(1) On the Visual Front: Revisiting World War II and American Art
(2) Window, Lens, Mirror: Thte Materiality of Glass in Modern and Contemporary Art
(3) Picturing Death, 1200-1600
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(1) On the Visual Front: Revisiting World War II and American Art”
From: Melissa Renn <melissa.renngmail.com
Date: Apr, 2015

Due partly to the conventional disciplinary divide at 1945 between American and Contemporary art history and partly to the lingering dominance of nonobjective abstraction at midcentury, World War II has been largely left out of standard histories of American art. This session aims to explore the often-overlooked artistic production of this period. We define the concept of an art of World War II very broadly and invite papers that engage with diverse visual cultures, both within the fine arts and without. We welcome both new theoretical approaches and specific case studies, and seek papers that address a variety of representational modes, from realist to nonobjective. Possible topics include scenes of combat from around the globe; depictions of life on the home front; work made for the armed forces and other government agencies; commercial wartime commissions; and art produced in response to the war in the intervening decades.

Paper proposals are due May 8 to John Ott, James Madison University, ottjwjmu.edu; and Melissa Renn, Harvard Business School, melissa.renngmail.com

Replies will be sent by June 5.

Every proposal should include the following five items:
1. Completed session participation proposal form, located at the end of the pdf (http://www.collegeart.org/pdf/2016CallforParticipation.pdf), or an email with this information.
2. Preliminary abstract of one to two double-spaced, typed pages.
3. Letter explaining speaker’s interest, expertise in the topic, and CAA membership status.
4. CV with home and office mailing addresses, email address, and phone and fax numbers. Include summer address and telephone number, if applicable.
5. Documentation of work when appropriate.

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(2) Window, Lens, Mirror: Thte Materiality of Glass in Modern and Contemporary Art
From: Dalia H. Linssen and Virginia Anderson <dlinssenrisd.edu>
Date: Apr 23, 2015

College Art Association 2016, Washington, D.C., February 3 - 06, 2016
Deadline: May 8, 2015

Simultaneously reflective and refractive, solid yet visually permeable, illuminating yet distortive, protective yet potentially destructive, the material of glass plays a rich and complex role in modern and contemporary art, architecture, and visual culture. Wassily Kandinsky and Gabriele Münter embraced the German folk art practice of hinterglasmalerei as part of their quest for the spiritual in modern painting; Marcel Duchamp painstakingly repaired The Large Glass when it shattered after its 1926 exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum; and Hans Namuth positioned his camera under a sheet of glass to capture Pollock dripping paint across the surface above. Architects from Walter Gropius to Philip Johnson to Renzo Piano have exploited the transparency of glass in their innovative designs. Contemporary sculptors such as Josiah McElheny and Christopher Wilmarth have played with the historical, philosophical, or phenomenological associations of the material while Kazuki Umezawa requires viewers to experience his work through an iPad lens. In the era of mobile phones and personal tablets, glass screens – which function for us as both self-reflexive mirror and window onto the world – mediate our daily visual culture.

This panel seeks to engage critically with the material of glass and its surrounding rhetoric of transparency, translucence, reflection, and fragility in modern and contemporary art. We invite papers that address the use of glass in photography, painting, decorative arts, sculpture, architecture, or mixed media; the production of and conceptual investigations into glass as material; consider the cultural or political associations surrounding glass as an artistic medium; or examine the theoretical implications of transparency and translucence as a counter-narrative to modernist discourses around surface-based painting and sculpture.

Proposals are due by May 8 to Dalia H. Linssen, Rhode Island School of Design, dlinssenrisd.edu and Virginia Anderson, Maryland Institute College of Art, vandersonmica.edu. Responses will be sent by June 5.

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(3) Picturing Death, 1200-1600

From: Stephan Perkinson <sperkinsbowdoin.edu
Date: Apr 22, 2015

Organizers: Stephen Perkinson, Bowdoin College (sperkinsbowdoin.edu<mailto:sperkinsbowdoin.edu>) and Noa Turel, University of Alabama at Birmingham (ntureluab.edu<mailto:ntureluab.edu>)

From the spatialization of Purgatory to the wake of the Reformation, death was insistently visible throughout Europe. The faithful were urged to mitigate the trials of the deceased and anticipate their own tribulations to come. This apparent agency in the face of death drove a vast array of cultural production, from new memorial chapels to intimate macabre jewelry. This session seeks papers that expand our understanding of artifacts that recall death and the dead from 1200 to 1600. How did literary works about death relate to images? Did pictures of the afterlife convey messages church authorities had sanctioned? Why were so many macabre artifacts themselves the sorts of precious baubles that the memento mori theme inveighs against? What effects did the religious turmoil of the sixteenth century have on established imagery and customs? We welcome papers that explore these questions and others toward a more nuanced understanding of the meaning and aims of picturing death.

Please submit an abstract of one to two double-spaced pages, along with a two-page c.v., by Friday, May 8, 2015, to either of the above listed organizers.

Further information about the conference can be found at: http://www.collegeart.org/news/2015/03/05/propose-a-paper-or-presentation-for-the-2016-annual-conference/