Call for Papers: Graduate Student Sessions
Graphic Mimicry: Intermediality in Print and the Art of Imitation (Print Think 2017)
Tyler School of Art, Temple University
Oct. 21-22, 2017
Conference description
Print Think 2017 is co-organized by Amze Emmons and Ashley West, bringing Tyler School of Art’s Art History Department in collaboration with our Printmaking program. This year’s conference, titled Graphic Mimicry: Intermediality in Print and the Art of Imitation, will examine the intervisual dialogue between prints and other media from both a historical and contemporary perspective of the medium. At the heart of this year’s conference is the fundamental question of how printmaking from its earliest years defined itself in relationship to existing and historically more prominent technologies and media, such as drawing, painting, metalwork, sculpture, and tapestry design.
Over the course of two days, the conference will include a first day of discussions and panels on Saturday, October 21, featuring keynote speakers Susan Dackerman and Christiane Baumgartner; several scholarly panel discussions and talks featuring Anders Bergstrom, Shira Brisman, Phyllis McGibbon, Madeleine Viljoen, and Imin Yeh; and workshop demonstrations. The second day of the conference, Sunday, October 22, will focus on the work of graduate students, with two sessions organized by Devon Baker, Maeve Coudrelle, and Natalia Vieyra, advanced doctoral students in the Art History department.
CFP for Graduate Student Sessions:
We seek papers from graduate students and very recent graduates (within the past two years) that examine how printmaking processes have appropriated and translated aspects of other media. Whether aiming for the scale of frescoes or architectural monuments in multi-block oversized woodcuts; the modeling of an ancient sculpture or medallion through the language of hatching and cross-hatching; or searching for flat areas of tone through chiaroscuro, aquatint, mezzotint, or manners of color printing to simulate qualities of drawing, innovations in printmaking over the past five centuries often have been motivated by a desire to imitate or critique the distinctive visual effects or processes of other artistic techniques and materials. Staking a claim for itself as a medium to be taken seriously, printmaking also seems to have asserted its ability to do the high-minded theoretical work usually enjoyed by these other media, for which there were ample written treatises. But rather than rely on a textual tradition, printed images proved their ability to do their own theorizing, by referencing their processes of making and by commenting upon their ambitious position among the arts by visual means.
Questions to consider:
- How did this ability of print to adeptly mimic nearly every other art form and to assert itself within the discourses of other mediums become one of its greatest strengths and a critical tool for contemporary printmaking?
- How does print mimic, counterfeit, or copy?
- To what end do certain printmakers “quote” or allude to other media processes in their graphic work?
- What is the long-standing relationship between print and our mimetic faculties?
- Under what circumstances is it fruitful to examine print through an intermedia lens?
We welcome papers from graduate students in Art History, as well those pursuing an M.F.A. We hope to include papers addressing a range of time periods and regions, from the Renaissance through to the present day.

Please email abstracts (400 words maximum) and a C.V. to both Maeve Coudrelle (maeve.coudrelletemple.edu) and Natalia Vieyra (nataliavieyratemple.edu) by July 1, 2017. Selections will be shared in late July.