics, fire and conflict, the language of fire and burning, burnt matter as art and/or testimony, and the conservation and care of fire-affected objects within the archive.

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For a History of Artists’ Models
Raisa Rexer, Vanderbilt University, Raisa.Rexer@Vanderbilt.edu; and Colette Morel (Université de Grenoble-Alpes / LARHRA (Laboratoire de recherche historique Rhône-Alpes), colette.jeanne.morel@gmail.com

In his Dictionnaire universel du XIXe siècle, Pierre Larousse wrote that the model must “contribute to the perfection of the work.” Yet despite the model’s implied significance, the terms of their contribution to art, and the toll it exacted on the men and women who made it, have remained shrouded in controversy and anonymity. This panel seeks to confront the history of the model by exploring both the conditions of their contribution to creative work and their personal agency.

The history of the model is fundamentally rooted in a feminist history of art, even as methodological approaches have shifted over time. Early scholarship focused on the invention of the ‘sexually available’ model as a social type (Waller 2006; Lathers, 2001), access to live models as fundamental to the training of 19th-century artists (Nochlin 1977) and tracing the biographical paths of these female contributors (Seibert 1986, Lipton 1992). More recent historiography has shifted towards empowering the model, moving beyond the modernist myth of the ‘muse’ and the artist. These approaches have situated the model within the study of the live model and the anatomy courses given in art academies and drawing schools since the 17th century (Lahalle 2006; Brugerolles 2009; Guedron 2003); coexisting studio trades (Fugier 2007; Nerlich 2013), the history of the body and of gender (Solomon-Godeau 1997; Comar 2008), colonisation (Murell 2018), networks of sociability (Marsch 2019; Robert 2023; Morel 2023), and early photography (Rexer, 2021, 2023).

Building on these historiographical shifts, the panel solicits contributions exploring the methodological challenges of writing the history of models. Proposals may include:
• Typology of the model and its representation
• Epistemological issues raised by biographical/prosopographical approaches (anonymity, identification, sources)
• Social and economic history of work (precariousness, working conditions, interconnected socio-professional worlds: theatre, dance, prostitution, etc.)
• Networks of sociability framing the profession (modelling agencies, collective action, circulation between workshops, etc.)
• Production and circulation of photographs of models (marketing of images produced for artists, studio collections, nude magazines, library and university collections, overlap with pornography, etc.)

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How Was It Made? How Interdisciplinary Collaborations in Material Culture Studies and Art History Can Unlock New Avenues of Knowledge
Rebecca Klarner (University of Leeds), fhrlmk@leeds.ac.uk; and Julia Tuveri (University of Leeds), ml17jm@leeds.ac.uk

Traditionally in art history, the study of material culture and decorative arts has been relegated to a subordinate role. Only more recently, objects and their materiality have received more rigorous attention: from Smith’s interdisciplinary project ‘Making and Knowing’ to work by e.g. Yonan, Adamson, Scott, etc.
While object-based and technical art history approaches do consider the material knowledge of curators, conservators, heritage scientists, and others, rarely is the knowledge and material intelligence of makers considered through this art historical lens.

‘How was it made?’ With this question as our starting point, this panel argues that material literacy should be an art historical priority. New avenues of knowledge can be unlocked through interdisciplinary collaboration when we consider the material processes of an object, combining the unique and often tacit knowledge of craftspeople and artists with the knowledge of conservators, art historians, heritage scientists, and curators. As such this panel will demonstrate how historic objects in art history can be further interrogated by extending the object biography approach and by also encompassing an even earlier point of material processes and specialist knowledge leading up to the object’s very creation.

As professional curators and conservators we invite professionals of various disciplines, including the above, working with and in various media, across all time periods to explore the question ‘How does our understanding of material and manufacturing processes enhance our understanding of an object’s historical value?’ and ‘What can material literacy and material intelligence offer the study of art history today?’

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The Art of a Nation: British Culture on the Continent, 1625–1900
Daniela Roberts (Institute of Art History, University of Würzburg), daniela.roberts@uni-wuerzburg.de; and Gerry Alabone (National Trust Knole / City Guilds of London Art School)

For decades, the state of self-reflection about English or British identity and cultural values had not reached such heights as it did during the Brexit referendum, reinforcing a feeling of national belonging in an entire nation. This provides the occasion to reappraise how Englishness or Britishness in terms of artistic innovations has been understood and defined in the past and has contributed to European culture. There is generally no doubt that the English landscape garden, Gothic Revival or the Arts and Crafts Movement have had a great impact on the artistic evolution and on aesthetic ideas in Europe. However, we know far less about the recognition of British art, the extent of its influence, the mechanisms of contribution, the processes of appropriation and the intentions or motivations behind them.

This session aims to explore continental engagement with British art and architecture through their processes of transfer, adaptation, and interaction with local art production. To this end, we seek to examine how British art was conceived and understood as foreign innovation, and for which qualities and cultural attribution it was selected. How did contemporary reviews judge on the significance and status of British Art? What role did aristocratic networks, politics, economic ties, the art market, and Grand Tour tourism play as decisive factors in activating the transfer process. To discuss these topics, we welcome case studies on understudied examples of artistic transfers including interior design, furniture, and ceramics as well as studies on collecting British art and art historiography.

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The Artist as Art Historian
Melissa L Gustin (National Museums Liverpool), melissa.gustin@liverpoolmuseums.org.uk; and Susie Beckham (University of York), susie.beckham@york.ac.uk

The earliest art historians were also artists, or perhaps rather artists who were also art historians. The relationship between theory, historiography, and practice is often led and taught from the historian’s perspective, rather than artists’. This panel considers the multivalent approaches to art history by artists/practitioners, from Vasari, to Ruskin, to contemporary artists and exhibitions. While the expression of an art historical perspective across media and methods has changed in response to contemporary pressures, art history within artmaking has been a consistent practice for centuries. This panel invites contributions for 20-minute papers that ask what relevance historic art and historiography have to the past and present. We especially welcome artists whose practice incorporates art historical research. How have artists used art history to better understand their practice and thus engaged in art history across media? How have artists used their practice to teach or better understand art history to contextualise their work and that of others? How can these art historical manoeuvres activate new understanding of historical contexts including colonialism, imperialism, racism, sexism, or more? What do recent exhibitions such as Entangled Pasts or I Preraffaeliti: un Rinascimento Moderno and the works therein offer for this kind of art historical-artist perspective? How have art historical artists been involved in creating a ‘canon’ or ideas of ‘canonicity’ in the first place through their valorisation of certain names and involvement in institutions like the Royal Academy, or in reaction against it? How does art history cross borders and temporality for artists? This session invites papers from the Renaissance to the present day and expects to include a wide range of historical and geographic areas.

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The Visual Display of Art Historical Information
Allison Stielau (University College London), a.stielau@ucl.ac.uk

The translation of visual and material phenomena into verbal form is usually framed as the central challenge of art historical method. Yet this translation often takes place alongside visual forms of description, quantification, and analysis. Models, didactic drawings, graphs, tables, reconstructions: such visual displays of art historical information (to paraphrase Edward Tufte’s classic study of data visualisation) have played a central, if underexamined role in the formation of the discipline. They include ‘family trees’ of artistic schools, graphic analyses of composition, diagrams identifying iconography and explaining perspectival systems, among other formats. Building on a recent interest in the diagram as image across art historical fields, this session turns to art historians’ own use of graphic elements to communicate information seemingly unavailable in reproductive illustration. How have these contributed to, or undermined, the scientistic underpinnings of art history and mediated its vexed relationship to “objectivity”? How do diagrams or schematic drawings allow for different modes of analysis, synthesis or criticism? The expanding use of big data in the humanities has brought with it new visual models. What might the longer history of the discipline’s relationship to ‘data visualization’ teach us about the affordances and pitfalls of these analytic forms?

Papers exploring these and other questions should focus primarily on a single example and be 10 minutes in length. Pairs of papers will be followed by a 5-minute response, ending with a 25-minute panel discussion. Ideally contributions will consider art historical practice in a wide range of fields and across geographies, from prehistory to the present.

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Visualising Human-Animal Relations: Animals in Visual and Material Culture, 1750–1900
Luba Kozak (University of Regina), kozak20l@uregina.ca; and Kate Nichols (University of Birmingham), e.k.nichols@bham.ac.uk

The ‘animal turn’ has gained traction in the humanities and social sciences, bringing animals to the forefront of academic discourses. Visual culture can offer new insights into the animal turn, opening up new ways of reading animals in art, and revealing nuanced human-animal relations. 1750–1900 was a crucial period in human-animal relations, yet representations of animals in both visual and material culture remain underexplored. This session aims to reevaluate animals in 18th and 19th-century artworks to shed light on human-animal relations through interdisciplinary perspectives. It encourages papers which integrate perspectives from the animal turn to critically rethink how animals are represented, understood, and treated. We invite art historians, researchers and museum professionals to explore ways of challenging anthropocentric perspectives and empowering animal narratives.

Papers might consider:
• Animals as art materials
• Trade and mobility of animals across global networks
• Pet culture and pet-owner relationships
• Conflicting categories of animals (ie. pets vs. pests or livestock)
• Menageries and animal collecting practices
• Animals and science
• Anthropomorphism and blurring human-animal identities
• Recognizing animal individuality, subjectivity and agency
• Moral and ethical shifts in attitudes towards animals, including animal welfare
• Visual cultures of meat and/or vegetarianism
• Animal cruelty and suffering
• Religious and spiritual beliefs on shaping human-animal relations
• Connections between nationalism and attitudes towards animals
• Methodological reflections on animal studies and art history

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What Is Architectural Scenography?
Paul Ranogajec (Independent), pranogajec@gmail.com

Can scenography be a generative category for studying the history of architecture and urban design? As a descriptive term, scenography concerns the design of framed views and raises questions of spectatorship and public ceremonial. In a more interactive sense, it also identifies the choreography of space, the ways in which architectural and urban forms foster distinctive bodily and somatic experiences. While architectural writers including Rudolf Wittkower, Michael Fried, and Kenneth Frampton have occasionally invoked scenography, there are no shared understandings about its definition or scope in the literature. In fact, there have been few sustained studies of architectural scenography as a design mode in specific historical circumstances. Does the theatrical understanding of scenography as ‘setting the scene’, of staging the fictional within a performance space, translate to architectural scenography?

Two touchstones will help orient the panel’s scope. One is Daniel Savoy’s Venice from the Water (Yale, 2012), a book analysing ‘water-oriented urbanistic practices’ as part of the city’s civic ceremonial and contributing to the symbolic construction of the ‘myth of Venice’. Another, A Civic Utopia (Drawing Matter Studies, 2016), identifies scenography in 18th- and 19th-century France as related to the “very fabric [of cities], so that … the sight of the town itself would provide pleasures in its aspects and a ready awareness of its civic, social and commercial life.” This panel invites papers exploring the design elements, spatial dynamics, and historical significance—social, political, or economic—of architectural scenography from the early modern period to the present.

I’ve highlighted here a selection of panels related to the eighteenth century; but please consult the Call for Papers for additional possibilities. –CH

113th Annual Conference of the College Art Association
New York Hilton Midtown, 12–15 February 2025

Proposals due by 29 August 2024

The CAA 113th Annual Conference will take place at the New York Hilton Midtown, New York City, 12–15 February 2025. The conference will be held in person with a selection of hybrid sessions and events. To submit a proposal, you’ll need a CAA account—though at this step, membership is not required. Proposals should include a presentation title and an abstract (of no more than 250 words), along with a brief CV (2 pages). Additional information is available from CAA’s website.

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American Art and the Pyrocene (remote session)
Chairs: Thomas Busciglio-Ritter (Joslyn Art Museum) and Annika Kelsey Johnson (Joslyn Art Museum)

Coined by historian Stephen Pyne in 2015, the concept of Pyrocene defines a human-caused fire age in which burning has become synonymous both with fossil energy consumption and lasting environmental damage. In North America, fire has long stood at an ecological, cultural, and political threshold, particularly when considering the long history of Indigenous practices such as controlled burns. With the arrival of Euro-American settlers, fire became a weapon used against Native societies to ensure an unbridled exploitation of natural resources. In turn, the omnipresence of fire within the US colonial project inspired a full-fledged artistic genre as of the early 19th century, and depictions of landscapes set alight became a popular form of disaster spectacle. Fire, however, has acquired new meaning in the 21st century: faced with persistent drought and large-scale blazes exacerbated by climate change, a growing number of communities are, for instance, reconsidering prescribed burns as an ecological practice.

Examining interactions between American art and the Pyrocene across time and media, this session invites submissions from researchers, scholars, and artists at all levels who focus on:
• Visual representations of fire in American Art, from the 18th century to the present
• Material interactions between American art and fire (accidental or intentional destruction, fire as creative fuel or co-participant in artmaking…)
• Artistic involvement in the study of fire and fire management
• Artist-led environmental interventions involving fire
• Artistic approaches to Indigenous ecologies of fire in North America
• Artists’ responses to North American wildfires and the climate crisis in our time

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The Art of Collaboration in the Long 18th Century (HECAA)
Chairs: Yasemin Diba Altun (Duke University) and Tori Champion (University of St Andrews)

The 18th century is an era known for its joint ventures, from sweeping publications like the Encyclopédie to crowd-sourcing spaces like the Enlightenment salon. This panel invites papers that consider the group dynamics and agencies that shaped the production, distribution, and consumption of visual and material art and culture during the long 18th century (ca. 1688–1815). How did 18th-century makers and their art worlds define ‘collaboration’? Scholars have noted that this term (at least in relation to artmaking) did not arise until the 19th century. What then were earlier vocabularies and discourses used to characterize a shared creative process and its participants? Papers could engage with conventional hierarchies of fine and craft arts. They could examine divisions of labor within academic, guild, domestic, and other contexts of production, both local and global. Particularly welcome are contributions that take up the politics and (in)visibilities of collaboration: how has credit been attributed to artworks produced by more than one individual? Whose names have or have not been ascribed to such works, for instance when displayed in exhibitions, sold on the art market, or described in critical writings? How do modern and more recent ideas of authorship fit or conflict with the 18th-century realities of artistic practice, which often involved multiple people working at different sites and stages, whether in concert or competition, to realize products of visual and material culture? Ultimately, this panel seeks contributions that challenge or complicate lingering norms of individual—relatedly, male and white—authorship in 18th-century art history.

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Collecting Her Thoughts: Women Art Collectors across Time
Chairs: Toni Armstrong (Boston University), Danarenae Donato (Boston University), and Ilaria Trafficante (Scuola Superiore Meridionale)

In his introduction to 19’s 2021 issue on women collectors, To Stammers writes that “the renewed study of female collectors promises to reconfigure the history of art and the history of gender alike.” Across time, women’s access to the social and financial resources necessary to collect art has been different from that of their male counterparts and often more limited. Both because of and in spite of these differences, women have served as art patrons, developed ideologically and materially expansive collections, and promoted art in public arenas. Yet, women collectors have been systematically excluded from museum and curatorial studies, perhaps in part because their collections and practices may manifest differently. Discussions of major art collectors continue to prioritize men, even when women were involved as spouses in developing domestic collections, in donating to museums, and in developing legacies for themselves and their partners.

How does the study of female collectors challenge and expand existing scholarship? Who were these women, and how and why did they collect? How and in what ways did women live, work, influence, and collect in community with others? How do women’s philanthropy, art collecting, and collecting as activism intersect in and out of the museum? We invite papers that open conversations about feminist curatorial practice of the past and present, offering new methodologies for the study of collecting and women’s curatorial practice. We encourage scholars who may be early in their careers, those who may come from underrepresented backgrounds, or those who study multiply marginalized women.

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Gender, Sexuality, and Non-Pristine Nature in Northern European Art and Material Culture, 1350–1750 (HNA)
Chairs: Anna-Claire Powell Stinebring (The Metropolitan Museum of Art) and Sarah Walsh Mallory (The Morgan Library & Museum)

How might waste studies (or discard studies), as an emerging strain within eco-critical methodologies, be put into productive conversation with (eco)feminist and queer theory? Such a question is apt in the context of early modern northern European art and material culture, born from an age in which the adage “cleanliness is next to godliness” had a particular resonance: close observation of nature was for artists a spiritual practice, which in turn spurred them to explore new methods for depicting their world, including mundane or unseemly details. This panel will examine notions of gender, sexuality, and non-pristine nature to shed new light on the construction—or playfully subversive deconstruction—of normative social hierarchies in early modern Northern European art and material culture. We build on the work of Mary Douglas, Donna Haraway, Carolyn Merchant and on recent scholarship, including: Francesca Borgo and Ruth Ezra (Wastework conference and edited volume); Emma Capron (The Ugly Duchess: Beauty and Satire in the Renaissance); Lauren Jacobi and Daniel Zolli (Contamination and Purity in Early Modern Art and Architecture); and Vittoria Di Palma (Wastelands: A History). Relevant topics include: gender in depictions of purity and contamination; wastelands; urban or domestic environments; purity in the colonial context; and contemporary curatorial responses. We welcome papers on all artforms and material culture produced in, or in connection with, the Northern Netherlands, Southern Netherlands, or Germany between the l4th and 18th centuries. Please send a proposal and CV to Sarah Mallory (smallory@themorgan.org) and Anna-Claire Stinebring (Anna-Claire.Stinebring@metmuseum.org) by August 29th.

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The Incomplete in the Long 19th Century (Interdisciplinary Nineteenth-Century Studies)
Chair: Nancy Rose Marshall

The theme of our panel is art and imagery related to the concept of ‘INCompleteS’, broadly construed. Possible topics might include: Unfinished sculptures or paintings; the meaning of the sketch; art that thematized ideas of absence, the partial, the fragmented, or the dismembered; fiction or criticism treating the undeveloped or unfinished artwork; or disability studies perspectives that counter 19th-century definitions of deficiency. We are especially looking for interdisciplinary papers that consider how notions of ‘the incomplete’ might in turn shed light on the 19th-century investment in the idea of whole and the totalizing. Topics from the long 19th century of any country or culture welcome.

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Neoclassicism in the Extended Field
Chairs: Rebecca Yuste (Columbia University) and Faraz Olfat (Yale University)

Neoclassicism, the movement that looked to the aesthetic, philosophical and political tradition of Greece and Rome, is one of the central threads of the long 19th century, often associated with state-building projects and the rise of secular modernity. Works by Robert Adam, Jacques-Germain Soufflot, Karl Friedrich Schinkel and Abbé Laugier had a crucial influence on the evolution and theorization of the movement internationally. This was facilitated through the circulation of ideas and the growth of European colonial enterprises as Neoclassical buildings sprung up far beyond the confines of Europe, with examples in the colonial Americas, the Middle East, South Asia, and across the continent of Africa.

This panel asks what happens when Neoclassicism moves outside of its traditionally understood geographies, namely Western Europe. It examines the introduction, promotion and application of Neoclassicism in these non-western geographies in order to construct a global understanding of the movement. This panel also considers how Greco-Roman traditions intersect and interact with local archaeological legacies, as well as the relationship established between Neoclassicism and imperialism across the globe. We welcome papers that expand, complicate and contradict traditional narratives of Neoclassical architecture, from the discovery of Pompeii and Herculaneum until the first decade of the twentieth century. These might explore topics related to the circulation of Neoclassical design through colonial intervention, photography, pattern books, architectural treatises, or the prominence of the École des Beaux-arts. Examples could include but are not limited to governmental buildings, libraries, financial institutions, religious monuments, private residences, unrealized projects, and theoretical writings.

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New Directions in British Art and Architectural History (HBA)
Chairs: Monica Anke Hahn and Laurel Peterson (Yale Center for British Art)

The study and practice of art history in the academy and in in the museum has changed substantially in the last five years. This call invites scholars, researchers, curators, and practitioners to present their work on innovative approaches, emerging themes, and unexplored avenues in the study of British art and architectural history. We define ‘Britain’ and ‘British art’ broadly, and welcome presentations on a diverse range of topics including, but not limited to:
• Reevaluations of overlooked or underrepresented artists, architects, styles, and movements.
• Revised interpretations of established narratives and historical perspectives.
• Explorations of transnational connections and global exchanges shaping British artistic and architectural practices.
• Examinations of the intersections between British art and architecture and issues of identity, memory, and tradition.
• New curatorial approaches and interventions.
• Applications of innovative methodologies, including digital humanities, GIS mapping, and material analysis.

Especially encouraged are projects with interdisciplinary approaches, and those that consider wide geographical, social, and racial contexts. Proposals from scholars in and outside of academia, and at any stage in their programs or careers are welcome.

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Sculpture as a Collective Practice in the Long 19th Century
Chairs: Apolline Malevez (Ghent University) and Marjan Sterckx (Ghent University)

Collaborative practices, shared authorship and the labor of art are gaining recognition in contemporary art research, yet remain under-acknowledged in nineteenth-century art history. Taking inspiration from Howard Becker’s ‘art worlds’ [1982], this session explicitly considers sculpture as the collective practice it has traditionally been, and zooms in on the sculpture studio as a creative ecosystem, in which ‘the sculptor’ is but one of the actors involved.

Most successful sculptors hired collaborators to help with the making of their works. However, this did not mean that collaborative work was valued as such: the (male) sculptor was generally considered as the only ‘real’ creator, while the specialists who helped with the various mechanical aspects of art making (such as the production of plaster moulds, the bronze casting and/or the rough cutting) were perceived as ‘mere assistants’, and their use was sometimes criticized.

Beyond specialist practitioners, this panel also wishes to highlight other forms of hidden labor. We invite papers that draw attention to the domestic, creative and/or technical work of pointers, carvers, moulders, students, models, domestic servants and family members in the sculptor’s studio and household. We will consider questions such as: who made the time-consuming labor of sculpture possible? Who cleaned up all the dust? How should we value the artistic contribution of sculptors’ collaborators? We aim to provoke discussion around the notion of individual authorship, the rethinking of the studio as a space of hybrid (class, gender and race) relations, and the importance of care work within artistic creation.

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Taking and Making: Artistic Reckonings with Cultural Property Theft in the Long 19th Century (AHNCA)
Chair: Nancy Karrels (Independent Scholar and Curator)

The 19th century witnessed a plethora of incidents of cultural property theft accompanied by coercion and violence and often driven by imperial and colonial agendas. From the notorious spoliation of Beijing’s Old Summer Palace during the Opium Wars to the seizure of sacred Native American artifacts under the guise of scientific inquiry, these acts of looting left communities grappling with profound cultural losses that still reverberate today. This panel explores the complex dynamics of artistic exchange and expression engendered by these traumatic events. Drawing inspiration from Bénédicte Savoy’s transnational approach to the cultural exchanges that resulted from the French spoliation of Germanic princely collections in post-Revolutionary Europe, we aim to investigate the ways in which forcible transfers of cultural patrimony globally catalyzed shifts in artistic value and meaning during the long 19th century, and how these contentious processes sparked cross-cultural discourse and innovative avenues of creative expression among artists directly impacted by or complicit in them. From the interplay between looting and artistic production to the evolution of techniques and styles in the aftermath of plunder, we encourage contributions from diverse cultural perspectives and methodological approaches. Proposals are open to all, but once accepted, presenters will need to update their memberships in both CAA and AHNCA by the time of the conference.

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Trajectivity in Art: Toward a Horizontal Art History of Styles
Chair: Julie Codell (Arizona State University)

We call styles grouped by artists ‘movements’, but where do styles go? Art historians constrict movements to ‘centers’ (e.g., Paris, New York) and time periods. Considering styles’ movements in a horizontal art history [from the eighteenth century to the present], we can discover how styles’ canonicity, materiality, their artists’ reputations, and their market values are transformed across borders, oceans, and continents. ‘Trajectivity’ can mean orientation toward (Paul Virilio): artists often orient their styles toward permanence, popularity, universality, and transcendence. It may mean deraciné, ungroundedness (John Rajchman). In a horizontal art history challenging the center-periphery binary and provincializing ‘centers’, ‘peripheral’ artists can transmute, de-and re-territorialize and re-invent styles through their local conventions; peripheries are not passive recipients of styles but recreate them, denying the essentialism and universality ascribed to European styles presumably grounded in centers (Piotr Piotrowski): The Metropolitan Museum’s Surrealism Beyond Borders (2021–22) covering 45 countries and 80 years exhibited Surrealisms that absorbed local visual idioms beyond Europe.

Possible questions are (but not limited to):
• How do styles’ meanings, market values, histories, significations and authority change when styles cross borders?
• What art events (exhibitions, biennales) stimulate styles’ mobility?
• When centers are provincialized, what happens to ‘universality’ and ‘transcendence’ ascribed to centers’ styles?
• Do new traits from places they traverse adhere to styles?
• Do reputations of artists associated with centers change when styles migrate?
• What agency do artworks have to transform styles when introduced into ‘centers’ or ‘peripheries’?
• How can critical museums display and exhibit styles’ cultural exchange transformations?
• Do political events—colonialism, war, emigration—affect styles’ transmissions and transformations?

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Unboxing the Long 18th Century (ASECS)
Chairs: Dani Rebecca Ezor (Kenyon College) and Jennifer Germann

Boxes are objects which at once contain and extend their makers’ and users’ contact with the world. Then as now, they traveled the globe, moving between cultures and amongst sellers, consumers, and collectors. With online shopping and shipping, they have proliferated as symbols of consumerism, as fodder for YouTube and TikTok videos, and as useful nuisances, littering our landscapes. They have not, however, claimed the same space in our scholarly studies. Usually an afterthought or even discarded entirely, boxes could be luxury goods themselves, made by skilled craftspersons with significant care and attention to detail. Boxes contain, store, hide, protect, wrap, package, present, and encase, but they can also reveal, expose, manifest, exhibit, and even release. Here we turn attention to the box as a signifier and site of meaning. As noted in the Encyclopédie, “The number of assemblages that can be called a box is infinite.” (“Le nombre des assemblages auxquels on donne le nom de boîte est infini.”)

This panel invites papers that explore boxes of all kinds, including but not limited to boxes for artist’s materials; snuff boxes; powder boxes; mouche boxes; nécessaires; etuis; tea or coffee canisters; specimen boxes; trunks; coffers; caskets; and cases; as well as their representation. These objects raise issues related to interiority and exteriority, storage and display, the hidden and the revealed. Global topics from the 17th through the early 19th century that address labor, performance, the senses, empire, materiality, gender, race, and other avenues of exploration are welcome.

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The Visual Culture of Festivals in Germany, Scandinavia, and Central Europe (Historians of German, Scandinavian, and Central European Art and Architecture)
Chair: Michelle Oing

Mikhail Bakhtin’s foundational work on carnival has inspired countless studies on festivals around the world, and the idea of the world turned upside down. Though Bakhtin’s focus was on literature, much subsequent work on festivals has been produced by anthropologists, social historians, and theater historians, for whom the inversion of carnival provides a useful framework to consider myriad themes (social hierarchy, humor, reform, etc.).

But what makes a festival a festival? What is often most striking is their rich visual culture. In this panel we are interested in the idea of the festival broadly defined: gatherings religious or secular, parades, protests, organized events and spontaneous celebrations or revolts. From the elaborate ephemeral architecture of early modern royal entries, to Midsummer celebrations involving maypoles and bonfires, and the Krampusnacht parades of Austria and Central Europe, these festivals make full use of the visual impact of masks, puppets, floats, costumes, automata, and the manipulation of architectural and/or natural spaces. Ephemeral live events, records of festivals also often survive only in visual form, whether in photography, painting, engraving, or other forms of visual record-keeping. This panel seeks papers that consider the highly visual and spatial aspects of the festival in Germany, Scandinavia, and Central Europe through an art historical lens. We welcome submissions that blend art historical and other theoretical approaches in order to explore what the tools of art history can bring to the study of the festivals from this region, from antiquity to the present.

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Women and Letters
Chair: Isabel Mehl (Freie Universität Berlin)

Women reading letters is a widespread motif in art history. In the 17th century, the motif was ubiquitous in Dutch painting, became erotically charged in the French Rococo period, and was taken up again in the 19th and 20th century by Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Henri Matisse. Research has mainly focused on male artists depicting female (letter) readers whereas paintings by women artists depicting the same motif have not yet been researched (comparatively). This is surprising since women painters have employed the motif of the letter since the 19th century—prominent examples being Mary Cassatt’s The Letter (1890/1), Harriet Backers Evening, Interior (1896), or Charlotte Berend-Corinths Self-portrait (1941). In addition, the epistolary form as such has regained prominence in works by contemporary women artists working in different mediums, for instance, Sophie Calles installation Prenez-soin de vous (2007), Moyra Davey’s chromogenic prints Subway Writers (2011) or Nicole Tyson’s book Dead Letter Men (2015). This session seeks to bring together scholars whose work addresses the epistolary as motif or form in works by women artists. Artists are also invited to contribute their perspective on this topic. We will discuss issues of class, gender and race in relation to these works. In bringing together current research from different geographical contexts and historical periods this session aims at uncovering the yet untold stories of woman and letters in the visual arts.

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Women Artists and the Politics of Neoclassicism
Chairs: Andrea Morgan and Megan True (Art Institute of Chicago)

The history of 18th-century French painting has long been dominated by the study of canonical male artists like Jacques-Louis David, whose name is synonymous with a Neoclassical aesthetic. However, as recent scholarship has shown, from the end of the French Revolution through the Restoration women artists were more visible than generally acknowledged, such as by exhibiting in increasing numbers at the Salon and the Royal Academy and participating in the commercial market. This panel invites papers investigating how women makers responded to the dramatic social and political upheaval in France and its reverberations across Europe, Great Britain, or more broadly from the late 18th century throughout the 19th. Can any trends in subject matter chosen by women be identified within the broad umbrella that constitutes Neoclassicism? Did Neoclassicism—with its inclination toward the classical body and the genre of history painting—necessarily exclude a number of women artists who often concentrated on more ostensibly neutral subject matter such as still life or portraiture? Or were there more women like Nanine Vallain, a student of David, who actively participated in political conversations? This panel aims to explore reform, revolution, and restoration from the perspective of women—including those who were patrons of the arts—in the hopes of expanding or nuancing our collective interpretation of the Neoclassical movement, broadly defined. Papers that discuss—whether in support or repudiation of—the contested notion that there are specifically feminine or masculine characteristics to artworks are particularly welcome.

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Note (added 29 July 2024) — The original posting was updated to include the session on Trajectivity.

From USTC, as hosted by St Andrews:

St Andrews Book Conference: Newspapers and Periodicals
Universal Short Title Catalogue Conference
St Andrews, 19–21 June 2025

Organized by Andrew Pettegree, Arthur der Weduwen, and Zachary Brookman

Proposal due by 13 December 2024

Job Adriaensz Berckheyde, A Man Reading a Newspaper, ca. 1670s, oil on panel, 17 × 14 cm.

While the basic technological underpinnings of print were unaltered from the days of Johannes Gutenberg to the invention of the steam press in the nineteenth century, one type of early modern publishing, pioneered in the early seventeenth century, would alter the printscape decisively. The rise of newspapers and other types of periodical publishing was beset by many failures and missteps, but by 1700, the genre had taken Europe by storm.

In the eighteenth century, newspapers would be at the heart of the expansion of printing presses in provincial Europe and its colonies overseas. At the same time, the range of periodical publishing on offer in Europe’s major cities would expand into every realm of printed information. While periodicals have long been the poor relation of short title catalogues and bibliographical investigations, this conference will seek to place periodical publishing where it belongs, at the heart of early modern print culture.

The conference will engage with the full diversity of periodical literature that appeared in the early modern period, from newspapers and monthly digests of current affairs to periodicals covering science, the book trade, literature, arts, husbandry, philosophy, and more. We welcome proposals for papers on research methodologies and the reconstruction of periodical ventures, key categories of periodical genres, individual titles, or prominent publishers, and other subjects.

Proposals—with a title, an abstract of up to 300 words, and a short biography of up to 150 words—should be addressed to the organisers, Andrew Pettegree, Arthur der Weduwen and Zachary Brookman, by 13 December 2024. The organisers can be reached at admp@st-andrews.ac.uk, adw7@st-andrews.ac.uk, and zb28@st-andrews.ac.uk.

From ArtHist.net:

The Architecture of the Cassinese Congregation, 15th–18th Centuries
Padua and Vicenza, 30 January — 1 February 2025

Organized by Gianmario Guidarelli with Ilaria Papa, Paola Placentino, and Riccardo Tonin

Proposals due by 31 August 2024

The University of Padua (ICEA Department), in collaboration with the Centro Internazionale di Studi di Architettura Andrea Palladio/Palladio Museum and the Abbey of Santa Giustina in Padua, is organising a three-day conference addressing the architecture of the Cassinese Benedictine Congregation, to be held in Padua and Vicenza from 30 January until 1 February 2025.

The conference is part of the PRIN 2022 research project CoenoBIuM. Art and Architecture of the Cassinese Benedictine Congregation (XV–XVIII centuries): Digital and Spatial Analysis Strategies through BIM Models, which studies the architectural and artistic practice of the Cassinese Benedictine Congregation from its foundation until the end of the 18th century from a comparative perspective and with the use of the innovative and experimental Building Information Modeling (BIM) methodology. The project is coordinated by P.I. Gianmario Guidarelli (University of Padua), is structured in three Research Units belonging respectively to the Universities of Padua, Bologna (Associated Investigator: Sonia Cavicchioli) and Brescia (Associated Investigator: Paolo Borin), and gathers a team of professors and young researchers.

The reform of monastic life instituted by Ludovico Barbo and formalized in 1419 revolutionized Benedictine monasteries by reorienting monks’ lives towards contemplation and personal prayer. This new model of monastic life entailed the transformation of cenobitic spaces of the cenobia and the introduction of new theological and iconographic themes in painting and sculpture in the congregation’s churches and monasteries. This broad topic of study was inaugurated by the studies of James Ackerman (1977), Mary-Ann Winkelmes (1996), Bruno Adorni (1998), Guido Beltramini (1995, 2007, 2013), Andrea Guerra (2006), and Tracy Cooper (2005), and then further developed in the 2017 conference Network of Cassinese Arts (organised by Alessandro Nova and Giancarla Periti, KHI Florence). The CoenoBIuM project aims to verify this hypothesis using the BIM methodology, which facilitates the management of large amounts of data of different nature (archival, bibliographic, iconographic, material, geometric-spatial) within a framework of interdisciplinary collaboration. The project will gradually extend to the study of the entire network of monasteries of the Congregation, thanks to the sharing of data (open access) and results (thematic seminars, conferences and publications).

Focusing on the building practices and architecture of the Cassinese Congregation, the conference welcomes studies on individual monasteries as well as on the following general thematic issues:
• shared building regulations
• shared building practices: site management and economy
• circulation of architects, workers, materials
• relationship with local building traditions
• relationship with the urban and territorial context
• circulation and use of architectural drawings
• relationship with treatises
• antiquarian culture: spatial models and architectural language
• spatial models of other contemporary congregations: Olivetans, Laterans…
• spatial models of reference: Cistercians, Dominicans, Canons Regular, etc.
• relations with other reformed Benedictine congregations in Europe (France, Germany, etc.)
• the Cassinese congregation as a model for the architecture of the new Counter-Reformation congregations
• architecture and monastic life: liturgy and spirituality in relation to spaces

Paper proposals, consisting of a short abstract (250 words max.) and a short CV, should be sent as an email attachment to coenobium@dicea.unipd.it by 31 August 2024. Accepted proposals will be announced by 15 September 2024. The proceedings of the conference will be published. Additional information is available here.

From the Call for Papers:

Land and Power in Scotland: History, Law, and the Environment
Paris-Panthéon-Assas University, 26–27 June 202

Proposals due by 30 January 2025

Breathes there the man, with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land!

Immediately after these famous lines, their author, Sir Walter Scott, went on to describe his ‘native land’ as ‘O Caledonia! stern and wild/… Land of brown heath and shaggy wood/ Land of the mountain and the flood’. Although part of a wider romantic nationalist tradition of professing love for one’s native land through love of its landscape, Scott’s words reflect the special place of the land in Scotland’s identity. Scottish landscape defines Scottishness both within and beyond its borders. Indeed, it is no coincidence that Donald Dewar chose to quote Scott’s words at the opening of the new Scottish Parliament on 1st July 1999.

There are few nations where views of the land are both so fundamental and so fraught. Historically, Scotland combined a high proportion of harsh and often marginally productive land with the need to maintain an effective warrior class to resist English expansionism. The solution was a heavily militarised aristocracy endowed with vast territorial estates and innumerable retainers, over which it exercised almost princely power. While by no means unique when it originated in the Norman period, the resulting pattern of concentrated landownership has persisted to this day, even as social, economic and legal relationships have undergone dramatic change. Most notably, the 18th- and 19th-century Clearances upended the mutual obligations that underpinned the old feudal order, as the great landowners sought to transform their estates for intensive agricultural exploitation. The Clearances’ enduring legacy of social conflict, environmental degradation, and vast material inequality has given land a uniquely complex and controverted role in Scotland’s contemporary cultural, political and legal life.

Scotland now has one of the most concentrated patterns of land ownership in the world with an estimated 432 families owning half of all private land. Reflecting this situation, land reform has, since devolution, become a key issue in Scottish politics. Successive legislative initiatives have focused mainly on ending feudal tenure and simplifying titles to land, as well as creating a celebrated ‘right to roam’ and establishing a ‘community right to buy’ from existing landowners. Further legislation, the Land Reform (Scotland) Bill, was introduced to Parliament on 14th March 2024 to, inter alia, increase the influence of local communities when large landholdings of over 1,000 hectares which represent more than 50% of Scotland’s land are being sold.

The aim of this international and pluri-disciplinary two-day conference is to explore the current concern for land reform in its social, cultural, legal and environmental contexts. The intention is to gather specialists from a range of disciplines including history, geography, law, literature, political science, economics, sociology, and the arts, as well as environmental and climate change specialists, to explore the interactions between land and power in Scotland along three main axes:

• History — historical and symbolic roots of land and identity/power in Scotland, and their past and contemporary implications, the (mis)use of history to claim or retain rights, the history of Scottish landscapes in art and science, the history of environmentalism in Scotland, etc.

• Law — land law and policy reform in Scotland, its origins and current concerns, such as the ‘right to roam’ and the Scottish Outdoor Access Code, land reform, community ownership, transmission and inheritance, the notion of ‘environmental justice’, etc.

• The Environment — eco-activism and sustainable development, for example rewilding, reforesting and repeopling, renewable energy, eco-tourism and rural development, the environment as a source of wealth and power, green nationalism, nature and Scottish identity, etc.

The conference will be held in English and French, and a selection of papers will be published in an academic publication after the conference. Please send your proposals (300 words), a title, and a short biography (in French or English) to the scientific committee by 30 January 2025:
• Clarisse Godard Desmarest, Professor at Picardie Jules Verne University,
clarisse.godarddesmarest@u-picardie.fr
• Juliette Ringeisen-Biardeaud, Associate Professor at Paris-Panthéon-Assas University
juliette.ringeisen-biardeaud@u-paris2.fr
• Aurélien Wasilewski, Associate Professor at Paris-Panthéon-Assas University,
aurelien.wasilewski@u-paris2.fr