Print Culture and the American South
2010 Summer Seminar in the History of the Book:
The Global American South
& Early American Print Culture
American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, MA, 14- 18 June 2010
Applications due by 12 March 2010
What happens when we view the imagined community of U.S. print culture from the vantage point of the South? How might such a reoriented book history challenge emerging transatlantic, transnational, and cosmopolitan histories of the U.S.? At a moment when industrial print culture was consolidating itself in the Northeast, “the South” appeared in print on several spatial scales. While asserting an “American” identity, Southerners represented themselves as a sectional alternative to the nation. Boasting a distinctive regional culture, they simultaneously celebrated local diversity. The seminar will investigate how these complementary practices of national, regional, and local self-definition circuited through print cultural conditions on the ground. How, we will ask, did distribution, copyright, authorship, and reading inflect the South’s sectional self-fashioning, its attempt to lay claim to the nation, and its engagements with the wider world?
We can hear echoes of Southern print culture’s sectional and local accents in the American Antiquarian Society’s unsurpassed periodical holdings, which also allow us to track the printed South’s circulation, reception, and representation throughout the nation. The seminar will benefit from the AAS’ wealth of ephemeral print propaganda on the South’s major political crises: Indian removal, the slavery controversy, and nullification/secession. Finally, the seminar will provide an introduction to the Tinker Collection’s rich holdings in Francophone Louisiana materials-from legal ordinance digests to an original copy of Les Cenelles. (more…)
The Social Life of an Object
The Material Life of Things Project
Courtauld Institute of Art, London, 2010-2011
Applications due by the 12 March 2010
Project coordinated by Dr Francesco Lucchini
In recent years, the evidence of technical and material analysis has become increasingly important to art-historical interpretation. Beyond their traditional role in informing the restoration of artefacts, technical investigations have greatly contributed to our understanding of how works of art were made. Yet, less critical attention has been paid to the ‘use-life’ of artefacts – that is, to the manipulation, exchange and consumption of artefacts throughout their life histories. Drawing together researchers from different areas of expertise including curators and conservators, this research project aims to explore the material lives of artefacts in a variety of media, encouraging object-based, methodological and theoretical discussions relating to the shifting relationship between artefacts, people and environments throughout the life history of particular objects or classes of objects. Emphasis is placed on works of art as material objects considering the ways in which they are manipulated, re-made and unmade by different individuals, at different times, manifesting different social and cultural practices
Aims, Issues and Themes
The aim of project is to draw together scholars working across the dicipline in order to research and discuss aspects of the material life of works of art from different periods, claryfying theoretical and methodological issues and advancing our understanding of the subject. Among issues that can be raised are the following:
- Temporality, authenticity and change
- Fragmentation and reconstruction
- Aggregation of artefacts and the status of the object
- Ritual damage/reparation and pre-modern restorations
- Material history and conservation of new media
- Durability, ephemerality and material residuals
- Recontextualisation/decontextualisation, artefacts in consonant and dissonant environments
- Confiscation, displacement and repatriation
- Individual vs. corporate attitudes towards materiality of art
- Commoditisation and decommoditisation
- Ownership, market and the value of materiality
- Historiographic and methodological approaches to the materiality of art
- The concept of ‘object biography’ and its implications/limitations (more…)
HBA Publication Grant
Historians of British Art 2010 Publication Grant
Due by 31 January 2010
The Historians of British Art (HBA) invites applications for its 2010 publication grant. The society will award up to $500 to offset publication costs of or to support additional research for a journal article or book manuscript in the field of British visual culture that has been accepted by a publisher. Applicants must be current members of HBA. To apply, send a 500-word project description, publication information (name of journal or press and projected publication date), budget, and CV to Pamela Fletcher, HBA Prize Committee chair, at pfletcher@bowdoin.edu.
Call for Submissions: Graduate Students Writing Visual Studies
Call for Submissions: Visual Studies Reader, Written Entirely by Graduate Students
The first fully collaborative, student-run publication on visual studies
All submissions due by 30 January 2010
The visual world is changing so fast that no conventional anthology can capture it. Our idea is to record the current shape of visual studies, across disciplines, as it is experienced by the upcoming generation of scholars and artists. We are gathering a group of about 100 authors. After we have completed a rough draft of the book, we will post the entire manuscript on our Wiki, and allow everyone on the internet to suggest changes, Wikipedia-fashion. All grad students are eligible; if you are studying for an MA, MFA, or PhD, or if you received your PhD in the last six months, you can contribute texts to this book.
The book is international and collaborative. It began with a group of students at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and now it includes about thirty students from 20 institutions around the world. Have a look at our Table of Contents to see how the book is developing. As the book grows, so does the community of editors. Everyone who joins the Reader can make suggestions about everyone else’s contributions: you will have final say over your own contribution, but you’ll also be involved in conversations with all the other participants.
After a further year of editing, in 2012, the entire book will be published by Routledge, and advertised and disseminated internationally. To apply, visit the wiki for full information:
and then send us a two-page description of what you’d like to contribute. Your proposal will be read by the grad-student authors who are currently in the project (the editor, Jim Elkins, doesn’t vote). Full instructions are on the wiki:
Book Prize
30th Annual Louis Gottschalk Prize
Nominations due by 15 November 2009
The Louis Gottschalk Prize is for an outstanding historical or critical study on the eighteenth century and carries an award of $1,000. Louis Gottschalk (1899-1975) second President of ASECS, President of the American Historical Association, and for many years Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago, exemplified in his scholarship the humanistic ideals that this award is meant to encourage.
All scholarly books, including commentaries, critical studies, biographies, collections of essays by a single author and critical editions, written in any modern language are eligible. Books that are primarily translations and multiauthored collections of essays are not eligible.
- To be eligible for this year’s competition, a book must have a copyright date between November 2007 and October 2008.
- The author must be a member of ASECS at the time of submission.
- Submission must be made by the publisher, and five copies must be received by 15 November 2009.
Send all submissions and inquires to: ASECS — Louis Gottschalk Prize, 2598 Reynolda Rd., Suite C, Winston-Salem, NC 27106; E-mail: asecs@wfu.edu
HBA Publication Grant
Historians of British Art 2010 Publication Grant
Due by 31 January 2010
The Historians of British Art (HBA) invites applications for its 2010 publication grant. The society will award up to $500 to offset publication costs of or to support additional research for a journal article or book manuscript in the field of British visual culture that has been accepted by a publisher. Applicants must be current members of HBA. To apply, send a 500-word project description, publication information (name of journal or press and projected publication date), budget, and CV to Pamela Fletcher, HBA Prize Committee chair, at pfletcher@bowdoin.edu.
Next Year’s Getty Theme — ‘Display’ Once More
Scholars in Residence Applications for the Getty — Due 1 November
‘The Display of Art’ continues as the theme for the Getty Research Institute from 2009–2010 into 2010–2011.
The Getty Research Institute seeks applications from established researchers as well as those at the pre- and postdoctoral levels who are interested in questions bearing upon ‘The Display of Art’ and wish to be in residence at the Getty Research Institute or Getty Villa during the 2010–2011 academic year.
The Display of Art
Art and display are inseparable. When selecting and juxtaposing objects we create narratives, assign meanings, grant relevance, and produce art history. Studying a work of art requires attention to the social, political, economic, and cultural contexts of its display. The display of art will again be at the center of the scholar year, continuing and building on the theme from 2009–2010. Projects may focus on, but are not limited to, the history of museums; display in and of antiquity; private and public modes of display; the display of cultural encounter; display itself as art form; and the links between the display of art and conservation.
◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊
This year’s scholars and fellows include:
Dominique Poulot (Professor of the History of Art at Université Paris I–Panthéon-Sorbonne and senior member of the French Universitary Institute) — Museum Cultures and Experiences in Europe, 1750–1815
Alain Schnapp (Professor of Art History and Archaeology at Université Paris I–Panthéon-Sorbonne) — Towards a Comparative History of Antiquarianism
Tristan Weddigen (Professor of the History of Early Modern Art at the University of Zurich, Switzerland) — The Collection as a Visual History of Art: The Dresden Picture Gallery in the 18th and 19th Century
Mario Epifani (doctorate from the Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II) — Neapolitan Paintings in Italian and European Collections between the 17th and 18th Centuries
Book Prize for Biography
Biennial Annibel Jenkins Biography Prize
Due 15 November
The biennial Annibel Jenkins Prize is given to the author of the best book-length biography of a late seventeenth-century or eighteenth-century subject and carries an award of $1,000. The prize is named in honor of Annibel Jenkins, Professor of English (Emerita) at the Georgia Institute of Technology. A founding member of the Southeastern American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, she is an outstanding teacher and scholar who has been for many years one of the most active and encouraging members of the academic community in America.
Rules:
- To be eligible for this year’s competition, a book must have a copyright date between November 2007 and October 2009.
- The author must be a member of ASECS at the time of submission.
- Submission must be made by the publisher, and six copies must be received by 15 November 2009.
Send all submissions and inquires for to: ASECS, Annibel Jenkins Book Prize, 2598 Reynolda Rd., Suite C, Winston-Salem, NC 27106; E-mail: asecs@wfu.edu
Fellowships in Cartography
J.B. Harley Research Fellowships in the History of Cartography
Applications due by November 1
Funded by the J. B. Harley Research Trust, the Harley Fellowships provide support of up to four weeks (normally at GBP 400 per week) for those, from any discipline, doing the equivalent of post-graduate level work in the historical map collections of the United Kingdom.
Harley-Delmas Fellowships in the History of Cartography
Applications due by November 1
For the period 2007-2011, in addition to the normal J. B. Harley Fellowships, there are also Harley-Delmas Fellowships funded by the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation. Successful applicants researching the history of cartography during the European Renaissance to the Enlightenment c.1400-c.1800 will be eligible for a Harley-Delmas Fellowship. All applicants, however, should apply for a J. B. Harley Fellowship. Eligibility for a Harley-Delmas award will be decided by the Selection Committee of the Trustees.
The Fellowship website includes an Application page that should provide all the necessary information as well as answering many frequently asked questions. It would be helpful if you could say where you saw this notice.
Weekly Apollo Competition
Each week, Apollo Magazine gives away a book to a lucky reader who sends in an email in response to a simple question and is then selected from a pool of respondents with the correct answer. This week’s contest seems worth noting both for the book on offer and the query, which is closely related to the painting pictured below (hint, hint!). From the Apollo website:
Emily Cole (Yale University Press, 2009) ISBN: 978-0300148718, $85
This week we are offering you the chance to win Lived In London: Blue Plaques and the Stories Behind Them, edited by Emily Cole (Yale; £40). This superb book charts the fascinating history of London’s Blue Plaques while telling the story of the city’s most famous residents and the buildings in which they lived. Arranged geographically, by borough and area, this book is the first published guide for over half a century to be compiled with the aid of local government and English Heritage files. It includes new research and findings on the people and buildings commemorated, as varied as Winston Churchill, Virginia Woolf, Mahatma Gandhi and Charlie Chaplin. In the book’s foreword Stephen Fry writes, “Part of the sport of Plaque Spotting is to encounter remarkable men and women of whom one has not heard, but whose claim to greatness one can discover. . . The presence of their plaques tells us much about them but also about the London they chose to stay in and which offered them refuge and hospitality. This invaluable book, written with insight and exemplary scholarship, is a perfect companion for anyone who has ever looked up and wondered. . .”
For your chance to win, simply answer the following question:
Which antiquary and collector lived at Number 14 Queen Anne’s Gate (originally called 7 Park Street)?
Clue: Most of the collection of antiquities amassed by this person was acquired by the British Museum.
Email your answers ot offers@apollomag.com using ‘Blue Plaques’ as the subject of your email. Only answers received before midday on 9 October will be entered into the competition draw.
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