Session proposal: UAAC 2016 (UQAM)

Caroline Bem, postdoctoral researcher (CRIalt, Université de Montréal)
caroline.bemumontreal.ca

David Mitchell, PhD candidate (McGill University)
david.mitchell2mail.mcgill.ca

Of Diptychs, Doubles, and Mirrors: Towards a Theory of Twoness

This panel aims to investigate twoness through interrogations of mirrored aesthetics, uncanny encounters, and bipartite forms in visual culture. While studies of diptychs have largely focused on historical artifacts, particularly carved relief and painted panels, “the double” has been of primary interest to literary studies of modernity and narrative theory. This session, then, aims to build on these fields of inquiry and to extend such investigations to a wide range of visual and material culture objects and to their contexts of presentation.

We want to think through dual forms’ propensity for paradox, which resides in their ability to simultaneously configure unity and difference, aperture and closure. Papers might engage with either historical or contemporary cultural contexts—or with both—and address all manner of twoness: figural doubles, diptychs, sequels, material replications, pairings, secondary placements, fragmentation by half, or twofold multiplication.