Call for Papers: New Voices – Art and Decolonization

A conference at the Henry Moore Institute, 16 November 2013

Art and its histories have ‘complex entanglements’ with empire and imperialism, to borrow a phrase from theorist Nikos Papastergiadis. In collaboration with the Henry Moore Institute, New Voices investigates the intersections of art and decolonisation to ask what the specific implications of decolonisation are for art and art history. This symposium turns attention to the geo-political struggles, revolutions and cultural recalibrations that artists and art historians have championed, challenged and negotiated as imperialism and colonialism weakened their grip and took on new forms.

New Voices aims to identify the roles art has played in the volatile moments at the end of various empires in order to ask how has art depicted and enabled the production of cultural identities amidst rapid political change seen in examples that include the decline of the Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman Empires, decolonisation in the twentieth century, the fall of the Berlin wall, Indian independence and the spirit of liberation that swept across Africa. New Voices is also interested in addressing how the visual arts has resisted and altered the terms of domination or homogeneity in the contexts such as the Arab Spring and international Indigenous struggles for self-determination. The effects of deterritorialisation, migration and modernisation on art and its institutions are of particular interest.

As New Voices is hosted by Henry Moore Institute, a centre for the study of sculpture, we welcome submissions which consider sculpture and the Leeds Museums and Galleries sculpture collections, managed on partnership with the Henry Moore Institute.

Call for Papers: Imaginary Exhibitions

The Henry Moore Institute , 6 November 2013

This symposium is part of our present research project looking at ‘Sculpture and its Exhibition Histories’. Through this project we address how developments in sculpture have impacted upon the spaces of exhibition, how the material conditions of the display of sculpture have played increasingly important roles in the meaning and making of sculpture as an art form, how the modes of presenting sculpture have shifted and how curatorial practice has impacted on the understanding of sculpture, and vice versa.

The formal exhibition, staged indoors in the spaces of the art gallery or museum or outdoors in the sculpture park or urban setting, is key to these histories. This one-day symposium seeks to further complicate this larger history of sculpture and exhibitions by looking at the place of the ‘imaginary exhibition’ within this narrative. The ambitions and registers of such projects vary: they range from the utopian to the tentative, the immaterial to the highly materialised, through to exhibitions that were hampered by logistics or that were inscribed with impossibility from their inception. Instances of these ‘imaginary exhibitions’ are to be found internationally, across ancient, modern and contemporary epochs, in the work of many twentieth-century artists, including Constantin Brancusi, Marcel Duchamp, Henry Moore and David Smith, and embedded within curatorial, artistic and textual practices.

Call for Papers: The Varied Roles of the Amateur in Early Modern Europe

New York, RSA, March 27 - 29, 2014, Deadline: Jun 1, 2013

A central identity in early modern Europe for fashioning one’s self as a participant in sociability and public-building was the lover (liefhebber/es, Liebhaber/in, amator, amatore/amatrice, un/une amateur). Currently the liefhebber or amateur is usually considered from the perspective of the history of connoiseurship in art. However, the lover was not only a persona in the art world. One could be a lover of alchemy, of liberty, of mathematics, or of the fatherland. The question is then, how did the identities of the lovers in one arena intersect or not with those in others? Can the agency of the lover in the development of taste, expertise, and cultural content, as one sees in art, also be seen in other endeavours? Are national or regional differences visible? What was the role of gender? Were there distinctions between lover, connoisseur or virtuoso? What were the relationships between the non-professional lover and standard arenas for the assurance of expertise, such as guilds and universities? How does the role of the lover relate to models of citizenship and participation in a market society?

Call for Papers – The Thirteenth York Manuscripts Conference: Cathedral Libraries and Archives of Britain and Ireland

Conference hosted by the Centre for Medieval Studies and the Centre for Renaissance and Early Modern Studies at the University of York, 3-5 July 2014. Abstract Deadline, 1 July 2013.

The York Manuscripts Conference has been held biennially or triennially since 1986 and, with about 50 papers, is amongst the largest conferences in Europe dedicated to manuscript studies. The Thirteenth York Manuscripts Conference, to be held from 3-5 July 2014 will have as its topic the Cathedral Libraries and Archives of England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland. The Cathedral Libraries and Archives of Britain and Ireland comprise some of the most remarkable and least explored collections of medieval and early modern manuscripts. While predictably focused on theological, liturgical, and devotional books, they also contain many medical, scientific, and literary sources, as well as legal and administrative documents. In addition to the many collections that are still in situ, others are now being looked after elsewhere, or have been dispersed. The conference will include papers on medieval and early modern manuscripts which are or were once held by the cathedrals of Britian and Ireland, considering their varied contents, illumination, use, and provenance; paper topics might also explore the formation, development, and dissolution of the libraries themselves; connections between different collections; their location and cataloguing within the cathedrals; or the distinction between cathedral libraries and cathedral archives in a historical perspective. Papers which shed light on lesser known treasures and collections will be especially welcome. We invite papers from researchers in the fields of religion, history, art history, musicology, history of science, literature, codicology, conservation, and other cognate disciplines. Papers delivered at the conference may be considered for inclusion in a volume of selected essays.

Call for Papers – Modern British History since 1750

Conference on Modern British History: Society, Culture, Politics and Religion since 1750. University of Edinburgh, 10-11 June 2013. Proposals due by 6 May 2013

Following the success of the conferences held at Strathclyde (2007-2009), at St Andrews in 2010, at Dundee in 2011, and at Stirling in 2012, the Modern British History Network will host a seventh major Conference on Modern British History at New College, University of Edinburgh, on 10-11 June 2013. The event is particularly aimed at members of the Scottish universities and the northern English universities although all historians are very welcome. Previous conferences have attracted delegates from across the UK and from overseas. Proposals for papers or registration to attend the event are now invited from researchers working on all aspects of modern British history. The conference aims to represent work covering the whole period since the late eighteenth century with topics in social, cultural, political and religious history. Proposals should be submitted by 6 May 2013 to Dr Juliette Pattinson (juliette.pattinson@strath.ac.uk). Over two days there will be three main papers from senior academics and short papers by other academics and postgraduates, who are equally welcome to speak.

Call for Papers – Legacy: Mythology and Authenticity in the Humanities

De Montfort University: A postgraduate conference 28th June 2013. Proposal Deadline April 16th

This conference focuses on the influence of cultural ‘legacies’ within current humanities research.  By highlighting the work of postgraduates and early career researchers, this interdisciplinary conference will examine the various ways in which ‘legacies’ are created, restructured, perpetuated and even rejected.  It will also question whether newer disciplines respond to cultural mythologies by establishing their own ‘legacy’ as a means of achieving academic authentication. The recent confirmed identity of Richard the III, Faber’s choice of cover illustration for its anniversary issue of Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, and the recent film adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit are just a few of the numerous examples that demonstrate how cultural legacies evolve within academic research and the public forum. These inherited cultural legacies are continually being redefined, rebranded and reevaluated, creating a cyclical pattern that challenges the ways in which we approach and define them.  This brings into question the social and political significance of ‘legacy’ and its relevance within the humanities, both as a research theme and as a lens by which to view the progression of our respective disciplines. The conference will conclude with a roundtable discussion with Professor Dominic Shellard the Vice-Chancellor of De Montfort University, Dr Will Buckingham of the School of Humanities at De Montfort University, and Mr Sam Causer of the Leicester School of Architecture.

Call for Papers: Collaborators – The Role of Collectors, Critics and Curators in Artistic Practice c. 1780-1914

Honoré Daumier, The Print Collectors, c.1863–5. Photo c. V&A

Conference: 26 June 2013, Humanities Research Centre, University of York; Call for Papers Deadline: Friday 26th April

In May 1884 the art critic Marion Harry Spielmann wrote in defence of the often criticised profession of art criticism: “The critic – (I am not now referring to the mere notice writer of daily journalism) – spends his life in devotion not only to art but to artists: and, so far as public recognition is concerned, he reaps his reward in sneers and ‘chaff’: sneers from painters, thoughtless and irresponsible, like Mr Whistler; indifference from others less splenetic and querulous.” Spielmann, a prolific author, editor and arts administrator, was an advocate for and close friend of numerous contemporary artists. Along with the collectors and curators whom he frequently worked with and wrote about, he was an active and influential participant in contemporary art practice in late-Victorian London.

Call for Papers and Panels: British Studies

Midwest Conference on British Studies 60th Annual Meeting, DePaul University, Chicago, October 11-12 2013.

The MWCBS seeks papers from scholars in all fields of British Studies, broadly defined to include those who study England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, and Britain’s Empire and the Commonwealth. We welcome scholars from a broad spectrum of disciplines, including but not limited to history, literature, political science, gender studies and art history. Proposals for complete sessions are preferred, although proposals for individual papers will be considered. We welcome roundtables (of four participants plus chair) and panels (of three participants plus chair/commentator) that:

Call for Papers: Sin and Salvation in Reformation England

A conference at the Shakespeare Institute, Stratford-upon-Avon, June 26-28, 2013

Sin and salvation were the two central religious preoccupations of men and women in sixteenth century England, and yet the reformation fundamentally reconfigured the theological, intellectual,

social and cultural landscape in which these two conceptual landmarks were sited. The abolition of purgatory, the ending of intercessory prayer, the rejection of works of supererogation and the collapse of the medieval economy of salvation meant that it was impossible for attitudes, hopes, fears and expectations about sin and salvation to survive the reformation unchanged. This conference will explore some of the transformations and permutations which the concepts of sin and salvation underwent over the course of the Reformation in England, as well as the practical consequences of these changes as lived.

Call for Papers – Identity Construction and Meaning

AAH Call for Papers for Student Summer Symposium 2013, University of Oxford, 20-21 June 2013. Proposals deadline, 1st April.

The concept of ‘identity’ is prolific within the visual arts and in many ways its pertaining issues have shaped the discipline of art history. The biographical approach to reading artists’ work privileged by Vasari in his Lives (1550) has had a lasting influence. The portrait remains an effective medium through which to narrate the historical and contemporary identity of particular institutions and nations, and the art market continues to rely upon authentic attribution. Yet this art history of names remains problematic and by no means comprehensively represents either the discipline of art history or the plural notions of identity that have come to influence it.

During the twentieth century, subjectivity was critiqued and revised: psychoanalysis destabilized the concept of a consistent and whole subject, positioning the self as an illusion of stability and a site of fragmentation; Barthes and Foucault challenged notions of authorship, arguing instead that the reader-viewer be considered in the creation and interpretation of a work. More recently, gender and postcolonial theory has cast light on notions of identity understood as performance and as Otherness, and new technologies, such as the Internet, have altered relations between international communities and provided new platforms for constructing identity.