New Growth: Dialogues on the Tree

11th Annual Art History Graduate Student Symposium

As an essential life source, the tree has taken on manifold
significations throughout history and across cultures within mythology,
religion, art, political and state propaganda, and scientific study—to
name only a few such categories. Within current environmental debates,
the cultural significance of the tree is juxtaposed by the threat of
its extinction that massive deforestation, overexploitation, and urban
sprawl pose. This broad import renders the tree as both a natural and
conceptual object and cultural artifact that is ideologically shaped
and constructed. Caught in this tension, the tree can thus be theorized
as a physical and symbolic locus of the Nature/Culture paradigm.

Taking this idea as a point of departure, this symposium centres the
tree as a site for cultural inquiry that defies inclusion in either one
(Nature) or the other (Culture) category. Specifically, it aims to
highlight pertinent issues surrounding the tree as a site of competing
forces and ideologies. This symposium will run alongside the exhibition
“The Tree: From the Sublime to the Social” at the McMichael Canadian
Art Collection. We, therefore, invite papers addressing the tree within
visual art and culture. However, we aim to enable an interdisciplinary
dialogue that will reflect on the tree as a rich realm for inquiry and
invite papers from diverse fields and perspectives. Papers on
historical or contemporary subjects are welcome. Topics for discussion
may include but are not limited to:

- the iconography of the tree
- the tree, landscape, and ideology
- the tree, landscape, and language
- ecopoetics and the tree as metaphor
- the tree and wilderness myths
- the tree within nationalist and postnationalist narratives
- the tree as a site of cultural memory
- the tree, power, and the possession/dispossession of the landscape
- postcolonial perspectives on the tree
- the tree and landscape as frontier and prospect
- the tree considered within disaster narratives, environmental
destruction, and violence
- the tree, art, and activism
- ecofeminist perspectives on the tree
- the tree, affect, and the environment
- the tree in garden design
- topography, landscape architecture, and the tree
- the tree within natural, built, and virtual environments
- the tree in intersections of art and science

Please send a 250-word abstract of your paper along with a working
title, curriculum vitae, and contact information to:
ahgsaygmail.com
or
AHGSA Symposium Committee
c/o Dawn Burns
Faculty of Fine Arts
Rm. 243 Goldfarb Centre for Fine Arts
4700 Keele Street
Toronto, ON M3J 1P3
CANADA

The deadline for submissions is December 20, 2011. Successful
participants will be notified by January 9, 2012. The symposium will
take place March 31, 2012, at the McMichael Canadian Art Collection in
Kleinburg, Ontario, Canada, north of Toronto, Canada.

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact symposium
co-chairs Emma Conner and Kristen Daigle at ahgsaygmail.com.

Thank you.