Enfilade

From the Call for Papers:

Serious Fun: Expressions of Play in the History of Art and Architecture
The 32nd Annual Boston University Graduate Symposium on the History of Art and Architecture
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 26–27 February 2016

Proposals due by 21 November 2015

In all of its forms, play is a vital expressive force. Whether theatrical or athletic, rollicking or subversive, play has enacted a pivotal role in shaping cultural life. The 32nd Annual Boston University Graduate Student Symposium on the History of Art and Architecture invites submissions that consider aspects of play as form, content, process, and methodological framework.

Possible subjects include, but are not limited to:
• representations of play
• entertainment, games, and toys
• spaces of play, leisure, and recreation
• play as practice
• political control of play
• play as dissent or activism
• word play
• the naughty and the bawdy
• revelry and whimsy
• play and performance
• play as creative force

We welcome submissions from graduate students at all stages of their studies, working in any area or discipline. Please send an abstract (300 words or less), paper title, and a CV to the Symposium Coordinator, Catherine O’Reilly, at bugraduatesymposiumhaa@gmail.com. The deadline for submissions is Saturday, November 21, 2015. Selected speakers will be notified before January 1, 2016. Papers should be 20 minutes in length and will be followed by a question and answer session.

The Symposium will be held Friday, February 26 – Saturday, February 27, 2016, with a keynote lecture (TBD) on Friday evening at the Boston University Art Gallery at the Stone Gallery and graduate presentations on Saturday in the Riley Seminar Room of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

This event is generously sponsored by The Boston University Center for the Humanities; the Boston University Department of History of Art & Architecture; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Boston University Graduate Student History of Art & Architecture Association; and the Boston University Art Gallery at the Stone Gallery.

From SAH:

Society of Architectural Historians Annual Conference
Glasgow, 7–11 June 2017

Session Proposals due by 16 January 2016

At its 2017 Annual International Conference in Glasgow, Scotland, SAH will offer a total of 36 paper sessions. The Society invites its members, including graduate students and independent scholars, representatives of SAH chapters, and partner organizations, to chair a session at the conference. As SAH membership is required to chair or present research at the conference, non-members who wish to chair a session will be required to join SAH at the time of submitting a proposal.

Since the principal purpose of the SAH Annual International Conference is to inform conference attendees of the general state of research in architectural history and related disciplines, session proposals covering every period in the history of architecture and all aspects of the built environment, including landscape and urban history, are encouraged.

Session proposals are to be submitted online beginning October 1, 2015, through 5:00 pm CST, January 16, 2016. The portal will close automatically at this time. Proposals will be reviewed by Sandy Isenstadt, SAH 1st vice president-elect and conference chair.

Prospective chairs must include the following in their proposal:
1. A session title not longer than 65 characters, including spaces and punctuation
2. Summary of the subject and the premise in no more than 500 words
3. Name, professional affiliation (if applicable), address, telephone and email address
4. A current CV (2 pages maximum)

View the complete call for sessions and submit a proposal online at sah.org/2017.

Questions? Contact Sandy Isenstadt at sandy.isenstadt@gmail.com or Kathy Sturm at 312.543.7243 or ksturm@sah.org.

From H-ArtHist:

Gillray after Gillray: Echoes and Influences in Rude Britannia, Then and Now
Institut national d’histoire de l’art, Paris, 29 January 2016

Proposals due by 15 October 2015

The year 2015 witnessed a number of exhibitions and conferences devoted to James Gillray’s bicentenary and the artist’s graphic work. But Gillray after Gillray is a study day aimed at discussing Gillray’s posterity and visual heritage across several areas of British and European culture in the course of a century. British caricaturists frequently claim to work in the wake of Gillray’s satirical spirit (Ralph Steadman, Gerald Scarfe, Martin Rowson, Steve Bell) and as such manifest their debt to the artist’s approach to the body and to politics. Other artistic forms, on the other hand, may be derived from the Georgian era but in a less obvious manner, for instance, The Chapman Brothers’ envisioning of Capricios is indebted to Goya’s series, but the title Like a Dog Returns to its Vomit twice appears to be closer to motifs such as digestive discomforts and uncontrolled regurgitation recurrently exploited by Gillray in his prints and drawings. Looking at graphic afterlives and avatars of Gillray’s caricatures and his particularly vitriolic sense of satire is also an opportunity to extend current critical views from editorial cartooning and contemporary art onto a whole range of satirical forms in mass media. Issues that may be raised, though not exclusively so, may range from art-historical approaches to case studies of post Georgian era reception.

Submissions are invited that engage with examples of graphic satire dating from any point across the last 250 years and that address the following questions, among others:
• What traces of Gillray can be identified in contemporary painting, installation art, video or even TV?
• How can we engage with the notion of morbid comic as for instance demonstrated in the works of the Young British Artists?
• Public space and the aesthetics of graphic satire
• Politeness, decorum and Rude Britannia from 1790 to nowadays
• British tabloids as part of Gillray’s influence and heritage
• What exactly is « rude » in British visual and mass media culture?
• How far can Gillray be viewed as a founding father of a specific approach to visual satire?
• Art, visual satire as something deliberately spectacular and shocking
• Art, commerce and visual satire then and now

Please send proposals (of no more than 250 words) for 20-minute papers to Brigitte Friant-Kessler and Morgan Labar before 15 October 2015. This study day will be held in French and English.

Brigitte Friant-Kessler
Maître de conférences en langues et cultures anglophones
CALHISTE EA 4343
Université de Valenciennes
Brigitte.Friant-Kessler@univ-valenciennes.fr / b.friant@free.fr

Morgan Labar
Doctorant contractuel en Histoire de l’art (ED441)
HiCSA, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne
morganlabar@gmail.com

James Gray, Kingston from Fort Henry, 1828, 29.6 x 54.9 cm (Montréal: McCord Museum, #M19883, via Wikimedia Commons). Fort Frontenac was founded on the site of what became Kingston in 1673. Fort Henry was constructed during the War of 1812.

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Canadian Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Annual Conference
Kingston, Ontario, 26–30 October 2016

Proposals for panels due by 1 March 2016 / Proposals for papers due by 1 April 2016 [deadlines extended a month from their original dates of February and March]

The annual meeting of the Canadian Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies invites panel and paper submissions for its annual conference, to be held in Kingston, Ontario, 26–30 October 2016. This conference will be co-hosted by colleagues from Queen’s University and the Royal Military College of Canada. The conference theme is Secret/s & Surveillance. Plenary speakers will include Christophe Cave (Université Grenoble-Alpes) and Lisa Freeman (University of Illinois, Chicago).

Proposals for panels and papers might consider the following themes, though this is not an exhaustive list: treason; suspicion; espionage; voyeurism; surveys & surveying; informants & surveillance networks; secret code; private conduct & self-surveillance; anonymity & pseudonymity;  ___ & ——s, or ‘types’ of secrecy; costume, disguise & cross dressing; masquerade; secret identity; passing; observation of religion; military intelligence; scandal; secret societies;  spectatorship; audience; secret histories; secrets of the natural world; clandestinity & censorship.

Papers in either French or English are welcome. Please send panel proposals by 1 February 2016; paper proposals by 30 March 2016 to email CSECS2016@queensu.ca.

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Appel de communications

À l’occasion de son congrès annuel qui se tiendra à Kingston (Ontario) du 26 au 30 octobre 2016 grâce à la collaboration de collègues de l’Université Queen’s et du Collège militaire royal du Canada, la Société canadienne d’étude du dix-huitième siècle vous invite à proposer une séance ou une communication. Le thème du congrès est « Secret(s) & surveillance ». Les conférences plénières seront prononcées par Christophe Cave (Université Grenoble-Alpes) et Lisa Freeman (University of Illinois, Chicago).  

Les propositions de séances et de communications peuvent aborder les thématiques suivantes, sans que cette liste soit exhaustive : trahison; suspicion; espionnage; voyeurisme; enquêtes & sondages; informateurs & réseaux de surveillance; code secret; comportement privé & surveillance de soi; anonymat & pseudonymie; costume, déguisement & travestissement; mascarade; identité secrète; renseignement militaire; scandale; sociétés secrètes; spectacles & spectateurs; mémoires secrets; secrets de la nature; clandestinité & censure. 

Qu’elles soient en anglais ou en français, vos propositions de séance doivent parvenir à l’adresse suivante avant le 1^er février 2016 et vos propositions de communication, avant le 30 mars 2016 : CSECS2016@queensu.ca.

From H-ArtHist:

Creativity and the City, 1600–2000
University of Amsterdam, 27–29 October 2016

Proposals due by 15 November 2015

Organized by Amsterdam Centre for Cultural Heritage and Identity, University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands

Keynote Speakers
• Jo Guldi, Brown University
• Ilja Van Damme, Antwerp University
• Scott Weingart, Carnegie Mellon University

This international and interdisciplinary conference on the history of creativity and the city aims to bring together recent research in the fields of history, arts, and digital humanities. In the last decade, scholars in the humanities and social sciences have explored the complex interplay between places and their culture using a variety of methods and approaches. The conference examines the relationship between cultural artefacts (art, books, etc.) and the urban networks and spaces in which they were conceived, (re)produced, distributed, mediated, and consumed in early modern and modern Europe. How such issues can be studied by means of existing and novel (digital) methods, as well as comparative and long-term approaches, is the second major theme of the conference.

We invite researchers in the fields of history, arts and culture, urban studies, media studies and the digital humanities to submit abstracts. Papers may address all kinds of cultural expressions and products—from books, (applied) arts and theatre, to films, media and music. The committee particularly invites scholars who will reflect on methodological questions and the use of computational techniques for historical research.

The list of possible themes includes but is not limited to:
• Space and place (built environment, local amenities, spatial distribution, transnational connections, etc.)
• Entrepreneurs and firms (business strategies, networks, collaboration and competition etc.)
• Intermediaries and institutions (guilds, societies, museums, policy, etc.)
• Markets and labour markets (distribution, training, cross-sectoral linkages, etc.)
• Text analytics for historical corpora (information retrieval, pattern recognition, tagging and annotation, etc.)
• Digital cultural heritage (3D/4D modelling, visual and audio-visual content analysis, etc.)
• Analysis and visualization (prosopography, network analysis, discourse analysis, etc.)

Please submit your details, abstract (300 words max.) and 5 key words before 15 November 2015 through the conference management system. When your paper is embedded in a larger research project, please also provide its title and affiliation. A scientific committee will evaluate the abstracts and sessions will be formed on the basis of the selected papers. For inquiries, please contact us at achi.red@uva.nl.

Abstract submission: 15 November 2015
Notification of abstract acceptance: Early January 2016
Registration will open in February 2016

Advisory Committee: Rens Bod, Jan Hein Furnée, Lia van Gemert, Jaap Kamps, Joep Leerssen, Julia Noordegraaf, Harm Nijboer, and James Symonds.

Conference Organizers: Jan Bolten and Claartje Rasterhoff.

From H-ArtHist:

Musical Theatre and Space: Early Modern European Courts
Gotha, Friedenstein Castle, 27–29 October 2016

Proposals due by 15 September 2015

International Colloquium of the Rudolstädter Arbeitskreis zur Residenzkultur e.V., the Institut für Musikwissenschaft of the Universität des Saarlandes, the Institut für Kunstgeschichte of the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München and the Stiftung Schloss Friedenstein Gotha

The union of the arts in the Gesamtkunstwerk (‘total work of art’) of court opera has been repeatedly studied by diverging approaches of musical history research. However, although a wide range of different arts were involved in the realization of music-theatrical spectacles, still an interdisciplinary approach seems to be pursued rather hesitantly. Thus, for example, particular spatial-architectural aspects of court opera scarcely have been taken into account. Yet, music theater connotes scenic performance and architecture alike. Both constituted essential elements of aristocratic representation in the 17th and 18th centuries. Just as castles and palaces, the European nobility used operas and ballets as core media for the staging and representation of dynasty and person. In the Old Empire not only the imperial estate nobility initiated music-theatrical spectacles, but also lesser courts arranged ballets and operas according to their potentials. Even in the urban space opera-houses sporadically became installed, maintained by the aristocracy.

Hence, from a European perspective the colloquium shall focus upon the varied connections and interplays which existed between musical theatre and the court and its space in the narrow and broader sense. Mainly, scenic performance and architectural space are to be scrutinized. In this context the mutual relations between different forms of musical theatre, architecture, venue and stage are to be considered. In what ways and by what means a special ‘performance space’ became produced by the means of music, sound, language and movement (dance, facial expression and gesture), of architecture, picture and sculpture as well as light and technology? Which specific and corresponding spaces at court became created or converted, and which were the traditions being used? Within the scope of these issues, it is a significant question, to what extent the site of the spectacle on the one and the music-theatrical work of art on the other hand presupposed each other. To this effect the characteristics of Italian, French or Swedish musical theatre shall experience consideration in equal measure; terms of transfer and networks as well as the formation and development of certain types and models are to be analyzed. Against this background, it has to reconsidered, whether and to what extent at the courts there developed European standards, and whether these can be estimated to stand in accordance to the common national characteristics of ‘Italian’ and ‘French’. Furthermore, there shall be examined the recipients, the transfer in different social realms, the influence and participation of the court in the artistic realization, and finally the personal limits, which certainly existed.

As a vital point of all these thematic approaches it should be stressed, that the focus lies exclusively on the contexts of courts. Above all, the colloquium shall broach the genuine court conditions and shapes of performance and staging as they were implemented, understood and utilized by the European nobility only. Therefore, a core issue is posed by the problem of precise distinction, both socially and aesthetically, of the phenomena musical theatre and ‘court space’.

With the focus on court culture, we would be happy to receive contributions, preferably with an interdisciplinary approach, to the following range of topics:
• Court, opera and architecture as means of princely self-representation
• The ruler’s presence in the stage area
• Court venues and stage areas
• Music-theatrical staging within and beyond the stage area
• Stage technique, stage light, scenery and acoustics
• Motion in the stage area (stage dance, facial play, gesture)
• Forms, characteristics and sites of performance in comparison
• Different norms and practices at European courts
• The court audience
We encourage you to suggest also alternative topics. Please send an accordant proposal for presentation. The colloquium will take place subject to the acquisition or allocation of funds. A publication of the contributions is planned. We ask for proposals for the colloquium until 15th September 2015.

Dr. Heiko Laß: heiko.lass@kunstgeschichte.uni-muenchen.de
Dr. Margret Scharrer: m.scharrer@mx.uni-saarland.de

From the University of Kent:

Writing Buildings
University of Kent, 14–16 July 2016

Proposals due by 30 September 2015

CREAte, the research centre for architecture and the humanities at the Kent School of University, University of Kent, is holding a conference in collaboration with The Architectural Review which will bring together quite different traditions of writing about historic buildings. The special character of this conference is that speakers will be drawn from both academic and non-academic fields, and from a range of disciplines that touch on architectural experience and history. In this way we aim to offer a new experience for writers on architecture, interior design and urban space. We are inviting papers from those in architecture, English, history, sociology, film and drama, landscape studies and related disciplines with a specialist interest in writing about buildings and urban spaces or experiences across different time periods. The common theme of the papers will be the uses of a variety of voices in creating architecture culture.

Writing Buildings will be a two-day conference on the subject of alternative ways of writing architectural history which will encourage experimentation in criticism through breaking disciplinary barriers. The programme will include papers from both academic disciplines and non-academic professions which engage with the built environment, for example, journalism, interior design and construction, as our keynote speakers demonstrate:
Iain Sinclair / Writer
Matthew Beaumont, UCL / Psychogeographer
Jonathan Meades / Writer and Film Maker
Alexandra Harris, University of Liverpool / Cultural Historian
Barbara Penner, Bartlett, UCL / Material Anthropologist
Jonathan Reed / Interior Designer
Ben Campkin, Bartlett, UCL / Urban Geographer
Ian Dungavell / former director, the Victorian Society

We will organise at least one project-based writing event outside the conference hall. We are currently planning to hold this in collaboration with Turner Contemporary as part of their innovative Waste Land project. We will update news about the conference, including information about events, talks and activities on this website.

Both previous CREAte conferences have resulted in edited books by leading international academic publishers and we anticipate that this will happen again this time. In addition, the widely read and respected international journal The Architectural Review will promote the conference and intends to publish papers from it.

Email your abstract of approximately 250 words to WritingBuildings@kent.ac.uk by 30 September 2015. Notification of acceptance of papers by 31 January 2015.

Conference Directors
Timothy Brittain-Catlin, Kent School of Architecture, University of Kent, tjb33@kent.ac.uk
Catherine Richardson, School of English, University of Kent, c.t.richardson@kent.ac.uk
Tom Wilkinson, History Editor, The Architectural Review

From the CFP:

Reading Architecture across the Arts and Humanities
University of Stirling, 5 December 2015

Proposals due by 26 September 2015

An interdisciplinary conference organised in cojunction with the AHRC-funded project, Writing Britain’s Ruins, 1700–1850: The Architectural Imagination at the University of Stirling.

The organisers of this one-day multidisciplinary conference seek to solicit proposals for 20-minute papers that consider the creation, expression and subject-areas across the Arts and Humanities. Papers should seek to address the creation, understanding, circulation and cultural impact of both real and international contexts. Original and creative accounts of how architecture might variously be ‘read’ and interpreted across such disciplines as welcome.

Plenary Speakers: Rosemary Hill and Olivia Horsfall Turner

Possible topics may include, but are by no means limited to, the following:
• Historicism
• Responses to, and recreations of, the architectural past
• Reflections upon architectural styles and ‘movements’
• Assessments of architecture and architectural practices
• Representations of architecture in film
• Architecture and the law
• Antiquarianism and architecture
• Architectural ruin and the tourist industry
• Architectural conservationism
• The politics of architectural form
• Literary representations of architecture
• Lives of architects
• The aesthetics of architectural form
• Historiography
• Architectural Heritage

300-word proposals should be emailed to the conference organisers, Dr Dale Townshend and Dr Peter N. Lindfield—architecture@stir.ac.uk—by 26 September 2015. The School of Arts and Humanities at the University of Stirling has generously agreed to fund a number of postgraduate travel-bursaries for this event. Please contact the conference organisers for further details.

This conference is the first event in a series of outputs arising from the AHRC-funded project, Writing Britain’s Ruins, 1700–1850: The Architectural Imagination at the University of Stirling (June 2015–December 2016).

From the conference website:

Framing the Face: New Perspectives on the History of Facial Hair
Friend’s Meeting House, London, 28 November 2015

Proposals due by 30 September 2015

Over the past five centuries, facial hair has been central to debates about masculinity. Over time, changing views of masculinity, self-fashioning, the body, gender, sexuality and culture have all strongly influenced men’s decisions to wear, or not wear, facial hair. For British Tudor men, beards were a symbol of sexual maturity and prowess. Throughout the early modern period, debates also raged about the place of facial hair within a humoural medical framework. The eighteenth century, by contrast, saw beards as unrefined and uncouth; clean-shaven faces reflected enlightened values of neatness and elegance, and razors were linked to new technologies. Victorians conceived of facial hair in terms of the natural primacy of men, and new models of hirsute manliness. All manner of other factors from religion to celebrity culture have intervened to shape decisions about facial hair and shaving.

And yet, despite a recent growth in interest in the subject, we still know little about the significance, context and meanings of beards and moustaches through time, or of its relationship to important factors such as medicine and medical practice, technology and shifting models of masculinity. We therefore welcome papers related to, but by no means limited to the following questions:

• To what extent were beards a symbol of masculinity and what key attributes of masculinity did they symbolise?
• To what extent did the profession of the barber influence beard styles and the management of facial hair?
• To what extent were beard trends led by the elite and by metropolitan fashion?
• How far did provincial trends influence metropolitan trends through migration?
• What impact did changing shaving technologies have on beard fashions/trends?
• How were beards understood within the medical frameworks of different eras?
• How have women responded to facial hair in different eras?
• How has the display of facial hair by women been viewed as both a medical and cultural phenomena?

Please send abstracts of up to 300 words, by 30th September 2015, to framingtheface@gmail.com. For further information please contact the organisers: Dr Alun Withey, University of Exeter, A.Withey@exeter.ac.uk, and Dr Jennifer Evans, University of Hertfordshire J.evans5@herts.ac.uk.

From The Courtauld:

Posing the Body: Stillness, Movement, and Representation
Regent Street Cinema, University of Westminster and The Courtauld Institute of Art, London, 6–7 May 2016

Proposals due by 2 October 2015

Posing has been central to art, dance, and sculpture for thousands of years. In recent years, the growing interest in fashion media and modelling has also focused attention on questions of pose and posing. Incorporating notions of movement and stillness, posing can be understood in terms of historical modes of representation, as well as contemporary media and rapidly evolving relationships between bodies, subjects, and technologies of representation. Posing incorporates symbolic and semiotic meaning alongside embodied action and feeling. Recent coverage of the work of choreographer Stephen Galloway in 032c magazine, and new publications such as Steven Sebring’s Study of Pose: 1000 Poses by Coco Rocha testify to the growing interest in the cultural significance of posing and the pose—yet both remain under-researched areas with little discussion of their significance.

This symposium will assert the importance of pose as both a creative practice and an emerging area of critical inquiry. It will bring together multi-disciplinary academics and practitioners to discuss and develop new ways of understanding pose and posing in a historical and contemporary context. We encourage proposals for papers that address pose from global and diverse perspectives. This event represents a potentially fruitful and exciting moment to bring these strands together to the benefit of researchers within practice and theory-based media, historians of dress, photography, art and film and allied disciplines.

The keynote lecture will be delivered by David Campany, internationally recognised writer and curator, and Reader in Photography at the University of Westminster.

Possible themes include (but are not limited to)
• Modelling (fashion and artistic)
• Gesture
• Dance (popular and classical)
• Pose and the everyday
• Movement and stillness
• Posing, corporeality and the body
• Posing and social media (blogs, Instagram, etc.)

Please submit abstracts of 150–200 words in English, along with a short biography of approximately 100 words to Posingthebody@gmail.com by 2 October 2015.

Organised by Rebecca Arnold, Oak Foundation Lecturer in History of Dress & Textiles, The Courtauld Institute of Art; Katherine Faulkner, Study Skills and Widening Participation Academic Coordinator, The Courtauld Institute of Art; Katerina Pantelides, Visiting Lecturer, The Courtauld Institute of Art and Eugénie Shinkle, Reader in Photography, University of Westminster.