Enfilade

From ArtHist.net:

The Architecture of the Cassinese Congregation, 15th–18th Centuries
Padua and Vicenza, 30 January — 1 February 2025

Organized by Gianmario Guidarelli with Ilaria Papa, Paola Placentino, and Riccardo Tonin

Proposals due by 31 August 2024

The University of Padua (ICEA Department), in collaboration with the Centro Internazionale di Studi di Architettura Andrea Palladio/Palladio Museum and the Abbey of Santa Giustina in Padua, is organising a three-day conference addressing the architecture of the Cassinese Benedictine Congregation, to be held in Padua and Vicenza from 30 January until 1 February 2025.

The conference is part of the PRIN 2022 research project CoenoBIuM. Art and Architecture of the Cassinese Benedictine Congregation (XV–XVIII centuries): Digital and Spatial Analysis Strategies through BIM Models, which studies the architectural and artistic practice of the Cassinese Benedictine Congregation from its foundation until the end of the 18th century from a comparative perspective and with the use of the innovative and experimental Building Information Modeling (BIM) methodology. The project is coordinated by P.I. Gianmario Guidarelli (University of Padua), is structured in three Research Units belonging respectively to the Universities of Padua, Bologna (Associated Investigator: Sonia Cavicchioli) and Brescia (Associated Investigator: Paolo Borin), and gathers a team of professors and young researchers.

The reform of monastic life instituted by Ludovico Barbo and formalized in 1419 revolutionized Benedictine monasteries by reorienting monks’ lives towards contemplation and personal prayer. This new model of monastic life entailed the transformation of cenobitic spaces of the cenobia and the introduction of new theological and iconographic themes in painting and sculpture in the congregation’s churches and monasteries. This broad topic of study was inaugurated by the studies of James Ackerman (1977), Mary-Ann Winkelmes (1996), Bruno Adorni (1998), Guido Beltramini (1995, 2007, 2013), Andrea Guerra (2006), and Tracy Cooper (2005), and then further developed in the 2017 conference Network of Cassinese Arts (organised by Alessandro Nova and Giancarla Periti, KHI Florence). The CoenoBIuM project aims to verify this hypothesis using the BIM methodology, which facilitates the management of large amounts of data of different nature (archival, bibliographic, iconographic, material, geometric-spatial) within a framework of interdisciplinary collaboration. The project will gradually extend to the study of the entire network of monasteries of the Congregation, thanks to the sharing of data (open access) and results (thematic seminars, conferences and publications).

Focusing on the building practices and architecture of the Cassinese Congregation, the conference welcomes studies on individual monasteries as well as on the following general thematic issues:
• shared building regulations
• shared building practices: site management and economy
• circulation of architects, workers, materials
• relationship with local building traditions
• relationship with the urban and territorial context
• circulation and use of architectural drawings
• relationship with treatises
• antiquarian culture: spatial models and architectural language
• spatial models of other contemporary congregations: Olivetans, Laterans…
• spatial models of reference: Cistercians, Dominicans, Canons Regular, etc.
• relations with other reformed Benedictine congregations in Europe (France, Germany, etc.)
• the Cassinese congregation as a model for the architecture of the new Counter-Reformation congregations
• architecture and monastic life: liturgy and spirituality in relation to spaces

Paper proposals, consisting of a short abstract (250 words max.) and a short CV, should be sent as an email attachment to coenobium@dicea.unipd.it by 31 August 2024. Accepted proposals will be announced by 15 September 2024. The proceedings of the conference will be published. Additional information is available here.

From the Call for Papers:

Land and Power in Scotland: History, Law, and the Environment
Paris-Panthéon-Assas University, 26–27 June 202

Proposals due by 30 January 2025

Breathes there the man, with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land!

Immediately after these famous lines, their author, Sir Walter Scott, went on to describe his ‘native land’ as ‘O Caledonia! stern and wild/… Land of brown heath and shaggy wood/ Land of the mountain and the flood’. Although part of a wider romantic nationalist tradition of professing love for one’s native land through love of its landscape, Scott’s words reflect the special place of the land in Scotland’s identity. Scottish landscape defines Scottishness both within and beyond its borders. Indeed, it is no coincidence that Donald Dewar chose to quote Scott’s words at the opening of the new Scottish Parliament on 1st July 1999.

There are few nations where views of the land are both so fundamental and so fraught. Historically, Scotland combined a high proportion of harsh and often marginally productive land with the need to maintain an effective warrior class to resist English expansionism. The solution was a heavily militarised aristocracy endowed with vast territorial estates and innumerable retainers, over which it exercised almost princely power. While by no means unique when it originated in the Norman period, the resulting pattern of concentrated landownership has persisted to this day, even as social, economic and legal relationships have undergone dramatic change. Most notably, the 18th- and 19th-century Clearances upended the mutual obligations that underpinned the old feudal order, as the great landowners sought to transform their estates for intensive agricultural exploitation. The Clearances’ enduring legacy of social conflict, environmental degradation, and vast material inequality has given land a uniquely complex and controverted role in Scotland’s contemporary cultural, political and legal life.

Scotland now has one of the most concentrated patterns of land ownership in the world with an estimated 432 families owning half of all private land. Reflecting this situation, land reform has, since devolution, become a key issue in Scottish politics. Successive legislative initiatives have focused mainly on ending feudal tenure and simplifying titles to land, as well as creating a celebrated ‘right to roam’ and establishing a ‘community right to buy’ from existing landowners. Further legislation, the Land Reform (Scotland) Bill, was introduced to Parliament on 14th March 2024 to, inter alia, increase the influence of local communities when large landholdings of over 1,000 hectares which represent more than 50% of Scotland’s land are being sold.

The aim of this international and pluri-disciplinary two-day conference is to explore the current concern for land reform in its social, cultural, legal and environmental contexts. The intention is to gather specialists from a range of disciplines including history, geography, law, literature, political science, economics, sociology, and the arts, as well as environmental and climate change specialists, to explore the interactions between land and power in Scotland along three main axes:

• History — historical and symbolic roots of land and identity/power in Scotland, and their past and contemporary implications, the (mis)use of history to claim or retain rights, the history of Scottish landscapes in art and science, the history of environmentalism in Scotland, etc.

• Law — land law and policy reform in Scotland, its origins and current concerns, such as the ‘right to roam’ and the Scottish Outdoor Access Code, land reform, community ownership, transmission and inheritance, the notion of ‘environmental justice’, etc.

• The Environment — eco-activism and sustainable development, for example rewilding, reforesting and repeopling, renewable energy, eco-tourism and rural development, the environment as a source of wealth and power, green nationalism, nature and Scottish identity, etc.

The conference will be held in English and French, and a selection of papers will be published in an academic publication after the conference. Please send your proposals (300 words), a title, and a short biography (in French or English) to the scientific committee by 30 January 2025:
• Clarisse Godard Desmarest, Professor at Picardie Jules Verne University,
clarisse.godarddesmarest@u-picardie.fr
• Juliette Ringeisen-Biardeaud, Associate Professor at Paris-Panthéon-Assas University
juliette.ringeisen-biardeaud@u-paris2.fr
• Aurélien Wasilewski, Associate Professor at Paris-Panthéon-Assas University,
aurelien.wasilewski@u-paris2.fr

From the Call for Papers:

The Useful Enlightenment: Theories, Practices, and Representations of Usefulness
Martin-Luther-Universität, Halle-Wittenberg, 26–27 June 2025

Organised by Jean-Alexandre Perras

Proposals due by 31 December 2024

Clément-Pierre Marillier, Jean-François de Troy, Allégorie de l’enseignement des Arts (Château de Pau).

“What’s the use?” is often the very first question asked of a scientific endeavour. Indeed, the notion of utility has come to dominate our understanding of knowledge in the humanities as well as in the practical and fundamental sciences. It also furnishes the criterion by which we regularly assess the relevance of scientific research, where utility is often linked to potential applications and their economic benefits. This close relationship between knowledge, utility, technological improvement, and economic advantage dates back to the Enlightenment. This period saw not only the flowering of reason and human rights but also the beginning of the industrial exploitation of natural resources and the development of the logistical and economic infrastructures necessary to profit from the forced labour of displaced populations. As this conflict suggests, the question of utility has never had a simple answer, insofar as it requires us to consider for whom something is useful and to what ends.

This conference invites researchers from a wide range of historical disciplines (including the history of philosophy, literature, institutions, economics, and the sciences) to explore the many aspects encompassed by the notions of utility, usefulness, and usage over the course of the long eighteenth century. The aim is to reconsider how the circulation of various conceptions of utility shaped the relationship between knowledge, technology, politics, and the economy and how this relationship gave rise, in turn, to the concept of ‘useful knowledge’, whose links with the historiographical idea of the ‘industrial revolution’ and the accompanying rise of capitalism have been strongly emphasised through the notion of the ‘knowledge economy’ (Mokyr 2002). This follows research over the last twenty years that has challenged these intrinsic relationships, whether by applying a gender perspective (Serrano 2022; Maerker, Serrano, and Werrett 2023), by framing approaches in the global context of the circulation, exchange, or appropriation of knowledge and commodities (Schäfer and Valeriani 2021; Berg and Hudson 2023), or by focusing on the long-term transmission of practices and knowledge (Nigro 2023).

In the wake of this research, the conference will question the special relationship that developed during the eighteenth century between utility and value, be that economic, scientific, artistic, moral, or literary. Contributions will thus shed new light on the emergence of utility as a criterion for evaluating knowledge, goods, and cultural production. Particular attention will also be paid to the relationship between utility and improvement, how this was translated into the implementation of social, agricultural, or industrial reform, and the conditions of such practical application.

During the eighteenth century, the increasing valorisation of ‘useful’ knowledge, that is to say, practical, experimental and innovative knowledge, challenged the former hierarchy between the ‘liberal’ and the applied, ‘mechanical’ arts. This shift caused significant disruption in how the sciences were viewed in relation to nature and society. It also had a significant impact on both nature and society themselves, creating new means of exploiting human and natural resources according to such new criteria as not only utility but also productivity, efficiency, and progress. These changes gave rise to the debates that animated the political and intellectual reforms of the Enlightenment in the areas of slavery, luxury, and the control of wheat prices—to name but a few examples.

If, in the course of the century, utility did indeed become a central value in the construction of modern Western societies, it is essential to question the causes of this valorisation and relativise its supposed universality, particularly from extra-European points of view or by considering dissident voices, victims, and those excluded, who have questioned or suffered from the growth model centred on the politics and economy of useful knowledge.

Contributions may focus on issues such as the following:
• The relationship in eighteenth-century thought between the notions of interest, profit, or efficiency and those of utility, usefulness, and use.
• The different criteria used to assess utility in various fields of economics, literature, science, technology, or morality and the expertise or institutions needed to carry out such assessments.
• How the usefulness of certain types of knowledge, technologies, or reform projects was evaluated, for whom they were deemed useful, and how this evaluation was carried out.
• The role of learned societies such as academies and economic, patriotic, agricultural, or improvement societies in defining, disseminating, and implementing useful knowledge.
• The importance of non-Western knowledge in the development of a global economy in the eighteenth century.
• How the notion of utility can be used to reshape and reconceptualise the Enlightenment, particularly in terms of the relationship between centre and periphery.
• Voices against the valorisation of utility: scientists, gens de lettres, religious figures; those victimised or left behind by the implementation of public interest projects; those excluded from the determination of utility (colonisation, alternative conceptions of usefulness, criticisms of utility).
• The relationship between innovation, useful arts, science, and technology.
• The evolution of the notion of utile dulci in art and literary theory; the usefulness of rhetoric; fiction and representation; ‘useful’ passions; exemplarity and morality of the arts and literature.
• Growth, progress, sustainability, and usefulness: the agricultural Enlightenment; exploitation of resources and land; agrarian profitability and the acclimatisation of (useful) exotic plants in Europe and the colonies.
• Women and useful knowledge; women and the sciences; the usefulness of women’s labour; social reform projects aimed at women.
• Scientific research deemed futile: squaring the circle, metaphysics, alchemy, etc.
• Pedagogy and usefulness: educational programmes and reforms, popular schools and education and the ‘popular Enlightenment’.
• The utility of the Enlightenment in contemporary political, historiographical, or scientific debates.

Proposals, including an abstract and a short biography and list of publications, should be sent by 31 December 2024 to jean-alexandre.perras@izea.uni-halle.de.

Organised by Jean-Alexandre Perras, Humboldt Research Fellow, with the support of the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung, the IZEA (Martin-Luther-Universität, Halle-Wittenberg), the Voltaire Foundation (University of Oxford) and the Pôle Europe des Lumières (Sorbonne Université)

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