The following Design Studies Forum-Sponsored Special Session has been added
to the CAA Annual Conference in Los Angeles.
It does not appear in the printed version of the 2009 Call for
Participation.

BENJAMIN'S OBJECTS
Design Studies Forum-Sponsored Special Session
College Art Association
Los Angeles, February 25-28, 2009

CALL FOR PARTICIPATION

The objects found in Walter Benjamin's writing constitute a significant
part of his material and intellectual world. Benjamin's careful textual
descriptions of objects gird his broader critical insight into the status
of objects and their significance. In reflecting upon his childhood,
objects became a means through which to access a bygone era; taking
possession of things was posited as a way to divest them of their commodity
character. Activities such as collecting, assembling the archive, or
unpacking the library were necessarily material-filled. In a seemingly
straightforward manner, Benjamin celebrates the material qualities of
objects such as letters, books, or old toys, but he also less directly
employs objects to address subjects such as kitsch, modern life, and
capitalism. In Benjamin's formulation, antimacassars, cases and containers,
in their use, allowed the dweller to leave traces; it is notably through
objects that the dweller imprints himself upon the interior.

This session proposes a reappraisal of Benjamin's objects, with
considerations of what objecthood meant to Benjamin and how the particular
set of objects highlighted in his writing can be understood both within his
body of work and the broader period in which he wrote. Benjamin's theory
can also be used to inform the examination of objects in other areas of
design history. This panel invites investigations of objects as a means of
soliciting critical insight into Benjamin's larger questions, such as those
surrounding the aura, habits, taste, the bourgeoisie, or authenticity.
Seeking not just to excavate and explicate previously underexamined
Benjaminian objects, this session asks how we might interrogate them as
discursive entities or agents. Papers might address the myriad
relationships between art and objects, object-laden activities (collecting,
for example), or between subjects and objects. How might objects mediate
between the concrete realm of the commodity and the dream world, both
equally populated with things in Benjamin¹s work? How might objects give
insight, according to Benjamin, into broader categories of knowledge? How
do the perceptions or representations of things relate to their general
existence or to a specific time and place? How might objects be seen in
relation to the work of art or the production of images? And finally, how
might the material culture of Benjamin give insight into the material of
culture?

Please submit an abstract not to exceed 500 words with a c.v. via
email to Robin Schuldenfrei (schuluic.edu) by Friday, May 23, 2008.

Robin Schuldenfrei
Assistant Professor
Department of Art History
University of Illinois at Chicago
935 W. Harrison St., MC 201
Chicago, IL 60607-7039