Enfilade

From the Call for Papers:

The English Georgian North, 1714–1830: Rethinking Cultures and Connections
Institute of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, Durham University, 15 September 2023

Proposals due by 14 July 2023

This symposium builds on conversations that have been taking place at Durham University over the last fifteen months as part of the IMEMS research strand The Georgian North, designed and led by Professor Fiona Robertson. It sets out to develop new approaches to the intellectual and creative cultures of the northern counties of England in the Georgian period, 1714–1830. Important contributions to knowledge, interpretation, creative practice, and scientific advance were made in the north country during this still largely rural and early industrial period in its history. They took shape in social, professional, and discursive networks of considerable complexity and reach, bringing together artists, abolitionists, antiquaries, architects, writers, theologians, musicians, astronomers, philosophers, mathematicians, botanists, landscape designers, linguists, clergy, social and political reformers, actors, and archaeologists. Yet there has been little connected cross-disciplinary exploration of these cultures, their significance, and their legacies.

J.M.W. Turner, Durham Cathedral with a Rainbow, ca.1817, graphite and watercolour on paper, 55 × 37 cm (London: Tate, D25247).

We invite proposals for 15-minute papers or presentations to contribute to a day of informal and investigative discussion. Topics of interest include, but are not restricted to
• Environment and conservation
• Abolition, reform, and intervention
• Originality and innovation
• Scientific enquiry, speculation, and new worlds
• Practices of collecting, curation, and display
• Performance: players, theatres, audiences
• Composition: music, painting, poetry, prose fiction, architecture, design
• Ancient pasts: theories and artefacts
• Cultures of belief
• Depletion and rediscovery (buildings, communities, habitats, traditions)
• International and intercultural connections; connections across languages and traditions
• Conversation and exchange (social, professional, and discursive networks, philosophical and historical societies, bookshops, print cultures)

The region under discussion comprises the historic counties of northern England: County Durham, the North Riding of Yorkshire, Northumberland, Cumberland, and Westmorland. Of particular interest, because especially under-researched, is present-day County Durham and the areas immediately bordering it, but we welcome work on all relevant locales and communities. Of the many individuals active in the intellectual and creative cultures of the period, some were permanently settled in the northern counties, while others were here for shorter periods, often under-researched relative to the wider body of scholarship on their work. They are all of significance to our discussion, as are, also equally, the natural and constructed environments of the northern English counties—private and public buildings, landscapes and treescapes, theatres and observatories. All these environments helped shape the formation and development of ideas and many are now lost or under-regarded.

This is a free, in-person symposium, open to researchers across disciplines, with papers and roundtables and an emphasis on discussion and exchange. Teas, coffees, and a light lunch will be provided. There will be at least one online-only follow-up session later in 2023. We invite 300-word proposals for 15-minute papers or presentations. Please submit your proposal via this form by 14 July 2023.

If you cannot attend but are interested in receiving information about the Research Strand and follow-up sessions, you can use the above link to register your interest. We shall respond to all proposal submissions no later than 28 July, after which time further details and the registration link will be made available.

From CIHA, whose 2024 conference is organized around the theme ‘Matter Materiality’:

Materialising Loss: Absence and Remaking in Art History
36th Congrès du Comité International d’Histoire de l’Art (CIHA), Lyon, 23–28 June 2024

Chaired by Francesca Borgo and Felicity Bodenstein

Proposals due by 15 September 2023

Paper proposals are currently invited for the session “Materialising Loss: Absence and Remaking in Art History” at the 36th Congrès du Comité International d’Histoire de l’Art (CIHA) in Lyon, 23–28 June 2024, co-chaired by Francesca Borgo (University of St Andrews/ Bibliotheca Hertziana) and Felicity Bodenstein (Université Sorbonne).

The material turn in art history has reinstated a sensibility for the ‘thingness’ of things (Brown, 2001), the properties of their constitutive materials (Ingold, 2007), and the activity of their matter (Miller & Poh, 2022; Latour 1991; Gell 1998; Bennett, 2010). More recently still, interest has extended beyond making and materials: processes of unmaking, deterioration, care, and preservation have become subjects of investigation, accompanied by growing critical engagement with conservation (Fowler, 2019; Fowler & Nagel, 2023) and increasing attention to the behaviour of matter across the deep time of geological history (Borgo & Venturi, CIHA 2019).

But what happens when—despite all our best efforts to conserve, protect, and make last—things disappear? Taking this question as its starting point, we invite papers that reconsider matter and materiality from an unusual point of view: the object’s loss or inaccessibility and the practices undertaken to compensate for its absence, via physical replicas or virtual reconstructions. In centring itself on what has long been considered an epistemological endpoint in art historical studies—the disappearance of the original object—the session proposes a critical assessment of material and virtual remaking as site of art-historical knowledge. It asks how we might integrate that knowledge into the analytical methods of art history.

Looking at materiality from the seemingly paradoxical standpoint of absence reveals how much material studies takes for granted in terms of the object’s presence, permanence, and accessibility. Loss forcefully confronts us with the enabling operations and grounding conditions that go into writing material art history. It permeates everything we do, and yet it is distinctively undertheorized (Fricke & Kumler, 2022). What are the stakes of absence and reclamation? How does loss help us rethink the relationship between matter and form beyond the hylomorphic model? How do art historians deal with missing evidence, and how does its resurfacing or remaking change the canon and the narrative? Whose loss is worth talking about and why?

The threats of war, climate change and mass tourism give these questions a pressing relevance today, amplified by debates over sustainability, inclusion, and property rights. But art history seems sceptical of efforts to work against these risks: despite recent calls for ‘militant reproductions’ (Bredekamp, 2016), campaigns to widen the notion of originality (Lowe & Latour, 2010) and emphasize the seriality of the Classic (Settis & Anguissola, 2015), and appeals to the greater inclusivity of digital heritage (Terras, 2022; Michel, 2016), much of the discipline remains ambivalent about the remade, regarding it as ludic and nostalgic.

We live in a world in which heritage is constantly de- and re-materialised, formed and reformed in an unprecedented interplay between the material, immaterial, and neomaterial. And although the implications for objects and their histories are manifold, they remain largely unexplored. This session aims at remedying that imbalance, reflecting on the impact of physical loss on material art history and examining the value of remaking as historical method. In the interests of crafting a more inclusive narrative of loss and remaking and of fostering exchange between scholars from different geographical and professional backgrounds, we especially welcome papers offering global perspectives.

Proposals are due 15 September 2023 and must be submitted via the CIHA platform. Instructions on how to submit your proposal can be found here.