Call For Papers

Photography in Revolution

Deadline for submissions: July 31, 2010.

The following panel will be part of an international symposium, "Cuba
Futures: Past and Present," hosted by the Cuba Project at the Bildner
Center for Western Hemisphere Studies. The symposium will be held at The
Graduate Center, City University of New York from March 31-April 2,
2011.
For more information visit
http://web.gc.cuny.edu/bildnercenter/cuba/events.shtml.

Photography in Revolution

In 1959, the story goes, Fidel Castro brandished a copy of Henry Luce's
"Life" magazine in front of his collaborators, explaining "I want
something like this." The "this" to which Castro referred, and which he
got in the form of publications like "Revolución," was much more than a
new means for the circulation of the revolution's epic photographs. It
was, as Luce had envisioned it, a new means "to see." To quote Luce from
the illustrated magazine's 1936 prospectus: "To see life; to see the
world, to eyewitness great events; to watch the faces of the poor and
the gestures of the proud. To see, and to show is the mission now
undertaken by LIFE." In Cuba, in 1959, "to see," of course, took on a
very specific meaning, as many of the nation's new vanguard were
illiterate. In conjunction with the revolution's literacy campaign,
Castro honed a medium more legible than the alphabet. He honed
photography.

Despite the acknowledged importance of photography to the documentation
and representation of the revolution and its heroes, historians of the
revolution have paid scant attention to photography's role as a tool in
the revolution. What, for example, are the implications of Castro's
decision to appropriate the mouthpiece of the "American Century," a term
coined by Luce to mark the advent of America's global hegemony? What
does it mean to propose or invent a new "way of seeing"? "Photography in
Revolution" seeks to bring together scholars interested in attending to
these questions to the role photography played in shaping, selling, and
disseminating the revolution.

Though framed by events in the 1960s, "Photography and Revolution" seeks
to do more than provide a forum for examining the role photography and
mass media played in Cuba's past. Responding to the conference's
interest in addressing Cuba's future, this panel also welcomes scholars
interested in attending to the role the media still plays in shaping
Cuban history, culture, and society. For example, how does the
prominence given to new media-digital photography, the Internet, and
video-in shaping our understanding of our current wars and revolutions
impact our understanding of the events of the 1960s? Since the crisis of
the 1990s, Cuban artists-both on and off the island-have begun to
address the revolution's status as a media event. "Photography and
Revolution" welcomes papers attending to these developments in
contemporary Cuban artistic practices. How do we understand the renewed
interest in photography in the 1990s, as well as the turn away from the
epic gestures of the 1960s? Today's artists are not only interested in
attending to how history was "told" and documented, but in creating new
histories and media events. In short, "Photography in Revolution" seeks
to create a forum for addressing the relationship between media and
revolution, a forum for exploring how the various and dynamic ways in
which the revolution has been mediated are in revolution.

Please send abstracts of proposed papers (500 words) and a cover letter
with the author's professional affiliation, a biographical sketch, and
contact information to cubaprojectgc.cuny.edu. Proposals will receive
preliminary assessment as they arrive. The final deadline for
submissions is July 31, 2010.