Enfilade

From the ArtHist.net announcement, which includes the German:

Securities of Art: On the History of Authentication between Work, Text, and Context
Carl von Ossietzky Universität Oldenburg, 5–7 December 2024

Organized by Tobias Vogt and Lukas Töpfer

Proposals due by 15 June 2024

Workshop as part of the DFG project Wertpapiere der Kunst. Authentifizierung als künstlerisches Konzept in Zeiten von Finanzkrisen, 1720–2020 (Securities of art. Authentication as an artistic concept in times of financial crises, 1720–2020), Prof. Dr. Tobias Vogt and Lukas Töpfer M.A., Institute for Art and Visual Culture, Carl von Ossietzky University Oldenburg.

The workshop Securities of Art: On the History of Authentication between Work, Text, and Context (Wertpapiere der Kunst: Zur Geschichte künstlerischer Authentifizierung zwischen Werk, Text und Kontext) will examine artistically conceived authentications that have become constitutive for the status and value of artworks since the early 18th century. The guiding assumption is that artists in particular interrogate specific methods of authentication—such as signatures and titles, but also certificates, contracts, and other securities in the broadest sense—and integrate them into the structure of their works. Examples range from specially designed subscription tickets for the purchase of prints in the early 18th century to images of real and fake paper money dating from the French Revolution, from designs and caricatures of bonds since 1900 to certificates and contracts in works of contemporary art that comment on or criticize the changing financial system.

The focus is on exploring an art history of authentication in overarching social, economic, and legal-historical contexts on the one hand, and on the other, delineating the theoretical contours of the relationship between the authenticating and the authenticated, between work and parergon, and between text, paratext, and context. We will engage in a historical and theoretical analysis of the shift from the authentication of art to authentication as art and how this led to a corresponding blurring or reorganization of the relationships between ergon and parergon. Another important question is the extent to which authentications are particularly likely to emerge as artistically conceived in the face of radical changes to a prevailing value structure: in times of financial crises.

The presentations should last approximately 25 minutes in English or German and preferably focus on individual case studies of artistically designed authentications. We are particularly (but not exclusively) interested in the following questions:
• What are the pictorial and textual characteristics of a specific artistically conceived authentication?
• What procedures and constellations (of works and parerga) is it integrated into?
• How does authentication generate value not only as an element of economic practice, but also and especially within its own syntax and semantics, materiality, and mediality as determined by visual artistic practice?
• How does it respond in terms of form and function to the contemporary financial world? How does it perhaps even operate inside it?
• How does it specifically place the authenticating and the authenticated in relation to each other?
• What qualifies as an authentic work of art? How is it created—parergonally? How do artists themselves address this question, whether directly or indirectly?
• How does the question of the work relate to the creation, formation and preservation of value in general, where the intersection between art and finance is particularly relevant?

Please send an abstract of approximately 200 words, together with a short biographical note, to tobias.vogt@uni-oldenburg.de and lukas.mathis.toepfer@uni-oldenburg.de by 15 June 2024. Travel and accommodation costs will be covered within reason.

From Le Blog de l’ApAhAu:

A Beautiful Painting? Aesthetic Canons and Pictorial Production within Spanish Crown Territories, 16th–19th Centuries
Lo bello en la pintura? Cánones estéticos y producción pictórica en los territorios de la Corona española, siglos XVI–XIX
Une belle peinture? Canon(s) esthétique(s) et production picturale dans les territoires de la Couronne d’Espagne, XVIe–XIXe siècle
Paris, 9–11 December 2024

Proposals due by 30 April 2024

The beautiful in the field of Hispanic painting (in the sense of painting produced in the territories of the Spanish Crown) is a notion that is not precisely defined and debated regarding its fundamental character in art history in general, and this in favor of an approach that focuses mainly on the realistic canon of this painting. The Spanish Golden Age, religious painting, still life and its great names (Velázquez, Zurbarán, Ribera, etc.) are all linked to a form of realism or naturalism presented as the most characteristic feature of Spanish painting.

However, some recent publications on the Golden Age itself show a renewed interest and a new approach to the subject, which are also evidenced by the new directions of young researchers in the field of Hispanic painting of the 15th–19th centuries. Moreover, exciting works have already been devoted to the painting produced within colonial America, which highlight the importance of adopting a periodization in which 1700 is not a breaking point for American territories, research on painting in the colonial Philippines is hardly sketched out, and for the other territories of the Crown also it seems obvious that periodization cannot be a fixed given. Finally, a renewed interest in a historiographical approach to Spanish art history has emerged in the last decade. The history of Hispanic art is therefore undergoing a period of change.

This symposium is devoted to the question of the beautiful in painting produced within the territories of the Spanish Crown (Spain, but also Sicily, Naples, Milan, South Netherlands, Artois, Franche-Comté, as well as the American and Filipino territories) from the 16th century to the early 19th century. It aims to question both the way in which an ideal has been forged in the painting produced in these territories, often associated in historiography with a «realistic» or «naturalist» canon, with all the problems that these terms imply, and the way in which this canon was perceived and received, or even adapted, transformed to the different periods. What was considered beautiful in the paintings produced in the territories under Spanish rule during modern times? What was the aesthetic ideal of the painter and the viewer? Was beauty really the painters’ first objective? What about the 18th century, particularly after the dynastic change, and the arrival at the Court of artists from France and Italy? What about the 16th century?

From the historiographic point of view, have the paradigms of Beauty been so modified that they have made Spanish painting lose its signs of recognition (realism, predominance of the religious), and have made it forget? What place should be given in this context to the greatest names in painting (Morales, Ribera, Zurbarán, Velázquez, Goya, etc.)? Can we think of the history of Spanish art by giving them less space in the aesthetic canons associated with it?

This event is dedicated to young researchers, and more specifically to doctoral and postdoctoral students working on one of the aspects described above. These French researchers will be able to enter into dialogue with foreign doctoral students, in particular Spanish ones, who are of course also expected: their presence will make it possible to assess whether there are gaps in their approaches, particularly because of the historiographic traditions on which they are based.

Contribution proposals in the form of an abstract of a maximum of 200 words and a brief biographical profile must be sent before the 30th April 2024 to clemence.raccah@inha.fr, iris.romagne@louvre.fr, and cecile.vincent-cassy@cyu.fr. Travel and living expenses (3 nights) will be covered by the organization of the meeting.

Places
Maison du Patrimoine et de la Photographie, Charenton (9th December), Institut national d’histoire de l’art, Paris, Vasari room (10th December), Centre Dominique-Vivant Denon, Paris (11th December)

Organization Committee
• Clémence Raccah (INHA)
• Iris Romagné (CY Université and Musée du Louvre)
• Cécile Vincent-Cassy (CY Cergy Paris Université)

Scientific Committee
• Luisa Elena Alcalá (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid)
• Charlotte Chastel-Rousseau (Musée du Louvre)
• Elsa Espin (CY Cergy Paris Université)
• Pablo González Tornel (Museo de Bellas Artes de Valencia)
• Álvaro Molina Martín (UNED)
• Felipe Pereda (Harvard University)
• Cécile Vincent-Cassy (CY Cergy Paris Université)

From ArtHist.net:

Historically Free African Americans in Visual and Spatial Representation
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich, 2–3 September 2024

Proposals due by 20 April 2024

Organized by Andrea Frohne

Art historians have overwhelmingly focused on representations of enslavement. In her 2015 book Picture Freedom: Remaking Black Visuality in the Early Nineteenth Century, Jasmine Nichole Cobb calls for a “disentangling [of] Blackness from slavery within the shared space of the nation” (6). This workshop focuses on free African American people through art, visual culture, and studies of space. It investigates circumstances of freedom and the disconnection from slavery prior to the Civil War, representations of free people of colour and descendants in visual culture and studies of space into the 21st century, and 17th- and 18th-century White European immigration into Black America.

For pre-Civil War processes and circumstances of legalising freedom, presentations may address free Black life from birth, manumission, or the Underground Railroad. Freedom at birth occurred when children born of free mothers were immediately free at birth regardless of racial categorisation. Second, manumission processes included documents or wills written by enslavers and enslaved people purchasing their and their family members’ own freedom. Third, freedom seekers escaped on the Underground Railroad into lands where slavery was illegal. Once liberated or free at birth, descendants of all of the above remained free through the centuries.

Presentations may focus on artworks made by free people of colour, such as sculptor Edmonia Lewis, portrait photographer J.P. Ball, landscape artist Robert S. Duncanson, and painters Henry Ossawa Turner and Edward Mitchell Bannister. How did their status as free play a role in their artistic careers or impact the content of their artworks? Papers may also focus on mobility and migration into free Black settlements across the United States and Canada. Topics include visual and spatial analyses of Black churches and schools, ownership of property shown in land surveys, rural roads named after free families of colour, or cemeteries in areas such as Black Philadelphia, Seneca Village in Manhattan, the Ohio River Valley (Lett Settlement, Tablertown, Berlin Crossroads, Cutler, Blackfork, Barnett Ridge), Beech Settlement in Indiana, Nicodemus in Kansas, Mecosta County in Michigan, Chestnut Ridge in West Virginia, Amherstburg in Ontario, Buxton in Ontario, etc.

Finally, with our location in Germany for the workshop, we seek to explore European migration into enslaving territories. What are the through lines of White families who become Black in the new world? They may have become enslavers who bore liberated children of colour. Or they may be indentured servants who bore free children of colour. Some free people of colour in the United States descended from German, British, Irish, and Scottish forebears. What are the global ramifications of such disrupted, disconnected genealogies? Overall, the workshop seeks to contribute new scholarship to the underrecognised subject of free African Americans and descendant populations in visual and spatial representation.

Please note that the language of the workshop is in English. Abstracts (fewer than 250 words) with short bio-notes (fewer than 150 words) for 25-minute presentations are invited for this in-person event at the Käte Hamburger Research Centre global dis:connect at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München. Accommodations in Munich and meals during the workshop will be provided, and some support for travel may be available.

Andrea Frohne, Fellow Alumna of the Käte Hamburger Centre and Professor at Ohio University, is the workshop convener. To apply, please email Dr Frohne at frohne@ohio.edu by 20 April 2024. Decisions will be conveyed by 1 May.

From ArtHist.net and Scientiae:

Scientiae Fall Conference: The Global History of Knowledge, 1450–1750
Brown University, Providence, 25–26 October 2024

Proposals due by 15 May 2024

Samuel de Champlain, Brief discours des choses plus remarquables que Samuel Champlain de Brouage á reconneues aux Indes occidentales, 1602, 35r (igre. Loupcervier Leopard). Providence: John Carter Brown Library, Codex Fr 1.

Scientiae is very pleased to announce its first fall conference. This event will take place at, and with support of Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island, on Friday 25 and Saturday 26 October 2024. For this conference we have chosen the theme The Global History of Knowledge with a specific, but not exclusive, focus on the Americas and the Atlantic in the period 1450–1750. Historians of science, philosophers, literary scholars, art historians, and many other seemingly distant experts are encouraged to reflect together on the complexities of the early modern period. We are proud to announce a keynote address by Pablo F. Gómez (University of Wisconsin-Madison).

The organizing committee consists of Matthijs Jonker (Scientiae/Utrecht University), Tara Nummedal (Brown University), and Hal Cook (Brown University). Inquiries can be addressed to m.j.jonker@uu.nl.

We envision three ways to join:
• Individual, 20-minute papers: please submit a descriptive title, 200-word abstract, and one-page CV.
• Complete panels: same as above for each paper, plus 200-word rationale for the panel (maximum four presenters, including chair and/or respondent).
• Workshops or seminars: one-page CV for each session leader, plus 200-word plan explaining the topic’s suitability and its techniques or resources.

Please submit your proposal online before midnight, 15 May 2024, at scientiae.uk@gmail.com.

Providence has a good airport and is well-connected to New York City and Boston by train. The conference organizers look forward to welcoming you to Providence in October!

Excerpted from the Call for Papers at ArtHist.net, which includes the French:

The Intimate and the Public: The Face in 18th- and 19th-Century Public Sculpture in France and the German Sphere
L’intime face au public : le visage dans la sculpture publique des XVIIIe et XIXe siècles en France et dans la sphère germanique
Institut National d’histoire de l’Art, Paris, 25–26 November 2024

Proposal due by 15 May 2024

This study day devoted to sculpture will focus on one element in particular: the face. As an essential part of the sculpted figure, the face has the dual role of enabling identification and expression. This dual role became more apparent in the 18th and 19th centuries, with the rise of portraiture, as well as the interest in the inner self and more broadly, the intimate. The aim of this exhibition is to draw a parallel between two contradictory concepts: the intimate and the public. As sculpture is the art par excellence of the public space, the aim is to confront the face, which is intimate, with the imperatives of public sculpture. The subject is all the more relevant given that statues in public spaces were subject to constantly changing decorum throughout the 19th century. The portrait was and remains the preferred type of statuary, whether full-length or in bust form. As a means of honouring a person, a propaganda tool, and an official image, the sculptural face had many functions, which began to take shape in the 18th century and became clearer in the 19th, as sculpture shifted from a religious and royal function to a civic one. Oscillating between idealisation and resemblance, the figuration of the face in the sculptural medium is a questionable concept in the Franco-German 18th and 19th centuries. In addition to the similarities in their artistic and textual origins, these two geographical areas will enable us to examine the artistic circulations that took place, and above all to analyse how political developments, which affected both France and the Germanic sphere, led to a national affirmation that was embodied in public sculpture. The aim of this study day is to examine the representation of the face in Franco-German public sculpture in the 18th and 19th centuries, analysing its theories, practices, techniques, possible typologies and the way it is perceived by the viewer. . . .

The aim of this study day is to return to a motif that is already well known and studied, the face, but this time by analysing it as an element at the junction of two spheres—the intimate and the public—through a body of sculpture. In addition to the obvious lack of studies devoted to this art form, the choice of focusing on sculpture is justified above all by its coherence with the areas of research: sculpture is mainly used to represent figures, and therefore faces, and it is the art form par excellence used in the public space.

Written submission must address one of these 8 major themes:
• The role of the face in the sculpture of public spaces
• Theories and practices of facial representation
• The relationship between the intimate and the public
• Individualisation and typology of faces
• The relationship between the face of a sculpture and the urban space
• Technique and materiality of sculpture
• Destruction or alteration of the face of a contested statue
• The gaze of the sculpture and/or the viewer / the sculpted figures in relation to each other

This call is open to all researchers, whatever their discipline or status, and we particularly encourage young researchers. Proposals for papers in English or French (maximum 300 words, accompanied by a brief bio-bibliographical presentation) should be sent before 15 May 2024 to the following address: sculptureparis24@gmail.com. The selection committee will respond to proposals by 20 June 2024.

Organizers
• Justine Cardoletti, doctoral student in art history at the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, justine.cardoletti@gmail.com
• Emilie Ginestet, doctoral student in art history at the University of Toulouse Jean Jaurès, emilie.ginestet8@gmail.com
• Sarah Touboul-Oppenheimer, doctoral student in art history at the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, sarahtoub.st@gmail.com

From the Call for Papers:

Human and Nature Interactions in History: The Impact of Climate, Environment, and Natural Phenomena on Human Life
Istanbul University, Faculty of Letters, Kurul Odası, 28–29 May 2024 (with opportunities for virtual presentations)

Proposals due by 26 March 2024

Over the course of history, the fact that humans have been faced with the impact of the environment in which they live and that the relationship between humans and nature directly or indirectly has governed cultural, economic, and social structures and artistic currents has been a common problematic that concerns various disciplines. The fact that humans were subjected to compulsory guidance by nature, of which they were inclined to take control in the making of civilizations and cities, has been one of the main issues determining the historical and current agendas in varying degrees and forms.

This symposium will discuss the ways in which the natural environment shapes new habitations, the impact of the natural structure on the essential elements of the city such as architecture and settlement patterns, and how the diversity of fauna and flora affects social, cultural, emotional, and economic development or deprivation. In addition, it aims to examine the drawbacks such as water shortages, droughts, floods, fires, earthquakes, epidemics, storms, and forced migrations. In this context, it is expected to receive papers that can evaluate the manifold reflections of these phenomena that might positively or negatively affect, change, or give direction to the historical course.

Organized by the History Research Center, this free symposium aims to bring together experts from diverse fields, including environmental science, geography, historical geography, literature, economics, cultural heritage, history, and art history. If you would like to participate in the meeting with a paper, please send a short CV and an abstract of 200–300 words to tam@istanbul.edu.tr. The event will be held in a hybrid format, with both physical and online opportunities to present.

A glutonous man thinking about the food and drink he will consume at Christmas! From The Comic Almanack for 1839: An Ephemeris in Jest and Earnest, Containing ‘All Things Fitting for Such a Work’ by Rigdum Funnidos, Gent, with illustrations by George Cruikshank (London: Charles Tilt, 1838).

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From the Call for Papers (the PDF of which includes the French), via GIS Sociabilités:

Eating or Not Eating Animals: Sociability and Ethics around the Table
Manger ou ne pas manger la chair: Sociabilité et éthique autour de la table
Université Rennes 2, 6 June 2024

Organized by Florence Magnot-Ogilvy and Sophie Mesplède

Proposals due by 15 March 2024

Since the non-human turn of the early 21st century, numerous critical works have examined the animal question in the 18th century, a time when humanity’s place in the world, the relationship between human beings and non-human animals, the latter’s sensibility, and debates on the sensory soul were at the heart of the reflections of philosophers, physicians, naturalists, and educationalists.[1]

Few studies, however, have explored the question of meat- and non-meat-eating patterns specifically from the point of view of sociability.[2] Yet the issue formed one of the dividing lines in sociability, between men and women, young and old, people from different backgrounds, but also, in a new way, between humans and non-humans, in a century in which pets were playing an increasingly important role in human sociability.[3] As more and more human beings developed unique emotional relationships with cats, dogs, monkeys, and birds—to name but a few companion species—the question arose as to whether or not the bodies of animals credited with sensibility should be consumed. Some naturalists and writers, such as the Englishman Lord Monboddo and the hunter-philosopher Charles Georges Leroy, author of Lettres sur les animaux, recognized the ability of these animals to aggregate into communities that they felt were close to human societies. The tradition of the metempsychosis narrative, revived by the vogue for Orientalism, was then articulated in an unprecedented way with reflections on point of view, sensibility, and individuality.

In the 18th century, the abstinence from meat practiced for religious reasons[4] along with that driven by medical concerns (in George Cheyne’s writings, for example, where the question of diet was also linked to an imagination of power) was joined by that born of ethical considerations regarding the duties of humans towards other animals. The latter would profoundly question the dividing line between humanity and animality in European cultures won over by the imperatives of sensibility. The philosophical writings of Voltaire, Diderot, Condillac, and Rousseau on the nature of this boundary and the consequences to be drawn from it in terms of food were to be read throughout Europe. Meanwhile, their fictions were supported by a food imaginary weighed down by moral and political values, from Zadig’s supper to the gendered eating habits of Clarens as set out by Saint-Preux in one of the letters of La Nouvelle Héloïse. Across the Channel, it was often men of faith who spoke out against the cruelty inflicted on other species, and called for reflection on the modalities of their killing as much as on its finality. If the barbaric treatment of certain animals jeopardized the moral fiber of human beings, as William Hogarth’s series of engravings entitled The Four Stages of Cruelty (1751) helped to bring to light for a large English audience, what about the consumption of their flesh? “Vegetarianism,” term that did not appear until the middle of the 19th century, seemed to an increasing number of men and women to be a virtuous option that, although not always practiced, provided a subject for reflection and discussion in the context of enlightened sociability.

This study day, devoted to the debates surrounding the consumption of animals during the Enlightenment and the reconfiguration of positions that took place at the time, invites us to examine the question of a meat-eating habits insofar as these intersected with the emergence of new forms of sociability in Europe. It will look at how discussions about the ontological status of non-human animals helped redefine European sociability, where flesh-eating was a regular practice encouraged by the commercial adventures of the long 18th century.

Current debates around vegetarianism, veganism, anthropocentrism, and the gendered nature of food invite us to go back to the origins of modernity and to re-interrogate the Enlightenment on the place and role of non-human animals in what constitutes society. With this in mind, we will look at the many representations, both textual and pictorial, evoking the consumption of animal bodies in various social and literary contexts:

• In the visual arts — iconographic representations of animals killed or fattened for human consumption (hunting pictures, portraits of livestock, still-life paintings), animal carcasses, culinary preparations that visibly include them, market stalls and kitchen tables, the presence of animals in banqueting scenes, scenes of animals being fed, visual associations between femininity and animal flesh, caricatures and satirical representations, illustrations for fables, educational texts or scientific publications, etc.

• In literature — the representation of discussions about food and drink (table discussions, the material conditions of debates on the issue, the modalities of conversations, arguments and debates), hygiene-related considerations about children’s diets, the influence of flesh consumption on human morals, the link between what people ate and who they were, whether and how this type of discourse was influenced by the different literary genres, etc.

• In the periodical press, essays, political writings, and pamphlets — how and when the issue was used to support a particular argument.

• In scientific writings (naturalist, veterinary, and medical writings) — the extent to which they took the ongoing changes in morals and attitudes towards animals into account

Papers may be presented in French or English. Proposals (with a provisional title, a 250-word summary, and a brief biography of the author) should be sent before 15 March 2024 to:

Florence Magnot-Ogilvy, florence.magnot-ogilvy@univ-rennes2.fr
Sophie Mesplède, sophie.mesplede@univ-rennes2.fr

This event is supported by the GIS Sociabilités.

i n d i c a t i v e  b i b l i o g r a p h y

Arena, Francesca, Yasmina Foehr-Janssens, Irini Papaikonomou et Francesca Prescendi (eds.), Allaitement entre humains et animaux : représentations et pratiques de l’Antiquité à aujourd’hui, Anthropozoologica 52/1, 2017.

Berchtold, Jacques, “Julie et l’âme des poissons du Léman dans La Nouvelle Héloïse de Rousseau”, De l’animal-machine à l’âme des machines : querelles biomécaniques de l’âme XVIe–XXIe siècles, Paris, éditions de la Sorbonne, 2010.

Berchtold Jacques et Jean-Luc Guichet (ed.), « L’animal des Lumières », Dix-huitième siècle 42, 2010.

Blackwell, Mark, The Secret Life of Things: Animals, Objects, and It-Narratives in Eighteenth-Century England (Bucknell University Press, 2007).

Burgat, Florence, L’humanité carnivore (Seuil, 2017).

Gregory, James, “Vegetable Fictions in the Kingdom of Roast Beef: Representing the Vegetarian in Victorian Literature”, in Tamara S. Wagner and Narin Hassan (dir.), Consuming Culture in the Long Nineteenth Century: Narratives of Consumption, 1700–1900 (Lexington Books, 2007): 17–34.

Guerrini, Anita, “A Diet for a Sensitive Soul: Vegetarianism in Eighteenth-Century Britain.” Eighteenth-Century Life 23.2, May 1999: 34–42.

Guichet, Jean-Luc, Rousseau, l’animal et l’homme. L’animalité dans l’horizon anthropologique des Lumières (Cerf, 2006).

Guichet, Jean-Luc (ed.), De l’animal-machine à l’âme des machines : querelles biomécaniques de l’âme XVIe–XXIe siècles, Paris, éditions de la Sorbonne, 2010.

Larue, Renan, Le Végétarisme des Lumières. L’abstinence de viande dans la France du XVIIIème siècle (Garnier, 2019).

Magnot-Ogilvy, Florence, « Instabilité énonciative et hiérarchie des valeurs dans l’Histoire véritable : l’effet-personnage et la projection sensorielle chez Montesquieu », Montesquieu et la fiction : autour des Lettres persanes, Aurélia Gaillard (dir.), Lumières, 2022: 145–159.

Morton, Timothy, “Joseph Ritson, Percy Shelley, and the Making of Romantic Vegetarianism”, Romanticism 12.1, 2006: 52–61.

Page-Jones, Kimberley, “From Buffon to Coleridge: Sociability and Humanity in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Comparative Anatomy”, Literature & History 32(2), 2023: 110–128.

Puskar-Pasewicz, Margaret, Cultural Encyclopedia of Vegetarianism (Greenwood, 2010).

Richardot, Anne (dir.), Bestiaire des Lumières, Revue des sciences humaines 296, 2009.

Serna, Pierre, L’Animal en République (Anarchasis, 2016).

Serna, Pierre, Comme des bêtes (Fayard, 2017).

Spencer, Colin, The Heretic’s Feast: A History of Vegetarianism (UPNE, 1996).

Strivay, Lucienne, « Manger juste. Les droits de l’animal dans les encyclopédies de 1750 à 1800. De l’éthique au politique », in Bodson, Liliane, Le Statut éthique de l’animal : conceptions anciennes et nouvelles (Université de Liège, 1995): 61–99.

Stockhorst, Stefanie, Jürgen Overhoff and Penelope J. Corfield, Human-Animal Interactions in the Eighteenth Century: From Pests and Predators to Pets, Poems, and Philosophy (Brill, 2021).

Wolloch, Nathaniel, Subjugated Animals: Animals and Anthropocentrism in Early Modern European Culture (Humanity Books, 2006).

Scientific Committee
• Jacques Berchtold (Sorbonne Université/ Fondation Bodmer)
• Valérie Capdeville (Rennes 2)
• Émilie Dardenne (Rennes 2/ IUF)
• Jean-Luc Guichet (Université de Picardie)
• David Mc Callam (University of Sheffield)
• Florence Magnot-Ogilvy (Rennes 2)
• Sophie Mesplède (Rennes 2)
• Kimberley Page-Jones (UBO)
• Sophie Vasset (Université Paul Valéry)
• Phil Withington (University of Sheffield)

n o t e s

1. See in particular L’animal des Lumières, Jacques Berchtold and Jean-Luc Guichet (eds.), DHS n°42, 2010; Bestiaire des Lumières, Anne Richardot (ed.), Revue des sciences humaines 296, 2009; Figures animales, Annie Duprat (ed.), Sociétés et représentations 27, 2009; Jean-Luc Guichet, Rousseau, l’animal et l’homme, l’animalité dans l’horizon anthropologique des Lumières (Cerf, 2006) ; as well as the works of Pierre Serna, L’Animal en République (Anarchasis, 2016) and Comme des bêtes (Fayard, 2017).

2. With the notable exception of Le Végétarisme des Lumières. L’abstinence de viande dans la France du XVIIIème siècle by Renan Larue (Garnier, 2019), which sets out to explore the roots of vegan and vegetarian thought in the writings of the Enlightenment. Renan Larue founded a vegan studies programme at the University of California where he teaches, broadening the perspective to current debates on vegetarianism and eating patterns as political stances.

3. See the PhD thesis recently defended in 2023 by Tomohiro Kaibara under the supervision of Antoine Lilti: “Le Grand sacre des chats: l’invention d’un animal de compagnie en France (1670–1830).”

4. The case of Thomas Tryon springs to mind, as do the dietary prohibitions of all religions, which attracted the attention of philosophers such as Voltaire in France.

From ArtHist.net and the Design History Society:

Textiles and Masculinities
Online, Design History Society, 15 June 2024

Proposals due by 11 April 2024

Banyan, British, ca. 1780, silk (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1978.135.1).

The complex and evolving relationships between masculinities and textiles have been underrepresented in histories of design to date. This picture contrasts with the cultural and social importance textiles have in maintaining, contesting, and performing masculinities. This online symposium will share international research on historical and contemporary textiles in global contexts. We invite researchers at any level who investigate some aspect of masculinities and textiles to submit an abstract.

Themes include but are not limited to:
• Fashion textiles and masculinities
• Maintaining, performing, or contesting masculinities through textiles
• Queer, non-binary, and fluid gender identities and textiles
• Masculinities, textiles, and interior design
• Decolonising textiles and masculinities
• Textiles for menswear in fashion for all
• Design, production, and consumption of textiles and masculinities

Due to the language limits of the organisers, the symposium will take place in English. We acknowledge that information/knowledge can be disseminated in different ways, and so we are open to different presentation styles and formats. To be considered for a 15-minute presentation, please submit a 300-word abstract and a 50- to 100-word biography to the DHS Senior Administrator Jenna Allsopp at designhistorysociety@gmail.com by 11 April 2024. Applicants will be notified of the outcome of the submission within two weeks of the closing deadline. Please contact Dr Fiona Anderson (Glasgow School of Art) at f.anderson@gsa.ac.uk with any questions.

Georges Seurat, Female Nude, detail, ca. 1879–81, black conté crayon over preliminary drawing with stumped graphite
(London: The Courtauld, D.1948.SC.151)

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From the Call for Papers and The Courtauld:

Pose, Power, Practice: New Perspectives on Life Drawing
The Courtauld Institute of Art, Vernon Square, London, 20 June 2024

Proposals due by 22 March 2024

From the sixteenth century to the present, drawing the human body from life has remained a mainstay of Western institutional art practice. Despite significant shifts in the aesthetics, media, and purpose of art over the last five hundred years, life drawing endures in both the studio and the classroom. Pose, Power, Practice is a one-day symposium that seeks to reassess the state of the field on life drawing and apply new critical frameworks to this sustained practice. It aims to better understand life drawing in all its complexity, from its presumed advantages to its consequences. This is a practice deeply intertwined with concerns central to the discipline of art history, including but not limited to: the power dynamics of the gaze; the politics of representation; recognition of multiple forms of artistic labor; formulations of race, dis/ability, gender, and sexuality; and critiques of institutions. How has life drawing changed across time and place? How and why has it endured as a pedagogical practice, despite repeated dismissals of its ‘academicism’? What uses does it hold today, for artists and art historians alike?

Charles Joseph Natoire, The Life Class at the French Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture, 1746, pen, black and brown ink, grey wash and watercolour, graphite over black chalk (Courtauld, D.1952.RW.3973).

We invite studies that unearth the specificities of life drawing to interrogate larger questions of ethics, labor, power, and potential in the life studio. Papers might attend to any and all aspects of this practice, from the models who pose, to the materials used, to the dynamics of the environments—formal and informal—in which life drawing takes place. We welcome papers that consider artistic engagements with drawing the human figure from life across all regions and periods, historical and contemporary.

This symposium aims to bridge connections and bolster dialogue across specialist scholarly communities by centring this shared subject of concern, while also inspiring broader understandings of what constitutes expertise in this field. We therefore encourage applications from all scholars and practitioners of life drawing, including students, artists, and models, in the UK and abroad. In addition to 20-minute conference papers, we welcome creative or collaborative submissions.

Pose, Power, Practice will take place at the Courtauld’s Vernon Square campus in person on Thursday, 20 June 2024. The programme will be recorded and subsequently shared on the Courtauld’s YouTube channel. Speakers will be further invited to participate in a workshop in The Courtauld’s Prints and Drawings Study Room on 21 June 2024. Partial reimbursement for travel and accommodation may be available. In addition, we are planning a remote component of the symposium earlier in the week in collaboration with The Drawing Foundation, so if you are unable to travel to Vernon Square please do submit an application and indicate this preference.

Applications are due via this Google form on 22 March and speakers will be notified by 5 April. If you have any questions, please contact Zoë Dostal (azd2103@columbia.edu) or Isabel Bird (isabelbird@g.harvard.edu).