CALL FOR PAPERS

Dr Tamara Trodd and Dr Cordelia Warr invite submisions to their conference
session on the theme of 'Skin'.
The session will take place at the Association of Art Historians (AAH)
Annual Conference in Manchester (UK), April 2-4, 2009. We welcome papers
covering all historical periods and artistic media. Papers which treat the
theme as a conceptual tool - for theorizing eg the boundaries between media,
the interface with the viewer, or issues of space and embodiment in art -
are also encouraged.

35th AAH Conference 2009
Intersections
Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester
2 - 4 April 2009

Skin

Tamara Trodd, History of Art, Edinburgh University tamara.trodded.ac.uk
Cordelia Warr, Art History and Visual Cultures, University of Manchester
cordelia.warrmanchester.ac.uk

As the outer covering of the body, skin is an opening onto the world at the
same time as it is a container for our sense of our own interiority. Skin
can be marked, broken, and pierced, all of which can be the occasion for, or
result of, medical intervention, group-affiliation or religious conversion.
Visually, we respond to skin with a sensory knowledge of what it feels like
to touch and to be touched. At the same time, skin is the boundary of our
social selves, marking out the borderzone where we take on inscriptions of
social identity.

Psychoanalysts, doctors, photographers, film-makers, performance artists,
sculptors, and painters have used and understood skin as a privileged
location for articulation of the self and its histories. Skin can be both
represented (in painting and sculpture, for example) and can raise questions
relating to representation (skin as the support for paint and other media,
skin as metamorphosed subject). 'Skin' may thus provide a useful model for
theorising the interface between different media in the 'age of the
post-medium condition'; as painting, sculpture and drawing are all re-made
by their points of contact with each other.

A territory of visceral response and exchange, Skin is not bound by time or
geography: instead, focusing on the visual, this session seeks to explore
skin at the intersections of visual representation, medicine, performance,
religion, sensory response and different media.

To submit a paper proposal for this session please click, download and
return the AAH09 Paper Proposal Form (word) or AAH09 Paper Proposal Form
(pdf)

For further details and to submit proposals please see
http://www.aah.org.uk/conference/index.php
Deadline for Paper Proposals: 10 November 2008