Enfilade

From ArtHist.net:

The Art of the Syllabus

Centre for Research in Visual Culture, University of Nottingham, January — June 2026

Proposals due by 17 November 2025

Every year the Centre for Research in Visual Culture organises its seminar programme around a given theme. This year’s theme is The Art of the Syllabus, and for the first time we are inviting scholars to propose papers to present as part of our research programme from January to June 2026.

In histories of the teaching of art, photography, and art history, the syllabus is often sidelined. Teachers, students, institutions, even government policy: these are the threads usually pulled upon to tell this history. There is a logic to this marginalisation. Without a teacher, students, or an institution, a syllabus is redundant—a dormant document awaiting activation. Moreover, even though archives are filled with records of syllabi that have been activated, anyone who has been in a classroom knows that the syllabus itself is a poor record of what was discussed. At the same time, the syllabus captures a kind of pre-history of the classroom. It is a record of the best intentions of the teacher before the reality of the students (and the institution) intervenes. By using the syllabus as the starting point for our discussions, we are hoping we might capture the histories of teaching that never came to pass as well as those that did.

If our theme relates to your current research, we would like to hear from you. We are especially interested in hearing from scholars working on pre-twentieth century histories of art, photography, and art history pedagogy, although scholars of the twentieth- and twenty-first centuries are of course welcome as well. We are less interested in hearing about completed research projects. Conversely, if you are at the beginning of a project that resonates with our call, please do consider working through your early ideas at the CRVC. Please send a short (250 word) blurb and (50 word) bio to chloe.julius@nottingham.ac.uk by 17 November. All of our seminars take place in person on Wednesdays at 4pm. Talks should be planned to run for 45 minutes to an hour, and will be followed by a lively discussion. Travel will be reimbursed up to £150.

From ArtHist.net and The Warburg Institute:

‘Civilizing’ the World: Classicism, Neo-Classical Sculpture, and Plaster Casts

in the Service of Imperial Powers and Post-Colonial Elites, 1780–1945

The Warburg Institute, School of Advanced Study, University of London, 22–23 October 2026

Proposals due by 1 December 2025

We invite proposals for 20-minute papers for a two-day conference to be held at the Warburg Institute (School of Advanced Study, University of London) in co-organization with the Institute of Classical Studies (SAS, UoL) and the Department of the Classics (University of Reading).

Algiers, La Mosquée Djemaa-Djedid, La Statue du Duc d’Orléans.

Throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, European imperial and colonial powers used both Greco-Roman and neo-classical sculpture, as well as architecture and other art forms, to express and consolidate their authority, at home and in colonial settings, through the assertion of Eurocentric notions of ‘civilization’ and inherited supremacy. The establishment of museums and art academies, on a European model, remained a feature of nation-building by elites in many former colonies after independence.

This conference aims to bring together and foster new research into the roles that classical and neoclassical art (broadly defined) fulfilled for European colonial powers and post-colonial elites globally, seeking critical exploration and assessment of the ways classical visual culture has been reused, redefined and also contested. The conference seeks to investigate classical visual culture in the service of self-presentation among competing nations and as a means to ‘civilize’ and / or dominate indigenous, subaltern and settler populations. We encourage examination of the social, political and racial implications of engagement with the European classical tradition in both colonial and post-colonial contexts worldwide. We invite contributions on works including neo-classical sculpture, plaster casts after the antique, and works such as ethnographic life-casts, the creation and use of which amplified and illuminated concepts of race and evolution that underpinned notions of Greco-Roman cultural supremacy. While the principal focus of the conference is on sculptural works, proposals on other arts and/or the interaction of the visual and literary are also welcome.

We invite scholars at all stages of their career, including PhD students and early-career researchers, to submit proposals (300 words maximum) for 20-minute presentations. The preferred mode of attendance will be in person, and the organizers are aiming to raise funding in support of travel expenses for speakers who cannot obtain funding from elsewhere. In the light of the international scope of the topic and call for papers, please indicate whether you may be able to access travel subsidies from your own institution or other sources, and / or whether you would be prepared to attend and present online if necessary. Proposals and the accompanying statement should be sent to Eckart.Marchand@sas.ac.uk by 1 December 2025.

Organizers
Eckart Marchand (Warburg Institute), eckart.marchand@sas.ac.uk
Katherine Harloe (Institute of Classical Studies), katherine.harloe@sas.ac.uk
Amy Smith (University of Reading), a.c.smith@reading.ac.uk

From the conference website:

Mozart and His Time

Palácio Nacional da Ajuda, Lisbon, 22–24 January 2026

Organized by Aline Gallasch-Hall de Beuvink and Helena Gonçalves Pinto

Proposals due by 15 November 2025

The conference Mozart and His Time is organised by the Department of History, Art, and Humanities of the Universidade Autonoma of Lisbon, in partnership with the Ajuda National Palace (Portuguese Republic – Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sport, Museums and Monuments of Portugal) and Parques de Sintra – Monte da Lua. It is supported by CIDEHUS – University of Évora (CIDEHUS.UAL Centre).

The year 2026 commences with the commemoration of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s 270th anniversary (1756–1791) on January 27th. Universally esteemed as a prodigious genius and one of history’s most exceptional composers, Mozart lived during an era of significant upheaval. He was arguably the first composer to endeavor to be self-employed (Norbert Elias), a concept that was ahead of its time. This conference seeks to illuminate Mozart’s genius, while also fostering a greater comprehension of the era in which he lived: a period of profound political and social transformation that bridged the modern and contemporary eras.

Our national keynote speakers will be Rui Vieira Nery and Rosana Marreco Brescia. The international keynote speaker will be Mozart expert Simon Keefe, from the University of Sheffield.

We invite submissions that explore, but are not limited to, the following themes:
• The oeuvre and biography of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
• The influence of Mozart on his contemporaries
• Political, social, and cultural shifts in the latter half of the 18th century
• The reverberations of colonial revolutions in continental Europe
• Artistic movements in Central Europe during Mozart’s era (literature, painting, sculpture, architecture)
• The evolving role of women in opera and performance
• Libretti and musical performances reflecting the social transitions of the period
• The striving of artists to establish social standing
• Pivotal junctures that catalyzed social, political, philosophical, cultural, and artistic transformations (e.g., the 1755 Lisbon Earthquake, the French Revolution)

The conference languages will be Portuguese and English. Proposals should be sent as a Word or PDF document containing a title, a short abstract (maximum 250 words), and the author’s name and affiliation to the organisers at abeuvink@autonoma.pt by the 15th of November 2025.

Scientific Committee
Miguel Figueira de Faria
Rui Vieira Nery
Frédéric Vidal
Aline Gallasch-Hall de Beuvink
Roberta Stumpf
Helena Gonçalves Pinto
Rosana Marreco Brescia
Miguel Jalôto

A few sessions for next spring’s ASECS conference are still finalizing participants and hoping for submissions, including this one on “Lighting the Enlightenment.” Do get in touch with chairs right away if you have an idea (there may be a little wiggle room even with the late deadline).

Session | Lighting the Enlightenment:

Artificial Light and the Transformation of Cultural Practices

ASECS Annual Conference, Philadelphia, 9–11 April 2026

Proposals due by 3 October 2025

Chairs: Sophie Raux, Université Lumière Lyon 2, LARHRA, sophie.raux@9online.fr; and Marie Thebaud-Sorger, CNRS, Centre Alexandre-Koyré Paris, marie.thebaud-sorger@cnrs.fr

The renewal of theories of light in the eighteenth century, alongside the development of practices and uses related to the economy of lighting—such as lamps—contributed to shaping a metaphorical understanding of luminous phenomena within the broader discourse of rationalization that characterized the aptly named Age of Enlightenment. Artificial light came to be seen as a manifestation of humanity’s ability to overcome natural constraints, enabling the development of a wide range of practices—nocturnal sociability, theater, art academies, night work, domestic interiors—aligned with the transformation of material environments aimed at improving comfort, safety, and hygiene.

In recent years, interdisciplinary approaches have opened new avenues for research that move beyond literary or visual representations, emphasizing the role of material culture, technology, and sensory experience in shaping historical analysis. This panel invites proposals that explore how artificial lighting influenced, enabled, or transformed social, artistic, and literary practices. To what extent did innovations in lighting modify, inspire, or make possible such practices? What relationships emerged between technical innovation and artistic or literary creativity? How did artificial light affect the visual cultures of the Enlightenment? What were its implications for the history of vision and representation? We welcome contributions from a wide range of perspectives, including literary studies, theater studies, art history, the history of technology, the history of knowledge, and sensory studies. Special attention will be given to papers that reflect on methodological questions—for instance, the role of digital simulation or reenactment in reconstructing past sensory experiences. All submissions must be submitted through the Annual Meeting and Membership Portal.

From ArtHist.net and the Call for Papers:

Decentring Europe: Nordic–Iberian Histories in Transregional Perspective

University of Gothenburg, 21–22 May 2026

Proposals due by 15 November 2025

We are writing to announce the Call for Papers for the fourth workshop of SWESP, the International Research Network on Iberian–Nordic Contacts throughout History. The workshop is free of charge, and we offer partial bursaries to cover travel costs for doctoral students and early-career researchers with limited access to funding.

This interdisciplinary conference will explore the multifaceted connections and entanglements between the Nordic and Iberian worlds. Moving beyond traditional centre-periphery and modernisation narratives, the event aims to foster dialogue on how exchanges across these regions have shaped diplomatic, economic, political, and cultural networks from the late medieval period to the contemporary era. We welcome approaches from comparative and transnational history, histoire croisée (entangled history), and other interdisciplinary frameworks that examine both the continental lands and the overseas territories of these regions.

We invite contributions from a wide range of disciplines, including history, literature, arts, philosophy, and the social sciences. Topics may include, but are not limited to:
• Cross-regional diplomatic, religious, and military networks
• Movements of people, goods, and ideas; political exile and migration
• Comparative studies of governance, reform, and military/maritime infrastructures
• Cultural exchange, translation, and artistic reception; knowledge production and scientific transfer
• Comparative gender, family, and welfare structures
• Environmental and climatic histories
• Transregional solidarities and intellectual entanglements

We encourage submissions that focus on specific historical periods or adopt cross-temporal perspectives. The workshop aims to illuminate the shared questions and conceptual paradigms that emerge from studying the Nordic and Iberian regions in relation to one another. Proposals should be sent as a Word or PDF document containing a title, a short abstract (maximum 250 words), and the author’s name and affiliation to the organisers at swespnet@gmail.com by 15 November 2025. The results of the selection process will be communicated by 15 December 2025. If you wish to request a bursary, please include a short motivation letter (maximum 250 words) explaining how attending the workshop may impact your career, with details of available funding.

Organising Committee
A. Jorge Aguilera-López (University of Helsinki), Enrique J. Corredera Nilsson (University of Bern), Lucila Mallart (Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona), Kenneth Nyberg (University of Gothenburg), Ingmar Söhrman (University of Gothenburg)

Mughal Artist, Europeans Bring Gifts to Shah-Jahan (July 1633), detail ca. 1635–50, 34 × 24 cm
(Royal Collection Trust, RCIN 1005025.t).

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From the Call for Papers (which includes French and Italian versions) . . .

Diplomatic Gifts in the Modern and Contemporary Eras:

Definitions, Changes, and Patrimonialisation on a Global Scale

French Academy in Rome – Villa Medici, Rome, 2-3 March 2026

Proposals due by 15 October 2025

The eloquent evidence of peaceful trade, diplomatic gifts have been the subject of significant research in recent decades. Following Marcel Mauss’s seminal work on the anthropology of gift-giving, historians of modern diplomacy (Frigo; Bély) have focused on the material and political contexts in which intercultural and interreligious exchanges have taken place. While connected history has taken significant objects as its landmarks (Subrahmanyam; Gruzinski; Cooke), art history (Castelluccio; Rado) has profitably focused on the relationships between diplomacy and trade, on technical and artistic transfers, and on circuits and actors, particularly from the perspective of the involvement of royal, imperial or national factories. Researchers have placed strong emphasis on case studies in specific areas of exchange or types of gifts. More recently, legal historians have analysed how contemporary regulations have sought to replace frequent corrupt practices with transparency.

Using connected, material and post-colonial art histories, as well as cultural anthropology and museography, this symposium wishes to better understand these ‘ambassador objects’ (Kasarhérou) in their semantic richness, materiality and temporalities, and to consider the fertile ‘rhizomes’ (Bachir Diagne) that they fertilise in other territories. The aim of this reflection is, first of all, to take a fresh look at the definitions and sometimes tenuous distinctions between diplomatic gifts, tributary presents and spoils of war, commemorative commissions or creations, as well as their different roles (symbolic, emotional, pacifying, political, etc.) in the institution of international relations and the ritualisation of exchanges, by combining especially anthropology and political history. The aim is to analyze, by comparing narratives, the status they have on both sides of the chain, in various contexts.

The cultural practice of friendship gifts immediately raises the question of the conditions under which they are commissioned and produced, as well as the symbolic value of the materials. As studies articulating history of diplomacy and history of trade (Zhao and Simon; Schaub; Guerzoni) have demonstrated, gifts solicit support from local skills and crafts, as well as factories, or innovative technologies, while also promoting, legitimising and celebrating the high level of mastery of their producers, echoing in this way the prosperity and perfect governance of the territory that produced them. Concerning the creators, they may be employed by the powerful, or even benefit, as autonomous artists, from competition between princes. In some cases, particularly in interfaith relations, the emissaries themselves may be involved in the creation of these gifts. Alongside the use of traditional Indigenous productions or commissioned works, the potential use of hybrid objects or ‘border objects’ will also be examined—objects that carry acclimated external cultures and embody multiple layers of meaning, such as dynastic gifts. By addressing the choice of objects and their materiality in the light of economic and socio-cultural phenomena, and without neglecting the history of religion and the weight of ideologies, the conference aims to compare the order processes, the methods of adaptation and the balance between norms and freedoms, by recontextualising practices and examining the underlying strategies of domination.

If the uniqueness of a ceremonial gift lies in the richness and sophistication of its message, which simultaneously represents the giver and is tailored to the recipient, in the magnificence of its execution or material, but also in the ritual of its presentation, the typologies of chosen objects are many: official portraits, carpets, militaria, tableware, naturalia, costumes, jewellery and watches, religious or apotropaic objects, or even animals and court dwarfs, etc. The presentations will explore a variety of cases and will pay particular attention to certain specific objects that are, by their very nature, diplomatic gifts, such as presentation portraits, medals, handsteinen, or peace pipes.

Considering the long history of diplomatic relations, the conference aims above all to fully analyse the evolving agency of gifts, from the strengthening of princely dynastic alliances to the consolidation of nation states, as well as the way in which the objects offered construct and potentially reconfigure links. How do these objects fit into a policy of gift-giving, whether serial or renewed over time? According to what rituals must these witnesses, which seal the agreement, themselves reactivate the alliance (counter-gift, reconnection journey, etc.)? How are they perceived and understood a few years after they were offered, and when they become part of discourses on patrimonialisation, especially in places dedicated to their collective conservation, which are themselves, in turn, active tools? What reflections about space and display accompany these objects, with what staging, visual strategies, and what use of materials during the diplomatic encounter, and once they have been deposited with the recipient? What discourses and narratives do they represent? Furthermore, what happens to gifts that do not reach their intended recipients, and what is their symbolic impact? Some gifts, testimonies of peaceful ties, have been appropriated by other dominant, colonising or occupying powers: what were the sometimes complex circuits, cultural or propagandistic issues, and effects of semantic transfers?

The conference, hosted by the Académie de France à Rome – Villa Médicis, will also benefit from visits to relevant sites and collections and from a comparison with contemporary practices of protocol exchanges. It will debate from polycentric perspectives, encouraging cross-views on the phenomena and analysing sources bilaterally or multilaterally. Particularly welcome, without exclusions, are contributions focusing on enlarged geographical frameworks (from the Viceroyalty of New Spain to the Mughal or Chinese courts, from Versailles or Venice to Topkapi or Damascus, from the court of the Oba to that of Portugal, etc.) and shedding light on the following themes:
• Diplomatic gifts, their variations, and definitions
• The conditions under which gifts were made and the role of intermediaries (artists, princes, ministers, diplomats, protocol officers, building superintendents, merchants, etc.)
• The object’s lives, its staging and locations (palaces, studioli, cabinets of curiosities, galleries, official salons, etc.), ephemeral decorations, and architecture
• The meanings of the offering in context and its impact on international relations, the links between diplomatic gifts and commercial or religious strategies
• Analysis of representations, in all their forms, of exchanges of gifts (diplomatic embassies, Christian missions, ecumenical meetings, alliances, dynastic celebrations, translation ceremonies, etc.)
• The variety of commemorations of the gift (including discursive and spectacular forms) and cross-analysis of visual, literary, and historical narratives
• Patrimonialisation of diplomatic gifts: from princely collections to missionary, ethnographic, national, presidential, or transnational museums
• The evolution of gifts in relation to diplomatic practices (codification, professionalisation)
• Aborted gifts and unexpected captures, the authentication and falsification of diplomatic gifts with their material traces, provenance research on diplomatic gifts
• Diplomatic donations in the context of regulatory practices (sumptuary laws, transparency policies, etc.)

Interested researchers should send a proposal for a paper with a title and abstract (maximum 3000 characters) and a biographical presentation (maximum 5–10 lines) with their current affiliation to the following addresses by 15 October 2025: natachapernac@yahoo.fr; valqhristova@yahoo.fr; and patrizia.celli@villamedici.it. Proposals and papers may be submitted in French, Italian, or English. The organisation will cover the accommodation and meals of the speakers and will help in finding financial support for their travel expenses.

Organizing Committee
• Patrizia Celli, assistante chargée des colloques et du secrétariat du Département d’histoire de l’art – référente archives, Académie de France à Rome – Villa Médicis
• Alessandro Gallicchio, directeur du Département d’histoire de l’art, Académie de France à Rome – Villa Médicis
• Valentina Hristova, maîtresse de conférences en histoire de l’art moderne, Université de Picardie Jules Verne, Amiens
• Natacha Pernac, maîtresse de conférences en histoire de l’art moderne, Université Paris-Nanterre

Scientific Committee
• Lucien Bély, professeur émérite d’histoire moderne, Paris, Sorbonne Université, membre de l’Institut, Académie des sciences morales et politiques
• Francesco Freddolini, Professore associato di storia dell’arte moderna, Rome, Sapienza – Università di Roma
• Serge Gruzinski, directeur de recherche émérite en histoire, Paris, CNRS / EHESS
• Guido Guerzoni, historian and economist, adjunct professor, Milan, Università Luigi Bocconi
• Mei Mei Rado, Assistant Professor of Textile and Dress History, New York, Bard Graduate Center