<e.van.kesselhum.leidenuniv.nl>
Date: 4 March 2009
Subject: CFP: Art, Agency, and Living Presence in the Early Modern World
(Venice, 8-10 Apr 10)

CALL FOR PAPERS

Art, Agency, and Living Presence in the Early Modern World

Proposed panel for the 2010 Annual Meeting of the Renaissance Society of
America
8 - 10 April 2010
Venice, Italy

In the early modern period people often responded to paintings,
sculptures and buildings as if they were alive: the artworks seemed to
be moving, speaking or looking at the beholder. In this session, we
welcome papers that are dealing with this type of response in terms of
agency: that is, by considering works of art not as signs or codes
referring to something outside themselves, but as agents acting upon the
viewer. Topics to be addressed in our session could be, but are not
necessarily limited to, the following:
- Qualities such as lifelikeness, liveliness, vivacità in the work of
art;
- The power of social conventions such as ritual, theatricality and
'period eye' in guiding the viewer's response;
- The usefulness of the concept of 'agency' in analyzing these
responses.

We are welcoming case studies as well as contributions that are more
methodologically or theoretically oriented.

Please submit a 150 word abstract and a short cv before 15 April 2009 to
Minou Schraven (m.schravenhum.leidenuniv.nl) and to Elsje van Kessel
(e.van.kesselhum.leidenuniv.nl).