[1]
From: Peter Han-Chih Wang (peterwangtemple.edu)
Subject: "Crossing America: Road Matters in Art, Photography, and Visual Culture"

2019 marks several anniversaries of important markers in the history of art, photography and visual culture of the American road: in 1919 the War Department launched the Transcontinental Motor Transport Corps, traveling from Washington D.C. to San Francisco; in 1939, Dorothea Lange published An American Exodus: A Record of Human Erosion; Robert Frank published The Americans in 1959; Easy Rider was released in 1969. These and other road-related works prompt us to consider the wider role the road played and continues to play in American life. Can the interstate highway engender a sense of American-ness? Who is included and excluded by car culture, and how? How does the experience of the highway translate into different media, and how have artists leveraged this to various effects? What influence do highway connections have for social, political, and artistic movements? Does the century-old technology of the American highway offer lessons about newer, high-tech connections? We welcome contributions from artists and scholars engaging the theme of the road from the early 20th century to the present.

Chairs: David Smucker and Peter Han-Chih Wang
Contact: david.smuckergmail.com; peterwangtemple.edu

Submission Deadline: April 1, 2019

Please submit your proposal at https://secac.secure-platform.com/a/solicitations/home/5. A PDF of the complete list of sessions may be found at: https://secac.secure-platform.com:443/a/page/sessions.

David Smucker, Ph.D.
Adjunct Assistant Professor, Pratt Institute

Peter Han-Chih Wang, Ph.D.
Lecturer, Butler University

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[2]
From: Lauren DiSalvo (lauren.disalvodixie.edu)
Subject: "Turning on the Lights in the Classroom: Teaching Art History through ActiveLearning"

With an increasing focus on active learning and innovation in the university classroom, this panel seeks to provide guidance on ways to incorporate specific examples of active learning pedagogy into the art history classroom in hopes of promoting the exchange of new ideas. Instead of taking a more theoretical approach towards incorporating active learning, this panel is looking for educators who can share the methodology of specific activities that they have successfully implemented in their own classrooms. What kinds of interactive assignments, problem-based learning sets, or collaborative activities have been particularly effective in the art history classroom? Papers might address, but are not limited to, role playing, debates, digital technologies, object-based learning, or other innovative projects. This session welcomes proposals that address active learning activities in both large ways and small, for both in-class and outside-of-class assignments, and for both lower and upper division courses.

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[3]
From: Sara Berkowitz (sberk23umd.edu)
Subject: Ambiguous Bodies and Gender Non-Conformity

Title: "Figuring Alterity: Representations of Ambiguous and Gender Non-Conforming Bodies in Artistic Practice"

Session chair: Sara Berkowitz, PhD Candidate in Art History at the University of Maryland at College Park

Session abstract: From eunuchs and hermaphrodites to castrati and drag queens, non-normative and altered bodies have occupied the minds and imaginations of artists and art historians across time and culture. It is only in recent years, however, that inquiries into the representation of non-conforming, gender-bending, and ambiguous bodies have received attention in critical discourse, thanks in part to debates on transgender rights and biological determinations of sex. While these figures are traditionally positioned in opposition to their “idealized” and normative counterparts, maligning them to the spaces of the deformed or monstrous, scholarship has begun to push past this dichotomy in favor of uncovering their hidden lives and the implications behind their artistic representations. This session aims to expand the discussion of ambiguous and gender-bending figures in art to explore the cultural factors that inform how the body is defined and categorized. Its goal is to expose sites of contestation or confusion wherein ambiguity was and is able to exist and, in some cases, flourish. This session seeks submissions across chronological and geographic areas. It especially welcomes cross-cultural, interdisciplinary, and inter-medial approaches to the body that may include – but are not limited to – disability studies, medicine, performance theory, and queer theory.

I am seeking 200-word paper proposals for a 20-minute presentation from all temporal and geographic periods. Please consider submitting or forwarding this call to colleagues from other disciplines.

Instructions: submissions will be received directly through the SECAC website portal. Membership with SECAC is required before or at the time of the conference.

For further information or questions please contact Sara Berkowitz at sberk23umd.edu