Power and Image in Early Modern Europe

Graduate Student Conference
Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò
New York University

April, 6-8th 2006

Guy Debord has argued that “the spectacle inherits all the weaknesses of
the Western project which undertook to comprehend activity in terms of
seeing.” In his 1967 study of the role of image and spectacle in modern
societies, The Society of the Spectacle, Debord anticipated much of the
cultural debate that has predominated in the late twentieth century. Does
the growth of the power of image mirror the development of modern
societies, as Debord maintains, or, alternatively, is the image capable of
autonomy from social and economic influences? This conference re-examines
the exchange between power and image in the context of Early Modern Europe.
How have patrons, artists, and consumers acted upon and reacted to the
image? How do some images achieve a privileged and even sacred status,
while others become figures of the negative and the “Other”? If awareness
of the power of image in visual and literary culture is tied to
self-consciousness and “modernity,” how have artists explored the conflict
between representation and essence? Seeing and seeming?

The conference will take place on April 7-8, 2006, at the NYU Casa
Italiana Zerilli-Marimò. See program.

Keynote speaker:
Deanna Shemek, professor of Italian and Comparative Literature at Cowell
College, University of California, Santa Cruz.

PROGRAM:

Thursday April 6, 2006

6:00pm Wine and Cheese Welcoming Reception

7:00pm Fresh Looks! First night of Short Films Screening

Friday April 7, 2006

8:30am Breakfast

9:00am Panel 1:
SIMULATION OF THE IMAGE AND QUESTIONS OF AUTHORSHIP

Ljubica Ilic, Echo and Narcissus: Labyrinths of the Self.

Thomas Le Carner, The Future of the Past Looks Bleak: Spenser's Nostalgic
Faerie Image and Baudrillard's Simulacrum.

Malia Spofford, Ships and Selves: the Enchanted Boat and the Barcelona
Galley Ship in Don Quixote, II.

10:30-10:45am Coffee Break

10:45am Panel 2:
COURTING APPEARANCES

Jennifer Newman, Anxious Masculinities, Deceit, and the Creation of
Personal Image: Echoes of Quintilian in Castiglione's Cortegiano.

Ionna Panos, Machiavelli and Henry V: Examining the Virtù of Shakespeare's
Henry V.

Hiba Hafiz, Aristocratic Spectacle: Visual and Literary Portraiture in the
Seventeenth Century French Salon.

12.15-1.45pm Lunch

2:00pm Keynote Address:
Deanna Shemek, Epistolary Simulations: Fiction and Power in Isabella
d'Este's Correspondence.

3:00-3:15pm Coffee Break

3:15pm Panel 3:
IMPERIAL IMAGE AND THE ART(S) OF PROPAGANDA

Shannon Holcomb, Role of Spectacle in Fourteenth-Century Royal Achievement.

Chad Frischman, Imperial Visions: The Art and Propaganda of Charles V
after the Battle of Muhlberg.

Adler Rijo Costa, Writing Otherness in the Renaissance: Two Literary
Journeys to the Land of Brazil.

Jeffer Daykin, Late 17th Century French Travelers' Depictions of African
Laziness and the Justification of Slavery.

5:00pm Reception

6:00pm Fresh Looks! Second Night of Short Films Screening

Saturday April 8, 2006

8:30am Breakfast

9:00am Panel 4:
SPECTACLES OF SEX: GENDERING THE IMAGE

Alessia Weisberg, "L’uomo agisce, la donna appare": il canone della
descriptio personae e la sua trasgressione nella poesia delle Petrarchiste.

Jaclyn Cohen, Honor and the Home: Theatrical Representations of a Woman's
Space in La Estrella de Sevilla and Del rey abajo, ninguno.

Megan Marie Faller, Maria Theresia: "Aus Mutterlichen Wohlmeinung?"
Gender, Image, and Dynasty in Early Modern Austria.

10:30-10:45am Coffee Break

10:45am Panel 5:
EAST MEETS WEST

Lilia Verchinina, Iconoclasm, Iconolatry, and Modernity in Relation to
Proto-Image.

Elena Borelli, L’immagine della donna d’Oriente: variazioni e riscritture
di un tema.

Simona Mammana, Immagini della battaglia di Lepanto tra letteratura e
iconografia.

12.15-1.45pm Lunch

2:00pm Panel 6:
VISUALIZING MODERNITY

Steve Pulimood, Architectural Anatomies

Elena Napolitano, The Printed City: Institutional Identity and the Urban
Imaginary of Rome, 1575-1667.

Elissa Anderson, Rembrant's The Death of the Virgin, Cartesianism, and
Modernity in the Dutch Republic.

3:45-4.00pm Coffee Break

4:00pm Panel 7:
BEYOND APPEARANCES: VIOLENCE, TRANSGRESSION, AND DECAY

Carolin Behrmann, Triumph and Law: On Vasari’s frescoe series on the
massacre of St. Bartholomew’s Eve.

Kathryn Falzareno, Mother's Milk and Deborah's Sword: Joan's Anatomy in I
Henry VI.

Nicola Imbrascio, Secular Relic: The Transformation of Physical Decay on
the Early Modern English Stage.

_______________________________________________________________________

This conference is cosponsored by: the Italian Graduate Student
Association, the Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò, the Dean's Office of
Graduate School of Arts and Science, and the Medieval and Renaissance
Center of New York University.

New York University Department of Italian Studies,
Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimo',
24 W.12th St, New York, NY 10025.
Email: igsa.conferencenyu.edu

http://www.nyu.edu/gsas/dept/italian/program3.htm