[1]
From: Natasha Seaman <natseagmail.com>
Date: May 16, 2016
Subject: CFP: Embodying Value: Representing Money in the Early Modern Period

Embodying Value: Representing Money in the Early Modern Period

Deadline: May 27, 2016

Joanna Woodall and Natasha Seaman, co-organizers

As media of exchange, coins were essential to trade and economic development in the early modern period. Their double-sided form and the precious materials from which they were made had deep resonance in European culture and beyond. The efficacy of coins depended on faith in their inherent value but they were subject to debasement and counterfeiting. This session seeks papers that explore the signifying potential of money in works of art, and how abstract concepts of value intersect with and are figured in material and monetary forms. While the art market may have some relevance to this subject, papers selected will have as their primary focus the particular character of coins as physical and semiotic entities, money as it appears within images and texts, and how concepts of money and currency can inform our understanding of works of art in this period.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to

Depictions of coins in exchange, gifts, or theft
Represented coins in hoards and kunstkammers
Coins as metaphors in literature
Coins and the production of knowledge
Counterfeiting and debasement in works of art
Coins in relation to portrait medals, seals, or pilgrimage badges
Coins and the Eucharist and/or Incarnation
The materiality, design and production of coins in relation to their value and use

Please send proposals to Natasha Seaman (nseamanric.edu) and Joanna Woodall (Joanna.Woodallcourtauld.ac.uk) by Friday, May 27, 2016.

As per RSA guidelines, proposals should include the following: paper title (15-word maximum), abstract (150-word maximum), keywords, and a very brief curriculum vitae (300-word maximum). See http://www.rsa.org/?page=submissionguidelines#CfP

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[2]
From: Lara R Langer <llangerumd.edu>
Date: May 19, 2016
Subject: CFP: Lying in State: The Effigy in Early Modern Italian Funerary Art ca.1400-ca.1650

Lying in State: The Effigy in Early Modern Italian Funerary Art ca.1400-ca.1650
RSA Session Sponsored by the Italian Art Society

Deadline: May 28, 2016

Organizer: Lara Langer, PhD
Chair: Dr. Sheryl Reiss, President, Italian Art Society

This session seeks papers that highlight the effigy in Italian funerary art. Throughout the medieval period and most of the fifteenth century, effigies on tombs represented the deceased as they had been displayed during funeral ceremonies. This tradition changed at the turn of the sixteenth century; some were viewed as reclining, reading a book, and even “awake.” These changes continued into the seventeenth century, in which there were depictions of effigies as kneeling, “alive” figures. Artists often depicted the features of the deceased based on death masks, but in the sixteenth century some effigies took on idealized renderings of the commemorated. These dramatic changes in the production of effigies have yet to be fully addressed systematically in the scholarship, and suggest that there is more to be considered than the patron and his or her economic status. Papers may focus on issues of style and innovation: How were effigies constructed? What kinds of workshop collaboration existed in the development of an effigy monument? What do drawings tell us about the conception and implementation of effigies within a composition? Papers may also address other critical issues: What does the effigy as displayed in a state of “sleep” or “awake” signify? Were the changes in the presentation of effigies inspired by, or were responses to, known sermons or writings on the nature of one's soul after death?

Please send a brief abstract (150 words max), a paper title (15 words max), keywords, and a brief curriculum vitae (300 words max, in outline rather than narrative form) to llangerumd.edu by May 28, 2016.

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[3]
From: Sandra Richards <sandra.richardsgmail.com>
Date: May 19, 2016
Subject: CFP: Altarpieces on the Move: Religious Art Redeployed in Early Modern Italy

Altarpieces on the Move: Religious Art Redeployed in Early Modern Italy
Session Sponsored by the Italian Art Society

Deadline: May 23, 2016

Organizers: Gail Feigenbaum, Getty Research Institute; Sandra Richards, Department of Canadian Heritage, Government of Canada

Beginning in the 16th century, and with increasing frequency throughout the 17th century, altarpieces and other works of art originally destined for churches were moved to private and often secular spaces where they took on new roles and meanings. The motives and mechanisms that enabled these works to be redefined—avid collectors, issues of decorum, dramatic displays of power, international politics, an increasingly aestheticized view of sacred objects, to name a few—are many and complicated. Across such varied circumstances, these altarpieces on the move necessitated a recalibration of their sacred and aesthetic content as they were recontextualized in new settings such as picture galleries in palaces, or even repurposed in new church settings.

For this session, we seek papers that address instances in early modern Italy of altarpieces and other religious art objects being removed from their settings and put to new uses. Questions addressed might include, but are not limited to, the following: What measures, both theoretical and practical, helped ensure the transformation of these works? What distinctions were made between what was considered appropriate for sacred and secular contexts? What role did church authorities play in the removal of religious art? What can we learn from this phenomenon about the nascent art market and practices of collecting?

Please send a brief abstract (no more than 150 words); a selection of keywords for your talk; a brief curriculum vitae (300-word maximum in outline rather than narrative form) to Gail Feigenbaum at GFeigenbaumgetty.edu and Sandra Richards at sandra.richardsgmail.com by Monday, May 23rd. Please indicate “RSA” in the subject line of your email.

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[4]
From: Erin Benay <eeb50case.edu>
Date: May 19, 2016
Subject: CFP: Kingdom Animalia: Collecting and Representing Animals in the Global Renaissance

Kingdom Animalia: Collecting and Representing Animals in the Global Renaissance

Deadline: Jun 5, 2016

Animals have appeared in early modern art in a number of seemingly formulaic categories—serving as allegorical symbols, metaphors of human behavior, and as emblems of familial dynasty among other functions. Numerous scholarly studies have therefore been devoted to them as such. In these models, depictions of animals are understood to offer moralizing messages about faith, virtue, and vice. In recent years, however, alternative theories have emerged that assert the scientific and ethnographic implications attendant to the representation of animals in the period 1400-1700. These methodologies converge with new histories of the 'global' Renaissance which have introduced to the discipline vastly different interpretations of the natural world. Animals, in turn, should be seen to play an important role, not only in the wunderkammer or menagerie, as is well known, but in the production of global knowledge itself.

This session aims to explore the ways that animals—whether real, imagined, represented, or collected—participated in epistemologies of the 'exotic' or 'foreign' in early modern Europe. How might the European cultural history of animals have changed as a result of factors like increasing international trade, overseas exploration and colonization, and contact with indigenous religions? And finally, in what ways might European attitudes toward exotic animals have resembled their perceptions of the 'other' more generally?

Papers in this session(s) might explore a series of related topics and questions including but not limited to:

- The representation of animals from Africa, Asia, or the Americas in devotional or secular art
- The use of animal fur, feathers, bone, or tusks in the manufacture of decorative or utilitarian objects
- Non-European animals adopted as familial emblems
- Collection of taxidermy animals or composite, fantastical creatures
- The representation of animal myths and legends recounted in early modern travel literature
- The role of animals in the construction of early modern racial stereotypes
- The incorporation of non-European animals in large-scale, public monuments such as fountains.

Please send proposals to Erin Benay (eeb50case.edu). Include in your proposal: name and affiliation, paper title (max. 15 words), abstract (max. 150 words), and a brief CV (max. 300 words; in ordinary CV format) by Sunday, June 5th at the absolute latest.

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[5]
From: Thalia Allington-Wood and Imogen Tedbury <t.allingtonwoodgmail.com>
Date: May 19, 2016
Subject: CFP: Discovering & Rediscovering Renaissance Objects

Discovering & Rediscovering Renaissance Objects

Deadline: Jun 2, 2016

Jacob Burckhardt's The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (1860) has long been heralded as a pivotal moment for the rediscovery of the Renaissance. Throughout the long nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Renaissance 'discoveries' came to light that contradicted, shaped and informed the flourishing academic disciplines of history, art history and archaeology.
 
From archeological finds and archival revelations to 'hidden' art collections, discoveries come in many different forms. But as Francis Haskell and Ernst Gombrich have deftly demonstrated, 'discoveries' are also often 'rediscoveries' connected to taste, fashion and collecting; external events can act as a catalyst to perpetuate 'discoveries', or slow their widespread recognition; and 'discoveries' can make and break careers.
 
Leading on from these studies, this session proposes to explore the phenomenon of the 'Discovery' itself, as event, narrative, and academic moment, and as a cipher between this time and the discovered Renaissance past. 
 
We invite case studies and historiographical approaches in the discovery and rediscovery of Renaissance objects, to explore how such objects have been received, revived, and recounted. We welcome discoveries in Western and non-Western contexts, from the early modern period until the present day, as well as papers that consider the paradoxes in the notion of discovery itself.  

Please submit a paper title (15 word maximum), abstract (150-word maximum), key words, and a brief CV (300 words) to Imogen Tedbury, The Courtauld Institute of Art (Imogen.Tedburycourtauld.ac.uk) and Thalia Allington-Wood, University College London (Thalia.Allington-Wood.10ucl.ac.uk) by Thursday, June 2, 2016. 

Full details on the RSA website here: http://rsa.site-ym.com/blogpost/1357869/247696/Discovering--Rediscovering-Renaissance-Objects