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[1] Early Modern Technologies of Art Making

From: Ivana Vranic <ivana7vranicgmail.com>
Date: July 9, 2018

Can technologies of art enable us to reconsider the early modern interactions between “local” and the “global?” Seeking to answer this question, the proposed panel takes up art technology as a hermeneutic tool to analyze production of art in the early modern period. In this period, technologies of art involved specialized and often localized practices that required systematic application of techniques, materials, and tools that did not travel as readily as the objects they helped to generate. Although embedded in cultural objects, artworks and materials exchanged across the Silk Road and the Oceanic networks of trade, art technologies were seldom known to those who acquired these objects of cross-cultural exchange. In contrast to the mobility of inimitable artifacts and images art technologies were often intangible and unknown, which heightened the foreignness and desirability of objects produced with their application. Attempting to recreate foreign objects using local technologies, practitioners across Europe, Near East, Asia, and the Americas made all kinds of hybrid things—things that were neither local nor foreign, but uniquely, early modern.

Notable examples of objects and materials evoking the hybrid forms of early modern art production include Indian dyed textiles that mirrored Dutch prints, Mexican feather painting that turned an “Old-world” technology into a “New World”-adaptation, Renaissance images that reproduced Ottoman carpets, embroideries, and metalwork, as well as Chinese silk and porcelain, and Japanese lacquer. Dyestuff, namely Cochineal, voyaged with the European travelers from the South Americas to Europe and stimulated conversations on dyeing techniques. Exploring some of these and other examples, papers can investigate any subject or objects of visual and material culture that throws light on how art technologies can expand and enrich our understanding of the early modern world.

Please send a 150-word abstracts, along with a title, keywords, and a CV (300 words maximum) to Rajarshi Sengupta (rajarshisengupta22gmail.com) and Ivana Vranic (ivana7vranicgmail.com) by August 5, 2018.

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[2] Imaginative Intersections between Writers and Artists in the Seventeenth Century: New Thoughts on an Old Theme

From: Alexandra Hoare <alex.hoarebristol.ac.uk>
Date: July 10, 2018

The fertile intersections between literature and the visual arts in the seventeenth century, which impact upon and give unique shape to the creative outputs of that historical moment, have received a wealth of scholarly attention over the decades. This phenomenon continues to compel and to generate important, fruitful and even ground-breaking discussion within the various disciplines concerned with the literary and the visual/artistic, either by inflecting or overturning long-standing assumptions about the nature of that relationship or by building significantly upon the extant repertoire of topics with which we have become so familiar (among them the ‘ut pictura poesis’ theme). This panel invites papers that contribute meaningfully to this ongoing discussion by seeking to significantly expand, nuance or problematize extant narratives of the ‘text-image’ relationship within the seventeenth century, broadly conceived and approached from diverse disciplinary perspectives. Papers might address one of the following topics:

- new forms of artistic iconography or style that find a basis in contemporary texts
- a consideration of previously neglected or understudied protagonists in artistic and/or literary fields
- overlooked contexts of literary engagement on the part of artists
- the concept of authorship, within the context of seventeenth-century literary and/or artistic practice and theory
- the impact on artistic production of as-yet unknown or alternative forms of text or writing
- relationships between text and image in the context of previously under-researched or new media, in either visual/artistic or literary fields
- text-image connections that appear within new cultural or geographic contexts of creative production in the period

Proposals should include the presenter’s name, academic affiliation, email address, paper title (15 words maximum), abstract (150 words maximum), PhD completion date, and CV (300 words maximum). Please submit proposals by July 30th to Carlo Avilio (carloaviliogmail.com) and Alex Hoare (alex.hoarebristol.ac.uk).

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[3] Health in Medicine and Visual Arts, 1300-1550

From: Jordan Famularo <jjf376nyu.edu>
Date: July 14, 2018

Artists and architects contributed to cultures of health in medieval and early modern societies, yet their ties to medical practice are often overlooked in modern scholarship. This session invites historians across disciplines to compare their approaches to visual cultures of medicine between 1300 and 1550. Which perspectives and methods might be productively shared among historians of medicine, science, art, architecture, and other specialties focused on care for the body, mind, and soul? A key objective is to advance research on interactions between learned medicine (i.e., taught in universities) and visual arts.

Papers are invited to address the body of knowledge by which artifacts and monuments were believed to be therapeutic and/or protective. How and why were such effects ascribed to images, objects, and spaces?

Topics might include
- images in medical astrology: instructions for their making and use
- restorative spaces in domestic and institutional buildings
- therapeutic works on paper: books, almanacs, calendars, prints
- apothecaries and foreign ingredients in the service of medicine and pigment-making
- objects and environments used in regimens for preserving health and hygiene

Intercultural, interregional, and transoceanic topics are welcome.

Paper proposals are due by August 5, 2018 to Jordan Famularo, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University (jjf376nyu.edu). Proposals should include two documents: an abstract with paper title (250 words maximum) and CV. Please indicate the presenter’s title and affiliation.

Submissions are considered commitments to attend the conference if the proposed panel is accepted and to be responsible for registration and membership fees. Submission guidelines are available at
https://www.rsa.org/page/2019SubmissionsGuide.