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[1] Dangerous Portraits in the Early Modern World

From: Jennifer Germann <jgermannithaca.edu>
Date: Sep 18, 2017
Deadline: Nov 6, 2017

We are seeking proposals for 25-minute papers for "Dangerous Portraits in the Early Modern World", a panel at the 2018 Association for Art Historians Annual Conference. Please include a title and abstract (250 words maximum), your name, and your institutional affiliation with your submission.

Organizers: Jennifer Germann, Ithaca College, USA, jgermannithaca.edu; Melissa Percival, University of Exeter,U.K. M.H.Percivalexeter.ac.uk

Portraiture was a dynamic and, at times, disruptive artistic practice in the Early Modern period. Portraits could and did undermine, reconfigure, or otherwise step outside the bounds of social propriety. Rather than upholding or reinforcing existing hierarchies and/or maintaining the status quo, these portraits challenged the expectations of spectators and consumers. Dangerous portraits could disavow normative behavioural expectations, challenge the political order either openly or privately, or imagine and even generate new identities. How were social expectations engaged and subverted in portraits? Where and in what forms were dangerous portraits consumed or shared? How did artists, spectators, critics, and/or markets respond to these challenges?
This session seeks papers that consider Early Modern portraits that pushed beyond the bounds of social norms and expectations. It engages the theme ‘look out!’ by allowing for reflection on identities traditionally viewed as ‘outside’ the bounds of the normative or desirable in terms of gender, race, class, geography, etc., produced between 1500 and 1800. Papers are welcomed from diverse cultural traditions around the globe, which address the impact of cross-cultural exchange, consider media beyond painting and sculpture, and by scholars, curators, and artists who work outside of the discipline of art history.

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[2] Medieval Eurabia: Religious Crosspollinations in Architecture, Art and Material Culture during the High and Late Middle Ages (1000-1600)

From: Sami Luigi de Giosa <aahchristianmuslimpanel2018gmail.com>
Date: Sep 19, 2017
Deadline: Nov 1, 2017

Panel organised by Sami De Giosa, Oxford University and Nikolaos Vryzidis, British School at Athens
Email: aahchristianmuslimpanel2018gmail.com

The coexistence of Christianity and Islam in the Medieval Mediterranean led to a transfer of knowledge in architecture and material culture which went well beyond religious and geographical boundaries. The use of Islamic objects in Christian contexts, the conversion of churches into mosques and the mobility of craftsmen are only some manifestations of this process. Although studies beginning with Avinoam Shalem’s Islam Christianized (1996), have dealt extensively with Islamic influence in the West and European influence in the Islamic Mediterranean, sacred objects, and material culture more generally, have been relatively neglected. From crosses found in Mosques, to European-Christian coins with pseudo/-shahada inscriptions, medieval material culture is rife with visual evidence of the two faiths co-existing in both individual objects and monuments.
This panel invites papers from scholars working on intercultural exchange in art, architecture and material culture. We particularly welcome contributions that focus on sacred objects that have been diverted or ‘converted’ to a new purpose, whether inside or outside an explicitly religious context.
Papers should present original research, which expands the boundaries of knowledge and which the scholars would like to be considered for publication. Abstracts should be no more than 250 words long.

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[3] Just Looking? Art, pedagogy & the object lesson in the long 19th century

From: Elena Chestnova <elena.chestnovausi.ch>
Date: Sep 22, 2017
Deadline: Nov 6, 2017

Session Conveners:
Elena Chestnova, Università della Svizzera Italiana elena.chestnovausi.ch
Andrea Korda, University of Alberta kordaualberta.ca

The popularity of object lessons in the 19th century attests to the fact that looking at things was not taken for granted as a straightforward or innate activity. Vision was to be educated. Its formation was embedded in a complex of senses and ‘mental faculties’, which meant that seeing involved more than just the eye; it was both multi-sensorial and multi-dimensional. Looking was not always aimed solely outwards, and the path between the subject and the object was not necessarily a direct line.
This session aims to examine the history of the object lesson – a pedagogical approach that relies on first-hand engagement with artefacts and phenomena – by inviting contributions that investigate its ‘messy’ instances. The growth of both general and artistic education in the 19th century saw the methodology of learning through things expand into new media, with images increasingly used as learning aids. Teaching activities of artists and historians led to the introduction of object lessons into artistic practices and art historical writing, and in some instances, artworks themselves became object lessons. How can we understand 19th-century object lessons in view of this growing complexity? And what are the implications for our conceptualisation of vision, which indeed ‘has a history’?
The ongoing scholarly interest in the history of education and growing attention to popular forms of art history resonate with the concerns of this session. We invite paper proposals from a range of disciplines including but not limited to the history of art.

Please submit abstracts of 250 words maximum for 25-minute papers to both session conveners by email, including your name, institutional affiliation (if any), and the title of your proposed talk. The deadline is November 6, 2017. We will respond to successful applicants by November 17.
We look forward to many interesting submissions!
http://www.forarthistory.org.uk/events/annual-conference-2018/

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[4] Art and Law: Objects and Spaces as Legal Actors

From: Jack Hartnell <j.hartnelluea.ac.uk>
Date: Sep 22, 2017
Deadline: Nov 6, 2017

Art history has long investigated the role of the law, from issues of visual evidence and legal aesthetics to ideas of artistic originality and authorship. But recent scholarship has increasingly drawn attention to the ways in which art can participate in the law’s actual operation. This session aims to broaden these investigations by tracing the long history of artistic intrusions into legal life, focusing on moments when the objects and spaces of art and architecture, broadly defined, have functioned as legal actors in their own right.
The session promises to explore these ideas through interdisciplinary and cross-chronological case studies from researchers, artists, and practitioners both in art history and in parallel fields such as law, journalism, and the social sciences. How have aesthetic objects past and present actively shaped the production and execution of the law as witnesses or juridical subjects in themselves? How have artists approached the courtroom as a site of artistic production and intervention? And in what ways has aesthetic production sought to short-circuit legal structures or forward alternative, even utopian, legal systems? Such questions have taken on new urgency in light of recent political and constitutional crises worldwide.

Papers might address, amongst other topics:
- historical and contemporary objects that dispense justice
- signs, emblems, or inscriptions that enforced legal boundaries or enacted legal codes
- artworks framed as legal victims, or which have been tried in absentia of criminals
- objects and theories of legal proof
- architectural actors as part of the fabric of legal drama
- art historical or theoretical texts investigating legal production and evidence-gathering and witnessing as forms of aesthetic production and research

Proposals of 250 words, accompanied by a short academic CV, should be sent to the two session organisers no later than 6 November 2017:
Dr Jack Hartnell (University of East Anglia, UK)
j.hartnelluea.ac.uk
Dr Kevin Lotery (Sarah Lawrence College, USA)
kloterysarahlawrence.edu