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[1] Identity in the Visual
Panel Organizer: Daniela Chalániová (Anglo-American University, Prague)

Panel Description:
Ever since the so called ‘linguistic turn’ in the 1970s, majority of research on identity in political and social sciences has been focused on language and text - as language has been considered the primary tool for meaning formation, and ideas exchange. Today, we are twenty years from a digital revolution of the 1990s, which on the one hand, made communication faster, more efficient and more global, on the other hand made the linguistic exchange just one of many possibilities. While arguably some visual elements such as symbols and flags have been recognized as important for collective identification, the impact of journalist, fashion and travel photography, films, comic books and documentaries, billboards and brands, sports and arts has largely been neglected by mainstream political science scholars, who viewed images as something rather suspicious. However, with increasing interest in the visual/aesthetic aspects of political and social life (the so called ‘visual/aesthetic turn’ of the late 1990s) it is only logical to take a hard look at identity beyond language, that is, from an interdisciplinary visual perspective.

Images, just like words, are able to communicate norms, meanings and values, they polarize as well as unite communities, identify who is ‘in’ and who is ‘out’. Images communicate meanings through logic of association, rather than logic of argumentation as texts often do, appealing to our emotional rather than logical cognition. Images trigger the unconscious processes of stereotyping and value judgments associated with them, effectively constructing affiliation or differentiation, a Self and the Other, with behavioural consequences. Therefore, analysis of visual material in connection to identity should occupy a more prominent place among identity scholars. Political and social science, however, lacks in tools of visual analysis, therefore it needs to broaden its scope into other disciplines such as communication studies, artsand history, cultural studies, media studies, theatre, iconography, semiotics, marketing and advertising, public relations, fashion, photography, cinematography, etc.

Thus, this panel aims at a more inclusive interdisciplinary approach to identity building, especially in terms of the empirical scope. The goal is to collect empirical as well as theoretical and methodological papers on political and social identity, focused on visual aspects of identity construction.

Suggested topics may include/but are not limited to these:
- Film and Visual Identity
- Role of images in multilingual collectivities’ identity construction
- Role of images in multicultural/multinational collectivities’ identity construction
- Role of sports as visual performance in identity narratives
- Emotional appeal of images, symbols and representations
- American presidential election and the public ‘image’ of the candidates
- Presidential election and the public ‘image’ of the candidates
- Constructing the democrats/the republicans in the media
- Political branding and electoral campaigns
- Media campaigns of the European Parliament
- Statues and monuments of national identity
- Treatment of minorities in films – visualizing the Other
- National cinema and national identity
- Images of patriotism
- Fashion statement as a declaration of belonging
- Folk costumes and clothing in contemporary national identity narratives
- Visualizing the gender

While the papers suggested here approach identity from a social-constructivist perspective, other approaches and criticisms are welcome.

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[2] European Cultural Heritage

Panel Description:
In 2017 the European Council and the European Parliament representatives took the decision of establishing a European Year of Cultural Heritage. 2018 was expected to be the year to fulfill for the first time the celebratory idea of a European Cultural heritage. The concept of European cultural heritage encompasses a variety of references to the European heritage in its most diverse dimensions. These include monuments, sites, traditions, transmitted knowledge and expressions of human creativity, as well as collections conserved and managed by museums, libraries and archives. The reference to the European cultural heritage is an opportunity to indicate the European unity in diversity but also the actual diversity in diversity. Since the European patrimonial inheritance is immense and intense, it is also fragmented in a mosaic that in its diversity stands for the authentic European cultural history. The European culture substantively precedes the European Union and it’s a precondition of its existence. This panel looks at the advancement of the European Year of Cultural Heritage as an opportunity for exchange and analysis of a common magmatic European patrimony celebrated in its diversity.
The 2018 Year of Cultural Heritage was declared to be conceived as an occasion to `highlight the importance of European culture`. An importance that is however acknowledged in its grandeur and that needs constant deepening and re-visitation/interpretation. The European Year of Cultural Heritage is a bottom-up approach on the participatory governance of cultural heritage aimed to foster awareness of European cultural history and values and to strengthen a sense of European identity. However, the patrimonial European identity goes in terms of temporal and geographical extensions well beyond the EU as political arrangements. This panel aims also to address cultural heritage appropriations in political projects inside the EU in asserting the intrinsic value of European cultural heritage for a European unity. The politicization of culture in the process of inventing a European identity is co-substantial to the EU as an institution and brings also about inclusion/exclusion nexuses and cultural recognition inside the EU. The panel also addresses the impact assessment of the 2018 Year of Cultural Heritage.
This panel welcomes the most diverse and multi-disciplinary approaches to the European cultural heritage in holistic terms and/or details.

Selected topics to be non-exclusively considered for the panel are:
- Intellectual History and Cultural Heritage
- European Culture as Shared Patrimony
- Heritage and Diversity in Europe
- European Heritage and European Identity
- Art History and European Artistic Heritage
- Monuments, Museums, Galleries and Exhibition
- Projects Promoting a European Dimension of Cultural Heritage
- History and Heritage: Sites of Conflict as European Heritage
- European Cultural Heritage and the Pre-National/National and Post-National Moments
- Local/National/European/Global Dimensions of Cultural Heritage in Europe
- Cultural Production, Mobility, Exchange and Cultural Heritage in Europe
- Architecture and European Heritage
- Urban Cultural Heritage
- Rural Cultural Heritage
- Industrial Heritage
- Cultural Tourism in Europe
- Forgotten or Ignored Sites of Memorialization
- Non-Monuments and Counter-Monuments in Europe
- European Cultural Policy
- European Cultural Diplomacy
- European Cultural Dialogue and Exchange with Non-European Cultures
- Creative Societies and Cultural Production
- Assessments of Cultural Funding in the EU
- A European Culture to Protect: Sustainable Development and Preservation
- European Cultural Heritage, Eurocentrism and Multiculturalism
- Arts and Intercultural dialogue
- Cultural Institutes and the Promotion of Cultural Heritage
- Lived Cultural Patrimony: Quotidian Sites of Culture
- Preservation, Conservation, Restoration and Rehabilitation
- Mnemonic Loci
- Participatory Governance and Cultural Heritage
- Cultural Production, Markets and Globalization’s Impact on European Cultural Heritage

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[3] Art as Cultural Diplomacy: (Re)Constructing Notions of Eastern and Western Europe
Panel Proposed by Cassandra Sciortino, University of California, Santa Barbara

Panel Description:
The panel “Art as cultural diplomacy” seeks papers that explore the function of art (in its broadest definition) as an instrument of cultural diplomacy by the state and, especially, by nongovernmental actors. The main theme of the session is the question of art and diplomacy in Europe before and after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Papers are welcome which explore issues related to the role of art, diplomacy and the politicization of the European Union and its candidate countries, as are those which consider how the arts have pursued or resisted East-West dichotomies and other narratives of alterity in Europe and worldwide. The panel seeks to combine a wide range of interdisciplinary perspectives to explore how art--its various practices, history, and theory--are an important area of inquiry in the expanding field of cultural diplomacy.

Some examples of topics include:
- How can art serve as a neutral platform for exchange to promote dialogue and understanding between foreign states?
- How can art, including organized festivals (i.e. film, art, music.), cultivate transnational identities that undermine dichotomies of East and West, and other narratives of alterity in Europe and beyond it?
- The implications for art as an instrument of diplomacy in a postmodern age where geopolitics and power are increasingly mobilized by image based structures of persuasion
- How has/can art facilitate cohesion between European Union member states and candidate states that effectively responds to the EU’s efforts to create “unity in diversity.”
- The politics of mapping Europe: mental and cartographic
- Community based art as a social practice to engage issues of European identity
- The difference between art as cultural diplomacy and propaganda
- The digital revolution and the emergence of social media as platforms for art to communicate across social, cultural, and national boundaries?
- Diplomacy in the history of art in Europe and Eastern Europe
- Artists as diplomats
- Art history as diplomacy--exhibitions, post-colonial criticism, global art history, and other revisions to the conventional boundaries of Europe and its history of art
- The international activity of cultural institutes

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For complete information before applying see full details of the conference at:
http://euroacademia.eu/conference/8eupe/

You can apply on-line by completing the Application Form on the conference website or by sending 300 words titled abstract together with the details of contact and affiliation until 25th of September 2019 at applicationeuroacademia.org