Enfilade

From the Call for Papers:

Visualising and Materialising Colonial Spaces: Female Responses to Empire
University of Warwick, 11 January 2014

Proposals due by 31 October 2013

Proposals are invited for 20-minute papers for Visualising and Materialising Colonial Spaces: Female Responses to Empire, a conference organized by Dr. Rosie Dias (Art History, University of Warwick) and Dr. Kate Smith (History, University College London) and funded by The Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art. Confirmed keynote speakers include David Arnold, Emeritus Professor, Department of History, University of Warwick and Caroline Jordan, Honorary Associate in the Humanities and Social Sciences, La Trobe University Melbourne.

In recent years scholars working in the field of British art history have increasingly broadened their approach to include transnational and imperial topics. Despite such interest, however, little attention has been paid to the gendered nature of such artistic productions. The majority of research on Anglo-Indian visual culture for example, has focused upon work created by men and as yet little research has considered the role of women in the creation and dissemination of visual and material culture. Visualising and Materialising Colonial Spaces: Female Responses to Empire demonstrates the significance of women’s cultural productions upon ideas of empire at home and abroad by examining the rich visual and archival sources created by British women in imperial spaces. It examines the paintings, sketches, writings, collections, and objects that women created to capture and record their experiences of empire. In doing so it questions the role women played in constructing particular understandings of and narratives about imperial experiences in the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Please send a 250-word abstract and a brief biographical note to visualisingcolonialspaces@gmail.com by October 31, 2013.

In April of 2014 the Royal College of Art in London will host the 40th annual meeting of the Association of Art Historians (AAH). Panels will address a wide variety of themes. Here’s one example, the Museums & Exhibitions Group Annual Session (a full list is available here).

AAH Annual Conference | Challenging Conventions: Exploring Hierarchies
within the Historiography of the Fine and Decorative Arts
Royal College of Art, London, 10–12 April 2014

Proposals due by 11 November 2013

This session explores hierarchies within the discipline of art history, tracing the separation of the ‘fine’ and ‘decorative/applied’ arts and examining the impact of this division on the research, display and use of art objects within academic and museum contexts. Even before Kant subdivided the arts into ‘mechanical’ and ‘aesthetic’ groupings, the ‘decorative’ arts were somehow deemed lesser due to their inherent functionality, allied to base manual labour and divorced from the purity and higher appeal/role of the ‘fine’ arts. This approach was perpetuated throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, and continues to influence modes
of practice to the present day.

Within this session questions may include, but are not limited to, exploring how these historiographies affect perceptions within the study of art history and the presentation of objects within museums. Have they actively shaped the way we research, collect and display objects? Have these exclusions/inclusions limited or facilitated ways of working within the discipline generally, or affected the way specific fields have been shaped more particularly? And what impact has this legacy had on contemporary practice, in modes of working, forms of display or the evolution of funding streams?

The Museums & Exhibitions Group represents a wide range of practitioners, including art historians, curators and artists/makers, from all eras and cultures, and invites a similarly wide range of responses. Papers may examine specific areas within this topic, examples of interdisciplinarity or case studies within museum/gallery or academic contexts.

Please send proposals (maximum 250 words) to the session convenors Dr Marika Leino, Oxford Brookes University mleino@brookes.ac.uk and Marie-Therese Mayne, Laing Art Gallery, Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums marie-therese.mayne@twmuseums.org.uk by 11th November 2013.

From IU:

Eighteenth-Century Hospitalities | The Bloomington Eighteenth-Century Studies Workshop
The Center for Eighteenth-Century Studies at Indiana University, Bloomington, 14–16 May 2014

Proposals due by 13 January 2014

An enduring controversy in eighteenth-century studies—how to interpret the death of Captain Cook—turns on questions of stranger and self, hostility and hospitality. Canonical eighteenth-century European texts defined hospitality as something individuals, states, and institutions extended to strangers. (“Hospitality,” wrote Kant, “means the right of a stranger not to be treated as an enemy when he arrives in the land of another.”) Other cultures understood the workings of hospitality, hostility, and the stranger in different fashions, however. Natives of North America, for instance, organized their worlds in terms of kinship, fictive and otherwise, which structured lines of peace and conflict. If for Kant, hospitality was a technique for managing hostility (for preventing strangers from becoming enemies), this was not always the case. When incommensurable hospitalities clashed, hostility could easily arise.

We invite scholars to reflect on the ways that hospitality and self-stranger relations were thought, negotiated, represented, imagined, and lived across the eighteenth century. Questions to be addressed might include everything from how and why different categorizations of stranger-ness arose to daily practices of hospitable interaction. What conceptual, social, legal, etc. arrangements regulated the ways that those seen as socially distinct (the strangers) inhabited one’s own or an alien space?

We welcome papers on topics ranging from forced confinement (e.g., captivity, quarantine, servitude, ghettoization) and the eighteenth-century hospitality industry (coffee shops, restaurants, hospitals, etc.) to ideas and models of refuge, asylum, sanctuary, and contact. Evidence might be found in ethnographies and travelogues (fictional or factual, pictorial or textual) but also in novels, private correspondence, international treaties, etiquette manuals, or works of architecture. Cross- or interdisciplinary approaches are especially welcome.

During the Workshop, we will discuss 4–6 pre-circulated papers each day and have an occasional lecture. Expanded abstracts of papers will be published in the Center’s The Workshop, along with discussion transcripts.

The application deadline is January 13, 2014. Please send a paper proposal (1–2 pages) and current brief CV (3 pages, max) to Dr. Barbara Truesdell, Weatherly Hall North, room 122, Bloomington, IN 47405; 812–855–2856, voltaire@indiana.edu. We will acknowledge all submissions within a fortnight: if you do not receive an acknowledgment by January 27, 2014, please contact Barbara Truesdell or the Center’s Director, Professor Rebecca L. Spang (rlspang@indiana.edu).

Constructions of the Exotic in Europe and North America, 18th–21st Centuries
Special Issue of Material Culture Review

Manuscripts due by 15 December 2013

Material Culture Review solicits articles for a special issue on the theme of constructing the exotic. We are looking for articles that examine the question of how a person, an object or a work of art comes to be seen as exotic. How is ‘foreignness’ constructed? How is one culture appropriated and domesticated by another?

The goal here is not to show the constructed nature of the concept of the exotic. Rather, papers should emphasize the processes by which something is made exotic, including the stories that surround an object, the ways in which an object is exhibited, and how the representation of an object affects whether or not it is perceived as foreign. We invite papers that examine exoticization and domestication in relation to territory and place, agency and identity – papers that examine not only what is exoticized but also who does the exoticizing and how they do it. We are particularly interested in analyses of the exotic in Europe and North America that are grounded in social and political contexts.

Proposed Research Topics

1. Representation
The first topic has to do with representations that blur the border between documentation and fiction, realism and exoticism. How do certain items construct certain identities? For example, how do Indian clothing, Chinese dishes, and tobacco accessories contribute to the identity of those who wear or use them? How are these objects used in the art world, in the theatre, or in people’s homes? How do 18th-century engravings used to illustrate stories of voyages, as well as more ‘scientific’ representations (photographs, museums, etc.) produced at the beginning of the 19th century, construct the exotic? Papers on this topic will look at what actually makes something appear exotic, what increases or decreases the ‘foreign’ quality in the eyes of the maker and consumer.

2. Display
The second topic pays attention to the material culture, words, and gestures surrounding objects – to displays that make them look exotic or, on the contrary, domestic. Here, it is important to examine how the objects are displayed in their place of purchase, in people’s homes, and in museums. How are they exhibited? What physical context (furniture, frames, light) is used to present them? What words are used to describe them? Do these things qualify the objects as exotic or, rather, do they underemphasize their ‘foreign’ quality?

3. Materiality
Once the things are acquired, how are they repaired, reformed, or recomposed? What kind of material trans-formations do these imported, re-territorialized objects undergo? It may be through a process of hybridization with other artifacts. Exoticization can also happen through a process of integration: a fragment inserted into a piece of furniture can alter the entire object. However, exoticism is reinforced, for example, in the bronze or silver rings on an Asian vase. We encourage papers that study the process of fragmentation, extension, and the use of specific materials (precious and tropical wood, stone, metal, etc.) in the creation of ‘exotic’ objects.

Articles should be 20–30 double-spaced pages, including endnotes. In addition, we encourage the submission of
· research reports (10–20 pages, including endnotes)
· exhibition reviews (10–15 pages, including endnotes)
· research notes (5–10 pages)
· book reviews (notes and comments less than 5 pages) on this theme

Articles are expected in English or French. Please submit manuscripts by December 15, 2013 to Noémie Etienne at ne477@nyu.edu.

Collecting Prints & Drawings
Kloster Irsee, 13–15 June 2014

Proposals due by 30 November 2013

Organized by Andrea M. Gáldy, Sylvia Heudecker, and Angela M. Opel

Cabinets of prints and drawings belong to the earliest art collections of Early Modern Europe. From the sixteenth century onwards some of them acquired considerable fame which necessitated an ordered and scientific display. This interdisciplinary conference brings together art historians, historians, curators and collectors and explores topics such as: when, how and why did cabinets of prints and drawings become a specialised part of princely and private collections? How important were collections of prints and drawings for the self-representation of a prince or connoisseur among specialists and social peers? Is the presentation of a picture hang in a gallery, for example by Charles Eisen for the Royal Galleries at Dresden, to be treated as documentary evidence? In how far do we find art historical approaches of systematisation or aesthetic concepts realised within the collections? Are there notable differences in the approach to collecting, presentation and preservation of prints and drawings in diverse parts of the world? What was the afterlife of such collections? What is the interest of institutions in pursuing the activities of art collecting and sponsorship today (banks, industry, foundations, universities)?

Please send your 250-word proposal on these and related themes together with a one-paragraph bio to the organisers at collecting_display@hotmail.com by 30 November 2013.

Political Portraiture in the United States and France
during the Revolutionary and Federal Eras, ca. 1776–1814
National Portrait Gallery, Washington, D.C., 25–26 September 2014

Proposals due by 15 November 2013

Organized by Todd Larkin and Brandon Brame Fortune

Charles Wilson Peale, Washington at the Battle of Princeton (Princeton)

In August 1814 British troops under General Robert Ross sacked Washington, D.C., and burned the Capitol, together with some splendid state portraits of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette, the French monarchy’s gift to the American Congress some thirty years earlier. The approaching bicentennial of this event will provide scholars of the United States and France a rare occasion to meet and share expertise on aspects of late eighteenth- to early nineteenth-century portraiture.

The premise of this conference is that in the period between the War of Independence and the War of 1812 the United States maintained a complicated political alliance with France, which had an impact on patterns of cultural representation and consumption on both sides of the Atlantic. The transition from monarchical to republican forms of government was accompanied by a shift from aristocrats to citizens as the primary patrons, subjects, and viewers of portraits. Yet portraits of American and French heads of state, delegates, and families often reveal an uneasy integration of traditional aristocratic forms and new republican values.

The first half of the conference, titled “Dialect[ic]s of Diplomacy,” will treat with single-person portraits (and portrait pairs) that suggest an individual invested with high status, extraordinary power, martial strength, or diplomatic duty on behalf of the nation; the second half of the conference, “Representative Bodies,” will examine group portraits that suggest a shared commitment to collective governance, family harmony, or equitable representation within the nation. How effective were state portraits in promoting the authority of a hereditary monarch, group portraits in promoting the authority of an elected assembly? To what extent did American artists reference or adapt the paintings and prints of French artists, and vice versa? What formal arrangements and symbolic repertories were invented to invest politicians, merchants, and workers with ideals of “patriotism” and “republicanism”?

This line of inquiry is meant to challenge or complicate persistent claims that the United States remained culturally dependent on Great Britain throughout the period, that its portraits reflect a kind of “Anglo-American synthesis.” Although the British flooded North America with royal paintings and celebrity prints in the general expectation that these would encourage fidelity to the Crown and taste for English goods, the French deployed images of sovereigns, ministers, and generals more precisely to seal diplomatic agreements, to celebrate military victories, and to rally public support. Indeed, so appealing were French productions that American artists freely borrowed from them to commemorate the first Presidents of the United States.

There will be six sessions, each lasting approximately two hours and consisting of three to four participants. (more…)

Reminder: the due date is 15 September!

2014 American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Conference
Williamsburg, 20–22 March 2014

Proposals due by 15 September 2013

Governor’s Palace in Williamsburg, Virginia. The original structure was built between
1710 and 1722, with further additions made in the 1750s. Fire destroyed the
main house in 1781. The present building was constructed in the early 1930s.
Photo by Larry Pieniazek, 2006, from Wikimedia Commons.

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The 2014 ASECS conference takes place in Williamsburg, 20–22 March. Along with our annual luncheon and business meeting, HECAA will be represented by two panels chaired by Denise Baxter and Amy Freund and Jessica Fripp. In addition to these, a wide selection of sessions that might be relevant for HECAA members are also included below. A full list of panels (68 pages’ worth!) is available as a PDF file here.

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Anne Schroder New Scholar’s Session (Historians of Eighteenth-Century Art and Architecture)

Denise Amy Baxter, 1304 Edgewood Court, Carrollton, TX 75007; denise.baxter@unt.edu

Named in honor of the late Anne Schroder, this seminar will feature outstanding new research by emerging scholars.

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Selfhood and Visual Representation in the Eighteenth Century (Historians of Eighteenth-Century Art and Architecture)

Amy Freund, Texas Christian U. and Jessica Fripp, Parsons The New School for Design; a.freund@tcu.edu and frippj@newschool.edu

This panel will consider the relationship between the visual arts and new ideas of selfhood in the eighteenth century. Enlightenment-era debates about the nature of the self had profound effects on how people imagined the individual’s place in society, how gender, age, and racial difference were framed, how science and medicine conceived of the mind and body, and how emotions such as love and friendship were understood and expressed. Some scholars have approached the question of the eighteenth-century self in terms of the rise of possessive individualism, of secularization, and of consumer culture; others have pointed to the persistence and transformation of traditional hierarchies, of collective identities, and of mysticism and the irrational. We are seeking papers that examine the visual representation of the eighteenth-century self, both in portraiture and in other genres and modes, including (but not limited to) genre and history painting, architecture and the decorative arts, dress, and material culture. We encourage proposals that deal with the eighteenth-century self in Asia, Africa, and the Americas, and with the transformation (or inapplicability) of Enlightenment ideas outside of Europe.

A larger list of potentially relevant sessions is available here»

From Hypotheses.org, the blog of the Art Histories Society and Art History Supplement:

Art History Supplement 3.6 (November 2013) — Advertising Images / Art as Advertisement
Papers due by 15 October 2013

Images with advertising attitude frequently draw forms and figures from artworks. This appropriation is commonly discussed in each case as a reference to the particular work of art being discussed in the image of the advertisement, when it comes to an art history curriculum. The reception of that artwork would be the primary concern of that study. For instance, see John Berger (1972) Ways of Seeing, London: BBC and Penguin Books, chapter seven. The role of advertisement is primarily to communicate a certain message in order to support, in one way or another, the promotion, the sale or the awareness of a particular product. This product may be a commodity; including a person or an idea, for instance. Such a perspective inevitably brings art historians in front of a certain quandary.

When are these advertising images becoming part of a history of art (art history) curriculum on their own status? Could advertising images bridge the gap, if such a gap exists indeed, between history of art and history of images?

On the other hand, according to OED (2nd edition), for instance, an advertisement could be defined as: a) the turning of the mind to anything, b) the action of calling the attention of others; admonition, warning, precept, instruction, c) the action of informing or notifying; information, notification, notice, d) a (written) statement calling attention to anything; a notification, a ‘notice’, e) a public notice or announcement: formerly by the town-crier; now, usually, in writing or print, by placards, or in a journal; spec. a paid announcement in a newspaper or other print.

Yet, Hoepli describes the current meanings of pubblicità as a) L’essere fatto in pubblico, b) azione del far conoscere al pubblico, c) complesso delle varie forme di propaganda aventi lo scopo di far conoscere e di incrementare il consumo e l’uso di un prodotto commerciale, di un servizio, d) mezzo con cui si fa conoscere al pubblico, a scopo commerciale, un determinato prodotto, e) piccola pubblicità, nei giornali, la rubrica degli annunci economici.

While, John Florio (1611) in his Italian – English dictionary annotated the meaning of publicatione as a publication, a proclamation, a manifestation, a making knowen (p.408).

Wouldn’t all these above qualities be able to describe images regarded, for example, as renaissance and/ or early modern art? A) Religious or humanistic art communicating a political or cultural message, B) “preaching” through images, C) the narration or the narrative element of early modern painting, D) the dictum that images can be the Book of the illiterates, E) public devotional or secular commemorative art or the diffusion of engravings. The drawing of such intriguing parallels could be alleged to the role and the use of those art images in those times, based on the theoretical and their rhetorical structures, as patronage and reception studies, built upon the Panofskian model of “cultural” signs.

Papers and short notes are sought to support, or not, the advertising images as a traceable chapter in a history of art survey course; concerning the use of these images, along with any stylistic dimensions these images have. Moreover, submissions are being welcomed to investigate earlier examples of advertisements through renaissance and early modern religious, or not, paintings, portraits, engravings and ephemera. (more…)

From the conference website:

ISECS Congress 2015 | Opening Markets: Trade and Commerce in the Age of Enlightenment
Rotterdam, 26–31 July 2015

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The International Congress on the Enlightenment is the largest event in the field, and takes place every four years. Recent meetings have been held in Dublin (1999), Los Angeles (2003), Montpellier (2007) and Graz (2011). The 14th Congress will take place from 26 to 31 July 2015 in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. Congress facilities will be provided by Erasmus University Rotterdam, with tours and displays on local heritage coordinated by members of the Dutch-Belgian Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies.

The Congress is organized by the Organizing Committee of Dutch-Belgian Society of Eighteenth-Century Studies and is hosted by the Erasmus University Rotterdam. The Congress is preceded by an ordinary meeting of the ISECS General Assembly. Opening Markets includes theme-related sessions as well as plenary sessions featuring invited speakers. The Congress is organized into parallel sessions and round tables with keynotes elaborating on the subtopics. The Congress facilitates poster presentations. Preceding the Congress the organizers host an ISECS International Seminar for junior Eighteenth-Century scholars.

The scientific program is coordinated by an International Steering Committee made up of members of the Organizing Committee and eminent scholars from scientific institutes and universities in the world. A professional Congress Organizing Office is in charge of the practical aspects concerning the preparation, registration, communication and organization of the Congress, the accomodations for participants and the excursions and (partner)tours during and after the Congress.

The Scientific Steering Committee invites the submission of abstracts for oral and poster presentations at the Congress from January 2014. Abstracts must be submitted online by 31 December 2014. An individual may submit more than one abstract. Abstracts must not exceed 250 words. Presenters must be registered participants at the Congress. Accepted abstracts will be presented at the Congress and published in the Congress proceedings.

Additional information is available at the conference website. Also consult the first announcement of the preliminary programme, available for download as a PDF file here»