Call for Papers

South African Visual Arts Historians (SAVAH)

ANNUAL CONFERENCE 2009

KEYNOTE SPEAKER: Ruth B Phillips
Canada Research Chair and Professor of Art History Institute for
Comparative Studies in Literature, Art, and Culture Carleton University,
Canada

The annual SAVAH conference will be hosted by the Department of Visual
Arts, University of Pretoria, from 10 - 11 July 2009. The theme of the
conference is:

THE POLITICS OF CHANGE: Looking backwards and forwards

The South African Visual Art Historians is holding its 25th annual
conference in 2009. It therefore seems fitting to reflect on the history
of the visual arts within (South) Africa and to engage with the diverse
and changing contexts of art (history) and visual culture in a critical
manner. This discourse necessarily involves the dialectic of local and
global politics that forms the backdrop to image making in (South)
Africa. Through this conference, we hope to sketch a historical overview
of the ontology and practice of art (history) and visual culture and to
represent with some transparency the polemics of documenting history and
theorising change in a global landscape.

Submissions are invited from Visual Culture Studies, Cultural Studies,
Cultural History, Art History, Tourism and Leisure Studies, Gender
Studies, Cultural Geography, Film Studies, Philosophy, Visual Arts and
Architecture, or any other fields that are involved with the
interrogation of the themes indicated below.

The following themes/questions/issues in some way or another engage with
the politics of change in terms of art (history) and visual culture.
When submitting your abstract, please indicate in which theme you would
like to be included.

THEMES:

- Visuality theorised
- The social construction of the visual in a changing political
landscape
- Theorising the history of the visual

- Gender in crisis?
- Art production and gender
- Bodies of change
- Embodiment, performance and identity

- Commemoration, identity and memory
- Collective memory, reconciliation and healing
- Changing history/ies

- Visual colonialisms
- The tourist and leisure gaze: changing places
- Cultures on display

- Space, place and power
- Third spaces
- Geopolitics and topographies of power
- Landscape / cityscape

- The dialectic between global and local
- Exploring transnational / marginal identities
- Mobility and globalisation

- New media technologies
- Art and visual production in the technocratic age

Abstracts should be between 200 and 300 words in length (Times New
Roman, font 11, single spaced) and must include the following:
. Title of paper
. Theme to which it belongs
. Author/s
. Affiliation/s
. Contact details.

Please forward abstracts to savah2009up.ac.za by 27 February 2009. You
will be notified as soon as possible after this whether your proposal
has been accepted. Full details regarding the conference will be made
available in February 2009.

We look forward to hearing from you.

Jeanne van Eeden
Amanda du Preez
Stella Viljoen
Jenni Lauwrens

Department of Visual Arts, University of Pretoria