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[1] Prints in Books: The Materiality, Art History and Collection of Illustrations

From: Elizabeth Savage <leu21cam.ac.uk>
Date: Sep 21, 2016

Convenor: Elizabeth Savage, Cambridge University, leu21cam.ac.uk

Book illustrations, especially from the hand-press period (1450-1830), are an essential but traditionally overlooked source of art historical information. Although the hierarchies of fine art over popular art are dissolving and modern disciplinary distinctions between text and image (or art and book) are giving way to cross-disciplinary and holistic approaches to printed material, printed images that happen to be inside books often fall outside the remits of art historical, literary, bibliographical and material research.

One reason is that practical and academic barriers impede access to the art historical information that book illustrations can provide. Due to incompatible cataloguing standards adopted by libraries and art museums, researchers can struggle to identify book illustrations across collections. Cataloguing protocols may reduce hundreds of significant woodcuts in a book to the single word ‘illustrated’; some world-leading graphic art digitisation initiatives exclude book illustrations. As the global digitised corpus expands, will book illustrations be more represented in print scholarship or will they continue to fall into the gap between art and book? As material objects and visual resources, should they be considered bibliographical, art historical or iconographical material? And how do such classifications influence their interpretation?

This interdisciplinary, all-day session seeks to establish a platform for discussion about the position of printed book illustrations in graphic art scholarship. Theoretical and object-based papers related to any aspect of collecting, cataloguing and interpreting printed book illustrations, broadly defined, are welcome, as are papers that explore the materiality, iconography, historiography or art history of pictures printed inside books.

Please email 250-word paper proposals, including your name, affiliation and email, to the convenor by 7 Nov 2016. Full proposal guidelines at http://www.aah.org.uk/annual-conference/sessions2017/session25.

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[2] Beyond Vision: Experiencing Art Through the Other Senses, c 500–1600

Convenors:
Serenella Sessini, University of Sheffield, ssessini1sheffield.ac.uk
Laura Cristina Stefanescu, University of Sheffield, lcstefanescu1sheffield.ac.uk

The perception of works of art can involve more than one corporeal sense. Even though the sense of sight is at the basis of the interaction with images, the elements within a work of art can also lead to a multi-sensory experience. Medieval and Renaissance artworks have the potential to reveal interesting insights into an otherwise hardly accessible sphere, that of perception. Through their analysis, scholars can seek to understand the feelings and reactions of contemporary viewers. Scholarly interest in the role of the senses in Medieval and Renaissance art has greatly increased in recent years, establishing a new direction in art historical research.

The aim of this session is to bring together scholars interested in exploring works of art from the audience’s perspective, and in investigating how the experience of an image can be supported by other senses in addition to vision. How does the visual perception of the viewer change when other senses are provoked by elements depicted in a work of art? Do different types of viewers respond differently to different sensory provocations? Can the engagement of the other senses assist in particular practices, such as devotion and moral education, or in everyday experiences? Would the viewer respond automatically to visual stimuli by recalling familiar sensory experiences?

We welcome papers related to these and similar questions, using either or both contemporary and modern sensory theories, and case-studies that explore the multi-sensory experience either of particular works of art or as it is revealed by contemporary textual sources.

Please email your paper proposals straight to the session convenor(s). Provide a title and abstract for a 25 minute paper (max 250 words). Include your name, affiliation and email. Your paper title should be concise and accurately reflect what the paper is about (it should ‘say what it does on the tin’) because the title is what appears most first and foremost online, in social media and in the printed programme.

You should receive an acknowledgement of receipt of your submission within two weeks. Do not send proposals to the Conference Administrator or the Conference Convenor.

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[3] Visualising the Post-human, Cyborgs and Cybersexuality in Contemporary Art

From: Ming Turner <mingturnermail.ncku.edu.tw>
Date: Sep 24, 2016

Post-human as an academic term has been debated widely since the late 1970s. Ihab Hassan’s Prometheus as performer: Toward a posthuman culture?, published in 1977, contends that technology both influences medical science and governs our daily consumer culture. Meanwhile, Steve Nichols’s Post-human Manifesto, published in 1988, maintains that people today are already living in a post-human condition. The phenomenon of the post-human reveals a state of anxiety and uncertainty resulting from the condition of being somewhere between human and inhuman. The post-human takes the shape of our bodies, but exists as a hybrid of our biological forms and technology, including in the form of the cyborg, which, according to feminist philosopher Donna Haraway is ‘a cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction’ (1991: 69).

Haraway’s concept of the cyborg addresses how the post-human demonstrates a form of tension and indecision between the human and the non-human, allied to the idea of the phenomenon of combining the human body with technology. A cyborg as an individual transcends gender duality in the material world, and by rejecting gender duality, cyborgs further deconstruct gender identification and re-present the bodily symbols of post-humanist desire. It is now evident that technology has realised many of the ideas previously only imagined in the realms of science fiction and fairytales.

This session welcomes papers from academics, curators, theorists and artists wishing to address the issues and discourses that explore the visualisation of the ideas of the post-human, cyborgs and cybersexuality through the lens of contemporary art practice, with particular emphasis on the perspectives of art and science.

Please email your paper proposals to the session convenor, Dr Ming Turner (National Cheng Kung University), mingturnermail.ncku.edu.tw. Please provide a title and abstract for a 25 minute paper (max 250 words), and include your name, affiliation and email. You should receive an acknowledgement of receipt of your submission within two weeks.