[1]
C.C. McKee <cmckeeu.northwestern.edu>
Ecocritical Approaches to Colonial Art History (1600-1900)
Deadline: Aug 6, 2018

Organizers: C.C. McKee (Northwestern University) & Claudia Swan (Northwestern University)

A great deal of recent art historical scholarship on the colonial world
addresses the visual production of natural science and
its relationship to ecology. Scholars have pinpointed botanical,
entomological, natural historical, and ethnographical imagery
as crucial to understanding and classifying the natural world, beginning
with New World colonization and intensi ed maritime trade in the fourteenth
century. Increasing contact with non- European cultures resulted in a ood
of new plants, animals, minerals, and artefacts into Europe from across the
globe. European exploration and settlement subordinated (often violently)
autochthonous knowledge of the natural world developed by indigenous
peoples, slaves, and their descendants—in the East and West Indies as
well as the Middle East and Asia, cultures with which Europe had long
fostered contact. Visual representations of colonial ecologies proved to be
a foundational means by which Europeans understood their increasingly
interconnected world and asserted dominance over people, land, and
resources.

This panel asks: In what ways do art historical approaches informed, for
example, by ecocriticism and new materialism, open on to new ways of
understanding visual byproducts of colonialism? In what ways can a more
capacious attention to colonial ecologies contribute to our understanding
and analysis of the visual production of the non-European world? How did
these ecologies shape the representation of Europe in return? This panel
seeks proposals that examine the roles of science, art, and/ or
environmental policy in an ecological approach to colonial art history,
garden history, and visual histories of science.

Please email C.C. McKee (cmckeeu.northwestern.edu) by August 6, 2018 with
a paper title, abstract (max. 500 words), and CV.

[2] From: Cara Jordan <cara.jordangmail.com>
The Artist as Public Intellectual: 1968 to Today
Deadline: Aug 6, 2018

Along with increased specialization and the rise of the rapid news cycle,
the status of intellectuals in public life has experienced a shift since
the mid-20th century. Long populated by social thinkers, literary critics,
and philosophers, the public intellectual—once called upon to combat
political propaganda with facts and cultural analysis—has now been
replaced by an expert talking head. Artists have played an equally active
part in public life for millennia, experiencing an apogee around 1968 with
figures such as Judy Chicago and Joseph Beuys. Although in recent decades
many have abandoned their utopian proclamations in favor of localized
action, today’s artists are increasingly seeking methods to generate
public debate and address social problems, reviving the tradition of the
public intellectual by using art as a mode of cultural critique writ large.

This panel seeks papers that investigate modes of art making that might be
considered activities of public intellectualism since the turbulent 1960s
in order to identify global phenomena and establish precedents for
today’s practitioners. How have artists sought out public methods of and
venues for idea production and dissemination with the goal of resisting
hegemonic power and/or catalyzing social change? Which strategies were
successful (or unsuccessful) and which ideas took hold on a mass scale? How
have artists built upon existing activist movements or cultural moments in
order to broadcast their ideas? Papers may address individual artists
and/or projects, thematic case studies, or curatorial methodologies;
artists are also encouraged to present on their own work.

Please send a 250-word abstract, conference proposal form (see CAA
website), cover letter, brief CV, and documentation of work (optional; for
artists) to cara.jordangmail.com by August 6 for consideration.

[3] From: Andrew Gayed <gayedayorku.ca>
Geographies and Art Histories: Diaspora, Decolonizing and Praxis
Deadline: Aug 6, 2018

Diaspora and transnational identity pose many issues when it comes to
imagining geography within global contemporary art practice. This
discussion urgently accounts for the lived conditions of globalization and
migration, and points to the dif culties of art history to adequately
explain the realities of a networked and globalized world. In imagining the
issues posed by geographic borders this panel grapples with the
disciplinary limits of art history, suggesting that diasporic artists and
their cultural production illustrate the incompatibility of colonial de
nitions of borders, nation-states, and identities. It is when geographies
and borders are reimagined that the migration and movement of people can be
developed productively and fully within art historical frameworks.

By reimagining geography, what does decolonizing the study and writing of
art history look like? What does it mean to conduct research on the global
contemporary with special attention to spatial problems in a large scale?
How can macro studies of global art histories productively be theorized
alongside micro studies of speci c locales? Where does the study of
diaspora t within world art studies and notions of ‘worlding’? How
might methods of entangled geographies speak productively to themes of
transnational connections and diaspora? Ultimately, how can geography be
theorized within contemporary art both regionally and globally while
avoiding the rigid nation-state epistemologies of area studies? Through
case studies, curatorial and artistic interventions, and institutional
practices, we encourage proposals that suggest methodologies for rethinking
geography giving special attention to advancing studies of indigenous,
diasporic, queer, and transnational theory within contemporary art.

Please submit: completed session participation form, abstract of 250 words,
and a current CV to Andrew Gayed gayedayorku.ca and Chanda Laine Carey
chanda.l.careygmail.com

For more information:
http://www.collegeart.org/pdf/programs/conference/CAA-CFP-2019.pdf

[4] From: Dr. Sonia Coman <coman.soniagmail.com>
Anonymity in the Eighteenth Century
Deadline: Aug 6, 2018

Co-Chairs: Kee Il Choi Jr. (Leiden University) & Sonia Coman
(Freer|Sackler, Smithsonian Institution)

The entry on ‘anonymous’ in the Encyclopédie begins by defining the
term, etymologically, as that which has no name or whose name is not known.
This definition alone highlights the semantic richness of the anonymous as
ontological and epistemological category. In the early modern period, the
notion of anonymity co-existed and overlapped with those of pseudonymy and
of sociopolitical and/ or sociocultural visibility or lack thereof. Issues
of intentionality and authenticity further complicated the early modern
understandings of the anonymous and its constellation of norms and
practices.

The eighteenth century saw a creative tension between conservative
self-effacement and an emerging authorial ambition, manifested in
literature, the visual arts, and specific forms of cultural
entrepreneurship such as the activities of artists’ workshops and of
marchands-merciers. If we are to look at eighteenth-century visual and
material culture broadly, we will quickly realize the extent to which
anonymous artifacts, loosely defined, make up the fabric of it. And yet,
art history privileges (re)known artists and works, relegating the un-named
and those who had fallen into anonymity, as it were, to the periphery of
research and intellectual inquiry. When we walk through our museums, we
become aware that onymous artists and artifacts drive featured narratives,
while the majority of things we see on display are, in fact, anonymous.
Against this backdrop, and given the resurgence of interest in material
culture and the “decorative arts,” the eighteenth-century category of
the anonymous warrants a fresh look.

The current panel invites papers that explore anonymity in the arts in the
eighteenth century. We welcome submissions that focus on any region and
medium, and particularly look forward to papers that display attention to
methodology and the materiality of the works in question.

Possible topics to investigate include, but are not limited to:
- Anonymous makers of the architectural and material fabric of
eighteenth-century social spaces
- Hierarchies of connoisseurship and of medium and genre: signed vs.
unsigned art in the eighteenth century
- Artists’ career narratives in the eighteenth century: causes and
effects of falling into anonymity
- The ethics of eighteenth-century anonymity (e.g. anonymous cultural
production in the context of the ethical code of the honnête homme)
- Anonymity, clandestinity, and political resistance in eighteenth-century
arts
- Methodological challenges and approaches to studying anonymous
eighteenth-century artifacts

Those interested are invited to submit proposals including title, abstract
(250 words maximum), and a brief CV (2 pages maximum) to
amiotscupgmail.com & coman.soniagmail.com.

[5] From: Katie Anania <katie.ananiagmail.com>
Haunted: Cross-Historical and Cross-Cultural Specters in Print Practice
Deadline: Aug 6, 2018

The portability of artists' prints and printmaking projects (from comics to
librettos, artists' books to 'zines) allows them to traverse borders and
boundaries. But what remains attached to, and within, a print as it
circulates, and how does it resurface, sometimes much later? An apprentice
printmaker’s works, for instance, (covertly or overtly) bears the stamp
of the master under whom she studies. A zine or broadsheet reveals layers
of appropriation. This panel, then, attends to an important but neglected
aspect of prints’ mobility: it puts the ways that prints were fabricated
and the stories of their local origins in dialogue with their histories of
circulation. From practitioners and historians, e seek discussions of
images, designs, and materials of various “others” that lie within a
print’s construction.

Inspired by voices speaking to the ghostly residues upon objects from
Gloria Anzaldúa, to Jacques Derrida, to Luce Irigaray, to Harold Bloom, we
solicit proposals that approach the haunting of printed material in various
ways. In addition to semantic or metaphorical hauntings, we welcome papers
that consider pedagogical haunting—that is, the things that viewers of
printed material are supposed to learn and how—or the ways that prints
have contributed to the unsettling of certain cultural forms. The aim is to
exhume and revive the mis-identifications that printed materials have
instigated over time.

Please email Katie Anania (katie.ananiagcsu.edu) and Alexis Salas
(alexisnsalasgmail.com) by August 6, 2018 with a paper title, abstract
(max. 300 words), and CV.

[6] From: Kristopher Driggers and Allison Caplan <driggersuchicago.edu;
acaplantulane.edu>
Indigenous Languages of the Americas and the Language of Art History
Deadline: Aug 6, 2018

Indigenous languages offer exciting new avenues and novel challenges for
art history. This panel asks how we might integrate indigenous languages
with the language of art history, considering how expressions of form and
representation in Amerindian languages intersect and diverge from the
discipline’s own practices and conventions of language. Language
powerfully shapes the production, reception, and interpretation of objects.
We thus propose exploring how indigenous languages can enrich our
understanding of art in the moment of its creation and help us better
engage with art in contemporary scholarship. This approach is not without
its pitfalls and methodological challenges: historical and cultural
particularities, including discrepancies between oral and written
traditions, questions surrounding historical writing systems’
decipherment, and the colonial production of indigenous texts in alphabetic
script, must be navigated carefully in working towards
linguistically-engaged art histories of the Americas. In light of these
particularities, this panel will encourage methodological reflection on the
promises and challenges of using indigenous terminology in art history, as
well as new case studies that demonstrate how indigenous language study can
advance the interpretation of objects. Topics for consideration may include
ekphrastic practices in indigenous traditions; issues of chronology
(including using contemporary indigenous terms in the study of older art);
areas of resonance between language and artistic production and technique;
and points of congruence and incongruence between indigenous terms and
those used in art historical practice. Papers may address traditions
throughout the Americas, with emphasis on the pre-Conquest period.

Please send a 250-word abstract, CV, and proposal form by August 6, 2018 to
Kristopher Driggers (driggersuchicago.edu) and Allison Caplan
(acaplantulane.edu).

For further information, visit:

http://www.collegeart.org/pdf/programs/conference/CAA-CFP-2019.pdf