Call for Papers | The Street and the City: Thresholds
From the conference website:
The Street and the City: Thresholds
University of Lisbon, 5–7 April 2017
The Street and the City: Thresholds is the second of a series of multidisciplinary conferences with special emphasis on cities and the life that has evolved around them through time. Although English studies play a central role in this conference series from both cultural and geographical points of view, other fields of study relating to the conference theme are welcome. The first International Conference The Street and the City: Awakenings drew participants from a wide array of disciplines, such as literature, architecture, sociology, tourism or gender studies, to name but a few. This second conference aims for a comprehensive view of the street and the city focusing on its streets and people as well as on its less known spaces and hidden gems.
Throughout the centuries cities have been hubs of cultural experience and exchange, bringing people together time and again. The streets have been the public space where peoples and individuals both merge in a web and are isolated in the crowd. Cities have also channelled the voices of unsatisfied or rebellious citizens in periods of crises, or become a platform for gathering collective support in dire moments. In times of such conflicts, cities open up spaces for hope and multicultural dialogue. Such dynamics and challenges of an urban milieu constantly pose new questions to researchers concerning, for example, aspects of aesthetic and political representation, and the ways they are interpreted and experienced. Thus, studies of such currents and challenges have become highly diversified, promoting a variety of perspectives of the space we identify ourselves with.
Lisbon is the 2017 Ibero-American Capital of Culture, in the words of the City Council, an “event [which] will be the catalyst for a year of artistic innovation, in which there will be recognition of the historical processes and exchanges of ideas that underpin the relationships between European and American cities, and an acknowledgement of current artistic production, which is unique and intrinsically diverse.” In this sense, we wish to welcome everyone to share this urban atmosphere, which goes beyond the boundaries of Europe and connects the city in a global way.
The Second International Conference The Street and the City: Thresholds will take place at the School of Arts and Humanities, University of Lisbon, and at the Estoril Higher Institute for Tourism and Hotel Studies from 5 to 7 April 2017.
This scholarly meeting keeps its primary goal of fostering an interdisciplinary debate within English studies and of serving as a productive space for disseminating the most recent academic research alongside the studies of culture, urban studies and other fields of interest in relation to cities, their spaces and cultures. While encouraging the interchange of different academic perspectives, the Organising Committee also aims to promote informal networking gatherings among its participants. As such, topics and themes of interest—related to the Street and/or the City—include, but are not restricted to, the following:
• Aesthetic Representations of the City
• Cities as Havens of Hope or Despair
• Streets and Cities as Hives of Negotiation
• Gendered Urban Spaces
• Imagined Cities
• Literary Cities
• Mobility in the City and Urban Flows
• Streets, Consumerism and Fashion
• Sustainable Cities
• The City and Community Expressions
• The City and the Commons
• The Street and the Senses
• The Political Street
• The Tourist and the Flâneur
• Urban Cultural Heritage
• Urban Rhythms
We welcome suggestions for papers, pre-organised panels, and roundtables (20 minutes per speaker) by 28th February 2017, to be submitted on the conference webpage. Abstracts of 300 words for individual papers of twenty-minute duration. Please include the full title of your paper, name, institutional affiliation, contact information (postal address and e-mail address) and a bionote (max. 100 words).
Call for Papers | Source: Notes in the History of Art
Source: Notes in the History of Art
We welcome essays on art from any period or geographical area of interest. Our concise format—up to 2500 words and 3 illustrations—is perfect for introducing fresh interpretations, discoveries, and speculations, resolving old points of dispute, and bringing new ones to light.
Source was founded in 1981 as a scholarly journal in art history. Its mission is to publish articles of 2500 words or less, accompanied by a maximum of three illustrations. The range of articles spans antiquity to the present and includes western and non-western art. The original premise has been borne out: there is an audience for scholarly articles in art history that are clearly written, adequately illustrated, and above all, succinct. Furthermore, scholars welcome having a forum to present ideas and speculations that don’t warrant a major treatise but might nevertheless make interesting ‘notes’ for specialists and non-specialists alike.
Manuscripts may be submitted in English, French, or German. Please note that French, German, or other foreign-language submissions take more time to review, and so even a draft English translation is preferable.
More information is available here»
Editor: John Cunnally
Sponsored by the Bard Graduate Center, New York
Call for Papers | Water, Gods, and the Iconography of Power
Design for a Carriage Built by Andrea Cornely after a design by Ciro Ferri, engraving published in An Account of His Excellence, Roger Earl of Castelmaine’s Embassy from His Sacred Majesty James the II King of England, Scotland, France and Ireland &c. To His Holiness Innocent XI (London, ca. 1687). London: V&A 19393. Inscriptions read: “The Tritons behind support two Majestic figures of Neptune & Britannia who extend each / an Arm & rear up the Imperial Crown of England’ and in the lower center of the plate, “A Marine Lion with two Genii each curbing ye Lion & Unicorn, one next Neptune holds his Trident”
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
A donde Neptuno reina: Water, Gods and the Iconography
of Early Modern Power (16th–18th Centuries)
CHAM Conference—Oceans and Shores: Heritage, People, and Environments
Lisbon, 12–15 July 2017
Proposals due by 1 February 2017
Since Antiquity, the personification of water—rivers or seas—has been a recurrent elements in the iconography related to power. From the Tigris to the Ganges, from the Mare Nostrum to the Atlantic Sea, water seems to have been an essential element in the visual display of powerful monarchies and empires. After the European discovery of the Americas, oceans started also to play an extraordinary role in allegorical representations, especially in Spain and Portugal, though elsewhere, too. This panel approaches water iconography, especially as related to oceans, as a mode of representation of power during the early modern period, addressing its role in politics and culture. We are interested in arts, music, and literature, and how they relate to the iconography of water and its relationship with power. Especially welcome are cross-disciplinary contributions, proposals that address different cases studies in a comparative way, and studies focused on ephemeral architecture and theatrical contexts. Topics may include, but are not limited to:
• Ephemeral art: Celebrations of victories, kings’ birthdays, or even religious events were the perfect context for the representation of water as the image of rulers.
• Prints, emblems, and propaganda: How does the topic relate to rulers’ propaganda?
• European powers and the new geography: How did sovereigns employ discoveries into their own images of power?
• Odes, poetry, and epic: How did literature use the image of oceans and rivers to glorify rulers, and what were the implications for the visual arts?
More information is available at the CHAM conference website, and please direct any questions to Dr. Pilar Diez del Corral Corredoira, diezdelcorralcorredoira@tu-berlin.de. Proposals are due by 1 February 2017.
Call for Articles | French Porcelain, 1789–1918
Makers, Markets, and Museums: French Porcelain in the Long Nineteenth Century, 1789–1918
The French Porcelain Society Journal 7 (2018)
Proposals due by 7 April 2017
The French Porcelain Society Journal is the leading academic English-language journal on European ceramics and their histories, illustrated throughout in full colour. The society is pleased to announce the publication of Volume 6, Céramiques sans Frontières: The Transfer of Ceramic Designs and Technologies across Europe. Based on the society’s 2015 symposium, fourteen articles investigate the impact of French ceramic design on makers elsewhere in Europe and in Britain in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. These range from an analysis of the transfer of the Istoriato maiolica tradition from Italy to France in the late sixteenth century and an account by J.V.G. Mallet of the travels of Walther Ehrenfried von Tschirnhaus to an investigation of the links between Sèvres and Minton porcelain in the nineteenth century. For a full list of contents or to order, please consult the society’s website.
The editors now invite submissions for volume 7 of the journal, Makers, Markets, and Museums: French Porcelain in the Long Nineteenth Century, 1789–1918, to be published in 2018. From the dispersal of Sèvres porcelain from royal palaces and aristocratic collections after the French Revolution to the founding of outstanding collections of French porcelain in Britain and the United States and the establishment of new museums for the decorative arts, the nineteenth century was undoubtedly one of seismic change. It witnessed the growth of a flourishing London art market and new departures in collecting French eighteenth-century decorative art, all encouraged by the rise of the dealer. Innovation in design and manufacture was documented in a plethora of printed specialist publications, pattern books and popular journals. It is hoped that this volume will enlarge our understanding of this under-researched but important aspect of ceramic history.
The journal will include an article based on the 2016 Geoffrey de Bellaigue lecture given to the society by Dr Tom Stammers (Durham University) on “Baron Jean-Charles Davillier: A Paragon and Historian of Taste in Nineteenth-Century France.” Topics for consideration could include:
• Nineteenth-century French ceramics or those of other factories influenced by them
• Nineteenth-century collectors
• Methods of display in the nineteenth-century interior
• The role of new museums, exhibitions, and publications in advancing the study and collecting of French ceramics
• The dealer, the auction, and the art market
• New technical advances in ceramic production
• Connoisseurship
Submissions in the first instance should be a summary of no more than 750 words, with a brief description of the argument, a historiography and a note of the research tools and sources used. Please include a brief CV. The journal accepts articles in French as well as in English. The volume will comprise about 15 articles which will be peer reviewed by the editorial board and the FPS council of academic and museum specialists which includes: Dame Rosalind Savill, DBE, FBA, FSA (Curator Emeritus, The Wallace Collection, London); Oliver Fairclough, FSA, John Whitehead, FSA, Patricia Ferguson, Errol Manners, FSA, Diana Davis and Caroline McCaffrey-Howarth (University of Leeds). Articles should be no more than 6,000 words in length excluding endnotes. Up to 15 high-resolution images per article will be accepted. Please send abstracts as an e-mail attachment to: diana_davis@hotmail.co.uk by 7 April 2017. If your abstract is accepted, articles and images will be due by 29 September 2017.
Call for Papers | Jacques-François Blondel
From the appel à communications:
Jacques-François Blondel et l’enseignement de l’architecture
La dernière leçon de l’architecture « à la française »
Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine, Paris, 14 December 2017
Proposals due by 31 March 2017
Gabriel de Saint-Aubin, Blondel démontrant des machines dans l’académie d’architecture, 1770, Recueil de poésies de Sedaine, 1770 (Chantilly, musée Condé).
La Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine et la Ville de Metz se sont associées pour organiser une journée d’étude sur l’architecte Jacques-François Blondel (1708/9–1774). L’objectif de cette journée est d’interroger le rôle de cette gure majeure du siècle des Lumières dans l’enseignement de l’architecture. Cette rencontre annonce l’exposition monographique Blondel, architecte des Lumières, qui sera présentée à Metz en 2018, et l’exposition-dossier qui lui sera consacrée à la Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine la même année.
Parmi les architectes ayant publié des traités ou des « cours » sur l’exercice de leur art, Jacques-Francois Blondel se distingue par la qualité de ses ouvrages. Auteur majeur de la théorie architecturale, ce collaborateur de l’Encyclopédie de Diderot et d’Alembert a su, au cœur des Lumières, redonner une actualité à l’architecture classique, en s’opposant à l’art rocaille qui domine alors. Pour J.-F. Blondel, l’architecture possède une dimension encyclopédique — elle mobilise à la fois les savoirs techniques et les di érents arts — mais aussi sociale. Les écrits de J.-F. Blondel sont par ailleurs indissociables de son action pédagogique : avec la fondation de son École des Arts (1740), qui se propose de centraliser la diversité des compétences, il opère une véritable révolution pédagogique. Cette révolution, le professeur la mène jusque dans les salles de l’Académie royale d’architecture, où il est agréé académicien en 1755, puis nommé professeur o ciel en 1762. Au cours de sa longue carrière, il a l’occasion de former plusieurs générations d’architectes français et étranger, ainsi que d’in uencer des artisans, des amateurs, des commanditaires, des hommes de lettres… En ce qui concerne la pratique, J.-F. Blondel est surtout connu pour avoir aménagé le secteur de la cathédrale de Metz. On ne saurait cependant ignorer ses projets, rééls ou pédagogiques, tels l’aménagement du centre de Strasbourg, ou ses propositions d’architecture religieuse inspirées par les structures du gothique, mais respectant le répertoire classique des formes.
Les propositions devront s’intégrer dans les thèmatiques suivantes :
1. Blondel et les institutions : de son école privée à l’école de l’Académie
Par la volonté du marquis de Marigny, directeur général des bâtiments du roi, J.-F. Blondel, après avoir fondé l’école privée d’architecture (1740), est appelé à poursuivre son enseignement dans les salles du Louvre (1762), secondé par son ancien élève, Julien-David Le Roy. Ce premier axe entend explorer la manière dont le système royal des beaux-arts fut mis en place et le rôle que J.-F. Blondel et d’autres personnages-clés, furent amenés à y jouer. Cette thématique voudrait également interroger les résultats de cette politique.
2. Enseigner l’architecture aux XVIIIe et XIXe siècles : de l’atelier à l’école de l’Académie, quelle fortune pour Jacques-François Blondel ?
Avant que J.-F. Blondel ne fonde l’École des Arts en 1740, chaque élève se formait à son futur métier en atelier, en agence, auprès de di érents professionnels (architecte, dessinateur, charpentier…). J.-F. Blondel révolutionne l’enseignement de l’architecture : il rassemble les cours dispensés par plusieurs professeurs dans de mêmes locaux. En 1747, lors de la réorganisation de son école, c’est encore J.-F. Blondel qui est sollicité pour enseigner l’architecture aux élèves de l’École des ponts et chaussées. Au-delà de cette méthode d’enseignement, comment les professeurs qui succèdent à J.-F. Blondel cherchent-ils à l’imiter ou à se démarquer de lui ? Quels liens ou ruptures peut-on établir avec l’enseignement dispensé au XIXe siècle, que ce soit à Paris ou ailleurs ?
La langue du colloque est de préférence le français. L’anglais est cependant accepté. Les propositions et les communications sont acceptées dans ces deux langues. Les propositions de communication sont à envoyer sous forme d’un résumé (entre 1500 et 2000 signes) accompa- gnées d’un titre et d’une notice biographique à l’adresse suivante : blondel@citechaillot.fr. Date limite d’envoi des propositions : 31 mars 2017 Les réponses seront communiquées début mai. La durée de chaque communication est de 20 mn. Les communications feront l’objet d’une captation video ; elles seront mises en ligne sur le site internet de la Ville de Metz et celui de la Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine.
Comité scientifique
Présidence:
• Corinne Bélier, directrice du musée des Monuments français, Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine
• Aurélien Davrius, maître-assistant à l’École nationale supérieure d’architecture de Paris-Malaquais
• Joseph Abram, professeur honoraire à l’École nationale supérieure d’architecture de Nancy
• Pierre Caye, directeur de recherche au CNRS
• Lorenzo Diez, directeur de l’École nationale supérieure d’architecture de Nancy
• Guillaume Fonkenell, conservateur du patrimoine, musée national de la Renaissance, Écouen
• Jean-Marc Hofman, attaché de conservation, Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine
• Olga Medvedkova, directrice de recherche au CNRS
• Stéphanie Quantin, conservateur du patrimoine, Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine
• Hélène Rousteau-Chambon, professeur d’histoire de l’art moderne, Université de Nantes
Call for Papers | Beyond Reproductive Printmaking, 1500–1810
From H-ArtHist:
Beyond Reproductive Printmaking: Prints and the Canon of European Painting, ca. 1500–1810
Diesseits und jenseits von Reproduktion: Druckgrafik und der Kanon der europäischen Malerei
Kupferstich-Kabinett, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, 18–19 September 2017
Proposals due by 15 February 2017
Conference for Ph.D. students, postgraduates and researchers at museums and universities in the Kupferstich-Kabinett (Museum of Prints, Drawings and Photographs) of the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden (Dresden State Art Collections) in collaboration with the TU Dresden Institute of Art and Music, Dresden, 18–19 September 2017.
Are paintings reproduced because they are famous, or have they become famous because they have been reproduced over and over again in the past centuries? The aim of this conference is to throw light on the status of reproductive prints in the process of the formation of (an) artistic canon(s). It aims at exploring artistic and technical aspects of the creative and innovative making process, including the printmakers’ ability to translate the original work into a new pictorial language and to the history of both reception and transmission of works of art.
The conference will cover the period running from the early 16th century to the introduction of the first lithographic press in the early 19th century. Geographically, the focus is on Europe. No restrictions are imposed concerning printing techniques—on the contrary, the characteristics of each technique as well as its ability and uses for reproducing original paintings constitute an important topic. We invite submissions of papers drawing from current research on specific prints or series of prints as well as on new theoretical approaches and methodologically promising developments in the study of interpretative prints, also exploring their potential as a source and as a subject matter of art history.
In particular we welcome submissions in (but not limited to) the following areas:
• Yet again: The original and its graphic interpretation(s): How are collaboration and competition amongst the printmakers themselves, and between the engravers and the painters represented in the prints? To what extent did the engravers take liberties with the paintings’ details? Did printmakers even perhaps hide critical or satirical messages in their interpretations?
• Questions of style: How is the painterly style of the original expressed in the graphic medium? What is the relationship between the printmaker’s technique and the pictorial style or the genre of the original? Is there experimental ground for innovations in new printmaking techniques? What role do special printmaking techniques—e.g. outline etching, aquatint, or colour(ed) print—play in the processes of translation and interpretation?
• Reception: How were differences in style and in composition between the original and its reproduction perceived by the contemporary viewer? Is it possible to identify links between prints and theoretical writings on certain paintings or painting in general? Which influence do captions have in the process of reception?
• Reproductive prints as a source for new approaches in scholarship: What potential do reproductive prints have as a source for the study of canon formation and for (art) historical network research? How can the pictorial and textual information contained in those prints be gathered, and how can this be made accessible for practical use?
An important objective of the conference is to encourage networking between academic researchers and museum professionals. Proposals by both doctoral candidates in art history and aesthetics as well as students aiming at a Ph.D. in the field of the graphic arts are welcome. We also invite applications from curators and postgraduate researchers at museums and other research institutions, and we are pleased to receive papers from colleagues working in media studies, philosophy, and history.
Please submit your proposal in the form of a 400-word abstract and a short CV and send it in English or German as a PDF file to beyond-reproduction-2017@gmx.de by 15 February 2017. Please indicate in your proposal those prints that you wish to discuss in the original; we will be happy to check if they are available in the Kupferstich-Kabinett.
Call for Papers | The Art of Revolutions
From H-ArtHist:
The Art of Revolutions
Philadelphia, 19–21 October 2017
Proposals due by 15 March 2017
The tumult and transformations resulting from the Age of Revolutions (1770s–1840s) created a trans-Atlantic body of art and material culture that reflected and inspired new ideas and actions. Inspired by the American Philosophical Society’s 2017 exhibition on the legacy of the patriot portraitist Charles Willson Peale and his artistic family from the eighteenth century until the middle of the nineteenth, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMA)’s forthcoming publication of The Art of the Peales: Adaptations and Innovations, along with a series of other Peale-centric events happening in Philadelphia, the APS and PMA will co-sponsor a scholarly conference, 19–21 October 2017, that explores the role of imagery in influencing and giving meaning to the political revolutions that defined the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The conference is especially interested in papers covering the American Revolution, the French Revolution, the Circum-Caribbean Revolutions, and the Revolutions of 1848.
Potential topics include
• the work of individual artists or artistic movements
• the role and influence of those who reproduced artwork for the public, such as printers or engravers
• the ways in which works were received by audiences
• the function of art in shaping public perceptions both at the time of revolutionary events and through historic memory
We hope the chronological scope and transatlantic breadth of the conference will stimulate an interdisciplinary dialogue that crosses traditional geographic barriers and transcends the limitations of strict periodization.
Applicants should submit a title and 250-word proposal along with a CV by March 15, 2017 to conferences@amphilsoc.org. Decisions will be made by the summer of 2017. All presenters will receive travel subsidies and hotel accommodations. Accepted papers will be due a month before the conference and pre-circulated to registered attendees. Papers should be no longer than 15-double spaced pages. Presenters may also have the opportunity to publish revised papers in the APS’s Proceedings, one of the longest running scholarly journals in America.
Call for Proposals | Companion to 18th-Century Literary Illustration
A Companion to Eighteenth-Century Literary Illustration, Volume I: Approaches
Edited by Leigh G. Dillard and Christina Ionescu
Proposals due by 20 January 2017
Proposals are invited for the first installment in a multi-volume collection, titled A Companion to Eighteenth-Century Literary Illustration. The first volume is designed for students and established researchers seeking an introduction to approaches in this field; it can also be used for book illustration scholars seeking to extend their theoretical and methodological tool kit. Contributions should provide an introduction to pertinent theoretical terms and concepts, a practical demonstration, and suggestions for further reading. When possible, examples should be chosen from more than one national tradition. We invite proposals on the following topics to fill gaps in our existing commitments:
• Book illustration and consumer culture
• Book illustration and fashion studies/costume studies
• Book illustration and visual rhetoric
Please send 300–500 word proposals to Christina Ionescu (cionescu@mta.ca) and Leigh Dillard (leigh.dillard@ung.edu) by January 20, 2017. The deadline for the submission of completed chapters will be December 15, 2017.
Call for Papers | Design and Displacement: Graduate Student Symposium
From H-ArtHist:
Design and Displacement
26th Annual Parsons/Cooper Hewitt Graduate Student Symposium on the History of Design
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, New York, 7–8 April 2017
Proposals due by 23 January 2017
The challenges faced by vast numbers of migrants and refugees worldwide—uprooted by war, persecution, or ecological crises or relocating in search of economic opportunity—are giving rise to innovative design solutions. Although often urgent, these crises are unfortunately rarely new. This symposium attempts to take a broader historical view of the relationship of design and decorative arts to the displacement and movement of people and populations since the Renaissance. From French Huguenot artisans emigrating to England in the early 18th century to artisans exiled in the wake of the 1848 revolutions to the Bauhaus’s re-establishment after its dissolution by the fascists to designers’ migrations all over the world, the movement of populations has spurred great change in the cultural landscape, including the creation of opportunities for new cross-cultural synthesis. Migrations also inspire architectural solutions, such as temporary housing for displaced persons during wartime or natural disasters or more substantial interventions into the landscape, such as buildings erected to accommodate the exponential growth of cities like Lagos or Rio de Janeiro. Papers might consider historical or contemporary designers or whole populations. The symposium also seeks to address issues of national and transnational identity as well as anti-immigrant sentiment.
Proposals are welcome from graduate students at any level in fields such as art history, history of design, design studies, fashion studies, history of the decorative arts, urban studies, cultural anthropology, history of architecture, consumer studies, design and technology, media studies, museum studies, food studies.
The symposium’s Catherine Hoover Voorsanger Keynote speaker will be Jeremy Aynsley, professor of design history at the University of Brighton (UK) and chair of the Design History Society. Professor Aynsley’s research interests concern late-19th- and 20th-century design in Europe and the United States, with a particular focus on design in modern Germany, which he has explored in major exhibitions and academic publications including Nationalism and Internationalism in Design in the 20th Century (1994), Graphic Design in Germany 1890–1945 (2000), and Designing Modern Germany (2009). He is especially interested in the phenomenon of the migration of Modernism and is currently working on a project about German graphic designers in the United States on the eve of World War II. The keynote address will be given on Friday evening, April 7, 2017, and the symposium sessions will be held in the morning and afternoon of Saturday, April 8.
To submit a proposal, send a two-page abstract, one-page bibliography, and a CV to Ethan Robey, Associate Director, MA Program in the History of Design and Curatorial Studies, robeye@newschool.edu.
The symposium is sponsored by the MA History of Design and Curatorial Studies program, offered jointly by Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum and Parsons School of Design.
Call for Papers | Visual and Material Culture Exchange across the Baltic
From H-ArtHist:
Visual and Material Culture Exchange across the Baltic Sea Region, 1772–1918
Greifswald University, 15–18 June 2017
Proposals due by 15 December 2016
Although the Baltic Sea has been one of the world’s greatest cultural crossroads, scholars often have overlooked cultural exchange in favor of exploring national and regional identities. Since the 1990s, the concept of a Baltic Sea Region encompassing the sea and its surrounding land has fostered transnational thinking about the region, transcending Cold War binaries of ‘East’ and ‘West’ in an effort to view the area more holistically. Still, common terminology such as ‘Scandinavia’ and ‘the Baltic States’, suggests these cultures are mutually exclusive, or, as the case with ‘Central and Eastern Europe’, ambiguously monolithic.
While historians have been examining the Baltic Sea Region—present-day Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, and Sweden—as an important center of cross-cultural interaction, the area’s visual and material culture, one of the most important avenues of exchange, is often reduced to illustrative examples of historical phenomena. Art historical narratives continue to be tethered to national and ethnocentric approaches, a bias this conference seeks to complicate.
This project—two conferences (in Greifswald and Tallinn) and an anticipated edited volume—emerges from these twin desires: to study the Baltic Sea Region as a cultural crossroads and to depart from isolated, national/regional narratives. By foregrounding visual and material exchanges and the ideological or pragmatic factors that motivated them, we seek to establish common ground for viewing the Baltic Sea as a nexus of intertwined, fluctuating individuals and cultures always in conversation. We invite papers that engage material/visual culture as conceptual lenses through which to reevaluate the history, meaning, and significance of the Baltic Sea Region.
Proposals for this conference must include (in English):
a) an abstract of maximum 150 words summarizing your argument
b) academic resume
c) full contact information including e-mail
Papers will be 20 minutes in length and will be followed by discussion. The language of the conference is English. Contributions should be sent to Michelle Facos (mfacos@indiana.edu) and Bart Pushaw (bcpushaw@gmail.com) by 15 December 2016. Notification of acceptance will be by 15 January. This conference will be co-sponsored by the Baltic Borderlands Program of Greifswald University and the Alfried Krupp Wissenschaftskolleg, Greifswald.
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