Enfilade

As posted at CAA News (14 March 2014), From the International Committee of the History of Art (Comité International de l’Histoire de l’Art, known as CIHA) and from the conveners of the Beijing Committee for the Congress: Professors LaoZhu, Fan Di’an, and Shao Dazhen.

Thirty-Fourth Congress in the History of Art
Beijing, September 2016

Session Proposals are due by 10 April 2014

The organizing committee for the thirty-fourth Congress in the History of Art, which will take place in Beijing, China, in September 2016, warmly invites expressions of interest from the international community of art historians. The concepts for the sessions are outlined below. We ask for expressions of interest from scholars who wish to develop these themes as session chairs.

Each session will have an international chair and a Chinese chair. A Chinese chair may be from Chinese mainland, Taiwan, or abroad. An early career researcher might serve as associate chair, if necessary. The two cochairs (and an early career researcher, if there is one) will act as a committee to define and refine the session’s concept for the preliminary congress in 2015, and to select presenters for the major congress in Beijing in 2016.

Applications for chairs may be made by academics or independent scholars. We want to remind applicants that no member of the CIHA board, and no one having been a chair in the Nuremberg Congress in 2012, can apply for serving as chair of a session at the Beijing Congress.

Applicants should:

1. Be thoroughly acquainted with the most recent developments in the field of art history relevant to the topic of their session
2. Be able to develop the chosen concept by organizing relevant symposia and workshops before 2016, to initiate dialogue and discussion, and to identify important issues for discussion at CIHA 2016 in Beijing
3. Be able to identify global experts in the appropriate fields and to collaborate with them
4. To be present at CIHA 2016 in Beijing

Applicants should send the following to the CIHA scientific secretary with copy to Chinese committee:
1. Number and title of the proposed session
2. 1–2 pages explaining the perspective they intend to give to the session and the main ideas they would like to be developed and discussed
3. A first draft of the call for papers to be developed with the Chinese chair if the session is selected
4. A short CV stressing the activities and publications related to the session

The deadline for applications is April 10, 2014. The list of the chairs will be established during the CIHA board meeting in Marseilles, France (June 25, 2014) and immediately announced on CIHA website and the Beijing Congress website.

Session Themes

The sessions as defined by the National Committee of the People’s Republic of China and the International Committee for the History of Art are as follows:

1. Words and Concepts【语词与概念】

2. The Rank of Art【标准与品评】

3. Imagination and Projection【想象与投射】

4. Appreciation and Utility【欣赏与实用】

5. Self-Awareness or Self-Affirmation【自觉与自律】

6. Politics of Identity: Tradition and Origin【传统与渊源】

7. Translation and Change【流传与嬗变】

8. Art and Taboo【禁忌与教化】

9. Autonomy and Elusion【独立与超脱】

10. Gendered Practices【性别与妇女】

11. Landscape and Spectacle【风景与奇观】

12. Garden and Courtyard【园林与庭院】

13. Transmission and Adoption【传播与接受】

14. Othering and Foreignness【他者与陌生】

15. Creative Misunderstanding【误解与曲用】

16. Commodity and Market【商品与市场】

17. Display and Observation【展示与观看】

18. Media and Visuality【媒体与视觉】

19. History of Beauty vs. History of Art【审美与艺术史】

20. Professional Education and Aesthetic Education【专业与美育】

21. Connecting Art Histories and World Art【多元与世界】

Full session theme descriptions are available at CAA News»

From the Facebook page of the McNeil Center for Early American Studies:

Fraktur and the Everyday Lives of Germans in Pennsylvania and the Atlantic World, 1683–1850
Philadelphia, 5–7 March 2015

Proposals due by 15 April 2014

Reward of Merit (Belohnung),watercolor on laid paper
10.6 cm x 9.4 cm, ca. 1790s (Free Library)

Paper and panel proposals are invited for a conference on Fraktur and the Everyday Lives of Germans in Pennsylvania and the Atlantic World, 1683–1850 to be jointly sponsored by the McNeil Center for Early American Studies, the Free Library of Philadelphia, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art and to be held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 5–7 March 2015. The conference will coincide with major exhibitions at both the Museum and the Free Library. The Philadelphia Museum will be exhibiting fraktur from the collection of Joan and Victor Johnson, featuring many extraordinary manuscript and printed examples from southeastern Pennsylvania along with other objects, and will also be publishing a comprehensive scholarly catalogue of the Johnson collection [more information on the collection is available from a 2013 article at The Magazine Antiques]. The Free Library will feature historically significant, rare and unique examples of Fraktur, manuscripts, broadsides, and printed books from the Henry Stauffer Borneman Pennsylvania German Collection. Presently many of these items are available to scholars in an online database and are featured on the Free Library’s PA German Collection Blog.

These two exhibitions and their accompanying digital and printed components offer a tremendous opportunity for boundary-crossing discussion and analysis. While German-speaking people in Pennsylvania are often conceptualized as a distinctive and isolated group, the exhibitions and this conference encourages efforts to see them as a common subject of inquiry that provides a point of entry for a much broader understanding of the significance of art and culture and for how we understand human experience in the past and the present.

Among the potential themes that the conference hopes to explore are:
• the place of ethnicity within the Early American Republic
• Philadelphia’s historic and on-going relationship to its rural, small-town, and suburban hinterlands
• Pennsylvania Germans and acculturation
• varieties of German culture in European, Atlantic, and non-Pennsylvania contexts
• digital projects as a transformative force for studying art, material culture, history, genealogy, and our understanding of the past
• the relationship of libraries, museums, and university-based academic programs to the general public
• the strengths and weaknesses of art and material culture for understanding the past
• the role of the collector in preserving the past for the future

Proposals are welcome for papers of 25 to 30 pages in length, which will be pre-circulated to all conference participants. Suggestions for complete panels will also be considered, but the organizers reserve the right to accept, reject, or reassign individual papers. Please submit proposals of approximately 500 words, along with curriculum vitae, to mceas@ccat.sas.upenn.edu no later than 15 April 2014. Accepted panelists will be notified by late May 2014. Papers will be due for pre-circulation no later than 15 January 2015. Some support for participants’ travel and lodging will be available for paper presenters.

From the conference website:

Decline—Metamorphosis—Rebirth: International Conference for PhD Students
Ljubljana, Slovenia, 18–19 September 2014

Proposals due by 12 May 2014

Throughout history mankind has witnessed rises and declines of civilisations, governments and regimes, ideologies and ideas, cultural movements and artistic creativity. The periods of crisis in social as well as artistic fields are generally periods of reflection and pursuit of new ways. However, crises often bring about voices that advocate a return to old values and beliefs. Various connotations may be implied by the word decline, which in turn leads to different understandings of the concept. That is why the term itself rarely refers to something terminal—revivals of ideas, past ages and artistic movements are a common historical occurrence. In connection to these revivals and bearing in mind Heraclitus’s utterance »Ever-newer waters flow on those who step into the same rivers.«, new questions emerge: what is the effect of a new historical context on old, revived ideas, and what is the dialectical relationship between their manifestations in different periods of time?

The international conference Decline—Metamorphosis—Rebirth is intended for PhD students and recent PhD graduates from different fields of humanities and social sciences, who are invited to participate. Proposed topics for interdisciplinary analyses are:
• understanding and interpretation of concepts of decline, transformation/metamorphosis and rebirth in different periods and in different fields of humanities and social sciences
• artistic creation and modes of living in periods of decline, transformation and rebirth (the effect of social changes on artistic creativity, artistic and/or creative reactions on social changes)
• ways of understanding and attitudes towards historical phenomena, periods, and cultural heritage in different periods of time
• decline, transformation and rebirth of social systems, political structures, ideologies
• artistic and social contexts and the role of historicisms, neo- and post- styles in art
• decline, transformation and rebirth as iconographical motifs
• metamorphosis of iconographical motifs, ways in which they are perceived in new contexts
• forgotten, rediscovered or »rehabilitated« artists
• crisis, transformation, and rebirth in an individual artist’s oeuvre
• revival (Nachleben) of concepts and content within art historical periods

Abstract in English of maximum 400 words should be send, with the title of the paper, name and contact information (address, phone number, e-mail) until 12th of May 2014 by e-mail to phdconference2014@gmail.com or by post to Department of Art History, Faculty of Arts, Aškerčeva 2, SI-1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia (with the note ‘Conference for PhD students’).

Paragone Studies
Musée des Beaux-Arts du Québec, 18–20 September 2014

Proposals due by 1 April 2014

Papers are invited for The 3rd Annual International Conference in Paragone Studies, to be held at the Musée des beaux-arts du Québec, just outside of the old quarter of the City of Québec in Canada. The conference’s purpose is to support the scholarly investigation of the paragone, or rivalry in the arts, as it has been manifested in all media across history. The conference will also include a round-table session featuring artists who choose to discuss how competition in the arts, past or present, has impacted their work or their professional lives. To apply, please submit a 300-word abstract using the paper or round-table presenter appropriate form on the conference website and send to paragonestudies@gmail.com. Please include a c.v.

From Le Blog de L’ApAhAu:

L’amateurisme dans l’Europe du XVIIIe siècle. Pratiques et représentations
Paris, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle, 3–4 October 2014

Proposals due by 30 April 2014

Le XVIIIe siècle a souvent été décrit comme l’âge d’or de l’amateur. De cette consécration, le signe le plus visible est la création en France du titre d’« amateur honoraire » à l’Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture, dont la personne du comte de Caylus fut l’un des plus brillants représentants. Dans son abstraction, le terme renvoie moins à une fonction déterminée qu’à un goût pour l’art, lequel recouvre concrètement une configuration d’aptitudes ou de rôles (du collectionneur, du mécène, de l’esthète, du savant, du praticien) : parce qu’il combine ces différents usages du goût, le modèle académique constitue un type idéal et accompli de l’amateur, au point qu’on a pu identifier le déclin de ce modèle à la disparition de cette figure au siècle suivant.

Dépassant ce cadre d’analyse centré sur les beaux-arts et le cas français, on se fondera ici sur une compréhension extensive du terme, qui s’étendra aux domaines artistiques autres que les arts plastiques (théâtre, architecture, musique, arts des jardins, etc.) voire au champ esthétique en général (incluant à ce titre le paysage) et l’on abordera cet objet d’étude dans une perspective comparatiste, ouverte sur les particularités lexicales et sémantiques qui caractérisent sa conceptualisation dans les différentes langues et cultures européennes.

On s’interrogera sur les antagonismes et les évolutions qui travaillent la définition de l’amateur, au sein d’un champ de forces où s’affrontent des intérêts divergents. Pour être d’institution récente, la figure de l’amateur académique n’en reste pas moins partiellement tributaire des structures et des valeurs propres à cette sociabilité aristocratique au sein de laquelle s’est constituée une tradition du loisir cultivé et qui définit, depuis le XVIIe siècle, le cadre de la pratique de l’amateur des belles-lettres. Or la campagne que les « gens de lettres », Diderot en tête, vont mener contre Caylus et ses confrères à partir du milieu du XVIIIe siècle, contribue à élargir l’horizon de communication dans lequel se déploie l’activité de l’amateur. Dénonçant la restriction du domaine de juridiction en matière esthétique aux relations entre particuliers à l’intérieur de cercles d’initiés, les critiques d’art revendiquent leur rôle « dans la formation d’un espace public et civique du goût » (Charlotte Guichard, Les amateurs d’art à Paris au XVIIIe siècle, 2008). Ils promeuvent une nouvelle vision de l’amateurisme sous l’espèce du critique d’art, qui prétend former le goût général en s’exprimant en tant que personne particulière, sans être un professionnel ni un praticien. (more…)

Rienzi’s 15th Anniversary Symposium | Creatures of Comfort, 1650–1950
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, 19–21 September 2014

Proposals due by 1 May 2014

Rienzi, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston’s house museum for European decorative arts, celebrates its 15th anniversary as a public collection with the symposium, Creatures of Comfort, 1650–1950. By examining the period from 1650 to 1950, how and why did the concept of comfort evolve and become an important part of European and American cultures? What objects, inventions, aesthetic or cultural changes improved ones’ physical or emotional well-being simply by making life more comfortable?

Rienzi houses a significant European collection of paintings, sculpture, furniture, porcelain, and silver from the mid-17th to mid-19th centuries. Built in 1953 as a residence and now a house museum, Rienzi evokes the fine European country houses of the 18th century with formal, yet comfortable, furnishings, entertaining and private spaces, and rooms specifically designed for the enjoyment of family and friends. Rienzi also retains many modern amenities such as central air conditioning, a dishwasher, an elevator and other luxurious essentials that defined the ultimate comforts in America in the 1950s.

The Creatures of Comfort, 1650–1950 symposium offers academics and emerging scholars an opportunity to explore the ever-changing role of comfort in European and American cultures. The symposium will take place at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, from Friday, September 19, 2014, through Sunday, September 21, 2014.

We invite masters, doctorial students and emerging scholars to submit a 400-word abstract outlining a twenty-minute presentation, along with a current CV by May 1, 2014. Please direct all submissions to rienzisymposium@mfah.org. Selected participants will be notified by July 1, 2014. Participants will be offered a $600 travel and lodging stipend. All presentations will be given on Saturday, September 20, and Sunday, September 21, at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.

Possible themes of investigation may include, but are not limited to: interiors, design, architecture, dining, privacy, leisure activities, etiquette, gender, costume, travel, technology, and economics.

The keynote address will be given on Friday, September 19, 2014 by Dr. Joan DeJean, Cultural Historian and Trustee Professor of Romance Languages at the University of Pennsylvania. Her research includes the cultural history and the material culture of late 17th- and early 18th-century France. She is the author of ten books on French literature, history, and material culture, including, The Essence of Style, How the French Invented High Fashion, Fine Food, Chic Cafes, Style, and Sophistication, The Age of Comfort: When Paris Discovered Casual and the Modern Home Began, and her most recent publication, How Paris Became Paris: The Invention of the Modern City.

For those of you working in the long seventeenth century. From SE17:

33rd Annual Conference | Society for Interdisciplinary French Seventeenth-Century Studies
University of Western Ontario, London, Canada, 16–18 October 2014

Proposals due by 30 March 2014

Conference Organizer / Organisateur du colloque
Jean Leclerc, University of Western Ontario, jlecler@uwo.ca

Scholars from all disciplines are invited to submit abstracts in French or English (300 words maximum) for presentations relating to the session themes listed below. Please send abstracts by email directly to session chairs by March 30, 2014. Presentations will be of 20 minutes’ duration.

Les chercheurs de toutes disciplines sont invités à soumettre des propositions de communication (en français ou en anglais) relatives aux thèmes annoncés ci-dessous. Les propositions ne doivent pas dépasser 300 mots et sont à envoyer par courriel directement aux présidents de séance avant le 30 mars 2014. Les interventions devront se limiter à 20 minutes.

1. Economy and spending / Économie et dépenses
Chair  /  Présidente de session : Nathalie Freidel, Université Wilfrid Laurier, nfreidel@wlu.ca

2. Center and margins / Centre et marges
Chair  /  Président de session : Jean-Vincent Blanchard, Swarthmore College, jblanch1@swarthmore.edu

3. Old and New France / Ancienne et Nouvelle France
Chair  /  Présidente de session : Marie-Christine Pioffet, York University, mpioffet@yorku.ca

4. Spaces and perspectives / Espaces et perspectives
Chair  /  Président de session : Francis Assaf, University of Georgia, fassaf@uga.edu

5. Disappearances and endings / Disparitions et fins
Chair  /  Présidente de session : Charlotte Trinquet, University of Central Florida, ctrinquet@gmail.com

6. Dazzling, stunning, sublime / Éblouissement, sidération, sublime
Chair  /  Président de session : Gilles Declercq, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle, gilles.declercq@univ-paris3.fr

7. Pedagogy / Pédagogie
Chair  /  Présidente de session : Sylvaine Guyot, Harvard University, guyot@fas.harvard.edu

Further information concerning the conference will be available starting in March on the Society’s website / Des informations complémentaires seront disponibles dès le mois de mars sur le site Web de la Société.

It’s not an art history conference, but thinking about possible correlations between representations of animals and the actual trade in animals would seem fruitful. And maybe some of you are already doing that. -CH

From McGill’s Indian Ocean World Centre:

Trade in Animals and Animal Products in the Indian Ocean World
Indian Ocean World Centre, McGill University, Montreal, 23–24 October 2014

Organized by Omri Bassewitch Frenkel

Proposals due by 1 May 2014

Recently, much public attention has focussed on the lucrative yet often illegal trade in the Indian Ocean world (IOW) of animal parts, including elephant tusks, rhinoceros horns, and tiger skins. However, the trade in exotic animals and animal parts in the IOW, from Africa to China, is not a modern phenomenon. Its roots can be traced back centuries and is reflected in the traditions, folklore, medicinal practices and religious beliefs of many different societies across the IOW. It has also impacted on the environment. By exploring the long-distance trade in animals and animal products as economic, cultural, and ecological phenomenon, this conference will seek to interrogate the concept of the Indian Ocean as a ‘world’. The conference will consider the trade in all land and sea animals as well as birds.

A wide range of relevant issues will be given consideration, but prospective participants are asked to give special consideration to the following themes:
• Trade in exotic animals
• Trade in animal parts
• Trade in animal products
• Impact of the trade on the environment of the source regions
• Finance and structure of the trade
• Prices and profits
• Demand and consumption patterns
• Legal and religious prescriptions governing the hunting/collection and consumption of animals and animal parts

Papers should be in English or French. Deadline for submission of abstracts (title and 1–2 paragraphs) is 1 May 2014. The review process will be completed by 1 June 2014. Papers should be a maximum of 9,000 words (including footnotes). We anticipate that selected papers will be published in a volume to appear in Palgrave Macmillan’s Indian Ocean World Studies series. A registration fee of $200 USD ($60 USD for students) is payable by 1 September 2014. The late registration fee (after 1 September 2014) is $250 USD and $100 USD for students. Registration is payable by cash, personal cheque or money order. Credit card payments are not accepted. All those interested in participating should complete the conference registration form and return it by email to the IOWC (iowc@mcgill.ca). All queries should be sent to the conference organizer, Omri Bassewitch, omri.bassewitchfrenkel@mail.mcgill.ca.

Edited Volume | The Eighteenth-Century Bird in Literature, 1660–1830
Proposals due by 1 July 2014

A great deal of scholarly effort has been made over the years to gather together, analyze, and anthologize eighteenth-century bird poetry, paintings, and other material cultures that describe and represent birds in this period. Very few publications, however, have attempted to bring together the wide range of different approaches that scholars have adopted. This new project, The Eighteenth-Century Bird in Literature, 1660–1830, accordingly aims to further extend the discussion of the eighteenth-century bird and bring incisive, new critical approaches to the topic of birds and the representations of birds in eighteenth-century literature and cultural life. The editors are particularly interested in ways in which a deeper understanding of the bird in eighteenth-century cultural life shapes our twenty-first century notions of birds, our behaviors towards birds, and towards the environments that birds inhabit.

Chapters may include (but are not limited to) engagement with additional perspectives on eighteenth-century birds. These are just a few suggested topics:
• The eighteenth-century bird in the visual arts of the period
• Natural histories and the eighteenth-century bird
• Print cultures and the eighteenth-century bird
• Animal welfare and animal rights discourses around eighteenth-century birds
• Figurative birds
• The languages of eighteenth-century birds
• The exotic, the local, and the eighteenth-century bird
• The eighteenth-century bird as pet
• Ecocriticism and the eighteenth-century bird
• Science, culture, and the eighteenth-century bird
• Animal studies and the eighteenth-century bird
• Co-evolutions: the eighteenth-century bird and other animals (human and non-human)
• Eighteenth-century bird habitats, land-use transformations, and cultures
• Migrations, diasporas, and the eighteenth-century bird

We ask that anyone interested in contributing to this volume submit a one page CV (including previous publications) and an abstract of no more than 500 words by July 1, 2014 in docx or pdf format. Please send abstracts and direct any questions to the volume editors: Anne Milne (anne.milne@utoronto.ca), Brycchan Carey (brycchan@brycchancarey.com) and Sayre Greenfield (sng6@pitt.edu).

Call for Participation from The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art:

Graduate Summer Seminar | British Print Culture in a Transnational Context, 1700–2014
The Paul Mellon Centre for British Art, London, 21–25 July 2014

Applications due by 10 March 2014

In July 2014, the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art will offer a week-long graduate student seminar focusing on British print culture. This is open to doctoral candidates who are working on related topics, or whose research would benefit from a deeper knowledge of the subject. There is a substantial body of literature on British prints that takes the form of survey publications, monographic studies of individual printmakers, and studies of individual techniques, and a number of scholars and doctoral students are currently undertaking research related to these topics. However, the broad field of British print culture still remains relatively underexplored, and its importance for those working in other areas of British visual culture tends to be underestimated. Two related areas, in particular, have been neglected and offer rich possibilities for further study: the reproductive print and the transnational aspect of the British print. The now canonical division between reproductive and ‘original’ prints has tended to elevate the latter category at the expense of the former, and the long-held perception of the status of professional engravers working in Britain as inferior to the artists whose work they translated has obscured appreciation of the collaborative relationships between artist and engraver, and so inhibited our understanding of the complexities of British artistic production. Secondly, Stephen Bann’s research on Anglo-French exchange in nineteenth-century reproductive printmaking has provided an important model for investigating the transnational nature of the British print trade, the various different manifestations of which include: British engravers working elsewhere in the world; foreign engravers working in Britain; the circulation of British prints around the world; the appropriation of imagery from non-British prints in Britain and vice-versa; and indeed the emergence of global modes of representation transmitted by way of prints throughout the former British empire.

The seminar will engage with the development of British print culture, in a transnational context, from 1770 to the present day. It will offer an opportunity for consideration of the state of the field, through a series of sessions taught at the Paul Mellon Centre and at various print rooms in central London, including the British Museum, the Courtauld Institute of Art, University College London, and the V & A Museum. Students will have the chance to see and discuss a wide range of primary materials. The seminar will also offer an introduction to the different techniques of printmaking in relation to their historical development, and includes a visit to a print studio. (more…)