Early Modern Europe (Aberdeen, UK, May 2003)

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PRELIMINARY CALL FOR PAPERS

Picturing Poverty: Imagery of the Outcast and Marginal in Early Modern
Europe

A TWO DAY CONFERENCE HOSTED BY THE DEPARTMENT OF THE HISTORY OF ART,
KING'S COLLEGE, UNIVERSITY OF ABERDEEN, SCOTLAND, UNITED KINGDOM

TO BE HELD IN MAY 2003 (DATES TO BE CONFIRMED)

Papers are invited for an academic conference devoted to the
representation of marginal and outcast social groups in British and
European art. The Conference is envisaged as primarily art historical in
kind, with a specific focus on visual imagery (of any kind). But
interdisciplinary papers are also welcomed, particularly from scholars
working in the area of literary studies and cultural history. The term
'Early Modern' is used merely in a blanket chronological sense: papers
are invited on art featuring outcasts and marginal people from any place
or period within the broad time frame 1300-1700.

The period 1300-1700 is remarkable for the rapid increase in the number
of images of marginals produced in a wider range of media. And while
many of these are didactic, satirical or dismissive in tone, others are
increasingly complex in their representation, the increase in quantity
being matched by a concommitent increase in quality and diversity. The
new imageries can be seen against larger historical meta-narratives
relating to the growth of the market, the centralisation and
secularisation of European states, and the religious Reformation and
Counter-Reformation.

Alongside papers dealing with those living beyond the pale of
established society, such as 'roguish' beggars, criminals, and the
insane, its is hoped the conference will also feature work on those
frequenting its edges, for example, street hawkers and traders,
cardsharps, tricksters, fools, travelling musicians and players. It may
also be taken as referring to exiled or vagrant racial groupings (for
example, Jews and Gypsies), and to the sick, the incarcerated and those
considered as morally depraved: for example, lepers, criminals, madmen,
and prostitutes. Papers dealing with the representation of peasants are
also welcomed, given that such imagery often overlaps in its concerns
and emphases with that devoted to the outcast and liminal.

The conference is intended to bring together scholars whose work may
not immediately overlap in terms of its chronology, geography or
methodological approach, but that nonetheless has an underlying affinity
in its concern with the social 'underclass'. The conference will aim to
provide a clearer understanding of the rapidly expansion of imagery
devoted to people living on the edge in what is a key period for their
emergence into the field of visual representation.

Proposals for papers (20 minutes in length) should be sent to Dr. Tom
Nichols, Department of the History of Art, Powis Gate, King's College,
University of Aberdeen, AB24 3UG (e-mail: t.nicholsabdn.ac.uk;
telephone enquiries: 01224 273783). Proposals should be no more than 300
words. Closing date: October 1 2002.

Tom Nichols
King's College
University of Aberdeen

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