Enfilade

From ArtHist.net (6 December 2021), which includes the CFP in French . . .

Thinking Europe Visually / L’Europe par l’image et en images
IMAGO Center at the Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris, 9–10 June 2022

Organized by Béatrice Joyeux-Prunel and Léa Saint-Raymond

Proposals due by 15 March 2022

“If I had to do it again, I would start with culture”: this statement, often erroneously attributed to Jean Monnet, suggests that Europe as a political and economic construct remains, in the absence of a shared culture, nothing but a hollow shell, empty and soulless. This conference aims to question the disillusioned position which holds that there is no meaningful common European culture, and to do so through images.

One way to visualize the potential existence and limits of a European cultural base is indeed to trace the circulation of images—be they works of art, press images, posters, photographs, or even motifs and patterns—in the region, from antiquity through to the present day. What are the images that have circulated most widely in Europe? Are they specific to Europe or are they already globalized? What was their visual and symbolic impact? Is there a ‘visual culture’ specific to Europe and, if so, what might be its distinctive ‘patterns’? This conference will attempt to question the existence, history, contours, and impact of this ‘Europe of images’—from an art historical and visual studies perspective, as well as in historical, anthropological, and geopolitical terms.

Interested contributors are invited to send proposals (400 words maximum) for a 20-minute presentation, along with a short CV in the same document. Proposals should be sent to Prof. Béatrice Joyeux-Prunel (Beatrice.Joyeux-Prunel@unige.ch) and Dr. Léa Saint-Raymond (lea.saint-raymond@ens.fr) by 15 March 2022. The conference will take place 9–10 June 2022 in Paris (France) and will be hosted by the Imago Center at the Ecole normale supérieure, 45 rue d’Ulm, in collaboration with the project Visual Contagions at the University of Geneva (Switzerland).

Work at the MFAH Sarofim Campus concluded with the opening in November 2020 of the Nancy and Rich Kinder Building (shown above). Designed by Steven Holl Architects, the structure houses art produced after 1900 and moves the MFAH up to the twelfth largest art museum in the world (in terms of gallery space). Photo: Richard Barnes, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

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From the Call for Papers:

48th Annual Conference of the Midwest Art History Society
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston and Menil Collection, 10–12 March 2022

Proposals due by 15 December 2021

Head south to Bayou City for the 48th annual conference of the Midwest Art History Society. The conference will be held in Houston, Texas, in close proximity to world-class art collections and cultural sites. Participate in engaging sessions at one of the most impressive art institutions in the nation, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH), on Thursday and Friday, March 10 and 11, with special sessions and visits to the Menil Collection and other area institutions on Saturday, March 12.

On Thursday evening, MAHS members are invited to a keynote lecture, “Re-presenting Afro-Atlantic Histories,” presented by Kanitra Fletcher, Associate Curator, African American and Afro-Diasporic Art, Modern and Contemporary Art at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. Dr. Fletcher will examine Afro-Atlantic Histories, the largest international exhibition effort to date to treat the Black Atlantic as an area of cultural exchange and transformation between Africa and the Americas (MASP, São Paulo and MFAH).

Established in 1900, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston holds a growing encyclopedic collection of more than 70,000 objects spanning from antiquities to the present. The museum’s Susan and Fayez S. Sarofim main campus comprises a number of important museum buildings and their collections, including the newly opened Nancy and Rich Kinder Building designed by Steven Holl Architects (2020) to house 20th- and 21st-century collections. The MFAH is also home to two house museums, a repertory cinema, two libraries, public archives, and facilities for conservation and storage, as well as the International Center for the Arts of the Americas (ICAA), a leading research institute for 20th-century Latin American and Latino art.

Conference attendees are encouraged also to explore the Lillie and Hugh Roy Sculpture Garden and the beautiful works in the Brown Foundation, Inc, Plaza, which provides views of downtown Houston. Just across the street, the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston offers visitors an opportunity to view exemplary work by living artists. Established in 1948 and housed today in a space designed by Gunnar Birkerts in 1972, the museum exhibits work by local and global living artists and organizes thought-provoking arts programming to educate and inspire audiences.

Close to the Museum District are spectacular sites of downtown architecture and green spaces, interspersed with a vibrant collections of museum spaces including the Asia Society Texas Center, the Buffalo Soldiers National Museum, the Czech Center Museum Houston, Diverseworks, Holocaust Museum Houston, Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, Houston Museum of African American Culture, Lawndale Art Center, the Jung Center, Children’s Museum of Houston, Houston Museum of Natural Science, the Houston Zoo, and the Health Museum.

The Houston skyline is distinguished by a host of striking buildings, varying from the Houston City Hall, constructed by the Works Progress Administration following the Great Depression in the 1930s, to the 1999 postmodern ‘Skyscraper of the Century’ Williams Towers designed by Philip Johnson. Green spaces include the Discovery Green, an area famous for its restaurants, food trucks, and free community events varying from yoga to concerts and arts shows; and Herman Park, home of the Houston Zoo and trails leading to a small lake with pedal boats and a Japanese Zen Garden.

Beyond the Museum District, the nearby Montrose neighborhood developed in 1911, offers visitors diverse dining and shopping options. In the 1980s, it was the center of the gay community and today is a demographically diverse area with renovated mansions, bungalows with wide porches, and cottages located along tree-lined boulevards. More recently (in 2009), Montrose was named one of the ‘ten great neighborhoods in America’. The world-class art collections of Dominique and John de Menil are housed in the Menil Collection in the heart of Montrose. The impeccable Renzo Piano building features matchless galleries of Surrealist art, as well as later modern and contemporary art, arts of Africa, Oceania and Latin America, and important temporary exhibitions. The Menil campus also contains the Rothko Chapel, a museum building dedicated to the art of Cy Twombly, and the new Menil Drawing Institute with its own display and study spaces.

Conference presentations are expected to be under twenty minutes. Proposals of no more than 250 words and a two-page CV should be emailed to the chairs of individual sessions by Friday, 15 December 2021. Chairs are to submit finalized panels for their sessions by 10 January 2022.

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A selection of sessions of potential interest for eighteenth-century scholars is listed below (with the full listing available here).

Drawings and Prints, I
Chair: Cheryl Snay (Curator of European Art, Snite Museum of Art, University of Notre Dame), csnay@nd.edu
This session invites new research or perspectives on early modern American and European drawings and prints from the fifteenth to the nineteenth century.

Graduate Student / Early Career Workshop: Museum Work — Skills, Applications, Opportunities
Chairs: Rex Koontz (University of Houston) and Christine Bentley (Missouri Southern State University), rkoontz@uh.edu and bentley-c@mssu.edu

Provenance Studies
Chair: Jon Evans (University of Houston), jevans@uh.edu

Textiles / Fashion
Chair: Erica Warren (The Art Institute of Chicago), ewarren2@artic.edu

Decolonizing Art History
Chair: Lauren DeLand (Savannah College of Art and Design), delan104@umn.edu

Art History Pedagogy
Chairs: Beth Merfish and Sarah Costello (University of Houston-Clear Lake), merfish@uhcl.edu

Socially Engaged Art History Round Table
Chairs: Cindy Persinger (California University of Pennsylvania) and Azar Rejaie (University of Houston Downtown), persinger@calu.edu and rejaiea@uhd.edu

African Art and Art of the African Diaspora
Chair: Felicia Mings (Curator, Art Gallery of York University), mings@yorku.ca

Art of the Indigenous Americas: Ancient and Modern
Chair: Rex Koontz (University of Houston), rkoontz@uh.edu

Between the Local and Global: Art of the Americas
Chair: Cristina Gonzalez (Oklahoma State University), cristina.gonzalez@okstate.edu

Asian Art
Chair: Jennifer Lee (School of the Art Institute of Chicago), jlee241@saic.edu

Early Modern Art (15th–18th Centuries)
Chair: Elizabeth Carroll (San Jose State University), elizabeth.carroll@sjsu.edu

Recent Acquisitions in the Midwest
Chair: Cheryl Snay (Snite Museum of Art, University of Notre Dame), csnay@nd.edu

Technical Art History
Chair: Amy Morris (University of Nebraska at Omaha), ammorris@unomaha.edu

Undergraduate Art History Session
Chair: Paula Wisotzki (Loyola University), pwisots@luc.edu
Faculty members who have received outstanding research papers from undergraduate students within the past two academic years are invited to submit them for inclusion in our eighth annual Undergraduate Research Session. These papers should explore specific art historical research questions. In all cases, a faculty member (usually the submitter) must serve as a mentor and accompany the undergraduate student to the annual conference. Submissions should include the complete paper of no more than 2500 words, a 250-word abstract, and the student’s resume. In the event that the paper is accepted, undergraduate student presenters and faculty mentors are expected to pay membership and conference fees.

From ArtHist.net:

English and Irish Crystal Drinking Glass, 1640–1702
Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 6 October 2022

Proposals due by 1 March 2022

Writing the translation of Neri’s The Art of Glass in 1662 Christopher Merret declared that English glassmakers had “these twenty years last past much improved themselves.” Similarly, in 1672 the glass-seller John Green claimed that “we now make very good drinking glasses in England.” Undoubtedly, the latter half of the seventeenth century was a period of material, technical, and aesthetic development, which saw the vessel-glass industry in England and Ireland reach maturity. The V&A Museum in partnership with the Association for the History of Glass is delighted to announce a conference entitled Celebrating the Birth of English and Irish Crystal Drinking Glass, 1640–1702 as part of the UN International Year of Glass to be held at the V&A on Thursday, 6 October 2022. This study day aims to explore the evolving story of the birth of these sophisticated products a century before the ‘industrial revolution’ began. We invite contributions that draw on a range of methodological perspectives including art history, history, archaeology, science technology, conservation, curatorial praxis, and historic making practices.

2022 has recently been designated by the United Nations as International Year of Glass. 2022 also marks 125 years since the publication of Albert Harshorne’s Old English Glasses, the first serious study of the history of English and Irish glass, and additionally represents 350 years since 1672, a pivotal year in the development of crystal glass. Thirty years earlier had seen the closure of the only crystal glass factory in these isles, but twenty years later there were approximately thirty glasshouses producing flint and crystal glass and the industry was the envy of our continental rivals. Such a growth rate was probably unprecedented, yet it was encouraged by a range of key events including: the publication of Merrett’s translation of Neri’s Art of Glass at the request of the newly-formed Royal Society (1662); the establishment of The Worshipful Company of Glass Sellers of London, who received their Royal charter which, among other things, enabled them to assume responsibility for drinking glass designs (1664); and the decision taken by the King to allow saltpetre imported from India to be sold at public auctions, removing the last barrier to the economic production of a high-quality British flint glass (1672). By the 1670s, the quality and value of English crystal drinking glass was even acknowledged by the Venetian secretary in London, to have exceeded that from Venice. During this time two significant patents were also given, the first a seven-year patent to George Ravenscroft to produce a “glass resembling rock crystal,” and the second an almost identical patent which was granted in Ireland to the Altarese glassmaker Jon Odacio Formica and two others, but for a duration of fourteen years. Odacio had worked previously in Nijmegen, the Netherlands. It is important to emphasise the European context at play here. For example, we know that many Italian glassmakers played key roles in the development of our industry, and several worked for Ravenscroft in the 1670s.

Frequently, this area of study in historical glass has been dominated by attributions based solely on aesthetic appearance and an overemphasis on the singular figure of Ravenscroft. However, more recent research including that by Mike Noble, Colin Brain, David Dungworth, Peter Francis, and Franc Myles has confirmed that the development of lead crystal glass vessels in England and Ireland was a much more multifarious and complex process. Furthermore, there is currently an exciting field of emerging research which brings together documentary and visual evidence, along with non-destructive analysis (XRF, PXRF, UV-Fluorescence, etc). As such, this study day seeks to bring together scholars, curators, makers, and collectors to explore crystal glass vessels and review previous historiographical assumptions.

We invite submissions for 20-minute or 30-minute illustrated papers on any aspect of the supply, design, production, consumption, and analysis of British and Irish crystal glass drinking vessels, 1642–1702

Topics could also include:
• Museum display and interpretation
• Documentary evidence of crystal glass vessels
• Studies of non-destructive analysis for crystal drinking vessels
• Influence of alchemy and scientific discovery
• Difference between English and Irish production
• Design, consumption patterns, dining culture
• Influence of the European glass vessel industry
• Historiography of the crystal glass vessel industry, especially how the story of the birth of English and Irish crystal glass has been told previously

Please send your submission, of no more than 300 words, together with a brief biography to: Colin Brain (cjsm132@gmail.com); Reino Liefkes (r.liefkes@vam.ac.uk); Dr Caroline McCaffrey-Howarth (c.mccaffreyhowarth@vam.ac.uk) by 1 March 2022.

From ArtHist.net:

Hunting Troubles: Gender and Its Intersections in the Cultural History of the Hunt
Flüchtige Identitäten: Jagd als Schauplatz geschlechtlicher Phantasien
Online, Bremen, 12–14 May 2022

Proposals due by 31 December 2021

Hunting has always been an arena of gender fantasies. Its function as a social practice and aesthetically orchestrated event far outweighed its significance in terms of food procurement or defense against wild animals—this was not only the case in European cultural history. The pursuit and killing of animals were above all an area where physical, cognitive, and social superiority were demonstrated. Hunting therefore created and reinforced images of the ‘masculine’ as well as the ‘feminine’. Countless ancient myths focus on male heroes whose political and sexual violence is linked to images of the hunt. At the same time, however, hunting is not always and unquestionably associated with masculinity. The same myths are also populated by hunting women—such as the Greek goddess Artemis, her nymphs Daphne, Kalisto and Echo, and mortals such as Atalante, who, after gaining access to a male hunting party through her lover, decisively wounds the Calydonian boar. Later on, in the Minnelieder songs of the Middle Ages, lovers engage in an erotic chase during which the role of the hunter and the hunted seem—at times—interchangeable. And the carefully orchestrated portraits of early modern princesses in hunting costumes bear as much witness to the subversion of gender roles as the (self-) representations of colonial huntresses since the nineteenth century.

As a symbol and technique that—in itself—seemed to gesture towards asymmetrical power structures, hunting has always served to naturalise gender difference and binarity. However, hunts and their representations always seem to open up spaces in which gender and other boundaries are not only established and consolidated, but also unsettled and blurred. Both the young man Leukippos in the ancient myth who disguises himself as a woman in order to gain access to the virgin nymph’s hunting party and the male animal in Ernst Jünger’s short story “Die Eberjagd” (“The Boar Hunt”) (1952) that is, at the moment of the kill, are transformed and can be read as ‘female’. There is an—albeit temporary—ambiguity of gender boundaries, a floundering, which seems—if not inevitably but repeatedly—to go hand in hand with the principal liminality of the hunting situation and its stagings.

These ambivalences of hunting as a cultural and symbolic practice as well as its aesthetic (literary, artistic, performative) stagings are the starting point of the conference and the publication project, which is designed to give an extensive overview of the interrelations between gender and the hunt in European cultural history. From a historical as well as intersectional perspective, we wish to examine how the interplay between actual hunting and its representations reinforced and/or destabilized certain gender images. The focus will be on the following intersecting approaches:

Hunting practices
What role did different hunting practices and their stagings play in the construction of gender identities? When and why were which hunting practices considered specifically ‘male’ or ‘female’? Which historical caesurae inform the history of gender images when it comes to hunting: are there historical constants, epochal changes and regional differences that can be identified?

Men’s Worlds
Which concepts of masculinity have been produced through the practice and representation of the hunt? Which customs, techniques and laws made hunting an effective means of demonstrating and narrating virility? Are these narratives tied to specific artistic genres? How were notions of gender difference naturalised through hunting? Which homoerotic constellations did hunting produce and sublimate?

Women on the Hunt
Which concepts of femininity were produced through hunting, its performance and aesthetic representation? Under what social and political conditions could women reinterpret hunting semantics or subvert heteronormative relations? Are narratives of female hunting bound to certain artistic genres, genres, etc. or excluded from them, and, if so, why? What needs (or fears) were expressed by narratives of mythical female hunters and the omnipresence of Artemis/Diana in images, buildings or festivals of hunting?

Female, Male, and Other Animals
How did the relationship to wild or domestic animals such as horses and dogs affirm or subvert heteronormative gender notions? How was the pronounced sexual dimorphism reflected – especially in cases where the larger females were the preferred hunting animals, such as in the case of the goshawk or sparrowhawk? Which role did the gender of hunted animals play in empathic descriptions of the hunter’s desire and identification with the pursued animal?

Intersectional Perspectives
To what extent is the relationship between ‘human’ and ‘animal’, ‘nature’ and ‘culture’ as well as ‘foreign’ and ‘familiar’ in literary and artistic representations of hunting gendered and to what extent is this subject to historical change? In which constellations did hunting as a technique of demonstrating superiority in terms of gender, class and race reach its limits? Did hunting also produce non-binary (gender) constellations and/or transcultural situations? To what extent are these also partly intertwined with the transgression or consolidation of social boundaries?

For these and related questions, we especially ask for suggestions for topics in literature, art and cultural studies, history, and other fields. To submit send a 250-word abstract for a 20- or 30-minute paper (English/German) and a short bio to Dr. Laura Beck (laura.beck@uni-bremen.de) and Prof. Dr. Maurice Saß (Maurice.Sass@alanus.edu) before 31 December 2021. Please name one of the approaches above (hunting practices, men‘s worlds, etc.) to which you would assign your proposal. Partial reimbursements of travel and/or stay may be offered. After the conference we would like to publish the results in an anthology as soon as possible.

Schedule
Deadline for submissions: 31 December 2021
Applicants will be notified by 10 January 2022
Date of the conference (online or presentational in Bremen, Germany): 12–14 May 2022
Deadline for submission of manuscripts: 1 November 2022

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Note (added 13 January 2024) — The conference was part of the activities of the Cultural History of the Hunt research network (Netzwerk Jagdgeschichten).

After Magdeleine Horthemels, Burial of Nuns at the Abbey of Port-Royal-des-Champs (Musée de Port-Royal des Champs).

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From the Call for Papers:

Women and Religion in Eighteenth-Century France: Ideas, Controversies, and Representations
In-Person and Online, Queen Mary, University of London, 24 June 2022

Organized by Marie Giraud and Cathleen Mair

Proposals due by 21 January 2022

In the decades since Peter Gay argued that religion occupied no place in the French Enlightenment, scholars including Dale Van Kley, Suzanne Desan, and Mita Choudhury have shown how religious beliefs and controversies informed philosophical ideas, political practices, social relations, and cultural identities in eighteenth-century France.

Owing to this scholarship, it has also become clear that women of faith—from the Jansenist nuns forcibly removed from Port-Royal to the Carmelites guillotined during The Terror—played an important role in French social, cultural, and political life in the period. Representations of convents took on new and urgent meanings amidst mounting political and financial pressure on the Ancien Régime. Influential women on the peripheries of religion were instrumental in the dissemination of controversial beliefs and new philosophical ideas, like the Protestant salonnière Mme Necker who hosted celebrated writers and academicians at her home and Mlle de Joncoux, known as l’invisible, who devoted her life to defending the nuns of Port-Royal. In the revolutionary period, nuns challenged the suppression of religious orders while Catholic women became symbols of resistance in the religious riots of the late 1790s.

Drawing on new approaches and sources, this interdisciplinary workshop will consider the identities, controversies, ideas, experiences, and representations of religious women in eighteenth-century France. What role did these women play in the political and intellectual culture of the Ancien Régime and the French Revolution? How did they and their supporters or enemies navigate a period of extraordinary social change and political upheaval? In what ways did they adopt, challenge, or subvert the religious canon, cultural norms, and societal conventions as the understanding of religion, politics, and power shifted rapidly throughout the eighteenth century?

We invite proposals for twenty-minute papers from scholars in History or related disciplines such as Art History, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Literary Studies, and Theology. We especially welcome proposals from graduate and early career researchers. Proposals for papers may wish to consider the following themes:
• Devotional and liturgical practices
• The circulation of religious ideas, books, and objects
• Representations of women religious in art, literature, and material culture
• Education
• Charity and nursing
• Interdenominational relations
• The relationship between religious orders and the state
• Marriage and motherhood
• Popular and lay religion
• Emotions and bodies

To apply, please email your abstract and a brief bio to m.s.giraud@qmul.ac.uk and c.i.mair@qmul.ac.uk by 21 January 2022. Abstracts should be no more than 250 words for papers of 20 minutes in length. Please specify whether you would prefer to present in person or online. The symposium will take place in hybrid format, meaning speakers can attend in person or virtually via Microsoft Teams. The symposium will be free to attend and all speakers will be invited to dinner. Travel grants will be available to support PhD and ECR scholars speaking at the workshop. For more information, please visit the symposium website.

Keynote Speaker: Professor Mita Choudhury (Vassar College)

From the posting at ArtHist.net (which includes the German version) . . .

Water / Landscapes: Ecologies of the Fluid, circa 1800
Wasser / Landschaften: Ökologien des Fluiden um 1800
A Conference of the Rhine-Main-Universities Initiative Romantische Ökologien
7–9 July 2022, Research Center, Bad Homburg

Proposals due by 30 November 2021

Wherever literary, pictorial, musical, or even horticultural depictions of the landscape are to be found in the Romantic period, there too, is the element of water: whether in sweeping and meandering streams or artfully arranged ponds and waterfalls within landscape gardens; mirror-smooth coastal and lake-surfaces reflecting the sun- or moonlight (either with summer brightness or in eerier shades); from wind-whipped sea tides and ocean waves; whispering brooks brimming with whimsical trout, or rivers like the Rhine, Main, Neckar, Thames, Seine, or Nile, welcome-beacons to all prospective barge- and ship-farers and invitations to imagine, paint, and compose poetry. Water-surfaces, water elements, and water spectacles are constitutive to a Romantic understanding of ‘landscape’.

Through these waterscapes of Romanticism—and more generally, those from the years around 1800—a (proto-)ecological understanding of the interplay between inorganic and organic entities in locally defined spaces comes into view and is first articulated. The connection nonetheless remains to be investigated further. To be sure, the Environmental Humanities have recognized the literature, philosophy, and science around 1800 as originators of modern ecological theorems and environmental consciousness. Nonetheless, the role that can be attributed to water—to the biotopes and conditions of existence attached to it—is still unclear. This is all the more astonishing as discussions and imaginations of the significance of water for life and the living in general, and specifically for the reciprocal, developmental, and transformative relationships between organisms and water (and hydrogen), was certainly encouraged by both the natural sciences (physics, geology, and in philosophy/ies of nature) as well as in literature and the arts around 1800 more generally. In particular, the realization that life and living forms not only consolidate in water, but that medial approaches are simultaneously necessary to make these interdependencies and interrelationships visible is decisive—Andersen’s fairy tale of water drops (Danish: Vanddraaben, 1847) beneath the magnifying glass brings this into view in a particularly impressive way.

Moreover, water landscapes help bring together the constantly interwoven levels of the semiotic and the material, of sonic and the phonetic (linguistic), and of literal and metaphorical meaning: Within landscape poems, the splash, bubble, spring, flood, flow, rush, and surge are not only the acts of waterworks and water surfaces; rather, diverse actors, their distinct modes of being and movement, become entangled and affected by each other, as they converge, mingle, and disperse again. Animals, plants, air, soil, and light make up an ensemble, which is brought into contact and co-constituted by water. Its activity and vitality, much like any form of landscape, is made possible only through water. More pointedly, the period from about 1750 to 1850 launches epistemological and aesthetic formations which recognize that without water, landscapes and living forms are unthinkable and unrepresentable.

The conference explores the ecological dimensions of the fluid in the period around 1800, taking the concept ‘water|landscapes’ as its point of departure. The focus will consist of various ‘water sites’, ranging from rain-bearing cloud formations to water puddles and bogs to river courses and marine spaces. It will bring into play extremely heterogenous aesthetic programs (e.g., the sublime or the locus amoenus), genres (idylls, river and seafaring ballads, garden poems, landscape prose and landscape painting discourse, nature essays, etc.) places (national and international, fantastic and realistic etc.), times, and traditions (Greek and Germanic mythology, Middle Ages). The basic thesis of the conference is that Romantic literatures and images stage, reflect, and negotiate the interplay of (living) elements and beings around/in water.

We are interested in contributions that inquire into historical knowledges about and aesthetic approaches to water, aquatic habitats, and habitats in the period around 1800, especially as relating to theories, figures of thought, and forms of representation of the ecological. Points of departure and catalysts for research can be found not only in the field of Romantic Ecocriticism but also in Hydro-Criticism and the Blue Humanities. European and International Romanticism is thereby an important, though not exclusive, reference point. Our interest is in the diversity of representations and theories surrounding water and its proto-ecological dimensions around 1800; all proposals that focus on water|scapes in text, as image, or as a jumping-off point for discussions between 1750 and 1850 are welcome.

Please send your abstract (max. 500 words) for a 25-minute talk and short bio and bibliographical notes in one single document to all three organisers (borgards@lingua.uni-frankfurt.de; middelhoff@em.uni-frankfurt.de; thums@uni-mainz.de) until 30 November 2021. A publication of selected talks is planned. The conference is scheduled as an in-presence event at the Research Center’s Villa Reimers in Bad Homburg. Travel and accommodation costs can—if needed—be reimbursed.

Organisers

Prof. Dr. Roland Borgards (Goethe-University Frankfurt)
Prof. Dr. Frederike Middelhoff (Goethe-University Frankfurt)
Prof. Dr. Barbara Thums (Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz)

Contact

Frederike Middelhoff (W1-Professur für Neuere Deutsche Literatur mit dem Schwerpunkt Romantikforschung)
Goethe-Universität Frankfurt
Institut für deutsche Literatur und ihre Didaktik
Campus Westend // IG-Farben-Haus // Postfach 17
Norbert-Wollheim-Platz 1
60323 Frankfurt am Main
middelhoff@em.uni-frankfurt.de

Selected Bibliography

Alaimo, Stacy. “Oceanic Origins, Plastic Activism, and New Materialism at Sea.” In Material Ecocriticism, ed. Serenella Iovino, Serpil Oppermann. Bloomington 2014, pp. 186–203.

Böhme, Hartmut (ed.). Kulturgeschichte des Wassers. Frankfurt am Main 1988.

Böhme, Hartmut. “Wolken, Wasser, Stein. Zur Ästhetik der Landschaft, in: semina rerum (1999), pp. 1–7.

Briški, Javor und Irna Marija Samide (eds.). The Meeting of Waters: Fluide Räume in Literatur und Kultur. Munich 2015.

Bunzel, Wolfgang (ed.). Romantik an Rhein und Main: Eine Topographie. Darmstadt 2014.

Costlow, Jan, Yrjö Haila, Arja Rosenholm (eds.). Water in Social Imagination: From Technological Optimism to Contemporary Environmentalism. Ann Arbor 2017.

Cohen, Margaret and Killian Quigley (eds.). The Aesthetics of the Undersea. London, New York 2019.

Davies, Jeremy. “Romantic Ecocriticism: History and Prospects.” In Literature Compass (2018), pp. 1–15.

Deloughrey, Elisabeth. “Towards a Critical Ocean Studies for the Anthropocene.” In English Language Notes 57:1 (2019), pp. 22–36.

Detering, Heinrich. “Der Weiher als Ökosystem.” In: id.: Holzfrevel und Heilsverlust: Die ökologische Dichtung der Annette von Droste-Hülshoff. Göttingen 2021, pp. 46–60.

Goodbody, Axel and Berbeli Wanning (ed.). Wasser – Kultur – Ökologie: Beiträge zum Wandel mit dem Wasser und zu seiner literarischen Imagination. Göttingen 2008.

Garde-Hansen, Joanne. Media and Water: Communication, Culture, and Perception. London, 2021.

Görner, Rüdiger. “‘Hörst du das Alphorn überm blauen See?’ Aquafine Zeichen in der Lyrik Anette von Droste-Hülshoffs.” In Jahrbuch des Franz-Michael-Felder Archivs 20 (2019), pp. 16–29.

Häusler, Wolfgang. “Zwischen Naturwissenschaft, Heiliger Schrift und Historie. Beobachtungen zur Funktion des Wassers im Wer Adalbert Stifters.” In Jahrbuch des Adalbert-Stifter-Instituts 16 (2009), pp. 101–114.

Honold, Alexander. “Zwischen Wasser und Poesie. Brentanos Stromkreislauf.” In Gabe, Tausch, Verwandlung. Übertragungsökonomien im Werk Clemens Brentanos, ed. Ulrike Landfester. Würzburg 2009, pp. 127–141.

Jacobs, Mary. Romantic Things: A Tree, a Rock, a Cloud. Chicago 2012.

Jue, Melody. Wild Blue Media: Thinking through Seawater. Durham 2020.

Kramer, Anke. “Hydrographie der Zeit. Erlebte Zeit bei Annette von Droste-Hülshoff, Henri Bergson und Johannes Müller.” In ZwischenZeiten. Zur Poetik der Zeitlichkeit in der Literatur der Annette von Droste-Hülshoff und der ‚Biedermeier‘-Epoche, ed. Cornelia Blasberg and Jochen Grywatsch. Hannover 2013, pp. 189–209.

Kramer, Anke. “Elementargeister und die Grenzen des Menschlichen. Agierende Materie in Fouqués Undine.” In: Mensch – Maschine – Tier: Entwürfe posthumaner Interaktionen (= Beiheft PhiN 10/2016), ed. Christa Grewe-Volpp, Evi Zemanek, pp. 104–124. http://web.fu-berlin.de/phin/beiheft10/b10t08.pdf.

Kraß, Andreas. Meerjungfrauen: Geschichten einer unmöglichen Liebe. Frankfurt am Main 2010.

McKusick, James. Green Writing: Romanticism and Ecology. Basingstoke 2000.

Pape, Walter (ed.). Romantische Metaphorik des Fließens: Körper, Seele, Poesie. Tübingen 2007.

Ritson, Katie. “The View from the Sea: The Power of a Blue Comparative Literature.” In Humanities 9/3/68 (2020) https://doi.org/10.3390/h9030068.

Ritson, Katie. The Shifting Sands of the North Sea Lowlands: Literary and Historical Imaginaries. London 2018.

Robbins, Nicholas. “Ruskin, Whistler, and the Climate of Art in 1884.” In Ruskin’s Ecologies: Figures of Relation from Modern Painters to the Storm-Cloud, ed. Kelly Freeman Thomas Hughes. London 2021, pp. 203–223.

From the Call for Papers:

Exploring the Mental World of the Country House
20th Annual Historic Houses International Conference
Centre for the Study of Historic Irish Houses and Estates, Maynooth University, 9–11 May 2022

Proposals due by 19 November 2021

Country houses are masterpieces of material culture, they are triumphs of architecture, fine and decorative art, and landscape design, but they are also about the history and transmission of ideas.

In varying degrees their occupants (above and below stairs, indoors and outdoors) thought, conversed, read, and responded to their milieu through books, newspapers, as well as other media and forms of knowledge. In recent years country house libraries and archives have steadily revealed more evidence for how people in country houses fashioned themselves and their views of the world. In 2022 the Twentieth Annual Historic Houses Conference will examine the intellectual background to the country house. What is the meaning of all those volumes in bookcases, did they do more than just decorate a room? How were they acquired, read, and put to use?

By what means did elite society exchange ideas, absorb new trends, and engage in wider debate, especially when at home in the country? To what degree was this knowledge valued and displayed in terms of stylish library design, and how did houses preserve, or neglect, their books and other records? How did members of a household entertain or better themselves, what was popular to read with whom —men, women and children? The classics, natural history, literature, genealogy, fiction, and other subjects feature in many country house libraries, and very often a battered, plain copy of a publication will reveal more than the most pristine edition in a lavish ornamental binding. In what ways did books furnish minds as well as interiors?

Beyond the demesne walls how has the world of the country house been perceived and understood in fiction, poetry, drama and, more recently, film? How have these treatments shaped a wider understanding of the country house as a cultural and literary phenomenon? Exploring the Mental World of the Country House will examine these and other related questions, and mark the twentieth anniversary of the Centre; the conference is likely to be a mix of real and online proceedings. Papers on any of the above topics relating to country houses in Ireland, the UK, Europe, or further afield will be considered. Abstracts of no more than 400 words should be sent to Professor Terence Dooley and Professor Christopher Ridgway before 19 November 2021 at the following addresses: terence.a.dooley@mu.ie and cridgway@castlehoward.co.uk.

From ArtHist.net (5 October 2021) . . .

Grinling Gibbons and the Story of Carving
Victoria and Albert Museum, London, 24–25 June 2022

Organized by Jenny Saunt, Kira d’Alburquerque, and Ada de Wit

Proposals due by 10 January 2022

Grinling Gibbons (1648–1721) is the most celebrated carver in British history. His closely observed depictions of full-bodied natural forms, executed in hyperreal detail, captivated audiences of his own time as much as they captivate us today. But how much is really known about this man, his work, and its implications in terms of the way we think about carving now? As part of the year-long Gibbons tercentenary celebrations of 2021/22, this conference explores the story of Gibbons but also investigates broader themes around the subject of carving in a European context from 1600 to 1800.

On day one, an invited panel of speakers will present the latest research on Grinling Gibbons and his work. For the second day, we invite papers that explore all aspects of the processes of production and design in the story of carving in early modern Britain and in terms of international exchanges. Topics of interest are wide ranging and include design, sources, materials, methods, training, tools, techniques, business and workshop structures, branding, professional networks, and nineteenth- and twentieth century engagement with and reinterpretation of the carved work produced in this period. Intersections and interactions are of particular interest. In what ways did the lives and careers of practitioners contemporary to Grinling Gibbons and the careers of his assistants and apprentices relate to each other and how did this impact the work produced? What were the exchanges between carving and other related disciplines of the time, such as ship building, furniture production and frame making? Using examples of early modern practice, how can we expand our understanding of the meaning of design sources and processes, be that through print or other material or social cultures of the time; how did these interplay and how can they be questioned and quantified? How can we develop methodologies to investigate these makers and their understanding of their own working processes, their relationships with materials and tools, and what new insights can be gained from this type of exploration? How did such factors work together to create the type of physical forms that are so recognisable as the product of Gibbons’ world?

Papers should be 20 minutes in length and include a PowerPoint. Please send an abstract of 250–300 words, with name, title, institution, and short bio (100 words max) to grinling.gibbons@vam.ac.uk. The deadline for paper proposals is 10th January 2022. Notification for acceptance will be sent by 7th February 2022.

Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, The Scourge of the Serpents (detail), 1732–35, oil on canvas
(Venice: Gallerie dell’Accademia)

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From ArtHist.net and the Accademia:

The Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries at the Gallerie dell’Accademia: New Studies
Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice, 22–23 February 2022

Organized by Giulio Manieri Elia and Michele Nicolaci

Proposals due by 10 December 2021

The inauguration of the new Seicento and Settecento rooms at the Gallerie dell’Accademia represents a fundamental part of the re-installation of the museum’s collections that has finally been completed with the ground floor organized around 13 rooms, with a chronological arc from the seventeenth to the ninenteenth centuries. Among the 62 works now visible to the public—including absolute highlights of the period’s artistic production—many are included in the museum itinerary for the first time, and many have returned to view after significant restoration campaigns. The long gestation of this moment has enabled scrupulous examination of the works, stimulating new research and unexpected discoveries, and a rich dialogue between the museum and both the Italian and international scholarly communities.

The reopening of these spaces, which singularly represent the art of painting over these two centuries, should be considered a cue for new departures, a field of investigation for new research. Plenty of the works remain little known, and many diverse and fascinating themes merit further research: from authorship to dating, from patronage to provenance, from iconographic questions to those linked to the materials and techniques of painting and restoration history. To further this endeavour, the Gallerie will organize a workshop intended as an opportunity to share inquiries and to enrich our knowledge about the museum’s patrimony with the aim of attracting the most innovative and cutting-edge studies on the Seicento and Settecento works in the Gallerie dell’Accademia. The conference will foreground not only artworks hanging in the new rooms 5 and 6, but also the rest of the display, as well as the many works in the museum’s stores and those visible in other institutions in Venice and the Veneto (external stores). It is further hoped that the meeting will constitute a preliminary contribution to complex effort of updating the catalogue raisonné of the collections.

The workshop will be held in the Gallerie dell’Accademia over two days, one dedicated to the Seicento and one to the Settecento, with individual talks lasting 30 minutes. A portion of the conference will address restoration conducted in the museum, providing the opportunity to share conservation discoveries, doubts, and decisions with the workshop participants. The conference will take place in person, with a limited number of places available respecting the rules in place with regards to the containment of the diffusion of Covid 19 (distancing, masks, and other measures required by relevant safety protocols). Plans are also in progress for the transmission of the talks via the YouTube channel of the museum.

Candidates who wish to present should send an abstract of no more than two pages and a brief CV, in Italian or English. Research concentrating on one or more works in the museum will be privileged along with talks that significantly and concretely advance the current state of knowledge, or which offer a novel approach to understanding the works, their original context, creation, or material history. Participants may expect the costs of travel and stay in Venice to be partially or totally covered. Publication of the conference proceedings is foreseen. Proposals should be sent to michele.nicolaci@beniculturali.it by the 10th of December 2021.