Enfilade

Adolphe Duperly, The Destruction of the Roehampton Estate in the Parish of St. James, Jamaica, January 1832, 1833, hand colored lithograph, 29 × 41 cm. This copy of the print was sold at Christie’s on 24 April 2012; Sale 4826, Lot 282.

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From ArtHist.net and The Bartlett School of Architecture:

Constructing Coloniality: British Imperialism and the Built Environment Annual Conference of the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain The Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London, 12–14 May 2023

Organized by Eva Branscome and Neal Shasore

Proposals due by 27 January 2023

Demands to ‘decolonise’ have grown louder and louder in recent years, not least in architecture, architectural history, and heritage. In Britain public monuments and spaces have loomed large in discussions about the legacies of slavery and empire and the processes of repair, from Edward Colston in Bristol and Cecil Rhodes in Oxford, to Winston Churchill, and numerous others in London—as has the ‘colonial countryside’ manifest in National Trust and English Heritage properties and their interpretation. Meanwhile, the dynamics and effects of British colonialism play out in buildings, cities, and landscapes across the world: in the reshaping of the Raj’s New Delhi by the Indian government, for example, or in the perpetuation of plantation structures in the Caribbean. In seeking to forge a decolonial architecture, architectural history, and heritage practice amid a polarised debate, it is necessary to deepen our understanding of the built environment’s complex entanglements with coloniality—not just the act of colonialism, but also the social, economic, and political relations and attitudes that spawned, sustained, and endured beyond it. Moreover, the disciplines involved in the production of knowledge about built environments and how they are formed in different temporalities and geographies must take a broader view, scrutinising not just the subjects of research, but the methods deployed and the modes used to disseminate the results. This conference focuses on the coloniality of architecture and heritage in relation to the British Empire, from the early years of expansionism and the escalation of the slave trade in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, through the physical and political force wielded in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and the development of racial capitalism, to the subsequent and ongoing struggles for independence, freedom, and justice. Contributions are welcomed that reassess the built environment in Britain and (former) British colonies in terms of its relationship to colonial systems and ideas, including but not limited to • Domestic environments • Urban environments, including streets, squares, and gardens • Factories and other sites of industrial production • Sites of assembly, leisure, and entertainment • Places of worship • Buildings for colonial administration • Infrastructure such as ports, waterways, and railways • Intercolonial networks and infrastructures • Experiences of colonial dispossession, displacement, and exclusion • Heritage sites and conservation Alongside or in the process of examining such subjects, typologies, and morphologies, we welcome reflections on the following historiographical and methodological questions: • How have the professions, disciplines, and discourses of architecture, design, and heritage been shaped by and participated in imperialism, coloniality, and racism? • What the knowledge systems and epistemologies are that construct ideas of ‘architecture’ and ‘heritage’, and what is excluded and why? • How teaching and its institutional contexts reinforce these frameworks? • How financial systems, supply chains, and concepts of tenure and relations to the land shape the production of built environments? • How does the coloniality of architecture and heritage relate to histories of extractivism and energy use? The conference organisers are Dr Eva Branscome (Bartlett School of Architecture) and Dr Neal Shasore (London School of Architecture), with advice from an International Academic Committee. We encourage participants to submit their paper to the SAHGB’s journal Architectural History for consideration. Fuller details about the conference and how to book will be publicised in due course. Abstracts of a minimum of 300 words and maximum of 500 words are invited for this major architectural history conference being held in person at the Bartlett School of Architecture in mid-May 2023. Up to three pages of images can also be supplied. However, all of the text/images in each case must be combined together into one single Acrobat PDF file for submission or else will not be accepted. We invite conventional paper proposals, but welcome other appropriate formats to our subject matter such as poster presentations, films etc. Prospective contributors should submit titles and abstracts to conference2023@sahgb.org.uk by 27 January 2023 with participation confirmed by 27 February 2023. To ensure equal treatment for all submissions, the organisers will not respond to any individual queries about the content of papers or about the thematic categories. The selection panel will assess each of the proposed papers on an anonymous basis. Applicants need to ensure that they have their own sources of funding available to take part in the conference as online presentations will not be possible. This three-day conference is hosted by The Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain (SAHGB) in collaboration with UCL and the London School of Architecture.

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Note on the image from Christie’s: “The Christmas Rebellion, also known as the Christmas Uprising and the Great Jamaican Slave Revolt of 1831–32, was a 10-day rebellion that mobilised as many as 60,000 of Jamaica’s 300,000 slave population. This lithograph illustrates the destruction of the mill yard and slave village at the Roehamton Estate owned by J.Baillie Esq., in January 1832.”  

From ArtHist.net:

Soundscapes of Naples: From the Medieval to the Early Modern
Naples, 8–9 June 2023

Proposals due by 31 January 2023

Musical practices are inherently woven into a city’s urban fabric: as marker of identity, expression of religious devotion, sonic manifestation of power, or form of entertainment, musicking punctuates the salient moments of a city’s culture. In Naples, for centuries a cultural and political capital and among the most densely populated cities in Europe, music making has always occupied a prominent position in the soundscape of public and private, sacred and secular spaces.

The interdisciplinary conference, Soundscapes of Naples: From the Medieval to the Early Modern, aims to map intersections between the performative dimension of music making and the city’s spaces and places. The organizing committee invites proposals that focus on physical venues (churches, monasteries, theaters, aristocratic palaces, schools, the public piazza, and so on, including their visual programs) as they interface with music performance and production. We welcome proposals on musicking as a cultural practice from musicologists as well as scholars from sister disciplines, including art and architectural history, archaeology, history, literary studies, and anthropology, on themes and approaches such as manuscript and print production, archival studies, music and gender, patronage/matronage, performance practice, history of the senses, acoustics, history of pedagogy, relationships between music and specific works of art, notions of ability/disability, and instrument making.

Proposals should include a curriculum vitae, a brief narrative biography (max. 150 words), and an abstract (max. 350 words), and may be in either Italian or English. The abstract should also indicate the topic’s relevance to the themes outlined above, and whether the proposed contribution could take the form of a presentation on-site at the monument under discussion. Final presentations (20 minutes) may be made in Italian or English. Please combine these materials in a single Word or PDF document with Lastname_Firstname as the title, and send to lacapraia@gmail.com by 31 January 2023. Selected participants will be notified in mid-February 2023.

Soundscapes of Naples: From the Medieval to the Early Modern is coorganized by the Center for the Art and Architectural History of Port Cities ‘La Capraia’ (a partnership between the Edith O’Donnell Institute of Art History at the University of Texas at Dallas and the Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte) and the Butler School of Music at the University of Texas at Austin.

The Call for Papers from Fabula:

Claude-Nicolas Ledoux dans le texte: Lectures de L’architecture considérée sous le rapport de l’art, des moeurs et de la législation (1804)
Saline royale d’Arc-et-Senans, 1–3 June 2023

Proposals due by 31 December 2022

Colloque de clôture du projet Ledoux 2020–2023
Architecture, littérature, philosophie et société au tournant des Lumières : L’Architecture considérée sous le rapport de l’Art des mœurs et de la législation de Claude-Nicolas Ledoux, une édition numérique
(Labex Les Passés dans le Présent, Université Paris-Nanterre)

L’Architecture considérée sous le rapport de l’Art, des mœurs et de la législation, que l’architecte Claude-Nicolas Ledoux fait paraître en 1804, deux ans avant sa mort, est l’ouvrage le plus célèbre et le texte plus fascinant de toute l’architecture moderne européenne. Premier tome d’une oeuvre monument qui devait en compter cinq, cet ouvrage testamentaire au “style magique et poétique” (Cellerier) fait figure de véritable OVNI dans la production architecturale de l’époque. Ledoux y travaille pendant trente années pour l’élaboration de l’illustration (près de 500 planches, dont 125 publiées en 1804), et pendant près de dix ans pour établir un texte de 240 pages. Il conçoit ainsi une œuvre à la mesure de son ambition artistique totale. Or, parmi l’immense bibliographie et historiographie sur Ledoux, essentiellement consacrée à l’œuvre bâti et projeté, le livre lui-même et le texte de L’Architecture… n’ont que rarement fait l’objet d’études approfondies et a fortiori exclusives. Quant aux études littéraires, pourtant en pleine réévaluation de cette période du tournant des Lumières, elles l’ont plutôt négligé.

Dans la lignée des travaux pionniers de Béatrice Didier (qui avait tenté, la première, de situer la plume de Ledoux dans le contexte littéraire du tournant des Lumières), de Mona Ozouf (qui s’intéressa à la représentation livresque de Chaux) et des grandes analyses de Daniel Rabreau (qui a replacé l’écriture mythologique et poétique dans le projet esthétique global de Ledoux), ce colloque se propose de jeter toute la lumière possible sur le livre, la représentation de l’architecture, le texte et l’écriture de Ledoux, dans une approche et un esprit résolument interdisciplinaire, seule démarche à même, par le croisement des regards d’historiens, d’historiens de l’art, d’historiens des idées, de spécialistes de littérature ou de rhétorique…, de percer la densité et l’épaisseur des strates de sens de ce livre hiéroglyphe.

Cette rencontre plurielle, autour du texte de Ledoux, est le point d’aboutissement d’une démarche collective qui a engagé une quinzaine de chercheurs au sein du projet LEDOUX 2020–2023 du Labex Les Passés dans le Présent (université de Paris-Nanterre) dans la réalisation d’une édition scientifique et collaborative de l’Architecture, comportant un double volet, papier et numérique.

Accueilli par la Saline d’Arc-et-Senans, institution partenaire du projet LEDOUX, le colloque sera donc l’occasion de partager les acquis de ce travail collectif et de l’enrichir en l’ouvrant aux apports de chercheurs extérieurs.

Ces lectures de Ledoux, pourront, sans exclusive, explorer les dimensions suivantes :

La fabrique du texte de L’Architecture

Au-delà de la chronologie globale proposée par Gallet et Vidler, qui situe la rédaction entre son emprisonnement à la Force pendant la Terreur et le début du XIXe siècle, comment retracer une généalogie du texte de Ledoux ? Comment L’Architecture trouve-t-elle à s’inscrire dans un réseau d’autres textes connus de Ledoux (le Manuscrit Calonne, les extraits de la correspondance ou encore le Prospectus de 1803) qui pourraient en éclairer la genèse et la singularité ?

Quels éclairages peut apporter l’analyse du vaste réseau d’intertextes qui travaille L’Architecture et qui attend encore de véritables enquêtes d’archéologie textuelle et culturelle ? Entre Anciens (Homère, Ovide, Virgile, Plutarque, Lucien, Cicéron, César, Tacite…) et Modernes (La Fontaine, Fénelon, Diderot, Voltaire, mais aussi Shakespeare, Milton, Thomson, ou encore Gresset ou Gluck…), entre influences (d’une forme, d’un genre..), réécritures (d’un topos, d’un motif) voire reprises et citations (d’un extrait, d’un passage…), quelles formes prennent ces réappropriations littéraires multiples ? Comment participent-elles concrètement de la fabrique de l’imaginaire esthétique et historique ? Sous l’empreinte fièrement revendiquée que l’architecte laisse dans la pierre, quelle figure de l’écrivain ces emprunts, plutôt souterrains, dessinent-ils ? Et pour quels lecteurs ? Des “enfants chéris d’Apollon”, auxquels Ledoux s’adresse explicitement, jusqu’aux lecteurs d’aujourd’hui, comment a-t-on lu et lit-on encore Ledoux ? Avec quelle culture ? Pour quelle expérience ?

La fabrique des idées : Ledoux, penseur des Lumières ?

L’Architecture peut bel et bien être envisagée comme une formidable chambre d’échos, au crépuscule du siècle, de la pensée des Lumières. On pourra dès lors s’interroger sur les façons dont se diffusent et se cristallisent, dans le texte, ces grands courants de pensée qui traversent le demi-siècle : le sensualisme, auquel sont acquis de nombreux architectes, l’héritage encyclopédiste, la sensibilité rousseauiste, la pensée économique et physiocratique, la religion comme morale…

Dans quelle mesure Ledoux fait-il siennes ces idées partagées par le siècle ? Avec quelle singularité et quelle solidité ? Quel type de philosophe est-il ?

La fabrique des images : fiction et figurations

Les réflexions pourront aussi se réunir autour de la notion centrale d’image, au carrefour des enjeux propre à l’écriture, à l’illustration et à la théorie de la création artistique.

De quelle manière l’image travaille-t-elle en profondeur l’écriture et la langue de Ledoux ? Avec quels héritages rhétoriques ? Quels usages de l’univers mythologique ? Selon quelles modalités stylistiques (innovations lexicales, constructions syntaxiques) ? Pour quels réseaux de sens, entre unité et dissémination ?

Comment l’imagination (celle de l’architecte comme celle du lecteur) s’invite-t-elle au cœur du pacte de fiction qui commande le récit (avec le périple romanesque du voyageur) ou encore la description (avec le recours incessant à une esthétique du tableau, qu’on pourra interroger) ?

Enfin, quels types de relations les images textuelles entretiennent-elles avec les images gravées ?

L’histoire et la théorie des arts et de l’architecture

Comment situer l’entreprise éditoriale de Ledoux dans l’histoire du livre et de la théorie d’architecture, tant à l’époque moderne (une histoire qui reste d’ailleurs à écrire, malgré des travaux consacrés à l’Italie ou encore l’Angleterre) qu’au début du XIXe siècle, (période charnière pour l’édition en général et le livre d’architecture en particulier) ? Que représente L’Architecture, entre le Livre d’architecture de Boffrand (1745), les grandes monographies de la fin du XVIIIe siècle, comme la Description des écoles de chirurgie de Gondouin (1780), et les recueils de modèles du début du siècle suivant, comme l’Architecture civile de Dubut (1803) ou les recueils de Krafft, et les ouvrages pédagogiques, comme le Précis des leçons d’architecture de Durand (1802–1805) ? Quels liens le projet de Ledoux entretient-il avec d’autres écrits théoriques, aux ambitions parfois littéraires, comme les textes de Boullée et les Lettres sur l’architecture de Viel de Saint-Maux (1779), par exemple ?

Mais c’est aussi le rapport que l’architecte entretient avec l’Antiquité et les œuvres modernes, la Renaissance italienne et la création française des XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles, qu’il est possible d’examiner plus précisément à la lecture fine du texte de L’Architecture. Quelle est donc la culture architecturale de Ledoux ? Est-elle simplement livresque pour ce qui regarde les sites et édifices lointains ? N’a-t-il jamais vraiment fait l’expérience des sites antiques et des monuments modernes qu’il décrit à l’appui d’une démonstration ? Enfin, comment s’exprime, dans son texte, l’admiration inspiratrice qu’il porte aux peintres, aux sculpteurs, mais aussi l’intérêt qu’il montre pour l’art des jardins ?

Les propositions de communications (3000 signes maximum) sont à envoyer avant le 31 décembre 2022.

à : fabrice.moulin@parisnanterre.fr, dominiquemassounie@gmail.com

Comité d’organisation
• Fabrice Moulin, Paris-Nanterre, CSLF (litt&phi / ILHAM)
• Dominique Massounie, Paris-Nanterre, H-Mod/HAR
• Isabelle Sallé, Saline royale d’Arc-et-Senans

Comité scientifique
• Emmanuel Chateau-Dutier, professeur agrégé, université de Montréal
• Marianne Cojannot-Le Blanc, professeure, université Paris-Nanterre
• Michel Delon, professeur émérite, université Paris-Sorbonne
• Colas Duflo, professeur, Paris-Nanterre, IUF
• Hugues Marchal, professeur-assistant, université de Bâle, IUF
• Elise Pavy-Guilbert, maîtresse de conférences, université Bordeaux-Montaigne, IUF

 

Proposals welcome in German, French, or English. From the Call for Papers, which also includes the German text:

La presse périodique suisse dans le contexte médiatique européen
Die periodische Presse in der Schweiz im medialen Kontext Europas
Tagung der Schweizerischen Gesellschaft für die Erforschung des 18. Jahrhunderts (SGEAJ)
Colloque de la Société Suisse pour l’Étude du XVIIIe Siècle (SSEDS)
University of Fribourg, 18–19 April 2024

Proposals due by 5 March 20223

Lorsque le premier journal imprimé parait à Strasbourg en 1605, il ne dispose pas d’un programme de publication nouveau. Pour l’éditeur, l’imprimeur Johann Carolus, il s’agit simplement d’économiser les frais afférents à la diffusion d’un journal manuscrit et d’optimiser sa diffusion. Pourtant, malgré ce début peu spectaculaire et un contenu fait de la compilation de nouvelles sans commentaire éditorial, la presse imprimée a un succès décisif. Désormais, une information régulière sur ce qui se passe dans le monde est disponible. Un nouveau système de communication et d’information se met en place, qui a l’ambition d’être en prise sur l’actualité. Très tôt, ces publications sont collationnées par les organes de gouvernement des princes et des villes, mais se diversifient aussi rapidement selon le lectorat visé. Des journaux savants, des revues mondaines, des périodiques spécialisés ou généralistes sont ainsi diffusés.

La presse périodique a fait l’objet de nombreuses recherches depuis une quarantaine d’années, favorisées encore par la numérisation des supports—les conditions de conservation sont en effet très aléatoires—en particulier en Allemagne autour de Jürgen Wilke, Holger Böning et Daniel Bellingradt et en France avec Gilles Feyel, Jean-Pierre Vittu ou Pierre Rétat. Malgré les travaux de Jean-Daniel Candaux, de Séverine Huguenin et Timothée Léchot, de Fritz Blaser, Hanspeter Marti et Emil Erne ou Andreas Würgler, la presse suisse reste en revanche moins connue.

Le but de ce colloque est de cerner des périodiques suisses, leur conception, fabrication, profil éditorial et journalistique, mais aussi leurs lectorats. Avec sa diversité confessionnelle, linguistique et politique, la Suisse forme un cas d’étude particulièrement riche des médias locaux, régionaux ou transnationaux. Aussi, le colloque s’attachera aux journalistes suisses hors de Suisse, aux réseaux journalistiques et à leurs mises en œuvre en particulier lors de controverses, au cheminement des nouvelles dans différents médias, aux reprises et compilations commentées ou non, à la gestation de discussions dans les médias, aux rythmes de l’information et à leurs effets, à la perception positive ou négative des journaux et à leur emploi, par exemple dans telle décision. Il se centrera sur la presse périodique tout en prenant aussi en considération des « canards », des libelles, des feuilles volantes (« Flugschriften »), des gravures commentées (« Flugblätter »), des calendriers, des étrennes, des almanachs et des messagers boiteux.

Le cadre chronologique couvre la période de 1623 (premières gazettes hebdomadaires suisses qui nous sont parvenues) à 1803 (fin de la République helvétique).

Trois axes seront particulièrement interrogés.

• La presse périodique suisse dans une perspective transnationale
Ce volet se penchera sur la presse périodique rédigée en Suisse ou lue en Suisse, et les journalistes suisses dans leurs réseaux européens ; sur le marché et la fabrication de l’information, la compilation de l’information ; enfin sur d’autres modes de circulation de l’information

• Intermédialité et savoirs
Cet axe sondera les formes manuscrites, voire orales, de l’information, les correspondances en lien avec la presse périodique

• Les représentations dans et de la presse
Ce pan examinera la circulation des images imprimées, les artistes suisses et la satire politique, la question de la censure, etc. Il étudiera les représentations de la presse et les images de la Suisse dans la presse.

Des analyses littéraires, linguistiques ou iconographiques et des études sur l’histoire des savoirs et l’histoire de la communication et des médias sont les bienvenues.

Un temps de 25 minutes est prévu pour les communications d’un intervenant, et de 40 minutes pour les communications à plusieurs intervenants. Des propositions de thématique peuvent être adressées en allemand, en anglais ou en français (max. 300 mots) jusqu’au 5.03.2023 à Claire Gantet (claire.gantet@unifr.ch) ou Andreas Würgler (Andreas.Wuergler@unige.ch). Le comité de préparation du colloque se prononcera sur elles d’ici le 30.04.2023.

 

From the Call for Papers:

Shaped by Greed: Reflections and Impacts of Environmental Exploitation in European Visual Cultures, 1200–1900
Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic, 8–9 June 2023

Proposals due by 22 January 2023

How have environmental exploitation, industrialization, and urbanization shaped late medieval and modern visual cultures, landscapes, environments, and the built environment in Europe (and beyond)? An international conference hosted by the Art History Department of Masaryk University in Brno, 8–9 June 2023, organized by Tomáš Valeš, Jan Galeta, Martin F. Lešák, and Veronika Řezníčková as 3rd Biennale of the University’s Centre for Early Modern Studies.

During the Anthropocene, the planet Earth has witnessed several environmental shifts, closely affecting not only the current existence of living species but also the overall future of the planet. The exploitation of the environment creates wealth and simultaneously leads to the various ecological, social, economic, and humanitarian crises that contemporary societies are forced to address, especially in reaction to climate change. In the past centuries, the extraction of precious materials (silver, gold, coal, pearls, coral, whale bones, ivory, or even wood) financed the running of states, cities, churches, monasteries, influential families, and clergy who, in turn commissioned luxurious art and opulent buildings, using the mined materials themselves. Industrialization and urbanization had a tremendous impact on the environment and landscape. Currently, these issues also resonate in the field of art history, or rather eco-art history, for example, in connection with groundbreaking studies and edited volumes, such as those by Sugata Ray (Climate Change and the Art of Devotion Geoaesthetics in the Land of Krishna, 1550–1850), Andrew Patrizio (Ecological Eye: Assembling an Ecocritical Art History), and Karl Kusserow (Picture Ecology: Art and Ecocriticism in Planetary Perspective). Following this line of research, the conference’s main aim is to tackle a broad spectrum of relevant questions that have not yet been asked.

We intend to investigate the interconnections between the environment, its exploitation, art, architecture, and urbanism in a broader European frame with global overlap between 1200 and 1900 (thus taking a longue durée perspective). This explicitly includes the transformation of raw mined materials into luxurious objects; sumptuous and prestigious artistic and urbanistic projects financed by the wealth raised by exploiting nature; iconographies that reflect how the environment was treated, shaped and used in late medieval and modern times.

We are particularly interested in bringing together scholars specialized in different academic areas to confront the human impact on past environments and connect it with the sometimes somewhat self-righteous world of art and beauty. Ultimately, the aim is to explore future perspectives of environmental approaches in art history and lay the foundations for further cooperation between researchers from diverse academic backgrounds.

Possible topics may include but are by no means limited to such issues as:
1. The role of industrialization and urbanization and their foot prints on the landscape, environment, and built environment.
2. Visual representation of human impact on the natural world, e.g., mining, logging, whaling, etc.
3. The mechanisms of exploitation of natural resources in connection to artistic production, e.g., in the case of ivory, coral, or various building materials.
4. Appropriation of nature for collecting purposes or personal representation (taxidermies, live specimens, parts of animal bodies, herbariums, portraits of animals, menageries and zoos, etc.)
5. The origins of appreciating wild nature and the reflection of this appreciation in visual culture, e.g., the beginning of mass tourism, scientific research of nature or how travellers mediated non-European nature in their homelands.

The keynote lecture of the conference will be given by Dr. Hannah Baader (Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz – Max-Planck-Institut).

We invite proposals for papers (in English) from senior as well as junior scholars and advanced PhD candidates; presentations will be 20 minutes. Please submit your proposals of around 200–300 words, accompanied by a short CV, by 22 January 2023 to brno.conference.2023@gmail.com. Notification of acceptance of proposals will be issued before 22 February 2023. Selected papers will be published in an edited volume with Brepols publishing house (Belgium).

From the Call for Papers, from IU Bloomington’s Center for Eighteenth-Century Studies:

Bodily Autonomies, Autonomous Bodies
Indiana Center for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Bloomington, 18–20 May 2023

Proposals due by 20 January 2023; accepted papers due mid-April 2023

The Indiana Center for Eighteenth-Century Studies announces its twenty-first annual Bloomington Workshop: Bodily Autonomies, Autonomous Bodies. The idea of ‘autonomy’ arises in the early modern period in relation to political entities, rather than individuals. A borrowing from the Greek (αὐτο + νόμος) meaning self law, autonomy referred to ability of an institution or a state to govern itself. In the eighteenth century, that scope began to apply increasingly to the capacities of individuals. Indeed, one strong tradition in eighteenth-century studies identifies our period with the invention of the author and the origins of the modern, autonomous individual. Looking back to the early modern, eighteenth-century conceptions of autonomy draw from the foundations that would lead to the birth of the nation state, and from contrasting models of internal and external virtue. From out of the eighteenth-century, the application of the term will spread from Montesquieu’s political philosophy, to Kant’s moral philosophy, and extend across the natural and social sciences. And yet the questions of autonomy—of self governance of a human or a political body—do not move in straight lines or toward easy answers.

Self-governance is often a sweet lie that hides the abuse of power, from the personal level to the geopolitical. Foucault has taught us that the individual operates within a network of power systems—religious, gendered, political, racial, geographic, and colonial, among others—that can influence, abridge, inhibit, or reinforce their ability to exercise agency or will over their life and body. More recently, methodological approaches such as New Materialisms, object-oriented ontologies, and alternative ontological frameworks such as those drawn from Black and indigenous studies often serve to unsettle the concept of autonomy, probing the spaces between the ephemeral capacity to self-govern, the material acts of self-determination, and the very notion of a ‘self’ who can be governed and determined at all. Therefore, with this Workshop theme, we hope to explore the limits of self-governance within the network of power structures that make up the world, to recognize the ways that autonomies exist against the grain of social discourse, and to acknowledge long-running ramifications—both positive and negative—of the aspirational quality of this ideal. At the same time, we look to question whether this idealization has contributed to dogmas of personal responsibility and economic self-interest at the expense of collective forms of action and care.

Within the sphere of the eighteenth century, we invite papers about autonomy as it applies to individuals across the spectrums of power and privilege; of groups whose identity or enforced social status inhibits or countermands their capacity to exercise agency; of national or political entities whose formation, liberation, and sovereignty are impacted by colonial pressures, and work that questions and probes autonomy’s drawbacks and boundaries as they figure in eighteenth-century histories, archives, and texts.

We look forward to reading your abstracts and ideas. A non-exhaustive list of topics they might address would include:

• negotiating questions of self and autonomy for enslaved persons
• the autonomy of gendered bodies
• autonomy within or of a colonized state
• freedom of movement: border-crossings, gatherings, quarantines, departures
• approaches that complicate or question ideas of personal or political sovereignty
• scientism and visions of the body as machine
• the individual figured against a backdrop of control or systems of power
• disenfranchisement: debt, citizenship, exile, etc.

In last year’s Workshop, which focused on Collaborations, questions arose about the limits of what can be considered labor performed together (col + labōrāre) in the context of radically inequal power relationships or within systems of sanctioned oppression. This year we hope to continue these conversations, which hold the echoes of the Center’s first workshop, Signs of the Self, and resound into a present where the concept of the autonomous individual is being questioned for political gain.

During the Workshop, we will discuss pre-circulated texts (due in mid-April) and perhaps have an occasional lecture or library, museum, or archive visit. Given the theme, we are especially open to co- and multi-authored contributions, including those that work across hitherto conventional boundaries of genre, discipline, and media. We intend and hope that the workshop will largely take place in person (and that participants will be present for the entire event), but anticipate making provision for some online participation as well.

The application deadline is Friday, 20 January 2023. Please send a paper proposal (1–2 pages) and current brief CV (3 pages, max) to Dr. Barbara Truesdell, Administrator, Center for Eighteenth-Century Studies. Please email to voltaire@indiana.edu. We will acknowledge all submissions within a fortnight: if you do not receive an acknowledgment by 31 January 2022, please email voltaire@indiana.edu or the Center’s Director, Jesse Molesworth (jmoleswo@indiana.edu).

Papers will be selected by an interdisciplinary committee. We cover most expenses for visiting scholars chosen to present their work: accommodations, travel (up to a certain limit), and most meals. Expanded abstracts and/or entire papers may be published in the Center’s The Workshop, along with discussion transcripts or summaries.

The V&A Wedgwood Collection in Barlaston, Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire.

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From the Call for Papers from the V&A:

Unpacking the V&A Wedgwood Collection
Barlaston (Stoke-on-Trent) and London, 7–8 July 2023

Proposals due by 15 February 2023

The V&A Wedgwood Collection is one of the most important industrial collections in the world and a unique record of over 260 years of British ceramic production. Owned by the V&A following a successful fundraising campaign spearheaded by Art Fund in 2014, it is on display at Barlaston, Stoke-on-Trent, where an imaginative public programme celebrates the diversity, creativity and depth of the collection. The conference is organised in honour of Gaye Blake-Roberts MBE, former curator of the then Wedgwood Museum. After forty years of research and achievements, she retired from her position in early 2020, continuing her research as Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the V&A Research Institute.

Wedgwood was founded in 1759 by British potter and entrepreneur Josiah Wedgwood, who helped transform English pottery from a cottage craft into an art form and international industry. A museum has existed since 1906, first at the Etruria site and then from 1952 at Barlaston and a newly designed museum opened in 2008, winning the prestigious Art Fund Museum of the Year prize in 2009. It houses the finest collection of Wedgwood material, showcasing innovations in taste and fashion over three centuries and the UNESCO recognised Wedgwood Archives.

We are pleased to invite submissions from established scholars as well as emerging voices, and look forward to exploring new dialogues and disciplines which broaden our understanding of Wedgwood. Contributions are invited for four research themes:

1  Beyond Josiah Wedgwood: Re-examining the Narrative
2  Global Wedgwood
3  Creativity, Technology, Economics, and Labour
4  Impressions of the Past: Contemporary Ceramic Making

Topics may include, but are not limited to:
• Transatlantic and continental trade
• Creativity, design, and artists
• Race
• Economics and labour
• Disability
• Workshop traditions
• Female contributions to the development and history of Wedgwood and ceramics
• Production and consumption of ceramics
• Empire and colonialism
• Technology
• Class
• Displaying and collecting of ceramics
• Social histories of ceramics
• Factory architecture and employee welfare

Please submit a 400-word abstract outlining a 20- to 30-minute presentation along with a short biography or curriculum vitae by 15 February 2023 to r.klarner@vam.ac.uk. These will be reviewed by the organising committee. Selected participants will be notified by 15 March 2023.

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Note (added 20 January 2023) — As initially announced here at Enfilade in November, the conference date was scheduled for 30 June — 1 July 2023; the posting has been updated with the new dates of 7–8 July.

From ArtHist.net and the Seminar on Collecting and Display:

The Mutability of Collections: Transformation, Contextualisation, and Re-Interpretation
Seminar on Collecting and Display
Institute of Historical Research, University of London, 7–8 July 2023

Proposals due by 30 November 2022

We invite proposals for papers reflecting on the ways in which the contents of collections are not permanent but may be subject to numerous mutations. Objects in collections are added, exchanged or disposed of, translated and transformed. Items can be moved to new surroundings and different decorative settings, resulting in altered contexts of display, meaning, and significance. The history of collections is more than a history of objects brought together by acquisitive owners; it is also a history whereby collectors and owners may re-interpret an inherited or purchased collection and re-arrange and complete it in accordance to their taste.

As is well known, the Medici amassed a collection that grew, was looted, regained, distributed over palaces and villas, and finally bequeathed to Tuscany as part of Anna Maria Louisa’s family pact in 1737. Obviously, the Medici’s treasures were not the only collection with a fragmented biography and that of Rudolf II would provide another famous example.In the nineteenth century, William Beckford added new layers of interpretation as he amassed his collections from a variety of different sources. Further translations and reinterpretations ensued when the first collection was dispersed and Beckford created a new collecting environment in Bath.

This session aims to explore the various issues underlying the mutability of collections, including
• the ways in which intentionality, taste, and the periodically fluctuating finances of collectors influenced the composition and display of a collection, sometimes more than once within a collection’s biography
• the ways in which fashion may have directed a collector towards particular groups of objects, as well as their alteration according to the taste of the time
• the ways in which collections may be reinterpreted and take on new meanings according to the spaces in which they were displayed
• the different associations and meanings given to individual objects through their changing representations, displays, or associations

We invite paper proposals of no more than 250 words, investigating the mutability of early-modern collections during their creation, transfer to new locations, transformation, or re-interpretation. Please send your proposals, along with a short bio (no more than 200 words) to collecting_display@hotmail.com by 30 November 2022.

 

From ArtHist.net:

Race and Architecture in the Iberian World, ca. 1500–1800s
Special Issue of Arts (2023), guest edited by Cody Barteet and Luis Gordo Peláez

Proposals due by 15 December 2022; finished articles due by 1 June 2023

In the field of art history, previous scholarship has addressed (and continues to address) the contribution of Indigenous, Black, Asian, and mixed-raced artists to the early modern visual culture in the Atlantic world. Frequently scholars are interested in documenting race and its enduring legacy through a variety of cultural artifacts such as paintings, sculptures, manuscripts, featherworks, metalwork, etc. However, much less attention has been given to architectural history, and particularly that of the early modern Iberian world.

Recently, Irene Cheng, Charles L. Davis II, and Mabel O. Wilson edited a ground-breaking volume titled Race and Modern Architecture (2020). Their publication provides an important collection of essays that discuss how the discipline of architectural history has been shaped by racial thought. Likewise, the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians dedicated a short roundtable-style conversation on the subject of race and architecture in the 1400s through the 1800s (Carey, Dudley, Escobar, et. al. 2021). Each short paper considers the role of race in architecture and implores other scholars to investigate this understudied topic. This special issue of Arts is a response to this scholarly call to engagement. Specifically, we will explore the intersection of race, labor, and architectural history and their interconnectivity with the architecture and its accompanying artistic forms in the early modern Iberian world. We do so through considering how race and architecture are activated through construction projects, the building trades, the history of labor, and in plans, pictorial, and print representations, etc., in the vast territories (European, American, African, Asian) that comprised the Spanish and Portuguese empires.

We invite contributors to submit their research in English for consideration. Please note that there is a two-stage submission procedure. We will first collect a title and short abstract (maximum 250 words), five keywords, and a short bio (150 words), by 15 December 2022, via email to Dr. Cody Barteet (cbarteet@uwo.ca) and Dr. Luis Gordo Peláez (luisgordopelaez@csufresno.edu) or Dora Wang from Arts Editorial Office (dora.wang@mdpi.com). Selected abstracts will be invited to submit papers of 7000–9000 words for peer review by 1 June 2023. Journal publication is expected to occur from late spring through fall 2023, depending on the revision time needed after peer review. Each article will be published open access, on a rolling basis after successfully passing peer review.

Guest Editors
Cody Barteet, cbarteet@uwo.ca
Luis Gordo Peláez, luisgordopelaez@csufresno.edu

Special Issue Editor
Dora Wang, dora.wang@mdpi.com

 

From Trinity College Dublin:

Unlocking the Fagel Collection: The Library and its Context
Trinity College Dublin, 22–23 June 2023

Proposals due by 15 December 2022

The Fagel Collection is one of the most important and largest Dutch private libraries of the eighteenth century still surviving today. It was assembled as a working library by several generations of the Fagel family, of whom successive members held high offices in the Dutch Republic throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The collection of books, pamphlets, and maps was purchased as a whole for Trinity College Dublin in 1802.

This symposium represents the culmination of the Unlocking the Fagel Collection project (2020–2023), a collaboration between the Library of Trinity College Dublin and the KB National Library of the Netherlands, funded by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs. We will mark the achievements of the project which has facilitated access to and raised awareness of this unique heritage library through cataloguing of the Dutch imprints in the Short-Title Catalogue Netherlands (STCN). This moment also signals the beginning of a second phase of work, dedicated to enhanced cataloguing of all non-Dutch materials and supporting new research into the collection, notably through extensive digitisation as part of the Virtual Trinity Library.

As such, the symposium represents an opportunity to take a fresh look at the historical context and significance of the collection, and to look forward to future exploration thereof, particularly, it is hoped, through new collaborations and digital integration with collections and projects internationally.

Topics may include
• The history and socio-cultural context of the Fagel library and the Fagel family, e.g. Den Haag book culture, print, and the Dutch States General
• Comparative perspectives with contemporary libraries, cultures of collecting, in the Dutch Republic and elsewhere, e.g. patrician libraries, political libraries, expatriated libraries
• Fagel holdings in relation to overall STCN data and other recorded collections
• Exploration of the collection’s holdings: books, pamphlets, maps, engravings, manuscripts, items no longer in the collection
• Links with complementary collections: the Fagel archives, the (dispersed) art, coin, and plant collections, etc.
• The role and use of the Fagel Collection, then and now, e.g. information politics
• The collection’s organisation and history, in the Netherlands and at Trinity College Dublin
• Materiality of the collection, of individual items, and questions of preservation
• Perspectives on future development and use of the collection, e.g. in digital form

The organisers welcome proposals for papers (c. 250 words) on these and related topics. Proposals should be sent, together with a short bio-bibliographical statement including indication of institutional affiliation, by 15 December 2022. Email to Library.Events@tcd.ie with the subject heading ‘Fagel Symposium’.

Participation and attendance, including meals and refreshments, is free of charge. Travel costs and accommodation are not covered. For further information, please contact Ann-Marie Hansen, project manager of Unlocking the Fagel Collection, at the Library of Trinity College Dublin, anhansen@tcd.ie.