Enfilade

From The University of Chicago Press:

“More images, please.” These words—all too rare in publishing—are commonplace for editors at Winterthur Portfolio: A Journal of American Material Culture. More than a bunch of pretty pictures, images act as essential evidence, allowing Portfolio readers to explore a wide range of topics based on substantive object-based research. Interdisciplinary material culture scholarship rests on seeing the objects, images, places, and spaces under discussion, and the editors of Winterthur Portfolio and the University of Chicago Press are committed to providing the highest level of image quality and editing for authors from any stage in their careers.

As a journal that appears both in print and digital formats, Winterthur Portfolio welcomes traditional manuscripts as well as innovative textual, graphic, and video content. We encourage authors to use a broad range of tools and media to bring new insights and spark conversations about the material world in the Americas. A generously illustrated article, a 3-D model, a digital photo essay, or an analytical model all have a place at Winterthur Portfolio, and we look forward to hearing your ideas for cutting-edge, interdisciplinary material culture research. For inquiries and questions, please contact Executive Editor Catharine Dann Roeber (croeber@winterthur.org), or Managing Editor Amy Earls (aearls@winterthur.org), or click here .

From the conference website:

Nomadic Objects: Material Circulations, Appropriations, and the
Formation of Identities in the Early Modern Period, 1500–1800
Paris, 2–4 March 2017

Proposals are due by 15 September 2015

Domenico Remps, Trompe-l’oeil with an Open Cabinet (Cabinet of Curiosities), ca. 1690s (Florence: Museo dell’Opificio delle Pietre Dure)

This interdisciplinary conference, organized in partnership with two museums of the Paris region, the Musée National de la Renaissance in Écouen and the Musée Cognacq-Jay in Paris, seeks to confront the material history of early modern objects with their artistic and literary representations. It proposes to look at the various ‘traces’ left by material culture as it circulated and was appropriated. Studying the history of material culture (be it dress and personal accessories, everyday and decorative objects, art works, and technical, scientific, or musical instruments…) sheds light upon the various processes of cultural appropriation, transculturation or hybridization that accompanied such material circulations across Europe or between Europe and the rest of the world. Material objects, whether commodities, tools, devotional objects or works of art, can all be considered as bearers or vehicles of cultural identities. By travelling across space they call into question national, religious and linguistic boundaries. The early modern period (1500–1800) corresponds to a period when national identities became more firmly entrenched in Europe with the definition of clearer national territories, languages and religious traditions. The establishment of such boundaries resulted from the development of a new political philosophy, born in part in reaction to Renaissance court culture and its intrinsic nomadism (A. M. Thiesse, La Création des identités nationales, 1999). Following the trajectories of objects as they crossed these boundaries brings into focus the tension between sedentariness and nomadism that Daniel Roche identified as a key element in the advent of modernity (Humeurs vagabondes, 2003).

In addition to the tight network of material circulations within Europe linked to trade, diplomatic exchanges, aristocratic modes of life or religious exile at a time defined by intense religious and political strife, more complex trajectories yet are to be traced. In the context of proto-globalization and of the rise of international trading companies, goods often followed global paths, coming from distant locations and transiting through a number of countries or cultural spaces before reaching their destinations. Because these objects found their way into artistic and literary representations, they also generated in turn less material forms of circulation, posing the question of multi-layered processes of appropriation.

We are seeking proposals that address such processes of circulation and appropriation by looking at the reception of these objects in literature and the arts or at their production and consumption, and the craftsmanship, techniques or practices thereby implied. Suggested topics include, but are not limited to
• Legal and illegal networks for the circulation of objects and goods, whether through trade, smuggling or personal relationships
• Diplomatic gifts and exchanges
• Travelling objects in court culture
• Objects in exile and objects of the exiles
• The transmission of craftsmanship and technologies and its links to human migrations
• Decorative, artistic and literary motifs, and their circulations from one country to another
• The meaning and implications of literary and artistic appropriations of objects
• Processes of linguistic appropriation and cross-fertilization linked to the circulation of objects
• The notion of proto-globalization and its economic, social, material, cultural and artistic manifestations

We hope that this conference will bring into play a variety of methodologies and foster a fruitful dialogue between different disciplines (history, material culture, history of technologies, art history, European languages and literatures, anthropology, archaeology…). Outreach activities, such as workshops and round-tables open to the general public, will also be included in the program. We welcome proposals from established scholars, doctoral students, curators and other professionals working on or with early modern objects. We particularly encourage proposals discussing objects in the collections of the Musée de la Renaissance or the Musée Cognacq-Jay. 300-word proposals, along with a brief CV (1 page maximum), should be sent by September 15, 2016 to the conference organizers at objetsnomades2017@gmail.com.

Professor Giorgio Riello (University of Warwick) will be one of the keynote speakers.

Conference Organizers: Line Cottegnies (Sorbonne Nouvelle – Paris3); Anne-Valérie Dulac (Paris 13); Ariane Fennetaux (Paris Diderot – Paris 7); Anne-Marie Miller-Blaise (Sorbonne Nouvelle – Paris 3); Nancy Oddo (Sorbonne Nouvelle – Paris 3); Sandrine Parageau (Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense); Laetitia Sansonetti (Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense); Jean-Paul Sermain (Sorbonne Nouvelle – Paris 3)

Scientific Committee: Muriel Barbier (Conservateur du patrimoine, Musée d’Ecouen) ; Pascale Gorguet-Ballesteros (Conservateur du patrimoine, Palais Galliera) ; Isabelle Bour (Université Paris 3) ; Marie-Madeleine Fragonard (Professeur émérite, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle – Paris 3) ; Rose-Marie Herda-Mousseaux (Conservatrice du Patrimoine, Musée Cognacq-Jay) ; Beverly Lemire (University of Alberta) ; Angela McShane (Victoria & Albert Museum) ; Lesley Miller (Victoria & Albert Museum), Alain Montandon (Université Blaise Pascal – Clermont II) ; Ladan Niayesh (Université Paris Diderot – Paris 7) ; Isabelle Paresys (Université Lille 3) ; Joad Raymond (Queen Mary University of London) ; Helen Smith (Centre for Renaissance and Early Modern Studies University of York) ; Chantal Schütz (École Polytechnique).

From H-ArtHist:

Interiorities: Artistic, Conceptual, and Historical Reassessments of the Interior
Palgrave Communications
Guest Editor: Vlad Ionescu (Faculty of Architecture and Art, Hasselt University, Belgium)

Article proposals due by 31 October 2016; full submissions due by February 2017

Palgrave Communications is inviting article proposals for a collection dedicated to the theme of ‘Interiority and the Interior’. The collection addresses interiority as a concept debated by artists and philosophers, historians and sociologists alike. The goal of this interdisciplinary collection is to approach interiority and the interior as relational entities that interact with architectural spaces, visual arts and music, social and political ideologies, geographical and historical structures. We welcome contributions that address the interior as an opportunity to research the status of the subjectivity in modernity and beyond. Article proposals and enquires should be sent to the Managing Editor at palcomms@palgrave.com.

Palgrave Communications is an open access online-only journal dedicated to publishing high quality original research across all areas of the humanities, the social sciences, and business. Multi-disciplinary in scope, Palgrave Communications also champions interdisciplinary research, fostering interaction, creativity, and reflection within and between the rich disciplines the journal encompasses. The journal is supported by an international Editorial Board and aspires to be the definitive peer-reviewed outlet for open access academic research in and between its subjects. Palgrave Communications is open to submissions on all theoretical and methodological perspectives.

From H-ArtHist:

Synagogue and Museum: 3rd International Congress on Jewish Architecture
Technische Universität Braunschweig, 21–23 November 2016

Paper proposals due by 29 July 2016; poster proposals due by 30 September 2016

Since antiquity and especially since the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in the year 70 CE, synagogues have become the central places of gathering of Jewish communities. They are complex, highly significant and polyvalent objects of for religious, social, economic, architectural, and artistic developments in Jewish culture. At the same time, they reflect the interdependencies with the surrounding cultures. Since the holocaust, historic synagogues also gained high importance as focal points of remembrance and education.

However, scholars were interested in the material culture(s) of Jews all over the world well before the holocaust and turned synagogues and their furnishings into a focus of their research. The documentation of synagogues as objects of cultural and historical significance started alongside with the establishment of Jewish ethnography (jüdische Volkskunde) as an academic discipline at the end of the 19th century. They became items of collecting, which were set up in exhibitions and museums. Objects from the religious and cultural practice got ‘musealised’, as well as entire synagogue furnishings and sometimes even architectural elements. After 1945, the interest in synagogues as objects of cultural history continued. Besides ritual objects and furnishings, the ’empty’ buildings of the annihilated communities became objects of interest. Historic synagogue buildings were regarded as museums, their material substance was and is restored and interpreted in different ways. The virtual and haptic reconstruction of destroyed synagogues generated another group of ‘immaterial’ exhibits.

The congress will examine the subject in a wide range of perspectives of theoretical and historical reflections. Historic and actual examples of documenting, collecting, and researching synagogues and their furnishing will shed light on the history, the presence, and the future of synagogues in and as museums. Thus, the organisers encourage scholars in the fields of art and architectural history, cultural sciences, Jewish studies, restoration and museology as well as experts in museums, collections, preservation authorities, and education programs to take part in the congress.

This call asks for papers for talks and for posters for a posters-section. It is open for young researchers as well as museums, collections and initiatives who want to present their institutions and their ongoing or future projects. The members of the international and interdisciplinary academic board and the organisers will decide on the acceptance of the papers and the posters. The publication of selected papers and posters in the book series of the Bet Tfila – Research Unit for Jewish Architecture is scheduled for 2017. The conference language is English. Provisions to refund travel expenses will depend on the approval of running applications.

To propose a paper, please send an abstract of up to 1500 characters for a lecture of 15 minutes and a short-CV of up to 500 characters in English by July 29th, 2016. To propose a poster, please send a poster (PDF-file, 5 MB max.) for the poster presentation in English by September 30th, 2016. The email address is u.knufinke@gmx.de.

The congress is organised by the Bet Tfila – Research Unit for Jewish Architecture (Braunschweig/ Jerusalem) and the Lehrstuhl für Kunstgeschichte at the Hochschule für Jüdische Studien, Heidelberg in cooperation with the Braunschweigisches Landesmuseum, Braunschweig, and the Israel Jacobson Netzwerk für jüdische Kultur und Geschichte e.V.

From H-ArtHist:

Art and War: New Perspectives
The Frick Collection, New York, 16 September 2016

Proposals due by 16 June 2016

The Frick Collection is pleased to invite submissions for Art and War, a symposium that will accompany the special exhibition Watteau’s Soldiers: Scenes of Military Life in Eighteenth-Century France. On view from July 12 to October 2, 2016, the exhibition presents a selection of Jean-Antoine Watteau’s little-known drawings and paintings of military life. In these works, Watteau eschews martial glory in favor of depicting more mundane aspects of life on the front: fatigue, boredom, simple diversions. Prompted by Watteau’s singular vision of war, The Frick Collection solicits 25-minute papers that consider the relationship between art and war in ways both direct and oblique, across all media, geographic regions, and time periods. We welcome a range of approaches that engage critically with the historical and theoretical problems posed by the relationship between art and war.

Questions to be addressed include, but are not limited to
• What representational pressures and aesthetic challenges has war created?
• Where have artists located themselves in, away from, or after ‘the fight’?
• How can art convey the experience of war—not only the violence of battle, but also its impact on everyday life?
• How has art glorified, condemned, or otherwise commented on war?
• What can we learn from examining this relationship in an age of perpetual war?

Please send a 250-word abstract and CV by Thursday, June 16, 2016, to Caitlin Henningsen (henningsen@frick.org) and Aaron Wile (wile@frick.org). Proposals from emerging scholars are particularly encouraged.

Thanks again to Christina Smylitopoulos, HECAA is scheduled to be represented at this year’s UAAC Conference! Details and a full list of panels (65 in all) are available here»

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Universities Art Association of Canada / l’association d’art des universités du Canada
Université du Québec, Montréal, 27–30 October 2016

Proposals due by 24 June 2016

HECAA Open Session (Historians of Eighteenth-Century Art and Architecture)
The objective of this society is to stimulate, foster, and disseminate knowledge of all aspects of visual culture in the long eighteenth century. This HECAA open session welcomes papers that examine any aspect of art and visual culture from the 1680s to the 1830s. Special consideration will be given to proposals that demonstrate innovation in theoretical and/or methodological approaches. Please email proposals for 20-minute papers to Dr. Christina Smylitopoulos (University of Guelph), csmylito@uoguelph.ca.

From the conference website:

Understanding Material Loss across Time and Space
University of Birmingham, 17–18 February 2017

Proposals due by 14 October 2016

Understanding Material Loss across Time and Space is an innovative conference that will take place in 2017 at the University of Birmingham. Kate Smith, who works as Lecturer in Eighteenth-Century History, is organizing the conference to complement her current research on loss, lost property, and the making of modern Britain. Rather than focus solely on modern Britain, however, the conference seeks to consider the methodological and historical insights that might be revealed by utilizing loss as significant analytical framework across time and space, particularly when examining the material world.

Archaeologists, anthropologists, philosophers, literary scholars, sociologists and historians have increasingly come to understand the material world as an active and shaping force. Nevertheless, while significant, such studies have consistently privileged material presence as the basis for understanding how and why the material world has played an increasingly important role in the lives of humans. In contrast, Understanding Material Loss suggests that instances of absence, as much as presence, provide important means of understanding how and why the material world has shaped human life and historical processes.

Speculative and exploratory in nature, Understanding Material Loss asserts that in a period marked by ecological destruction, but also economic austerity, large scale migration, and increasing resource scarcity, it is important that historians work to better understand the ways in which humans have responded to material loss in the past and how such responses have shaped change. Understanding Material Loss asks: how have humans historically responded to material loss and how has this shaped historical processes? The conference will bring together a range of scholars in an effort more to begin to explore and frame a problem, than provide definitive answers.

Confirmed keynote speakers include
• Pamela Smith, History, Columbia
• Simon Werrett, Science and Technology Studies, UCL
• Maya Jasanoff, History, Harvard
• Jonathan Lamb, English, Vanderbilt
• Anthony Bale, English and Humanities, Birkbeck
• Astrid Swenson, Politics and History, Brunel

Understanding Material Loss seeks to uncover the multiple practices and institutions that emerged in response to different forms of material loss in the past and asks, how has loss shaped (and been shaped by) processes of acquisition, possession, stability, abundance and permanence? By doing so it seeks to gauge the extent to which ‘loss’ can be used as an organizing framework of study across different disciplines and subfields. Understanding Material Loss seeks papers from across a variety of time periods and geographies. Although open and speculative in nature, this conference will focus on three broad topics within the wider rubric of loss, in order to facilitate meaningful conversations and exchanges.

Using Materials
• How has the ‘loss’ of particular materials affected scientific practice, manufacturing, architectural design or development in the past?
• How have humans responded to the partial loss or decay of materials?
• How have ‘lost’ skills or knowledge affected the use of materials?
• How have humans re-appropriated or recycled seemingly damaged or obsolete materials?

Possessing Objects
• How have humans sought to maintain and mark the ownership of objects?
• How has the loss of possessions and property affected human mobility and constructions of identity?
• How have communities historically responded to the loss of particular objects? When and why have they sought to stave off the loss of things?
• Where, when and how have cultures of repair flourished?
• How has the loss of possessions and property (or the potential for loss) affected processes of production, consumption or financial stability?

Inhabiting Sites and Spaces
• When and why have particular sites or buildings been understood as destroyed or obsolete?
• How have past societies responded to the loss of particular sites?
• When and how have landscapes been actively purged of symbols and sites?
• How have past societies worked to rebuild or reclaim particular sites?
• What strategies did past societies develop to ensure the resilience of certain structures?

If you are interested in participating in the conference, please send proposals (250 words max per paper) for papers and panels to conference organizer Kate Smith (k.smith@bham.ac.uk) by Friday 14 October 2016. Papers should not exceed 20 minutes. Roundtable panels featuring 5–6 papers of 10 minutes each or other innovative formats are encouraged.

Thanks to Past & Present and the University of Birmingham for their generous support for the conference.

Panel proposals are due this weekend:

2017 American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Conference
Minneapolis, 30 March — 2 April 2017

Session Proposals due by 15 May 2016

Proposals for panels at the at the 48th annual meeting of the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, to take place in Minneapolis, are now being accepted. Please complete the form (available as a Word document) and email it to asecs@wfu.edu.

Please note that in accordance with the Handbook on the Annual Meeting, III. The Conduct and Procedures of Seminars [i.e. Sessions]; E. No person may present more than one paper at a single annual meeting or appear more than twice on the program excluding participants in plenary sessions and winners of the Innovative Course Design Competition. This means that in addition to presenting a paper, a person may also serve as either a session chair, a respondent, OR a panel discussant. A person who does not present a paper may serve in no more than two of these other capacities. It is not permitted for a session chair to present a paper in his/ her own session.

Please note also that in order to hold down the number of concurrent sessions, which has increased considerably over the last decade, the Executive Board has decided that requests for double sessions will no longer be entertained.

As a reminder, ASECS caucuses continue to be guaranteed two sessions and affiliate societies one session; regional societies are no longer guaranteed a session on the program unless they are meeting jointly with ASECS when it is in their region. Like individual members, affiliate societies, regional societies, and caucuses are encouraged to submit session proposals to be considered by the Program Committee.

From the conference website:

Warburg Institute Postgraduate Symposium
Cultural Encounters: Tensions and Polarities of Transmission
from the Late Middle Ages to the Enlightenment
The Warburg Institute, London, 17 November 2016

Proposals due by 31 May 2016

The Warburg Institute will host its first postgraduate symposium on 17 November 2016. It will explore the concept of cultural encounters and focus particularly on their productive outcomes. We are interested, above all, in the dynamics of cultural change across time and space. The symposium will be multidisciplinary and will cover topics that fall into the unique classification system of the Warburg Library: Image, Word, Orientation and Action.

The aim of the symposium will be to map the diverse and intricate forces which have driven cultural encounters in the past and which also help define contemporary societies. Amongst the questions that we hope to address are: the degree to which productive outcomes can be seen as a conscious reception and reformulation of external ideas and models; resistances to exchange and in what form; the long-term implications of such encounters and their outcomes.

The symposium is intended for postgraduate students and early career researchers. It will bring together speakers from different backgrounds in the humanities and draw on a variety of disciplinary tools and methodologies. Submissions are invited across a wide range of topics represented by the global cultural interests of the Warburg Institute, including but not limited to:
• Artistic creations: forms, models, styles
• Literary productions and transmission of texts: translations, adaptations, copies
• Philosophy, rhetoric and transmission of ideas
• Personal encounters: Academies, universities and epistolary exchanges
• Encounters with the ancient past: reception, interpretation, visualisation
• Religious encounters, propaganda and politics
• Geographical discoveries: new continents, new cultures and animal species, etc.
• Scientific innovation: findings, theories, inner contradictions, etc.

Proposals for papers should be sent to warburg.postgrad@gmail.com by 31 May 2016:
• Maximum 300-word abstract, in English, for a 20-minute paper, in PDF or Word format
• One-page CV, including full name, affiliation, contact information
All candidates will be notified by 31 July 2016. Limited funding to help cover travel expenses is available. Attendance is free of charge.

Organized by Desirée Cappa, Maria Teresa Chicote Pompanin, James Christie, Lorenza Gay, Hanna Gentili, Federica Gigante, and Finn Schulze-Feldmann